Karel didn’t notice. He was trying to comprehend the news. He didn’t know if he should be happy or not.
The man twisted fully in his seat, an arm stretched behind his wife’s head, and smiled at Gavra. “Excuse me. Are you… ?”
It was hard to know how to answer. To say no was to admit he knew what the man was talking about. To ask what he meant would lead to more questions. So Gavra leaned forward and said in very slow English, “I’m sorry, but I do not understand.”
The man squinted, recognizing the language but not knowing it, then held up a hand, smiling, to show he’d made a mistake. He returned to his wife, shaking his head.
“What was that?” Karel whispered.
“When we get there, I’ll tell you.”
“Get where?”
“To the airport.”
It was dark when they reached Pankov International. By that point, someone had spray-painted over PANKOV, but no one had yet renamed it. They climbed down from the bus at the far end of the parking lot and walked the half mile to the terminal. Gavra walked quickly, so the suspicious man and his wife would be left far behind.
“We picking up someone?” said Karel, jogging to catch up.
“We’re leaving.”
“Leaving? Why?”
“We’re just going.”
Karel stopped, and Gavra had to come back to fetch him. “I’m not going anywhere. I live here, you know.”
“Come on,” Gavra urged, dragging him along. “You don’t know everything yet. You’ll understand. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Then explain it now.”
“Later.”
“No.” Like a child, Karel dug in his heels, then dropped until he was sitting on the ground next to a rusted Trabant. He squeezed himself, partly from the cold. “I’m not moving until you tell me.”
So Gavra returned, squatted in front of his friend, and told him everything. By the time he finished, Karel was trembling. “You? You did it?”
“They were going to kill you.”
That was more responsibility than Karel could take. He swatted away Gavra’s hands. By that point the other bus passengers had reached and passed them. They all seemed interested in Karel’s behavior.
“If you’d been there,” said Gavra, “you’d understand. Now come on.”
“But why are we leaving?”
There was no way to explain it to his friend’s satisfaction. The fact was that after shooting the Pankovs, he realized there was nothing left in our country for him. His job was obsolete. His apartment was surrounded by people who had been waiting years to attack him openly. His new government was awash in murderers. He’d done something that no one he knew—myself included—would ever be able to understand, so there was only one thing left: to abandon this place. All he could manage was, “I hate this country. I can’t live here anymore.”
“But what about me?”
Gavra settled on the cold ground next to him. “We’ll go to Amsterdam. I have friends there. We’ll find work, better work, and we’ll be in the West. Don’t you want to go west?”
They’d never discussed this before, so Gavra was surprised when his friend said, “Absolutely not. I’ve never even considered it.”
“Give it a month. If it’s not working out, we’ll come back.”
“But I don’t even speak Dutch!”
Gavra’s patience ran out. He gripped Karel’s elbow and heaved him into a standing position. “Fine. I don’t give a damn. Just come in to see me off. You can stay in this shit hole.”
Despite what he’d said, after he exchanged the American dollars he still had left from Yuri Kolev, he bought two tickets to Budapest—the next international flight out—from a frazzled TisAir clerk. “It’s like a sinking ship,” she said, “but the rats are flying.”
Gavra didn’t know if the woman was trying to scold him for abandoning the ship, but it didn’t matter, because, as she was writing out a receipt, she looked up and squinted at him. “My God,” she muttered. “It’s you”
“I don’t need a receipt.” He stuffed the tickets into his pocket and walked over to Karel, who was moping by the glass doors. He glanced back to see the clerk talking with her manager, pointing in his direction.
He again grabbed Karel’s arm and led him down a corridor, past the bathrooms, to a door labeled SECURITY. It was locked, so he knocked until a fat man in a guard’s uniform opened up. The man blinked in the bright light of the corridor. “Gavra?”
“Hi, Toni. Let us in?”
Toni stepped back, and they entered a small, dark room lit by ten video monitors. Toni, who had the white skin of his job, took a seat, shaking his head. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Gavra. He searched the monitors until he found the camera outside their door, where a few people in blue TisAir uniforms came smiling down the corridor, looking for him. They kept moving past the security office.
“What’re you doing here?” said Toni.
“Hiding out until my plane leaves.” He leaned on the simple desk. Karel stood uncomfortably with his arms around himself. “This is my friend Karel. Karel, Toni.”
They shook hands. Then Toni bent under the desk and tugged out an old cardboard box. He produced plastic cups and a bottle of plum brandy. “This calls for a toast. To the man who rid us of a couple of real monsters.”
Karel glared at Gavra.
Toni handed out the shots and raised his cup. “To Gavra Noukas, who’s put us on the road to freedom!”
Toni threw back his drink, and Gavra followed suit, the rough homemade brew burning his throat. Karel took a small sip, then set it down. Gavra said, “You have to decide, Karel. Come with me.”
Toni, clutching his third brandy, looked confused but was smart enough not to interrupt.
“Someone has to stay around,” said Karel. “Someone has to vote.”
“Won’t make any difference. It’ll be rigged.”
Karel shook his head. “You don’t know that, Gavra. In fact, you don’t know anything for sure. You never have.”
Thinking back over that eventful week, Gavra could see how right his friend was.
THIRTY-TWO
•
The Russian was as big as Ferenc and Bernard but padded with a lot of fat. Ferenc set aside the empty Kalashnikov and searched him beside his car, while Bernard kept the pistol trained on him. He wore a cheap gray suit of Soviet make and stared at me while Ferenc patted him down. “You’re Emil Brod?”
“Do I look like Emil Brod?”
Fyodor Malevich cocked his head. “Brano said you’d look devastated. So, yes.”
At that moment, I didn’t like the Russian, nor did I like Brano.
We brought him into the kitchen and sat him down. He stank of some Moscow hair tonic. Magda served him tea. “Anything stronger?” he asked hopefully.
Magda obliged, setting out a bottle of brandy with four glasses. Agota wandered in, carrying Sanja. “Hello,” she said, surprised.
Magda took Sanja from her, and that was the first time I heard the baby cry. “Come on. Let them get drunk and do their talking.”
Bernard poured the drinks, and Malevich raised his glass. “Na-zdorovye!”
We drank but didn’t repeat the word. He reached into his jacket pocket and placed a train ticket envelope on the table in front of me.
“This, Comrade Brod, is for you. Second class straight through to Vienna.”
I picked it up, confused. “Vienna?”
“Brano asks that you come see him. It leaves Sarospatak at one in the morning. He’ll be waiting for you. Everything’s arranged.”
“How did Brano know I was here?”
“7 knew,” said Malevich. “You visited Comrade Kolyeszar’s headquarters. Think I’m not watching that place?”
“I’m not going to Vienna.”
The Russian shrugged and pushed his empty glass forward, but no one chose to refill it. “That’s up to you. I’ve done my duty and passed it on. You do a
s you like.”
“But why?” I said.
He stared at his glass. “Brano told me nothing. He just sent a telegram saying it was urgent you come to him on that train. So I bought the ticket on the way here.”
I stared at it. I had no desire to see Vienna, or Brano Sev.
“And now,” continued Malevich, pushing his glass closer to the bottle, “Comrade Kolyeszar.” He smiled at Ferenc, but Ferenc didn’t smile back. “You and I must talk.”
“About what?”
“About how to salvage this situation. How to save some little part of the popular revolution.”
Ferenc reached for the bottle and refilled all our glasses. Malevich looked relieved. But then Ferenc clapped his hand over the Russian’s glass. “Just over a week ago, some of my people captured you. You had a colonel’s uniform in your wardrobe. I know this. Further, I know you and your KGB friends were trying to undermine my work. Why would you be interested in changing sides now?”
Suddenly, the big Russian laughed, echoing in the kitchen. He slapped the table. “No!” He shook his head and pointed at Ferenc. “You revolutionaries are so narrow-minded!”
Ferenc removed his hand from the glass and let him drink it down. The Russian set down the empty glass.
“Listen, Ferenc. You’re letting paranoia get the best of you. What you may not know is that I’ve got a crackpot for a boss. Gorbachev. He starts seeing the results of his idiotic catastroika and realizes he’s made a mistake. Everything’s going down the tubes. The Poles, the Germans, the Czechs, the Hungarians.” He shook his head. “Everywhere, it’s turning to shit. So what does he do? He pulls in some of the head guys and talks over options. They tell him, quite reasonably, that the only real option is to send in the Red Army until all this blows over. Secure socialism, et cetera. But Gorby doesn’t do that. He sends them all away and calls in my boss, Vladimir Aleksan-drovich Kryuchkov. He says he’s not worried about losing these countries. He’s very philosophical. He only worries that the results won’t be what the people want. He actually says that!”
He laughed, red-faced, but none of us was laughing with him.
He settled down. “Okay. You don’t believe me. Whatever. But the fact of the matter is, we start getting our mission briefs. Go in, take a look at the situation, and do our best to make sure there’s no bloodshed. If the people want to start a new government, then so be it. Just make sure there aren’t any massacres, okay?”
Bernard broke in. “Not very successful, were you?”
The Russian squinted at him and spoke seriously. “You think thirty dead’s a massacre? If it weren’t for us, brother, there’d be three hundred dead.”
“How does Brano Sev come into this?” I asked.
Malevich looked at me. “He’s a friend of the people, our Comrade Sev. He’s always been. Who do you think told us to support your buddy here?” he said, motioning toward Ferenc. “Who told us to watch out for the Galicia Revolutionary Committee and all its CIA money?”
I looked at Ferenc; he, too, was stunned, but he found his tongue. “So what have you been doing to stop the committee?”
Again the Russian shrugged, but this time he reached for the brandy himself and filled our glasses. “Not as much as I’d like. My boss tells me to protect your Democratic Forum but also says I can’t shoot anybody. What am I supposed to do? Why do you think the glorious Bolshevik Revolution was so full of corpses? There’s no other way to get rid of the foreign influence. Everyone’s crazy about Gorby, but the man’s about as practical as a firefly.”
None of us knew whether or not to believe him. The fact that he’d used Brano Sev’s name wasn’t enough. Then again, what would the Russians gain by hurting Ferenc when the real threat was in the Capital, where friends of America were already in control of the country?
Malevich said, “I bet you never thought you’d have a Russian come to protect you from the Americans.”
“That’s why it’s so hard to believe,” muttered Bernard.
“It’s just common sense,” said the Russian. “You’ve got the CIA, they’ve been funding the Galicia Committee for years. Millions of dollars, probably, when you add it up. Then there’s unrest in Patak, and a senator comes to visit the CIA director and says, This is what we’ve been paying for, right? Now, that director, he’d like to keep hold of his pretty secretary (who’s probably his mistress), his fancy office, and his pension. So he says, Yes, of course. This is exactly what you’ve been paying for. Now, he’s got to make sure it happens. He makes sure his team gets into power.”
“They’re funding murderers and communists,” Bernard said.
“Syn, wake up,” said Malevich.
“I’m not your son,” countered Bernard.
The Russian raised his hands. “Okay. But the Americans don’t care about this. They only care that the new government will owe them something. What they want, and what they’re getting, is a group of countries who love them. Everybody needs to justify his budget, and if a million dollars buys you the friendship of a whole country, that’s money well spent.”
Ferenc, like me, was tired of this talk. “Okay. Say I believe all this. How are you going to help us?”
“Not much can be done anymore,” he said. “There’s only one option: You meet with the opposition and negotiate a settlement.”
“Settlement?” said Bernard. “You don’t settle with murderers!”
“We settle with murderers every day,” said Malevich. He turned to Ferenc. “What you need to do is get a foot in the door. Then you can run for office. It’s the only way.”
Ferenc, too, was angry. He’d spent the last days filled with the naive optimism that somehow his ragged band of students could overpower the Capital by simple moral force. He refilled his own glass, threw the brandy down his throat, and lit a cigarette. He stood and stared down at the Russian. “Brano agrees with this?”
“He did when I spoke to him.”
“When?”
“Couple of weeks ago. We discussed the various outcomes and what should be done in each case. He seemed to think he had information that could bring down the committee’s main candidate. But not anymore. That fell through.”
I closed my eyes, trying to block out all this. Brano, I realized, knew long ago what would unfold here. If he’d told me about this weeks ago, Lena might still be alive. I said to Ferenc, “I don’t trust this.”
“Neither do I,” he said, wandering toward the sink, smoke streaming from his cigarette.
Bernard remained silent. He stared at his empty glass, turning it in his fingers.
“Okay, then,” said Malevich. “If you’ve got a better plan, then let me know. I’ll be happy to assist.” He reached for the bottle again.
It was no use. For the next hour, the Russian gradually went through the bottle, and Ferenc tried to come up with alternatives. He made phone calls, discussing the Russian’s plan with his young revolutionaries, and they reacted as he had, but with the self-righteousness of youth. They weren’t able to think straight. I went outside with him and tried to come up with something, anything, but I was never a political thinker, and Ferenc, despite his position, wasn’t much of one either. At least with this solution, Ferenc’s people wouldn’t be completely marginalized. They could represent the western part of the country in parliament, and even put forth their own candidate for president.
Malevich didn’t gloat when Ferenc admitted he had no alternatives. Instead, the Russian cocked his head and said, “You know, Brano never thought it would come to this either. I told him from the beginning this is where it would go, but he refused to believe me. That man, he’s as idealistic as the rest of you. He’s an eternal optimist.”
Ferenc frowned at him. “I never took Brano for an optimist.”
Neither had I.
“Oh,” said the Russian. “One more message from Brano Sev, then I take Comrade Brod to the train station.”
“What’s that?” said Ferenc.
“He
wishes you all a happy Christmas.”
25 DECEMBER 1989
MONDAY
•
THIRTY-THREE
•
Of course, I went. Like Gavra, I was starting to realize there was nothing for me at home anymore. The life of Militia Chief Emil Brod, at sixty-four years, had ended with an automobile explosion. And what had that life been anyway, when I’d never even known my wife? It had been an illusion. Whether my final days were eked out at home or in Austria, it made no difference. I just didn’t want anyone else to die because of my stupidity.
When Magda kissed me good-bye, she was out of threats. She squeezed my face in her hands and told me to come back soon, because Austria would be too much for a simple man like me. She meant it as a compliment. As thanks, I handed her Gavra’s Makarov and told her to bury it.
In the car, Fyodor Malevich became serious. For a moment I wondered if this was all a trap. Maybe Brano hadn’t sent him; maybe I would be the last witness to die, quietly on a frigid evening roadside. But he just wanted to tell me, in private, how sorry he was about Lena. His own wife had been killed five years before when he was stationed in Paris, a hit-and-run. Though it was never solved, he believed the English had done it in retaliation for an agent of theirs he’d had to kill months before. As we crossed the Bodrog, entering Sarospatak, he said, “Get prepared, my friend, because you’ll never get over it.”
The train was packed, and though my ticket gave me rights to a window seat, I found it occupied by a pregnant woman and her baby, so I spent the hour until the Hungarian border smoking in the corridor. It occurred to me as we pulled into Szerencs that I didn’t have a passport and would be turned back, but it was a different time then, fraternal borders briefly open to all newly freed peoples—my Militia card sufficed. We stopped for a couple of hours in Budapest, where the train emptied. I found a window seat and peered out at Deli Station, its platform still shrouded in predawn gloom, then dozed until a Hungarian man woke me in Tatabanya, insisting my seat was his. I had to change trains there anyway. I found my new train, tracked another empty seat, took some Captopril, and went back to sleep.
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