They seemed to scan him up and down and then after a moment the hooded figures turned back to their artwork, ignoring his presence. His vagrant’s camouflage.
Some blocks farther up, he checked his pocket for the nazar and found it missing. He fingered through a hole that had torn through the bottom of the pocket. He peered back the way he’d come, feeling hopeless. Varia had walked all day around the center. No telling where it’s fallen . . .
In the gutter between his feet Varia spotted the remainder of a cigarette two-thirds smoked. He smoothed it out and hit it with a match (those were still free). Smoking it to the filter, he cursed silently whomever now carried the amulet, knowing the act did nothing—they were protected.
Now approaching plateia Syntagma, he began to notice the extent that traffic had gotten increasingly congested. Varia hadn’t been a stone’s throw to a demonstration this large since his own country’s revolt in . . . he scratched his head, 1989, was it? Only that had been much different, so ruthlessly violent. He had long tried forgetting any participation on his end. He’d never forget the newscast panning across the dusty remains of the Ceaușescus.
Once he reached the square, he was relieved to find the gathering was calm in spite of its size. He wasn’t sure exactly what they were protesting, nor who the present Prime Minister was, though it was easy to assume it could have been either a Karamanlis or a Papandreou—names that had always come up in the news; the political dynasties of the Hellenic Republic—back when he still paid attention to regional politics.
He scanned predatorlike, wandering through the crowd for something to take, something he could eat, perhaps thousands of empty wrappers, fast food bags and plastic bottles. . . .
Feeling so hungry there was pain, and just as lost, Varia sat positioned lotus at the center of the square in a small clearing between protestors facing west at the base of the fountain, and he closed his eyes and began to pray.
The street was one Varia no longer knew the name of but could still navigate blindly if he ever had to. Andrei Nistor was in the passenger seat, staring ahead. The ashtray pulled all the way forward and filled with cigarette butts. Nistor’s gun nose down in the console’s cup holder. Varia’s was still holstered; he was looking at his wrists and feeling like he’d put on weight.
“Do you attend church?” Window down, Nistor’s arm over the door, tapping ash.
“Sometimes.”
“Me? Work is my church.” Nistor’s breath smelled dry, vaguely aniseed, probably from raki; Varia didn’t mention it. Neither had shaved in days. “I don’t have much else.”
“Uh huh.” Varia was missing his wife.
“How’s your family?”
Varia turned, studying the question on Nistor’s face. “My family is, they’re real good, yeah. They’re okay. The babies are growing quickly. The wife and I are still attending meetings. It’s good. Everything’s good. Nothing’s perfect, but we do okay.”
“I’m glad. I’m glad for you.” Nistor lit another off the same one. “I wonder what that’s like. To be married. Having kids.”
“Marriage, shit. Marriage is a lot of being wrong, even when you’re right.”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to talk about something?”
Nistor coughed deep. “Just waiting till I meet the right one.”
“My luck was just that . . . luck. I didn’t expect to meet anyone at a meeting for alcoholics.”
“I suppose you’re right. Maybe I should just stop waiting and just live it out.”
“Was it the family?”
“Your family?”
“No. That house yesterday. Everyone slaughtered.”
“I guess it could be. I wasn’t thinking of that. The children were very young. That one had gone so . . . far. But you’ve got people waiting at home. How does this not stick?”
“It sticks. But Svetlana helps me through it.”
“Again. Lucky man.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t deserve her.”
“No, no you don’t.” Nistor picked up his gun. Checked the safety and holstered. “Are you ready for this?”
“Sure.” Sirens cutting into the night, headed the same place they were. “When you are.”
Aris Maniotis climbed onto an Audi that was parked just below the fire escape. Jumping from its roof, he grabbed the lowest platform and pulled himself up, vaulting over the railing. Life as a civilian had always felt to him like the color saturation was turned way down. As if he’d been somehow hindered by the open-endedness of the private sector. He was carrying the Kalashnikov like it was an infant. People in various windows of the buildings across the street took uncoordinated turns peeking through curtains or blinds, then disappearing again. His pistol held in place only by the tension between the belt and the small of his back. The sun and moon both in the sky, one on its way out. It was only a few stories up, but that was still a long way to travel, all things considered. Upstairs, Jean-Paul Mesrine could see his reflection in one of the windows of the kitchen now that it had darkened a bit. He was inspecting his hair again, looking for signs of age or displacement that could be eliminated. He asked the target’s sister if she thought he looked okay. But Elektra Manioti wasn’t listening, rather she was still leaning over her mother’s body, though sobbing silently now, her face looking both stretched and pitted as her mouth conformed to the open parabolic shape of grief. Mesrine thought she could be slightly more beautiful without eyes. He would have liked to know what she was about, maybe help ease her imperfections with the right knife. But he also knew there was no time for that. He’d get this done and send confirmation to the number that contacted him on the burner phone, pick up the rest of his money and get on the soonest flight someplace else. Mesrine was also thinking that he better relocate to the hotel or at least somewhere less hot, and maybe take her along, because someone had probably already called the police, and because he needed more information from her, since none of what he’d received thus far had gotten him any closer to closing the job. Manioti was staring at nothing specific, her expression disintegrating slowly until her mouth was closed, the skin relaxed again. Everything around her narrowing, all of a sudden.
“I’ve got a modest accommodation nearby—”
Mesrine still sometimes tripped up when he was speaking to a female he felt to be physically agreeable. Back outside, Maniotis lost his footing on the second flight of metal steps and slipped, reflexively catching himself on the rail. Mesrine heard the commotion outside, trained the gun to the window leading to the fire escape balcony and approached cautiously. Undertoned something about it probably being cats, about the city being nothing more than an aggregate of rodents. He unlocked the window quickly and slid it open and half-stepped out onto the grated platform, looking down, rifle steadied.
“A-ha.”
Mesrine glimpsed the target two stories below and fired over the side.
By this point Ciprian Varia was mouthing the syllables of the names of his wife and daughters, bowing his head back and forth and distancing himself from the craving.
All around Varia, some people in the crowd had begun to notice. A repatriated woman from Queens (third generation, grandfather’s side) saw him and felt something and sat right beside him, whispering her own ills. Varia focusing the trinity of his family’s faces at the center of his skull. An old communist now living out his final years here at home, remembering the coup and his own subsequent departure to Nice, watched them, deciding to follow along, but also because his legs were hurting. A family of three that hadn’t had an income in months, relying on their friends and relatives for a place to stay and something to eat, followed their child into the chants. Soon there were dozens more, an emerging circle around him, all muttering their grievances, with the government or the continent, their jobs (or lack thereof), their families. . . .
Rising to his feet, Varia opened his eyes, calmed. He didn’t quite notice the crowd that had converged upon him, a mass
ive circle, like a detonation of consciousness. He toed around some meditating protestors and cut down odos Mitropoleos, parallel to Ermou, because it was a little less packed and the demonstration still had him nervous. And where Plaka opened into Monastiraki, he contested a dog for the remains of a pork gyro. After frightening the dog away by kicking at it, though not once connecting, Varia bent down and scooped up what was left of the meal, and the dog left him alone, defeated. People were watching, but he didn’t care, greedily cradling the foil-wrapped pita. He wandered through the agora, aimed at nowhere. Soon he was among a strip of cafes, over some defunct rail tracks that cut through the road abruptly, through the grass of a park (much easier on his feet), until he reached the other side, where there were significantly less people around. He had never been there before. Varia wiped at his mouth, his throat dense and acerbic from the greasy meat. Turning a corner, he saw flashing lights casting blue and white on the walls of buildings. The distant snare of automatic rifles. Muzzle flashes from multiple points—it looked like the set of an action film.
Ignoring anything that told him otherwise, he walked in that direction.
Maniotis heard the window creak open and immediately backed against the rail, slimming his profile. Two stories above, the professional emerging onto the platform spotted him. He leaned over the rail and fired down, but nothing connected—metal on metal, that warping, echoing sound of ricochets. Maniotis was exposed here and knew it. He fired back, running up the rest of the way to the next platform and backed under a concrete window lintel. Now there was a little more cover, but not much. His legs still exposed. Lights were coming on all the way throughout the street. Maniotis took off the rifle strap to adjust his position so he could fit on the sill. People had their cameras out now, documenting the confrontation from their windows. The professional fired a burst and then there was a brief recess in the action and Maniotis leaned out to fire, but the professional fired first and hit the stock of his gun, knocking it out of his hands, and it fell all the way down, landing stock first on the sidewalk, useless. Maniotis patted himself for wounds that weren’t there. Looking down at his rifle, he thought Shit. He drew the pistol and waited and leaned out, firing blindly, fast as he could pull the trigger. Someone across the street yelled something that might have been cheering him on or calling for his head. Each silence between rounds like it was expanding. Exit strategy—he looked around—he had nothing. Maniotis squared himself and listened for sirens. He leaned out again, firing until the pistol clicked. He unclipped the spent magazine, clipped a new one in. He already felt winded. The professional fired a burst, listened a moment then fired another and also clicked empty. Maniotis reacquainting himself with adrenaline rage. Seeing an opening, he rushed onto the landing and charged up the escape. The professional quickly changed magazines and fired. Now you could hear the sirens.
Back in the kitchen, time had condensed for Elektra Manioti. And it wasn’t just time (when she blinked, the position of the minute hand on the kitchen wall clock changed), it was also the room itself that was warping—like everything was being seen through a fisheye lens. It wasn’t long before she realized that the Frenchman was distracted, now on the platform outside. The air that came in through the open window smelled like burnt matches.
Her legs trembled when she stood, feeling like they might collapse at any moment. The plate of food unfinished, looking like it might have started out as something her mother planned to prepare . . . she glanced back at the body, as if expecting it to stir, every ounce of her fearing the removal of its bloodied linen—Manioti couldn’t look at her, not now, not like this. . . .
It was easier to run.
Manioti propelled awkwardly through the dim hallway and struggled to unlock the front door, her fingers fumbling with the bolt, and when the door finally came open, she wandered out dazedly toward the stairwell, touching her way along the wall, using it as a guide against everything else that didn’t seem like it was actually happening. She wandered out into the street. Blossoming orange light from the different points on the fire escape. Chips of pavement and brick scattered from where stray bullets struck. There were more spectators now crowding doorways and sidewalks. Some people actually drinking beers on the street like it was a show.
Hellenic Police arrived in underwhelming numbers, in a car and a motorcycle, pulling into the street at opposites ends of the block. Three cops piled out of the car, two from the bike, quickly taking positions behind their vehicles—they weren’t expecting this, not tonight, not stretched this thin with the demonstrations. One of them got on the radio that was clipped to his vest. Another yelled for the crowd on the sidewalk to disperse, to either leave the street or get inside. Aris charged up the fire escape and ducked beneath the next platform. But most of the crowd remained outside, transfixed. One of the cops was shooting at her brother. The Frenchman diverted his attention from her brother to the cop that was firing and struck him in the neck, removing a large chunk of it. The other cops followed suit and opened fire on the side of the building. Both men on the metal staircase now opening fire on the police, measured single shots, expressions sangfroid. They took down three more policemen and the fourth stayed crouched behind the bike, radioing. Her brother seized the break to sprint up the last set of stairs and skewed the assault rifle with his forearm, and head-butted the Frenchman.
Mesrine let go of the rifle and let it fall and pulled Maniotis in by the shoulders and kneed him in the gut. Maniotis brought up his pistol; Mesrine blocked his arm—the shot strayed.
Mesrine slammed his arm over the rail twice. Maniotis let go of the gun and it too fell.
Close quarters: each getting in little jabs, blocking most, nothing hard connecting.
Maniotis shifted weight and pushed Mesrine forward into the rail. Mesrine pivoted, threw an elbow, locked a hand over his neck and leaned and they both went over the side.
They landed on the Audi, collapsing its roof. Cameras flashed. Glass suddenly everywhere.
Maniotis rolled off the side, hit the pavement. He coughed, ribs throbbing fierce. Mesrine moaned, stirring. The surviving cop approached and trained his gun, but he didn’t see Maniotis recovering the Kalashnikov. Maniotis chambered it slow, hoping like hell the barrel wasn’t irregular from the drop, and rose, firing. The cop went down, twitching on the road. Maniotis half-turned toward the impacted car—Mesrine rolled off the roof and kicked the gun upward—that burst fired wide. Mesrine shoved the rifle against Maniotis’ chest and pushed him against the building’s wall with his forearm. He thumbed the magazine release and it unclipped and dropped. Maniotis turned the barrel down and hit Mesrine with the stock. Then he swung it like a club, but Mesrine dodged. Mesrine kicked at his leg; Maniotis blocked.
Mesrine gripped the slide and pushed it, discharging the chambered round.
In the forests surrounding Cluj-Napoca, where child-spirits haunt the woods, Tiberiu Varia taught his nephew to shoot. Their family was southern, living in the north. Ciprian still the child whose activist parents had disappeared before he was old enough to remember. He lacked many relatives, like his family was going extinct. His grandmother took him to church to help him along the road to salvation; for his uncle, the forest was salvation. Tiberiu took from his flask and handed it to the boy and despite the boy’s protests about the taste made him drink from it. The vodka made the boy dizzy. His uncle told him it was Polish, something he’d acquired in a trade for some pelts. It was snowing this day and they were both layered in fur and wool. He watched his uncle stagger through the woods, his boots crunching deep through hardened snow, Tiberiu leaned on an occasional tree for support. Tiberiu shoulder-carried a Karabiner 98k, and Ciprian, a short-handled broom to pretend with. Tiberiu had the boy march from the house to the woods, though he himself couldn’t keep up so well and had to take rest stops. Together they lived with his grandmother in a two-room house that was mostly cinderblock and stucco with a corrugated metal roof Tiberiu had thickly painted black in the supersti
tious hope of always attracting the sun. They cooked and heated with an iron stove. Presently the grandmother thought they were out gathering wood. Tiberiu was teaching him to become a man. There was movement through the forest at least a hundred meters away. Tiberiu stopped the boy with a hand to his chest, told him to keep quiet. Everything bright, broken by skeletal trees. The Movement shifted again and Tiberiu lowered to the ground. Ciprian left holding onto the flask. The Karabiner squared, Tiberiu licked his thumb and felt at the air. He gestured a cross with his hand and steadied. Shadowed motion. He told the boy to watch closely. Tiberiu fired—Ciprian Varia snapped out of it, watching the shootout unfolding, mesmerized like an insect to flame. The last policeman went down, emergency lights flickering mute, casting deformed shadows. The animal Tiberiu had struck turned out to not be an animal at all but a young woman. They held her hands as she died afraid, bleeding into the snow. Opening his knife, his uncle sent Ciprian back for the shell casing. It took him a while to find. Without any hesitation he ran at the woman standing in the street, past her, yanking her arm along. They made it to a narrow passage between buildings, but the impetus threw her to her knees and palms, almost prone on the pavement. The spectators dispersed when one of the stray shots knocked down a teenager that was holding a skateboard. Tiberiu dug the bullet from the body and cleaned his hands in the snow. He told the boy to gather some wood to burn for when they got home. He and Ciprian never spoke of the event. His heart rapid now, adrenaline afterburn. The woman he’d just pushed out of harm’s way didn’t appear aware of her surroundings—she was covered in blood, but it wasn’t hers that he could see. Ciprian had never told anyone of the incident in the woods, had even thought for a long time that it’d been a dream, and it was only years later he realized he had, as a child, helped his uncle cover up a murder, even if accidental. He looked down at his shirt. Electric yellow static closing his vision. The shirt wet and red, a stain in bloom. The woman finally looked up at him just as he was vomiting. The rest of it, he already knew, would be trying to stay conscious.
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