Nikolai feel more relaxed.
After a pause, during which they stared ahead at the awakening village, Captain Brovko asked about the assignment. “What do you think, Nikolai? Will Detective Horvath and Juli Popovics really come here?”
Nikolai knew it was time to choose his words carefully. “Because we are here, Major Komarov must have reason to believe so.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Detective Horvath?”
“No. Major Komarov.”
“I… I don’t think anything. I simply follow orders.”
Captain Brovko chuckled. “Don’t worry, Nikolai. I’m not trying to trick you. We’re in this together, assigned to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Can you tell me why Detective Horvath would come here when he knows we’re waiting?”
Captain Brovko turned to stare at him. “I don’t blame you for not answering. Especially after being uprooted from your PK assignment and sent on a field mission during which your partner was killed before your eyes.”
Nikolai was silent as he stared at Brovko’s eyes.
“You and your partner were unprepared for the situation. Afterward you were angry because of the inappropriateness of the assignment. Correct?”
“Yes.”
Captain Brovko leaned closer. “Now I’ll tell you something, Nikolai. I believe Detective Horvath will come here. He’ll be drawn here because his brother’s wife and children are here. There are things about this case even I don’t know, things Major Komarov, for whatever reason, has chosen to keep to himself.”
“The major is a driven man,” said Nikolai.
“In what way?” asked Captain Brovko.
“He is willing to do anything to prove Detective Horvath is a saboteur.”
“What has he done so far?”
“I can’t say more, Captain. I’ll get myself in trouble the way Pavel got in trouble because he didn’t know the consequences of aiming a pistol at an armed militia detective.”
“Tell me,” said Captain Brovko, “why do you think, with the men available to him in Kiev, Major Komarov chose to send you and your partner to retrieve Juli Popovics?”
Nikolai looked out at the road, where an ancient battered bus began climbing slowly up the hill. “I don’t know, Captain. Pavel and I were both inexperienced. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
The bus lumbered past, lifting dust from the road. In the windows Nikolai saw the faces of wide-eyed farmers staring at the strange sight of two men sitting at the side of the road at dawn in a black Volga.
“The farmers are off to their fields,” said Brovko as he started the Volga and began driving down to the hotel in the village.
Five hundred kilometers east, near the town of Korostyshev, another collective bus drove down a dusty road. The bus was full of men and women wearing layers of clothing to keep away the morning chill. Some on the bus commented on the dry weather of the past few days allowing planting to progress. Some talked about family matters. But most conversations eventually turned to a more serious matter. These workers, belonging to the Kopelovo collective, a hundred kilometers southwest of Kiev, were now providing food and shelter for several hundred refugees forced to flee the Opachichi collective near Pripyat.
A man in a leather cap at the front of the bus stood facing the back, firing questions at those sitting near him.
“How do we feed our own families? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“You’re not starving,” said a woman in a yellow babushka.
“Not yet,” said the man. “But we’re the ones working the fields.
We need food so we can continue working.”
The man sitting next to the woman in the yellow babushka waved his hand. “Nothing makes sense when people are forced from their homes. How would you like to lose everything and be forced to sleep in barns and tents and practically beg for food for your children?”
“At least,” said the man in the leather cap, “they could come work in the fields. What else have they got to do?”
“The people in my barn wanted to work,” said the woman in the yellow babushka. “But the chairman said no. He said they all have to stay where they are because officials are arriving today from Kiev.”
“What for?”
“A census,” said the woman. “The chairman says they might relocate some people farther south and west.”
“Good,” said the man in the leather cap. “Maybe things will get back to normal and I’ll have a decent meal. Look how thin I am.”
The bus passengers laughed, and even the man in the leather cap smiled as he turned to look out the bus windshield. The only one who didn’t laugh or smile was the driver, who was in his own world, the world of the throbbing engine and the shifting of gears and the dodging of holes in the road.
Within the Kopelovo collective village, behind one of the houses lining the road, Lazlo lifted the canvas tent flap and looked outside. The tent opening faced away from the house, with a view of the family’s freshly planted private plot. A thin layer of ground fog was being burned away by morning sun. The damp morning air smelled of livestock and smoldering trash fires.
Lazlo heard footsteps in the weeds, leaned out, and saw the man from the next tent over. The farmer from the north lived in a tent with his wife and two children. A goat tethered outside during the day was allowed inside the tent at night. The farmer walked back from the outhouse carrying a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and a tin cup in the other. He hummed a Ukrainian folk song. Although Lazlo did not know the name of the song, he knew it glorified morning. A cheerful song of hope and hard work, a song he sometimes heard the skinny baker at his favorite bakery whistle in the back room before bringing out a fragrant tray of pastry.
The thought of the warm Kiev bakery made Lazlo shiver. He dropped the tent flap and sat back on his heels. He reached up to touch the warm slope of the tent where the orange of the sun glowed.
Although the cut on his wrist was healed, his ankle still ached from the jump to the scaffold at the Hotel Dnieper. He turned and crawled to the back of the tent where Juli slept. He lifted the blankets carefully so as not to let in cold, damp air. Beneath the blankets, he felt Juli’s warmth against him and his shivering stopped.
After the narrow escape at Lenkomsomol Square, Lazlo met Juli at the hospital. Dressed as peasants and with Lazlo wearing an eye patch to disguise himself, they’d gone to one of the roadblocks and joined the line of people trying to enter Kiev. Lazlo had worked the roadblocks long enough to know how to use the situation to their advantage. He knew that instead of being allowed in, they would be transported with others to a collective many kilometers away. He also knew they could do this without identification because during the rapid evacuation, many refugees failed to obtain passes. He let Juli do most of the talking, saying they were from Pripyat and had worked in a department store. He kept his face hidden, and none of the militia officers recognized him.
They had been here at the Kopelovo collective a full week, freez-ing in the tent each night and keeping trim on the daily ration of food provided. Kiev was a hundred kilometers northeast, and he might never see it again. His sprained ankle had healed, and he was ready to move on. The question was where to go and when. The only logical direction was west, to Czechoslovakia or Hungary or even farther. The time would be soon, because yesterday there were rumors of relocation. Paperwork would be completed, names put on file, and representatives of the militia or the KGB milling about.
They were fugitives, both considered criminals-him a murderer and Juli his accomplice. It didn’t matter if the agent aimed his pistol at them. To the KGB, one of their own was dead. No matter if the incident was a setup and Tamara’s poet friend was a KGB informer.
He recalled Tamara’s anger at the poet when he met her at the river, saying she would kill him if she saw him again. Lazlo had insisted she not make trouble for herself. He needed her to follow through on the faked betrayal so she would not be implicated when he and Juli escaped.
Would he ever see Tamara again? Would he tell her about his confusion when he realized he was attracted to Juli? Would he tell her about the past week, during which he and Juli posed as husband and wife living in an army tent on the Kopelovo collective? Would he tell Tamara he was in love?