while. Grandfather produced two cigarettes and lit them both. He handed one to Emil. The dark city was almost silent. They ashed on the cobblestones.
“Men are different,” Grandfather said after a while. “They’re made different. Your father, he was… unchanging. Truly. Him and that god of his. But he could walk out onto the battlefield. He had that in him. He was loyal. Loyal to his country.” He took three quick drags, trying to keep his cigarette lit; it glowed. “Not me. I was never loyal to my country. I stayed out of their so-called Great War. But I went to Moscow. I was in their war because I loved the workers. My loyalty was that I loved anything that wasn’t a king. And when the Fascists arrived, I supported that fight, though I was too old to pick up a gun myself. You follow?”
Despite the heavy, sleepy end to his drunkenness that muted everything and kept his throbbing eyes from focusing clearly on a family of Gypsies passing on the other side of the street, he was following everything because he knew where it all was going. His grandfather had said nothing new in a decade.
“And there’s you,” Grandfather said wearily. “I don’t think you’re a coward, but maybe…maybe I’m too old to want to think that. Not of my flesh and blood. You could have gone to the Front. Yes,” he said, raising a hand against Emil’s lazy attempt to debate. “You could have. They would’ve allowed it. Gone with your father. Maybe even saved him from that bullet. But you decided to leave, go on a trip. To where you weren’t needed. To make money you wasted on some girl. I never understood why.” He shrugged as though the effort of understanding had exhausted him. “When you leave your family- if you leave your family-it should be for a reason. I don’t know yours.” His cigarette had gone out, and he flicked it into the street. “Why did you go?”
A boy detached himself from the family and snatched the cigarette butt.
“Get away, rat,” snapped Grandfather.
The Gypsy boy scurried back to his parents, sucking on it, and Emil watched them turn the next corner. He wondered if it was age, if the old bastard was too far along to remember what it was like to be a teenager, to want to have nothing to do with war, with these vast movements of people, to want only to find your own way, even if that meant cutting a path through the Arctic waters and risking your neck over dead seals and violent Bulgarians. Maybe Emil had been a coward, maybe that was why he had decided it was impossible to join his father’s military unit or his mother’s medical regiment. But his grandparents had not been around that day in Ruscova when he saw how crowds can turn inhuman, or later, the other mob here in the Capital that led the woman to her death. And was there no room in the old man’s heart for insolence and confusion and the simple fear of death?
“When you told us,” Grandfather said, his wavering voice still even-tempered, “that you were joining the Militia-well, I can tell you we were very proud. And I thought, This is the day he finally becomes a man. No more fear.” He turned his heavy eyes on Emil, his lids half-drawn. “Now here you are, only-how many? Four days! And now, here you are, quitting.” He shook his head. “It makes me sick.”
Emil opened his mouth, half stunned, half preparing to defend himself. But all the words drained from him, and he was left with only the impotent fussings of a child. You dont understand. Leave me alone. I dont need to listen to this. A frightened child with nothing show for all the miles he has traveled.
CHAPTER TEN
Leonek Terzian was not at his desk when Emil sauntered in, though his jacket was draped over the chair and his worn leather bag lay on the floor. Emil waited at his own desk. Despite the aching muscles and joints, the burning forehead and throat, and the fact that he’d gotten no sleep, he wanted to get moving. He wanted to see Lena Crowder again. He wanted to hear what she had to say when she wasn’t a drunk, grief-stricken widow.
He went through his sparse case notes, trying to assemble facts. Two bodies. Money. Ten photographs. A German. A Walther PPK.
The speculations…he had them, but this wasn’t the morning his sleepy head would put them together.
A half-hour later, Terzian still hadn’t appeared. The others had been doing an admirable job ignoring Emil, even Brano Sev, who was back in his files, making occasional phone calls and glancing everywhere but at him. Emil said to the room, “Where’s Inspector Terzian gone?” The only reply was a squealing pig and the smell of sawdust from outside.
He went through the notes again, slowly.
The money in Janos Crowder’s cardboard box, found in Aleks Tudor’s apartment. Fifteen thousand… payment…for what?
A possibility floated to the surface.
It helped that he was feeling terrible. He could concentrate on the pain that rippled up and down his body with each step toward Brano Sevs desk. He stopped beside it, a shoulder against the wall, then squatted so his face was just above its edge. Sev looked up blankly.
“Comrade Inspector,” said Emil. “I was wondering.” A sharp pain trembled behind his eye, then went away. “Do you have a file on Janos Crowder?”
Sev looked down at the open side drawer. “Your dead man?” His voice squawked. “ That Janos Crowder?”
Emil nodded. “I’d like to rule something out.”
“His loyalty?” The question was snapped back. No hesitation.
Emil opened his mouth to say yes, his loyalty and patriotism were in question, but couldn’t spit out those kinds of words. “Do you have a file on him?”
Brano Sev closed the files on his desk, one at a time, and leaned close. He had a mouth of half-digested garlic that fumigated the air between them. “These files are for suspected traitors.”
“You’ve told me. Thus my question.”
The flat face puffed as he chewed the insides of his cheeks. He leaned back and spoke firmly. “A public figure such as Comrade Crowder is by necessity examined very closely. We have no evidence of his involvement in traitorous activities. Do you?”
Emil stood up, his knees cracking. He had at least ruled out the Queen of England from his list of suspects. “Thank you, Comrade Inspector.” He paused. “Do you happen to know where Terzian is?”
The small eyes blinked up at him. “Try the interview room.”
It felt like weeks had passed since he had wandered these corridors looking for a typewriter. The room he wanted was beside the toilet, its scratched wooden door the only one without a glass panel. He leaned his head against the stenciled interview and listened. Voices-two men, words unclear-then laughter that dissipated when he knocked. The handle wouldn’t budge. The sound of his knuckle striking wood provoked the beginnings of a fullfledged hangover. The lock was fooled with, and the door opened a fraction. Leonek Terzian s dark features appeared: “What is it, Brod?”
He could see nothing past his face except hazy walls covered by more scratches. He hadn’t thought through his words. “What are you doing? On the case. Let’s compare notes.” Emil took out his notepad to make his intentions clear.
“Not now,” said Terzian. “Later. Maybe.”
“Who are you interviewing?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something.”
Terzian sighed heavily and opened the door enough to slip out into the busy corridor. His voice was a high whisper: “ Never interrupt me when I’m interviewing. Understand?”
“Who is it?”
“No one. An informer.” Terzian’s hard, weathered face would not give Emil anything but eyes, nose and mouth.
“For our case?”
“ Your case, Brod.”
“Well?”
Terzian nodded at a pair of Militia in dress uniform. They muttered a familiar greeting back at him. Once they were gone, he said, “A witness. He may have come across Aleksander Tudor’s killer.”
“Let me talk to him.”
