glass.
“Because Janos was in love with you.”
It might have been true, but there was no way for Emil to know. He only knew that the German was holding something back, and flattery was the only way to bring it out.
Konrad let out a long, low sigh, sinking toward the table. He shrugged. “Of course Janos loved me. That is a given. And yes, you clever Slav, Janos could not lie to me for long. I could see right through him. Once Janos was in Berlin, standing in front of me, he could not help but spill the whole story.”
It was much as Emil had suspected. Janos went with Lena to Michalec’s home for a party. Their shared Hungarian past made them one-night friends, and they were inseparable. Then the Oberst arrived. He was a drunk who asked Michalec in loud Hungarian how much all this had cost. Only Janos and a couple others understood the words, and, to Janos, Michalec’s angry reaction was shocking. “He grabbed this drunk by the collar and flung him- literally — into the garden. The whole time shouting, What are you doing in my house?” But the German-a happy drunk- seemed to feel nothing, and murmured joyously that he would go to Berlin, to the files. That’s where anyone could learn how much this life had cost.
“God,” said Emil, his despair fleeing him in one brief, amnesiac moment. “It was all there from the start!”
Konrad shook his head. “When you’re working backwards, Comrade Inspector, yes. But not when that’s all you know. We’re not all criminal experts.”
But Janos’s interest was piqued. He took to following Michalec around town, spying on him, photographing him, and once, when he saw Michalec meet again with that German late one night, he decided to get in touch with his own man in Berlin.
Ten photos, thought Emil. The beginning. “So through you and Birgit he located the file and took one of the photographs.”
“He made a snapshot of the evidence,” Konrad corrected. “Unlike you, he’s not a thief.”
“But he was an extortionist. Janos blackmailed Michalec for six months. And then it ended. Why, Konrad? Why did Michalec decide it was all over?”
Konrad was sinking, slowly, into his chair. “You tell me, Inspector. After he left in February, I never heard from him.” His voice was somber and muted, as if covered by a veil. “It was supposed to set him free. The money was supposed to give him the freedom to leave his wife and come to me.”
Emil watched a moment, this man slipping into his own regrets, then put a hand on Konrad’s. He told him about the plane ticket receipt he had found in Janos’s apartment.
Konrad’s eyes lit up. “What?”
“He was killed the day before he was going to fly to Berlin,” said Emil, glad for once to make someone happy. “To be with you.”
The club was full. There were men dressed immaculately and some women laughing at jokes, and in the corner, on a small stage, a few men wearing women’s clothes and wigs prepared for a show. Emil remembered the black garters from Janos’s apartment-so long ago-and realized they had probably been his. Cabaret music blared from the jukebox-tinny sounds straining the old speakers-and smoke filled the room. He was surrounded by fur collars and fine hats. His own disarray was painful and obvious. They were watching him, even though their eyes never met his. It was the same trick the homicide inspectors conjured on that first day. He drank to ignore it.
He asked someone at the next table for the time, and the man’s milky, German voice almost slipped away before he caught it: 8:15. Still eight hours until his flight. The music swelled and consumed him.
He couldn’t remember where Irma had said she was from. He should find out and visit her family. Tell them something kind about her service to the Crowder household. He should not be here.
He dwelled on Irma to avoid thinking of the other one.
Konrad sat across from him, looking upset, and tapped Emil’s cheek. “You better wake up. There’s someone here to see you.” His face looked very white and stiff.
Behind Konrad, a tall man in a leather overcoat smiled. His smile was narrow, and he had thick, black-rimmed glasses. Emil recognized him from yesterday morning. “You are Comrade Inspector Emil Brod?” he asked, stepping up. He spoke Russian with a Moscow slur.
Konrad stood aside, whimpering quietly. Emil at first needed help getting up, but once on his feet he could make it all right. Outside, he said, “My cane?” and the Russian nodded to a disheveled- looking teenager standing outside a long Grosser Mercedes. The boy ran into the club. The Russian put a hand on Emil’s head to make sure it didn’t strike the frame as he got into the backseat. A chubby man with a broad smile was in there already-yes, this was the one he had lost in the alley-and then Emil was between them.
Behind the wheel was the one-armed taxi driver who had driven him and the bureaucrat from the airport. They looked at each other momentarily in the mirror, but Emil saw no recognition in his eyes.
The teenager reappeared with the cane and leapt into the passenger’s seat. When the car started moving, he lit a cigarette.
“Can I ask where we’re going?” Emil’s pulse was so loud he almost shouted his question.
The Russian who had fetched him pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged. “Somewhere quiet. We’ll talk, no problem.” He cocked his head. “You want a smoke? Yakov, give the man a smoke. Give me one too.”
Emil took one. The Russian lit it for him with a match, but put his own behind an ear. Emil knew from the first drag that he was back in the East. He didn’t want his last minutes to taste like this.
The silhouetted shells of nighttime Berlin passed them, and all he could think of were methods of torture. Nothing extravagant, but the simplicity of heat and pressure applied to the tender parts of the body. Shards shoved beneath fingernails. Testicles burned with cigarettes-he gazed, horrified, at his own cigarette-and bones crushed. All the rumors of the MVD rolled over him. Simple visits to answer a few questions became days and weeks and months behind stone walls, iron bars. Became missing persons. Became stutterers and cripples and mutes. Soviet Intelligence had never been known for subtlety.
He wanted to think of Lena. He thought she might give him courage, but in these final moments all he could think of were his own bones, his own organs and flesh.
They finally stopped at a low brick building. A bullet- punctured sign said it was a boy s school. But there were no boys behind the twisted iron gate, and only a few lights in the windows. There were other cars parked along the street. Men leaned against their hoods, smoking. Waiting.
Emil’s heart sputtered so loudly he could not be sure of the silence in the street. Then the barking of a dog broke through.
The Russian in glasses, with the cigarette still behind his ear, led him past the gate and inside, down a dim yellow corridor lined by identical, odd-numbered doors: 17,19,21,23. The heavy man with the wide smile followed. Fluorescent ceiling lights buzzed. 33,35,37. Their shoes echoed on the floor. He thought he smelled ether.
They opened 47 and let him inside. Somebody hit the light switch. The room was just as he would have imagined: a small desk with two wooden chairs, facing a lone chair in the center of the room. There was a small spotlight on the desk.
“You know where to go,” said the one who had fetched him.
He did. He sat in the center of the room without hesitation. As he watched them go to their own seats, he wondered if, had they brought him to the edge of a ditch in a bullet-riddled courtyard and told him to kneel before it, he would follow their orders with the same obedience and wait for the bullet. He nodded at the spotlight, tightening his throat. “You’re going to sweat something out of me?”
The wide face looked confused an instant, then understanding overcame him. His smile was huge. “This?” He grabbed the electrical cord and held it up, showing where it ended in a frayed mess. “Hasn’t worked for-how long?”
“Months,” said the other. But he didn’t smile. He left his leather coat on and took some papers from a small bag Emil hadn’t noticed before. He flattened them on the desk.
“Months,” the smiler repeated, nodding. “It would make this job a lot easier. But for now, the Revolution moves at a snail’s pace.”
“Is that what this is about?” Emil’s voice was beginning to relax, though the rest of him couldn’t.
The first one, satisfied with his paperwork, took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. “Everything is about the Revolution, Comrade. Some things more than others.”
Emil became aware that the walls were filthy. They were speckled by something that looked like brown paint.
