“That’s the one.”
“That particular bastard will be here for another week or so, then he’s off to the provinces.”
“Labor camp?”
“Labor?” The functionary grunted. “Sure. Labor.”
It was a long shot, but he and Nestor were at the same camp during the same period, and it wasn’t unreasonable that they might have known each other. Or that they still knew each other. I told him I’d arrive in the next few hours to fill out the request for an interview.
“As you like.”
Footsteps exploded in the station. I knew, even without looking, who it was.
“ You!” He was at my desk, leveling a cool, stable finger at me.
“I see you’re back on your medication.”
Malik Woznica swung down a fist that made my typewriter jump. “Where is my Svetla?”
I tried to seem concerned. “You haven’t heard from her yet? And no ransom notes?”
“Don’t talk to me like that! What did you do with my wife?”
“I think my chief told you, Comrade Woznica. I haven’t found her. A prostitute was mistaken for her, but really, your wife’s no prostitute.”
He breathed heavily, not used to so much exertion, and when he spoke his teeth were clenched. “Comrade Inspector Kolyeszar. You signed the papers authorizing her leave. We have your name on a paper that says you took Svetla Woznica into your custody.”
“I was mistaken.” I said this smoothly, but it was just the coolness of immediate shock. I had forgotten about that form.
“No, you weren’t mistaken, Comrade Kolyeszar. But you did make a mistake. You thought you could go against Malik Woznica of the Health Ministry. You thought you were above the rules.” He put another unshaking hand on the desk. “I’m going to finish you off.”
Then he walked out. There was no sign of his illness at all.
34
I didn’t wait for the others. I got into one of the Militia’s Mercedes and sped north to Ozaliko. Woznica’s hands did not shake, but mine did, and they threw the car off a little when I took wide turns. The Militia radio buzzed through tinny speakers, and a few times I heard voices. Leonek informed the station that he was heading over to the Fourth District Militia station, and Regina Haliniak thanked him for his update. I lifted the mouthpiece and even pressed the button before changing my mind. Sev would learn where I was going, and wonder why. He would want to know why I was speaking with a prisoner at Ozaliko, and for the moment I didn’t want him knowing anything. He’d had the file of my killer, and that meant Kaminski did as well. They were just two heads of the same Hydra.
The face of the man who sounded sick of his job matched the voice. His features sagged depressingly, in direct contrast to the smiling Mihai on the wall. When I told him I had called a half hour ago, he made no move to suggest that this rang a bell. He handed me the forms on a clipboard and asked if I needed a pen. But I already had one.
It was a three-page form requesting all of my personal details, with open spaces to fill in my reasons for seeing the prisoner. I labored over that, wanting to explain it without bringing up Nestor Velcea’s name, though I knew that, were Sev interested, he could figure it out easily enough. But there was no reason to make it easy for him.
The clerk took back the clipboard and ignored me as I stood waiting. “What now?” I asked.
He looked up again. “You’ll be contacted.”
I drove all the way to the station before changing my mind. I was afraid that Woznica would be there again, waving forms at Sev or Kaminski, awaiting my arrival. I was afraid that Kaminski was finally done playing with me, that all this time he had only been waiting for a free cell in Yalta Boulevard, where I could think about what I’d done on the Sixth of November. So I instead parked by October Square and asked Corina if I could use their telephone. She looked over to Max, cleaning glasses behind the bar, and he shrugged.
“Hello?”
“Vera. It’s me. Ferenc.”
“Well, this is a surprise.”
“Are you busy?”
“Just looking over some lectures for a class. Want to drop by?”
“Can I buy you a coffee? I’m over at October. Max and Corina’s place.”
At that point I had no intention of sleeping with her, or I believed I didn’t. I just wanted someone to talk to, and she was the one person I knew would be at home. But she was also the one person who would want more from me than a talk.
She looked as though the cold had taken a decade off her age, and when she sat I waved to Corina for another coffee.
“Shouldn’t you be hunting criminals or something?”
“Just don’t feel like it right now. What lectures were you working on?”
Corina set down the coffee. Vera thanked her, pulled some long black strands behind an ear, then leaned close to me. “You don’t really care about that, do you?”
I could feel her warm breath on my face. “I do, actually. I’m interested.” And that was true.
She leaned back. “Well, Marx, if you must know. His critique of Plato’s Republic — Marx considers it largely a defense of the Egyptian caste system. Which, you can imagine, Karl wasn’t too happy about.”
“I can imagine.”
“Some of my students are relatively critical of Plato, but I like to point out how similar, in a way, social Marxism is to Plato’s theory of forms. In essence at least-because society is moving toward a predefined goal, a pure idea.”
I looked at her, eyes wide, until she understood.
“You don’t know anything about Plato, do you?”
“About as much as I know about Marx.”
“Which is nothing.”
I nodded. “So teach, professor.”
She looked at me a moment, trying to decide, then slid the ashtray to her left. “Plato or Marx?”
“The first one.”
“Well, it’s really very simple. Kindergarten level.”
“That’s just right for me.”
She looked at me another moment. “Plato felt that for everything there is an essential form that is more real than this reality.”
“Like souls?”
“No,” she said. “That’s a common mistake. He uses the story of the people in a cave, with a fire blazing. On the walls are the shadows-these shadows are us. Our world is on the walls. And the people sitting around the fire are the ideal.”
I nodded.
“You’re sure you haven’t heard this before?”
I had, but I wanted her to do the talking. “Just tell me, will you?”
“Okay. An example: For all apple trees, there is a single, perfect apple tree on which they are all based, but never equal to.”
“Like God making us in his image.”
“Something like that.”
“All apple trees aspire to this perfect version?”
“Maybe. But it makes more sense for people.” She pointed at me. “Behind Ferenc Kolyeszar there is an ideal
