Around one in the morning, I drove over the Georgian Bridge and parked in the Canal District. There were no lamps, so I had to feel my way, unsure, through the narrow alleys. I kept stepping in puddles, but pressed on. I had woken with a head cleared by a wave of remorse. For Vera, first of all. I had gone too far-this was now apparent. It may have begun as her game, but I had changed the rules and turned a simple enjoyment into torture. Then I remembered Malik Woznica, stuck in his hole. I had no remorse for him-just remembering Svetla justified anything I could do to him-but again, I knew that this was going too far. It could only end in prison. After what I’d put him through already, he wouldn’t risk turning me in. I had proven that I could track him down, even in the mountains, and end his life.
Halfway there I started to worry about how to get him out. He was heavy, and the well was deep. I had brought along the knotted rope that still smelled of Vera’s urine. He could tie it around himself, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to pull him out on my own.
Like Vera, he wasn’t calling for help. No doubt he’d tried earlier in the day, moaning through his underwear, but no one in the Canal District came to anyone’s rescue. My eyes had adjusted over the long walk, and stars shone through the shattered ceiling on the mosaic. “Malik,” I said as I approached the well. “Malik Woznica, it’s time to go home.”
The well was too dark to see into.
“Malik? You there?”
I lit a match and saw Malik Woznica’s bound head tilted back, his dead eyes staring up at me. The match slipped and fell onto his shoulder, where it glowed brightly before going out.
My first scattered instinct was to get rid of the body. I uncoiled the rope and ran it down into the darkness before realizing that this wouldn’t work. I sank my hand down into the well, but fell just short of his head. Then I tried to see all of my options, but it was hard to see anything with a dead body beneath me. I went out to the square and sat on a step. My knees were shaking, so I walked.
A heart attack made sense. That or suffocation-if his nose stopped up, it was the end of him. But that possibility had never occurred to me as I was tying him up and shoving him into that black hole. I pulled my rings off and slipped them back on, one at a time. That other Ferenc-reckless and sure-had been unable to see the simple consequences of his actions. But now I was back.
I had killed a man.
I could not move the body, and so I would leave it. That seemed the only option. When found, it could be another murder to add to Nestor’s tally. But this one did not fit. A victim outside the group of art friends, one already known to the Militia. One that could be traced-by Sev and Kaminski, or anyone-back to me.
I returned and looked for something that could help me, but the place had been cleaned out years ago by vagrants. I lit another match. He was naked except his shirt, its collar loose and high around his ears. I climbed on the lip of the well, lying across it and bracing myself with my waist and my head. I reached down. My fingers groped, just reaching the hair, the top of the ear, then the shirt. I had to tilt my head to grip it fully, then use my neck, straining, to tug him up a little. My veins were ready to burst. He stuck to the walls, then slid up a bit. I grunted, rolled, my rising shoulder pulling him farther. It took a lot of sweat, but finally I had his upper half folded over the lip of the well. I gasped at him in the darkness.
Burning came to mind, but there would be smoke-Nestor had been lucky when he burned Antonin. And the canals weren’t deep enough to cover him for long.
I collected the rest of his torn jacket, his pants, and shoes, and lifted him over my shoulder, covering him with his trench coat. Then I started for the car. A smaller man couldn’t have pulled it off, and I almost didn’t make it. I stumbled through puddles, tripped over loose stones, and dropped him twice, his body making a wet thud when it hit the ground. The sky was still black when I folded him back into the trunk.
Once his car was found up in the mountains, they would search the area for his body. So I drove southeast, where the forests near the Soviet border would be out of their reach. The woods were thick there, and the roads empty. The sun had begun to turn the night a bluish gray. A dirt road turned off to the left, and at the end of it were the ruins of an old dacha that had burned to the ground. I carried Malik Woznica deeper into the forest, using my free hand to push aside thorns and vines. Finally, I looked back. I was out of sight of the ruins. I dropped Malik and his extra clothes on the dry leaves, covered him ineptly with a few more, and stumbled back to the car.
76
I arrived at the train station at nine-thirty as the rain began. It was a strange bit of luck that no one had seen me when I returned home. I had only had time to wash in the sink and change out of my clothes, which I put into a small trash bag. I then drove to the outskirts of town, where I added stones and dropped the bag into the Tisa. It sank quickly.
The station was busy enough-the regular throng of weekend travelers going to and from the Capital or stopping along other journeys, farmers and clerks alongside one another. I had a brandy in the bar, waved away a Gypsy muttering about all the children she had to feed, then returned to the main hall. A woman’s voice over speakers told me that the ten-twenty from Vienna, headed to platform six, would be fifteen minutes late. She repeated the announcement in Russian.
I looked at my empty glass.
At exactly ten, Leonek arrived, hunched and dark, almost a Gypsy himself. He crept over with a nod.
“You look like hell. What happened to your hand?”
It was covered in thorn scratches. I stuffed it into my pocket. I smelled like hell, too.
“So you going to tell me?”
I nodded at the arrivals board. “The ten-twenty from Vienna. It’s late.”
“Who are we waiting for?”
“A Frenchman. I don’t want to stop him. I want to see where he goes.”
“Where’s Emil?”
“At home with his wife, where he should be.”
Leonek looked up at the arrivals board to avoid showing me his expression. Then he looked back. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve told you. A Frenchman. The ten-twenty.”
“Not that.”
He seemed to want to discuss it. But I didn’t think I could converse right now, and I saw no need to help calm his guilt. “Let’s wait over by the bar.”
We leaned on the counter, looking through a window over the platforms and drinking slowly. He said, “I learned something very interesting.”
“Did you.” I looked past him at families chatting about times and places and people.
“I finally made it through that interview. Had to use a Russian dictionary for half the words.”
“Should’ve had someone translate it for you.”
“I’m stubborn.”
“I guess you are.”
He looked at his coffee. “Turns out this Boris Olonov knew quite a lot. He told Kliment the names of two of the other three soldiers who killed the girls.”
“What about the third?”
“Wouldn’t give it up. But more importantly, he knew about Sergei’s murder, because there was a witness to it.”
“Someone saw Sergei killed? How did he know about that?”
“Because another soldier knew the witness,” he said. “Now ask me his name.”
“The soldier’s?”
“No, the witness’s.”
“Okay. What’s the witness’s name?”
Leonek smiled. “Nestor Velcea.”
“Nestor-” I began, but stopped. “That’s impossible. Isn’t it?”
