you’re still standing here, living and breathing, making me a cup of coffee.”
Her eyes took on a forced vacancy, staring at the now-full coffeepot. “I really don’t know what you mean, Comrade Sev.”
“Card games in the provinces are a very particular phenomenon.”
“Are they?”
“Their rules are firm. And the gamblers, for lack of a better word, are like members of a cult. The rules give their lives extra meaning. So when Zygmunt bet your life and lost, he couldn’t just change his mind. He had to follow through.”
She poured the coffee into cups, staining the counter with black puddles. “This is sounding ridiculous,” she said without looking at him.
“The only way Zygmunt could get out of taking your life was to make a deal with Pavel Jast. You would remain alive, but another life would have to be taken.” He approached her; she flinched. But he only took a cup. “The choice wasn’t up to Zygmunt, or you. It was Jast’s choice. Wasn’t it.”
She didn’t answer.
“Comrade Nubsch, I have no doubt that Jast cheated at that game-not because he wanted you dead, but because he wanted Zygmunt to commit a murder. He had someone particular in mind. Jakob Bieniek.”
She reached for the second cup but faltered, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bring it to her lips. She tugged at her ear; she swallowed. “Pavel Jast is a fiend. I’ve told my husband this for years, but the game-it’s hard to explain.”
“It’s an addiction.”
“More than that, Comrade Sev.” She focused on his ear, considering her words. “Do you know what Zygi used to be?”
“No.”
She paused, and when she spoke again the sentences were clear and without hesitation, as if part of a speech she had practiced for years. “He was the head manager of the Bobrka Petroleum Works. He was an important man. But one day the Gas Committee sent some men from the Capital; they had no idea what they were looking at. A bunch of bureaucrats who made policies without understanding a thing.” She opened one hand and used the other to tap the wet countertop. “Zygi was foolish enough to point out this fact, and two weeks later he received a notice in the mail. He’d been given a new job. He was to deliver bread for Bobrka and the surrounding villages. Do you know what that does to a man? A man with Zygmunt’s talent and experience?” She shook her head. “No, Comrade Sev. I don’t think you have any idea.”
“Then explain it to me, Comrade Nubsch.”
This, at least, was understood. His pains receded, the barking mutt behind the white wooden fence no longer distracted him, and he even found himself smiling as he walked past the church and the bus stop that still, beneath its bench, sheltered the empty book of matches Pavel Jast would never pick up.
Ewa Nubsch was the kind of person who, in the end, doesn’t care about punishment; the guilt is so strong that all she desires is to be understood. And with the story came tears. She explained between sobs that they’d used razor blades because they couldn’t be traced. We thought we were being smart. We didn’t use the shotgun. We thought we could find a vein. But we couldn’t, and it only made everything more horrible.
That was because they’d been drunk; it was the only way they knew to prepare themselves for murder. Then they’d gotten Jakob drunk and brought him out there. She was still surprised he’d come. He had seemed, almost, excitedly curious. But once they gagged him he fought back, and that was when she had hurt her leg.
And what about the matches?
The matches?
The matches you stuffed in his mouth.
That was Pavel, she said. He wanted them to be on Jakob’s body when it was found. And the shirt. Yes, the shirt. He wanted us to give him the shirt. And yes, yes-he even told us where to do it, behind the Emilia 4. He told us everything.
And she told him everything, except the answer to the one question that mattered most- Why? Why would Pavel Jast frame him for the murder of a reclusive peasant? Pavel Jast had not run off with the Sorokas; he had simply disappeared.
“You look like hell,” the captain said as Brano approached his white Skoda at the Militia station.
“It’s nothing. But listen.” Brano drew close as Rasko fooled with the lock on the front door. “The Bieniek case is solved. It was Zygmunt and Ewa Nubsch.”
Rasko let go of the lock. “Are you kidding me?”
“Pavel Jast arranged the whole thing. He made Zygmunt bet his wife’s life in a Cucumber game, then he offered Zygmunt a trade-Jakob’s life for Ewa’s.”
Rasko got the door open. “And they’ll admit all this to me?”
“Ewa told me everything.”
“How did you get it out of her?”
“I asked.”
Rasko tossed his keys on the desk and dropped into his chair. He ran a hand through his black bangs. “Let’s see how it all turns out. First you might want to get in touch with the Ministry. They called for you this morning. Maybe they want you to go back home.”
Regina Haliniak, at the Yalta front desk, softened when she heard his voice. “Hello, Brano. Are you enjoying the provinces?”
“Not particularly, Regina. Are you and Zoran well?”
“Well enough. Did you want to talk to the colonel?”
“Yes, Regina. Thank you.”
He listened to clicks and static.
“It’s about time you called, Sev.”
“I just got the message.”
“What’s the progress?”
“I’m afraid Pavel Jast’s crime has been proven. He forced an old couple here to kill Jakob Bieniek.”
“Jakob who?”
“Bieniek. Jast used them to frame me for the murder. The wife admitted everything.”
“When I asked about progress, I wasn’t talking about this murder. You know what I was talking about.”
Brano cleared his throat. “I’ve had more contact with Soroka, and Jast told me he’d be leaving soon. But I no longer trust Pavel Jast’s information.”
“Well, trust him, Comrade Sev. We have the same information. Jan Soroka is leaving in the next couple days, probably for Austria, and you’d better clear this up before that happens. If you can’t manage to stop him, then you follow him and report back when you can. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. But-”
“But what?”
Brano paused. “I’m known there, Comrade Colonel. In Austria. If I enter the country without diplomatic papers… I don’t think I’d be safe.”
Cerny gave one of his unimpressed exhales. “You’re exhausting, Sev. You’ve been given an opportunity few men receive. And who do you think insisted you could be trusted to come back on this case? It’s my neck we’re talking about.”
“I know, Comrade Colonel.”
“You know me, Brano. You know disappointment doesn’t sit well with me-makes my bladder go awry. And it doesn’t sit well with the Comrade Lieutenant General, either.”
“He knows?”
“The man knows everything, Sev. It’s my job to keep him informed.”
His legs ached by the time he made it to the house, trying without success to evoke that memory of Cerny’s suicidal weeping to settle his nerves. But the man was right-he’d been given an exceptional opportunity to redeem himself. He climbed into his Trabant and drove west.
Again, he didn’t have to wait long. To the south, beyond the silent cows, a small figure materialized near the base of the mountain. He parked by the road, and his feet crunched through snow as he walked through the cold,
