The Turkish polis station was not what Gavra expected. Perhaps he expected exotic Muslim arches or policemen sitting on velvet pillows. Instead he found himself in a dirty, gray-walled bureaucratic building not unlike home. In place of a framed portrait of General Secretary Pankov, Kemal Ataturk glared at him from under flaming eyebrows. Then the smell hit him: Turkish tobacco and sweat. It straddled the line between sensual and revolting. At least there was a familiar face: Talip Evren, the fat captain from the airport. He shook their hands with both of his and took them down an empty side corridor. He knocked on a scratched door. The small man who opened it wore a pistol in his belt.
The room was dark, and in the center a young man with hair reaching his shoulders was tied to a chair. A desk lamp shone on his battered face, and the only sound in the room was his labored breathing. Dried blood covered most of his features, so it was hard for Gavra to make out what he looked like.
“May I introduce to you Norair Tigran,” said Talip. “Ask as you want and I will make translation.”
Brano pulled up a chair and sat just out of the light. “He should tell me everything about Wilhelm Adler.”
“Wilhelm?” the young man said, gurgling as if speaking through water. “Allah belan? versin.”
Talip shook his head. “He does not wish to repeat himself. Hasad.”
The small man took out his pistol and swung it into the young man’s face.
Gavra thought he heard something snap, but Tigran shifted his head, whispering, “Wilhelm?”
“When did he call?” Brano asked.
Talip translated the answer: “Last Wednesday.”
“Why was he part of this? He’s not Armenian.”
“He understand solidarity.”
“And he told you to make this a suicide mission?”
Norair Tigran showed his teeth a moment, trying to clear his throat. He spoke, and Talip said: “It was not suicide mission. He say he don’t know what happen.”
“What else did Wilhelm say?”
“Nothing. Only it must should be that day, that flight. Number five-four.”
“Why would you listen to him?”
Even through the mask of blood the young Armenian seemed annoyed. He spoke directly to Brano in English. “Because we’re new at this, okay? Wilhelm is a veteran. We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know when. He told me that this would be the one.”
“But why this plane? Why did he say?”
“He said…” Norair Tigran cocked his head. “He said it would be the best.”
“But why?”
“Just that he knew. But Wilhelm-” Norair grunted something like a laugh. “Wilhelm was wrong about this one.”
During the interview, Gavra asked no questions. He wanted to, and Brano would have allowed it, but no words came to him. On the flight back home, he said, “It’s disappointing. In that room I didn’t have the presence of mind to come up with a single question.”
Brano told him not to worry. “This case is hardly a case for us. The Turkish police are well equipped to handle the investigation of the hijacking. But since the hijackers boarded in the Capital, we should try to reconstruct what they did in our country and pass that information on to the Turks. We begin with Wilhelm Adler.”
Gavra gazed at the seat in front of him. “There’s something more here. I’m sure of it.”
“Let’s talk to Adler,” Brano said. “No one will expect extradition to Turkey, but he should be able to shed some light on this.”
“Tonight?” Gavra asked as a stewardess collected their empty coffee cups.
“Tomorrow. Our people are keeping an eye on him; he won’t get away.”
“What about Ludvik Mas?”
Brano scratched his ear. “Ludvik Mas is none of our concern. He works in an office no one looks into, because it’s best no one does.”
“Do you mean Room 305?”
Brano gave him a blank expression. “That office does not exist.” He folded his tray table shut. “And what does not exist should not be thought about.”
Brano dropped him off at his Fourth District sixth-floor walk-up a little after four in the afternoon. The pitted field surrounding his apartment block was full of out-of-commission Trabants rusting under the sun. It was Thursday, but even on a workday the familiar trio of young men by the door was sharing a plastic bottle of cheap palinka. A couple of years before, Mujo, the hairiest of the group, got hold of a smuggled record by an American rock band, the Velvet Underground. His life began sliding downhill that very day.
“You’ve been traveling?” said Mujo. “You got some sun.”
“Sun and water and lots of sex, Mujo.”
The alcoholic told his friends, “Gavra here is a traveler. A man of the world. ” For some reason that made the other two laugh.
“And don’t forget,” Gavra told them, “I also find volunteers for the state. Someone needs to dig our canals.”
The men quieted, unsure whether this was a joke, as Gavra went inside and checked his mailbox, which was empty.
His apartment was small and untidy. The living room was filled with stacks of records: Smak — a Yugoslav progressive rock band he was fond of-some Beatles, as well as an English singer, Elton John. A fine layer of dust covered everything, even the off-green walls. Gavra had become used to the grime over the years; he lived his life outside those walls.
He grabbed a bottle of homemade palinka from the cabinet-a bottle, he remembered as he pulled out the cork, from Libarid’s wife’s family distillery. He found a fresh pack of cigarettes and settled in front of his little black- and-white television. That’s when he saw the story. Earlier in the day, members of the Red Army Faction and the Heidelberg Socialist Patients’ Collective took over the West German Embassy in Stockholm. In retaliation for an attempted recovery by Swedish police, they brought the West German military attache, Baron Andreas von Mirchbach, to a window and put bullets through his head, his leg, and his chest. Police, stripped down to their underwear to show they were unarmed, dragged the body away.
The newscaster, in order to help clarify the groups’ aims, quoted Red Army Faction founder Ulrike Meinhof from a statement she had made the previous year from Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart:
Faced with the transnational organization of capital, the military alliances with which U.S. imperialism encompasses the world, the cooperation of the police and secret services, the international organization of the dominant elite within the sphere of power of U.S. imperialism, the response from our side, the side of the proletariat, is the struggle of the revolutionary classes, the liberation movements of the Third World, and the urban guerrilla in the metropoles of imperialism. That is proletarian internationalism.
Gavra wondered how anyone, after listening to that, could be optimistic about international affairs.
Katja
I’ve been three days with as many hours sleep, but only now do I feel it. Climbing out of the taxi, the hot sun makes me momentarily blind, and the airport is suddenly replaced by a field of dizzying sunspots. When I reach back to the taxi for support, it’s already gone, and I stumble into a cloud of hot exhaust.
I’m trying to focus through the fatigue, clutching my small leather purse and counting its contents in my head: a new external passport, some money, and a roll of audiotape.
At the TisAir desk I wait behind a young couple who squeeze each other’s hands as they wait for the clerk to stamp their tickets. It seems to take a long time, but I’m not sure. Because time has become strange. Until only a week ago-yes, Wednesday, 23 April-I was faced with the regular minutiae: the sour husband, the paperwork- clogged desk in the militia office, the condescension from my workmates. A frustrating life, being the only woman working homicide, but a simple one to understand.
Now I’m at the counter, explaining to the pert blonde with a blue TisAir cap that I would like to go to Istanbul
