“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get a drink.”
She led him to the underground parking lot and took a Militia Skoda. She drove them to a smoky cafe-bar on October Square. On the way, she only said, “I’m not going to talk to the old bastard. Only to you. Because I know you’ll work with me on this. Am I right?”
“Yes,” said Gavra, unsure. “Of course.”
They said hello to Max and Corina-the couple gave discounts to the Militia, which made their cafe popular with the station-and ordered palinkas. Gavra waited for the drinks, then carried them to the window table where Katja sat.
She smiled-Katja often smiled at Gavra, and he worried that she was flirting with him. He knew she had difficulties in her marriage, and in Gavra’s experience marital troubles raised the chances he’d find himself in the embarrassing situation of fending off a female advance. Women sensed something in him that, unlike their men at home, was unthreatening.
She hadn’t invited him out for anything like that, though. “Brano thought he trumped me by letting me go to the hotel when he’d already been. But the old comrade doesn’t quite know everything.”
Gavra leaned closer.
“He asked the staff if the Armenians had talked to anyone while they were there-phone calls, meetings in their rooms-and they hadn’t. But I found a very cooperative desk clerk who seemed to like me. I had him go through their records again, and he came up with this.”
She produced a slip of paper marked
Hotel Metropol
MESSAGE TIME: 23:44
TO: Emin Kazanjian FROM: Cd. Martrich
Gavra took it. “No message, no first name?” He turned the paper to look at its blank reverse. “Just Comrade Martrich?”
She shrugged.
“Why didn’t they give this to Brano?”
“Because,” she said, “the message never reached the hijackers. Comrade Martrich called after they had checked out and left for the airport. Look at the time.”
“About an hour before-”
“-the plane took off,” she said. “But that’s nothing. I thought the name was familiar, so I went back to Flight 54’s passenger manifest. Tenth line down, Zrinka Martrich.”
“A woman? On the same flight?”
Katja looked very pleased with herself. “So I sent Imre to Victory Square to look up her file. Almost nothing there at all. But just try to guess her last known address.”
“What?”
“Guess!” She was enjoying this.
“I don’t know,” said Gavra.
Katja placed her hands flat on the table. “A mental asylum, just outside Vuzlove. The Tarabon Residential Clinic.”
Gavra opened his mouth but was too stunned to speak.
She said, “I’m thinking this woman was insane.”
“An insane accomplice to hijacking?”
Katja shrugged. “Now you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Tell me what you and the Com rade have learned.”
Which is what he did.
Katja
The stewardess smiled when I asked for water, but that was twenty minutes ago, and now she’s talking to the fat man in first class. He flicks his little red star self-consciously, flirting, and the stewardess is so flattered she’s forgotten my drink.
There’s a middle-aged man snoring beside me. Before passing out he tried to start a conversation, informing me that he was to meet with some extremely important Turks to discuss exporting locally made electric fans. “We’re famous for manufacturing the best fans in the region, did you know that? Better even than the Poles, and they’re admirable competition.”
“Interesting,” I told him, then turned away and asked for water.
His face is now pressed into the cushion of the headrest, his mouth flaccid and damp.
Up front, the stewardess laughs liltingly.
So I wave until she notices, touches the fat man’s sleeve to ask his patience, and walks over.
“Yes?” The stewardess squats beside me, showing off her intense brown eyes.
“That water, please.”
“Water?”
“Yes. I asked for water a while ago.”
“I see,” she says, though it’s plain she doesn’t. “I was just getting that.”
Or maybe, I think as the stewardess continues to the rear of the plane, it’s just that unreliable sense of time. Maybe I did only just ask for the water, and the stewardess has decided I’m one of the troublesome passengers, one of the bitches.
As if to confirm this, the fat man grunts and twists in his seat so he can get a good look at me.
I find myself wishing the fan salesman awake. Conversation would at least distract me from the fact that I’m having trouble remembering the last week. There are details-the explosion of the Turkish Airlines flight. The insane asylum. And the trail leading to a dead woman and her brother, Adrian. Adrian Martrich. And, of course, Gavra.
Out of the week there are only three vivid faces that remain with me, all men. Gavra, Adrian, and him. But I’ve lost track of what connects them all. Why were we protecting Adrian Martrich? Gavra never would explain anything in detail. Soon after the investigation started he became cold and uncommunicative.
And then, two days ago, Adrian Martrich suggested we go out for a drive. “Where?”
He shrugged. “To someplace I think you’ll be interested in.”
A voice is speaking to me.
It’s the stewardess, holding a plastic cup. “You did want water, right?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
The stewardess hands it over, smiles briefly, and returns to the fat man, shaking her head as she speaks to him.
I drink the whole cup in one go and crush it into the pocket of the next seat.
There is a part of me that tries not to remember that short trip with Adrian Martrich, because when I recall its details I shake and the surety of what I’m doing begins to collapse. So I jump to Wednesday morning- this morning-when I called the Militia station. Imre, that poor dunce, had spent the last week completely in the dark; I treated him with the same silence Gavra gave me, and when I called I was in no mood to fill him in. “Get me Brano Sev.”
“Brano?” said Imre.
“Just get him, will you?”
Imre timidly called for our Ministry officer to please take the phone.
“Sev here.”
“This is Katja.”
“Good morning, Katja.”
“Where’s Gavra?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him.”
