“Can we meet?”
“You don’t want to speak in the office?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Can you make it to the Hotel Metropol at noon?” He sounded so much more accommodating than he naturally was. “The bar.”
Gavra
Saturday morning Gavra cleaned himself and put on his dress uniform. He’d never felt comfortable in it, because, as he left Unit 16, his neighbors, including Mujo and his closest friend, Haso (already drunk, though it was only nine o’clock), paused to watch him pass.
He met the others at the Seventh District cemetery, where the tight crabgrass clung to the earth, and waited as Chief Brod said a few clumsy words in front of the hole, then stepped back to let two young recruits shoot rifles into the air. There was nothing left of Libarid Terzian to bury; inside the cheap coffin lay Libarid’s best suit, cleaned and pressed by Zara the day before.
Gavra shook little Vahe’s hand as if he were now a man, then turned to Zara, who looked away as he spoke.
“My condolences, Zara. And I’m sorry if yesterday-”
“Don’t,” she said, then rubbed her arm.
So he withdrew past Katja and Imre, to where Brano stood on the edge of the crowd in civilian clothes. He held a newspaper under his arm and wore his hat, which struck Gavra as impolite. “Were you close to him?” he asked Brano.
When the old man spoke, his lips didn’t move. “We worked in the same office for three decades. We knew each other. I’m not sure you could say we were close.”
Gavra surveyed the mourners. There were a lot of people he didn’t know, Libarid’s friends from outside the station. Armenians mostly, like his wife’s family, remnants of various exoduses from greater Turkey in the early part of the century. They didn’t look like terrorists. He said, “Katja and I are going to Vuzlove after this.”
Brano squinted. “Why?”
“A woman from Flight 54 called and left a message for the hijackers at the hotel.”
“Who told you this?”
“Katja uncovered it. The call was made not long before the flight took off, and if the woman knew the hijackers, she had to know they weren’t in the hotel-they were with her, in the airport. Interesting, no?” When Brano didn’t answer, he added, “Her last address was a mental asylum in Vuzlove.”
Brano blinked a few times. “Mental asylum?”
“I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
“Name?”
“Eh?”
“This woman’s name.”
“Martrich,” said Gavra. “Zrinka Martrich.”
Brano ran his tongue behind his lips, then nodded.
“You know her?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to waste too much time on this. It’s disturbing that someone we knew was a victim of this tragedy, but in the end it’s exactly what it looks like: a hijacking that went wrong.”
“I’d still like to know why the plane exploded.”
“People make mistakes all the time, Gavra. Even terrorists.”
Brano handed him the morning’s Spark. The front page told him that, during their interrogation of Wilhelm Adler, Brano had been right about Stockholm. Though Adler’s revolutionary comrades once again showed their frustration by shooting Doctor Heinz Hillegart, the West German economic attache, no concessions were made by the Swedish authorities. Then, at midnight, the TNT they’d piled in the embassy basement exploded, killing Ulrich Wessel of the Red Army Faction. Everyone else, hostages included, survived. The cause of the explosion was cited as “bad wiring.”
“Mistakes are made every day,” said Brano, just before he walked across the grass to his car.
Katja drove at top speed along the dusty roads east of the Capital, and Gavra asked why her husband, Aron, hadn’t shown up at the funeral-he did, after all, know Libarid. She admitted that they’d been fighting. “He’s a good man, though.”
“You wouldn’t have married him otherwise.”
“I might have. Maybe I wouldn’t have if I’d known how weak he was. He’s desperate for me to find a safe job and have a baby.”
“And that’s not what you want?”
“What about you? Why aren’t you married?”
“No time,” he said quickly. Then: “I’m not sure I’d want to bring someone into this kind of life.”
She tapped the wheel. “You’re different, though. You’re not like those other Ministry characters. You don’t try to intimidate everyone like Brano does. I don’t know how you can work with that man.”
“He’s my mentor-I see a side of him no one else sees.”
“I’d rather not see him at all.”
Gavra let the silence sit between them, and he knew why: A small part of him was trying intimidation. Stay silent, and let her project her fears onto you. He only spoke when they saw the sign for Vuzlove on the side of the road. “We’re here.”
An old man with a white beard gave them directions to the clinic on the north side of town, and they parked beside a lone concrete box in the middle of a grassy field, surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence-the Tarabon Residential Clinic.
“Listen, Gavra,” Katja said as she removed the ignition key. “If I insulted you back there-”
“It’s nothing.” He waved a hand casually, but as he climbed out a smile crept into his face. He was finally getting the hang of it.
The front office was a depressing affair, with two white-smocked matrons in front of a wall of file cabinets, filling ashtrays and watching a black-and-white television in the corner. It was half past three on a Saturday, and like most of the country they were tuned to Family Popa, about the difficult but virtuous lives of the members of that ideal socialist family. Gavra had watched it only once and had been irritated by its forced internationalism. While the family’s ethnicity was Romanian, they went out of their way to name the children Laszlo (Hungarian), Frantisek (Czech), Nastasiya (Ukrainian), and Elwira (Polish).
Katja waved her Militia documents, but neither woman stood as she explained what she needed.
“Eh?” said the closest one.
Gavra took out his Ministry certificate, hoping that would help. It did.
It was intimidating.
The head nurse stood with some effort, finally noticing their dress uniforms. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you asked for.”
Gavra said, “We’re interested in the records of a patient with the family name of Martrich.”
She put out her cigarette. “First name?”
“Zrinka.”
The nurse went to the wall of drawers and opened M-P, then returned with two files: MARTRICH P and MARTRICH S. But the two names were PAUL and SANDOR.
“Zrinka,” said Katja. “We’re looking for a female patient.”
“Well, these aren’t women,” said the nurse.
“I know.”
“And they’re the only Martriches here.”
Gavra leaned on the counter. “Could she be filed somewhere else?”
“If it’s not here-”
