“Would you like to know where he is?”
“Of course I would.”
“The Sultan Inn, in Sultanahmet. On Mustafa Pasa. Number 50.”
“Wait.” I stumble to the pencil and hotel stationery on the desk, beside the machine. “Repeat that.”
He does, and I write it down.
“Are you all right, Comrade Drdova?”
“Oh, me? I’m fine, Comrade Sev. I’m just fantastic.” I change tone. “Why are you doing this?”
“What?”
“Helping me find him. I doubt this is in the interests of socialism.”
He hums into the telephone, then takes a breath. “This is the final stage in ending something that should have never begun.”
“Does this something have to do with Zrinka and Adrian Martrich?”
“Yes.”
“With Libarid’s death?”
“Everything is connected, Comrade Drdova. And everything I do is in the interests of socialism. Trust me on that.”
“No, Brano. Everything you do is in the interests of Brano Sev.”
He ignores that. “Are you armed?”
“Armed?”
“I suppose you’re not. I want you to do something, but do it right now. It’s for your protection. Go to Istiklal Caddesi. It’s a street just two blocks from the Hotel Pera Palas, behind the Dutch consulate. Are you writing this down?”
“I am.”
“There is a Dutch chapel, the Union Church. Ask for Father Janssen.”
“A priest?”
“You’d be surprised where socialism finds its friends, Comrade Drdova. Ask Father Janssen, in these exact words, in English…you know English?”
“Not much.”
“Just remember this sentence: Has the harvest come down from the mountains? ”
“What?”
“Those exact words, Comrade Drdova.” He repeats the words as I write them. “Father Janssen will give you what you need.”
“Brano.”
“Yes?”
“How long have you known this? That I was the girl from Peter Husak’s story.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Comrade Drdova.”
“It does to me.”
He pauses. “Your name is different now. You have your husband’s name. And it’s quite surprising you never ran into each other before, but I suppose Peter Husak didn’t come to the Militia offices.”
“When?”
“I didn’t know until yesterday afternoon at the Metropol, when you told me about your relationship to Stanislav Klym.”
Then he hangs up.
For a long time I don’t move. I’m standing next to the desk with the buzzing receiver in my hand, and it’s all coming back to me. Only once I’ve replayed it again in my head, that night in all its painful detail, can I put down the phone and go to dress for the day ahead, for what I have to do.
Gavra
His flabby-faced companion drove him out to the Seventh District, to Tolar, a street of low, sooty Habsburg buildings, and parked in front of number 16, behind a white Skoda. He’d taken Gavra’s pistol at the hotel, but just inside the front door he returned it. Then he trotted up the stairs; Gavra followed.
The door was on the second floor, and the driver tapped a few times, then waited for the lock to be pulled. Brano Sev opened the door.
“Ah, Gavra. Come in.”
The driver remained in the stairwell and pulled the door closed behind them.
It was a sparse office, with empty factory shelves and a single desk. Behind the desk sat Ludvik Mas, his thin mustache, in this light, looking damp. He smiled and motioned to a chair.
Brano was already sitting down.
“Thank you for coming,” said Mas. “Comrade Sev felt that you should be made aware of what’s going on with your case.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Gavra.
“Of course. Brano?”
The colonel turned to him with a straight face. “Gavra, what do you know of parapsychology?”
The question threw him. “Not much. I’ve heard of Special Department Number 8 in Novosibirsk, but didn’t the Russians shut that down?”
“Yes,” said Mas. “Six years ago. But research continues.”
“The KGB,” Brano explained, “controls Soviet research now. But in our country, we set up a laboratory in 1967, in Rokosyn.”
Gavra tugged his ear, worried about where this was going. “Zrinka Martrich actually was there?”
Brano shook his head. “Not exactly.”
“But she was being experimented on-wasn’t she?”
Mas slapped the table and shouted, “Yes!”
Brano chose not to raise his voice. “Comrade Mas is pleased because your supposition is exactly what he hoped others would believe. You see, the research clinic was closed because of lack of results in 1972. The building was torn down. The fact is, there is no research institute anymore.”
“Then where was Zrinka Martrich?” Gavra asked. “She’s been somewhere for the last three years.”
Ludvik Mas said, “She was living her life with us and a few other delusional patients. Elsewhere. What we needed was for her, and the others, to disappear. We plant a few rumors here and there-stories that scientists at Rokosyn have made sudden breakthroughs-and the story is complete. Zrinka Martrich, the rumors go, is at the center of a project to tame the forces of psychokinesis and use them to stomp out the Western imperialists. Beautiful!”
Gavra looked from one face to the other. “I don’t understand.”
Brano leaned forward, slipping into the familiar tone of the educator. “It’s a Ministry counterintelligence project. We plant evidence of a nonexistent psychokinetic project in order to lure Western spies into the country. The Ministry controls the flow of information to these foreign agents. The spies can then be identified by this method, tracked, and interrogated.”
“Or liquidated,” said Mas, his chin settling on his chest. “I’ve been very pleased by the results. In the last two years we’ve taken care of two British, a French, and two American agents-poor Mr. Brixton included.” Mas raised his eyebrows. “Brixton even made it as far as Rokosyn-just to be more puzzled when he found no clinic. But that didn’t stop him searching. You saw the fruits of our labor in Adrian Martrich’s stairwell.”
“Smert shpionam,” said Gavra.
“Death to spies,” said Mas.
Gavra turned to Brano. “Are you telling me that the plane was part of this? You killed sixty-eight passengers as part of a hoax? ”
Mas shook his head. “Now that is something we had nothing to do with. We put Comrade Martrich on the plane to Istanbul, yes. We wanted to try the same ruse in Turkey-our embassy is riddled with leaks, and by having her there, by placing a few rumors, we thought we could clean the place out.” He grunted. “The fucking Armenians we never predicted.”
“Like I told you before, Gavra,” said Brano, “it was a coincidence.”
Mas lit a cigarette. “A tragic coincidence. Tragic in the obvious way, but now the Comrade Lieutenant General
