is closing down the operation. Zrinka Martrich was our central character in the scheme, and with her dead the operation is losing its momentum. We’ve had a good run, but now it’s over.”
“Which is why,” said Brano, “we’ve had these deaths.”
“We’re cleaning up the loose ends,” said Mas.
“Because they’re connected to the operation,” Gavra said, not sure anymore what to believe. “But what about Wilhelm Adler? You called him-you told him about the plane.”
“Not me.” Mas raised his hands. “Adler wasn’t part of the operation. But if he was working with these terrorists, he didn’t deserve to live. As for Doctor Arendt, he simply knew too much. He would begin to ask questions about his old patient.”
“What about the others?” said Gavra. “The other patients.”
Mas shrugged, clearly unwilling to answer. “The reason you’re being told all of this is that I need you to do two things.”
Gavra settled back into his chair, arms crossed over his chest.
“First, I need silence. In particular, you are not to breathe a word of this to your partner, that-what’s her name?”
“Comrade Drdova,” Brano told him.
“Yes,” said Mas. “Is that understood?”
Gavra nodded.
“Second, I want you to remain with Adrian Martrich. I’m waiting to find out what we’ll do with him. It’s possible the Comrade Lieutenant General will want to use that faggot in another way.”
Gavra opened his mouth but didn’t speak.
Mas winked-a secret communication. “Yes, comrade. He’s got the capitalist disease. Just watch out for yourself when you’re with him.”
“What if he isn’t of use?” Gavra asked.
Mas looked at Brano, who spoke quietly and, Gavra believed, reluctantly. “Then you’ll be asked to kill him, Comrade Noukas.”
Gavra eased his hand down because it had jumped to his ear.
Katja
On a rack in the lobby of the Pera Palas I find a tourist map that I study just outside the front door, in the hot light. Hotels and restaurants are marked by childish hand-drawn icons of roofs. At the bottom, beyond the Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn where it flows from the Bosphorus, and through a tangle of ancient streets, is a comical roof marked SULTAN INN, a block north of the Sea of Marmara, which they call Marmara Denizi.
This is my first time outside, under the Turkish sun. A line of dirty cars pushes by, and pedestrians wander in all directions. In other circumstances, I would be thrilled just to stand here.
As Brano told me, the Union Church is only two blocks away, straight from the hotel, up an alley, across Istiklal Caddesi, full of overpriced shops and multilingual tourists, then down another alley to where a small sign points me to a door in an ancient wall. As it also houses the Dutch consulate, a guard asks my nationality. I tell him and ask for the church. With a smile, he points me up a cobbled path inside.
It’s a small, modest place, in some ways similar to the Catholic chapel in Pacin, where I grew up. Since moving to the Capital years ago, I’ve found myself reluctant to return to see my family. Perhaps it’s just an aspect of growing up, but when I do return and walk with Mother arm in arm past that chapel, I always feel as if I’m visiting another country. I told this once to Aron, but he didn’t understand. He snorted under his breath, pulled up his sheet, and turned off the bedroom light.
The inner walls of the Union Church are rough, striped by slender bricks, and only two people sit in the pews, far from each other. I spot an old man dusting the pulpit with a feathered brush. He looks up when I approach.
“Evet?”
“Father Janssen,” I say.
He frowns, then speaks in labored English. “I do not know Janssen, a father.”
My English is just as labored. “Is priest here?”
He considers this, and it’s one of those moments when I’m pleased to be a woman because I present no threat. “Come,” he says, and leads me back to the front. Above our heads, over the entrance, is a second floor filled with an old pipe organ. The cleaner leads me upstairs to the dim floor, where a black-suited priest is reading a book laid on the organ keys. He looks up. “Evet?”
The cleaner says a few words in Dutch that I can’t make out, though I can tell that this priest’s name is Van der Berg. Then the cleaner says, “Janssen,” and the priest’s eyes light up. He nods for the old man to leave as he smiles at me. He doesn’t speak until the cleaner is visible again over the railing, headed for the altar.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?”
I close my eyes, trying to remember. “Is the harvest come down on the mountains?”
Van der Berg bites his lip, then lowers his voice and speaks in my language. “It has indeed, my child. A moment.”
Beneath a stained-glass window is a low bookshelf filled with twenty leather-bound books. He peers back down the length of the chapel, then pulls out a book called Sygdommen til Doden and opens it.
Just like in the movies, I think.
It’s a hollowed-out book, containing a silk-wrapped package that he hands to me. I unwrap it and look at the small Turkish MKE pistol, 380 caliber, not unlike the Walther PPs I used for practice in the Militia Academy.
“There are seven,” he whispers, tapping the handle. “Will you need more?”
“What?”
“Cartridges. Do you need more than seven?”
I shake my head.
He holds out his hand. “Please. The scarf.”
I give him the silk scarf and put the gun into my handbag.
“Is there anything else?”
I hesitate, looking into his kindly face, trying to think. Maybe some direction, that’s something I could use, but that’s not why he’s here.
He smiles. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”
I blink.
“Just remember, maintain your calm. And afterward, get rid of it.”
“Here?”
“No, silly girl. The Bosphorus. I don’t know how many guns that waterway has swallowed.”
“I see.”
The priest glances back again at the empty pews, then says in a high whisper, “For the victory of the world’s proletariat!”
“Of course,” I mutter, then turn to go.
The map helps. It takes me up Istiklal Caddesi to an underground train, the Tunel, which brings me down to the Galata Bridge. I cross on foot. Men line the railing clutching fishing poles. Then I’m making my way through hot, narrow streets, ignoring voices- Hello pretty lady; Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Finally, I reach Mustafa Pasa, a busy avenue choked with shops selling bronze sculptures and carpets and food.
The Sultan Inn is unassuming and run-down, not the kind of place I expect to find an officer of the Ministry for State Security. Or maybe I’m just inexperienced (which I am) and naive (which I may be). The lobby is dark, not made for the world’s tourists, but the bald desk clerk in the sweat-stained undershirt is smiling broadly at me. “Heh- low, ” he says.
I’ve already made a mistake. Walking inside only announces my presence. So I give him a confused expression and step backward across the cracked tiles. “Sorry. Wrong address.”
He shrugs as if it’s an opportunity missed.
Across the street I buy coffee from a street vendor and sip it beside a carpet shop. Passersby bump into me,
