I dial with shaking fingers and listen to the monotone ring. Then he answers.
“Aron?”
“Katja? Is that you? Where the hell are you? I’ve been-”
“I’m not in town. I just…how are you?”
“What do you mean, how am I? I’ve been worried sick. No one in the Militia knows where you are, and that chief of yours, Emil, he called asking if you were at home-where are you?”
“Listen, Aron, I can’t tell you about it now. But I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“You’re having an affair, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“That Ministry guy you always talk about. Gavra. He’s gone missing, too. I’m not a fool.”
That gives me pause, because I can’t imagine how he could suspect such a thing-where is this coming from? I say, “Sometimes you are a fool, Aron,” but really, he’s not. Not at all. Had Gavra ever given me the slightest sign, I would have slept with him without a second thought.
He tries to think through his words. “I know we have our problems, Kati. Hell, we have more than most. But this isn’t the way to deal with them.”
“I’m not having an affair.”
“Whatever you want to call it, I don’t care. Just come home, okay? We’ll work it out.”
I even smile to myself then. Aron is wonderful at deluding himself and making things sound so easy. We’ve been trying for three years to work out our problems, and it’s the hardest thing in the world. “I just wanted you to know I was all right.”
“Come home, Katja.”
Despite the smile, I’m choking up. He can hear the soft sound that always precedes my tears, and it gives him hope. He thinks it’s a sign I’m weakening. But he’s never been able to read me because I’ve never taught him how.
“It’s not a problem, Kati. Really. You come home and we’ll talk. We’ll take a vacation together. I’ll talk to my supervisor and arrange time off. But you have to come home first.”
Aron will never understand. So I say, “I’ll see you in a few days. Okay?”
“Now.”
“A few days.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “And I love you.”
“Christ, Kati.”
I hang up and get off the bed and walk past the tape player out to the terrace, where the sun has set over minarets and domes and decomposing Ottoman rooftops. A hot, stinky breeze rises from the street, bringing with it the choked sound of automobiles and shouting vendors. I’m shaking. Maybe that’s only because I haven’t eaten a thing all day.
The telephone rings. I look at it from the terrace for a while before coming back inside to get it.
“Hello?”
“Katja, it’s me.”
“How did you get this number? I didn’t tell you where I was.”
“It doesn’t matter, Katja. Did you see him today?”
“Not yet.”
“Just know that he’s changed hotels. He’s now in the Erboy. Ebusuud Caddesi, number 32. Under the name Ryzsard Knopek. Room 512.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Because he reported in, Comrade Drdova.”
“I see.”
Brano Sev hangs up.
Gavra
Once Katja had slammed the door on her way out, Adrian gave him a kiss on the cheek, took his beer-stained shirt from him, and soaked it in the bathroom sink. Gavra poured vodkas in the kitchen and brought them to the bathroom, where he sat on the toilet.
“Not going to tell me either?” said Adrian, as he squeezed the shirt and plunged it back in the water.
Gavra downed his vodka. “I’m sorry.”
“State secrets and all that?”
“And all that.” He left to refill his glass.
In the kitchen, Gavra wondered again why he did this job. Unlike Brano Sev, he was a man without belief-in the promise of socialism, or even the maintenance of world peace. And no matter what he believed, the job was never about such grandiose ideals. It was always like this, like standing in an apartment waiting for a phone call asking you to kill a man you’ve made love to. While he’d never before been asked to do this particular thing, it wasn’t so different from the lies he’d been asked to hand out to enemies of the state, the gradual confidence tricks he’d used to ensnare political opponents-tasks that often left him with a hole in his stomach that could only be filled by shots of hard liquor.
He had nothing else; that was true. He’d ostracized his family long ago and given himself up to the strange solitude of the Ministry for State Security, which had become the only world he knew. But was this reason enough to stay?
Adrian laid the wet shirt on the radiator and placed his empty glass on the kitchen table for Gavra to refill. Then he pulled up a chair and sat with his legs crossed at the knee.
“You’ve been lying to me,” said Gavra.
“Have I?”
“You know more than you’ve let on, and it’s going to have to end. Now.”
Adrian looked into his glass, rotating it with his fingertips. “She called me.”
“Who? Zrinka?”
He nodded but didn’t speak. When he sniffed, Gavra understood.
“She called you from the airport.”
“Yes,” he said. “She called to say good-bye. And to give me instructions. To tell me things she said I didn’t need to understand but should only do.” He looked up at Gavra. “I trust my sister. My sister was a saint.”
“Tell me what she said.”
“Can I have another?”
Gavra refilled his glass.
He sipped. “She knew she wouldn’t survive that plane ride, and she knew what would follow. She said that I would meet a man-you-and that we would become very close. She even used the word ‘love.’”
Gavra waited.
“She told me that I should do two things, and she told me when to do them. Exactly when.”
“To do what?”
“The first thing I’ve done. I did it a few hours ago. I took Katja to where you went today. Tolar Street, number 16.”
Gavra pressed his forehead with a palm. “What?”
“I don’t know why. She told me to take Katja there at precisely three o’clock on Monday the twenty-eighth of April, and wait. Just wait. So I did. Katja didn’t want to go, but I told her it was important-important for her to understand things. We went and sat in the car. I didn’t know what to expect. And then the door opened and you left with Brano Sev. He drove you somewhere. That surprised her, but she still didn’t understand. She asked me again why we were there, but I didn’t know what to say. Then the door opened again, and we saw a small, tough-looking guy come out, followed by another man. He had a very thin mustache. That was it. You should have seen her face. It was-it was unbelievable. She almost wept. We watched them drive off. Then I brought her back here. That’s why she was so upset when you wouldn’t tell her anything. That’s why she got you wet.”
The light in the apartment was failing, and Gavra had trouble seeing Adrian’s face clearly. “Your sister,” he
