I glanced at Katja, but she just shrugged. “Yes,” I said. “We believe there’s a connection between these people. Two people on the list, including your husband, have been killed in the last three days. We believe a third murder is also connected.”
She looked again at the list. It was a different list now, because two of them were corpses. “Who.” She said this quietly.
“Your husband, Lebed Putonski, and Yuri Kolev-he’s not on the list. Did you know Kolev?”
She shook her head and returned the pad without a word, then peered past me at the television. She reached for a slim remote control on the coffee table and started pressing buttons. “Look.”
On the screen were nighttime shots of crowds, the video grainy. I recognized a few buildings, so I didn’t need the German voice to know it was Sarospatak. I listened anyway.
“This footage of last night’s massacre comes from the Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug.”
It looked less like footage of a massacre than pictures taken by someone who was very frightened. The camera jerked and jumped, and we heard a cacophony of voices punctuated by the low thump of gunshots. Screams, the video smear of flashlights in darkness, and a very quiet Serbo-Croatian voice reporting what was translated by a louder German voice:
“A peaceful demonstration against the wrongful imprisonment of a priest, which grew over four nights to also protest the economic and human rights policies of the Pankov government, was disrupted last night when members of the Militia, mixed with regiments of the Ministry for State Security, fired on the crowd in 25 August Square. Official estimates are that six died in the shootout, though unofficial estimates place the death toll as high as sixty. In a city where nightly blackouts are common, any hard estimate is difficult to ascertain.”
It cut to a morning shot of 25 August Square. The camera was inside a building, looking out, fragments of broken glass framing the image. In the center of the square was a single old man with a broom, scrubbing a spot.
“By morning,” said the German translator, “the government had cleaned the square, making sure that there was nothing left to contradict its official estimates.”
The news turned then to China, something about arms treaties, and Csilla lowered the volume. It had all given me a headache, and I realized I’d forgotten to take my medication that morning. I grabbed my hat and stood. “Thank you for your help, Comrade Volan.”
Katja was still sitting, dazed by the television. I squeezed her shoulder, and she looked up.
“Come on.”
As we walked back to the door, Csilla Volan kept close to us. “You’ll tell me? If you find out why Dusan was killed.”
“Yes,” I said.
She opened the door for us but stood in our way. There was a distant look in her eye. “What about everything else?”
“Everything else?” I said.
“Sarospatak. Everything.”
“What about it?”
“Do you think there’s some connection?” I considered that a moment. “Was your husband a dissident?” “Hardly.”
“Then I doubt it,” I said and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Our condolences for your loss.”
On the drive back into town, we were silent. I knew what Katja was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing. In addition, I was wondering how we were going to find the reserves to focus on this case. Did it even matter anymore? When upwards of sixty people are killed in a single night, why care about a few old, rich men who’ve been murdered?
Then I remembered why it mattered: I was on the list.
“I need to call Aron,” said Katja.
I wasn’t sure what she meant, and said so.
“He should stay at his mother’s, outside town. If there’s shooting in the Capital, I don’t want him in the middle of it.”
“He won’t want you in the middle of it either.”
“Unlike Aron, I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll call Lena, too.”
Our decisions made, we returned to the station, which was still only half-staffed, and used the phones at our desks. I tracked down my medicine bottle and swallowed two Captopril, then dialed. After a few rings, Lena picked up. “Hello?”
Its me.
“A call from work. How privileged am I?”
“I want you to pack a bag and go stay with Georgi.”
“No,” she said. That was her initial response to everything, so I wasn’t discouraged.
“Yes,” I answered. “It looks like sixty people were killed in Patak, maybe more.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I have a feeling something similar’s going to happen here.”
“Now what makes you think that?”
“Remember what I was going to do for Agi?”
She hummed a yes.
“That’s what makes me think it. I’m serious, Lena.”
“But I can’t go anywhere.”
“What?”
“I told you, but you never listen. My car’s not starting.”
“Then call a taxi, come here, and take mine. I have to write you a pass for the roadblocks anyway.”
“That sounds like a lot of trouble.”
I fought the urge to shout at her; I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing. She was being difficult because she thought it was cute. But it wasn’t. “Do it, Lena. I have to leave, but I’ll be back by…” The clock on the wall told me it was twelve thirty. “I’ll be back by two. I’ll expect you here.”
“I love it when you talk like a sergeant, dear.”
Despite myself, I smiled but tried not to let it come through in my voice. “You’ll be here?”
“When you say it like that, how can I refuse?”
I found Katja with her feet crossed on her desk.
“You find Aron?”
She nodded. “His supervisor was incredibly annoyed, but I told him I’d send him to a work camp if he didn’t give me my husband.”
“He believed you?”
“Well, he found Aron pretty quickly.”
“And he’s going?”
“He’ll stop by here after his shift’s over.”
“Good.” I handed her a travel pass I’d stamped and filled out with her husband’s name. “Now come with me.”
“Where?”
“Just come, will you?”
SEVEN
Forty thousand feet above the Atlantic, Gavra was in the four-seat center row of a Boeing 747 headed to Frankfurt, crammed in beside a pensioner couple who, once they’d taken off, introduced themselves as Harold and Beth Atkins of Philly, Pennsylvania. He’d tried to ignore them, but Beth, an old woman who wore the bright primary colors one dressed a child in, just kept talking. When she told him their final destination, though, he gaped at them.
