blinked at me. “What is it, Comrade Brod?”
“I’ll drop the case if you’ll be straight with me.”
“I’ll certainly try,” he said.
I wasn’t as sure of myself as I pretended to be. My head hurt, and I was certain Romek could hear my loud heartbeat from where he sat. With my next words I could receive enlightenment or a quick trip down to the barred cells in the basement of Yalta 36. “Four people. Dusan Volan, Lebed Putonski, Tatiana Zoltenko, and Jerzy Michalec.” For the moment, I left out Brano Sev and myself. “What’s their connection?”
Romek was also good at masking his face, but he didn’t have the same kind of experience I did. There was an instant, as I rattled off the names, when pain flashed across his features. He recovered quickly, his upper teeth grazing his lower lip to get it back in line, but that instant had occurred. I knew that whatever followed would be a lie.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know where you got those names. Tatiana Zoltenko’s a Ministry colonel, like myself. Exemplary. Tania’s in Sarospatak as we speak. The rest-Putonski, you said? And Dusan Vol-wait. I do know him, I think,” he said with earnestness, correcting himself as if he were absentminded. “In The Spark. A judge. The man was murdered, wasn’t he?”
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a reply, so I didn’t.
“Yes,” he continued after a moment. “A murdered judge- murdered, just as you claim Kolev was murdered. Is that what you’re talking about? Have all these people been killed?”
He reached into an aluminum case and took out a cigarette. I still didn’t answer him. I rubbed the edge of my dry lips. I waited.
He lit his cigarette. “Don’t just sit there, Emil.” He took a drag, and the rush of nicotine brought back his composure. He exhaled bitter smoke. “What’s your game?”
Finally, I said, “Jerzy Michalec.”
“What about Jerzy Michalec?”
“He’s a murderer.”
“You’re saying he killed Kolev and Volan?”
“I’m saying all these people have a connection, and that connection is Jerzy Michalec.”
“Interesting,” he said without interest.
I blinked once. “Where’s Brano Sev living these days?”
“Sev?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. Isn’t he a friend of yours?”
“Brano Sev is no friend of mine.”
Halfway through his cigarette, Romek seemed to remember who he was. He recalled that he didn’t have to listen to anything I said. “I don’t like your tone, Comrade Brod.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that people are being killed. They’ll continue to be killed, however things develop today.”
“What made you put these names together in the first place? Did someone tell you something?”
“Who’s Rosta Gorski?”
Showing your cards one at a time produces wonderful results. The pain returned briefly, the teeth again, and he put out his unfinished cigarette. “Listen, Brod. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’ve got my hands full trying to keep down an insurrection. I don’t have time to bother with a bunch of senior citizens.”
“I never said they were all senior citizens.”
His eyelids drifted down in annoyance. He pointed at the door. “Get out of here, Brod. While you still can.”
I got up and walked through the door, ignoring Romek’s secretary, down the green corridor, past the front desk and its enormous bronze hawk, and out the door. I heard nothing outside the dangerous pounding of my blood. Only on the sidewalk, crossing to reach the car, did I let my body release its anxiety. My knees went weak, my arms ached, and I thought I might cry. Or have a heart attack. That’s what Yalta 36 could do to a man. Particularly an old man like me.
“What’s wrong?” said Katja.
I started the car and, with some effort, put it in first, but my hands had trouble doing anything. I took a long breath, placed my forehead on the wheel, and said, “Can you drive?”
“Yes, but-”
“Can you drive,” I repeated, “and not ask me any questions?”
I’d been honest with Romek about everything, including Brano Sev. We’d parted ways in 1985, and it was only at Lena’s insistence that I even attended his retirement party the following year. I remember us fighting about it. She sat at her vanity mirror, putting on makeup and explaining what a fool I was. “The man worked with you for thirty years. Send him off with a pat on the back, for Christ’s sake.”
“Why?” I said, full of self-righteousness. “You think the others are going because they like the man? No. They’re afraid that if they don’t go, he’ll leave a report on them with the Ministry. But I’m too old to be scared. People are dead because of Brano. Do you understand what that means?”
She wouldn’t have it. “You jump to conclusions. You always have. You think you know what people are thinking, but you’re nearly always wrong. The fact is, Imre’s death wasn’t Brano’s fault.” Then she got up, found my tie, and threw it at me.
Our relationship had ended the night Brano Sev called me down to discuss the murder of Captain Imre Papp. I found Brano parked on Friendship Street, just outside our door. “Get in,” he said.
“Why don’t you come up?”
“Please, Emil.”
He didn’t want anyone seeing us together, so for the space of our conversation he drove slowly down half- deserted streets, where we were hidden by the warm July darkness. But I could see him. In the ten years since we’d worked together in homicide, he’d aged dramatically-he was Lena’s age, but had the sickly expression of someone even older.
“I need to tell you a story, Emil. But you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
“I think I should. Gavra thinks I should.”
“Gavra?”
Brano focused on the dark road. “He says Imre’s murder is tearing you up. He thinks you should know the truth behind it.”
I was surprised Gavra cared, but I was more surprised that Gavra, working every day with us as we tracked down futile clues, had never shared his secret knowledge. “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
“This is not for your report, understand? Not even for Dora. I don’t want his wife knowing anything.”
I considered telling him that there was no deal. If I couldn’t give some answers to Dora Papp, and their son, Gabor, then knowing the answers seemed pointless. But I was too curious. “Okay,” I repeated.
So he told me, and the story, performed in his purposeful monotone, took ten miles of slow driving to get out. It had started the previous year with something Tomiak Pankov had brought up in one of his hour-long Central Committee speeches-the War on Revanchist Fiscal Counterrevolutionaries, by which he meant the war against corruption. The Ministry for State Security began investigating reports of large-scale bribes being taken by upper- echelon members of the People’s Militia. The bribes were paid by a burgeoning Hungarian mafia that traded in Western cigarettes, off-season fruits not available at home, and Japanese radios. They would capture shipments in Austria and West Germany, sometimes Italy, then transport them through Hungary and then here. All along the way, they paid off militiamen and customs officials to get their goods to our black market.
“So? Imre was a homicide detective.”
“Please,” said Brano in his unbearable monotone. “Just wait.”
The investigation was largely unsuccessful, because the agents working on it were equally susceptible to payoffs, and those very few who weren’t kept turning up dead in the countryside. “We needed a new method.”
“You needed a Hungarian,” I said, slowly realizing what he was getting at.
“Exactly,” Brano answered. “As you probably know, the Ministry has long been plagued by nationalist prejudices. Some people at the top-and I’m not one of them-feel that Hungarians can’t be trusted. We fill the ranks with Slavs-Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Ukrainians-and the occasional Romanian. It’s a stupid thing, but there it is. So I was asked to find a Hungarian we could trust to infiltrate the group and pass on information. Imre came to
