I remembered her again as I brushed my teeth, staring into my own bloodshot eyes.
I filled a second cup and joined Karel on the couch. Spread across the coffee table were pages from The Spark. “Where did you find this?”
“Outside,” he said without taking his eyes from the screen, where a soldier held up a gold bowl and tiny gold spoon-the commentator said it was a caviar set. “There’s a stack of them on the sidewalk. The delivery guy must’ve gotten spooked and just left them.”
I gathered the newspaper and refitted it together. I saw it was yesterday’s edition before seeing the front- page story. My throat closed up. Above a grainy photograph of a burning wreck, it said
MILITIA CHIEF’S WIFE SLAIN BY PATAK TERRORISTS.
I rushed to the toilet. I bent over and waited, gasping, my eyes dripping into the bowl. My intestines convulsed but produced nothing. I hadn’t eaten in a long time.
The official lie behind my wife’s murder would turn out to be the front-page story of The Spark’s final edition.
When I came out again, Karel twisted in the couch to watch me. “Hey. You all right?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Sit down.” He got up. “Let me cook up something.”
I did as he commanded but couldn’t look at the paper again. I used the remote to learn that both national television channels were now in revolutionary hands. So it was over. Across the bottom of the screen was a phone number to call if you had any information on the whereabouts of the Pankovs.
It was almost too much to grasp. A government that had taken a war to put into place and had survived for forty years had been de-stroyed in mere hours.
A commentator reported on yesterday’s battle at the Hotel Metropol. Revolutionaries had tracked the snipers to the Metropol and informed General Stapenov, who sent a unit to protect the le-gions of foreign journalists camping inside. The gunfight that fol-lowed lasted four hours, ending only when the “terrorists” simply stopped shooting. Soldiers made it to the roof, which had been de-fended along the stairwells, and found that the terrorists had disap-peared.
Cameras panned across the flat, empty roof, then the chaotic ground-floor lounge, where soldiers and journalists stood around examining the damage. A German man spoke slowly and purposefully in our language as he recounted his fear and his conviction that he was going to die. Then he smiled and pulled over a grinning young soldier. “But these man, he save my life!” He was followed by a Frenchwoman named Gisele Sully, who had an intense, dark stare and a better command of our language. She spoke rapidly, with hard consonants, saying that her own investigations made her think that the terrorists might not be who we thought they were. “They’ve yet to be captured, yes? But they’re everywhere, and when they shoot, everyone’s looking for them. But they disappear. They must be working in collusion with a nongovernmental group.”
She looked as if she were going to continue, but the camera cut to the studio, where the young man who still needed a shave reported on continued terrorist activity in the First and Fifth districts. There was also rumored activity in the Third.
Karel returned with toasted stale bread and a pile of Lena’s leftover pork and cabbage. I remembered throwing my serving in the trash and teasing her about her wifely duties. I tried to find the humor in it as I forked the bland stuff into my mouth but couldn’t.
So I turned to Karel. “Who’s running things now?”
“Things?”
“The country. The government.”
“The Galicia Revolutionary Committee.”
“But who’s their figurehead?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
With each bite, Lena’s dish tasted better. It was filling that empty space in me and helping my head. I gathered the patience to explain it to him. “It does matter. What happens if the old communists claim they’re the heads of the revolution?”
“Why would they? Everyone knows who they are.”
Despite Karel’s simple ignorance, he triggered a thought. It wasn’t about facts. Politics never is. It was about rumors and opinions. Television broadcasts. Journalism.
I ate the rest of the food quickly without tasting it, wiped my hands on my pants, and went to the phone. It was dead. Karel, putting the plate in the sink, said, “It’s been out since last night.”
“Where are your keys?”
“What?”
“The keys to your car.”
“It’s Gavra’s car. He said only in emergencies.” “This is an emergency.”
I didn’t want Karel to come along, but he wouldn’t give me the keys otherwise, and he insisted on driving. “You think I like your apartment that much?” he said as I took a couple of Captopril and pocketed the bottle. “I’m going stir-crazy.”
Gavra’s Citroen was parked just around the corner. It would have been a beautiful car had the left side not been covered in smeared red paint and the letter M. “Who did that?” I asked.
“Stupid drunks.”
“What did it say?”
He unlocked the door. “It said‘Ministry’”
We got in, and he started it up. “Where to, Comrade Chief?”
“To the Metropol.”
He was a careful driver, slowing for each turn and stopping at all the proper places. The traffic lights were out or blinking yellow, but Karel still stopped at each empty intersection and looked both ways before driving on. It was driving me crazy. At Victory Square he leaned close to the wheel to see up the height of the Central Committee, which a banner called the Galicia Revolutionary Committee HQ. He pointed at the people loitering on the front steps with cigarettes, shivering in the cold and chatting. “You wanted to know who’s running the country. There they are. Want to talk to them?”
I didn’t. I’d worry about my country later. “Metropol,” I repeated.
Yalta Boulevard was a mess. Damaged cars lined the road, and on the sidewalk by the Metropol entrance was a battered white Militia Karpat. Ahead, I could see number 36, where I’d found Yuri Kolev’s corpse only three- three! — days ago. Now, soldiers stood around the Ministry’s entrance, smoking, and young men moved in and out of the building, loading boxes of files into an army truck.
Since the curb was full, Karel parked in the road. I didn’t think it mattered. At the shattered front door of the hotel, an army sergeant looked at our papers and asked our business. “I need to speak to Gisele Sully.”
He frowned. “Who?”
“She’s a French journalist. I need her help in a criminal investigation.”
“What kind of criminal investigation?”
I was feeling impatient, but tried not to let it show. “A murder. She may have information about the suspect.”
“Why’re you so vague?” said the sergeant.
“Because,” I said, breathing loudly through my nose, “the murdered woman was my wife.”
He blinked a few times. “Wait.” He read my name again. “Brod? You’re-”
“Yes. I am.”
He nodded curtly. I don’t know what he knew about me or my situation. Perhaps he only felt sympathy.
Once we were inside, the other soldiers ignored us, as did the journalists draped over broken furniture, a few clutching bulky cellular telephones. There were two long lines at the lobby phones, the callers up front talking quickly in various languages as they read off of notepads. Karel and I went to the front desk, where a clerk, sweaty but well maintained, was talking on another phone. He nodded at us to wait.
“Do you know this woman?” whispered Karel.
“Who?”
“This Gisele woman. Can you recognize her?”
“I saw her on television.”
