The soldier did the talking for us, bending down to speak with a tired-looking girl in her early twenties. “These people are looking for Rosta Gorski. Any idea who that is?”
“Who are you?” she asked me.
I didn’t tell her who I was, instead motioning toward my companion. “Gisele Sully. She’s a French journalist. Gorski told her to come by for an interview.” Gisele started to open her mouth, but I cut in. “I’m her translator.”
“You know French?” She looked doubtful.
I didn’t-German was my language-but I said, “Oui,” with my best accent. Luckily, she didn’t speak it either.
She pulled over a folder and went through a stack of pages listing names and numbers. “Here it is. Room 214.” She pointed at one of the corridors. “Down there and up the steps.”
I thanked her and the soldier, then took Gisele’s elbow as we walked away.
“Why’d you say that?” she said.
“What?”
“That you were my translator.” She sounded insulted. “I’m fluent.”
“Because I need a reason to be here, and it’s better for you if they think you don’t understand.”
She’d been a foreign correspondent long enough to know this was true-she could listen in on what people didn’t want her to hear. At the end of the corridor, we took a circular staircase to the second floor, where it was quieter. At the opposite end of this corridor, I knew, was a second exit-a service stairwell that I and the other chiefs used when we wanted to make a quick, unnoticed escape from one of the Interior Ministry lectures.
“Where’s your recorder?”
She took it out of her jacket pocket.
“Just before we go inside, turn it on. Okay? But don’t take it out.”
She nodded, grinning vaguely. The intrigue appealed to her.
It didn’t appeal to me. My heart was thumping again, loudly, and I considered taking more Captopril, but held off-I only had ten left.
Room 214 was halfway down, on the left. We paused outside the door to listen but heard nothing. I pointed at her pocket, and she reached in to turn on the recorder. Then I opened the door.
Rosta Gorski had been given an exceptional office above the fray. It was large and marbled, with antique oak cabinets and a large desk where a thirty-two-year-old, clean-shaven man with a shock of very black hair sat reading papers through bifocals propped halfway down his nose. Behind him, from high windows, you could see the entirety of Victory Square.
“Yes?” he said, looking up. He removed his glasses and squinted at me, as if he knew me but couldn’t place my name.
Rather than give his memory the leisure to work up an answer, I closed the door and brought out Gavra’s Makarov.
“Merde,” said Gisele.
Gorski didn’t seem frightened by the gun. His memory caught up with events, and he raised a finger, wagging it at me. “Chief Emil Brod. You hardly look like your picture at all. It must be an old one.”
“Gisele,” I said, switching to my labored English, “sit down.”
“Who’s she?” said Gorski, as she settled stiffly in a chair. “Do I know her?”
“I used her to get in here. She’s French, doesn’t understand a word we’re saying.”
“That’s good,” said Gorski, then smiled at Gisele and said something in French about me being crazy- fou. He turned back to me. “Can I get a cigarette?” He motioned toward a shiny pine box on his desk.
I went to the edge of the desk and opened it. Inside were rows of Marlboros. I chose one at random and threw it in front of him, then tossed over a pack of Metropol matches I’d grabbed from the bar.
His hands shook when he lit it, but that was more adrenaline than fear. He waved the match, making a long ribbon of smoke, then dropped it into a crystal ashtray. “What can I do for you, Emil Brod?”
“I think you have some idea.”
“I have no idea.”
I don’t know what I expected from him-some eager admission of guilt, I suppose-but there are some people who can sense what you desire, and for that reason they give you the opposite. Rosta Gorski was one such person. I said, “Two weeks ago you went into the Ministry Archives with Nikolai Romek. You signed out six personnel files and one case file. You got rid of the case file and doctored the others so that no one would be able to prove that your father, Jerzy Michalec, had been a Gestapo agent.”
He took a drag, blinking as smoke got into his eyes, then waved the smoke away. “Go on.”
“But to ensure there were no accusations coming out of the woodwork, you proceeded to murder each person who was directly connected to that case.”
“Obviously not everyone,” said Gorski. His tone had cooled. “You’re still alive.”
“You tried but killed my wife by mistake.”
Gorski blinked a few times. “I didn’t kill anyone, Brod. And why do you think she was killed by mistake?”
I stared at him a moment, as the slow cogs of my brain refitted. I’d been staring at one thing for too long. Of course Lena was a target- Michalec had kidnapped her. She was a witness. They’d hoped we would be in the car together, or maybe hers was also wired with explosives. “But you didn’t take her file. Why?”
Gorski rubbed his nostrils, wondering how much he should say. He glanced at Gisele Sully and winked to comfort her. He said, “There was no file on Lena Brod.”
“Of course there was. It was just misplaced.”
He shook his head. “Her name’s not even in the reference lists. She’s only mentioned in your file, as your wife. Maybe you can explain that?”
I couldn’t. I’d last seen her Militia file in 1948, just after the Michalec investigation. I’d never had a reason to look for it again.
But he was trying to distract me from what I’d come to do. I raised the pistol so that it pointed at his head. He swallowed. When I spoke, my throat was choked. “You killed my wife, or you ordered her murder. You and your father.”
“If you believe that so strongly, then why haven’t you shot me yet?”
“Because I want your father. You, Rosta Gorski, are nothing.”
I’d judged correctly — my words stung him.
“Where is Jerzy?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gorski.
“It does. Tell me.”
“Or you’ll shoot me? Come on, Brod. You shoot me, and you’ll be dead before you reach the square. Same with your journalist friend. And you’ll never know where my father is.”
Behind me, Gisele coughed.
“You can’t walk me out of here,” Gorski continued. “You can’t do anything. You may be suicidal, but you’re not going to risk this woman’s life as well.”
It was a good try, but it wasn’t true. I could put a bullet in his head, then walk out alone through the service stairwell. No matter what happened to me, Gisele would simply stay in her chair until the soldiers arrived, then explain, in French, how I’d used her to get inside.
The desire for murder was strong, but I couldn’t simply kill this man at his desk. I turned back to Gisele and said in my stiff English, “You stay here. When they come, you tell. Tell everything what I did. In French is okay.” She nodded, terrified. I added, “Don’t worry,” but that did nothing to allay her fear.
I walked around the desk to Gorski, who was finally showing a bit of fear. “You won’t,” he said, as much to convince himself as convince me.
With as much speed as my old body could muster, I moved behind him and wrapped my arm around his neck so he had trouble breathing. I, too, had trouble breathing. My pulse banged in my ears, then came that electric hum. I placed the barrel against his temple. His hands leapt up to my arm, but my grip was strong.
Close to his ear, I whispered, “I’m going to kill your father. Understand? When you see him, tell him that. Tell him that Emil Brod is going to murder him, and that’s the only reason I’ve left his worthless son alive.”
I said all this because I meant it.
