Harold patted her hand to show he was fine. “I met Brano Sev in 1965. The man tortured me.”
Gavra rubbed his forehead, cursing his mistake. He should have considered this. It didn’t matter, though, not anymore. “You’re both part of this too, aren’t you?”
They waited.
“You want me to kill the Pankovs so you can frame Brano for the murder.”
Harold shook his head and pressed a finger into the tabletop, speaking defiantly. “We want you to kill the Pankovs because that’s what they deserve. They took our children away and starved a beautiful country until it was ugly. I suppose you can’t hear from inside this room, but there are still terrorists out on the rooftops. As long as the Pankovs are alive, they’ll keep shooting innocent people. We’re going to kill them and show their corpses to the whole country. We’re going to bring back peace.”
“But why me7” Gavra insisted.
Harold looked at Beth, so she answered. “We don’t want just anyone to kill the Pankovs. We want someone who’s spent his life serving that wretched man’s interests. But not just anyone. Someone who has no political stake in the outcome.”
“Which is why you can’t hand a gun to Andras Todescu.”
Harold nodded.
Beth said, “Brano Sev is the right man for this. If he’s proven to be responsible for killing them, it will show that even the most dedicated servant couldn’t take it anymore.”
Harold grunted. “We’re giving that bastard much more than he deserves.”
“We’re making him, and you, into heroes. Historians will talk highly of the two of you.”
Gavra leaned back and tried to absorb this. It was hard. He traced back the steps that had brought him to this room: the trip to Virginia, the plane ride beside this couple, the phone call in the Militia office, his kidnapping, and then Karel’s. It felt like too many variables at work to have been planned ahead of time, too many to be believable. Then again, it wasn’t planned. Jerzy Michalec’s brilliance lay in his ability to bend with situations, to quickly take into account what had changed and what should be done next. Michalec was a master at thinking on his feet.
Gavra was left in awe. Not only did this plan help assure the success of the revolution; it also assured Michalec’s safety. If Brano was tied to the murder of the Pankovs, then Brano was tied to Michalec, who had captured the First Couple and arranged the execution. If, next week, Brano told the international press about Michalec’s criminal history, he’d be accused of political backstabbing. There would be no evidence for him to cite, and he would be quickly marginalized. Brano Sev would become a nobody.
“You don’t understand,” said Gavra. “Jerzy is doing this-even this — to assure his past is ignored. He’s doing it to assure he can become president. You’re helping a murderer run our country.”
Beth shook her head. “But he doesn’t want to become president.”
“He says that now,” began Gavra, but Harold held up a finger to stop him.
“It’s true,” said Harold. “Jerzy wants his son to become president. He doesn’t want it for himself at all.”
Gavra stuttered just as Tomiak Pankov and I had stuttered. “S-son?”
“You didn’t know?” said Beth. “Sweet Rosta.”
“Rosta Gorski,” managed Gavra.
Just then, the door opened and Michalec stepped in. “I think my son’s ears are burning!”
The Atkinses laughed.
TWENTY-THREE
I reached Tisakarad a little after two. The low winter sun tried to break through gray clouds, and trees in the fields around me made bleak shadows. The Citroen’s heater had started sputtering halfway through the journey, then died soon after. I’d zipped up my coat against the cold, but my fingers felt like ice. I took two Captopril, then turned off a side road before the city limits, following a bumpy path through fields and taking more turns past the cooperative offices that ruled over the farms in the northeastern quadrant outside Tisakarad. I soon reached the Kolyeszar farmhouse.
When Ferenc was shipped off to a labor camp in Vatrina in 1956, charged with treason, Magda brought little Agota out to the countryside. They waited for him in her parents’Pocspetri farmhouse.
I was the one who picked him up from Work Camp #480 upon his release early the next year, and I remember being shocked by his appearance. He was a lice-ridden skeleton, covered in sores, and seemed in a perpetual state of shock. I probably wasn’t much help, as Lena had just suffered her first miscarriage, but I took him to a Vatrina hotel where he washed and ate and dressed in fresh clothes Magda had given me to bring along. By the time I got him to the Pocspetri farmhouse, he was just starting to become human again.
That was a long time ago. Since then, Magda’s parents had died, and they’d been transferred to this smaller farmhouse in Tisakarad. While tending his hectares of apple orchards, Ferenc had produced a series of samizdat novels that over the years, and largely by the work of Georgi Radevych (during his sober hours), found their way westward. By the midseventies, French papers were writing about this “genius” living behind the Iron Curtain, whose books could not be published at home. That was true, but the crudely bound manuscripts still found their way into our hands. I’d read all five of his books and was always deeply impressed by my friend.
When I parked in front of the house, next to the Russian flatbed, the door opened, and Magda came out holding a Kalashnikov rifle. The sight stunned me. “Get out!” she shouted.
“It’s me!” I called, rolling down the window so she could hear. “Emil!”
She lowered the rifle, confused. “Emil? Where’d you get that car?”
I climbed out and went over to hug her, but the Kalashnikov kept getting in the way, so I gave up. “Jesus, Magda. That’s some firepower.”
“This?” She took it off her shoulder and looked at it. “No bullets. But it’s still scary, isn’t it?”
“You’re alone?”
“Everyone’s in Patak making trouble. With the roads the way they are, it’s an hour each way, but they seem to think it’s worth it.”
I gave a hug another try, pressing into her gray hair that had once been so dark and rich. She squeezed me tight, whispering, “I’m sorry about her.” She kissed my cheek hard, then pulled back to look into my face. “How’re you dealing?”
“Not well,” I said, because it was true.
“It’s only been a couple of days.”
That was also true, but my sense of time was all wrong. It felt as if Lena had been killed just a few hours ago, but with everything that had happened since then, it seemed that a month must have passed. I think that’s what happens when you go mad. Time stops agreeing.
Magda and Lena had never been particularly close, despite Fe-renc’s and my efforts. We stuck them in the same room during visits, while we stepped onto the back porch to drink beer and reminisce, with plenty of lies, about the old days in the Militia. The women suffered each other, but I knew that Magda had always found Lena an unbearable snob, and Lena often told me what a prole Magda was. But what can you expect from a farm girl?
Despite this, I was always fond of Ferenc’s wife. Like anyone else, they had their problems, and during that nasty year, 1956, they nearly divorced. I was glad they hadn’t.
She boiled tea in the kitchen, whispering because Sanja was asleep in the bedroom. I watched her move instinctively between the stove and the cabinets; she’d gained weight, but on her it looked like health.
“What’re they doing in Patak?”
“Getting things working again. It’s a real chore.”
“Isn’t there help from the Capital?”
She grunted as she poured my cup. “The Galicia Committee? They’ve got their hands busy getting the Capital in working order. And the snipers.” She paused. “Did you see any?”
“I saw some of their work.”
“Oh.”
She told me that after the massacre on Wednesday night, the only violent deaths in Sarospatak had been
