Liberation Movements (10 page)

Doctor Arendt
told them what little he knew: that Zrinka Martrich’s brother, Adrian, was twenty-three years old, two years younger than her; that he was unmarried, living in the Fourth District; and that he managed the state butcher’s shop on Union Street.

Gavra drove while Katja opened the doctor’s file on her lap, squinting in the failing light. Beneath the stacks of memos she found a photograph of Zrinka, taken five years ago at the hospital. “Pretty girl,” she said.

He glanced over and saw a striking brunette with eyes that in the black-and-white were a very pale gray. “Yeah.”

“Do you believe the doctor?”

“It’s an elaborate story for a lie.”

“I don’t trust him,” said Katja. “This Zrinka is just swept away to Rokošyn and vanishes? How does that happen?”

Gavra considered his answer, then just gave it. “Katja, people disappear all the time.”

On Union Street, they found the butcher’s shop where a young man was locking the front door from inside. As they got out of the car and approached, he seemed to be trying to work the key faster, but he stopped when Gavra knocked on the glass. He looked terrified.

“Adrian Martrich?” asked Gavra.

The young man shook his head and said something they couldn’t hear.

Gavra pointed at the key. “Open the door.” The young man did this.

“We’re looking for Adrian Martrich,” said Katja.

“Not me. Adrian’s in the back.”

Gavra put his hand on the door. “Well, then. Take us to him.”

He led them past the empty glass cases, in which Gavra noticed traces of blood still not wiped clean, and to a back door. He knocked.

“Yeah?” came a voice.

“Adrian,” said the young man, his voice weak, “some people to talk to you.”

“Okay,” said Adrian Martrich, and they heard papers being put away. By the time the boy had opened the door, Zrinka’s brother was at a clean desk. He stood and offered his hand, smiling congenially, as if he’d been expecting their visit.

Gavra felt a choking sensation in the back of his throat. Adrian Martrich was tall and handsome, similar to the way his dead sister was beautiful. As they sat, Gavra grew warm, looking at that well-formed face, pale blue eyes, and thin, coiffed sideburns beneath a wave of brown hair. This man took good care of himself. He looked like no butcher Gavra had ever seen.

From his smile, it appeared that Adrian Martrich wasn’t disappointed by what he saw, either.

All this, Gavra knew, should have been a warning.

“Comrade Martrich?” said Katja.

He answered her but continued to look at Gavra. “Yes?”

“We’re here to ask about your sister.”

Adrian blinked at her. “You know where Zrinka is?”

She began to shake her head but stopped short of lying. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

“Three? Yes, three years ago. When she was in the clinic.”

“Tarabon.”

He nodded.

“Did your sister have friends in Istanbul?”

“Istanbul?” Adrian snorted lightly. “Not that I know of.” Then he looked back at Gavra. “But three years is a long time.”

“It certainly is,” said Katja. “And you never wondered where she was?”

Adrian Martrich sized her up a moment. “Of course I wondered where she was. Some months ago, her old doctor, Comrade Arendt, sent me to a little town in the countryside. He said she was there. Rokošyn. But when I arrived I realized he was lying.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “there was nothing there. As far as I know, there’s never been a clinic at Rokošyn.”

Gavra leaned forward; Katja frowned. She said, “Did you talk to the doctor again after that?”

“Why should I? He obviously wasn’t interested in helping me.”

Gavra placed a hand on the desk. “Zrinka was on a plane three days ago. It was headed for Istanbul, but it was hijacked and exploded. She’s dead.”

“Dead?” said Adrian. A nervous smile crossed his face, then vanished. He placed his own hands on the desk, flat. “Zrinka?”

“We’re sorry to have to give you this news,” Katja said, and followed with words of sympathy, but it was obvious that the butcher was no longer listening. He was staring at his hands.

“You’re talking about that plane,” he said finally. “The one in the
Spark
. Flight 54.”

“Yes,” said Gavra, his voice now very soft. “We’re trying to find out what your sister was doing on that plane.”

Adrian breathed a few times, loudly, then looked at Gavra. “I wish I knew.”

Gavra drove again as they headed through the dim streets back to Doctor Arendt. Katja stretched, trying to get rid of the tension of a long day in the car. She said, “Okay. If we believe the brother, then the question: Why did Doctor Arendt tell him, and then us, that Zrinka had been sent to a nonexistent clinic?”

“Because he doesn’t want to say where she really went.”

The sun was low behind the doctor’s Fifth District apartment, and they had to squint to see well. The door to the building was locked, so Katja pressed Arendt’s buzzer.

Along the street, families were promenading after early dinners. Katja followed Gavra’s gaze and pressed the buzzer again. “They look satisfied, don’t they?”

Gavra didn’t answer. He was thinking of Adrian Martrich, the handsome butcher.

Then the door opened, but it wasn’t the doctor. It was an old woman with a tattered pink babushka tied around her head. When she noticed their dress uniforms, she froze in the doorway, eyes wide.

Katja gave her a smile.

“Potatoes,” the old woman said.

“I’m sorry,” said Katja. “We don’t have potatoes.”

The old woman raised a bent finger and pointed across the street to a vegetable shop, and Gavra stepped out of the way. She passed quickly. They caught the door and went inside.

As they took the stairs, they didn’t say a thing. It wasn’t worth discussing.

Gavra was the one who knocked on the doctor’s door. He was the one standing there when it opened on its own, from the pressure of his knuckle. Against the far wall, the open wardrobe spilled files all over the floor, a few covering the doctor, who lay in the middle of his living room, facedown, with a bullet hole in the back of his skull.

1968

He could
not walk. The occasional soldier watched him jog past in the darkness, and a few even seemed to consider stopping him, though none did. Soon he was running through vacant streets, the evening humidity choking his nostrils and eyes, so that when he stopped at a doorway not far from where Jungmannova crossed Jungmannovo Square, he could hardly make out the large, flat façade of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. Through the arched doorway leading from the church courtyard, shapes stumbled out, and beyond the thumping in his head he heard voices.
Come on, you bastards. Hooligans.
The sound of bodies being thrown to the ground. The crack of a truncheon against bone. One scream, but just one. By the time his vision cleared it was a surprisingly quiet scene. Two white trucks and a white Mercedes. Twenty gloomy students. Jan. Gustav. And a black-robed old priest. Josef was probably already inside the trucks the soldiers were leading everyone into.

Peter stepped back, farther into the darkness, and measured out his breaths. It helped to remember that Emperor Charles IV had built this massive church to remind him of his coronation. What an ego. Despite the humidity, Peter felt the August night turning cold.

When he looked again, the back door of the Mercedes opened, and that man stepped out to light a cigarette. He didn’t seem proud, not as proud as he’d seemed in the interrogation room or later in the café. He instead looked like a man at the end of a long day of factory work, the weight of repetitive motion bearing on him. But strong. Bald, tall, and strong.

“Now you look like you’ve been hit by a train. Where do you keep running off to?”

He tried on a smile as he sat down. “I’ve had enough beer.”

Stanislav folded the letter into his pocket again. “Listen, this is my last night to be foolish. Once I’m back…well, I’ll have responsibilities. You up for a final blast?”

Peter felt his special talent—the one the StB officer had been so impressed by—bring on a big, authentic smile. “I don’t want to let you down.”

So they bought a bottle of Becherovka liquor and began again to drink. “Did you fight?” asked Peter.

“When?”

“Here. You’ve only said you ended up being stationed here. You never told me what you did.”

Stanislav shifted, then peered into his shot glass. “Most of the time, no. We were all quite pleased no one wanted to fight us. These girls—pretty girls, and what short skirts they had—they gave us flowers and told us to go home.” He shook his head. “As if we had a choice in the matter. But they were nice. At the beginning, though, there was some fighting.” He finished his glass and refilled it. “It was the twenty-first. We’d just gotten here, and half of us didn’t even know where we were. Then we were sent over to the radio building, over on Stalinova Street. A big crowd outside. I think the radio station had called them all there to protest. Well, it got out of hand. They threw rocks, someone started shooting, and, well…” He lifted the dark liquor to his chin. “Yeah, there were dead people.”

“Did
you
kill anyone?”

“I hope not. In the confusion, I couldn’t tell. But the station—” He grunted. “Those guys are clever. Radio Prague still broadcasts from different areas of town. They change frequencies and give out news for ten minutes, then move on. I doubt anyone will be able to stop them.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Me?” Stanislav peered at the dark liquor in his glass. “You think any of us want to be here? You think any of us are here because we want to defend socialism?”

Peter raised his own glass. “To going home.”

They swallowed what they had and then poured more.

As the
plane descends toward Atatürk International, I yawn to pop my ears. Beside me, the young electric-fan salesman rubs his eyes and smiles. “Did I sleep the whole way?”

“Yes.”

“You?”

“I can’t seem to sleep these days.”

“Well, you won’t sleep in Istanbul. Very
un
restful place. Where are you staying?”

His thin hair lies flat on his scalp, and in a few years he’ll be bald. He has bright eyes.

“I didn’t make a reservation,” I say, and it occurs to me how sudden this trip is. How ill planned. This afternoon, taking the long taxi ride from the Hotel Metropol to the airport, fingering my crisp new passport, it felt like the only option. But that was the fatigue confusing me. The fatigue and the buzzing in my ears that muted all other sounds.

“Well, you’ve got to make a reservation,” he says. “It’s a popular city. I’m staying at the Pera Palas. Why don’t you come into town with me and we’ll see if we can get you a room?”

“Yes,” I say, trying on a smile. “That’s a good idea.”

“I’m Istvan. Istvan Farkas.”

I make a smile with teeth and take his hand. “Good to meet you, Istvan.”

Then I notice the fat man looking at me again. When I catch him he turns away.

Waiting for Brano Sev at the Metropol earlier today, I also felt watched—a woman on her own at the half-empty bar, male eyes converging on my back. So I ordered vodka from a lanky bartender who set the glass down and smiled. “You waiting for someone?”

“Don’t give me trouble,” I said. He grunted and moved on to another customer.

Brano arrived, sweating in his too heavy jacket, and stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette. He moved quickly for an old man. The bartender, recognizing him, slipped back. “Comrade Sev, so good—”

“Žywiec.”

“Of course.”

Brano took off his jacket and climbed onto a stool. There were sweat stains all over his shirt. “As I told you on the telephone, Katja, I don’t know where Gavra is. He—”

“That’s not why I asked you here.”

“Okay.” The bartender set down a glass of beer and disappeared again. “Then why am I here?”

I took a breath. “Two days ago, on Monday, you and Gavra met a man in the Seventh District, on Tolar. He’s young, like me. He has a little mustache now. His name is Peter Husák. Where is he now?”

Brano’s face, unused to expressing emotion, let slip an instant of surprise. “Peter Husák?”

“Yes. Where is he?”

“Why are you interested in this man?”

“It’s personal.”

“Nothing’s personal.”

I considered my words. With Brano Sev, a misplaced syllable could end all discussion. “I knew him, once. Some years ago. In 1968.”

“How well did you know him?”

“He was—” I paused. “He
told
me he was a friend of my old boyfriend. That he knew him in Prague.”

“Why was your boyfriend in Prague?”

“He was in the army. He died there. He helped put down their revolution.”

“Their counterrevolution.”

“Whatever.”

“And that’s how Peter Husák knew your boyfriend?”

“He told me he worked with our soldiers, that they became close.”

“Your boyfriend’s name?”

“Stanislav Klym.”

Brano touched his glass but didn’t lift it. He nodded. “Right.”

“What?”

He stood up. “I have to go now, but…” He frowned, considering something. “Can you meet me back here at five?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at five.”

Then he was gone.