Liberation Movements (20 page)

The sunlight
ruins me. It’s inescapable. Even when I find a crevice between buildings, the light clings to the shadows, and I search for a closed door to hide behind. The first door is a teashop with pillows around low tables and dark men hunched in the darkness, whispering. That is, until I enter, when they all look up from their reveries, confused.

I tried not to run out of the hotel. I ran from the room, then stood in the empty corridor with blood on my knees and hands and blouse, the knife still in my hand. Then, in a moment of sudden fatigue, I stepped back inside and closed the door, lucky that the guests were all gone, eating late breakfasts or gazing at Istanbul’s sights. I stepped over the dead man, sat on the bed, and closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long it took me, in the darkness of my head, to decide what to do, but when I came out of it I found myself undressing.

I tried to ignore him as I washed my hands and went through the wardrobe and put on his undershirt and then tried pants, but they wouldn’t stretch over my hips. So I put my own back on and found a long raincoat with large pockets. I dropped the pistol and the knife into a plastic trash bag from the bathroom and slipped it into one pocket. Into the other went my crumpled, bloodstained blouse. I found an inner pocket to hold the Deutschmarks. Then I looked around, at everything except the body.

Before leaving, I admittedly squatted beside Peter Husák again, just outside the pool of blood, and gazed into that flaccid, blood-smeared face. That stupid little mustache.

I spat on it.

Only then was I able to walk calmly out of the hotel.

I walked eastward. Up a narrow cobblestone street, jumping aside to avoid cars and lumbering tour buses. Up, pouring sweat under the overcoat, until my calves hurt, burning away all thoughts. In an open square I saw men washing themselves in fountains.

Then down, almost tripping on the stones as I followed baffling curves.

Trees covered me at some point, and then I reached the water. A perfect horizontal line. Water above; road below. In the distance, ships and Asia. I sprinted across the road to a shore of large rocks. Just at the water, feet wet, I collapsed and threw the blouse and the pistol into the Bosphorus. The knife, though—I held on to that. I looked around finally, but I’d been alone all along.

It was walking back through these choked, confused streets that ruined my shaky calm. The heat and the weathered faces and the unsettling songs of prayer that burst from rooftops like the scorn of God. The sun.

So I’ve stepped into this dark cavern of men over steaming cups. The last place I want to be. I find a pillow at an empty table and try to smile at the gaunt waiter with the long sideburns. “
Rakı,
please,” I say.

He frowns, then shakes his head vigorously.

“Çay,”
he says, then: “
Chai
. Tea.”

“No alcohol?”

He shakes his head again.

“Oh.” With effort I climb back to my feet. All those mustached faces follow me as I walk back out into the light.

He stretches
out his leg under the next seat so the aluminum bar won’t cut into his skin, and as the hijacker returns to his post near Zrinka’s guard, Jirair leaves the cockpit and comes back to him.

The hijacker leans close and speaks in Armenian. “Who’s that girl?”

“I don’t know. I’d never met her before.”

“Is she a spy?”

Libarid looks up at this earnest, confused face. He’s young, maybe twenty-eight, and Libarid almost feels sympathy for him. “If she is, I wouldn’t know.”

“She’s frightening.”

When Jirair straightens and steps back, Libarid draws the bar from his pants leg, watching the bald head of Zrinka’s guard, and wonders if he’ll ever see his family again. Then it hits him—he wasn’t going to see them again anyway. A simple realization, but only now, minutes before risking his life, does the reality of never seeing his son again crystallize in his head. He’s spent the last months and years thinking of what he would gain by leaving, and that he’d only lose the tedium, as if a life lived alone is a joyride.

Unbelievable, he thinks as he listens to Jirair breathe heavily a couple paces behind him. Zara learned from her Bible that what we do affects others to a degree we can never predict. What would his abandonment do to Vahe?

What kind of man is he?

He forces the question from his mind, because Zrinka’s big guard is standing, reaching out.

“Sit down,” Jirair says, then takes a step forward. Zrinka’s guard reaches for the one nearest him, a quick arm around the neck, and Libarid swings the aluminum bar into Jirair’s legs. The Armenian tumbles, and Libarid, low, throws himself on top of him.

There’s a gunshot from the third one, in the other aisle, and screams follow. Libarid brings the bar down on the back of Jirair’s head with strength—he feels the skull give. Ahead, the Ministry man has broken the other’s neck and is rising with his pistol, shooting over heads at the third one. One bullet throws the hijacker back on top of a screaming woman, while a second snaps through a window.

A great sucking sound.

Libarid’s ears pop and he can’t hear a thing as, crouching, he runs forward. The floor tilts and he stumbles past the guard, who’s lying with blood pulsing from his shoulder but alive. From seats, disconnected arms reach out to grab him. He pushes past them to the cockpit door, where a stewardess is screaming something he can’t hear.

Then he pulls open the door and sees her. Those eyes. And for the first time, there’s something like surprise all over that beautiful face. Surprise and real, clear terror.

Gavra hailed
a taxi from the sidewalk outside Atatürk International Airport and took Adrian to the only Istanbul hotel he’d ever stayed in, the Erboy. On the ride, Adrian acted like a giddy child as he peered out the window at the ship-lights on the Sea of Marmara. “My first time here,” he said. “But you know it pretty well, I guess.”

“I know it well enough,” Gavra said, though at that moment he felt like he didn’t know it at all. The dilapidated buildings they passed, and then the Aya Sofia—they all seemed different now.

He registered them at the front desk, while Adrian picked up a complimentary copy of the
Herald Tribune
. Then they went up to the room, number 305. Gavra had noticed it on the key ring, then in the elevator looked at it again to be sure. He felt an urge to return to the front desk and ask for a different room but changed his mind. He didn’t want to be superstitious.

While Adrian showered, Gavra opened the window and looked down Ibni Kemal, the busy restaurant row behind the hotel. He still had no answer to the
why
of what he was doing. Did he really believe that Zrinka Martrich possessed the powers her brother had told him about? He didn’t know, but if it were true—if he did believe—then what about Adrian himself? Was it possible he had the power to influence people around him? Could he influence Gavra into committing an act he still could not entirely understand?

Adrian came out of the bathroom wrapped in a white towel, his wet hair flat over his forehead. “What?” he said.

“They’re going to come after us,” said Gavra. “Ludvík Mas, the man who tried to kill you before. He’s going to come after us.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we all did what we were supposed to do.”

Gavra sat on a chair as Adrian used the towel on his hair, standing naked by the bed. “What does that mean?”

“You haven’t been listening, dear,” said Adrian. “I did what she asked me to do. And you did what I asked you to do—you passed on the message to Brano Sev. She told me that if these things were done, you and I would be in no danger here.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged and brought down the towel. “Because she said so. Just accept it. You and I, we’re on vacation. That’s all.”

“How do you know she wasn’t wrong? Or that she didn’t lie?”

Adrian went back to drying his hair. “My sister’s entire life since the age of fifteen was about protecting me. She was more of a mother than my mother ever was.”

Gavra unbuttoned his shirt. “I need a shower, too.”

“Water’s hot,” Adrian said as he unfolded the newspaper and began to read.

Under the water, he worked again through all the details of the sister who had protected her brother since the age of fifteen. He pictured young Adrian and his pretty sister living in a clapboard house full of fear and pain.

“Listen to this,” Adrian said from the other side of the curtain.

“What?”

He read from the newspaper. “Last Saturday’s speech at the Interpol International Conference on Crime and Cooperation in Istanbul by Swedish delegate Roland Adelsvärd continues to send ripples through the international arena. Adelsvärd accused Soviet Bloc countries of funding terrorist cells throughout Western Europe and America in order to disrupt the functions of democratic nations. Of particular focus was General Secretary Tomiak Pankov of—” He stopped. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah,” said Gavra as the water cooled over his skin. When Adrian continued reading, though, he stopped listening. The Swede was talking about what everyone in the Ministry knew but chose not to discuss, because no one wanted to know. Room 305. Disruption Services.

“Amazing, huh?” said Adrian.

“Yeah,” Gavra repeated.

By the time he turned off the water and wrapped the hotel towel around himself, something had occurred to him. He dripped all over the carpet when he came out to find Adrian stretched out under the sheets, the paper turned to the sports page. Gavra said, “It was you.”

“What was me?”

“Your parents. They didn’t kill themselves, did they? You did it, and your sister spent her life protecting you.”

Adrian raised himself on his elbows and cocked his head. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Adrian slid back down, sighed, and spoke to the ceiling. “At first, she believed she had done it. She really did. She believed that she had influenced me to kill them. Unconsciously or consciously, it didn’t matter. But that’s not true. I did what I felt was necessary. And she did what she thought was necessary as well. She allowed herself to be taken away. A saint, like I keep telling you.”

“But you were…what? Eleven?”

“Thirteen.”

“And you…?”

“They had passed out in the backyard, okay? Passed out drunk. I just made it look like they’d done it to themselves.”

Gavra sat on the bed beside Adrian’s feet. “You hid it from me.”

“I was supposed to hide it. For the moment, at least. I really wish you hadn’t figured it out.”

“Why not?”

Adrian shrugged at the ceiling lamp. “I must have said too much. You weren’t supposed to find out.”

“Why?”

He sat up, staring past Gavra at the mirror on the wall. “But I didn’t say too much.” He looked at Gavra, his features twisted. “That was a
guess,
wasn’t it?”

“A hunch.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, frowning. “She was
wrong
. Which means…” He started rubbing his ear. “The plane.”

Gavra stood again. He wished this man—this childhood murderer—would make sense.
“What about the plane?”

Adrian peered at his reflection. “It’s possible…possible, mind you…that she made a mistake on the plane. I’d never considered that. Which would explain why it…”

“Blew up.”

Adrian nodded. “Do you see what I mean? There’s so much for her to keep track of. So many people, variables…so many unforeseen chance events. The brain isn’t wired for that.” He lay down again. “And now this. Our parents. You were
not
supposed to find out yet. We were supposed to have more time.”

This was enough. Gavra climbed on the bed and pinned Adrian down. Their faces were very close. “Stop speaking in riddles.”

“Kiss me first.”

Gavra did so. “Now tell me why I shouldn’t know about your parents. What difference does it make now? You’re not going to jail for it.”

Adrian cleared his throat. “Because, my dear, I am a murderer. And that knowledge will change everything for you. Not yet, no, but soon. The love you feel for me—and if she was right, it
is
love—will crumble.” He paused. “Before this moment, I was elusive, a mystery to you. But that allure will start to fade, and you’ll begin to wonder why you’ve thrown away your life, and your good career, for a simple butcher like me.” He swallowed, blinking. “You’ll think back. You’ll start to imagine me, as a child, murdering my parents. And you have a good imagination. You’ll wonder what kind of creature could do such a thing and then live his life as if nothing had happened. I won’t be a mystery anymore; I’ll be a monster.” He swallowed again, a sound like choking, then whispered, “And then, my dear, you’ll do what you were ordered to do by Brano Sev. You’ll kill me.”

“No,” said Gavra, because that was unimaginable. He kissed Adrian’s forehead. “I’d never kill you.”

Adrian smiled. “We can hope she’s wrong about that, too, can’t we?”

They kissed, and neither was surprised when Gavra’s tears dripped onto Adrian’s cheeks.

“It’s all right,” said Zrinka’s brother. “Really it is. By that time we’ll have had a good run, such a good run. You’ll have enough memories to last you a lifetime. Because in the end, a life doesn’t require so many, does it?”