The Bridge of Sighs (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

*******************

O
n the train he tried to ignore both his aching back and stomach, and his fears for Lena. He tried to focus on the facts.

February 1948, Janos Crowder made a trip to Berlin. This was before the present Russian blockade and Allied airlift.

Soon after Janos returned to the Capital, he had enough money to take an apartment in town and leave his wealthy wife.

(
His wife,
Emil thought. In the field last night, she kissed his scars.)

Six months later, in early August 1948, Janos made a halfhearted attempt to get back together with Lena, and after a week was kicked out.

One week after
that
—August 18—Janos was killed.

Then his building supervisor was killed in the same way.

Emil had few doubts: Jerzy Michalec, alias Smerdyakov, was his man, and Smerdyakov used an unknown German to do his work. For Emil it was not a question of who murdered these men, but
why
. Presumably, they were killed over an object that Janos Crowder and Aleks Tudor had in their possessions. Something that could fit into the pages of a book.

(He felt the blades of grass cutting into his palms as he held himself over her moist face.)

He again looked over the photograph of Jerzy Michalec and the tall German who had shot him three times. Certainly
these
photos couldn’t be the objects that had killed two men? A meeting at an automobile. Nighttime, talking. They proved nothing.

Another photograph, he thought.

When they called her that first time to tell her Janos was dead, she felt as if she were being watched.
You know the feeling.

Maybe they were watching her, waiting for her to run after the photograph. But she didn’t, because she knew nothing.

(When he closed his eyes, he was back in that field, at the foot of the Carpathians.)

It was three in the afternoon when he dropped by the state bank, cashed Lena’s exorbitant check, and then made it to the station. Big Ferenc was getting ready to leave with Stefan, but they stopped when they saw him clicking along with his cane. Leonek sat up in his chair, waking. “Brod! What the hell?”

Emil went straight to Brano Sev, who was sliding his file drawer closed, watching him approach. Emil dragged over a spare chair and settled into it.

“Comrade Brod,” said Sev—round, flat face, tiny eyes.

Everyone in the station was watching them.

“I need some help,” said Emil. He neither whispered nor raised his voice, so the others had to lean to listen. “Information.”

Brano Sev gave a minimal shrug and brought his fingers together on the impeccably clean desktop.

“There’s a man who went to Berlin last February. I want to know who he visited.”

The small mole on his cheek didn’t move when he spoke. “Depends on the man.”

“Janos Crowder.”

“Ah ha.”

Emil lowered his voice—just a little, but enough. “Can you contact the Berlin MVD?”

Sev looked at his hands, then at the buttons on his leather coat. The hardly visible shrug again. “Maybe.”

“Can I know by tomorrow?”

The security inspector gave a sharp, economical nod. Leonek was waiting at Emil’s desk. His eyes shifted back and forth between Emil and Sev, as if he couldn’t make them match. “What’s
this?”

Emil laid his cane beside the typewriter. “Can you get me a visa?”

“A what?”

“I need travel papers. Berlin. Here’s my passport.” He grunted and withdrew from his inside pocket the hard, maroon booklet.
*Berlin?”

“Spare me the surprise.”

“And this?” He touched some koronas sticking out of the passport.

“Bribes, I suppose.”

Leonek rubbed the bills between his thumb and forefinger. . “I’m coming with you.” “No, you’re not.” “You’ll get killed.” “I need you elsewhere,” said Emil. “Where?” “First, the visa.”

Leonek frowned and handed back the money. He held the passport beside his face. “Come on.”

Roberto did a fine job acting overjoyed to see Emil. He scrambled up and over the counter and patted his shoulders violently. “A ghost! It’s the curse of Sergei—that accursed typewriter!”

“Shut up,” said Leonek, though Emil smiled.

Roberto patted Leonek on the cheek, his lazy eye observing the far wall, and spoke reverently. “I’m sorry, my sensitive comrade.” Then he turned back to Emil, loud again: “So what can I do for my most abused customer? Typewriter ribbon? Blotters? Lamps? Erasers? Picture frames?”

Emil nodded at Leonek. “Tell him.”

“Travel visa.”

Roberto’s smile slid away. “Now
that,
my friends, is highly complicated. Do you realize?”

“But not impossible,” said Emil.

“Nothing:
,” Roberto explained, “is impossible these days. The only issue is
how.”

“And tomorrow,” said Leonek.

Roberto looked as though he had just witnessed a murder. “My
God\
Friends! How can I?”

“And for free,” said Leonek, his stony face making no suggestion of flexibility.

Roberto emitted more sounds of protest—whimpers and shouts—and pulled at his hair, but in the end took the passport. “For you,” he said to Leonek. “And that’s
done.”

In the corridor, Leonek explained that, a year ago, Roberto was caught selling surplus Militia pistols in the Canal District. Leonek saved him from being sent to the labor camps. He had milked that favor for as long as possible, and Emil’s visa constituted the final payment.

“You’re a good man to know,” said Emil.

Leonek shoved his hands into his pockets. “Take a walk?”

They left the station house, and Leonek guided him through a couple turns, stopping often for Emil to catch up. They were soon in a busy market—loud voices, hands shoving vegetables in their faces.

“I’ve been asking around,” Leonek said, nodding an old woman and her wooden spoons away. “Like a real inspector.”

“A real one, huh?” Emil tried to keep up.

“About your Michalec. He’s up for a vote in one week.”

Emil started to ask for clarification, but quickly understood. “Politburo?”

Leonek stopped just past a butcher with gutted lambs hung up to dry. “You think he’s untouchable now? Just
wait”

Emil remembered Smerdyakov s explanation: We,
as members of the Political Section, have very specific duties. And these duties confer upon us specific
rights.

“How did you learn this?”

Leonek smiled and leaned close to his ear. “Your favorite informer, Dora with the girl’s name.”

That name brought back everything—the suspicion and abuse of his first week in Homicide, the shooting and the two dead children in Republic Park. He hated this man he had never met, who had nearly killed him without even knowing who Emil Brod was. “Can you trust him?”

Leonek shrugged. “Eighty percent of the time.”

Emil started moving again, and finally told him what he’d done with Lena. “She’s safe for now,” he said, but felt the doubt swell in his gut. “If something happens you’ll have to get her. I’ll give you directions.”

Leonek smiled broadly. “I can vacation in the provinces while you’re vacationing in Berlin.” They were out of the market and in the narrow, winding alleys. “Bring an umbrella. I hear things are dropping from the sky.” He nodded at a Russian soldier who passed them. The soldier, surprised, smiled and nodded back.

He gave his grandparents silence for their concern, and the next morning the chief gave him an angry frown. He called Emil into his office and closed the door. “Sit.” Emil did. Moska walked around him, looking down, and settled on the edge of the desk. His form arched over Emil. “I hear you’re working on a dead case.”

“A dead case?” He spoke with measured stupidity.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” Moska began again. “In the hospital—you certainly weren’t yourself, were you?”

“Hardly.”

“I specifically told you the Janos Crowder case was closed.”

“Yes,” Emil nodded. “Of course that’s a closed case. You told me.”

The chief pursed his lips and looked at the thick, barklike nail on his right thumb. He spoke quietly. “You’ve been with the Crowder woman, Inspector Brod. She called here and left a message, and you met with her.”

“That’s true.”

“And now she’s apparently gone missing.”

“Who reported her missing?”

“None of your concern,” said Moska, “because the Crowder case is closed.”

“Agreed,” said Emil, nodding. “Janos Crowder’s case. But Lena Crowder has been the victim of burglary and threats.”

“Until she’s dead, it’s no concern of yours.” The chief stopped looking at his nail. “Tell her to call the district police, Brod. Burglaries are their jurisdiction.”

Perhaps it was only Emil’s hereditary hopefulness, but it sounded like the chief was reading reluctantly from a script that had been prepared in other offices, in the Central Committee back rooms. His words came out stiffly and without proper conviction. Emil shifted to take pressure off his stomach. “You’re right, Comrade Chief. I’ll drop the case right this minute.” The lie was a breeze.

“What about this?” He lifted a maroon passport from his desk and held it between his thumb and forefinger.

Emil didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not an absolute fool,” said the chief. He opened the passport, turning pages until he had reached the German visa. He shook his head. “You do realize, don’t you, that outside our border, your badge is worth nothing?”

Emil nodded.

Chief Moska closed it again and stared at the cover, thinking. Then he handed it to Emil. “Brod?”

“Yes, Chief?” He stood.

Moska looked at him. “Sympathy will only take you so far.”

*********

The others were arriving, clutching coffees and blinking tired eyes. Brano Sev was already at work in the corner, speaking into his phone. His whole body tilted toward the wall in a position of urgency.

Emil waded through some clutter that had built up over the last couple days—an informative proclamation on the tense situation in Berlin (
When all nations allow Germany to he a nation again, all nations will deserve their annihilation
), two notes from yesterday asking that he return his grandparents’ calls, and a sealed envelope marked by typed capitals:
brod
. The words cut into the thin paper.

7 October 1948, Thursday

Comrade Inspector Brod,

Regarding our exchange of last evening, the following facts have been ascertained from Berlin:

1.   On 10 February 1948, J. Crowder arrived in Berlin by Aeroflot #34B. From Schonefeld, he took a taxi to Wilhelm Strasse 14, the residence of Konrad Messer, owner of a nightclub called “Die Letze Katze”—or “The Last Cat.” Messer is originally from Heidelberg.

2.   Comrade Crowder stayed overnight and in the morning crossed into the American sector at the Brandenburg Gate. Our Berlin comrades followed him as far as the end of the Tiergarten, but for various reasons lost track of him.

3.   At 20:30, Comrade Crowder returned to the Soviet sector and took a room in the Hotel Warsaw. In the evening he had drinks in the lounge, and a search of his belongings came up with nothing of interest.

4.   He was allowed to leave Berlin without questioning. He returned on 12 February, Aeroflot #29.

It is my sincere wish that this information is of service to your investigations.

Respectfully,

It ended with a scrawled flourish of signature.

“Still here?” asked Leonek. He was crossing the room, feeling his pockets for change. “Get some coffee?”

But Emil didn’t look up. This was exactly what he had wanted from Brano Sev, but now that he had it in his hands, the intricacy of the details disturbed him. They kept names upon names in the Russian MVD files, and he suspected his own—since he had traveled outside the country—was relatively thick.

“Emil?” Leonek said.

Brano Sev had hung up the telephone and was staring at him. Emil nodded his recognition. The security inspector turned his simple, peasant’s face back to the paperwork on his desk.

“Some coffee?”

He blinked at Leonek and knew, finally, that he had made a mistake. He had suspected it before, ever since they sat in the station waiting for the Sighet train, but now it was undeniable. There was no place to hide in this country; there was no place out of reach. He had left her in a little village, unprotected, and anyone with his file would be able to figure it out in five minutes. Michalec had a whole universe of files at his fingertips. He could send any number of shadows into the countryside to close in on Lena Crowder.

“Leonek,” he said, deciding everything as the words came out. “You have to get her for me. Forget everything else. You have to protect her.”

Leonek began to make a joke about only wanting coffee, but changed his mind when he saw Emil’s face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

*******************

T
he rain-wet blacktop stretched unnervingly into the darkness—this midnight flight had been the earliest available. He imagined slick rubber tires skidding forward, then the explosion amid the pine trees at the far end of the runway. The Soviet stewardess, a pretty Georgian in a long, straight skirt, told him to hurry. He turned back to the fat Aeroflot plane and mounted the steps. His feet were numb.

Through the window he saw the propellers kick and begin to spin. The vibration shook the whole cabin. Businessmen and government men—all the shades of Slav—cracked jokes among themselves. The stewardess made sure he was strapped in, and he noticed her hair was tied tight beneath a blue cap that reminded him of his nurse, Katka, in her medical cap. Hospitals.

Again, violent deaths. Explosions.

She smiled very close to his face—some musky scent from Moscow department stores—and he tried to relax, thinking of the field in Ruscova, of Lena, but he only saw men in tall grass, converging on Irina Kula s fenceless house.

The takeoff was shaky and insecure, but no one else seemed concerned.

He could tell the government bureaucrats by the smug way they called the stewardess over and tapped her ass to send her on her way. The businessmen were the ones who laughed loudly; the bureaucrats supplied the jokes. He’d heard there was big business to be done in Berlin—supplying a decimated city always took work. And these days, with all supply trucks cut off from the western half of the city, some westerners migrated east during the day to buy the goods the Americans and British hadn’t yet dropped from their planes.

He’d only seen pictures of Berlin: flattened residential buildings and fire-gutted churches. Some newer news clips showed women and children wrapped in gray blankets, crowds huddling around military transports full of bread. Three years after the defeat, and Berlin was still crippled and hungry.

When he felt flush he waved at the stewardess and she brought a paper cup of tepid water. She held it to his lips and whispered something he could not hear above the whine of the engines.

Then the cabin became very cold. For those without heavy coats, she retrieved blankets, and, covered by his, Emil turned to the window, where black clouds merged into black, starless sky. He wondered what the pilots could be using for navigation. He felt like a peasant facing a locomotive. Everything was beyond him.

Emil was astonished by how solid the chilly earth at Schonefeld felt. The Russian customs officer, a severe young soldier, looked him up and down and jotted his name in a notebook. A second guard stamped passports between yawns. It was three-thirty in the morning.

A taxi driver approached him, and Emil shared the ride with a fat bureaucrat he thought he recognized as one of the famous “thick Muscovites,” but wasn’t sure. He had a dramatic mane of wavy hair rising from his forehead. “Hell of a town,” he said, nodding at the shadowy ruins passing them by. “Been here before?”

Emil shook his head.

He stuck a thumbnail between his lips and picked at his front teeth. “But you can’t sleep here anymore. This trash with the Allies. Blockade, airlift,
Christ
—planes all hours of the night!” He cracked his window and let the cold hiss inside. “The Germans are remarkable people. Like slow-witted insects who don’t get it. They just turn up the jukeboxes and dance!”

He laughed at his own observation, and Emil noticed the taxi driver looking at them in the rearview. He was a thick-jowled man who steered with one arm. The other sleeve was pinned flat. A veteran, maybe. A one-armed veteran forced to listen to foreigners’ views on his people. The bureaucrat opened the window the rest of the way, and they could now hear the far-off murmur of airplanes.

The Hotel Warsaw was one of the few comfortable places in the Soviet sector. Half the buildings on the street were shells of rubble. He had seen this kind of damage on that train ride back from Helsinki, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, tall buildings compressed until they came up to your nose. It made him wonder how much space the Capital would take up if all the air were sucked out of it. A home was always smaller than you thought.

The Warsaw was generally filled to capacity, but when Emil tried out his German on the morose desk clerk, he learned that a small, cold room—just big enough for the bed frame and a sink—had recently been cleaned. He took it. His head lay near the windowpane, and through it came the whine of engines. It was like flies buzzing in his ear, and he wished he had a bottle of plum brandy to put himself out. He wished he had a stomach that could take that much liquor. He wished he could stop thinking of Lena. He would have to lie here until sleep, at its leisure, claimed him. Then, from the exhaustion of his anxiety and the low, dull pain of his wounds, it did.

The airplanes had not ceased.

After a shower down the hall, he bought the sector’s currency —Ostmarks—at a bad rate from the front desk, and breakfasted in the hotel café. The bureaucrat from last night sat with a young brunette who looked like she had weathered a storm. She sipped at her coffee and stared straight ahead, while the bureaucrat shoveled fluffy eggs into his mouth.

It was a cool, brisk morning. There were a lot of pedestrians out, going to work, which was strange against the backdrop of a demolished city. It brought him back to that first year when he returned to the Capital, after the Arctic. Women in thick heels stepped carefully over broken bricks and stood outside shops waiting for work and busses. There were few men—German men, at least—except the very young and the very old. Russian soldiers with rifles walked in pairs, watching over everything under a sun that gave no warmth. It was all too familiar.

The rubble of broken buildings had been collected at some corners, and children scrambled up the little mountains, laughing. Some workers in coveralls held hammers and long, discolored boards cannibalized from exploded homes. Now and then his cane slipped, and he grew accustomed to watching the broken sidewalks. Ahead, a crowd descended into a metro station.

Always, the backdrop of planes. Buzzing.

It took a while, maybe an hour, before he picked them out. Ever since arriving, he had been paying close attention to faces. Maybe too much attention. He hadn’t seen a thing. When eyes met his he paused a moment to give them a once-over, or stopped now and then to look around, playing the lost tourist. Then, while looking at a store window stocked with ten colors of fabric, he noticed a man pause at a display of children’s clothes. Low-slung fedora. A leather overcoat.

He couldn’t know for sure, so he crossed to the other side of the street, took the corner, and waited in the blackened doorway of a firebombed restaurant. The man appeared soon, hands in his coat, and was followed by a partner. Fedora, leather coat and, for distinction, thick prescription glasses. The first was wide-faced, fat, while the one with glasses was thin. They both had serene, unsmiling faces.

Russian Intelligence. MVD. He was expected.

He left the doorway and took some streets at random. His shadows held back as he made his way up streets; then, just before he took a corner, they began jogging after him. Near an uprooted park, he found a sidewalk café and sat in the shade. By the time his coffee had arrived, the two men were at the edge of the park, waiting. They sometimes came together and talked, nodding and shrugging, and once a third man recognized them and shook their hands before leaving. Emil paid for his coffee, but did not leave. He gazed at the other customers, some pretty girls and an old man. He tried to clear his mind, to look utterly at ease, but when he did that, Lena came inevitably to him, and worry thickened his throat.

Finally, the shadow with the glasses spoke to his partner (who gave an unexpected, broad smile) and walked away.

Emil waited. Once the man was out of sight—looking for a telephone, perhaps, or a car—Emil got up and left the café.

The abandoned partner hesitated, unsure and again unsmiling, then followed.

Emil took quick turns, hobbling along, and dove into small, unlabeled streets. He was getting himself lost, he knew, but that wasn’t his worry now. In some dark alleys, men slept among trash cans, and in others, plump prostitutes muttered at him. Then he appeared in an empty, bomb-damaged courtyard with three possible avenues of escape. It was lined with trashcans on one side and a high pile of discarded clothing on the other. Emil crouched behind the clothes, as low as the pain would allow. The soiled clothes stank of death.

In no time the fat Russian appeared, gasping. He looked up each alley, considering the possibilities. Then he chose the middle way, and rushed forward.

Emil waited for his breath to return and his heart to slow. Then he backtracked, leaning more heavily on his cane. His stomach was troubling him again. A prostitute recognized him and smiled. “Change your mind, sweetheart?”

He offered a few coins and asked the fastest way to Wilhelm Strasse.