Olen Steinhauer - Victory Square

He turned off the television, because seeing it from the outside made him ill. Like most people-like myself, for instance-Gavra could not dispute the facts. Like everyone else, he knew that the Party newspaper, The Spark, would call the demonstrators “imperialist-financed counterrevolutionary agitators” and never report the reason for their gathering-to protest the recent arrest of a priest, Father Eduard Meyr. But also like the rest of ours, Gavra’s time was strained enough with his job, his friends, and himself. All he could do, sitting on an American motel bed, was focus on what he’d come to do: find a man and make a telephone call.

He found a fat telephone directory under the bedside table and flipped through it looking for “firearms.” There they were, amazingly, five gun stores. The closest was Bob Moates Gun Shop, on Hull Street. He marked it on his rental car map.

He dressed as he knew the Americans dressed: casually. A pair of Levi’s he’d picked up in a private Ministry store last year and a black polo shirt. He took out the NY baseball cap from La Guardia but was already too appalled by his outfit to add it.

The turnpike was busy with morning traffic. It took twenty minutes to find the windowless brick building with a steel door. The inside was lined with glass cases full of armaments. A fat man with a T-shirt and tattoos up his arms ate Ruffles potato chips behind the cases. “Morning.”

“Morning,” said Gavra.

“What can I do you for?”

“I’m looking for a gun.”

“Well, I’d say you came to the right place.”

“I suppose I did.”

“Rifle, maybe? Just got in two AK-47s. Russian, you know.”

“A little smaller, I think.”

In the end he settled for a Polish P-83 with twenty rounds of 9mm cartridges, then bought three rolls of quarters. The clerk placed the pistol and ammunition into a paper sack and wished him a good day.

One more thing to do, then he could sleep.

He drove back, past the motel, to where, on the right, a ring of stores spread. At the entrance, a large wooden sign proclaimed BRAN-DERMILL, and beyond it were more trees-it was more like a forest than the “housing project” he’d imagined. Another right placed him inside the paved ring of parked cars and shops. A plaza, they called it.

At the far end was a massive Safeway grocery store. Its windows were decorated with fake white snow and a cardboard Santa Claus leading twelve reindeer into the sky. Near its front door was a telephone booth. At this hour-noon-he had to avoid running over brightly dressed shoppers while searching for a parking spot.

He shoved coins into the pay phone, shivering as he dialed the long number. After ten rings he gave up, cupping his hand to catch the money the phone returned.

It was six in the evening back home, so the Lieutenant General had probably left for the day. He shoved in the coins again and tried the Ministry switchboard’s international access line. An operator picked up. “Welcome to Eastern Expressions, the world through the beauty of icon paintings.”

The cover always made Gavra smile, but he cleared his throat and gave his ten-digit identification number, then his real name, and asked for Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev’s home number. The operator paused, her voice wavering as she said, “You do know about Comrade Kolev, right?”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

The line wasn’t so clear that he could believe he’d heard her right, so he made her repeat it. “He had a heart attack this morning, right in the office. We’re all in shock.”

“Who’s taking care of it?”

“What?”

“Who’s doing the paperwork on his death?”

“It’s been handed to the Militia,” she told him. “I think Emil Brod’s working it personally.”

“Why the Militia?”

“You think anyone explained it to me?”

When he hung up, the Virginia cold seemed a little harsher, the colors on the American shoppers that much more intense. He returned to his Toyota, which felt stuffy. He’d been sent here with no information, knowing only that he should capture a particular man and then get in touch with Kolev. And now…

He didn’t like it, but Kolev had spelled it out for him: If anything goes wrong, return to Zagreb.

When the call came in, I was at my desk, having just popped two twenty-five-milligram tablets of Captopril. Hypertension. It’s one of the innumerable annoyances that come with getting old. I was also wrapped in a wool coat (the heating had been out for a week), going through a box of old files I’d had shipped over from the Eleventh District Militia Archives. Why had I asked for it? I’m not sure. Maybe it was just nostalgia, because being three days from retirement makes an old man sentimental.

That’s when the phone rang and a calloused voice said, “Comrade Chief Brod?”

“Yes.”

“We met at Brano Sev’s retirement party. Romek,” said the caller. “Colonel Nikolai Romek.”

All I remembered was a painfully dull party at the Grunwald Restaurant three years ago. Brano Sev surrounded by a general contingency of state security elders who only talked about sex. I’d been drunk and angry that night. “Sorry, but I don’t recall.”

“No matter,” said Romek. “This is official business anyway. Seems one of our officers is dead. Lieutenant General Yuri Kolev. He was at the party, too.”

I didn’t remember the Lieutenant General either. Later, I could ask Lena, because despite being seventy-two-eight years older than me-she had a crisp, clean memory for details I never caught. I grabbed a ballpoint and wrote down the dead officer’s name. “How did it happen?”

“Fell over at his desk. Heart attack.”

“Why call us?”

“Why not call you?”

“We’re the Murder Squad, Comrade Colonel. As much as we’d like to, we don’t bother with natural deaths.”

Romek cleared his throat. “As you may know, Emil, we’ve got demonstrations in Sarospatak. What you may not know is that other counties are also making noise. We simply don’t have the manpower to process this.”

It was true that, over the last week, citizens in that western town had been pouring into the streets each night to protest the incarceration of Father Eduard Meyr. But it was also common knowledge that one out of five people in the country worked for the Ministry for State Security in some capacity. They had plenty of men to fill out a lousy form, while I had only two homicide inspectors.

“Just send someone over,” he said. “It’ll take five minutes.”

I looked at the dusty, yellowed file I’d been leafing through, then closed it. “We’ll be right there.” After hanging up, I called down to our coroner, Markus Feder. He sounded pleased-overall, it had been a slow month for corpses.

In those days, murder in the Capital was a rare enough occurrence, and we could make do in the First District with my two detectives, Katja Drdova and Bernard Kovar. We were supposed to have three, but after the death of Captain Imre Papp four years ago, and the subsequent replacements who burned out so quickly, I gave up. When necessary, I went out with Katja or Bernard to visit crime scenes, but they usually insisted on leaving me to my desk. I don’t think they liked having the boss look over their shoulders.

This time, I would insist. I didn’t want either of my detectives going up to Yalta Boulevard without me there to back them up.

This morning, the homicide office was empty. Katja was investigating the murder of a retired judge, Dusan Volan, who’d been shot three days ago while wandering the grounds of his extensive Thirteenth District estate. Bernard had stayed behind, but he wasn’t at his desk. I knew where I’d find him.