Olen Steinhauer - Victory Square

So he thanked Freddy for the beer and conversation, then stepped out into the bright, cold sunlight. Behind the wheel of the Toyota, he looked around to be sure no one was watching. He reached under his seat, took the P-83 from the paper bag, then filled the clip with eight rounds. He wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.

By two, he was on the turnpike again. Thick forests lined the road, and that somehow made the discomfort of all of this more bearable.

Over the next hill he spotted the high school. Clover Hill. It was a low, flat-topped building that spread back into a deep field checkered with a baseball diamond and an American football field and a running track. It was impressive. His own village school had been a small house. All their sports were done in the public park, or for special events they went to the Palace of Physical Culture in nearby Satu Mare.

He parked near the front door, between a Subaru and a Ford pickup, and slipped the pistol into the glove compartment. He wouldn’t need it yet. Inside, crowds of teenagers clutched books and shouted at one another, ignoring him. They were on their way to classes, and the corridor soon thinned until only a few were left when the grating bell sounded. He nodded at a brunette. “Excuse me, where is the main office?”

“There,” she said, exasperated.

Directly behind him was a door labeled OFFICE. He let himself inside.

A heavy woman sat at a wide desk, talking into a telephone. Behind her were two doors, PRINCIPAL and VICE-PRINCIPAL. TO Gavra’s right was a line of four chairs, and in two of them sat a boy and a girl, teenagers. The boy was pale with prematurely thinning red hair he’d foolishly chosen to grow long. The girl gripped the boy’s hand, looking like a stunned model, with long blond hair and eager eyes that locked on to him. He smiled.

“Need some help?” It was the woman at the desk. She covered the telephone mouthpiece with her palm.

“Uh, yes. I’m looking for my cousin. Lubov Shevchenko. He teaches math.”

He heard a gasp and turned to see the girl whispering to the boy, who nodded.

“Cousin, huh?” said the clerk. “What’s your name?”

“Viktor Lukacs.”

“Well, Mr. Shevchenko has a class right now.”

“I don’t want to interrupt him,” Gavra said quickly. “When will he be finished?”

The woman thought a moment, wrinkling her nose. “I think Mr. Shevchenko’s running detention today. Is that right, Jennifer?”

The girl nodded. “Last detention of the year.”

“Yes, so he’ll get out around five thirty. Want to leave a message for him?”

“He’s not expecting me until next week. I want to surprise him.”

The boy said, “I don’t think Mr. Shevchenko likes surprises.”

“Yeah,” said Jennifer.

“Mind your own business, you two,” said the clerk. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Gavra picked up Marlboros and a ham-and-cheese sandwich from the Brandermill Plaza and learned from the pimply cashier that the name Brandermill referred to not just the plaza but the whole wooded area that bordered it. “It’s a housing development” she told him between smacks of her chewing gum. “Ain’t no project. Got its own lake, restaurants, sports club, and all these shops here. Ain’t no reason to leave. It’s just like a town.”

On the drive back, Gavra was struck by the similarity-in theory, at least-between the Brandermill development and Tomiak Pankov’s New Towns, those vast concrete estates where reassigned farmers were moved in order to man newly constructed factories. The difference, of course, was that people chose to move to Brandermill.

He parked in the same spot again, ate the sandwich (which was delicious), and waited in the car, smoking. Occasional adults emerged from the front doors, found their cars, and drove away. A woman with horn-rimmed glasses frowned at him when he tossed a butt out the window, but he ignored her. Later, two teenage boys came out, throwing punches at one another and laughing, then raced at full speed through the lot.

His plan was simple: find Shevchenko and then follow him home. There, he could take control of the man in privacy and get the answers Kolev had been unwilling, or unable, to share.

At four thirty, the grating bell sounded again. Students poured out. Older ones tossed bookbags into pickup trucks and small Japanese cars. Teachers patiently shouted at students to slow down, wished them a Merry Christmas, or reminded them to do this or that over the holiday. The Subaru beside Gavra’s window was owned-or at least used-by a tall kid who dribbled a basketball on his way to his car, stopping as he unlocked it to glare at Gavra.

“The fuck you looking at, faggot?”

Gavra considered pulling the gun on him. He could use a laugh. Instead he gave the kid the same cold look he’d once given a pe-dophilic murderer in 1982 just before he plunged the guy’s head into a toilet.

By five, the last of the buses were turning onto the road, and the parking lot had emptied of all but ten cars. In a half hour, Lubov Shevchenko would finish with his detention class.

Gavra slipped the P-83 into his coat pocket.

The corridors were empty but littered with spare pens and flakes from spiral notebooks. Just past the office, he took a left and began walking slowly past doors, each with a tall, narrow window. He paused at one where an old woman helped a black teenager with his writing, then at another where three students sat on a table, looking at notes a fourth was marking on the chalkboard. Whatever he’d written had upset a girl, who was shouting at him.

Gavra followed the corridor to the end, where it turned right, past a woman running a vacuum cleaner, and then up another right until he was back at the corridor where he’d begun. In the center of the floor was a large glassed-in library where a librarian was directing her student-workers as they shelved returned books. On the opposite side of the building, he followed another U-shaped corridor past more empty rooms until, on the last leg, he stopped at room 161.

Looking through the narrow window at an angle, he saw Lubov Shevchenko, a little fatter and older than his picture, with spectacles, seated at a desk, reading a disorderly stack of papers. He’d mark one, then go to the next, read, and write something else. He was grading students’work.

Gavra stepped to the other side and saw from that angle seven students at desks, serving their time. Some were working as well, hunched and scribbling, while the pretty girl he’d seen earlier- Jennifer-was passing a slip of paper to the balding redhead and glancing warily in Shevchenko’s direction.

The scene brought on a pang of empathy. As a boy, Gavra had considered it his patriotic duty to make trouble. He’d succeeded often enough to be very familiar with the experience of staying after school.

His smile disappeared-Jennifer was looking directly at him. She touched her boyfriend’s hand, and then he, too, was staring at Gavra. Jennifer smiled, and Gavra brought a finger to his lips for silence.

But Jennifer, like the young Gavra, was deaf to the pleas of adults. Through the door he could hear what she said: “Mr. Shevchenko, your cousin’s here.”

Gavra stepped back out of view. He almost fled as Lubov Shevchenko’s accented voice said, “Cousin?”

“See for yourself if you think I’m a liar,” said Jennifer.

Gavra only wanted to follow Shevchenko. Confronting him in the middle of a schoolhouse was not what he’d had in mind.

The door opened, and Lubov Shevchenko’s spectacled face peered out. He cocked his head and spoke in their shared accent. “Can I help you?”

All reasonable plans were now figments of Gavra’s imagination. He answered in our language. “Please close the door. I’d like to speak with you a moment.”