Olen Steinhauer - Liberation movements

“What is it?”

He turned back to see Josef’s face emerge from the gloom. “Gunshots. Outside. But I can’t see.”

Josef rubbed his eyes. “Took days before I could sleep through it.” He climbed back into his cot and pulled the sheets to his chin. “Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you get caught? I didn’t think there’d be a problem getting across.”

Peter looked out at the street. “It was my own fault. I wanted to start a fire.”

“A fire?”

“It was cold. We were in a field, and I was cold. Nighttime in the countryside. I hadn’t brought a good coat. They told me not to start one, but they were asleep and I was so cold. I didn’t think anyone would see.”

“But they did.”

“The worst luck,” said Peter. “A Russian jeep came along the road. And we were woken by the bullhorn. It was morning then. The jeep, it had…it had a machine gun on it, and when we ran they fired at us.”

“Savages.”

He cleared his throat. “We scattered. I can only assume they made it. I went south, and the Russians followed me. They picked me up in the town.”

“You were incredibly stupid.”

“I know.”

“But at least you didn’t get anyone killed.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. He took a breath. “I’m thankful for that.”

The old man woke him earlier than expected. Six o’clock, and it was just dumb luck, Gavra later reflected, that he had decided to be a good boy the night before. He’d spoken to the Germans in the hotel bar, two Heidelberg cops in town for the Interpol conference. They were attractive and seemed to like Gavra, but after his fifth vodka, he became suspicious of his own judgment. He began hearing the old man’s voice in his head. Waking up to Colonel Brano Sev proved he’d been right not to trust himself.

Brano was excited. “The Istanbul police have worked quickly. Last night, they raided an apartment of the Army of the Liberation of Armenia and rounded up three conspirators.” He explained this quickly, and Gavra rubbed his eyes, trying to understand.

“One of the men talked,” Brano continued. “Turns out they have no connection to the ASALA, the Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian Group, or even the Yanikian Commandos, the ones who tried to set off a bomb in New York two years ago. But guess how they decided to hijack that particular plane, on that day.”

“How?”

“A telephone call.”

“From who?”

“From Wilhelm Adler.”

Only then did Gavra wake fully. Wilhelm Adler, or “Tappi” to the newspapers, had famously spent years in West Germany with the proto-Marxist Red Army Faction, blowing up offices and airport terminals and kidnapping business leaders in an effort to free the older RAF generation-Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, Ulrike Meinhof-from prison. Just as West German police were about to close in on him in June 1974, he crossed into East Germany, and General Secretary Honecker, as always, welcomed the socialist warrior with open arms.

“So East Germany’s in on this?”

Brano shook his head. “Adler moved out of Democratic Germany not long after he arrived there. He’s been in our country for the last seven months.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Not a lot of people do. Now get your clothes on.”

The Turkish polis station was not what Gavra expected. Perhaps he expected exotic Muslim arches or policemen sitting on velvet pillows. Instead he found himself in a dirty, gray-walled bureaucratic building not unlike home. In place of a framed portrait of General Secretary Pankov, Kemal Ataturk glared at him from under flaming eyebrows. Then the smell hit him: Turkish tobacco and sweat. It straddled the line between sensual and revolting. At least there was a familiar face: Talip Evren, the fat captain from the airport. He shook their hands with both of his and took them down an empty side corridor. He knocked on a scratched door. The small man who opened it wore a pistol in his belt.

The room was dark, and in the center a young man with hair reaching his shoulders was tied to a chair. A desk lamp shone on his battered face, and the only sound in the room was his labored breathing. Dried blood covered most of his features, so it was hard for Gavra to make out what he looked like.

“May I introduce to you Norair Tigran,” said Talip. “Ask as you want and I will make translation.”

Brano pulled up a chair and sat just out of the light. “He should tell me everything about Wilhelm Adler.”

“Wilhelm?” the young man said, gurgling as if speaking through water. “Allah belan? versin.”

Talip shook his head. “He does not wish to repeat himself. Hasad.”

The small man took out his pistol and swung it into the young man’s face.

Gavra thought he heard something snap, but Tigran shifted his head, whispering, “Wilhelm?”

“When did he call?” Brano asked.

Talip translated the answer: “Last Wednesday.”

“Why was he part of this? He’s not Armenian.”

“He understand solidarity.”

“And he told you to make this a suicide mission?”

Norair Tigran showed his teeth a moment, trying to clear his throat. He spoke, and Talip said: “It was not suicide mission. He say he don’t know what happen.”

“What else did Wilhelm say?”

“Nothing. Only it must should be that day, that flight. Number five-four.”

“Why would you listen to him?”

Even through the mask of blood the young Armenian seemed annoyed. He spoke directly to Brano in English. “Because we’re new at this, okay? Wilhelm is a veteran. We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know when. He told me that this would be the one.”

“But why this plane? Why did he say?”

“He said…” Norair Tigran cocked his head. “He said it would be the best.”

“But why?”

“Just that he knew. But Wilhelm-” Norair grunted something like a laugh. “Wilhelm was wrong about this one.”

During the interview, Gavra asked no questions. He wanted to, and Brano would have allowed it, but no words came to him. On the flight back home, he said, “It’s disappointing. In that room I didn’t have the presence of mind to come up with a single question.”

Brano told him not to worry. “This case is hardly a case for us. The Turkish police are well equipped to handle the investigation of the hijacking. But since the hijackers boarded in the Capital, we should try to reconstruct what they did in our country and pass that information on to the Turks. We begin with Wilhelm Adler.”

Gavra gazed at the seat in front of him. “There’s something more here. I’m sure of it.”

“Let’s talk to Adler,” Brano said. “No one will expect extradition to Turkey, but he should be able to shed some light on this.”

“Tonight?” Gavra asked as a stewardess collected their empty coffee cups.

“Tomorrow. Our people are keeping an eye on him; he won’t get away.”

“What about Ludvik Mas?”

Brano scratched his ear. “Ludvik Mas is none of our concern. He works in an office no one looks into, because it’s best no one does.”

“Do you mean Room 305?”

Brano gave him a blank expression. “That office does not exist.” He folded his tray table shut. “And what does not exist should not be thought about.”

Brano dropped him off at his Fourth District sixth-floor walk-up a little after four in the afternoon. The pitted field surrounding his apartment block was full of out-of-commission Trabants rusting under the sun. It was Thursday, but even on a workday the familiar trio of young men by the door was sharing a plastic bottle of cheap palinka. A couple of years before, Mujo, the hairiest of the group, got hold of a smuggled record by an American rock band, the Velvet Underground. His life began sliding downhill that very day.