Olen Steinhauer - The confession

“He’s hard to find.”

“I expect results from you,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you that already?”

I nodded.

“Before Stefan was killed, I chatted with him about the case. He seemed to have some ideas.”

“Before he died?”

“Seemed to think he was close to finding Velcea.”

“I wish he’d have told me. Why are you so interested, Mikhail?”

He settled on the sofa, the trigger finger of his right hand tapping the cushion. “Me? I’m interested in the security of this country. I care about all levels of security. This Velcea character strikes me as a real threat, and I’d like to see him stopped.”

“You were interested enough to demand answers from a friend of mine.”

“Oh,” he said, lipping his cigarette. “Georgi Radevych. He’s a funny guy. He wanted me to think he didn’t really know you. Funny. Tell me-who’s Gregor Prakash?”

“And then you came to my home at night, when you could talk to me in the office anytime you wanted.”

“Well, you weren’t in the office yesterday, Ferenc.”

“Maybe you don’t want to talk about this around other people.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

I sat across from him and looked deep into his eyes. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

Kaminski leaned forward, tapping his knee. “I think you’re trying to scare me, Ferenc Kolyeszar. I think you believe you’re a threat to me. Did I tell you I had a talk with a certain Malik Woznica a couple weeks ago? He told me an interesting story. It includes you and a lot of bribery. Seems he learned it all from his wife in Moscow.”

“Before he killed her.”

He shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that part of the story, though I learned it on my own. But as for you, my friend, this is just one more thing I have on you. I’ve got you on a string. All I have to do is drop you.” He took his hat off the chair and stood up.

This was not how it was supposed to go. I took out my pistol.

“Now, Ferenc,” he said, smiling at it. “You’ve gone from dumb to moronic.”

“Maybe a little stupid,” I said. “I just want to know why you killed Sergei Malevich.”

“Where did this come from? First it’s Nestor Velcea, and now it’s Sergei Malevich? You’re all over the place. Do you have a fever?”

“I’m well enough.”

“What about the others-Leonek and Emil? Are they suffering from similar delusions?”

“I haven’t told them anything yet. First, I want to know why.”

“Always a loner, right?” He looked at his cigarette. “Well, if I had killed Sergei Malevich, I suppose there could have been some good reasons. Security reasons. He was trying to cause more scandal for the liberating army. There had been enough scandals by that point, and public opinion was turning against us. Sergei, from what I’ve heard, was a little like you. He never cared about the larger picture.”

“Public opinion was always against the Russians.”

He raised a finger. “No, Ferenc. Private opinion was always against us. It’s public opinion that is the danger to stability. Once hating Russians becomes a public opinion, you’ve got what you had in Budapest. You’ve got busses set on fire and windows broken. You’ve got tanks in the street. No one wants that.”

“That sounds admirable.”

“It is what it is.”

“But it’s not true. You killed Sergei because you were one of those four Russians who took those two girls into the synagogue. And the night you killed him, he was meeting his one witness, Nestor Velcea. You got rid of Sergei, then needed to get rid of Nestor.”

He smiled.

I steadied my pistol. “But it was hard to find and kill him on your own, because he went into hiding. So you used the machinery of state security and a French informer to put him away. It must have been a surprise when you were in Moscow and found out that not only had he survived ten years in a work camp, but he was going to be released. You requested a transfer so you could finally take care of him personally.”

He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag.

“But you won’t get him.”

“So you do know where he is.”

“He’s safe,” I said.

Kaminski’s smile returned, and he shook his head. “Nestor is not safe-he’s a dead man. And you, Ferenc, you’re walking and breathing, but you’re also dead. Remember, I have plenty to use against you.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

I raised the pistol so he could see into the barrel. “Lie down.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me.”

I shot a bullet past his ear that buried into the wall. He got on his knees. “Down,” I said. “Arms out.”

With his nose in the rug and arms spread, I found in the lining of his jacket his pistol-a nine-millimeter with a long silencer attached to it-and tossed it into the kitchen. I knelt beside the chair where I had left Agnes’s knotted rope and bound his hands behind his back. He wrinkled his nose when the rope passed near his face. “Damn, Ferenc. That thing smells like piss.” I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching him as I phoned Emil, but he made no move. When I hung up, he said, “This is it, then. You understand, right? Once I’m in custody, I’ll tell everything about November the sixth, and about Svetla Woznica. If you put me away, I’ll put you away. That will be the end of you.”

I sat in the chair. “Then we’ll go down together.”

All four of them arrived, Leonek and Emil with guns drawn. Kaminski smiled at everyone. I wanted more from him. I wanted some kind of pleading, something to let us all know that now he was finished. But he only smiled as I gathered the audiotape and Emil and Leonek lifted him and took him out to the car. Louis and Nestor sat together on the sofa. Louis said, “What about us?”

“What do you think?”

Nestor was tipsy-Lena had kept him drinking. He smiled grimly. “I suppose it’s time for me to pay back society again.”

Louis was a French national, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to charge him with anything. He was a fool, but that had never been much of a crime in our country. So I drove him back to the Metropol. He and Nestor hugged on the dark street, and Louis kept apologizing, but Nestor was serene. The alcohol must have helped.

As we got into the car, I glanced back at the hotel. A white-haired man in the lobby stood and approached Louis. Jean-Paul Garamond did not look happy.

Kaminski was already in a cell, and Leonek and Emil were waiting for me. They stood to the side as I filled out forms for Nestor’s detention, then Moska showed up. He was tired and confused and a little angry that he hadn’t been told what was going on. But he got over it. After Nestor was taken away we went to a bar. I wanted to be drunk, to gain Nestor’s serenity, but intoxication only made me feel sick. I couldn’t quite hear what the others were saying. One thing I did make out was Emil’s confusion over something Kaminski had said. “He told us that by tomorrow no one will give a damn about him, or Nestor, or anyone. He said tomorrow everything is going to be different.”

“What does that mean?” Moska asked.

Emil shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

Leonek wagged his head over his glass. “I don’t wish I did. I’m very glad not to know a thing.”

I felt the same way. I wanted to forget Kaminski’s last words to me- That will be the end of you — but memory and knowledge are the killers of serenity. Then, around one, when we were all too drunk to read a thing, a heavyset woman came in, red-faced, frantically waving a special late-night edition of The Spark.

“God, oh God,” was all she could get out, repeatedly.