Victory Square (31 page)

“Come on, old man. Finish breakfast, then I’ll show you the operation. Show you what really matters.”

•

While growing
up, Gavra had seen films made just after the Second World War, grainy black-and-white show trials where ragged-looking, stiff men stood in the dock and became witnesses for their own prosecution. In carefully memorized speeches, they stated their crimes against the people of our great country and asked the people’s forgiveness. These trials were notable for their consistency. A prosecutor went into a lengthy indictment, often very emotional, accusing the defendant of treason or collaboration or any number of crimes whose victim was the entire state. This was followed by the evidence, always in the form of teary-eyed men and women who had seen or heard or suffered because of the defendant’s treachery. As their statements went on, they grew louder. They stuttered and wept when their emotions became too powerful; they shot accusing fingers at the dock, where the defendant stared back blankly. With recent torture still fresh in the defendants’minds, anything was preferable to returning to those dank prison cells and beatings. Even the bureaucracy that would lead to a life of labor or a firing squad was better than those cells. So they didn’t interrupt the accusers. In fact, they sometimes nodded in agreement. Then, when the time came, they made their own statement, which concurred with everything that had been stated before. All they would say in their defense was that they’d been duped by foreign governments and their own insipid greed. They knew, and they expected, that the court would show no mercy, because mercy was something they did not deserve.

These films were documents of a particular time. Once Mihai, that wartime partisan and postwar hero, had annihilated or put to work everyone who might pose a threat to his administration, the show trials trickled away. They had served their purpose by cleaning the state of malcontents, and the films reminded everyone else of the dangers of too much unfettered ambition.

As he listened to the witnesses now, Gavra remembered those films. It was a different time, but they gave their statements much as their predecessors had. A few murmured nervously throughout, and the prosecutor had to ask them to speak louder, but most, including Beth and Harold Atkins, let their emotions enter the stories, and Beth cried three times as she tried to get it all out. Harold was defiant, pointing at the other side of the room while the Pankovs either stared blankly back or pretended to ignore what was going on. A few times, they tried to interrupt, and the president of the court scolded them. After a while, they saw it was no use and just let the old people rattle on and weep and shout.

The room, Gavra knew, was full of liars: the Pankovs, Michalec, Romek, and Andras Todescu (who had summoned enough courage to stand in the doorway). Even Gavra himself was a liar. The witnesses were the only ones in the room who were not liars; they were the only ones who were not despicable.

He knew the Atkinses’story, but when they told it again the emotion multiplied because they were finally faced with the villains they had spent the last thirty years hating. They had an audience with the devil, and the devil had no choice but to listen. “You broke apart a family, and you ended our lives,” said Harold, pointing. “You made us subhuman.”

A lone woman witnessed for herself and her now-dead husband and son, both of whom had been tortured to death in the early seventies within the walls of Yalta Boulevard number 36 around the time Gavra joined the Ministry. The story she told surprised even him, who had seen his employer do plenty of shocking things during his tenure.

Farmers arrived with stories of the effects of the “New Agro-Policy” Pankov implemented in the late seventies, leaving whole families starving while the land around them was full of wheat. The Maternity Laws of 1982 also produced witnesses, like one man whose wife, having already borne three children, was warned by her doctor to stop. An accidental pregnancy followed, and because abortion was now illegal, she died in childbirth, along with the baby. Others told of their fifth or sixth child being sent off to a state orphanage because there was no way to feed them all, and the child then disappearing. There were children dying of starvation in the Carpathian ranges and children dying of diabetes and influenza in hospitals with barren medicine cabinets. And homes. Homes had been lost endlessly as agro-policies forced fifth-generation farming families into socialist cubicles along the always-under-construction edges of the Capital, or the numerous homes that had been plowed under to make space for the Workers’Palace, which covered ten hectares of demolished land.

Some accusations were less visceral, such as the steady decline of electricity, which had turned once lively cities into morbid nighttime holes, and the fact that, during the last years, light bulbs available to the public had steadily declined in wattage. These days, the best you could get was a murky ten-watt bulb, all so that the country would use less electricity, and Pankov could pay off the foreign debt while he and his wife lived in well-lit splendor.

The witnesses included the senior citizens shipped in from other countries, as well as others who had never left, who could document what had become known as the Dark Eighties. There were stories of suicides, which Gavra knew had become more frequent in the last four years, and they asked what kind of man could do that to his people. What kind of man could make of his country a prison from which the only escape was suicide?

The Pankovs had no answer. They just shook their heads.

Gavra had no answers either. A few times he caught himself wiping tears from his eyes. No, it didn’t matter that this was all theater, because half the players didn’t know what kind of stage this was. They didn’t know they were being used.

Each time the Ministry was brought into the stories—and this happened frequently—Gavra felt a sharp pain in his stomach. What the Ministry did, he felt responsible for. He had murdered children and forced people from their homes and into underground cells and tortured them until they couldn’t remember their own names anymore. His breath became shallow as he remembered his own crimes, ones he’d actually committed himself, which were certainly many, and knew that whatever justification he’d had back then no longer applied. He was as guilty as the Pankovs, as Romek, who was smiling from his seat, and Michalec, who was now somber, arms crossed over his chest.

The stories continued. Whenever he thought they had finished, the prosecutor would motion to another person in the audience, state his name, and ask him to speak. It seemed to go on forever, and Gavra wanted to run out of the room—but couldn’t. It wasn’t Michalec or the big guard who kept him there; it was his own morbid curiosity. He wanted to know the stories, but more, he waited for the moment when Tomiak Pankov would cut in with a few words that would explain it all, offer up some simple evidence that would justify what had been done in his name, or express his shock and insist they knew nothing about this. But the best he ever offered was, “This should only be done in front of the Grand National Assembly.”

The president of the court told him to be quiet.

When the last weeping witness was led back to her chair, the prosecutor turned to the bench and said, “The people rest.”

The president of the court turned to his associate judges, whispering a moment. They ended the conversation with nods, and the president said to the room, “The court will now retire for deliberations.”

The soldiers turned off the cameras.

The president stood, as did the other two judges, and the audience stood as well. Michalec tugged Gavra’s sleeve until he, too, was standing. Only the Pankovs remained in their chairs as the judges walked along the wall and out into the corridor.

The prosecutor and defense attorney followed the judges out of the room.

As they settled back into their seats, Michalec said, “Well?”

Gavra peered over heads at the Pankovs, who were whispering to one another. “I want to talk to them.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“I insist.”

“Listen, Gavra. You know what we want you to do. You strike up a relationship with those bastards, and you’re not going to be able to do it.”

“That won’t be a problem. I’ve done it before.”

“Yes? Do tell.”

Gavra wasn’t going to regale this man with stories of jobs he’d prefer to forget. “The deal is this,” he said. “You give me a few minutes with them, and I’ll do it. You have my word.”

“Is your word worth something?”

“More than yours, certainly.”

Michalec peered over the crowd. Romek came over and whispered something in his ear, then left again. He patted Gavra’s knee. “You’ve got yourself a deal. But I’m depending on you to stick to it. There’s no way out.”

He motioned to the big guard and told him where Gavra was going. The man, despite his size, was frightened, but by then Gavra was already walking around the edge of the chairs toward the front. The guard hurried to catch up.

As Gavra approached the couple, an officer cut ahead of him and squatted in front of the table. “Sir,” the man said to Tomiak Pankov. “Major Ignac Maslov.”

“What army?”

Ilona Pankov turned away with an expression of disgust.

“I wanted to know why you’re not accepting the court’s legality. Don’t you realize you’re only making things more difficult for yourself?”

“Because,” said Tomiak Pankov in exasperation, “there is no legality to this court. Legality is granted by the Grand National Assembly, which these putschists ignore. None of this is legal.”

Maslov nodded. “Also, why did you try to leave the Central Committee Building by helicopter?”

Pankov looked past the man’s head, past Gavra, to the doorway where Andras Todescu still stood. “Because I was advised to take the helicopter by those who were plotting against me, and some of these traitors are right here in this room.”

“Aha,” said the major. He stood up and stepped away.

“They can’t do a thing,” whispered Ilona Pankov. “There’s nothing they can do.”

“Do I know you?” Tomiak said, looking up at Gavra.

“Lieutenant Gavra Noukas of the Ministry,” Gavra said, only afterward realizing how ridiculous this sounded.

“You’re with them, too?”

Gavra shook his head. “I was forced to come here. This is all a surprise.”

Pankov raised a finger. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “I remember. A friend of General Brano Sev, correct?”

Gavra couldn’t get the word out, so he just nodded.

“How is Brano? I shouldn’t have let him retire. He would’ve taken care of this mob.”

“Sev?” said Ilona, suddenly taking interest. “I never trusted him. I’ll bet he’s running this from Moscow.”

“I can assure you,” said Gavra. “He’s not.”

“Then where is he?” said Ilona.

“I—I don’t know.”

“Hunting!” Tomiak said suddenly. He wagged his finger. “I remember now. You came out to one of the lodges and we went hunting. I’m right, yes?”

Gavra nodded. “I’m pleased you remember. But, sir, we don’t have much time. I wanted to know something.”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you answer the witnesses? Didn’t you have some kind of explanation for them?”

The smile disappeared from Pankov’s face, and his wife made a hissing sound. “You haven’t listened to a thing,” said the old man. “None of you. I will say everything in front of the Grand National Assembly. I won’t recognize these putschists.”

Gavra straightened. They didn’t care, neither of them. “It’s too late. They have the country, and after this no one will be around to take it from them.”

“After what?” said Pankov.

“After your execution.”

Ilona, eyes red along the lids, bared her teeth at him. “So they’re going to do it. They’re going to do to us what they did to our son.
Animals.”

She looked away, but Tomiak held Gavra’s gaze a moment. The younger man’s fear had finally left. He turned on his heel, much as the flamboyant prosecutor had done so often, and returned to Michalec, the guard struggling to catch up. “I’ll wait in the corridor until it’s time.”

Michalec nodded at the guard, who followed Gavra out. As they entered the corridor, they passed the three judges and two lawyers, who were filing somberly back inside.

•

After breakfast,
we prepared to go into Sarospatak so Ferenc could show off “the operation.” Magda had stared at me often during the meal, but I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to tell me until I was putting on my coat. She pulled me aside. “What I said last night is true.”

“I know.”

“The other part, I mean. I love you. And I want to help you. I don’t care if what they say about Lena is true. If she worked for them, she did it because she felt she had no choice. No one’s going to convince me otherwise.”

“Thanks.”

Bernard decided at the last minute to join us, because he wanted to find a Christmas tree for Sanja. Squeezed between them in the truck, I realized that, whatever his flaws, Bernard loved his family. “Here,” he said near a cluster of pine trees before the main road.

Ferenc didn’t bother slowing. “Too small.”