Chapter 23
T
he room was half empty when the meeting began. Whether it was the murder of Foch, or the presence of the extra police officers in the lobby, or the taped and roped-off stairway and the guard outside their conference room, or just a fear of being the next victim, a number of the participants had stayed away. It could also have been because two French investigators were going to ask questions at the session. There is always a certain nervousness about responding to the whims of police officers. This was France, the home of love, and a number of delegates might not have wanted to answer the traditional question: “And where were you that night, the night when Foch was killed?” Tutungian, the turn-coat gangster who was scheduled to speak, was conspicuous by his absence. Even his nameplate was gone.
Moira Simmons introduced the two police officers, then glumly sat back in her seat as they took over her meeting. They asked the other traditional question first: “Does anyone have any information which might reflect on the reasons for the death of Mr. Foch?” Not even Moira, with her belief that men were after her because of her work, made any comment.
More general questions followed, all of them predictable: Had they seen Foch the previous morning? Had any of them seen him the night before? At dinner? Every question the cops posed was met by indifferent silence. In fact, all anyone would say was they had not seen Foch since he had left the meeting on the day before his murder.
The police informed everyone that they might interview them individually in the future, thanked them for their cooperation, and then asked to see Jana and Levitin outside the meeting room.
The French cops were lean and muscular men with receding hairlines. They were tense with the angry impatience that all police have with anyone perceived as interfering with their work, particularly police from another jurisdiction. They both voiced that anger in no uncertain terms.
The police guarding Foch’s body had described two people, a man and a woman, who had come upon the sealed-off area where the body was found, pretended they were the investigators, and demanded that everyone step outside while they examined the body. The description of the two, a man and a woman, fit Jana and Levitin, particularly Levitin, who would be very difficult to forget. Did they realize that the impersonation of a police officer was a criminal offense?
“Impersonation of a police officer?” Jana and Levitin were both offended. Of course, they were police officers in other countries, but they had never mentioned it to anyone there. “We never said we were police of any kind,” Jana admonished. “I, for one, would never do such a thing.” Levitin chimed in with his own denial: “A Russian knows his place in the world. This is France, not my country.”
Both Jana and Levitin said that they had done nothing to disturb the scene; the reason they had appeared was merely to pay their respects to Foch.
The two Frenchmen were not happy with the answers but were even more unhappy with the possibility of having to take foreign “envoys” into custody, “envoys” who were in Strasbourg to attend a Europe-wide conference. Whether they believed it or not, after hearing that the two had merely prayed over the body, the two French officers took the path of least resistance. They issued a warning to obey all French laws in the future, and then left.
“I didn’t know that police in Russia prayed,” Jana observed to the Russian cop.
“When was the last time you prayed?” Levitin shot back.
Jana took the question seriously, surprised at her own response. “I pray for the dead; for the victims. I pray by doing my work well, so they know they are remembered. It’s magical thinking. I like to believe I have eased their pain.”
Levitin shrugged. “I commend you, Commander Matinova. Unfortunately, they still stay dead.”
“Not while we work for them.”
“Even more commendable. I will give this point to the Slovak, because of my regard for her empathy. Unfortunately, I am not sure if this is a good characteristic for a police officer.”
“You might try it sometime.”
“I promise to think about it.”
They walked back into the conference room.
Chapter 24
O
ne evening after Dano’s departure, Jana realized that she had not taken a vacation in a year and a half. Conducting case investigations, making personnel evaluations of subordinates up for promotion, instructing at the academy, compiling departmental reviews—whatever the task, she’d felt compelled to accept and complete it. Everything consumed time, and maybe that’s what she wanted. Yes, she wanted time to pass without quite noticing its passage. Filling up her hours brought less anxiety, fewer concerns about her mother’s illness, less apprehension about dealing with an absentee father for Katka, and Jana’s submerged but still very present fear about what was happening, or was going to happen, to Dano.
She had not seen her husband since he had left the house with instructions to her that they could not see each other. For Katka, waking in the morning to find her father gone had not immediately brought about the catastrophe that Jana anticipated. Jana and her mother pretended that Dano had found a job in Brno and had been forced to leave without saying good-bye to Katka. He had left a short note, telling Katka to be good, to listen to Jana and her grandmother in all things, and to remember that he loved her and always would.
“He will be back when he has earned the necessary money. It is not forever.” Jana wondered if she were lying to herself as well. “He promised to come home.”
Jana’s mother had wanted to tear up Dano’s note before Katka saw it, an “I told you so” look in her eyes when Katka had became upset upon reading the last lines. “Let his leaving be a desertion, as abrupt as possible,” she had advised Jana. “It will speed the emotional break; sever the ties between father and daughter. It’s best.”
Jana had refused. “What comes will come naturally. We don’t need to help it along. We are not going to be criminals, stealing her love from him.”
“Who said anything about stealing?” her mother persisted. “We’re not taking it for ourselves. It’s to help her. When you have an animal that may come prowling around again, you make sure that the food he needs is not available any more. Then it won’t come back.”
“I don’t like that kind of thinking!” Jana became angry at her mother, her voice taking on a flinty tone. “We are all trying to survive, including Dano. You can’t change the fact that Dano is, and always will be, her father.”
Jana’s mother pursed her lips and blew, creating a vibration that sounded similar to a human passing gas. Jana’s level of anger rose accordingly. She was afraid she would lose control of her own temper with the next escalation of the argument, so she left the kitchen. She and her mother did not talk for several days after that, and for weeks afterward communicated only in the briefest of sentences.
Katka continued to bring up her father’s absence, most frequently in the first several months after he had gone, and in later months with less intensity, and then only on those events, like school holidays, when Dano would ordinarily have taken her to the park or to a café for a dessert treat. Once in a while, in the evening, Katka would still come over to Jana with the plaintive “When is Daddy coming back?” or “Why doesn’t he write?” or “Doesn’t he like us any more?” Even that began to lessen as she accepted that Dano was in that unknown void, “out there.”
With her mother becoming progressively more ill, suffering from congestive heart failure, her life force ebbing more each week, Jana finally decided it was time for a vacation. She walked into Trokan’s office to get his permission.
“Vacation granted,” he announced without a moment’s hesitation. He asked her to sit and talk for a while. Jana was not in the mood and tried to avoid a discussion by edging toward the door. “If I’m going on vacation, I need to get as much casework done as possible.”
“I didn’t say you could leave,” Trokan barked, very much her superior. “Sit!” he commanded.
Jana sat, uncomfortable, aware instinctively that Trokan was going to bring up Dano.
“Where are you planning to go?” he wanted to know, making conversation as he watched her, looking for something.
“The Tatras.” Her answers were going to be as short as possible so she could get out of his office. “The mountains are peaceful.”
“Lovely place, the Tatras. I would go, except my wife doesn’t like walking up hills.”
“What does she like?”
Trokan grimaced. “Nothing. I have concluded that my wife likes nothing and no one, particularly me.”
“You have considered divorce?”
“I’m glad you brought that up. It is the topic I wanted to discuss. Not my divorce. Yours. Have you thought about a divorce?”
Jana had opened the door to the topic she wanted most to avoid. “I haven’t recently.”
“Think about it then.”
“Why?”
“Because the wrong people bring it up with me very often. ‘Has she severed all her ties to him?’ they ask. I remind them that you are a good police officer, and you don’t need watching. I don’t have to tell you how they react.” He shrugged as if to say, what can I do? “For all I know, they might be watching you now.” His voice became more matter-of-fact. “They probably are.”
“Divorce is a private matter.”
“Not for a police officer in this country.”
“To put your mind at ease, I will
think
about it.”
“Good.” He pulled a manila folder from his desk drawer, opening it on his desk to reveal several sheets of paper within it. “Papers. All folders contain papers which must be read by me. You see this stripe?” He pointed to a thin red stripe along the edge of the open side of the folder. “It means I have to read these first under penalty of being called color-blind by the Secret Police. That is a severe accusation, so I read these immediately, just in case.”
He read a little of the facing page as if to satisfy himself that he was referring to the correct folder. “A number of items are in here which might most certainly affect you in the future. Let me see. . . .” His voice trailed off as he read a few more sentences, humming out loud as he read. Then he closed the folder as if slamming a door.
“I forgot. I can’t talk to you about any of this. It is marked ‘Highest Secret.’ Sorry.”
He stood. “I am going to the W.C. I will be gone, let us say, exactly five minutes. It is now fourteen hundred. Remember, although I am leaving this material here,” he patted the file, “a file which some idiot has labeled secret, it should not be touched by you. That is too bad, considering the fact that the person who would most benefit by it can’t peruse it.” He walked out of the office, closing the door very quietly behind himself.
Jana wasted no time in opening the folder and laying the papers side by side on Trokan’s desk. It was a report on the investigation of the Democratic Party of the Revolution, the DPR. The members of this “counterrevolutionary group” had been holding secret meetings throughout Czechoslovakia. According to the reports, all their meetings had called for actual armed rebellion against the state. The person who was most active in this call for action was Dano, her husband. Part of his last speech was printed verbatim in the report:
We are not here to discuss abstract issues. We are not here to evaluate the economics of poverty, disease, or starvation. We are here to discuss those processes that oppress the mind and sicken and starve the spirit in the most concrete way: We must be allowed to work, to train for what we and we alone want to do, to be promoted for our excellence and not on someone’s whim. Why must we be prevented from talking to each other about the simplest of political needs: the questions that have come into our minds about our governing officers and their institutions? We cannot speak about our simplest needs as citizens.
What are we allowed to do? Watch our minds and spirits starve? Walk about like burglars in the night, concerned about making noises that the owner of the store, or the house, might hear? Remember, you don’t own the house; you don’t own the store. You don’t own the country. They do! And they will always stop you from trying to own even a part of it. Under this government we will always be thieves in the night, afraid!
End the fear. Take the country back. It is our country, not theirs!!
Jana could see Dano in the light at the clandestine meeting, his hair tousled with passion, everyone enthralled by the drama of the moment, including Dano himself. She could see everyone coming to their feet, applauding every comma and period of the talk, including the police informants both in the audience and on the stage with Dano.
This time Dano and his DPR friends had fled before the police arrived, but there had been other arrests and other meetings. All this activity was succinctly summarized by the warrants that had been issued for his arrest for criminal acts against the state, listed on the last page of the report. They were hunting Dano.
She carefully replaced the pages in the folder and sat back down across from Trokan’s desk. A moment later Trokan returned, pretending he had no notion that she had reviewed the folder.
“Sorry you couldn’t read these.” His voice was full of good cheer. Then the
bonhomie
was replaced by a slightly sour look. “Do what you have to, but stay away from him. I will not be able to save you this time if you don’t. Understand?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Good.” He paused, trying to remember something. “Your vacation. In the Tatras. Enjoy it.” He went back to his work as she left the office.
Chapter 25
A
week later, Jana, her mother, and Katka were in Stary Smokovec, in the High Tatras, at the Grand Hotel. The hotel had seen better days. Now it offered bargain prices and a genteel poverty that reflected the way life had been three decades ago. Jana and her parents had vacationed there when Jana was a child. The country was still very green, none of the city noises or smells intruding, and aside from the one-too-many tourists, it was how Jana wanted it. Yet problems had followed them.