The Confession (36 page)

It gave
us forty-eight hours to watch Louis. Leonek took the first shift. He paid for another room one floor up and took Louis to it. The hotel staff would notice the broken door and window, but there would be no one left in that room to blame.

Before I left, Leonek pulled me aside, and whispered, “Let’s keep this between us for now.”

“We could call in Emil.”

“I trust him to be quiet, but he won’t keep it from Lena, and she doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut. Then Brano Sev will know. Wasn’t he the one with Nestor’s file?”

I thought about that, but admitted that, despite everything, I still found it hard to believe that Brano Sev would kill Stefan.

“Believe it. That man has no friends.”

This was true. “But I also haven’t noticed any bullet wounds on him. Have you?”

Leonek shook his head. “Brano Sev is a machine.”

And I’d been wrong about plenty of things already.

At home I sat beside the radio set and considered giving Vera a call. The apartment was lonely without even her bleak company. But she hated me now.

So I drank in the empty apartment and wondered what Malik Woznica’s body looked like now, if it was covered or if the wind had blown the leaves off of him, exposing him to the elements. I closed my eyes.

The sound of the ringing telephone made me reach, instinctively, for my pistol. But I’d left it in the bedroom. I walked into the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Ferenc?” My legs tingled. She was crying.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“What happened to Leonek?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“I tried to call him all day.”

“He’s fine. He’s working.”

“I have to speak with him.”

“I’m not going to be your liaison, Magda.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“I was calling him to end it. I can’t believe what I’ve done to you.”

I let that hang between us.

“Ferenc?”

“I’m here.”

“Can you…”

“Can I what?”

“Can you forgive me?”

I hadn’t thought of that before. There had been no reason to. All I’d known was that my wife was leaving me, and that there was no decision to make. I could either accept it or go crazy. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re right. We can talk about it later.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Dad has a key to the cooperative office.”

“Oh.”

“Goddamn.”

“What?”

“Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

“I’ll get him to call you. How about that?”

“Thank you.” Then she started to cry again.

I wondered afterward if it had been a dream. Almost two in the morning—it seemed impossible that this had just happened. There was no evidence, except the sweat on my palm.

I showed
up at ten the next morning under a clear sky, and as Leonek left I told him to call Magda. He stopped at the door. “Magda? You want me to call her?”

“She’s been trying to get in touch with you. I’ll give you the number she’s at.”

He held up a hand. “I’ve got it. See you at noon tomorrow.”

I had brought coffee and rolls, and as we ate, Louis said he would write an epic poem about this. “It’s quite a story, isn’t it? I mean, are the paintings any more or less valuable because they’ve got the wrong signature on them? I wonder what the galleries in Paris would say.”

He was talking again the way I remembered him. “Does it matter, Louis?”

“Sure it matters.” He brushed crumbs off his shirt. “Though Antonín didn’t send Nestor to the camp for his paintings, he could have. So is a painting as valuable as a man’s life? For that matter, is anything as valuable as a man’s life? Or is everything that valuable?”

I wasn’t in the mood to listen to this. It made me wonder what was equal to Malik Woznica’s life, and I didn’t want to think about that.

“What do you say, Ferenc?”

“I don’t say anything.”

Louis grunted. “You were more engaging at Georgi’s party. Maybe we need to get you drunk.”

“Did you know Georgi was interrogated at Yalta Boulevard?”

Louis’s smile faded, and he gave a sharp nod. “I heard.”

“What if he didn’t come back? Would you still be asking if a painting was as valuable as a man’s life?”

Louis patted the air. “Point taken. No more, okay?”

I finished my coffee.

“Tell me about those, then.” He nodded at my hand. “You never told me about those rings before. It’s a lot for any one man.”

I flexed my fingers. “They’re from the war.”

“Most people get medals.”

“Well,” I said, then touched the one on my left index finger. “This one belonged to Friedrich Schultz, captain second-class. He was born in Hamburg in 1915. I killed him on 28 April 1939.”

Louis leaned back. “You—
all
of them are from Germans you’ve killed?”

I nodded at my hand, touching Hans Lieblich, Franz Müller and Heinrich Oldenburg. “Except this,” I said, and touched my wedding band, which had its own story.

“Forgive me, Ferenc, but that’s pretty morbid.”

I crushed my coffee cup. “Sometimes I need the reminder that I won’t live forever.”

We shared the bed that night and I lay on my back, hands on my chest, staring at the ceiling. I wanted to be home in case she called again. I wanted to hear her voice. I was sick of this world of men who loved revenge and other men’s wives. I didn’t want to puzzle through bloodstained walls or the shallowness of love. But it strikes me now that that is the only world there is, and all I wanted to do was lie and dream.

In the morning, I called the front desk for more coffee, and as we drank it I said to him, “You were an informer, weren’t you?”

He looked up from his cup. “What?”

“After the war, when you came here. You informed on your friends.”

“What makes you say that?”

“When you found out Nestor had been sent away, you went directly to Yalta Boulevard. Most people would go to the Militia office and file a complaint. But not you. You went to the heart of state security and demanded your friend be released. Georgi said you were tough, but you’re smart, too. You wouldn’t walk into Yalta Boulevard unless you thought you had some pull with the people inside.”

“I,” he began, then set his coffee on the bedside table. “I knew they wouldn’t do anything to a French citizen.”

I shook my head. “A lot of spies were being arrested back then, a lot of foreigners. And I’ve never heard of a foreigner, other than a Russian, being allowed in there. No. You knew someone at Yalta, and thought that because of your services you could get your friend out. He wasn’t political, after all, and you thought they would trust you. So you went directly to the Office of Internal Corrections. But you were wrong. They wouldn’t even see you, would they?”

Louis got up and took his tie from a door handle. He put it around his neck and began to knot it. “They made me wait in the front room for two hours. I left them my name, and periodically went to the desk to ask what was going on, but they told me nothing. I had to give up.”

“Who were you going to see?”

“Just the office. I only knew the field operatives I’d meet in the parks around town. I’d never been in Yalta Boulevard before.”

I looked out the window to the busy street. “And when Nestor was picked up, he was waiting in the train station to meet you.”

“But I didn’t show up,” he said, fixing his tie in the mirror. “I couldn’t get past Hungary.”

“You told Yalta Boulevard that you were coming. They knew, didn’t they?”

He left his tie alone and turned to me. “Yes.”

“And when you came back last September you talked to them once more. You gave them a description of Nestor for their files, and used the code name ‘Napoleon.’”

He looked at me, his mouth chewing air, and I felt close to something big. The Office of Internal Corrections had stalled Louis when he came to plead for Nestor a decade ago. It was the one office that knew when he would come to meet Nestor in the train station, and it also had the power to stop Louis at the Hungarian border. I picked up the phone and dialed.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, Leonek.”

“Oh,” he said. Then: “I talked to Magda.”

“What did she want?”

“You know damn well what she wanted.”

“We’ll talk about it later. Before you come over here, try and get hold of some files—Brano’s and Kaminski’s. They should be over at the Central Committee.”

“Kaminski?”

“He’s been out sick,” I said, but didn’t elaborate on my suspicions.

He arrived early, while Louis was in the bathroom. He hadn’t gotten any sleep, and it showed in his red-rimmed eyes and slack mouth as he handed over the file. He seemed to be laboring over the words before they came out: “I’m still shaken up about this.”

“The files?”

“No.”

I took out two cigarettes and offered him one. He shook his head.

“I don’t know exactly what to say.”

I took the files to the bed and settled down. “There’s nothing to say.”

His eyes were focused on nothing in particular. “Maybe not. I wasn’t lying before. I love her. I love them both. I always will. But if she’s made her decision, then it’s done.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“Can I have that cigarette?”

I lit it for him.

Because of the nature of their work, both men’s files were minimal: Yalta Boulevard would store the details of their own men. These files contained a brief biography, photos, associations, and a page that listed assignments. Brano’s assignment had been our own Militia office for the last decade, but Kaminski’s listings gave me pause: Chief of the Office of Internal Corrections of the Ministry for State Security, March 1946 to December 1948.

So Brano Sev was not our man after all.

“Are you going to take her back?”

I closed the file. “I don’t think that’s your business.”

“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Just be good to her.”

“I’ve always been good to her. And I’ve always been good for her.”

As he took his cigarette into the hall, too distracted to ask about the files, it occurred to me that, despite what he said, Leonek was still hopeful. Magda had shown she could change her mind. She had chosen me years ago, then she chose Leonek. She had probably, in our bed, told him she would leave me for him. And now she was choosing me again. Neither he nor I knew which decisions were final, or if any would be, ever.

I waited
inside the café window, while Leonek walked a few paces behind Louis into the October Square market, where round peasant women sold wormy apples and soft potatoes. Along the edge, the Romanians Ágnes disapproved of stood in a semicircle playing fiddles. A couple uniformed Militia watched them a moment, then checked their papers. In the center of the crowd, Louis rose on his toes to see over heads.

“You going to just stand there?”

“Yeah, Corina. I’ll just stand here for now.”

She went back to the tables, and I watched the militiamen give the Romanians their papers back and move on, out of the square.

He arrived at five minutes after noon.

Like the gum-chewing teenager had said, he was short, but not a real shorty. He limped through the crowd from the east side of the square, pausing for women to pass, taking his time. I could only see his head and sometimes a shoulder. Blond hair and a gaunt face. Cheekbones sharp and clear and white, eyes set deep into his skull. He noticed Louis, but didn’t alter his slow, steady pace. Louis’s face lit up in one of his bright smiles as he pushed through bodies to get to Nestor.

Leonek remained a couple people back, glancing in their direction only casually, and I stood at the window with my face half-exposed.

“Sure you don’t want a coffee?”

I didn’t look at her. “Give me a few minutes, will you?”

“Whatever you say.”

They talked a moment, and Louis motioned to the café. I slid farther out of sight as Nestor turned in my direction and considered it. Then he shrugged and limped forward. Leonek kept close behind them. Then Nestor stopped. So did Louis and Leonek. He turned and said something to Louis, and Louis’s face melted, his lips opening and shutting rapidly. Nestor turned back then, quickly, and used his hands to part the crowd. But Leonek caught his arm and stuck a pistol into his ribs. All three turned back to the café. I waved to Corina and pointed at an empty booth. “Four coffees.”

He did not struggle. I noticed this immediately, but I didn’t know what it meant, if anything. I sat at the booth and watched them enter, Leonek still gripping Nestor’s arm. Louis’s face looked like pain as he whispered into Nestor’s ear. I only heard a little of it once they were at the table:
“
…
the only way
…
no choice
…
just listen
…
”

Louis sat beside me and Nestor across from me, Leonek beside him. “Hello, Nestor,” I said.

His thin face moved beneath the surface, his jaw shifting. “Good afternoon, Ferenc.” His voice was high but coarse, as if his throat had been put through a lot.

“Nestor, please give Leonek your gun.”

He kept his eyes on me as he pulled it out of the inside of his jacket and passed it beneath the table.

Corina arrived with our coffees and looked significantly at me before walking away.

“Tell me about Stefan.”

Nestor frowned. “Here?”

“Yes. Then we’ll go somewhere else. Right now, Stefan.”

The other customers didn’t notice us. They smoked and ate and talked loudly with one another. When Nestor lifted his trembling cup to his mouth, I saw the missing finger—just a pink stump. “I didn’t do it,” he said.

“Tell me what happened.”

He set the cup down. “I went to see him. To turn myself in.”

“What?” said Leonek.

“Let him,” I said.

Nestor looked at Leonek, then at me. “Stefan didn’t believe me at first either. He kept his gun on me, and we talked. I told him why I had killed Josef and Antonín and Zoia. The paintings, and—” He frowned at his missing finger. “And my time in the camp.” He looked at Louis. Nestor couldn’t hold his gaze still. “He was all right, that militiaman. After a while he made some fish soup; he knew I was hungry. He kept his gun with him, but we talked and ate, and he asked why I was turning myself in.”

“What was your answer?” I asked.

He turned to me again. “Because it was done. I had killed them, and I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. But then he arrived.”

“Kaminski,” I said.

“Kaminski?” That was Leonek.

Nestor blinked a few times, then nodded. “Stefan asked who it was, and that’s when I learned his name. I didn’t know it before. Stefan told me to wait in the kitchen, so I did. Kaminski asked Stefan about me. He wanted to know if Stefan had found me yet, and that when he did he should give me to him. To Kaminski. But as I was listening to his voice, it sounded familiar. I hadn’t seen him yet, so all I had was the voice. I stuck my head around the doorway. It was so stupid of me.”

“He saw you,” I said.

“And I saw him. And I recognized him right away. When you see a man commit murder, his face never leaves you. It was the same face I’d seen in that crowd of four Russians who were talking with those little Jewish girls. The same one who killed that other militiaman, Sergei Malevich. And I knew it then: Antonín hadn’t sent me to the work camps after all. I knew it immediately.”

“You’re right.”

Nestor nodded. “Kaminski recognized me, too, and he was quick. Stefan was taking out his gun, but Kaminski turned and shot him twice. So fast. But quiet, with that silencer.”

“But you had a gun too.”

“I’d taped it to the small of my back; I didn’t know if I could trust this Stefan. I shot Kaminski in the shoulder. But he jumped back into the corridor before I could get him again.”

Leonek gaped, “So it’s true.”

Nestor nodded at him, but his face was pale and unwell. “It’s true.”

“And you got out through the window,” I said.

“I thought he would be waiting at the front door.”

“He probably was. Did you come to my apartment a few days later?”

“But the woman wouldn’t let me in. Your wife?”

I waved to Corina for the bill.

Louis finally spoke. “Nestor. Good god
damn. Nestor.
”