Free Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer

Peter on the cot. “Josef, can I talk to you out here?”
    Josef closed the door as he left, and Peter looked at Gustav. “You don’t think I betrayed anyone, do you?”
    “I don’t know what to think.” He stifled a yawn. “But you can appreciate that we’ve got to be careful.”
    “Of course.”
    “Josef likes to jump to conclusions.”
    “He’s never trusted me.”
    Gustav lit a cigarette and offered one. Peter took a drag, closing his eyes. “So what’s on the agenda?”
    “What agenda?”
    “My agenda?”
    “You’ll be ostracized, at least until we can assure ourselves you’re not…one of them.”
    Peter crossed a leg over his knee. “At least I’ll have time to study.”
    “What if the policeman comes back?”
    “I can’t tell him what I don’t know.”
    Josef returned, his face a deeper red than before. He moved slowly as he sat beside Gustav.
    “Well?” said Gustav.
    Josef blinked. “It seems Peter hasn’t been completely honest.”
    “Oh?” said Gustav.
    “Oh?” echoed Peter.
    Josef spoke through his teeth. “Today’s list of casualties went up an hour ago. Guess what?”
    “What?” asked Peter.
    “Go ahead. Guess.”
    “Don’t screw around,” said Gustav. “Tell us.”
    “No,” said Josef. “I want this bastard to take a stab in the dark.”
    Peter shrugged, because though he knew, it was best not to know, and so he cleared the knowledge from his head.
    “Come on,” said Gustav.
    Josef leaned forward and patted Peter’s cheek with an open hand, then gripped his ear. “Ivana and Toman are on the list. They were killed outsideeské Budjovice.”
    “That’s horrible,” said Peter. He tried to pull his ear out of Josef’s grip but couldn’t.
    “Remember his story?” said Josef. “He bravely led the Russians away from his friends, who he’d gotten into a tough spot.” He twisted Peter’s ear just a little, so it hurt. “They didn’t make it out of that field, did they?”
    “I don’t know,” Peter began, then grunted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “He killed them,” said Josef. “His stupidity killed them, and he won’t even admit it.”
    Gustav straightened. “That’s what it sounds like.”
    “They were alive,” said Peter. “I last saw them alive.”
    Josef punched him in the eye. He fell back, his head hitting the wall again.
    Gustav leaned his elbows on his knees. “What are we going to do with you?”
    “We can’t believe anything he says,” said Josef.
    “No. We can’t.” Gustav stood up. “Come on. We’ll talk to the others and take a vote.” Peter began to stand, but Gustav held up a finger. “Not you. You stay here. The door will be watched. You understand?”
    Peter nodded.

Gavra
     
     
    Gavra was furious. He had brutalized a man who, though not innocent in the classical sense, was not guilty of the particular thing Gavra was thinking of as he put his knee into his face.
    “Why did you do that?”
    Brano turned onto Mihai Boulevard and cocked his head. “I wanted you to keep the pressure on. If you believed Adler had given them the explosives, then you’d push him. He didn’t move the explosives himself, but if he knew who had done it he would have said something. He didn’t know.”
    Gavra watched the gray Tisa flowing past. Everyone in the Militia office hated Brano Sev, and he was beginning to understand exactly why. Brano understood people; he knew them well enough to know what to say, or do, to most trouble them. And for Gavra, this method was finally showing results.
    When he was ten, Gavra’s father told him that a wild dog lived just outside their village, and that it ate children. When he realized that this was a lie to keep him from wandering, Gavra began to hate his father. Two decades later, his Ministry mentor was doing the same thing.
    Gavra lit a cigarette. “We need to look at the Ministry. Someone at Yalta called Wilhelm Adler and told him what information to pass on.”
    “We