Free Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer Page A

don’t know it was someone from the Ministry,” said Brano. “Adler doesn’t know—he’s just guessing.”
    “Ludvík Mas was waiting at the airport. He’s involved.”
    “We were at the airport,” Brano countered. “Does that mean we’re involved?”
    Gavra cracked the window to let out smoke. “You know what most bothers me?”
    “Tell me.”
    “You’re choosing to ignore the biggest connection—or coincidence. Whatever you want to call it.”
    “Then enlighten me, Gavra.”
    “Why was Libarid, the only Armenian in the Militia, on a plane taken over by Armenian terrorists?”
    Brano didn’t answer at first. He turned onto Karl Liebknecht, a small side street filled with vegetable shops, and parked. “Continue.”
    “I just think it shouldn’t be overlooked.”
    “Do you propose speaking to Zara, his widow? One day after she’s learned her husband was killed?”
    Brano was testing him; he knew that. The old man always looked him in the eyes when he wanted to measure Gavra’s abilities. “Why not?”
    “Okay,” Brano said as he started the car again. “Let’s go see her.”
     
     
    They parked in a narrow, muddy lot in the Tenth District, between block towers riddled with terraces hemmed in by opaque colored glass. Each piece of glass was cracked. They took a loud elevator to the fifth floor and found TERZIAN on a plaque beneath an eyehole. “Go ahead,” said Brano.
    Gavra pressed the buzzer.
    From inside came a woman’s voice, “Vahe…Vahe, no!” Then footsteps, and a pause as she peered through the eyehole. Zara opened the door, a robe pulled tight around her small body, her face swollen, her eyes slits. “Brano. Gavra.”
    “How are you?” said Gavra.
    She looked at him as if the question made no sense. She glanced back. “Come in.”
    They sat in the cramped living room, trying not to step on Vahe’s wooden toys, which were scattered across the carpet, though the boy was nowhere to be seen.
    “Can I get you some coffee?”
    “No, thank you, Zara,” said Gavra.
    Brano shook his head; he was choosing silence.
    She sat in a stiff wooden chair and put her hands together between her knees, as if in prayer. “Did you catch them?”
    “We’re working on it,” said Gavra.
    She nodded, and Gavra noticed Brano was suddenly distracted, looking at the wall. To the left of the television hung a large cross decorated at the ends with ornate swirls.
    “Which is why we’re here,” Gavra continued. “These terrorists, the ones who were responsible. I guess you know they were Armenian.”
    She nodded again.
    “So we’re trying to follow up on any possible connection.” He cleared his throat as she stared at him. He should have thought this through before coming here. “During the past few weeks, did you or Libarid have any contact with Armenians you didn’t previously know?”
    “You’re asking if we’ve been talking to terrorists?”
    He shook his head. “No. What I mean is, the Armenian community here is very small, and it makes sense that if new people arrived, it would be well known.”
    She sighed. “Gavra, when people leave the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, they don’t come here. They go to Moscow, or Belgrade, or even New York. But not here. The Armenians you find in our country had the bad fortune of being born here.”
    She bit her lip, as if what she’d said hadn’t come out right. From a back room, Gavra heard the child humming.
    “Do you go to church?” Brano asked, nodding at the cross.
    Zara’s cheekbones reddened, and she smiled at him, but it wasn’t a kind smile. Her small eyes were pink. “Comrade Sev, my husband may have kept our religion a secret, but I’m not my husband. Here.” She reached back to the bookcase behind her and grabbed a thick book called Orations —the collected writings of General Secretary Tomiak Pankov. She opened it to show that the guts had been ripped out and replaced with a leather-bound book, gold squiggly letters