Beat me? Slit my throat? Rape me first?
My interrogator yanks off my hood without warning, and I sit up to get a better look. Bugs spin in the light of the headlamps as we approach a mud puddle almost as wide as the road itself. The driver curses, and the rear wheels spin as we crawl through it. Up ahead, a chain-link gate moves as the backlit silhouette of a guard pulls it open.
The van wallows into the middle of a courtyard illuminated by four sodium lamps that shine down onto the mud below in gray cones of light filled with moths. Buildings line the sides of the yard, painted green maybe forty years ago and not touched up since. We roll to a stop before a long two-story structure. The whole place has an institutional quality to it, like an army barracks.
We are not alone, however. There are a half-dozen cars also parked here: two Range Rovers, three BMW sedans, and a Mercedes that looks exactly like the one that took Bohdan Kladivo away from the restaurant.
The driver turns off the ignition and comes around to open the side door. It shocks me how meekly I let myself be taken from the van. I don’t fight, don’t even resist. Instead, I let them hoist me up by each arm. After a few steps, I realize their grip is surprisingly painful, not because they’re squeezing, but because I can barely walk and they’re dragging me. My body is accepting what my mind will not: that this is how it ends.
*
The mud beneath my bare feet is cold, and I can smell the forest, its wetness, its life. A moth touches my cheek, my forehead. My interrogator pushes open the door to the building. Fluorescent lights flicker and buzz, casting the dirty linoleum floor in a sickly blue. My feet drag and shuffle along, leaving behind the undignified footprints of one who is about to die badly. My escorts stop at an open office door, tap politely on the frame, and the figure of Bohdan Kladivo rises from a chair.
He is a different species from the man who sat across from me at dinner not eight hours ago. In the fluorescent light, his face is drawn and skeletal, the devil from a medieval woodcut, just as Rozsa had said. He is once more in his expertly tailored suit, with tie cinched up at his neck, the fat knot like a pedestal for his Adam’s apple.
My interrogator says just a few words in Czech, and Bohdan replies with a single nod as if the interrogator has just confirmed what he’d suspected. Bohdan approaches me, places a hand on my shoulder, and guides me farther down the hallway. My two escorts follow.
“Do you know what this place is?” he says next to my ear, voice low and confidential.
“No,” I say, the word barely coming out.
“We call it our tábor—our camp. But under communism, it was something else: a jail run by the secret police.”
We’re at the top of a metal staircase, and his footsteps ring as we descend. Mine are silent, and the staircase is cold as a sheet of ice on my bare soles.
“Torture. Executions. A bullet to the back of the head was the usual way,” he continues. “They happened right here in the basement.”
We walk along another corridor parallel to the one upstairs, only this one is lined with steel doors, each with the faded stencil of a number painted on a small metal hatch at eye level.
“After I sent you home, I said to myself, who is this woman who fights like a man but is loyal like a mother?” His eyes are narrow, filled with urgency. “Surely, a woman such as this is one of two things, a treasure rarer than diamonds, or a spy sent to trick me.”
“I am not a spy, Pan Kladivo.”
“But you can forgive this old man’s paranoia, no?” Bohdan pauses in front of cell number seven, traces a finger along the barely visible stencil. “This cell, this one was mine. For five months. Spring and summer of ’86. For chuligánství, it was called. Hooliganism. Selling blue jeans and cassette tapes of American rock music.”
My knees are about to buckle. “I have done nothing to betray you, Pan Kladivo.”
Bohdan places a hand on each of my shoulders, inhales deeply, then smiles. “I know that now, Sofia Timurovna. You are no spy.”
My mind races to untangle his words. Have I heard him wrong? Has he misspoken? He believes me? My interrogator appears in front of me, unshackles my wrists, then kneels and unshackles my ankles. I gasp in relief, and Kladivo pulls me into an embrace, holding me tightly.
“And I apologize for the way my men treated you in the van,” Kladivo continues. “One cannot be too careful. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Pan Kladivo,” I say.
He pulls back from the hug, places a hand on my cheek. “That is why, Sofia Timurovna, I must now ask for one more piece of evidence of your loyalty. One more, we may say, proof of your friendship.”
*
Bohdan Kladivo twists the handle on the door to cell number seven and pulls it open. Inside I see the figure of Miroslav Beran, tuxedo shirt rolled up to the elbows. He’s standing over another man who’s kneeling at the center of the cell, arms tied behind his back, face terrified and pleading. After the shock passes, I recognize him as one of Roman’s attackers, the largest of the three, the first one I grabbed.
There’s a wooden table in the corner of the cell. On it are a pair of pliers and a power drill and a blow torch—the tools for whatever they have planned for him next. The prisoner’s chest is heaving, each breath a labor, moments away from a heart attack. He’s staring back at me, and I see the recognition in his eyes.
Bohdan stands beside me in the doorway. “I am lucky to call the Praha police commissioner a dear friend. He made inquiries at hospitals and found this one preparing to leave with a few stitches. A few stitches hardly seems enough for beating my son, does it, Sofia Timurovna?”
“No, Pan Kladivo,” I say.
The man opens his mouth, chokes, then finally manages to speak. “Lady, I’m sorry—look, my mates, we had—you know, we were just funning, got a little outta hand is all—can I just—I can get money.…”
Miroslav Beran swings a fist into the side of the man’s head, and he topples to the side. With a white handkerchief pulled from his pocket, the Boss mops sweat from his brow, then scowls at the blood on his knuckles. For the crime of bleeding, he launches a sharp kick with the toe of his patent leather loafer into the man’s side. The prisoner manages no more than a hollow gasp for a response.
Bohdan steps forward and crouches before the prisoner. “You recognize this woman, do you not?”
The man nods.
“And is it true she attacked you after you beat up the fellow?”
Another nod. “She did, sir. She did. Fights real unfair-like. My mates and me were just having a bit of a row, you know, a bit of a dustup with the guy. Then she showed up and took it way out of proportion, sir. Way out of proportion.”
Bohdan rises and turns to me. “Do you know how I survived as an inmate in this place, Sofia Timurovna?”
“No, Pan Kladivo.”