Liberation Movements Read Online Free PDF Page A

telephone and bite his lip between words. He reached the next phone and picked it up. Mas was saying, “Of course it’s irregular. That’s what I’m telling you.”
    Gavra slipped in a coin and began to dial a random number.
    “Okay. But patience isn’t easy. Yes. Yes.”
    Mas hung up and walked back to his corner.
    “Who are you calling?” It was Brano.
    “I was listening to Mas’s conversation.”
    Brano, blinking rapidly, shook his head. “Forget that for now. Come with me.”
     
     
    He followed the colonel down a busy corridor to a door marked GÜVENLIK —security—beside which stood another handsome guard wearing a tall cap. Gavra gave him a smile he didn’t return.
    The airport security office was small and dark, lit almost solely by the blue haze of video monitors and the glow of five cigarettes held by five sweating men. The scent of Turkish tobacco, which last night at the club had seemed so intoxicating, now made him want to flee.
    “This is my associate, Gavra Noukas,” Brano said in English. “Nothing is to be kept from him.”
    It was an introduction he appreciated. Gavra nodded at each man, but none introduced himself. A fat Turk sitting in front of the monitors, said, “What to tell? There is no more plane. It blow up over Bulgaria.”
    Gavra touched the back of an empty chair to steady himself. “What?”
    “The pilot, he reports they are hijacked. So we talk to the hijackers—Armenians, members of…of the what?”
    “Army of the Liberation of Armenia,” said another man.
    “Who are they?” Gavra asked.
    The fat man shrugged. “Who knows? Just more dis…disaffected Armenians what think his empty bank account is the fault of Turkey. We talk to them, then lose contact. Then the plane, it disappear from the radar.”
    “You’re sure it exploded? It didn’t go down?”
    Brano explained. “The Bulgarians saw it. Sofia Airport reported the fireball.”
    “Before we can answer the demands,” said the fat man.
    Gavra turned the empty chair around and sank into it. “Then why did they hijack the plane?”
    The fat man shook his head. “You think I know, kid?”
    “You said you have a recording?” asked Brano.
    The fat man nodded. “They bring the equipment right now. But it’s no help. None. Probably they just wire the bomb all wrong. Fucking Armenians.”
    Brano turned to Gavra. “I want you to watch him, Ludvík Mas. Maybe he has nothing to do with this, but if he leaves, you follow. Do not make contact, only follow. Here are the car keys. You understand?”
    “Okay,” Gavra said. “But Libarid, wasn’t he Ar—”
    “Now,” said Brano.

Peter
     
    1968
     
    It was seven by the time he left Private Stanislav Klym and, a little drunk, began tracing his steps back through the darkening university district. He was surprised by how unchanged it looked. He’d expected crumbled buildings and commons areas turned into impromptu graveyards, but Prague was much as it had been before he left, the few people he saw only looking a little more exhausted.
    He caught a half-empty tram, held onto the leather strap, and, as he swung back and forth, wondered if he hated, or if he should hate, Stanislav Klym. There was something that gnawed at him about the man, but it wasn’t hatred. Despite the invasion, and despite what had happened outsideeské Budjovice, he never felt the urge to spit in any soldier’s face. They were boys just as he was a boy, taken from their homes and stuck in a city where, like Stanislav, they’d rather be tourists.
    He wasn’t upset with Stanislav because of his uniform but because of what the man had. Stanislav was happy; he had a life back home he was eager to return to. Whereas Peter Husák was returning to nothing.
    In the Tenth District he got out and walked up Pod Stanicí to the Hostivar? dormitory, which was decorated by a painted proclamation: AN ELEPHANT CANNOT SWALLOW A HEDGEHOG. He nodded at the young men who stood at the front door as if they