Victory Square Read Online Free PDF

beer, I’m insisting.”
    “I’m a little tired, Freddy.”
    “Trust me. You’ll sleep like a baby.”
    Gavra rubbed his eyes for effect. “Okay, but just one.”
    Freddy leveled a finger-pistol at him and shot. “You got it, buddy.” He took two cans of Budweiser—not the Czech Budweiser Budvar but something else entirely—out of a tiny refrigerator and passed one over. Gavra tried to appear pleased with the taste—like a half-can of beer topped off with stale water—but it was difficult.
    Freddy began their fraternity by complaining. About his
old woman.
Which Gavra took to mean his wife, Tracey. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. She’s a good woman. Puts out like a goddamned machine and makes a massive pot roast. But that mouth on her… wow! Sometimes I’m like to take a swing at her.”
    “You hit her?”
    “Not yet, brother. But someday it’s gonna happen. Got yourself a wife?”
    Gavra shook his head.
    “No problem. How old are you? Fifty?”
    “Forty-four.”
    “Well, don’t hurry into it. That’s a tip from the top. Might as well track down all the pussy you can before buying the cow. Can’t imagine it’s any different in Russia.”
    “It’s the same all over.”
    “Who you visiting with?”
    Gavra rubbed his eyes. He wished he could get through this terrible can and to bed. “My cousin, Lubov. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
    “Lubov Shevchenko?”
    Gavra thought he’d heard wrong. Not merely that Freddy knew Lubov Shevchenko but that he’d pronounced the name correctly. “You
know
him?”
    “Course I do! My kid, Jeremy, he’s got Shevchenko for math. He’s a tough bastard, doesn’t stand for no bullshit in his class.” He raised his beer in a kind of salute. “Country needs more teachers like him.”
    “He teaches?”
    “I kid you not. Didn’t Lubov tell you?”
    Gavra was speechless a moment. “You know Lubov. He’s secretive.”
    “Tell me about it,” said Freddy. He scratched his beard. “I figured it was all Russians, but meeting you, I see it’s just Lubov. School’s just a little farther up the turnpike. Clover Hill High. Done all right by himself, your cousin.”
    “I’m glad he’s happy.”
    “Land of the free, and all.”
    He didn’t have to do this. No one knew that, at the last minute, he’d been handed Lubov Shevchenko’s location. But opportunity changes how you look at the world. With Shevchenko just “up the turnpike,” Gavra could see that nothing really added up. A defector-turned-schoolteacher who needed to be kept alive. Why? A now-dead lieutenant general who wouldn’t share the man’s real name, who was in fact getting his orders from someone else who wanted to remain anonymous. He was starting to believe that the timing of Kolev’s heart attack was too much of a coincidence.
    So he thanked Freddy for the beer and conversation, then stepped out into the bright, cold sunlight. Behind the wheel of the Toyota, he looked around to be sure no one was watching. He reached under his seat, took the P-83 from the paper bag, then filled the clip with eight rounds. He wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.
    By two, he was on the turnpike again. Thick forests lined the road, and that somehow made the discomfort of all of this more bearable.
    Over the next hill he spotted the high school. Clover Hill. It was a low, flat-topped building that spread back into a deep field checkered with a baseball diamond and an American football field and a running track. It was impressive. His own village school had been a small house. All their sports were done in the public park, or for special events they went to the Palace of Physical Culture in nearby Satu Mare.
    He parked near the front door, between a Subaru and a Ford pickup, and slipped the pistol into the glove compartment. He wouldn’t need it yet. Inside, crowds of teenagers clutched books and shouted at one another, ignoring him. They were on their way to classes, and the corridor soon thinned