18
OPTSPRE ZECE
ou think you know someone. And when you realize you’re wrong, the humiliation steals something from you. Your mind becomes aY thick forest of dark thoughts and you wonder—what else am I not seeing? But I couldn’t figure it out. Who was I angrier with? Luca or myself?
I ignored his bruised face and the way people stepped back when I passed through the halls at school. I told myself it didn’t matter. They didn’t understand. Besides, I was focused on Liliana. I wanted to walk home with
her and give her the chocolate.
“Pupil Florescu.”
Damn it.
The school director flagged me in the hall. He stood, making idle chatter as the students filed out of the building. I saw Liliana approaching so I looked to my feet and spoke of exams. “Thank you, but tutors are very expensive, Comrade Director. My parents don’t have the money.” As soon as Liliana passed, I stood silent, waiting.
He handed me a piece of paper with an address. “Around the corner,” said the director.
I looked at the paper. A “host location.” I had read about them in the spy novels. Sometimes the Securitate used a nearby apartment for meetings.
The “host” was usually an adult informer who allowed access to their apartment while at work. Good. If I had to meet with the agent, I preferred being away from school grounds.
I lingered until all the other students had left, worried that someone might see me. I rechecked the address on the paper and set out onto the darkened street. The wet, blowy cold slid beneath my jacket. I shivered. A drone of Dacias buzzed by, weary brake pads shrieking. An old red bus spit fumes as it rumbled around the corner. Head down, I walked to the stone
monster of an apartment block.
Up the stairs. Second floor.
The door was open a crack.
The agent sat at a table smoking. His wisps of remaining hair were slicked with a greasy pomade. He yawned. The cigarette burned, a white toothpick in his huge hands, and the smoke climbed like a curious spirit toward the ceiling. The rank of major, yes, but an agent assigned to teenagers? He had to be second rate. I could outmaneuver him, couldn’t I?
“Close the door and sit down.”
I did as I was told. I took a breath and reviewed my plan. In the Romanian spy novels, people talked too much when they were nervous.
That always tipped off the agents. They gave too much, gave their own opinions, and gave themselves away in the process.
I would be calm. I would speak sparingly. I would be in control.
Or so I thought.
“Have you visited the target?”
“Yes.”
“Were you inside his home?”
“Yes.”
The agent pushed a sheet of paper across the table to me. “Draw the plan of the apartment.”
I began to sketch the layout of the Van Dorns’ apartment, purposely crude and simplistic. Walls. Doors. Windows. I worked quickly, hoping to leave quickly.
He watched me and alternated sucking on his cigarette and his fingernails. The agent’s neck was thick, his body bulked by beer and the black market.
“The teenager’s room. Identify it on the plan.”
I noted it.
“Identify and notate any electrical devices you saw and where they
were situated.”
“Electrical devices?”
“Fixed devices like lamps, telephones, and televisions. Also, portable devices like cameras or radios.”
I noted what I remembered. If they had bugged the Van Dorns’ apartment like Dan suspected, wouldn’t the agent already know where the phone and lamps were located?
“Now, what other details did you observe?”
I was prepared. I had written everything down in my notebook, reviewed it, and decided in advance what I would tell him: things that weren’t a secret or that wouldn’t interest him. I pinched my brows together to appear deep in thought. I began to recite.
“The mother speaks Spanish to her son. The father appears tired. The son has blond hair and blue eyes, sports shoes called Air Jordans, a leather jacket, and a shirt that says Benetton. He likes American football—”
“What is the interaction like between Van Dorn and his wife?”
The visual of Van Dorn’s hand joining with his wife’s flashed in my mind. Affectionate. Connected. It felt private, none of the agent’s business.
Why did he care?
I shrugged. “I don’t know. They interact like parents, I guess.”
“When will you be there again?”
“I’m not sure when my mom will be working.”
The agent flipped open the folder in front of him. “Thursday.”
“Well, then I’ll go Thursday. But sometimes Dan isn’t there.”
“Then figure out a way to see him more often. He goes to the American Library to read magazines from the States. Ask him to take you.
Make note of what he’s reading. And next time you’re at the apartment, see if the father has a desk somewhere. Observe what’s on it.”
I remembered his desk. Against the wall in the living room.
I said nothing.
“Anything else?” said Agent Paddle Hands.
“Yes, the medicine for my bunu.”
“Right. I’ll see about that.”
“When?”
“When I see about it.” He thrust a sheet of paper at me. “Write it down.
Everything you just told me.”
I stared at him. Write it down? He wanted an official, handwritten statement? Of course. That way he had proof. Proof of my traitorous testimony versus something he made up.
He placed a pen in front of me. “Write it down and then sign the bottom of your statement.”
I paused, thinking, then picked up the pen and began writing. I wrote a simple list, bullet points, and slanted my letters to the left instead of the right to disguise my handwriting. The agent stood and stretched. He lit another cigarette and walked slowly about the room. I peered over the paper
while writing, secretly observing him.
“I’m finished, Comrade Major.”
He leaned over me. The heft of his smoky frame pushed in close. I smelled the oily pomade in his hair. Musk over sweat. Disgusting.
“You forgot to sign it.” He pointed to the bottom of the page.
“Oh, sorry.” I scratched an illegible string of scribbles. Impressive.
Kind of artistic.
And then the meeting was over.
I exited the apartment, filing through my mental notes: The agent didn’t smoke Carpați, Romanian cigarettes. He smoked BTs, Bulgarian cigarettes. He wore no wedding ring. His fingernails were meticulously clean and buffed. Odd on such enormous, knuckled hands.
Peeking from the pocket of his black leather jacket was a piece of paper with a word we all recognized—Steaua.
Our national team. The agent was a soccer fan.
Many Westerners couldn’t find Romania on a map, but we knew that some associated our country with athletics. Although gymnastics and tennis had taken Romania to the Olympics, no team from a communist country
had ever won the most cherished prize in European soccer. Not until Steaua București.
The agent’s large mitts—perhaps Paddle Hands fancied himself a goalkeeper? Regardless, I now knew more about him: BT cigarettes.
Unmarried. Steaua.
I knew how to proceed.
|| OFFICIAL REPORT ||
TOP SECRET [28 Oct. 1989]
Ministry of the Interior
Department of State Security Directorate III, Service 330
Discussion with source OSCAR at host meeting house near MF3 High School. OSCAR’s behavior was appraising, smug. Thinks he has the upper hand. Provided the following information on target VAIDA:
-hand-drawn diagram of VAIDA’s apartment -locations of fixed and floating electronics -son’s interests For further documentation, OSCAR is now tasked with the following: -trying to accompany VAIDA’s son to the American Library to
collect further information -guiding us to VAIDA’s desk in the home
NOTE: Recent informer source report states that OSCAR had a physical altercation with his friend and fellow student Luca Oprea.
Recommend increased surveillance.