Belgrade Noir

It wasn’t the first time the police had surrounded a house where he’d been hiding.

He could’ve snuck out through the basement, quietly overpowered the two agents standing guard there, and found another safe haven by evening.

“Why did you surrender?” Helm asked him near the end of the final interrogation, knowing that a beaten man in his condition couldn’t answer him even if he wanted to.

“Why did he surrender?” Makhin asked Stalin as soon as he read the last page of the interrogation notes.

Stalin stood at the window and Makhin saw in the glass the reflection of his motionless face.

“He didn’t surrender,” Stalin said under his breath, and then, generously permitting the readers to imagine a newborn silence, pulled on his pipe and exhaled a fragrant cloud that soon vanished into the shadows of the chamber’s high ceiling.

“He di… didn’t?” Makhin stuttered, lacking the courage to put a simpler question behind these simple words.

“Didn’t,” repeated Stalin, looking his reflection right in the eye. “He merely carried out an order.”

“I understand,” said Makhin, though to him, as to most of us, it wasn’t at all clear what the hell that was supposed to mean.

My editor even flew into a fit.

“Man, you can’t ruin a good story like that!” He was almost screaming when I decided to respond to his call.

“You really think it’s good?” I asked after a few moments of silence.

“Excellent. But it will be mediocre rubbish if you don’t change the end,” he said in a calmer tone, justifiably afraid that I’d hang up, remove the SIM from my cell phone, delete the file, and never write another sentence.

“Listen, man…” He waited to see if I was still there.

“I’m listening.”

“Let’s meet somewhere and figure it out.”

So here I am in Pioneer Park, where I arrived ten minutes prior to our agreed-upon time. It’s a sunny day; children are playing; pensioners are sitting on the benches, reading the paper. Cars and buses speed along the boulevard, behind which sits the National Assembly building, and at the curb on the park’s edge stands an open double-decker bus that will soon take visitors on a sightseeing tour of the city.

I’ll take my editor sightseeing in the park.

I’ll show him where the Germans shot one of the most enigmatic and dedicated of Stalin’s secret agents. Then I’ll show him his grave. Later on, we’ll walk the same path that he and Mars took, and then we’ll head toward Terazije, where he’ll have to imagine buildings that no longer exist, where they interrogated the agent, and where he lay in his wounds, beaten and broken.

“That’s all well and good,” I know he’ll say, after taking his first sip of beer in the garden of some nearby café. “But, man, that part where Stalin is standing at the window saying Mustafa Golubić hasn’t surrendered but rather carried out an order — what does he mean by that?!”

I’ll look him right in the eye for quite a while, and then helplessly shrug. My editor will stub out his cigarette, stand up, put his hand on my shoulder, and leave, and as soon as I get home, I’ll write two more scenes for the ending.

The first will take place in the Kremlin, in the same room where Stalin stood by the window and stared at his reflection in the Soviet glass. This time, behind his back will stand one of his most enigmatic and dedicated secret agents, just returned from Mexico, where he’d laid the groundwork for the assassination of Leon Davidovich Trotsky, the greatest enemy of the world revolution.

The other final scene will take place in a house on the outskirts of Belgrade, which was surrounded by the German police early one morning in June 1941.

Mustafa Golubić will have shaving soap on his chin, but instead of holding a razor, he’ll be holding his revolver.

Weighing his options for escape, he’ll remember the conversation he had with Stalin after returning from Mexico.

“Joseph Vissarionovich, what are my orders?” he asked, interrupting the silence that, in his presence, was more cautious than a wild cat poised to sneak off into darkness.

“There’s only one more,” said Stalin, not daring to turn and look him in the eye.

“Yes?”

“Recognize the opportunity to go out as a hero.”

Here is that opportunity, Golubić will think brightly, already aiming for the body of the first German policeman he can see through the small bathroom window, but then he’ll realize that he’s been given the opportunity not only to die at the enemy’s hand but to be executed and buried in the very heart of the great city.

So I will never be forgotten

, he thought as he rinsed the shaving soap from his face and looked in the mirror for the last time.

One could even say he was happy.

Part IV

Kiss Me Deadly

The Touch of Evil

by Verica Vincent Cole

Lekino Brdo

November 1, 2018

Viktor Marković is a dead man.