Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer Read Free Book Online

morning then. The jeep, it had…it had a machine gun on it, and when we ran they fired at us.”
    “Savages.”
    He cleared his throat. “We scattered. I can only assume they made it. I went south, and the Russians followed me. They picked me up in the town.”
    “You were incredibly stupid.”
    “I know.”
    “But at least you didn’t get anyone killed.”
    “Yeah,” said Peter. He took a breath. “I’m thankful for that.”

Gavra
     
     
    The old man woke him earlier than expected. Six o’clock, and it was just dumb luck, Gavra later reflected, that he had decided to be a good boy the night before. He’d spoken to the Germans in the hotel bar, two Heidelberg cops in town for the Interpol conference. They were attractive and seemed to like Gavra, but after his fifth vodka, he became suspicious of his own judgment. He began hearing the old man’s voice in his head. Waking up to Colonel Brano Sev proved he’d been right not to trust himself.
    Brano was excited. “The Istanbul police have worked quickly. Last night, they raided an apartment of the Army of the Liberation of Armenia and rounded up three conspirators.” He explained this quickly, and Gavra rubbed his eyes, trying to understand.
    “One of the men talked,” Brano continued. “Turns out they have no connection to the ASALA, the Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian Group, or even the Yanikian Commandos, the ones who tried to set off a bomb in New York two years ago. But guess how they decided to hijack that particular plane, on that day.”
    “How?”
    “A telephone call.”
    “From who?”
    “From Wilhelm Adler.”
    Only then did Gavra wake fully. Wilhelm Adler, or “Tappi” to the newspapers, had famously spent years in West Germany with the proto-Marxist Red Army Faction, blowing up offices and airport terminals and kidnapping business leaders in an effort to free the older RAF generation—Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, Ulrike Meinhof—from prison. Just as West German police were about to close in on him in June 1974, he crossed into East Germany, and General Secretary Honecker, as always, welcomed the socialist warrior with open arms.
    “So East Germany’s in on this?”
    Brano shook his head. “Adler moved out of Democratic Germany not long after he arrived there. He’s been in our country for the last seven months.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “Not a lot of people do. Now get your clothes on.”
     
     
    The Turkish polis station was not what Gavra expected. Perhaps he expected exotic Muslim arches or policemen sitting on velvet pillows. Instead he found himself in a dirty, gray-walled bureaucratic building not unlike home. In place of a framed portrait of General Secretary Pankov, Kemal Atatürk glared at him from under flaming eyebrows. Then the smell hit him: Turkish tobacco and sweat. It straddled the line between sensual and revolting. At least there was a familiar face: Talip Evren, the fat captain from the airport. He shook their hands with both of his and took them down an empty side corridor. He knocked on a scratched door. The small man who opened it wore a pistol in his belt.
    The room was dark, and in the center a young man with hair reaching his shoulders was tied to a chair. A desk lamp shone on his battered face, and the only sound in the room was his labored breathing. Dried blood covered most of his features, so it was hard for Gavra to make out what he looked like.
    “May I introduce to you Norair Tigran,” said Talip. “Ask as you want and I will make translation.”
    Brano pulled up a chair and sat just out of the light. “He should tell me everything about Wilhelm Adler.”
    “Wilhelm?” the young man said, gurgling as if speaking through water. “Allah belanı versin.”
    Talip shook his head. “He does not wish to repeat himself. Hasad.”
    The small man took out his pistol and swung it into the young man’s face.
    Gavra thought he heard something snap, but Tigran shifted his head, whispering,