“You know, I’ve stopped being surprised by the gossip that goes around. Yesterday, my father-in-law, whom I took to be a man of sense, tried to persuade me that the bank heist was masterminded by the opposition!”
They both laughed out loud at this. Since Zef had disappeared, Mark found that he enjoyed the company of the head of the music section more and more.
“So now Judas is going to get his teeth into us at last!” he said. “That’s all that B— has been waiting for!”
The City Arts Center was abuzz. The director’s sky blue tie quivered with excitement, and his whole being exuded an air of euphoria.
“Is the delegation from Spain?” Mark inquired in an undertone.
“Mmm … up to a point, perhaps. The people are actually from the Council of Europe,” the secretary explained. “But some of them might be from Spain.”
The director went over their marching orders. The delegation would arrive around 3:00 P.M. So everyone was to be at their posts by 2:30. As for the other rules of engagement, staff members already knew them.
The foreigners showed up at 3:00 P.M. precisely. There were two Germans, one Dutchman, and an Albanian guide. First they had coffee at the Arts Center, then they asked to see the surrounding area. They wanted to visit a convent that had been reopened after being left to its own devices for the fifty years of Communist rule, and a kulla, or Tower of Refuge, of the highland folk.
The director climbed into the foreigners’ car; Mark, with the head of the music section, got into the next, an aged Russian-made all-terrain vehicle originally leased to the ministry of the interior and then handed to the Arts Center after the fall of the old regime.
The bush-lined dirt road climbed on and on up into the mountains. There were not many towers, but they stopped at each one that came into sight. The Albanian guide — a tall lad with a sloping right shoulder beneath his check jacket — gave a commentary in German. The Accursed Mountains could just be made out on the far horizon. The cold air made the Germans’ straw-colored hair look even thinner. The head of the music section, who stayed with Mark at the back of the party, twisted his head this way and that as if looking for something he had lost.
Mark thought he could hear a wolf howling in the distance, but no one else seemed to worry about it. It must have been the wind in the hills. He tried to imagine which steep path his girlfriend’s fearsome uncle would take when he came down from the northern plateau.
“Listen, Mark,” said the musician. “I don’t know why, but I’ve got a strong feeling that the path to the storage depot of the Secret Archives is somewhere around here.”
“Do you think so?” said Mark. “I’ve heard people say that sort of thing, but I thought it was just gossip.”
“Well, no, it’s not just another tall tale. It’s true they could have been moved since then, but in 1985, when Hoxha died, the archives really were in these parts.”
The area was undoubtedly suited to the role. A remote little spot at the foot of the Accursed Mountains: you couldn’t have dreamed of a more inaccessible hole.
“The cave must be somewhere nearby, I swear,” the music section head went on. “One of my cousins who worked for the Interior told me a very odd story about that.” He slowed his pace so as not to catch up with the main party. Mark was staring hard at him. “In April 1985, three days after the death of the tyrant, the first thing his successor did, just as soon as he had been sworn in, was to make a secret visit to B—.”
“No kidding?”
“It’s what my cousin told me at the time. It was the most discreet flying visit ever. Just two cars, so as not to attract attention.”
“That’s very odd,” Mark mumbled.
“Well, the next part is even odder,” the musician added. Although they were now way behind the visiting foreigners, they slowed their pace even more. “The small delegation from Tirana arrived precisely at 10:00 P.M. They didn’t stop in town and went straight to the deep storage depot. And there” — the head of the music section was already speaking in a whisper, but now, so it seemed to Mark, he was almost singing a lullaby — “and there, the new head of state hunted for things until three in the morning.”
“Well, well,” said Mark. “And then what?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what he was looking for?” Mark shrugged. “Well, that is the question! What was he really after? I’ve puzzled over that so many times since then! No one has the faintest idea. Nor does anyone know if he found what he was looking for. My cousin was one of the small group of local officials who escorted the head of state to the cave, and he said that when the leader came out, he looked utterly depressed.”
The director was shouting from way up front: “Hey, you two! Get a move on, we’re on our way!”
He sounded just a little resentful of their confabulating out of earshot, but both of them knew that the boss was so delighted to be mingling with foreigners, they could bend the rules a little without making him angry.
“We were talking about the Kanun” the head of the music section said as he and Mark rejoined the main group.
“Really?” The director’s face clouded over. “That’s all people are interested in these days!” he said with a kind of sadness, and turned his back on them.
It was known in B— that the director felt let down when visitors expressed interest in the old traditions. He was anxious to get down to talking about the latest advances of human civilization, about the Internet, the common currency, anything that had to do with the future of Europe. But to his amazement, foreigners not only spoke of such things without the least passion, but also couldn’t wait to quiz him about the old Kanun. How do you account for its revival? Do Towers of Refuge still exist? Were the ancient rules going to come back in a big way?
The two cars stopped in front of the convent. The foreigners snapped photographs of the restored gateway and walls. Once again, Mark thought he could hear that wolf in the distance. Images of his girlfriend’s armpits, of her uncle’s damaged leg, and of his much-allayed suspicion of her having had an affair in Tirana whirled about in his head.
The road ahead of them was virtually impassable, and the director reminded everyone that they had to be back in town before nightfall. Mark happened to notice the Albanian guide and interpreter just as he was bending down to get back in the car, and it suddenly occurred to him that what the Judas people were gossiping about was perhaps none other than he. The check jacket he was wearing somehow seemed to confirm the suspicion. God knows why, but he had always imagined that spies wore clothes of that sort.
On the way back, the cars passed by the hillside where the tunnel leading to the Secret Archives was supposed to be located. With his face pressed hard against the side window, Mark’s eyes hunted for some trace of an opening, but his breath misted up the glass. What had the head of state come to look for down in that hole? A message, a secret register, maybe his own file, kept there in case they might have to blackmail him, too? The dictator, people said, used that kind of armlock more and more as he grew old, to keep members of the Politburo totally dependent on him. So if it had seemed convenient to keep killer files on the others, it must have been even more necessary to keep information of last resort on the man who was to be his successor.
Mark had a feeling the head of the music section was having similar thoughts. He said to him in a whisper, “I cant get what you told me about the deep storage of state secrets out of my head.”
“I’m not surprised. After my cousin first told me about it, the mystery obsessed me for weeks.”