* * * * *
The knock at the door came in the middle of the night, as Josip Pekic
had always thought it would. He had been but four years of age when
the knock had come that first time and the three large men had given
his father a matter of only minutes to dress and accompany them. He
could barely remember his father.
The days of the police state were over, so they told you. The cult of
the personality was a thing of the past. The long series of five-year
plans and seven-year plans were over and all the goals had been
achieved. The new constitution guaranteed personal liberties. No
longer were you subject to police brutality at the merest whim. So
they told you.
But fears die hard, particularly when they are largely of the
subconscious. And he had always, deep within, expected the knock.
[Illustration]
He was not mistaken. The rap came again, abrupt, impatient. Josip
Pekic allowed himself but one chill of apprehension, then rolled from
his bed, squared slightly stooped shoulders, and made his way to the
door. He flicked on the light and opened up, even as the burly, empty
faced zombi there was preparing to pound still again.
There were two of them, not three as he had always dreamed. As three
had come for his father, more than two decades before.
His father had been a rightist deviationist, so the papers had said, a
follower of one of whom Josip had never heard in any other context
other than his father's trial and later execution. But he had not
cracked under whatever pressures had been exerted upon him, and of
that his son was proud.
He had not cracked, and in later years, when the cult of personality
was a thing of the past, his name had been cleared and returned to the
history books. And now it was an honor, rather than a disgrace, to be
the son of Ljubo Pekic, who had posthumously been awarded the title
Hero of the People's Democratic Dictatorship.
But though his father was now a hero, Josip still expected that knock.
However, he was rather bewildered at the timing, having no idea of why
he was to be under arrest.
The first of the zombi twins said expressionlessly, "Comrade Josip
Pekic?"
If tremor there was in his voice, it was negligible. He was the son of
Ljubo Pekic. He said, "That is correct. Uh ... to what do I owe this
intrusion upon my privacy?" That last in the way of bravado.
The other ignored the question. "Get dressed and come with us,
Comrade," he said flatly.
At least they still called him comrade. That was some indication, he
hoped, that the charges might not be too serious.
He chose his dark suit. Older than the brown one, but in it he felt he
presented a more self-possessed demeanor. He could use the quality.
Five foot seven, slightly underweight and with an air of unhappy
self-deprecation, Josip Pekic's personality didn't exactly dominate in
a group. He chose a conservative tie and a white shirt, although he
knew that currently some frowned upon white shirts as a bourgeois
affectation. It was all the thing, these days, to look proletarian,
whatever that meant.
The zombis stood, watching him emptily as he dressed. He wondered what
they would have said had he asked them to wait in the hallway until he
was finished. Probably nothing. They hadn't bothered to answer when he
asked what the charge against him was.
He put his basic papers, his identity card, his student cards, his
work record and all the rest in an inner pocket, and faced them. "I am
ready," he said as evenly as he could make it come.
They turned and led the way down to the street and to the black
limousine there. And in it was the third one, sitting in the front
seat, as empty of face as the other two. He hadn't bothered to turn
off the vehicle's cushion jets and allow it to settle to the street.
He had known how very quickly his colleagues would reappear with their
prisoner.
Josip Pekic sat in the back between the two, wondering just where he
was being taken, and, above all, why. For the life of him he couldn't
think of what the charge might be. True enough, he read the usual
number of proscribed books, but no more than was common among other
intellectuals, among the students and the country's avant garde, if
such you could call it. He had attended the usual parties and informal
debates in the coffee shops where the more courageous attacked this
facet or that of the People's Dictatorship. But he belonged to no
active organizations which opposed the State, nor did his tendencies
attract him in that direction. Politics were not his interest.
At this time of the night, there was little traffic on the streets of
Zagurest, and few parked vehicles. Most of those which had been rented
for the day had been returned to the car-pool garages. It was the one
advantage Josip could think of that Zagurest had over the cities of
the West which he had seen. The streets were not cluttered with
vehicles. Few people owned a car outright. If you required one, you
had the local car pool deliver it, and you kept it so long as you
needed transportation.
He had expected to head for the Kalemegdan Prison where political
prisoners were traditionally taken, but instead, they slid off to the
right at Partisan Square, and up the Boulevard of the November
Revolution. Josip Pekic, in surprise, opened his mouth to say
something to the security policeman next to him, but then closed it
again and his lips paled. He knew where they were going, now. Whatever
the charge against him, it was not minor.
A short kilometer from the park, the government buildings began. The
Skupstina, the old Parliament left over from the days when
Transbalkania was a backward, feudo-capitalistic power of third class.
The National Bank, the new buildings of the Borba and the Politica.
And finally, set back a hundred feet from the boulevard, the sullen,
squat Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It had been built in the old days, when the Russians had still
dominated the country, and in slavish imitation of the architectural
horror known as Stalin Gothic. Meant to be above all efficient and
imposing and winding up simply--grim.
Yes. Josip Pekic knew where they were going now.
* * * * *
The limousine slid smoothly on its cushion of air, up the curved
driveway, past the massive iron statue of the worker struggling
against the forces of reaction, a rifle in one hand, a wrench in the
other and stopped before, at last, the well-guarded doorway.
Without speaking, the two police who had come to his room opened the
car door and climbed out. One made a motion with his head, and Josip
followed. The limousine slid away immediately.
Between them, he mounted the marble stairs. It occurred to him that
this was the route his father must have taken, two decades before.
He had never been in the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
before. Few Transbalkanians had, other than those who were employed in
the MVD, or who came under the Ministry's scrutiny.
Doors opened before them, closed behind them. Somewhat to Josip
Pekic's surprise the place was copiously adorned with a surplus of
metal and marble statues, paintings and tapestries. It had
similarities to one of Zagurest's heavy museums.
Through doors and down halls and through larger rooms, finally to a
smaller one in which sat alone at a desk a lean, competent and assured
type who jittered over a heavy sheaf of papers with an electro-marking
computer pen. He was nattily and immaculately dressed and smoked his
cigarette in one of the small pipelike holders once made _de rigueur_
through the Balkans by Marshal Tito.
The three of them came to a halt before his desk and, at long last,
expression came to the faces of the zombis. Respect, with possibly an
edge of perturbation. Here, obviously, was authority.
He at the desk finished a paper, tore it from the sheaf, pushed it
into the maw of the desk chute from whence it would be transported to
the auto-punch for preparation for recording. He looked up in busy
impatience.
Then, to Josip Pekic's astonishment, the other came to his feet
quickly, smoothly and with a grin on his face. Josip hadn't considered
the possibility of being grinned at in the Ministry of Internal
Affairs.
"Aleksander Kardelj," he said in self-introduction, sticking out a
lean hand to be shaken. "You're Pekic, eh? We've been waiting for
you."
Josip shook, bewildered. He looked at the zombi next to him,
uncomprehendingly.
He who had introduced himself, darted a look of comprehension from
Josip to the two. He said disgustedly, but with mild humor oddly
mixed, "What's the matter, did these hoodlums frighten you?"