“I’m alone here, Comrade Sev. Your presence can only help.”
Steinhauer, Olen
36 Yalta Boulevard
10 FEBRUARY 1967, FRIDAY
He slept lightly and woke at seven in a sweat. Though he could not remember it, he knew he had again dreamed of that week just after his return from Vienna, spent in the basement of Yalta Boulevard 36.
The Lieutenant General had accompanied him in the white Mercedes from the airport into town. Brano, with his memory now intact, knew better than to speak, and when the other three men guided him to the large double doors of Yalta 36, the Lieutenant General only said, You better cook up some goddamned brilliant answers for us.
But he didn’t come with Brano as the men walked him past a stunned Regina Haliniak at the front desk, along the corridor of unmarked doors to the stairwell that brought them down to the basement. He’d led enough men to these damp, windowless cells to know the route, and even said hello to Stanko, the stout man with round glasses who kept the guardroom organized. Stanko, nodding, could come up with no reply.
A Ministry doctor visited him that night, listened to his heart, and asked him questions. For the memory loss, he could offer no authoritative explanation but suggested stroke. You’re not young, Brano.
The interrogation began the next day, when he was dragged to another room with a table and two chairs. What would always strike him as the great irony of those sessions was that each morning on the table sat a glass of water and the headache powders Brano’s doctor had prescribed, and only after he’d taken them did the Lieutenant General’s assistants feel free to begin what the Americans liked to call his “softening up.” Not until blood flowed did the Lieutenant General arrive.
You set up office in a hotel.
Yes, said Brano. The embassy wasn’t secure.
Maybe you were afraid Major Romek would listen in on your schemes?
I thought nothing of the sort.
Kaspar.
One of the guards struck him across the back of the head.
Don’t be impertinent, Brano.
Working back from the Lieutenant General’s questions, Brano could piece together Lochert’s inventive report. He claimed not only that Brano had attacked him in the Volksgarten the night of the Richter murder but also that over the previous month he had been trying to sabotage the investigation into the identity of GAVRILO. Brano had undermined security at the embassy, consciously casting doubt on the abilities of their head of security, Nikolai Romek, by planting electronic bugs. Why? Because Brano needed an excuse to run his operations outside the embassy, where he could not be watched, at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth. From there he could meet with whomever he wanted.
Lochert, his report claimed, was confused about the why of Brano’s treachery. Only after the incident in the Volksgarten was he able to piece together the details. Brano arrived late because of a liaison with a certain Dijana Frankovic, Yugoslav national, who, besides being the girlfriend of Bertrand Richter, was known to have entertained KGB agents in her apartment on Doblinger Hauptstraee. Brano, Lochert finally realized, was working for the Russians-who, for their own reasons, wanted to hinder Yalta Boulevard’s investigation into the source of their Vienna leak.
This was all, of course, a lie, and two weeks later, after he’d been released from his Yalta cell and given his new labor assignment at the tractor factory, he and Colonel Cerny took a walk together in Victory Park. But why? Brano asked him. Why did he do this?
Cerny had thought it through over the last weeks. Lochert’s lived in Vienna almost a decade; he knows the city and its networks better than anyone. We sent him to Vienna because he grew up in one of those Saxon villages in the Carpathians; we felt he understood the Germanic mindset. And then Kristina Urban was killed.
He expected promotion.
But he’s a simpleton, said Cerny, because the Ministry never planned to promote a hired gun-a half-educated Saxon thug-to the level of rezident. Then you arrived, with only minor Austrian experience, and Lochert’s pride… well, he couldn’t take it, could he?
If the Lieutenant General believes his story, why aren’t I in prison?
Why aren’t you dead, you mean. Cerny gripped his arm and whispered, Because you’ve got me, Brano. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.
He wiped the sweat off himself with a hand towel, and as he finished dressing, Mother stumbled to his bedroom door. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Where were you last night? Did you get any sleep?”
“Some. I’ve got to run.”
“Where?”
“To meet Captain Rasko.”
She leaned against the wall, stifling a yawn. “Why on earth are you seeing him this early?”
“There was a murder last night.”
“There was… what? ”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” He kissed her forehead.
Captain Rasko had not yet dressed. He asked Brano to make some coffee, then sprinted back to the bedroom. Brano picked through piles of dishes for the coffeepot and cleaned it thoroughly. There was a bag of ground beans in the cabinet.
Rasko straightened his tie as he drank. “This is better than my coffee.”
“I cleaned the pot.”
“Oh, is that the trick?”
Brano set down his cup and used a rag to wipe the counter clean. “You told me you hadn’t dealt with murder before. What kinds of crimes do you usually deal with?”
“Petty stuff. Fistfights and drunkenness. Thievery. Gambling-the boys here like Cucumber best-but I only become aware of gambling when it leads to fistfights or thievery. These guys are serious about their card games.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Had your breakfast yet?”
“I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
“Good. Because we’re going to see the body first.”
As they parked behind the doctor’s house, two small blond boys in pale blue pajamas ran out the back door, whistling clouds of breath into the cold air as they reached Rasko’s side. They called him “uncle” and held his legs as he tried to approach the back door, where the doctor, an old man in a white smock, stood smoking. Rasko rubbed the boys’ heads. “Juliusz, meet Major Brano Sev.”
Juliusz came down a step. “Sev? Iwona’s…?”
Brano nodded.
“From the Capital, right?”
“Yes.”
The doctor held out a damp hand but didn’t smile. “Pleased to meet you.” While the boys fought in their room, the men settled in the kitchen with coffee and cigarettes. Juliusz had picked up Jakob Bieniek’s body just before dawn and made a preliminary examination. “A savage. That’s who did it. I counted a hundred and thirty-four slices, but my eyes got tired toward the end. There are more.”
“Was it done there?” asked Brano.
“Eh?”
“Was he killed in the woods, or was his body brought there afterward?”
“The woods,” said the doctor. “Yes, in the woods. He got leaves in his hair-what little he has-while he was struggling. And when he was attacked he still had his shirt on. There were fibers in some cuts.”
Rasko looked at his hands. Brano took a final sip of coffee and stood up. “Shall we see the body?”
Juliusz had laid Bieniek on a table in a sunny room with large windows and white cabinets that held his equipment. One white napkin covered his face, another his genitalia. Between them, his stomach rose like a low mountain, etched, like his arms, with white marks, each between a couple of inches and half a foot long. The longer slices had split and puckered the flesh. All the blood had been washed away.
The doctor removed the face napkin and stepped back.
“How about that,” said Rasko. “He kind of looks like Comrade Sev, doesn’t he?”
The doctor bent over Bieniek’s white face, which was blemished where the gag had stretched over his lips and cheeks, then glanced back at Brano. “You know, you’re right.”
They were both right. Like Brano’s, Bi
eniek’s face was wide and round, with flat cheekbones, and he even had a mole on his left cheek, where Brano’s three moles lay. But unlike Brano, Bieniek was fat, his scalp was almost bald, and he had a thin beard that was more than a few days’ forgetfulness.
“Here,” said Juliusz. He opened a cabinet and took out a brown paper bag that he handed to Rasko. “These are the handkerchiefs used to keep him quiet. One in his mouth, the other around it.”
Rasko took the bag but did not open it.
“And these are his documents?” Brano pointed at a maroon passport on the table.
“Yes.”
Brano glanced at the passport photo-a cleanshaven version of the man on the table, smiling, with color in his cheeks-and slid it into his pocket. “Are we sure he died from the cuts?”
“I’d bet on it,” said Juliusz. “Once the carotid artery was hit, the fight was over.”
“Razor blade?”
“I’d bet on that, too.”
“Any thoughts on the assailant?”
The doctor blinked a few times. “Don’t know how many there were-it could have been a single energetic killer. But whoever it was, he didn’t know a thing about anatomy. Cutting that artery was dumb luck.”
“Fingerprints?”
The doctor inhaled. “Comrade Major, this isn’t the Capital.”
Brano looked at Rasko. “Do you have any questions?”
Captain Rasko was staring at Jakob Bieniek’s swollen ankles.
“Comrade Captain?”
His tongue danced inside his cheek. “No, no more questions.”
Jakob Bieniek’s house was on the edge of the center, another two-bedroom surrounded by ridged, frozen mud. Like Klara and Lucjan’s house, this one had been painted a Sanok white that the weather had quickly turned gray. There was no walkway, just a path of old boot prints leading to the locked front door. Rasko nodded at the window over the door handle. “Shall I?”
“Be my guest,” said Brano.
He shoved an elbow into the glass, knocked aside some loose pieces, then unlocked the door from the inside.
The place smelled sour, as if something were rotting in the back room, but it was only the smell of a shut-in who allowed his unwashed body to fester in a small, airtight space.
“What a shithole,” said Rasko.
Unlike Dijana Frankovic, Brano Sev did not believe in fate, but as he walked through Jakob Bieniek’s cluttered, musty living quarters, he thought that if fate had dealt him a different hand, this could easily have been him. The instinctual urge for solitude he shared with this dead milkman was a curse in a small town; it was punished by internal exile. Bieniek’s exile may have been chosen at first, after his wife’s death, but soon a whispered pact among the townsfolk had assured that he could not escape his sphere of silence. Brano had experienced that silence in the Capital, but unlike Bieniek, Brano had had Yalta Boulevard. Yalta had encouraged his hermetic nature; the Ministry rewarded the virtues of solitude and secrecy.
The furniture in the living room was threadbare, the kitchen worse than even Rasko’s. But the stink was centered in the bedroom, where greasy plates and filthy underwear were spread about. At the end of the bed, a small, cluttered desk looked out the front window, and beside the desk sat two cardboard boxes stuffed with papers.
While Rasko opened the window, Brano squatted and leafed through the boxes. At first he couldn’t decipher the quick scribbles. He brought a few pages to the desk for better light.
“What’s that?” asked Rasko.
Brano read aloud: “16 October 1966: Maria eats liver with potatoes on Mondays. She’s done it three weeks running, so that is a rule of thumb. She does it for strength, maybe, because on Monday afternoons Wiktor comes to visit and she has to clean the house afterward, before Krysztof returns.” He looked up. “Who are Maria and Krysztof?”
“The Rzepkas. Married. Live a couple streets away. Are all the pages like this?”
They were. The subjects changed, but the project did not. Jakob Bieniek had been keeping track of his neighbors with an unsettling eye for detail. He noted Lubomir Winieckim’s suspiciously brief grieving period after his wife Alina’s death, and before he’d been seen kissing the very pregnant Krystyna Knippelberg.
“I never realized he was actually crazy,” said Rasko.
Brano pulled out page after page of questionable activities-the Szybalskis, the Gargases, the Lisiewiczes. There was a method here, each sheet focused solely on one person, each comment preceded by a date. But the pages weren’t filed alphabetically; they were erratic, the excitement of a hermit’s secret knowledge leaving no time for order.
The disturbing sense of a missed fate swelled again. Not only did he share the reclusive nature of this dead man, the same face, too, but they shared the same profession. They were watchers and, each in his own way, judges.
“Some of this may be of use to you,” he said.
“Dirty laundry, that’s all it is.”
“I mean for the case. Jakob could have been blackmailing someone.”
“Of course!”
Brano placed a stack on the desk. “Why don’t you go into town and ask around for information? The townspeople won’t talk to me.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“And I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.”
Once Rasko was gone, Brano settled on the floor, legs crossed. He started through the pages, sometimes pausing on a familiar name, reading a line here and there, but continuing until, a little after noon, he found what he was looking for.
SOROKA, JAN
28 January 1967: A surprise. Jan Soroka walks in the main square as if he’s been here all his life. We all know (see K. Knippelberg-11 September 1966) he left his wife in the Capital, and now, 5 months later, he walks through Bobrka, smiling like a fool at everyone. When I passed him I remained silent to hide my surprise. I don’t know if he noticed… 30 January 1967: Overheard at the bar: The gambler Pavel Jast said Soroka’s been with a mistress these past months. A Dijana Frankovic, from Szuha. I never thought Soroka was that kind of man, but if nothing else my studies have shown me you don’t know who anyone is, ever… 3 February 1967: Another surprise. Jan’s wife and boy have arrived, everyone in his parents’ house. What is this? I’m beginning to doubt the story of the mistress. Jan and Lia are not, as you’d expect, fighting. Through their window they look in love. I’d find their reunion union touching if the suspicion of something larger wasn’t getting to me. Jan drove his father’s car to the train station today. A green Volga GAZ-21 was parked outside as well. I don’t know whose it was, but the plates were from Uzhorod… 6 February 1967: When Jan isn’t hiding inside his parents’ house, he walks the western road out of town and smokes in the fields. From my car I saw him talking to a cow. Insane? It’s possible. Perhaps I will speak with him. Perhaps I will not.
Brano got the Trabant from his mother’s house and drove through Bobrka, easily, as if he had nowhere to go. Just before the church he noticed the low gate and cream-colored two-story house, the tiled roof that needed repairs, the empty yard.
He turned around at the bus stop on the other side of the church and drove westward out of town, into the fields. Split-rail fences, half blown over by old storms, lined the northern side of the road, and occasional clusters of blank-faced cows appeared, a few stopping their meals to look at him. Then he spotted a figure coming over a low hill to the south, beyond the cows, where the earth rose into the base of a mountain. The figure was approaching the road, but Brano did not slow down. He continued over a second hill and, once out of sight, turned the car around and waited. He looked at his wristwatch, counting the minutes, then drove back slowly.
The man that walked alongside the road glanced back at him. Faint features, thinner than in his photo. Brano stopped beside him and rolled down his window. “Would you like a ride back into town?”
Jan Soroka’s surprise was evident in the quick growth of the eyes, the tension in the lips.
Jan looked at the empty path ahead of him, considering it.
“A long walk back,” said Brano. “Come on.”
Jan’s shoulders relaxed, as if he’d gotten rid of some weight. The bump in his long neck jumped when he spoke. “Thanks.” He had a high voice.
They drove for a minute without speaking. Jan seemed content to gaze out the window as if admiring the landscape.
“I’m Brano Sev, Iwona’s son. Aren’t you Jan Soroka?”
Jan continued looking out the window. “I think we each know who the other is, Major Sev.”
Brano felt momentarily as he had when his steering wheel had fallen into his lap in 1961. He feared he might swerve off the road.
“Why is that, Jan? Why would we know each other?”
Jan Soroka finally turned from the window, his eyes still damp from the cold winds. “Bobrka is small. There’s a whole communications network for each new visitor.”
“They don’t have a lot more to talk about.”
“Exactly what I mean.”
The village was coming into view. “Where have you been, Jan?”
“Just wandering. I do that a lot. To think.”
“I don’t mean now. I mean these last five months.”
Red fingers grew into his pale cheeks. “Haven’t you heard? I got involved with a crazy girl in another small town. I suppose I wanted a little excitement. But I love my wife, Comrade Major. I love my boy.”
“Dijana Frankovic,” said Brano.
Jan Soroka watched a collapsed barn pass.
“Funny, I used to know a Dijana Frankovic.”
“Not so funny. It’s a common enough name in the Serb villages.”
“But I didn’t know her here,” said Brano. “I knew her in Vienna.” He looked over in time to see Soroka turning his head fully away. “And besides, Szuha isn’t a Serb village.”
“I was misinformed.”
“You were. I’m not a major anymore, either.”
“No?”
“I work in a factory, assembling tractors.”
“Oh?” Jan didn’t look like he believed that.
“Have you heard about Jakob Bieniek?”
“Bieniek?”
36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3 Page 6