36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Then it must be true.”

  “Don’t kid me, Brano. You’re a romantic, just like the rest of us. You’ve found her again. Don’t tempt fate by screwing this up.”

  “You know what, Ludwig?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I just might do what you suggest.”

  The Austrian raised his whiskey. “I give a lot of useless advice, I know this. But with love I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You seem to.”

  Ludwig grinned. “Okay, Brano. Enough of that. Tell me what you and the great Filip Lutz have been talking about.”

  “A lot of things. Primarily him. He’s got a huge ego.”

  “That’s true. But he’s good at what he does.”

  “If what he does is being a slanderer.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “He talked about his interviews with exiles. I suspect he embellishes their stories before they make it into print.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because otherwise you won’t pad his bank account.”

  Ludwig’s grin spread over his face and his lips parted to let out one short laugh-Heh. “You really believe that?”

  “He’s got a new car, a Fiat.”

  Ludwig shrugged. “He’s just a smart capitalist. You know how much longer Lutz thinks your anachronistic system has left?”

  “Three years.”

  “What do you think of that?”

  “I think Filip Lutz is an optimistic man.”

  Ludwig crossed his arms over his chest. “You want to take a little walk? It’s a beautiful day.”

  Ludwig paid, took the receipt, and gave Brano his hat. They made themselves small to squeeze around the packed tables, and once they were outside, the Austrian asked Brano if he had a cigarette. Brano lit two. As they passed the flags of many nations fluttering in front of the Hotel Sacher, Brano said, “What’s on your mind?”

  Ludwig took a drag. “I just wanted to give you some advice.”

  “I thought you’d already done that.”

  “Not about love, Brano. I want to warn you not to escape anymore.”

  “We’ve been through this, haven’t we?”

  Ludwig didn’t say anything until they had turned onto Kartner Stra?e. “It’s different now. You have to realize that when I picked you up and then gave you that apartment, I did it of my own accord. My associates have never made a secret of their disagreement.”

  “What do they want you to do?”

  “They don’t care what deals I’ve made. They want you in prison, Brano. And they don’t want you to ever come out.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m not sure you do.” Ludwig tossed away his half-smoked cigarette. “I’ve had a few poor years in the service. Some mistakes have been mine, others were my responsibility. And when you eluded us a couple weeks ago, my associates reminded me of each mistake. I’ve had to fight hard to maintain our deal, to keep you out of prison. But if you leave again, it will be out of my hands.”

  “And what about you?”

  “What?”

  “What happens to you?”

  Ludwig frowned. “There’s an open desk in Accounting-I’ve been told this more times than I’d like to remember.”

  “Oh.”

  The Austrian patted Brano’s shoulder. “Just go see your girl and get out of my hair, okay?”

  Brano caught the number 38 tram north to Doblinger Hauptstra?e, got out, and paused, looking up. Hers was the concrete tower near the corner, up from the train overpass. It was noticeably plain in a city of Habsburg baroque. He waited with a small crowd for the light to cross the street. Once he reached her building, he glanced back as the sunburned man sneezed into a handkerchief. Brano entered the building.

  On a panel were three strips of buzzers above a speaker grille, FRANKOVIC halfway down the last row. He pressed it and waited.

  Through the glass doors behind him, the sunburned man took a small 35 mm camera from his trench coat and brought it to his eye.

  “Ja?” said the speaker. “Wer ist da?”

  He opened his mouth.

  “Hallo?”

  “Dijana?”

  A pause. Then his language. “Is you?”

  “ Pa da,” he said.

  The door buzzed, and he pushed through.

  He couldn’t remember if she was on the third floor or the fourth, so he took the stairs instead of the elevator, recalling the last time he’d taken these stairs, in August, following as she walked in her tight, flesh-colored pants, one hand reaching back, holding his. But unlike then, his knees tingled, and he couldn’t tell if he was moving fast or slow until his quick, shallow breaths began to make him dizzy. His palms were dripping.

  On the third floor, he heard her voice from above. “Brani? You is there?”

  He galloped the next flight to find her in her doorway, pink-cheeked, wearing jeans and a black turtleneck. Self-consciously, she pushed dark hair behind an ear, but, trimmed short, it wouldn’t stay.

  Somehow, he had forgotten that she was taller than he. Her hesitant smile, which brought out a dimple, was glued to her face as she kissed his cheeks. He wanted to squeeze her entire body but was afraid that would scare her.

  “So you really are here,” he said.

  “We talked, no? You was too drunk to remember?” Even her high voice seemed different.

  “I thought maybe you were a hallucination.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she said, then cocked her head. “You stop writing. I don’t know how is your life.”

  “Things didn’t go well for me back home. I thought it was a good idea to leave.”

  “To come here.”

  “To leave,” he said. “And what about you? How are the cards?”

  For an instant, she didn’t understand. Her eyebrows came together, and her lower lip rolled out. Then she smiled. “Oh, tarot? No, no, Brani. I’m not do that anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  She laughed. “You want we go in?”

  He laughed, too, easily, relieved.

  Her apartment was airy, with wood floors and old, heavily padded furniture. Essentially the same as August, except for a new beige chair, where, with one knee propped up to support an acoustic guitar, sat a young man with a mustache and blond curly hair long enough to cover his ears. He nodded at Brano.

  Brano nodded back.

  “Wolfgang,” said Dijana as she walked on to the bathroom. “Introduce yourself to my boyfriend.” She said this in German.

  Wolfgang’s face shifted, as if the bones beneath his skin had moved. He leaned the guitar against the arm of the chair, stood up, and stuck out a hand. “Gru? Gott.”

  “Gru? Gott,” said Brano.

  Wolfgang settled back down, opening a hand toward the sofa. Brano sat. They said nothing, half-smiling and listening to Dijana run water in the bathroom, humming. When she reappeared, she smiled at Brano. “You like my boyfriend?” she asked Wolfgang.

  The young man stood up. “So I guess today’s lesson is cut short, Dee?”

  Dijana nodded sternly. “Pa da.”

  The men shook hands again, and Dijana walked Wolfgang to the door, closed it after him, and turned to look at Brano on the sofa.

  He didn’t say anything at first, because her long body seemed unapproachable. There were so many things that Brano, the zbrka rising again, did not understand. He didn’t understand how he could be here in her apartment-how he ever could have been given access; he didn’t understand why she had sent away her handsome friend for him. He didn’t understand how she could be looking at him in that way. He supposed Cerny had always been right, and she was a spy. What else could explain her desire for an old man with a cold heart? But right now-right now, he didn’t care.

  She squatted beside him. “Wolfgang, he manage the bar where I work. Jazzklub Abel, on other side of canal, at Gro?e Mohrengasse. Maybe you hear of it?”

  Brano shook his head.

 
; “Easy work, I wait the table.” She shrugged. “A real job, no? But I like people what is there. Musicians. Folk music. You like?”

  “I don’t really know it.”

  “Wolfgang, he teach me guitar. Just little. And I’m thinking maybe it’s not bad idea I learn to sing. What you think?”

  She smiled hugely, waiting for his approval. He couldn’t say anything for a moment, because she was here, finally, with him. She smiled a lot-he’d forgotten that-and her teeth were large and clean and straight. He felt like he’d been drinking, but he hadn’t been.

  “I think it’s a great idea, Dijana.”

  “Dobro,” she said. Good.

  “And you’re finished with the tarot cards?”

  She nodded seriously.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s silly,” she said, standing again. “That’s something what you know. Okay, I thought maybe there is something in it. You know. Something like truth. But I change a lot since August. Da. First you come. Then Bertrand die. And tarot, it seem… I don’t know. Stupid. Wolfgang, he say to me about tarot, You know, Dijana, that is old world. Is true. This is new world.”

  “You’re brand-new.”

  “And my hair?” Hesitantly, she touched it. “You like my hair?”

  “I love it,” said Brano.

  They talked, and Brano slowly readjusted to the peculiar rhythms of her speech, the forgotten flow of her thoughts. She laughed regularly, and while in his career he often associated laughter with nervousness, this was not the case with Dijana. She simply found more things in this world funny than he did.

  As she told him more about her life, the job, the music, the friends, and even her developing interest in Buddhism, Brano realized that they were just as unlike as before, perhaps more so. Her evenings were spent in smoky music clubs discussing political hymns and peace marches and mysticism. His evenings were spent planning his survival. And she was young-even Cerny had pointed this out. A woman in her midtwenties was still jumping around the spectrum, trying to find something that would settle her nerves and guide her through the zbrka of modern life. She had left her own country behind, which only added to her need. The tarot cards hadn’t done it, so now she was throwing herself into the world of popular music and Eastern religion. That, no doubt, would not satisfy her either, and she would be faced with more years of dissatisfaction.

  He watched her face as she explained to him the idea behind reincarnation, and to avoid making an expression that betrayed his real opinion, he stopped listening and noticed how her cheeks puffed up when she spoke, her fingertips tapped the table, and her neck, just visible above her turtleneck, was very pale.

  “You know what?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You listening to anything I saying.”

  He remembered that that night in August she had often confused “anything” with “nothing.” He laughed, then she laughed. “You’re right,” he said.

  She stood up. “Is okay. But you must to go now.”

  “Go?”

  “ Pa da. I have things I must to do.”

  He patted his thighs and stood up, warmth rushing to his face. He started to look for his coat but realized he’d never taken it off. She walked him to the door. “Really, you are here?”

  “Really, I am.”

  Then she reached her arms around him, squeezed, and kissed him on the lips. She tasted of chewing gum, but he hadn’t seen her using any. Her lips parted, and he felt her large, strong teeth against his tongue, then her tongue entered his mouth. He held her tight until she let him go.

  “I not drunk this time, dragi. Yes, but not now, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding dumbly. “But when?”

  “I just-” she began. “Only not so fast. Okay?” When she smiled again her shoulders settled.

  Then she closed the door.

  When he left the building, Brano spotted the sunburned man putting away his camera. Brano caught his eye by waving and, inexplicably, blew the man a kiss.

  10 APRIL 1967, MONDAY

  Brano knew a little about the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations. Their primary work was using tourists to smuggle pamphlets and Beatles records into the East, where they tended to litter the corridors of the Hotel Metropol. Among the groups devoted to ending the communist experiment, they were low on the list of priorities. They were, like most emigre groups, more style than substance, only platforms to be heard from, because their new countries never listened. And so they spoke to their own kind, received applause, and returned to their empty apartments rejuvenated. The Committee was different in that it was formed not by exiles but by American Christian fundamentalists who plucked their workers from the exile communities.

  The Committee’s Vienna branch lay in the Innere Stadt, part of a Habsburg complex on Schulerstra?e, behind St. Stephen’s Cathedral. He had expected something farther out, in the cheaper districts, but at number 9 he found the small bronze plaque with a symbol of a sun rising over CLCN INTERNATIONAL

  He pressed the buzzer.

  “Hallo?”

  Brano leaned close to the speaker. “I’m here for the Filip Lutz lecture.”

  The door hummed.

  The office was on the second floor, and as he climbed the stairs Brano tried without success to push Dijana from his mind. It irritated him that he had been too confused to leave his phone number, but he assured himself that she was resourceful enough to track him down when she was ready, when she had done those unknown things that were required of her first.

  There was another plaque on the open door that spelled out the name of the organization, above a Latin motto: IGITUR QUI DESIDERAT PACEM, PRAEPARET BELLUM. Whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.

  In the foyer, beside a rack overflowing with coats, stood a small woman with thick eyebrows. She pumped his hand energetically. “So glad to meet you,” she said in childlike English. “So glad you could make it! I am Loretta Reich, the Committee’s press agent, and you-oh!” She put a hand to her mouth. “I mean, is English okay?”

  He nodded. “I’m Brano Sev. Filip invited me.”

  “A friend of Filip’s!” She placed a finger on Brano’s forearm. “Well, we’re just tickled pink he agreed to do this for us. You know, without Filip we’d hardly get a thing done around here. He’s invaluable. Oh!” She looked around. “Let’s get you out of that coat and get you something to drink.” Then she laughed, showing all her teeth.

  Loretta brought him into the large main room, where twenty people milled around rows of metal folding chairs, drinking. Lutz was beside a tall window that overlooked Schulerstra?e, entertaining a semicircle of admirers, both men and women. Others looked American-tall young men with tans and tailored suits they wore with ease. One stood in a corner quietly talking to an old man with a white mustache and beard-the shadow with the Volkswagen who liked to sit outside his apartment. The old man noticed him looking, then gave a smile and a half nod.

  “I hope you don’t mind zinfandel-the cabernet’s all gone!” Loretta laughed as she handed Brano a glass. “These people know how to drink!”

  “How long have you been here in Vienna?”

  Loretta tilted her head. “Well, I’ve only been here since November, but the office… we started it three years ago, in 1964.” Then she took a breath. “We do a lot of good work.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anticommunist seminars, mostly. Oh, we’ve had some success in the Austrian universities, particularly the Christian schools. And we’ve lobbied members of the Austrian and West German governments to include anticommunist education within their national curriculums.”

  “You’re not recruiting again, Loretta?” Lutz tapped her shoulder with a cylinder of papers, which seemed to be her cue-she moved on. In his other hand was a glass. “Brano, glad you could make it.”

  “You ready to speak?”

  “Trying desperately to get drunk first.” He looked back over the crowd and took a sip
. “See anyone you know?”

  “A few familiar faces. Who’s that guy with the beard?”

  Lutz squinted at the corner, where the white-haired man was still talking with his American friend. “Oh, that’s Andrew. Andrew Stamer. Left our country a while ago. Now I suppose you can call him an American. One of the founding members of the Committee.”

  “He’s not Austrian?”

  Lutz shook his head as Brano gazed at the old man, reviewing the two times he’d seen him outside the Web-Gasse apartment. Not one of Ludwig’s men, then, but a lone crusader who had somehow learned who and where Brano was, and was trying to reeducate him with cheap pamphlets.

  Lutz noticed him staring. “You probably don’t want to meet him unless you’re planning to convert. He can be very persuasive. Most of these Christians are.”

  “So you’re saying this isn’t a front for the CIA?”

  Surprise slid into Lutz’s face. “I keep forgetting what you used to do.”

  Brano cocked his head, as if agreeing.

  “Which reminds me, you still need to tell me your story. Escape from the Crocodile needs some tales of adventure.”

  As the crowd swelled, Brano recognized more faces from his Vienna files and heard accented English everywhere-Hungarian, Polish, Yugoslav, Czech, even Russian. They met and hugged and kissed cheeks, as if part of a secret society. But there was nothing secret about any of them. They all wore their faith on their sleeve; they were apparatchiks for their most precious word: liberty.

  Ersek Nanz arrived a few minutes later to harangue Brano for not spending more time at the Carp. Brano shrugged and went for another glass of zinfandel. Beside the bottles were stacks of the Committee’s pamphlets with such titles as What Is Communism? and Watch Out! There’s a Marxist Behind You! and Christ’s Words on Profit. On the wall was a line of bronze plaques mounted on wood; on each was a name and a year.

  Loretta came up. “You like our wall of martyrs?”

  Brano squinted at the names. There was the man his sister praised, Father Jacek Wieslowski, as well as Yuli Daniel, a Russian writer who had been given five years’ imprisonment last year for publishing anti-Soviet works in the West. At the end was the old head of the Office of Policy Coordination who had killed himself, Frank Wisner.