36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3

by Olen Steinhauer

  “I assume so. There was never any word from him.”

  Lutz, after a moment, wondered about any ex-wives or scattered children and was visibly irritated by Brano’s negative answer. “Something,” he said. “I need something more. A story doesn’t make a reader cry just because the main character gets into trouble. Something in the character must hook the reader, make him care. Make him think this guy’s not just another state security officer who got uncomfortable. What’s your hook?”

  Brano stared at him, opened his mouth, and closed it. “Why do you want to make your readers cry?”

  Instead of taking the number 38 tram north, he returned to Web-Gasse and telephoned Dijana to say he would see her tomorrow. “I just need a night alone.”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “I didn’t say that, Dijana. You know I like it there.”

  “Okay,” she said, then paused. “I think I can to see what you mean. You will be alone?”

  “Of course, Dijana.”

  “Poljubac,” she said. Kiss.

  “Poljubac.”

  He turned on the television. He did not want to be alone, and he didn’t want to be without her. More than that, though, he didn’t want to treat her coldly, and he knew he would. He wanted to ignore the photographs he’d hidden behind his refrigerator but couldn’t. Dijana was, at the very least, an informer for the Russians, who never trusted their satellites to do anything independently.

  No, he would not see Dijana today, and perhaps not tomorrow, either. He had a man to kill.

  But Filip Lutz, though he might have a certain misdirected talent for writing, was no organizer. He was the kind of man one used as a mouthpiece for an operation, or as a front. You put him in public so that attention would be drawn away from what was really going on. The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations was probably being used similarly. In public, they could be seen as the fools of reaction, while their quieter members, perhaps the old man Andrew, worked steadily in the background, with utmost seriousness.

  Filip Lutz was simply unable to head a conspiracy that aimed at bringing down any government. He spoke too much; he lived too much on his pride.

  Still, Yalta-and therefore Cerny-believed this so strongly that it had arranged a byzantine conspiracy to place Brano at Lutz’s side, in order for him to kill Lutz.

  He’d killed enough men in his time not to be dissuaded by the act itself. Murder is just a governmental tool, be it assassination or war. More than once, Brano had been called on to execute old comrades, a few he was even fond of; but in each instance he had understood the inevitability of that final option. Mokrii rabota — wet work-was never done without justification.

  Perhaps the only justification he needed was that he had been given a clear, unambiguous order from Yalta Boulevard. There was a time when that had been enough.

  14 APRIL 1967, FRIDAY

  Day 26. The Subject has altered his schedule over the last two weeks. Beginning with visits to the Carp (suggested by our own people-see report of 30 March), then a party at the residence of the Italian ambassador-hosted by Ersek Nanz, Norwegian publisher-and a surprise: his visit to the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations for a lecture by Filip Lutz.

  This agent’s perception of the Subject’s relationship with Lutz began as suspicion. Considering Lutz’s role as a thorn-albeit a small thorn-in the side of the socialist world, any new figure in his life is examined carefully, and the Subject is a security risk of the highest order. But after a series of meetings between Lutz and the Subject, this agent has become less suspicious. First, at Ersek Nanz’s party, the Subject was seen by sources sharing a hashish pipe with Lutz (which, we now understand, was one catalyst for the Subject’s erratic actions in the Volksgarten that same night-see Day 20). Later, as mentioned above, the Subject attended one of Lutz’s strongly anticommunist lectures. (He did, however, leave early, but only at the insistence of Fraulein Dijana Frankovic, Yugoslav, who invited him back to her apartment.) Yesterday, he visited Lutz at his local cafe, the Landtmann. The subject of their conversation was not verified, but from this agent’s vantage point at the window, it seemed extremely personal. And today, the Subject returned to the Landtmann for another conversation with Lutz.

  This agent’s assessment is that the Subject is genuinely interested in Lutz-in his stories and his persona, which we all know can be very intoxicating. Considering the Subject’s admitted depression after his arrival, it seems he has found in Lutz a possible, if ironic, friend. The additional entrance of Dijana Frankovic into his life can also be taken as a positive move, for the Subject will not consider himself, as he put it the night of Ersek Nanz’s party, “alone.”

  Lutz had been talking for an hour, fat hands spread across the table as he recounted his previous night with the interpreter from Ersek’s party, who had come to the Carp at his invitation. He’d manhandled her to another bar, where they wouldn’t be interrupted, then kissed her in a dark corner. She wouldn’t come home with him, but, he admitted, perhaps that was best, for on their walk to his car, she placed her hands on her knees and vomited on the sidewalk.

  “And you? How’s she treating you? Dijana-that’s her name?”

  “Very well, Filip.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You’re not allowed to be discreet with me, my man.”

  Brano ran his tongue over his teeth. “Tell me about your big project and I’ll learn to be indiscreet as well.”

  Lutz cradled his water glass below his chin. “Something’s gotten into you, Brano, and I’m going to figure it out if it kills me.”

  “Only curiosity. Does it have something to do with those American fundamentalists?”

  “The Committee?”

  “Yes, the fundamentalists.”

  Lutz pursed his lips, half-considering. “You know the difference between fundamentalists and your run-of-the-mill Christians? They don’t half-believe. If something is true, it’s goddamned true all the time. You’ve got to respect their lack of moral ambiguity.”

  “I know some Marxists like that. How long have you been involved with them?”

  “A few years now. They do great work in the schools.”

  “Loretta told me. Is Sasha Lytvyn working with them, too?”

  “Yeah, Sasha mentioned he knew you. Then he stopped coming to the Carp.” He shook his head. “No-he’s too scattered to join any organization.”

  “Did he tell you how he knew me?”

  “Just that it was a long time ago.”

  Brano looked at him a moment. He said, “Sasha parachuted into the country in ’fifty-two. He was part of an American operation to commit sabotage behind the Curtain. I caught him, then I interrogated him.” Brano waited a second, then added, “You could say I tortured him.”

  Lutz wiped his mouth. “No, he didn’t tell me that.”

  “What about the old man I saw at your lecture? He had a white beard.”

  “Andrew?” Lutz began tapping the table unconsciously.

  “Yes,” said Brano. “Andrew Stamer. American?”

  Lutz nodded, tapping away. “He’s American now. He escaped back in the forties. Smart guy!”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  Lutz rocked his head as he spoke. “He had some kind of business back in New York or New Jersey. Laundromats, I think. He made his money and retired early. That was smart, too. Then he helped Dr. Rathbone start the Committee. He told me he wanted to give something back.”

  “He’s one of the quieter ones, isn’t he?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean he doesn’t give lectures like you do.”

  “I think his official title is international coordinator.”

  “A grand title,” said Brano. He drank the last of his coffee and set the cup down. “But listen, I actually could be of help to your project. We both know I have a few talents.”

  Lutz stopped tapping and stretched his feet beneath the
table. He cleared his throat. “Take a rest, okay? You’ve got every reason to relax a while and just be satisfied. You’re in the West. You’ve got a girl who’s half your age. Hell, you’re friends with me! But learn some patience, Brano. Trust me. Next month the world will look like an entirely different place.”

  “And I’ll have you to thank for it?”

  “If you want to see it that way. But what about you? You’re more relaxed than when you arrived-that’s something. She’s good in bed, is she?”

  Brano blinked at him.

  “My God, man, you’re blushing! Kellner!” he called, snapping the air. “A bottle of Veuve Cliquot!”

  A waiter halfway down the room looked up from a table and nodded.

  “So tell me everything, you dirty bastard.”

  “I’ll only say I’m very fond of this girl.”

  “You should be,” said Lutz. “Men our age don’t get this every day. Watch out you don’t get a heart attack in the middle of it.”

  Brano and his sunburned shadow left the Landtmann an hour later, taking the tram back to Web-Gasse. Half a block away from number 25, the shadow paused, and when Brano looked he saw why. She was standing outside his door. She strode up to him in a short coat, then wrapped her arms around his neck. “Dragi, I am missing you. You are hungry?”

  “I can be.”

  “Dobro. I take you to dinner.”

  Although he didn’t want to go there, the only local place he knew was the Liebengaste, and so, with their sunburned companion just outside the window, they settled at a table. The waitress who brought the menus nodded at him, remembering his last visit. He ordered schnitzels for them both, then, after the waitress had left, leaned toward Dijana. “I’m sorry, did you want schnitzel?”

  “I don’t care, Brani. I just want to seeing you.”

  He lit her cigarette and tried to avoid looking out the window.

  “Last night,” she said as she took a drag, “I was at Jazzklub Abel. Not for the work, but a drink. Poor Abel-you should see him. He is very sad. But he asking me about you. He say, What this Brano Sev do?”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “I can’t to say you was a spy, of course. I say I don’t know. Something with business. And then I start to thinking-what I know about you?” She shook her head. “Nothing. I know you was a spy, but that is not information. I know you was friend with Bertrand, maybe you is dangerous. I know you go back to your home and you start to writing me, then you stop. I not know why. I not know even if you have wife-do you have wife?”

  “No,” said Brano. “I don’t have a wife.”

  “Then what?” Her voice rose and her cheeks turned pink. “I know I am a good girl, I not asking you questions because I have respect for the privacy. I waiting for you to tell me what you want to tell me. But you tell me nothing, Brani. I start to thinking maybe I’m stupid. You come again to Vienna and say nothing why you stop to writing.” She placed her elbows on the table. “Are you understand me?”

  He moved his fork to sit beside his knife, then stared at it. He said, “I stopped writing to you because I was told you were a spy.”

  When he looked at her, the flush had gone from her cheeks. “What you said?”

  “There are photographs,” he explained. “Photographs of you with men from the KGB. In your apartment.”

  “Boli me kurac,” she said, which was one of the few Serb phrases he knew-essentially, “my dick hurts,” meaning that this was simply not to be listened to. She said, “You people, you are terrible.”

  Then she dropped back in her chair and crossed her arms. Brano was overcome by an unexpected desire to apologize. He hadn’t taken those pictures, but the pictures had come from his world. He was the kind of man who did this, who set up cameras with long lenses to see into a young woman’s private world. It was his world that made such things acceptable. While he was thinking this, the waitress brought their food. She seemed to notice the awkward silence, in which Dijana, her face reddening again, stared at her schnitzel with something like terror.

  Once the waitress was gone, Dijana straightened again and leaned toward him, over her plate. She whispered, “Listen, Brano Sev. I don’t must justify what I am doing to you, not to no one. This is why I not live in Yugoslavia. They ask me always questions. Dijana, why you stop with your school? Why you not talk with your friends no more? Why, Dijana, your father is so sick-maybe you think he should not been in jail? They ask me, Dijana, why you want live someplace what is not your home? You are not patriot?” Her eyes were very big. “This is why I go. Because I will not to have interrogations no more. And not from the man what is my lover.”

  Brano nodded into the fist holding up his chin. “If I were the manager of a club-if I were Abel-then you would be right, I’d have no need to ask this. But I’m not a restaurateur. I spent all my life doing intelligence work, and if you were a spy, it would matter to me. I don’t want to think you’re using me.”

  “Using?”

  He nodded.

  “Too long,” she said. “For too long you doing this, you don’t see what is good no more.” She waited, but he didn’t answer. So she shrugged and said, “You want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  She touched the edge of her plate. “Why you think Bertrand buy me apartment? Because he love me too much? I was thinking this at one time, but no. He use me for place to meet with his friends. Those Russians. Of course I did not know they was KGB-he telled me nothing. But it’s not surprise me. He meet with them and I make coffee for them, and then he ask me not to stay there. He send me out to the store so he can to talk.”

  Brano folded his hand over his forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Why I should tell you?” She shook her head. “It’s not your business. And anyway, I sweared to him I will tell nobody. He make me swear. He was afraid Lutz will find out.”

  “Lutz?”

  “Pa da. Filip Lutz. They was friends, together all the time. Me, too, we all had good time together. In that time we was at the Carp. But Bertrand, he was scared from Lutz-he say if Lutz find out he is with Russians, then he is dead man.” She frowned then, momentarily confused. “You think maybe Lutz, he find out? He kill Bertrand?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Brano. “What was Bertrand doing with the Russians?”

  “I don’t know. Just talk. He meet them three times what I know of. In my apartment. But I don’t know what they was doing-I am no spy.”

  “Wait.” Brano tried to think through the fresh accumulation of zbrka. “You and Bertrand and Filip were friends at that time.”

  “ Da. And that terrible Ersek Nanz, too, you know. But after Bertrand die I stop going to the Carp. It depressing. Anyway, I wanted to be with you, not in Vienna. You remember?” Finally, a brief smile.

  “I remember.”

  “And you was thinking I am spy!”

  Brano rubbed his scalp. “I wasn’t sure, but I suspected.”

  “You still suspecting?”

  “No,” said Brano. Then he called to the waitress for a bottle of wine.

  15 APRIL 1967, SATURDAY

  She didn’t have to be at the Jazzklub Abel until one, so they spent the morning in her apartment lazily, eating and making love, until a headache crept up on him. She gave him aspirin and boiled tea.

  Brano could think of a hundred different ways to punch holes in the story she’d told him. For any good operative there were many layers of cover, each more convincing than the next. The thing that worried him most was her acceptance. She knew that he had worked for state security all his life, yet she had decided to simply believe that his life’s work was now over. Her father had been sent to a prison because of men like him, and she had left her country because of those same men. She had found refuge in the West and then, inexplicably, had chosen a lover from that world.

  Brano found himself thinking over his tea that even if she were telling him the truth, he would never be able to accept it complete
ly. He was, as she had pointed out, terrible.

  “You are cold again.”

  “What?”

  She pulled her robe over her shoulder. “I can see when you, your head, it is far away.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s the way I am.”

  She grunted and reached for her tea. “Pa da. Is what I am learning.”

  In the afternoon he walked her to the Marienbrucke, which crossed the Danube Canal into the Second District, where the Jazzklub Abel lay.

  “Why you not come with me?” she asked. “You can to meet Abel.”

  “I don’t think Abel wants to meet me.”

  “Why not? He’s not boy.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to meet him.”

  “Dragi,” she said, and kissed his cheeks. “You is not so cold after all.”

  He smiled.

  “And your head? How is it?”

  “It hurts.”

  She straightened the lapels of his jacket and kissed his forehead, then whispered, “I don’t want to making your head more bad, but there is a man behind you what is watching us.”

  “Does he have a sunburn?”

  “You mean his face?”

  “ Da,” he said.

  “Yes, is very bad.”

  “He’s just watching me, don’t worry.”

  “Who he is?”

  “He’s Austrian.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding and looking over his shoulder. “He is always with you?”

  “Always. To be sure I’m not getting into trouble.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I make stupid choice for a man, no?”

  “Yes, Dijana. You made a terrible choice.”

  She snorted a laugh, kissed him again, then headed off. He watched her cross the steel bridge, waiting until she was just out of sight, before turning back.

  As usual, Filip Lutz was at his back table, surrounded by soiled cups and saucers, and a full ashtray. Ersek Nanz was there, too, leisurely stretched out in his chair, listening to his friend’s lecture. Through the windows, Brano’s shadow wrote something in a notepad.