36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3

by Olen Steinhauer

  During his walk from the hotel to here, he’d gone through that dream again, but critically, picking it apart, analyzing it. There was only one flaw he could find, but it brought down everything: What would the lies, and a mind like his, corrupted from a young age, do over the years to a woman who could not be taken apart, who did not calculate and scheme? On the Marienbrucke the answer came to him: They would ruin her.

  He said, “There’s something I have to tell you first.”

  “ Da,” she said. “I know. You is a spy for your country. You tell me that.”

  “There’s more,” he said. “You have to know this.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, her face very serious. “I am on the ready.”

  What he wanted to do now, more than anything, was to come up with some innocuous fiction-that he had no money, or that he was married. Or even the simple truth that he was leaving. But despite the sometimes comical effect of her grammatical blunders, Dijana Frankovic was the most serious of women. She had spent the last years rebuilding her life from nothing and would not accept half measures. Her decisions-whether her decision to be with him or her decision to take on a low-paying waitress job because she’d uncovered the fraud of her previous career-were absolute. She had more integrity than anyone else in this cold city, and she deserved the truth. So he said, “Bertrand. I was involved in his death.”

  She let go of him. “You kill Bertrand?”

  “No,” he said, “but I arranged it. I believed at the time that he was selling information. He worked for us-for me-and I thought he was selling our secrets to the West. It was a mistake. I was wrong. But I had reason to believe it. There was a reason, it seemed, at the time.”

  He was babbling, so he stopped. Her expression was more like surprise than anger, and perhaps that’s why he clarified it for her.

  “I ordered his execution.”

  Footsteps clattered behind him. Two young men-Wolfgang and another long-haired friend-followed by Abel. They all nodded hello as they passed.

  “I must to working,” said Dijana. She brought a hand to her mouth, the nail of her thumb caught between her teeth.

  “I had to tell you.”

  “ Da,” she said, staring at some point in the air between them. “Thank you for your honestly. But I must to working.”

  She turned away; and he, feeling as if he were at that party again, stoned, wanting nothing more than to keep this remarkable illusion, reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  With more speed than he would have expected, she spun around and struck his face with her open hand.

  “Get away from me, Brano Sev.”

  28 APRIL 1967, FRIDAY

  Brano raised the melange to his lips, sniffing the frothed milk sprinkled with cinnamon, but found no scent. It was fatigue, he knew, the result of a night in an uncomfortable bed, reviewing each moment leading up to that still-sore bump on his head. He drank the coffee quickly, feeling it scald his throat, then motioned to the waiter for another. He lit a cigarette.

  It was shocking, the amount of abuse his poor body had survived.

  He’d been in Austria over two months now, but it felt like two years. Last night he’d replayed all those people in an endless loop. Lutz and Nanz, Ludwig and Franz. Monika at her eternal bar, and even the pitiful Sasha Lytvyn. His father was no longer just a chipped front tooth, and Dijana-she was so much more than the memory of a single night that had kept him warm at the Pidkora People’s Factory those final months of last year.

  The waiter placed a fresh melange on the table and took the empty cup. He smiled at Brano, then walked away.

  Should he have told her? There were moments last night, tangled in his wet sheets, when he had been sure that with those few words he had killed any possibility of his own happiness. Now, bringing the cup to his lips, that conviction returned.

  No lakeside house, no acoustic guitar. No charming sentence structures and no more desire.

  He’d once believed that those who fled socialism were opportunists, and perhaps that was true of him as well. Dijana was an opportunity to have something that his own country had been unable to give him.

  And what was left to him now? An assassination, and then the possibility of a firing squad.

  A clock on the wall told him it was nine.

  He paid and started down the busy street, following the stone wall of the Schonbrunn grounds. He touched the spot on the back of his head, then lit another cigarette.

  Cerny had once said that young men were ideal for assassination. They didn’t overthink. For them, the only worry is their own safety. Will they be able to get in, do the job, and make it out again? Unlike old men, they don’t concern themselves with the whys and the repercussions, as Brano found himself doing as he approached the front gate.

  The colonel’s reasoning was valid enough. Lutz’s death would hold the Ministry wolves at bay until they could uncover the mole. The Lieutenant General, in particular, was waiting for the opportunity to finish what he’d started in August. This time, as he’d said, a factory job would be just a dream.

  Brano paused in front of the unbearably regal palace, then followed a crowd of tourists around the left side, to enter the gardens.

  Filip Lutz was connected to a conspiracy to undermine socialism. He had no doubt about this. But Lutz was, like Brano, a pawn. His death would not frighten the surviving conspirators-Andrezej Sev and the unknown Ministry figure-into inaction. Lutz’s only value was the information he carried in his head. Which meant that the only reasonable course of action was to make him talk. And then, if necessary, kill him.

  He walked down the long stretch of garden leading behind the palace to the Neptune Fountain as he considered his phrasing, how he would explain this simple fact to Cerny. They could return to the Capital with enough information to salvage their position.

  At the end of the Great Parterre he turned left, trees rising on both sides. The tourists thinned here, and up ahead he could see the imitation antiquity of the Roman Ruins.

  By the time he reached the half-buried columns and worn arches and started walking around the pool filled with shattered fragments of lost splendor, he believed he had assembled the correct argument. That conviction only accentuated his surprise when he reached the hidden side of the pool and found Cerny with one knee in the dirt, a pistol equipped with a silencer in his hand, looking down on Filip Lutz. Lutz lay facedown at the edge of the water with a hole in the back of his skull.

  Cerny looked up, his face inert. He wiped his mustache. When he spoke his voice was almost a whisper. “Brano,” he said, then looked back at Lutz’s body. “You’re here.”

  “You’ve already done it.”

  “The first one didn’t,” Cerny said. “The first one didn’t kill him. It was in the stomach. So I had to do it again.” The hand on his thigh shook. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

  “He came early.”

  Cerny rose to his feet and wiped dirt from his knees. “Yes.” He blinked a few times. He rubbed his eyes.

  Something smelled strange here. Sweet. “He would have been more use to us alive.”

  Cerny gazed at the body. “I don’t know.” He looked past Brano, and Brano followed his gaze through the underbrush, but they were alone. Cerny’s face was very red as he stepped back and leaned against a tree. “I haven’t been in the field for over a decade, do you realize that? I send you guys out here all the time, but I forget it’s the hardest job in the world.”

  Brano nodded.

  “I did it for you, One-Shot. For both of us.” He took a long, loud breath through his nose and tapped his head against the bark. “I forgot.”

  “Forgot what?”

  Brano looked at his red face, which was covered in sweat.

  “Comrade Colonel?”

  The colonel bit his lower lip and reached into a pocket. “I forgot.” His hand came out holding a long syringe. “Jesus, Brano. I don’t think I can do it.” He slid, panting, down the tree as Brano ran over to him
and took the syringe. In the same pocket he found a glass bottle of insulin and began. The colonel fell to the side, trying to pull out his shirt. Brano filled the syringe with insulin, then held it up to the light, squeezing, until all the air was out.

  “ Christ,” muttered Cerny.

  Brano tugged the colonel’s shirt out of his pants and gripped the ample fat around his waist, which was cold and wet. Then he plunged the needle in, trying to ignore the dead body lying just behind him.

  He waited for the colonel to recover, then helped him back through the gardens, out the front of the palace, to the car park where Cerny’s diplomatic Mercedes waited. Some tourists watched, and a Frenchman offered assistance, which Brano declined. The colonel took the wheel but didn’t start the ignition. His breaths were heavy.

  “It’s all right,” said Brano. “You’re not expected to do fieldwork. It has to be difficult.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Cerny patted Brano’s knee with a weak hand. He took a deep breath. “But I’ve learned a few things. Since we last talked.”

  “What?”

  “My contacts,” he said, then cleared his throat. “My contacts have made some progress back in the Capital. During the months you’ve been in Vienna, one officer is on record as having made more than twenty calls to speak with our dear departed friend Josef Lochert.”

  “Who?”

  “Take a guess.”

  The answer slipped from his mouth without reflection. “The Comrade Lieutenant General. Who also ordered Lutz’s execution.”

  Cerny nodded. “You know what’s going to happen when we get to the embassy, don’t you?”

  “I have some idea.”

  “I’m not sure you do,” he said. “I know you killed Lochert in self-defense, but as far as Major Romek’s concerned, you’re a murderer. And probably a double agent.” He frowned, as if realizing something else. “He’s going to want to interrogate you, and it won’t be easy. There’s nothing I can do about that. I don’t know who I can trust.”

  Brano nodded.

  “I’ll tell the Ministry you took care of Lutz, but they won’t believe that until the Austrians print his death in the newspaper. They know how loyal I am to you.”

  Brano didn’t answer, and the colonel started the car. He drove slowly.

  “What about your father?”

  “What about him?”

  “He wants you to defect, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Father and son, but so different.” He smiled. “Irina used to say that children always act the same as their parents. Either they do it for the same beliefs, or they reverse those beliefs but commit themselves in exactly the same way.”

  Brano nodded as Cerny leaned into a turn.

  “Listen, One-Shot. I’m worried about you.”

  They were driving east toward the Ringstra?e. A light ahead of them turned red, and Cerny slowed. Brano said, “I don’t have any choice. I have to go to the embassy and tell them everything I know.”

  “I can tell them everything,” the colonel said as he rolled to a stop. He turned to Brano. “There’s no need for you to return if you don’t want to. You’ve done your service to the state. You’ve earned this right more than anyone. I can delay a search for a day or so, but you have to make the decision now. Before this light turns green.”

  Brano gazed at the dashboard. “Leave?”

  “You killed Lutz before I arrived, then left. I never saw you. But now, Brano. It’s your choice.”

  Brano put his hand on the door latch. “What about my family?”

  “I can protect them, Brano. No problem.”

  The colonel’s pink face was very serious. Brano nodded but took his hand off the latch. The yellow light came on below the red. Cerny sighed.

  At Ebendorferstra?e, Brano spotted Ludwig’s gray Renault but couldn’t see the man inside. They stopped at the iron gate, where a guard checked both their papers. When Brano rolled down the window and handed over his real passport, he glanced back at the Renault. The crew-cut Austrian stared at him a second before fumbling for his radio.

  A short paved driveway led around the side of the building, and they got out together. Through the front door they arrived in a foyer with a bulletin board covered in notices for upcoming symposiums on international peace and, in front of them, a desk below the bronze crest of a hawk with its wings folded into its side.

  “Good afternoon, Silvia.”

  A petite woman with thick black hair smiled at Cerny. “Hello, Comrade Colonel.”

  “Do you have the plane schedules?”

  While Cerny leaned over the desk and discussed flight arrangements, Brano wandered to the bulletin board and read a warning, drafted on Yalta Boulevard, about enemy intelligence officers.

  WARNING SIGNS: 1. UNPROVOKED FRIENDLINESS

  2. INTEREST IN YOUR PRIVATE LIFE

  3. TENDENCY TO AGREE TOO QUICKLY WITH YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE IMPERIALIST THREAT

  The notice ended with a final thought:

  THE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY INSTIGATOR OF IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION SEEKS TO DESTROY WHAT THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD HAVE BUILT WITH THEIR OWN BLOOD — VIGILANCE IS THE ONLY DEFENSE!

  “Comrade Major Sev?”

  Brano turned to face a thin man whose eyes bulged from a chronic glandular problem. He was the Ministry representative in the embassy, responsible for the staff’s political education. “Comrade Major Romek, it’s good to see you again.”

  Major Nikolai Romek spoke with a slight quiver. “Comrade Major, would you come with me?”

  “Why?”

  “So we may discuss your adventures.”

  Cerny hurried over from the desk. “Comrade Romek, I’ve already debriefed Comrade Sev.”

  “I understand,” he said, then shrugged. “I’m afraid, though, that I’ve been asked to repeat the procedure. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Who ordered this?” asked Cerny.

  “The Comrade Lieutenant General.”

  The colonel gave Brano a look. “All right, but don’t take too much time. We’re flying out in the morning.”

  Romek smiled. “Of course, Comrade Colonel.”

  29 APRIL 1967, SATURDAY

  Although there were no windows in his cell, he was sure that by now the plane home had left. Romek, with the assistance of a guard, had brought him downstairs to an empty office with a lock on the outside of the door, asked him to take a chair-there was one on each side of a table-then left and locked the door. Someone had turned off the lights after a few hours, and Brano climbed on the table to catch up on his sleep. He woke to a bright room.

  The walls were white and clean. He couldn’t remember if they had someone to clean up after each interview session, or if, as at Yalta Boulevard, they simply repainted such rooms once a week to cover the blood.

  In other circumstances he would not have been afraid. Although he and Major Romek had had their differences, Romek was in all ways an officer of the state, a simple man who had devoted himself to that training-school creed of living by his orders. But now, his orders came from Yalta Boulevard, specifically from the Lieutenant General.

  Major Romek arrived, followed by a squat, heavy man with a black beard who stood silently in the corner. Romek sat behind the table, and Brano took the seat opposite him.

  “Brano, I can tell you I was surprised when I heard you’d walked in here. I thought we’d lost you.” The quiver had left his voice.

  “As you can see, Comrade Major, I didn’t run away.”

  Romek smiled. “Before we get started, though, let me tell you that I’ve always admired your work. Last year, if you remember, I was upset that you questioned my security in this building. You had my men sweep the offices and, upon finding microphones, gave me quite a reprimand. At the time, I took this personally. I did. But later I realized that you were right. So, before we begin, I want to tell you that I bear no ill will toward you.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that.”

  Romek s
cratched the corner of a bulging eye. “But since then, the world has become a little more complicated, hasn’t it? You attacked Josef Lochert in Augustyes, he was open with us here at the embassy about what you’d done to him-and after returning home you murdered an innocent worker and have since finished what you began with Lochert. You’ve spent a lot of time in this city with known counterrevolutionaries-the moderately famous Filip Lutz, as well as a whole cast of curiosities connected to the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations, which we believe to be a front for the CIA. Do you deny any of this?”

  “I did not attack Josef Lochert last year, nor did I kill Jakob Bieniek. But the rest is true.”

  “Better than I expected,” said Romek.

  “I came here of my own free will.”

  “Free will.” Romek grunted, as if this were funny. “I suppose you did. But now, what I need from you is complete and utter honesty. Forget about the outside world. There are prisons and work camps out there, but they have nothing to do with what we are doing in here. What I want from you is the whole story.”

  So Brano Sev began with August 1966, outlining what happened with Josef Lochert and Bertrand Richter. Romek used his notepad sometimes and did not interrupt. Brano told him about the appearance of Jan Soroka and about the murder of Jakob Bieniek, arranged by Pavel Jast. Then he explained why all of this had happened, that it was the Ministry’s plan to get him into Austria for his mission.

  “Wait,” said Romek, frowning at his notes. “You’re telling me that all this was simply to get you into Austria?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. Colonel Cerny will verify this.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  Brano described his time with Ludwig in that suburban house and told him what information he’d been forced to give.

  “That’s all you told them?”

  “It’s all I remember. I might have told them more, but I don’t think I did.”