36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Well, Brano. It’s important we know everything you told them. So we know what’s been compromised.”

  “Of course. I’ll work on it.”

  “You do that.”

  Brano outlined his time in Vienna, his meetings with Filip Lutz and Ersek Nanz, the lecture at the Committee for Liberty. He told them the names of everyone he recognized there.

  “Andrezej Sev?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Romek wrote something down.

  Brano gave a step-by-step review of his two meetings with Lochert, ending with his murder.

  “But you’re leaving something out, Brano.”

  “What am I leaving out?”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  Brano closed his eyes and told everything he knew about Dijana Frankovic, including the information she’d given him about Bertrand Richter’s meetings with the Russians.

  “And she didn’t ask him about it?”

  “She believes in privacy.”

  “Go on.”

  The stroke was only a brief story, though he gave the names of the men who helped him on the border. “They don’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “I am.”

  “What about when you came back? You were no longer being followed, so why didn’t you report here immediately?”

  “I tried, but I wouldn’t have made it to the gate. There was an Austrian watching the street. He’s still there now.”

  “Oh, is he?”

  “He has a crew cut, and he’s sitting in a gray Renault.”

  “Dragan,” Romek said to the big man in the corner, and Dragan stood up and left the room. Romek smiled at Brano. “Go on.”

  “I called Yalta Boulevard on Monday. I spoke with the Comrade Lieutenant General.”

  “Yes,” said Romek. “And he ordered you to go home. Who else have you spoken to since you returned?”

  “My father, Jan Soroka, and Dijana Frankovic. Yesterday, Colonel Cerny contacted me.”

  “And so?”

  “And what?”

  “Now, Brano, it’s time for you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  Brano almost smiled. It wasn’t the kind of tale a simple man like Romek would be able to absorb. It was too confused, too indirect. But more important, Romek would pass anything he heard in this room directly back to Yalta Boulevard. “That’s classified information. I’ll have to talk to Cerny first.”

  Romek shook his head slowly. “And I thought you were being cooperative, Brano. Remember what I said, everything outside this room does not exist.”

  “I can’t take that leap of faith, Nikolai.”

  Dragan didn’t speak when he returned, only nodded at Romek’s questioning gaze.

  “Okay, at least one part of your incredible story has been verified. Shall I go get the Comrade Colonel?”

  “If you want to learn more, yes.”

  Romek patted the table and stood up. Before leaving, he gave a quick nod past Brano’s shoulder to Dragan, similar to the one Dragan had given him, and said, “Not the head. We don’t want another stroke.” Then he walked through the door and locked it.

  For a moment there was nothing. Brano stared at the closed door, listening to Dragan’s light breaths behind him, waiting. Then Dragan approached. He had the heavy, flat-footed step of his kind. The young, unreflective violence that served the Ministry so well. And when Dragan said, “Stand up,” Brano was surprised that the voice was so high, and light. The voice of the kind of man who tended flowers in his free time.

  He stood and turned to face the man. Dragan had bright, twinkling eyes, too, but no smile. He punched Brano in the stomach.

  Brano did not fight back, because he knew his role here. To be cowed. A second fist struck his chest, knocking him across the table. This is nothing, he told himself, but without conviction. Dragan stepped around the table and lifted him again, then kneed his testicles.

  Dijana was right. This world of men with endless questions that no answers would satisfy was a hateful place. He’d always known this, despite the meager justifications he had clung to for years. There had been so many justifications, hundreds, but now he was having trouble remembering what they could have been.

  Brano was in the chair again when the door opened. His limp hands hung between his knees, his head fallen to the side. He tried to make out Romek through the tears, and Romek leaned close to help. “Brano,” he whispered. “There’s someone to see you.”

  Then he straightened and stepped back as Cerny leaned down. The colonel sniffed, wiped his mustache, and said, “Tell them, Brano. There’s no reason to hide it now. He can’t get you here.”

  Brano raised his head. “Who?”

  “You know who. Just tell them everything. You can trust Comrade Romek. I have his promise that he’ll keep this quiet for as long as necessary.”

  “Dragan,” said Romek. “You’re not needed now.”

  Dragan walked out.

  “And you, Comrade Colonel.”

  Cerny looked at Brano. “Remember what I told you. We’ll get him, don’t worry.” The colonel left.

  Romek returned to his seat on the other side of the table. “Now, if you please. I don’t have all day.”

  So Brano began to speak, and in speaking felt that the world had become less infused with zbrka. Despite the pain, the world was now simpler, a place where he could share the burden of his knowledge.

  There was a conspiracy, he told Romek. A conspiracy to undermine socialism in their country. The conspiracy would take the form of an armed revolution, its soldiers made up of emigres who had, over the past few years, been smuggled back into their country. Unlike similar operations conducted in the early fifties by the Office of Policy Coordination, under the stewardship of the CIA, this one was run by a religious group-the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations-with only a loose, probably financial, connection to the CIA. The central conspirators included Filip Lutz and Bertrand Richter, both now dead, as well as Brano’s father. Lochert had been among their number, which was why he had attempted to kill Brano-because Brano was asking too many questions. There was also another person, placed inside the Ministry itself, who could retard their government’s reaction to the uprising.

  “Who is this person?”

  “Comrade Cerny and I suspect it is the Lieutenant General.”

  “Then why hasn’t he been arrested?”

  “Because we don’t have enough evidence.”

  Romek touched his pencil to his lips. “The Comrade Colonel told me that you were responsible for Filip Lutz’s death. Correct?”

  Brano hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you instead interrogate him? If the crux of the problem is a mole in Yalta, then why did you kill a man who could identify this person?”

  “I was following orders.”

  “Whose?”

  “The Comrade Lieutenant General’s.”

  Romek smiled and pointed at Brano, as if he’d made a particularly good point. “But Lutz wasn’t the only one, was he? Josef Lochert could have given us the information.”

  “I was acting in self-defense.”

  “Of course you were. But you weren’t acting in self-defense when you, or Lochert-it doesn’t matter, but you did it together-killed Bertrand Richter, who was making a deal to sell this name to the KGB.”

  Brano looked at him.

  “It seems to me,” said Romek, touching a finger to the tabletop, “that you have gotten rid of anyone who could implicate you in the whole scheme. I imagine the final conspirator with this knowledge-your father-would be difficult to capture, wouldn’t he?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “And what, then, would you suggest?”

  Brano looked at his swollen left hand on the table. “I’m the one person who can talk to him. He wants me to defect.”

  “Defect? To America? Well, that would be
something, wouldn’t it?”

  “If I wanted to defect, I would be gone already. I’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

  “I suppose you have,” said Romek. He stood up, walked around the table, and squatted beside Brano. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Tell me what you would do if our roles were reversed.”

  Brano looked into Romek’s strange eyes that seemed to want to flee his head. They both knew what Brano would do. He would place Romek on a plane home and pass on the order for Ministry interrogators to pick him up from the airport and place him in a cell. He would make sure Romek was worked on until he spilled the truth.

  “Tell me.”

  Brano cleared his throat. “I would send me to the Hotel Inter-Continental to speak with my father. Andrezej Sev will only talk to his son.” He paused. “If he believes I’m defecting, I might be able to get the name of the inside man.”

  Romek looked at him a moment, immobile, then the laughter came. High and melodic, like a girl’s. “Oh, Brano!” He caught his breath. “That’s really very fantastic. Really. I’m supposed to give you the opportunity to, first of all, warn your father of everything we know. Second of all, to defect. And third of all, to live out your days in comfortable anonymity with your hot little Yugoslav!” He shook his head. “No, Brano, I’m not quite the clever man you are, but I’m not stupid. Come on.” He stood again and reached out a hand. “Why don’t you get some sleep while I consider my options. Who knows? In the morning you just might be dead.”

  Dragan walked him upstairs to one of the third-floor bedrooms. It was small and modest, as only socialist diplomatic suites are, with gray walls and bars over the windows, through which he could see stars hovering in the night. Dragan didn’t say a thing, and when he left he locked the door from the outside.

  Brano washed in the bathroom and shaved with the razor they had supplied-a convenience Brano would have denied Romek. His left hand moved well, though it sometimes tingled when he reached above his head to wash his prickly scalp. His forehead throbbed, so he covered it with a cold, wet towel and lay in bed.

  He didn’t know if he should have taken Cerny’s offer to leave at that traffic light yesterday. He’d refused because of some kind of integrity he was having trouble finding in himself now.

  If he had taken Cerny’s offer, what would have followed? That dream returned-a car to the Lake Districts, a new name, a new life with her. But after his session with Major Romek, he knew that that new life would have been a troubled one, always waiting for that quiet, lurking death brought on by some young, soulless boy trained on Yalta Boulevard.

  No. He wouldn’t have done this, he now knew. Brano would have left that car, considered his options, then visited his father in the Inter-Continental. Because the only safety lay in his father’s hands. In America. A new identity, and a new life an ocean away from this one.

  There was a knock at his door.

  “Come in.”

  He sat up as Cerny entered. “Look at you. Come over here, in the light. Let me see.”

  Brano came over to the desk lamp, letting Cerny touch a bruise at the bottom of his neck. Brano grimaced.

  “Goddamned savage,” said Cerny. “I told him to go easy on you. I told him you were to be trusted. But he’d gotten orders from someone higher than me, to do as he liked.”

  “From the Lieutenant General.”

  “Which is why we’re keeping everything from him for now. Romek told me what you’d suggested. He thought it was funny. Ha ha. Well, I told him it was the only chance we had to end this thing.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I can’t see any other way.”

  Brano sat on the bed and looked up at him, but the bright desk lamp behind the colonel’s head obscured his expression. “Tell me. Why did you do that in the car?”

  “I-” Cerny paused. He sat beside Brano, then cocked his head. “The first reason I told you. You’ve been through too much on this operation. Far too much.’ He put a heavy hand on Brano’s shoulder. “You mean a lot to me, One-Shot, even more since Irina’s…’ He snorted, then wiped his mustache. “I wouldn’t have survived without you. And in a way, you’re the only family I have.” He looked into Brano’s face. “There’s so much I would do if I thought it would make you, finally, a happy man. Something we both know you’ve never been.”

  Looking into those familiar, damp eyes and at that unkempt mustache, Brano felt something like rest. They’d had so many years together, and in that time Cerny had never actually said such things to him. He’d shown it, sometimes, in their quiet moments, particularly during those months after Irina’s death, as Brano helped raise him out of that suicidal depression.

  Then he felt something he was not used to: shame. He was ashamed that he usually forgot those tender moments, remembering only the times Cerny reverted to the colonel whose job it was to punish Brano’s mistakes.

  Cerny patted Brano’s back, stood, and cleared his throat. “Don’t worry, One-Shot. I’m not half done yet.”

  30 APRIL 1967, SUNDAY

  He woke to Cerny’s face hovering over his. “Good news.”

  Brano rubbed his eyes. “Yes?”

  “You’re going to try it.”

  Brano sat up, awake now. “What about the Lieutenant General?”

  “He doesn’t know a thing. I stayed up late with Romek and worked on him until he agreed.”

  “You convinced him?”

  “Remember, I know a lot of things about a lot of people.” He shrugged. “I blackmailed him.”

  Brano dressed while the colonel sat at the desk, watching. Beside him, on the desktop, lay a pale cloth harness and a small box. “Here,” he said, reaching for the harness. “Romek wants you to wear this.” He helped Brano put it on-a strap went over his left shoulder and the harness wrapped around his chest. Cerny did the buttons in the back, making it tight. From the box he took a small wire recorder with three leads and slipped it into the pocket of the harness, just under Brano’s left armpit. Two leads ended in a tiny square microphone he hooked to Brano’s undershirt; the third, ending in a tiny switch, he let hang loose. “Put on your shirt.”

  Brano did so, and Cerny stepped back, nodding.

  “Listen,” he said as he grabbed Brano’s pants from the bed. “About the car. What I said yesterday.”

  “Yes?”

  Cerny used his thumbs to tear a small hole in the left pants pocket. “Well, I still feel the same way.”

  Brano looked at him.

  “Here,” he said, handing over the pants. “Put these on.” As Brano did so, he lowered his voice. “I want you to get the information from your father, yes. But what you do afterward… that’s your business. This,” he said, tapping the bulge by Brano’s left arm, “can always go in the Eszterhazy Park dead drop. And besides.” He bobbed his eyebrows. “You could be of use to us in America.”

  Brano slipped the on/off switch through the hole in his pocket, then put on his jacket. Cerny shook his head, smiling.

  “It’s small as hell-technology amazes me.”

  Brano nodded.

  The colonel’s smile went away. “Don’t consider this anything other than what it is. My desire for your happiness.”

  “I know,” said Brano.

  They walked together into the corridor and down the stairs to the foyer, where Romek was waiting. “You’re looking rested, Brano. Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “And you’re wired.”

  “It’s taken care of.”

  “Good,” said Romek. He scratched his cheek. “I’m not going to threaten you, because I don’t have to. You know what will happen if you try to get away.”

  “Yes,” said Brano. “I know.”

  The Hotel Inter-Continental sat at the far end of Johannesgasse, a gray, glass-plated monolith dominating the Stadtpark. The embassy Mercedes dropped him off a couple of blocks short of it, then drove on. He walked past the wide front entrance, avoiding the lob
by that would be packed with businessmen and tourists and informers of all nations. No doubt Ludwig’s men were lounging there now. He instead walked around to Am Heumarkt, where, next to the Putzerei Wascherei, he found an open door marked

  PERSONALEINGANG

  STAFF ENTRANCE

  HOTEL INTER-CONTINENTAL

  WIEN

  He glanced back. On the opposite corner of the intersection, hands deep in his pockets, Romek leaned against a store window. Brano entered the building.

  In the long tiled corridor, he passed carts overflowing with the day’s dirty towels and uniforms, and when staff members passed him he avoided their eyes. Not obtrusively, but in a casual way that suggested he was a preoccupied man who belonged here. It was a difficult look that took years of experience to acquire, and was made no easier by the bruise creeping up his neck. But he did not hesitate, and that look brought him to the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

  When he reached the fourth floor, he had to stop to catch his breath before continuing to the fifth. The corridor was empty, save a maid’s cart with cleaning fluids and towels and sheets beside an open door.

  Room 516 lay at the end, by a window that overlooked the skating rink behind the hotel. Children and adults slid around, sometimes falling, helping one another up, then continuing on their circular path. As he stared, he listened to the door beside him, waiting a full minute. He heard a television giving news in German. A toilet flushed; a door opened and closed. Bed-springs. Brano reached into his left pocket and pressed the switch. Although there was no noise, he could feel, beneath his arm, the vibration of the recording wire being pulled into the take-up reel. He turned to the door and knocked.

  The television silenced and the eyehole darkened. Then the door was open, Andrezej Sev smiling at him.

  His father’s face, this close, was as it had always been in the photographs that filled that guest room in his mother’s house. There was the addition of age, a beard, and when he smiled his front teeth were clearly visible-clean and white and strong. But this was truly his father.

  Brano touched his own front tooth. “What happened?”

  Andrezej Sev looked confused a moment. “Oh, this!” He still lisped his s. “American dentist-he capped the tooth. I see yours are looking good as well.”