36 Yalta Boulevard

by Olen Steinhauer

  Ewa Nubsch was the kind of person who, in the end, doesn’t care about punishment; the guilt is so strong that all she desires is to be understood. And with the story came tears. She explained between sobs that they’d used razor blades because they couldn’t be traced. We thought we were being smart. We didn’t use the shotgun. We thought we could find a vein. But we couldn’t, and it only made everything more horrible.

  That was because they’d been drunk; it was the only way they knew to prepare themselves for murder. Then they’d gotten Jakob drunk and brought him out there. She was still surprised he’d come. He had seemed, almost, excitedly curious. But once they gagged him he fought back, and that was when she had hurt her leg.

  And what about the matches?

  The matches?

  The matches you stuffed in his mouth.

  That was Pavel, she said. He wanted them to be on Jakob’s body when it was found. And the shirt. Yes, the shirt. He wanted us to give him the shirt. And yes, yes—he even told us where to do it, behind the Emilia 4. He told us everything.

  And she told him everything, except the answer to the one question that mattered most—Why? Why would Pavel Jast frame him for the murder of a reclusive peasant? Pavel Jast had not run off with the Sorokas; he had simply disappeared.

  “You look like hell,” the captain said as Brano approached his white Škoda at the Militia station.

  “It’s nothing. But listen.” Brano drew close as Rasko fooled with the lock on the front door. “The Bieniek case is solved. It was Zygmunt and Ewa Nubsch.”

  Rasko let go of the lock. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Pavel Jast arranged the whole thing. He made Zygmunt bet his wife’s life in a Cucumber game, then he offered Zygmunt a trade—Jakob’s life for Ewa’s.”

  Rasko got the door open. “And they’ll admit all this to me?”

  “Ewa told me everything.”

  “How did you get it out of her?”

  “I asked.”

  Rasko tossed his keys on the desk and dropped into his chair. He ran a hand through his black bangs. “Let’s see how it all turns out. First you might want to get in touch with the Ministry. They called for you this morning. Maybe they want you to go back home.”

  Regina Haliniak, at the Yalta front desk, softened when she heard his voice. “Hello, Brano. Are you enjoying the provinces?”

  “Not particularly, Regina. Are you and Zoran well?”

  “Well enough. Did you want to talk to the colonel?”

  “Yes, Regina. Thank you.”

  He listened to clicks and static.

  “It’s about time you called, Sev.”

  “I just got the message.”

  “What’s the progress?”

  “I’m afraid Pavel Jast’s crime has been proven. He forced an old couple here to kill Jakob Bieniek.”

  “Jakob who?”

  “Bieniek. Jast used them to frame me for the murder. The wife admitted everything.”

  “When I asked about progress, I wasn’t talking about this murder. You know what I was talking about.”

  Brano cleared his throat. “I’ve had more contact with Soroka, and Jast told me he’d be leaving soon. But I no longer trust Pavel Jast’s information.”

  “Well, trust him, Comrade Sev. We have the same information. Jan Soroka is leaving in the next couple days, probably for Austria, and you’d better clear this up before that happens. If you can’t manage to stop him, then you follow him and report back when you can. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel. But—”

  “But what?”

  Brano paused. “I’m known there, Comrade Colonel. In Austria. If I enter the country without diplomatic papers … I don’t think I’d be safe.”

  Cerny gave one of his unimpressed exhales. “You’re exhausting, Sev. You’ve been given an opportunity few men receive. And who do you think insisted you could be trusted to come back on this case? It’s my neck we’re talking about.”

  “I know, Comrade Colonel.”

  “You know me, Brano. You know disappointment doesn’t sit well with me—makes my bladder go awry. And it doesn’t sit well with the Comrade Lieutenant General, either.”

  “He knows?”

  “The man knows everything, Sev. It’s my job to keep him informed.”

  His legs ached by the time he made it to the house, trying without success to evoke that memory of Cerny’s suicidal weeping to settle his nerves. But the man was right—he’d been given an exceptional opportunity to redeem himself. He climbed into his Trabant and drove west.

  Again, he didn’t have to wait long. To the south, beyond the silent cows, a small figure materialized near the base of the mountain. He parked by the road, and his feet crunched through snow as he walked through the cold, hissing wind to meet Jan Soroka.

  He suddenly remembered what Klara had said, the pink anger filling her cheeks: The religion of the apparatchik only gives you paperwork and a bad conscience.

  This wasn’t far from the truth.

  Jan was crouched, looking at something on the ground. “Hello!” called Brano, and Jan glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t stop what he was doing: using a stick to slowly pick apart a high, encrusted anthill. Brano squatted beside him. “Going to destroy that thing?”

  “I’ve always hated ants,” said Jan. “When I was a child, a whole army attacked me. I’m a lover of nature in general, but not these things. Whenever I get the chance, I kill them.”

  He brushed the stick through the base of the hill, quickly, and the tower collapsed, releasing a flood of confused black spots that spilled onto a patch of snow.

  Brano said, “Ants in winter. That’s strange.”

  “Yeah,” said Jan.

  Then the two men began walking along the edge of the mountain in silence, until Jan said, “How’s that case of yours coming?”

  “Which one?”

  “That dead man. Bieniek?”

  “Yes, Jakob Bieniek.”

  “Any leads?”

  “The Nubsches killed him.”

  Jan, for once, looked surprised. “So it wasn’t you after all. But I’m not sure the village will believe a nice old couple like Zygmunt and Ewa sliced him up.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Bóbrka believes.”

  “It might. From the look of your face, you could probably use some allies around here.”

  Brano touched his sore eye. “You’re right about that.”

  “But why did they do it?”

  “The Nubsches? A bet.”

  “Cucumber?”

  “Pavel Jast got them to do it.”

  “And why did he do it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  They stopped beside a boulder, where Jan took out a cigarette. Brano cupped his hands around the match to keep it alight. Jan took a drag and handed it to Brano. “My father knew you didn’t kill Jakob—he had Pavel fingered from the beginning.”

  “Why?”

  “My father’s got intuition.”

  “Well, he’s a lucky man. I just stumble through the facts as I see them.”

  “What about your father?” asked Jan as he took the cigarette back.

  “My father?”

  “Is he dead?”

  “He was a farmer,” said Brano, “and when the Germans came, the Wehrmacht forced him into service. He built antitank obstacles. All through the war he did this in a factory up in Rzeszow. By the end of the war, he was managing the factory, and by late ’forty-five, he was back to farming.”

  “But he left the country, didn’t he?”

  “He had to. His name was put down as a collaborator. If he’d stayed he would have been arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  Jan handed the cigarette over. “By whom?”

  “By me.”

  They didn’t talk for a while, and despite the lingering memory of that trip to Bóbrka back in ’45 to arrest the man he instead handed forged pap
ers and ordered to emigrate westward, Brano found it a peculiarly peaceful moment. He never learned what had become of Andrezej Fedor Sev; the few times he’d tried to look into it he’d come up with nothing. Perhaps he never made it out of the country, or he died in one of the many displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. He simply didn’t know, and when he reflected on it, he found he didn’t care. That man was part of another life.

  Jan took out another cigarette and offered him one. They smoked and watched the cows standing in patches of snow. Brano said, “Either you had an affair with Dijana Franković in Szuha, or you went to Vienna and left your family behind—it really doesn’t matter. But why would you leave at all? Lia’s a beautiful woman, she seems like a good mother.”

  Jan tapped his ash and thought a second before answering. “Did you know that when I was sixteen years old I met Mihai?”

  “Nineteen-fifty,” said Brano. “You were a Red Pioneer.”

  “You guys really do know everything, don’t you?” He took a drag. “Well, I was excited. I’d never been much for the Pioneers, but every now and then we’d do something interesting. This time we met the most powerful man in the country. And I, like any other kid, idolized Mihai.”

  “A lot of people still do.”

  “So I’m told—no one seems to idolize Tomiak Pankov. Anyway, we went to Victory Square, to the Central Committee building and his office on the third floor. You been there?”

  Brano nodded.

  “It was impressive. All that red satin, the paintings, that enormous desk. I remember a silver ink bottle—it had the hawk etched in it. It was a beautiful thing. And then I saw Mihai himself. You met him a lot, I guess.”

  “A few times.”

  “Well, the photos and newsreels never really showed how short he was, did they? He was a head shorter than me. This was a shock, I can tell you.”

  “That he was short?”

  “Not just that he was short. He had a cold at the time, and whenever he breathed you could hear how hard it was for him. I was a kid, you know, and I couldn’t imagine how such a great man could be like this—short, snot-nosed, no better than the guy who sells vegetables in the market. And this was the head of our country?”

  “Well, you were young.”

  “I was. But I don’t think that reaction ever really left me. I got older, I married Lia—to me she was the most gorgeous woman in the Capital—but I was still a stupid teenager up here,” he said, tapping his skull. “I didn’t realize she’d catch colds, that she’d be lazy in the mornings and not make coffee. She’d be short-tempered and shout at me about things that weren’t my fault; she’d be completely unreasonable sometimes. And no amount of expectation can prepare you for a child. Everything shifts and becomes a little dirtier. Your wife’s body begins to fall apart.”

  “You’re brutal, Jan.”

  “To be fair, I’m sure she had similar complaints about me. I was unreasonable all the time; I got fatter, lazier; I stopped talking to her.”

  “And so you left.”

  “At first I just had affairs. An afternoon, sometimes a whole night. And I saw some of what I was missing. I suppose I wanted to get out on my own and learn what life with another woman was like.”

  “Until you became disillusioned with the new woman.”

  Jan shrugged.

  The cigarette was strong, and Brano’s head buzzed as he wondered if it would have been this way had he stayed with his Dijana. “Did you ever actually know her?”

  “Who?”

  “The real Dijana Franković. In Vienna.”

  Jan smiled. “I only knew the one in Szuha.”

  Brano was smiling as well. He tossed his cigarette into the grass and felt, for the moment, that time had slowed. For the moment, there was no one in the Capital waiting for results, no press of minutes.

  Then Jan said, “I’m not sure I understand. You seem to believe a lot of bad things about me. Why aren’t I in jail?”

  Brano considered this. When he first arrived in Bóbrka, he believed that sticking to his cover story, that he was simply a factory worker on vacation, would be simple enough. But no one in this town really trusted that, least of all Jan—he’d clearly been waiting for Brano’s arrival. There was nothing left to hide. So he said, “Arresting you isn’t my job. I was supposed to find out why you came back.”

  “And what’s your conclusion?”

  “My conclusion is that I really don’t care.”

  “Is that true?”

  Yes, Brano realized—it was true. “I came here to do a simple job. But immediately my one contact double-crossed me—he framed me for murder. And now that I’ve proven my innocence, the Ministry doesn’t care. I went into this with all good intentions, and now,” he said, looking for the right words, “now I have the suspicion I’m being used, but I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe it’s all about Pavel Jast,” said Jan. “Maybe he framed you in order to improve his position with Yalta. He probably wants to get out of Bóbrka and go to the big city.”

  “Did you tell him much about yourself? I mean, the things you don’t tell me.”

  “I’ve told you much more than I told Pavel Jast.”

  “Then that isn’t the answer. He could only improve his position if he arrived in the Capital with all the information on you that I couldn’t get.”

  “But he could also improve his position if he stopped me from doing what I plan to do.”

  “Which is to return to Vienna.”

  “Or maybe I want to go to Moscow.”

  They both laughed out loud, and Brano admired this clever man who could subdue his own fears and laugh with a man who might, at any moment, kill him.

  Jan nodded past Brano’s shoulder, toward the road, his smile fading. “Isn’t that Captain Rasko?”

  Brano turned, peering through the winter dusk he hadn’t noticed descending. The white Škoda was parked behind his Trabant, and Rasko took awkward, high steps through the snow toward them. They helped close the distance, and when they met, Rasko’s face was pinked by the wind. “Hello, Jan,” he said.

  “Tadeusz.”

  Rasko nodded at Brano. “Can I have a word with you?”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” said Jan as he retreated toward the cows.

  “What is it, Captain?”

  Rasko was wearing a heavy coat—blue, Militia regular issue. He buttoned the top button. “I went over to the Nubsches’.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, Comrade Sev. They’ve left. Taken a lot of clothes and gone away. I called the Dukla factory, and it seems Zygmunt abandoned his bread truck on the side of the road this morning. They don’t know where he is.”

  “They fled.”

  “They’re your alibi, Comrade Sev.”

  Brano looked into the captain’s dark, steady eyes, then wiped his hands on his pants. “They’re still my alibi. They left because they were guilty. It’s obvious.”

  “Not to Yalta.”

  “What?”

  Rasko arched a brow. “They’ve been in touch the whole time you’ve been in Bóbrka. Seems they don’t trust you completely. And when I told that colonel about the Nubsches’ disappearance, I was given leave to arrest you again.”

  Brano’s hands jumped involuntarily from his hips. “Colonel Cerny?” He settled them down again. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “We live by our orders, Comrade Sev.”

  That was a well-rehearsed line from the Militia Academy, the kind of motto only repeated at official functions. Now Brano Sev was hearing it in a field littered with blank-eyed cows.

  He cleared his throat. “Give me a little more time.”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “No, it’s not. Tomorrow. I’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”

  Captain Rasko squinted into the wind a few seconds, waiting for something more—a bribe, perhaps, or some sign of desperation—but Brano waited him out. The captain nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”


  As Rasko made his way back to his car, Brano turned back to Jan, who—magically, it seemed—had disappeared.

  The captain was right. The Nubsches’ home, which he entered by reaching through the hole Rasko had broken in the window, was cleared out. Clothes had been thrown around the bedroom in a frantic act of packing, and remnants of a quickly thrown-together meal littered the kitchen: bread crumbs, cheese, salami. He went through each room, his calm slipping away, trying to find anything—a coat, perhaps—that connected them to Jakob Bieniek. But after tearing apart cabinets and wardrobes and searching under all the furniture, he realized it was useless. When he slammed the door behind himself, broken glass fell and shattered on the concrete steps.

  As he drove through the darkness, he labored with the mass of facts that were filling him with an acute sense of zbrka. What he’d said so casually to Soroka—that he was being used—now felt real. Cerny was pressuring him, either to get results or to flee—he didn’t know which. There was no ready answer to the why of Jast’s frame-up nor the why of Cerny’s phone calls. Was it possible the colonel believed Brano had killed some nondescript milkman? Or was he only following the Lieutenant General’s orders?

  Again, the question: Why?

  His mother was settled in the dim kitchen with Lucjan’s vodka when he returned. Her head rolled back as she tried to get him into focus. “He returns!”

  Brano sank into a chair without removing his overcoat. “Are you drunk?”

  “What do you thing?” she said, slurring “think.”

  “That can’t be good for you.”

  Her eyes were shiny. “Don’t start telling me what’s good for me. You’re on your way to jail.”

  “You know?”

  “The whole town knows. My criminal son.”

  “Criminal son,” he repeated, and reached for the vodka bottle. There was a dirty water glass on the table that he filled to the rim. “But I didn’t do it.”

  “What do I know about that? You don’t tell your mother anything.”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Just like you told me about your Tati.”