36 Yalta Boulevard

by Olen Steinhauer

  “I did what I could.”

  She looked at him for a little while, then spoke slowly. “You know, Brani, I’m an old woman now. I know a few things. I know, for instance, that life is sometimes too long. There are a lot of years. What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t made your father leave?”

  “You know what would have happened. He would have been sent to prison. I had no choice.”

  “Yes,” she said, and brought her glass to her cheek, pressing it into the soft flesh. “He would have gone to jail, but for how long? A couple years, maybe five. Then, my dear son, my husband would have been returned to me. We would have been a family again.”

  He did not answer.

  She said, “You think your life is going to be one way, then it isn’t. Your son leaves for the Capital, then your husband leaves the country. Your daughter marries an idiot who can’t give you grandchildren.” She took another drink and set her glass down. “Tell me, Brani. Do you think this is the family I always hoped for?”

  He lifted his glass to his lips.

  She passed out in her chair, and Brano carried her to bed. He undressed her, then pulled the duvet to her chin before kissing her forehead. He felt very much like a father at that moment—at least, how he imagined fathers felt—looking down on this old woman who, in her more honest moments, hated him. She’d had to eke out a living without her husband and had never remarried—she instead lived on the fantasy that Andrezej Sev would return from the West. But unlike Jan Soroka, most people did not return when they escaped the Empire. If they survived, they made their way as best they could, despite loneliness and poverty, and became citizens of another world.

  And she was only partly right about what he’d done. There was no telling what would have happened to his father in one of those labor camps. Many never returned.

  He drank more in the kitchen, enough to maintain dizziness, and took his passport out of his coat pocket. He had a dull face, he knew, not the kind of face a young Vojvodina Serb living in Vienna would fall in love with. In his other pocket he found Jakob Bieniek’s passport and flipped through its pages. Both men had features that suggested plainness, perhaps even stupidity.

  He hung his coat by the door, then undressed in the bedroom. There was nothing to do but wait. Tomorrow—yes, tomorrow—Captain Rasko would visit, with full Ministry authorization, and take him to that puny cell. The climax of a half-year of failures. Then Brano would be faced with the end of everything. He would be transferred to a holding cell in Rzeszow, given a trial, and moved to a work camp. Perhaps Vátrina, in the Magyar provinces, where he had once visited an old colleague who had been put to work digging a canal that had never been completed, and probably never would be.

  A factory job would seem like a blessing.

  He was, inexplicably, free from worry. Some of it was the vodka, but as Brano climbed into bed and closed his eyes, the darkness swirling around him, he felt that it had to do with Jan Soroka, the man who chose to wander with idiot cows while the apparatus of state security haunted him. Jan was a disciple of acceptance.

  So it surprised him when he opened his eyes to that familiar voice in the darkness. He reached out to touch the shoulder of a coat and heard the voice again, as if from a dream: Don’t move, Brano. I’ve got a gun.

  Is this it? he asked the darkness.

  The voice said yes, this was it, though it didn’t mean what Brano had meant. Right now. Come if you want, but now—grab your bag. No hesitation. But if you try to stop us, I’ll kill you.

  Jan Soroka turned on the bedside lamp.

  14 FEBRUARY 1967, TUESDAY

  •

  Jan held the gun as Brano dressed and filled his suitcase with the clean clothes his mother had folded at the foot of the bed. Neither spoke. After a stunned moment, staring into Jan’s bright face, Brano had understood that communication, more than possibly waking his mother, would introduce questions and explanations that undermined Jan’s command for no hesitation.

  He grabbed his coat at the front door, but Jan took it from him and patted the pockets. He handed it back and nodded toward the kitchen, where they left through the now-unlocked side door, into the cold. They marched through the deep snow in the backyard and climbed over the fence, landing behind the Grzybowskas’ house, then cut around the side to the road, where a silent green Volga GAZ-21 with Uzhorod plates waited. Inside, dark forms shifted. Jan threw Brano’s suitcase into the trunk and opened the back door for him. Petre, sleepy eyes suddenly widening, was in the middle, and on the boy’s other side Lia sat straight-faced, not acknowledging him. The fat man in the driver’s seat was from Pavel Jast’s house, the Cucumber game, the man who had put out his cigarette in a glass of vodka. He turned, reached a hand over the back of the seat, and narrowed his eyes. “You been in a fight?” he whispered.

  Brano touched the bruise on his face. He nodded.

  The man gave a huge smile and shook his hand. “Call me Roman.”

  Jan sat in the passenger seat and closed the door quietly. “Well, let’s get going.”

  Brano had expected none of this. The wake-up call had been as if from a dream, and his snap decision had been based on nothing. But his training had come back instantly—the requirement of all good agents that they learn to act, even without all the proper facts.

  And this was the only move left to him. After clearly envisioning the end of everything, it was an amazing turn of fortune that he’d been awoken by another option.

  Luck, though, was a suspicious animal.

  Roman was a careful driver. He maintained a steady speed through Bóbrka, shifting gears smoothly, then exited from the west, passing the field with its dozing cows—then farther, through Kobylany, and beyond. Petre, with the blemish covering his left cheek, stared at Brano, but after a while bowed his head into his mother’s armpit and began to doze. Sometimes Jan glanced back at his wife, but Lia had closed her eyes as well.

  He didn’t understand the risk Jan was taking. Though Brano had surprised himself by opening up to Soroka in that field, he had no reason to believe Jan felt the same. Had they really made a connection?

  And Roman. He was the connection between Jan and Pavel Jast; he was Jan’s contact at the train station (watched by Jakob Bieniek) and Pavel’s Cucumber-playing friend who brought him pornographic pens from West Germany.

  Pavel Jast was no mere small-town informer.

  Although in the darkness he sometimes became confused, he was able to track their progress by villages. Nienaszów, Toki, Nowy-Źmigròd, Katy. The names were familiar, and the hills around them were filled with partisan memories; but now, knowing that he was leaving, yet not knowing why, they began to sound exotic to him, precious.

  They made gradual progress along side roads, only rarely spotting another car driving in the opposite direction. Once, a truck appeared behind them, hovering close, and Lia craned her head around, the truck’s headlights illuminating the fear in her face. Roman slowed and waved his hand out the window, and the truck passed, soon disappearing.

  Just after Krempna, they came upon a white Škoda blocking the road. Brano noticed the Militia hawk on its door. Jan reached for his gun, but Roman said, “Nothing to worry about,” as he braked. He climbed out and conferred with an older, uniformed militiaman beside the Škoda’s front hood; they shook hands and patted each other’s shoulders, and once Roman tapped the militiaman’s cheek with his fingers. Then the money appeared and was quickly handed over, and they shook again. As the Militia car pulled back into the shrubs, Roman got back behind the wheel. “This world is getting more expensive by the minute.”

  Petre, as if in answer, whispered, “I have to pee.”

  By Brano’s watch they had been traveling five hours; it was after seven, and an omen of sunrise lightened the sky. They had spent the last hour and a half winding slowly through the mountains north of Sárospatak and were now on the west bank of the Bodrog River, driving south through a birch forest. Roman pulled off onto the s
ide of the road and cut the engine. Then he flashed his headlights—once, twice—and settled back.

  “What is it?” asked Jan.

  Roman grunted. “We wait.”

  Lia reached for her husband’s shoulder, and he put his hand over hers, squeezing. Petre whispered, “Can I pee now?”

  They didn’t have to wait long. A pair of headlights appeared, very bright, and it was soon clear that they belonged to a large truck. Along the side, CARPATIA S. A. was painted in three-foot-high white letters. A thin, nervours-looking man climbed out. He had a mustache as thick as Stalin’s and long fingers that tapped the roof of the Volga as he talked with Roman through the window. “So many? You said three—come on, what’re you trying to pull?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Roman. “Everything’s the same.”

  The thin man looked at each face, pausing on Brano’s. “You know what this means, eh?”

  “Of course.” Roman handed over a wad of bills. “It’s all there.”

  The thin man counted the koronas with spastic fingers, his mouth forming numbers. “Yeah, okay. Looks right,” he said, pocketing the cash. “Let’s get moving.”

  Lia took Petre into the woods to urinate while Brano and Roman carried the suitcases to the truck. It was filled with boxes of canned plums that the thin man, with Roman’s help, shifted aside. They made a narrow corridor to the boxed-in space in the back. Jan seemed to have disappeared. They deposited the luggage in the corner as Lia and Petre returned, the boy now very awake, scrambling inside while they helped Lia up. Jan appeared again, a burned-down cigarette in his lips, and they all retreated to the secret room behind the boxes. Before the driver and Roman walled them in, Jan asked how long they’d be driving. “Four, five hours,” said the driver, but his voice wasn’t very authoritative.

  From the other side of the boxes, Brano and the Sorokas heard the men murmur to each other; then Roman’s voice, louder, wished them luck. The men jumped down into the gravel, and the doors ground shut—first one, then the other—and the darkness was complete. Petre yelped, but Lia calmed him. A rusty squeal as the latch was pulled into place, then the snap of the lock being secured.

  Brano sat against the luggage as the Sorokas huddled in the opposite corner, their whispers indecipherable above the knocking groan of the engine and bone-crunching thumps when they hit potholes. This man was not a careful driver; he sped and slammed the brakes indiscriminately, and occasionally they heard his voice through the wall, singing: Infant holy, infant lowly, for his bed a cattle stall. Oxen lowing, little knowing, Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

  The song crept on, its melody circular and incessant.

  Swift are winging,

  Angels singing,

  Nowells ringing,

  Tidings bringing,

  Christ the Babe is Lord of all,

  Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

  Despite himself, Brano found he was humming along.

  Although he could neither see nor hear them, he knew the Sorokas were scared. He had watched them during Roman’s drive, Lia most of all—her stern silence was a mask. She had never fled her country before, and here she was with her boy, at the mercy of strangers who handed the family off to one another like a shipment of … of canned plums. Worse, they had brought along a state security agent neither of them had any reason to trust.

  Brano closed his eyes—the darkness remained dark—and felt the truck’s erratic thumps and leaps dig into the old wounds from Bóbrka.

  After three or four hours, the truck stopped and idled. Lia whispered to her husband, and he whispered back. The truck moved forward a few feet, then stopped again. Petre asked when he’d be able to pee again, and Brano leaned in their direction. “Stay quiet now. We’re at the Hungarian border.”

  They answered with silence. The truck lurched, crept forward, and stalled. Was restarted and crept again, then turned off. They heard the thin man climb out of the cab and talk with the border guards, make a joke and laugh. Then footsteps around the back of the truck. The snap of the lock being opened, the doors unlatched. Brano heard the boy’s quick inhale, and when the doors opened gray late-morning light bled through the boxes. Lia’s hand was tight over Petre’s mouth. Above her hand, his eyes were perfectly round, focused on Brano. Jan held Lia from behind, biting his lips.

  The driver talked with the border guard about plums and how late he was running. The guard told him he was always running late. “You shouldn’t drink so much, Jaroslaw, it messes up your nerves. Know what my wife gets me to drink? Slivovitz, the kosher stuff. Wake up fresh every morning. Those Jews know what they’re doing.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Then they closed the doors again and, after a few minutes and a couple more jokes, the truck moved on. Once they were on their way, Jan said to the darkness, “Welcome to the Hungarian People’s Republic.”

  The second roadblock only checked the driver’s papers. It seemed that Jaroslaw knew all the people he ran into; he even spoke to them in Hungarian. This was his regular delivery route.

  After a while, they stopped again, and Jaroslaw opened the doors. “Let’s move, everyone. I’ve got to get this stuff to Budapest.” He climbed into the truck and started shifting boxes as Brano moved the ones on their side.

  They were at the end of a long forest trail, beside a small dacha. Impatient, Petre ran to a tree and dropped his pants. Jaroslaw unlocked the dacha and beckoned them inside, nervous hands fumbling with the keys as he spoke.

  “I’ll be back this evening, and I’ll be able to tell you what’s happening next.”

  “You don’t know already?” asked Lia.

  He raised the corner of his lip. “I know what I’m doing, okay? I need to contact someone, and then I can get rid of you. But in the meantime, stay here and don’t go out. If anyone knocks on the door, you’re not here. Okay?”

  Jan squeezed his wife’s arm. “We understand.”

  There was stale bread and jam in the kitchen, so Lia made sandwiches while Jan and Brano sat in the main room, smoking Jan’s cigarettes. Jan seemed nervous, but when Brano asked, he said, “No, it’s all right. This is the way they said it would be. It’s still unnerving, though.”

  “You didn’t follow this route before?”

  “Before when?”

  “When you went to Vienna.”

  Jan smiled, finally admitting the truth. “No, that time I took a different route. Through Yugoslavia.”

  Brano didn’t ask anything more.

  They spent that day floating through the dacha’s two cold rooms. Lia and Petre took a nap together in the bedroom while the men talked. They discussed the discomfort of that truck, both hoping they wouldn’t have to board it again, and Jan told him that for the whole ride Lia had been sure they were heading to prison. “She just can’t believe what she’s doing. I’ve done it before, but I can’t, either.”

  “Neither can I,” said Brano.

  “But this time it’s for real.” Jan lit a cigarette, forgetting to offer Brano one. “This time I’m not going back.”

  “And this is why you returned? To get your family?”

  Jan shrugged. “What better reason is there?”

  “What about me? I don’t understand why you brought me along.”

  Jan looked at his cigarette, then, remembering, offered one. He lit it for Brano. “Because I could tell you needed it. You were in a bind. Like everybody else in Bóbrka, I knew you were going to be arrested.” He paused. “And I like you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I’d like to believe you,” said Brano. “But we both know it was decided long ago, in Vienna.”

  Jan’s cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “Dijana Franković,” Brano explained. “The Americans gave you that name to assure that I’d be the one sent in. And I suppose they paid Pavel Jast to give me a reason to leave.”

  Jan Soroka stared at his hands in his lap. He took a breath. “Well, Brano. Let’s say this was true, that I was
part of some conspiracy to get you out of the country. Do you think the Americans would tell me everything?”

  “I suppose they wouldn’t.”

  “So what will you do?”

  Brano took a drag of his cigarette. “What?”

  “East,” said Jan, “or West?”

  Brano surprised even himself by dredging up another smile. “I don’t suppose I have a choice anymore.”

  While Jan slept, he watched Lia shepherd Petre around the dacha and intervene with a nervous smile when he began to talk too much to Brano. Perhaps she was afraid he’d repeat things he’d overheard. Brano hadn’t had much experience with children, but he felt that, despite the blemish on his cheek, Petre was like most boys—he saw this trip as an adventure. He peed a lot and asked for more bread and jam and exclaimed unexpectedly about details that caught his eye—“Mama, there’s a spider!” He pointed, trembling, at a dirty corner, where there proved to be no spider at all—but a cockroach. Brano began to suspect the boy was a little dumb, then decided that he was only overenthusiastic, with a penchant for quick, unreflective judgments. Lia would crouch over him and point out his mistake, and the boy would nod, register the correction, and move on to the next mistake. It was like watching a puppy and its master.

  After the tense silence had stretched long enough, he asked Lia about her work in the Galicia Textile Works back in the Capital, how long she’d known Jan, and how Petre was at school. At first, she answered his questions easily, folding her relaxed hands in her lap. Her cheekbones were very strong; when she paused, she pressed her thick lips together until they wrinkled. He asked, and she told him that her fear was lessening now that the trip was under way.

  “It feels like there are no more decisions to make, you know? It doesn’t matter if the original decision was wrong or not, because it’s irreversible. I’m no longer responsible.” A cigarette in her right hand sent ribbons of smoke into her face. “But what about you, Major Brano Sev? You’ve got a family back home.”

  He adjusted himself in his chair. “My situation is different from Jan’s. My family survives well enough without me. In a way, it’ll be a relief to them that I’ve gone.”