Dear Friend,
There is much talk these days of an impending war between Red China and the Soviet Union. Optimism, to be sure. Such an argument encourages the feeling among Leftist professors that détente with the Soviet Union is the best course of action, to prepare for a war against the Red Chinese. Is this truly the best course of action?
THE HYPOCRISY
What these communist/détente sympathizers forget is that war between two communist powers is, by their own logic, impossible. Communists believe war is caused by the retention of profit by a small group of capitalists, leading to the roller-coaster ride of inflation and depression. The moneymaking machine of war, they say, is the one thing that can repair a capitalist depression.
Therefore Communism, not burdened by profit, cannot lead to war.
The academics had better reread their hero, Karl Marx!
THEN WHY TENSION?
There are many reasons for the present tension between these two godless nations, and I will mention just a few:
1) The truth is that these two communist powers are, in fact, “capitalist.” That is, a small group of men hold the wealth, leaving the great masses with next to nothing.
2) Just this year Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist leader, spoke angrily against Red China for blocking arms shipments to the North Vietnamese Communist aggressors. It seems that while both Brezhnev and Chairman Mao wish to “bury” Capitalism, they cannot agree on the proper method.
3) The Soviet Union, desperate to keep its hold on World Communism, has united the Communist Parties throughout the world in an attempt to end the other, Chinese, form.
RABID DOGS!
What the Leftist professors will not tell anyone is that these are the precise reasons why détente must not be followed. At this moment we have two communist giants glaring at one another like rabid dogs, and this is when it is most important to act. The Captive Nations of Eastern Europe, so long under the boot of the Soviet Menace, must be set free of their chains!
Be one with us, and appeal to President Johnson to push forward efforts to roll back the Iron Curtain.
God bless America.
Dr. Ned Rathbone
The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations
December 18, 1966
30 MARCH 1967, THURSDAY
•
Day 11. The Subject began Thursday with the same routine as previous days. The Subject’s regularity has been a source of surprise, only interrupted by occasional visits to bookstores (often loitering in the political section). This agent has, however, noted an increased level of drinking. The Subject’s one or two evening beers have turned into two beers at a bar, followed by a bottle of wine from his 24-hour local, brought back home to drink in front of the television.
Perhaps the drinking explains the acts of 30 March.
This agent stood beside the flak tower at the corner of Eszterházy Park as the Subject read on his usual bench and, at noon, urinated on his usual tree. Rather than returning to his seat, he walked down Windmühl to Fillegradergasse, then, just before the Hotel Terminus, jogged up the steps leading to Theobaldgasse, turning left on Mariahilfer (effectively doubling back on himself). This agent, fearing he would lose contact, jogged as well. The Subject turned right at Stiftgasse, then took another right on Siebensterngasse. This agent rounded the corner as well, but found the Subject staring at him through the rear windshield of a taxi that was pulling away.
This agent immediately telephoned his superiors.
“Innere Stadt, you said?”
“Yes. The center.”
“But where in the center?”
Brano looked back at the sunburned man dwindling to insignificance. “Turn here. Right. Then go to the Westbahnhof.”
“Westbahnhof? That’s not in the center!”
“Please, just do it.”
Brano paid the driver and jogged into the modern, airy train station. There were three people in line at the ticket counter. The heavy woman in front of him wore a kerchief around her head and leaned on a cheap, heavy bag, much like the fat provincial women of Bóbrka, sweating beneath too many layers of skirt. Soon he was at the window.
“Salzburg,” he said. “First class.”
The clerk looked at a list of cities and numbers on the wall. “It’s leaving right now.”
“I’ll make it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Just let me worry about that.” Brano glanced behind himself, then handed over his money.
Ticket in hand, he ran up the stairs to the second level and paused, looking back again through the windows that covered the front of the Westbahnhof, his thumping heart reminding him he was old for this kind of action.
Then he spotted it: the gray Renault that parked along Europaplatz. Two men bolted out the back and across the concrete toward the station.
Instead of approaching the platforms, he exited left beneath a sign that said FELBERSTRAßE. He jogged through the station’s parking lot, north along a back street, then, panting, caught a tram along Lerchenfelder Gürtel. The car was tight with warm Viennese, and when he began to laugh involuntarily, many turned to look at him.
He got off at Gablenzgasse and returned on foot, taking the narrow backstreets overlooked by dirty buildings and shops, until he was back at the corner of Tannengasse and Felberstraße. Across the street an old woman moved slowly with her cane; on his side a drunk counted coins. “Funfundsechzig … siebzig.” When the woman had finally made it to her door and the drunk had shuffled past and disappeared around the corner, Brano turned to face the wall.
He counted three bricks from the bottom, then five bricks from the edge. The brick left gray marks on his fingers, and he had to use a key from his pocket to loosen it, but after a minute he was able to pull it out of the wall.
The back of the brick had been chiseled away, so that a small space remained between it and the next layer of brick. In that space lay a ring with two keys.
Number 20 Felberstraße was covered with a fine layer of soot from the train yard across the street. The tiles in the wall of the foyer had cracked a long time ago, and in those gaps spiders built webs. As he entered the second set of doors, an old man leaving the elevator held it open for him. “Grüß Gott,” they said to one another.
It was a small wooden elevator from before the First World War, with the name of a Budapest company on the plaque above the buttons. At the third floor he got out and closed the doors behind himself; the elevator returned to the ground floor on its own.
The apartment was to the left, and in the dark corridor he leaned close and listened, then used the key.
During his time as rezident, safe houses had been minimalist affairs—a mattress and a telephone. Nothing else was required. But Josef Lochert, it seemed, had taken it upon himself to decorate. He stood in a comfortable living room not so different from the one where he’d been imprisoned in the suburbs. A sofa covered with a lace blanket sat across from a television, and a china cabinet held trinkets of a life that was still being lived.
Then he understood.
“Peter?”
He looked toward the closed bedroom door.
“Peter?” the woman’s voice repeated. “Peter, you didn’t forget my chocolate, did you?”
Brano stepped back toward the front door and opened it.
“Peter, you better answer me now, you understand?”
On his way out to the street, he passed a fifteen-year-old with a large bar of chocolate in his hand. Brano smiled at the boy, who looked back curiously.
Farther north, Brano found a post office with a row of public telephone booths. He approached the woman at the desk and asked if he could place an international call. She accepted his deposit of schillings and the telephone number, and told him to wait in booth number 5.
He went in and leaned against the glass door, looking out at Viennese talking into their phones, Viennese in line to buy stamps, and sullen Viennese women behind the counters who took envel
opes and gave out change.
The telephone rang.
“Hello?”
There was a series of clicks, followed by a long hiss through which he could barely hear a telephone ringing. Then a faint woman’s voice, in his language, said, “Importation Register, First District.”
“Regina, it’s Brano.”
“Hello?”
He raised his voice. “Regina! It’s Brano!”
“Oh, Brano! Where are you?”
He sighed, wanting only to listen to Regina Haliniak’s comforting provincial accent. But he said, “I don’t have time to talk. Can I speak to the Comrade Colonel?”
“Colonel Cerny?”
“Yes.”
“One minute.”
The phone clicked four times, then began ringing again.
“Brano? You’re on a clean line?”
“Public telephone, I think it’s clean. The Felberstraße safe house is no longer safe. Lochert must have sold it for another.”
“Right,” said Cerny. “Where are you?”
“Where do you think?”
“Don’t be smart.”
“I’m not being smart, Comrade Colonel. You’ve kept me in the dark. You wanted me in Austria from the beginning, didn’t you?”
He heard Cerny’s long sigh as static. “Brano, everything has gone to plan. Now hang up and return to your apartment on Web-Gasse and await further instructions.”
He almost didn’t say the words, but they’d come to him so many times over the last week and a half that by now there was no holding them back. “Have you abandoned me?”
Another pause. Brano glanced up at the man in the next booth, who was sinking down the wall, crying into his telephone. Cerny said, “Comrade Sev, you will receive your orders when I want you to receive them. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. I just felt—”
“I don’t care about your feelings, Brano. Not at this moment. I care about the security of socialism. You’ll learn everything you need to learn, but only when you need to learn it. And stay away from our embassy—your presence is not their business. Are you reading the Kurier?”
“Every day, Comrade Colonel.”
“Good, Brano.” His voice lowered. “Just tell me that everything’s all right. You’re not hurt?”
“No.”
“You’re under observation?”
“Yes, but I’ve broken away.”
“Not for long, I hope.”
“No, Comrade Colonel.”
“Is there anything else you need?”
“Need?”
“Yes.”
“No,” said Brano. The man in the next booth had hung up the phone but was still in the booth, on the floor, weeping.
“Okay, Brano. My only order for you now is this—”
“What?”
“Be patient.” Then the line went dead.
The gray Renault pulled alongside him four hours later, as the sun was descending behind the Hofburg Palace. He heard the engine rumbling, then a squeaky window rolling down. Ludwig’s voice: “Come on now, Brano. Take a rest, why don’t you?”
The car pulled a little in front of him and stopped. Karl stepped out of the back and touched the brim of his hat.
Ludwig’s head popped out of the passenger window. “Enough. Now get in.”
Brano climbed into the backseat, and Karl followed him inside.
They turned right onto the Ringstraße and rode without speaking for a while, the driver, Karl, and Ludwig preferring to gaze out the windows at their capital.
“You like Vienna, Brano?” Ludwig didn’t look back when he asked it.
“It’s a nice city.”
“It’s a big city with a lot of history, and that’s why we get all these damned tourists. Not that I mind so much—if it wasn’t for tourist money we’d have more war ruins—but sometimes you don’t want to see crowds of Japanese with their little cameras. Know what I mean?”
“Did you pick me up to talk about tourism, Ludwig?”
“It’ll get me as far as any other subject.”
“Try me.”
Ludwig turned in his seat. “How about hospitality, Brano? You’re a guest in our lovely city. That’s agreed, isn’t it?”
“Sure.”
“And I don’t think you could really call us bad hosts, could you? Apartment, money, the freedom to move around—that’s not so bad, is it?”
“It’s very fine,” said Brano. Despite everything, he found himself admiring Ludwig. His insistent good humor was a rare thing in their business, and sometimes Brano could even imagine liking the inept Austrian. In another life, perhaps. In another war.
“So you can imagine our frustration when it turns out our guest isn’t being polite. When he in fact tries to send us to Salzburg to make fools of us. Can you imagine our frustration?”
Somewhere along the way, they had turned around and were driving in the opposite direction. “I can imagine that,” said Brano.
Karl was looking out the window, smiling.
“Listen,” said Ludwig. “I’m not going to try to be discreet about this. If you keep this up, we’re going to take you out into the suburbs and fire up our battery again.”
Brano didn’t answer.
“But, hey, none of us wants to do that. Right, Karl?”
Karl nodded at the window.
“So where were you?”
“Here and there.”
“You were gone almost five hours.”
Brano stared at his hands, which looked very small in this light. “I was at the Espresso Arabia, on Kohlmarkt, for the first couple hours.”
“And what were you doing?”
“I read the newspaper a little, but in general I was enjoying myself. The coffee there is very good.”
Karl sniffed.
“And then?” said Ludwig.
“And then the Espresso Josefstüberl.”
“On Alser Straße.”
“That’s the one.”
“Again, just reading?”
Brano nodded.
“Anything of interest in the news?”
“I was learning more about the recent coup in Sierra Leone. And it seems they’re unable to sink the Torrey Canyon oil tanker. The Scottish coast is covered in oil.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Brano. “There have been more protests in America against Johnson’s imperialist war in Vietnam.”
Ludwig stared at him a moment. “We’ll check on those cafés, you understand? I don’t want to find out you’ve been lying to me.”
“Anke, the waitress at the Arabia, should remember me. We had a nice discussion.”
“About what?”
“About the demise of capitalism.”
Ludwig looked ahead a moment. “So now can you tell me why?”
“Why?”
“Why you’re acting like a spoiled child.”
Karl was watching the enormous Natural History Museum slide by.
“I suppose I’m bored.”
“Bored?”
Karl turned to look at him.
“I’ve been here awhile, and I’ve only talked to you. How else am I supposed to feel?”
Ludwig pursed his lips. “Well, what do you think of that, Karl?”
Karl shrugged.
“I told you this before, Brano. You need to meet people. Who doesn’t? Maybe some of your own kind?”
“My kind?”
“I don’t mean spies, Brano. I mean your own countrymen.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll tell you what. You go over to Sterngasse. You know where that is?”
“I can find it on the map.”
“Good, good. There’s a bar there. The Carp. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“I think I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, you go there, and I assure you you’ll make friends.”
“Okay,” said Brano.
“You’ll give it a try?”
&nb
sp; “I will.”
“Good, good. You make some friends and try to be nice. Is it a deal?”
“Okay.”
Ludwig smiled finally. “Because I know that Karl, for one, doesn’t want to have to put those clips on your tits again. Do you, Karl?”
Karl shrugged and stared out the window.
31 MARCH 1967, FRIDAY
•
Of course he knew the Carp. It was a dingy place in the narrow maze of Vienna’s old fishing district—on Sterngasse, off of Desider Friedmannplatz. He knew what and where it was, though he’d avoided it personally. He’d instead sent his informants into its dark interior to listen to the exiles’ stories of dissatisfaction. Ingrid Petritsch had been one of his better informants; she could maneuver herself among the barstools and flirt the information out of any man, because the exiles would say anything to impress a beautiful woman. They would always explain to her, as if to a child, that their own capital was superior to cold Vienna, though none of them had the courage to return home. Then Ingrid would touch their arms and ask for more.
But Ingrid, after Bertrand Richter’s death, decided she’d had enough. Cerny had told him this over drinks. She married an English businessman and was now living in London. A goddamned waste, he’d said. She won’t even talk to our local man now.
In the morning he woke later than usual and did not bother with Eszterházy Park. Instead, he picked up a Kurier and took it east, to the vast grounds of the Schönbrunn Palace, where, when he wasn’t reading the newspaper’s personals, he gazed at squares of black soil in the enormous gardens being tended by workers in preparation for spring. He mixed with a busload of Italians who shouted at their wives and children, then stopped beside a Grecian sculpture and stared at the crisp blue sky, where a single unformed cloud floated.
At sunset, he took the tram back into town, to Schwedenplatz by the Danube, then found Sterngasse. It was a short pedestrian street ending in stairs, dirty by Viennese standards but relatively clean to Brano’s eyes. Arched above the door was a wooden carp, silver paint peeling off its ribs.
There were only a few customers this early, so Brano settled at the bar. The black-haired bartender, a woman of about sixty, smoked beside a wall of palinkas and vodkas, reading a newspaper. She wore large hoop earrings. Behind the bottles, a large mirrored wall allowed him to see his own tired face. In the corner, a wide, glowing jukebox played jazz music.
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