36 Yalta Boulevard

by Olen Steinhauer

  That second possibility scared him most, so he set it aside for the moment.

  Gerhard could perhaps be trusted, but the doctor was an unknown. He met with numerous people each day and had a wife, and one loose word to the wrong person could lead anywhere. The doctor was Hungarian, and as such he respected the legalities of paperwork; he would certainly feel the need to file something on the crippled, waterlogged stranger in need of his care.

  So Brano would leave.

  He could not walk through the border, because the Austrian post would be looking for him. He would have to wade through the marsh again, or find a point south of Sopron to make the farmland trek to the barbed wire. But in his state, that would be impossible.

  And so, the option that he held at an arm’s length came back to him.

  Everything was in Vienna. In its intrigues lay the answers he’d been pursuing. In Vienna lay what was left of his career. And in Vienna, he thought as he stared at the murky water, lived Dijana Franković.

  He unplugged the tub and reached for the towel. Insecurely, he stood and dried himself, then slipped into the robe. Before leaving, he squatted by the floor drain and popped it open. The pistol was wet, so he used the towel on it, then dropped it into the pocket of the robe.

  Gerhard took out a bottle of Monopolowa potato vodka. He offered a toast to Brano’s successful escape from the Empire, and Brano accepted the toast cordially. The liquor warmed him, but after that he drank no more. He refilled his glass and affected sleepiness, but each time spilled his shot into the rug beneath the table, watching as Gerhard, always willing to accept one of Brano’s inventive toasts—to Gerhard’s health, to the spawning zander of the lake, to an end to the troubling situations history forces upon us—became more drunk and exhausted. Finally, around one, when Gerhard was having trouble remaining in his chair, Brano helped him to the bed. “I’ll stay on the couch tonight,” Brano told him. “You deserve a decent night’s rest.”

  While the old man slept, Brano counted out two hundred schillings and left them on the kitchen table, then took one of Gerhard’s overcoats from a rack beside the front door. Inside the pocket, he found the keys to his car.

  There were no lights around the house, and for a moment it felt like Bóbrka, with its treacherous holes. He drove south, to where the roads again became erratic and the earth soft. This time he did remember, and repeatedly played the geography of his Austrian entrance in his head.

  He parked near the marsh where Gerhard had found him, and only now understood that he had been at the wrong place. Had he not been incapacitated by that stroke, he would have struggled from one end of the marsh to the other and come out still in Austria. He had to go farther.

  His limp troubled him as he walked, but not as much as the low guard towers he knew were hiding not far away in the darkness. When an occasional flash of light came his way, he lay flat in the grass and waited, then, each time with more difficulty, climbed to his feet and moved on.

  Then he spotted the upturned blue rowboat on the bank of the marsh that he and the Sorokas had once waded across.

  He looked up. The clear sky was choked with stars.

  He squatted in the water alongside the cold hull. Then he plunged his hand into the water.

  23 APRIL 1967, SUNDAY

  •

  “So, I don’t want to be rude, but what happened to you?”

  Brano looked away from the road at the truck driver, a big man with a mustache that curled up at the ends.

  “You get into a fight or something?”

  “Never know who you’ll run into late at night.”

  “That’s for sure,” said the driver. “I once picked up a guy north of Graz. Skinny kid, hair a little long, but nice enough looking. We started talking and he tells me he’s trying to stop the war in Vietnam.” He grunted. “A little kid. So I ask him how he expects to do that. With this, he tells me, and pulls out a gun as big as my forearm. Can you believe it?”

  “Unbelievable,” said Brano, involuntarily touching the weight in his pocket.

  “At the next gas station you can bet I drove off before he was back from the toilet.”

  Brano gave the man a half smile and returned to the road. The sun had just crested the hills behind them, casting long shadows, and ahead the outskirts of Vienna were coming into view. He’d parked Gerhard’s Volkswagen on the northern shore of the lake and walked with a dead milkman’s wet passport to the highway. He didn’t have to wait long for a ride, and this talkative man, shipping lumber from eastern Hungary to Vienna, had kept him awake.

  “I’m Heinrich. What’s your name?”

  “Jakob,” said Brano. “Jakob Bieniek. You can let me off at Floridsdorf.”

  “I can take you through the center if you want. I’ve got to check in with my office.”

  “Thank you.”

  He got out at the Museum District and took a tram north along the Ringstraße. The morning was cool, breezy, and gray, the shaking tram filled with only a few early risers. They yawned into their hands, but Brano was too exhausted to do even that. More than anything, more than even Dijana Franković, he wanted a bed. He got out at Schottenring and crossed the street. The embassy was on Ebendorferstraße, between Universitätsstraße and Liebiggasse, so he took a parallel street to Liebiggasse, then approached the corner and waited.

  There was the regular uniformed guard, standing outside his pillbox with a machine gun hanging off his back. He was trying to light a cigarette with matches. Through the iron fence, a ground-floor light was on. At the very least, Brano would be something to brighten someone’s otherwise dull Sunday morning.

  The street was half full of parked cars. Those nearest him were empty, blocking the cars farther up the road. He stepped out to get a better look, then slipped back behind the corner when the guard tossed down his empty book of matches, looked around, and crossed the road. He approached a car Brano could not see and bent over the window. The guard spoke a second, reached through the window, and brought a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth.

  Brano backtracked and crossed Ebendorferstraße two blocks away, then approached again from the opposite side. From this corner, he could not see the embassy but could plainly see the gray Renault with the half-open window and the cigarette smoke misting out. Inside, Ludwig’s crew-cut employee looked exhausted.

  At ten, stores began to open, and he bought necessities—toothbrush and paste, a razor and shaving cream, and a cheap, wide-brimmed hat. He wore the hat as he left the haberdasher’s, then took a bus to Concordiaplatz and walked the rest of the way.

  He turned right at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and was soon on Weihburg-Gasse. Number 3’s white façade looked as it had in August, but a different bellboy stood under the glass awning. The bellboy, however, said the same thing the other had.

  “Grüß Gott.”

  Brano nodded his reply and entered the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth.

  The same woman sat behind the desk, now reading a different book. Her flaxen hair was styled differently. It was longer, more natural. He asked if they had a room free. They did, in fact. Then she smiled and asked for his documents.

  “Sorry,” he said as he handed over the passport. “It got wet.”

  Although they were well trained and professional, both the bellboy and the clerk had taken notice of his limp, of the way this man spoke through the side of his mouth, as if delivering secrets. Perhaps they also noticed that he did not remove his hat. He tried not to let this worry him. The one safe house he knew of was no longer safe, and he doubted that Ludwig and his associates would spend the manpower looking for him in the tourist center.

  She compared the photograph in Jakob Bieniek’s passport to Brano’s bearded face. She wrote down the passport number. She handed it back with a key and thanked him. “Any luggage, Mr. Bieniek?”

  No, Mr. Bieniek had no luggage.

  But the bellboy, who had come inside during his registration, helped him with the elevator nonetheless. Did he
need assistance getting to the room? No, Mr. Bieniek did not need help, but he still gave the boy a small compensation for his efforts.

  In the room, he took apart the pistol, spread the pieces across the desk, and checked each for rust. There were five cartridges left in the clip, which he also laid out, to let everything air-dry.

  24 APRIL 1967, MONDAY

  •

  Brano didn’t wake until seven the next morning. It had been a fitful sleep, but when he woke the fog had cleared from his head. He sat up and gazed at the disassembled pistol.

  Before showering, he opened the Jakob Bieniek passport and propped it just below the bathroom mirror. Bieniek’s expression was nondescript and bland, and Brano found it easy to imitate. The moles were placed differently, but no one would notice. His beard was a different shade, but that, too, was unimportant. The hair, though. Bieniek’s scalp was wide, bald, and pale, while Brano’s was not. He took out the razor and shaving cream, ran water over his head, and worked the foam into his hair.

  He left the hotel at nine and spent the next hour on streetcars, changing often, until he had followed an arc around to Nußdorfer Straße. He got out one stop late and found a bookstore a half block north of her apartment.

  “Grüß Gott,” said a spectacled woman behind a desk. He smiled at her, and she watched him limp to the wall of used paperback fiction beside the front window. The street was busy with traffic, cars parked tight against the curb.

  “Looking for something in particular?”

  “Just browsing, danke,” said Brano. He gazed at the creased spines. Murder mysteries, cowboy fiction, sex-themed thrillers.

  Across the street, a small Peugeot pulled out, giving Brano an unhindered view of the car behind it, where the driver was reading a newspaper. Brano picked a book at random—an English writer with a French surname—and flipped through it. The driver turned to the next page, and he caught a flash of sunburned face, more faded than before but still clearly damaged.

  Brano closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and thanked the woman for her assistance.

  He was running into dead ends. Ludwig had locked down the two obvious places Brano would be drawn to—one for safety, the other for sentimentality. He found himself respecting Ludwig’s fortitude.

  So Brano would ignore safety and sentimentality for the moment and focus on what was probably most important: information.

  He walked east, toward the Danube Canal, and found a post office near the university. The woman at the desk told him to go to booth number 7, and he waited there, watching strangers until the telephone rang.

  “Hello?”

  Regina Haliniak, her voice muted by miles of telephone line, said, “Importation Register, First District.”

  “Regina, it’s Brano.”

  “Good to hear from you, Brano.”

  “Can I speak to the Comrade Colonel?”

  “He’s not there with you?”

  “In Vienna?”

  “He left … four? Yes, four days ago. I thought he was going to meet with you.”

  “Oh.”

  “You all right? There was some fuss a few days ago about you, but no one tells me anything.”

  “I’m fine, Regina.”

  “Hold on, Brano. Let me patch you through to the Lieutenant General. He wanted to speak to you if you called.”

  “No, wait—” Brano started to say, but she was already gone, replaced by a monotone ring. And though he considered it, he did not hang up.

  “Brano,” said the congested voice that took him back, briefly, to a small, humid room in the basement of Yalta 36. “Where are you?”

  “Vienna.”

  “What on earth is going on over there?”

  Brano paused. There were no men standing over him with fists, but he felt the same anxiety he’d felt in August. “I’d like to know what’s going on myself, Comrade Lieutenant General.”

  He heard static, then: “Tell me, Brano. Why is Josef Lochert dead?”

  “Self-defense.”

  “And why, then, would you need to defend yourself against the Vienna rezidentr?”

  “Because I learned he was a traitor.”

  The Lieutenant General didn’t answer at first. There was noise on his side, perhaps papers being shuffled. “You damn well better be able to prove this. Or else a factory job will be just a dream.”

  Brano gazed across the post office, where people were becoming blurry. “I believe I can collect the evidence.”

  “Go to the embassy, Brano. Major Romek will take your statement, and then we’ll decide what to do.”

  “I can’t, comrade.”

  “What?”

  “The Austrians are watching it. I wouldn’t be able to make it to the front gate.”

  “Then come home. We can arrange a pickup in the Stadtpark.”

  He rubbed his face. He had nearly died trying to get home. “With respect, I suggest I wait for Colonel Cerny. I was told he’s in Vienna.”

  “I see,” said the Lieutenant General. “That’s the way you’d like to play it?”

  “That’s the way I’d like to play it. Please let him know that I’m staying at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, under the name Bieniek.”

  “Bieniek?” The Lieutenant General let out a laugh that became a cough. “Priceless, Brano.”

  He waited until nightfall before visiting the Carp, spending the intervening hours at cafés farther north. He limited his outdoor time, and when he was on the street, he kept his hat low over his forehead, stroking his beard.

  He approached Sterngasse from Fleischmarkt, waiting near the top of the steps, at Desider Friedmannplatz. From there he could see down the short pedestrian street to the next set of stairs leading down to Marc-Aurel-Straße. It was almost eight o’clock and had become cool. He buttoned his jacket and leaned against the railing, clearing his mind for the mental silence that made surveillance work bearable.

  Through the window he saw a small crowd of familiars. Lutz’s translator sat with the short man from Ersek’s party, and Ersek was explaining something to Monika at the bar. Lutz was not around, but Brano did recognize the man with faint features who wobbled toward the front door and leaned against it, pushing through to the street.

  He took two steps back, deeper into the darkness.

  Jan Soroka came out, then paused by the Carp’s window, breathing heavily, talking to himself. “Yes, you know you can make it.”

  Then Jan turned and wandered down the stairs leading to Marc-Aurel-Straße.

  With his hands in his pockets, Brano stayed close to the opposite wall as he passed the Carp, then descended the steps. Jan was extremely drunk. He paused now and then, and once he put a hand against the wall, bowed his head, and rested before moving on.

  They shared a tram southward, past the Stadtpark, Brano sitting in the back of the car while Jan slumped in the front. Occasionally he raised his head, shook it, and squinted out the dark window. He seemed to know where he was going.

  They got off at Salesiandergasse, and during that last stretch along the sidewalk, Soroka spoke to himself again. Brano couldn’t make out all the words, but twice he heard “Li,” the second time louder than the first. Soroka stopped at number 6 Jaurésgasse and began searching for his keys.

  Brano closed the distance between them as quickly as possible, his left foot dragging across the wet sidewalk as he pulled out Josef Lochert’s pistol and pressed it against Soroka’s back.

  “Hello, Jan.”

  Soroka fell to the steps. His hands fluttered a moment, then settled. He squinted. “Brano? Jesus, you know how to fucking scare a man.”

  Brano switched the gun to his weak left hand and helped pull him up. “The keys?”

  Soroka looked at the gun. “Sure. Here. It’s the big one.”

  Brano used the long key on the front door and walked with him to a ground-floor apartment. Just outside the door, Soroka looked at the gun again.

  “Brano, should I be scared?”


  He opened the door. “No, Jan. I’m the one who’s scared.”

  While Soroka collapsed on the sofa, Brano went to make coffee. He stuck his head out of the kitchen now and then to be sure Jan hadn’t left. By the time the coffee was poured, Brano had to shake him awake.

  “Come on, Jan. Drink this. We need to talk.”

  Soroka forced himself into an upright position and accepted the cup. “It’s a bad night for talking.”

  “It’s the only night we’ve got.”

  Soroka sipped, then pursed his lips. “This isn’t bad.”

  “I make a good cup of coffee. Can you focus?”

  “Just barely.”

  “Then drink more.”

  Brano waited until he’d finished the first cup, then poured him a second. Jan squinted at him. “Something wrong with your face?”

  “I’m bald.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But your mouth. It looks kind of funny.”

  “It’s nothing.” Brano turned on a radio beside a few books on a shelf and found a station playing Austrian waltzes.

  Jan smiled. “You like this stuff?”

  “No, but it’s lively.”

  He tilted his head, unsure if he agreed, and started on his second cup. He looked tired, but it was more than the fatigue of a drinking night.

  “Why are you here, Jan?”

  “In Vienna?”

  Brano nodded.

  “I thought you of all people would know. Everyone else does.”

  “Lia?”

  “Yeah. We got to Chicago, Illinois, and that’s when she told me she wanted a divorce. She didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “Did she give you a reason?”

  “She said she couldn’t trust me. I get her out of that hellhole, I bring her to the richest country on earth, and she can’t trust me?”

  “Well, Jan, you did leave her behind at first.”

  “That’s what she kept saying.” He looked into his cup, frowned, and put it on the coffee table. “So I think to myself, where do I go now? Do I stay there? My English is terrible, and Chicago is … well, it’s huge. Have you been?”