She nodded.
“And, of course, you didn’t see me.”
“Of course,” she said, and punched him in the ribs.
In the entryway she wiped some tears from her eyes, then kissed him. She straightened the lapels of his coat.
“You will to grow out your hair again?”
“You don’t like it?”
She snorted when she laughed, and Brano hugged her. Over her shoulder, he saw the bulletin board of notices for future sermons, and one caught his eye. It was for the fourteenth of May, to celebrate when the Holy Spirit descended as tongues of fire and a rushing wind, and gave Jesus” disciples the power to speak so that all languages could understand them.
The fourteenth of May, a Sunday, was Pentecost.
She pushed him back and gave a teary smile. “You will to talk with your father?”
“I will, Dijana. I will.”
“Good,” she said. “I think it good we know our parents.”
26 APRIL 1967, WEDNESDAY
•
Brano chose the Café-Restaurant Europa because of the telephone booth across the street from its wide windows, which allowed an unhindered view of its long interior. He first bought tea in a paper cup from the pastry counter and told them he would need to reserve a table that afternoon for a business meeting. “How many?” asked the woman behind the counter. Brano said he didn’t know, but if he could have their phone number, he would call an hour before they arrived. She wrote it down for him.
He crossed to the telephone booth and dialed the Hotel Inter-Continental. A desk clerk patched him through to room 516. The voice that picked up was deeper than he remembered, but there was still that lisp to each s, caused, he had always assumed, by that chipped front tooth.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.”
“Brani. I’m so glad you called.”
“The Café-Restaurant Europa, on the corner of Kärtner and Donnergasse. You’ll be here in fifteen minutes if you leave now.”
Brano hung up. He had also chosen the Europa for its distance from the Inter-Continental. His father could arrive quickly enough, but not so quickly that Ludwig, with his resources, would not arrive first.
But over the next fifteen minutes, as he stood in an apartment doorway and watched cars glide by, sometimes honk, and Viennese cross the street, read papers, and scold children, nothing struck him as suspicious.
Though there were plenty of holes in the story, he felt he understood the outlines. The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations was planning a coup d’etat. He could doubt this if he were only going by Lochert’s word, but Jan’s friend Gregor had been killed after spotting Brano’s father and a Yalta Boulevard officer at a nuclear reactor. Lutz had made no secret of a May event, and Bertrand Richter, on the night of his murder, had let the day slip: 14 May, which turned out to be the kind of Christian holiday the Committee for Liberty would naturally choose—tongues of fire and rushing wind.
But why? Why had Brano been drawn into a fundamentalist conspiracy? Only Dijana’s revelation suggested an answer, and when he looked up he saw the answer approaching from the east, along Himmelpfort. Though Brano had seen him before, only now, with the knowledge of who he was, could he imagine away the beard and take off years. Andrezej Fedor Sev was a little shorter than he’d been in ’45, and he’d grown thick around the torso beneath his badly pressed raincoat. The white beard gave his round, pale face a generous feel that Brano could not recall from childhood.
He reentered the phone booth and took a few breaths to get rid of that choked feeling in the back of his throat. His father stopped at the café door, peering through the window. Then he went inside. Perhaps for Brano’s benefit, he chose a table by the window. A waitress took his order, and he rested his chin in his hand. He seemed neither agitated nor confused by his son’s absence.
Brano took a couple of minutes to check the street again, then put a coin into the telephone.
“Europa,” said a woman.
“Bitte, may I speak with one of your customers? He’s the older gentleman sitting next to the window, alone.”
He could see the woman behind the pastry counter look up from the phone. “Moment.”
She came up to Andrezej Sev’s table, bent over him, and spoke. He got up and went with her to the counter.
“Yes?” said Brano’s father.
“I’m afraid I’m very careful these days.”
“Brani. We could have just talked on the phone in my hotel.”
“I wanted to find out if I could trust you.”
“And? Can you?”
“Dijana said you wanted to tell me something.”
“I’d rather see you face-to-face.”
“Let’s take this in stages.”
His father nodded into the telephone, then looked around to be sure no one was listening. He was a careful man, more than when Brano was a child. “I’m the reason you were brought over. A deal with Jan Soroka—I’d help him get his family if he would lure you out.”
“I know this. But you couldn’t do it without Austrian help.”
“Yes, another deal. They called off their border guards and helped with the Hungarian side. In exchange, they were allowed to question you for a period of time.” Andrezej Sev paused. “I heard about the car battery. I’m very sorry, I didn’t think it would come to that. I won’t let it happen again.”
“Why did you want me here?”
“You’re my son, Brano. You saved me once, and when I heard what happened to you back in August—that you made a blunder—well, I thought I could save you as well. Your only safety lies on this side of the Iron Curtain.”
It was just a voice, he kept telling himself, a voice on the phone. Nonetheless, that zbrka of childhood crept upon him. As if he were a confused child returning home to his father’s stern voice, knowing he’d done something wrong but not knowing what it was. “How did you learn about that?”
“I keep an eye on my children. How’s Klara?”
“She lives in a house with bad paint.” He paused. “And I believe she hates me.
“Nonsense.”
“You couldn’t have sent a letter?”
His father paused again. “What do you want from me, Brano? Apologies? You’re the one who sent me away.”
He placed a hand on the window of the booth to steady himself. “You sound like Mother now.”
“Brano Oleksy Sev,” said that voice.
“Yes, Tati?”
“We’ll get sentimental later. You can even hit me if you like. But now I’m trying to save your life. You killed Josef Lochert, and, no matter the reason, you know the only thing that awaits you back home is a firing squad.”
Brano nodded into the phone because he’d known this ever since the Comrade Lieutenant General mentioned a pickup in the Stadtpark. He sniffed, then cleared his throat. “You and Filip Lutz are trying to overthrow my government.”
“You make it sound so easy.” Andrezej Sev snorted a laugh. “Is that what Lochert told you before you killed him?”
Brano closed his eyes. “Lochert tried to make me believe that Filip Lutz was running the operation, but that was only to protect the real head. You. You were the one seen last June at the Vámosoroszi test reactor by a worker named Gregor Samec.”
“I don’t remember being there.”
“But you were. Perhaps you were scouting landing areas, or perhaps you were figuring out how to create a meltdown. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter now. But you were with someone else, a state security agent. I want to know who it was.”
“I don’t remember that at all, Brani.”
He opened his eyes as Andrezej Sev broke away from the telephone to speak with a large man in a white chef’s hat.
“They want their phone back. Can I answer your questions face-to-face?”
“One last thing,” said Brano. “Are you going to wildly parachute soldiers into the country on Pentecost? While the Hungarians or the Czechs
just close their eyes as you fly over their territory?”
“You’ve been doing so well up to now, Brani,” said Andrezej Sev. “You’ve been making your father proud. But of course we’re not parachuting anybody in on Pentecost.”
“Because,” said Brano, scratching the paint flaking off the telephone. “Because they’re already there. You’ve already sent in your men, probably through the same path Jan used to get in.”
“You can think what you like, Brano. I have a feeling Yalta Boulevard will find your stories hard to swallow, given the storyteller. Ja, ja,” he said to the chef. “Brani, can we meet?”
“I’ll call.”
“Well, I—” Andrezej Sev began, but by then Brano had hung up.
His father had changed in the last twenty years. It was the same man—he had no doubt of that—but perhaps it was the American lifestyle that had made him into such a natural liar. He knew how to tease his son with half facts and outright fabrications. There was no reason to believe that he had brought Brano here for his safety; the fact was, it was his father’s operation that had ended his career back in August. Andrezej Sev worked with the American fundamentalists, and the CIA was likely part of his background as well. There were too many loose threads; everything remained just beyond his reach. And this, as Dijana had explained, was the essence of zbrka.
He took a tram down to Soroka’s neighborhood and rang his bell but got no answer. Behind the building was a large courtyard with grass and picnic tables and groups of mothers chatting while their children ran in circles. He sat at an empty table and stared at the children without seeing them.
He understood the outline. His father, using the cover of the Committee for Liberty, had worked with Lochert, Lutz, and Richter over what must have been a number of years, recruiting émigrés, training them, and then sending them back into the country to wait. Loretta Reich, the Committee’s secretary, had been kind enough to point out that his father had been close to Frank Wisner, who ran the earlier attempts to undermine the People’s Democracies. Andrezej Sev had no doubt learned from Wisner’s endless mistakes. Now their men had been placed—all they were waiting for was the prearranged date.
And in the middle of it all, his father was trying to convince him to defect.
Brano rubbed his head as children squealed, running past him.
There had been perhaps three moments during that phone call when he wanted to cross the street, walk up to Andrezej Sev, and hit him. Because he sounded like all fathers of the world who drop contact for years and then expect to be welcomed back. Like exiles, they live so long in their cloistered worlds, distracted by their petty obsessions, that it never occurs to them that their families no longer need them and, in fact, no longer want them.
But that wasn’t it, he realized as a small blonde girl ran over to him to retrieve her ball. Narrow-mindedness and stupidity were no reasons to strike a man. It was commonness. It was that Brano’s father turned out to be like all fathers in the world. He was a disappointment.
By evening he had returned to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. The woman at the desk set down her book when he approached. She stood up. “Mister Bieniek?”
“Yes?”
She handed him an envelope. “This is for you.’
“Thank you.”
There was a brief note inside, on Kaiserin Elisabeth stationery: Johannesgasse 4, 11:20.
“When did this come?”
“Around noon. A phone call.”
“Where is Johannesgasse?”
“Very near. Down Kärtner StraßE, away from the cathedral, two blocks.”
“You don’t know the name of the person who left this?”
She shook her head. “I asked, but he said you’d know who he was.”
27 APRIL 1967, THURSDAY
•
Johannesgasse 4 was a cinema, the Metro Lichtspiele, and its first show of the day, to begin at 11:20, was Det Sjunde Inseglet—The Seventh Seal—by a morose Swede named Bergman. That was an hour from now, so Brano wandered back down Kärtner and looked into the clothing stores and through windows at the faces of those who passed. He was back at the Lichtspiele by eleven, as the box office opened. He bought a ticket, went inside, and found a seat in the rear.
The cinema was empty for the next ten minutes, and he looked around at the ornate walls and the curtain covering the screen, waiting. The first visitor was an old man with a cane who took a center seat. Then a young couple appeared and sat in the front.
Two serious-looking young men with glasses arrived. One returned his stare, but they continued ahead, sitting near the old man.
The crowd consisted of mostly older Viennese looking for a brief escape from the boredom of their retirements. One of the old men, behind a small crowd, turned and looked back. It was that familiar, mustached face he was beginning to fear he’d never see again. Cerny lit up when he spotted Brano, smiling as he twisted to fit between rows of seats. He took the one beside Brano.
They didn’t shake hands, but Cerny patted his thigh. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get your message from Regina, One-Shot. I was afraid we’d lost you.”
“It was close. I got sick.”
“Sick?” Cerny squinted at him. “Your face—it’s different.”
“It seems I had a stroke, Comrade Colonel.”
“A—” Cerny didn’t finish the sentence. “Well, I guess that decides it. I’m sending you home.”
“What?”
Cerny’s next words were drowned out by a blast of music. Then it silenced and the lights dimmed.
Brano leaned closer. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I said that you’ve done more than enough for the cause of socialism. I’m not going to lose one of my closest friends. Just tell me what you know and we’ll put you on a plane.”
In a whisper, Brano outlined the plot as he understood it. A league of men trying to start a revolution on Pentecost. “The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations. One of the conspirators, Bertrand Richter, tried to sell the plans to the Russians. Lochert learned of this. He had photographs of KGB agents in the apartment Bertrand Richter bought for Dijana Franković. Lochert used Yalta Boulevard to get rid of Richter and protect the conspiracy, as well as himself. He was GAVRILO all along. Dijana Franković was never a spy.”
Cerny nodded at the screen, where a bird hovered against dark clouds, then a Crusade soldier rested on a barren beach; subtitles told them what happened when the Lamb opened the seventh seal. “Go on.”
“It’s become clear that everything is in place for the fourteenth of May. My father’s operatives are already in the country, waiting for the moment to attack.”
Cerny squinted at him. “Your father? I thought he was dead.”
“I did, too. His new name is Andrew Stamer.”
“Andrew Stamer? Christ. Are you all right?”
Brano leaned closer. “What?”
“It must have been a shock.”
“I’ve gotten over it,” he said, unsure if that was a lie. “But the crucial point is that someone in the Ministry is working with him. Last June this person helped my father enter our country, and they visited the Vámosoroszi test reactor together.”
“June?”
Brano nodded. “This is what separates his plan from Frank Wisner’s operations. Wisner never had a highly placed insider. If we find this person, the whole thing might fall apart.”
Cerny squinted at him, taking this in.
“Now you,” said Brano. “You have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Sounds like you’ve figured it all out, One-Shot. We first learned of the plot from the Russians, who had gotten what they knew from Richter.” He grinned. “If that bastard hadn’t been so greedy, wasting time trying to raise the price for his information, it would have ended last August.”
“So you knew about it that long ago? And you didn’t tell me?”
“All we knew was that something substantial was going on. The only name Richte
r had given the Russians was Filip Lutz. At the same time, our Vienna network was being decimated by the Austrians, and we felt that if you could reconstruct it by finding GAVRILO, then we’d be able to deal with this properly. But we all know how that tour of duty ended.”
Brano touched his shaved scalp. “But if you knew Richter had information, then why did you give the order for him to be executed?”
“We didn’t know,” said Cerny. “I guess the Russians knew we had a mole, because they wouldn’t tell us who their informant was.” He licked his lips. “Anyway, it was the Comrade Lieutenant General’s decision to kill Richter.”
“And what about Bieniek?”
“Who?”
“Jakob Bieniek, the man I was framed for killing.” Cerny again looked at the screen. “He was the key to getting us inside. We knew about this Andrew Stamer, that he wanted to get you west, through Jan Soroka, but we didn’t know why. We certainly didn’t know who he was.”
“How did you learn that he wanted to bring me west?”
“Josef Lochert. He said you would only be held a short time and then be given freedom within Vienna. That was Andrew—your father’s—deal with the Abwehramt.” Cerny wrinkled his eyes. “Your father?”
Brano nodded.
“Well, we decided to use their plan against them, but since you would be interrogated, we couldn’t brief you. You’d come to Vienna, and then you’d be able to get rid of Lutz.”
“But I’m telling you,” said Brano, “Lutz isn’t controlling the operation. He’s better to us alive.”
“That may be true, but at the time we thought otherwise. The Lieutenant General wanted Lutz dead. You were the one man I knew I could trust to do this.”
“But I failed.”
On the screen, Death told the Crusader that, yes, he was quite a skillful chess player.
“You were faced with unprecedented complications, Brano. It’s not your fault. I know this. You can go home without shame.”
“And the inside man?”
Cerny cleared his throat. “Let me make some calls from the embassy. I have friends at home who can make inquiries.”
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