36 Yalta Boulevard

by Olen Steinhauer

  “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Brano stood.

  His father patted the air for calm. “Ja?”

  “Maid,” said a voice.

  “Please come back later. I’m working.”

  They heard the cart squeak down the corridor.

  Brano settled down again and reached for the flask. “In the end, there’s one thing I don’t understand. You might cause trouble for a few days, but the Russians will come in, the same way they did in Hungary. Executions will follow, and in the end it’ll make no difference.”

  “Brano,” said Andrezej Sev, taking on a tone that seemed very proud and fatherly, “neither of us knows what will happen. But even if it does fail, do you really think it’ll make no difference? Humans have the gift of memory. They learn from their mistakes, so that when they try again they will succeed.”

  “And it doesn’t matter that hundreds will die.”

  “This is history, Brano. It’s bigger than anyone. Even your dear Stalin understood this. A million dead is a statistic. What we’re doing is not about today; it’s about tomorrow.”

  Brano looked into his glass, his cheeks warm. “It’s easy to talk about history in this hotel.”

  “You understand, but you don’t want to. We fight in the same way. Your Ministry sacrifices agents all the time—not to win battles, but in order to win the war. Don’t underestimate the strength of collective memory. When the Russians marched into Budapest, the International Communist Party lost members in droves. It will happen again. And by the end they will have no support outside the countries they hold by force. The Empire will crumble, captive nation by captive nation.”

  His father’s eyes were rapturous, reminding him of Klara’s when she left her church. There was no point debating with this man.

  “So tell me, Brani. What made you decide to come over? Have you finally had enough?”

  He shrugged.

  “You’ve been a good soldier, Brano. I’ve seen your files. But every good soldier reaches a point where the lies and the double-dealing finally take their toll. They start to lose the sense of why they do what they do. They start to forget who they are.”

  Brano forced a smile. “You’re not far from the truth.”

  “And the loneliness?”

  “I’m tired of that as well,” he said into his glass. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Like you said before, if I return home, it will be to a firing squad.”

  “Don’t hate me, Brano.”

  “I never hate my enemy.”

  Andrezej Sev frowned, then began to say something that was interrupted by another knock at the door. Two raps, a pause, then one more. He smiled, patted Brano’s knee, and walked to the door as Brano stood, unsure. Then his father opened it.

  Standing there, watching it open, Brano felt sure it would reveal Ludwig, or Karl, or maybe even the Lieutenant General. Nothing prepared him for Dijana, a hat in her hands, below a hopeful face.

  Brano started to smile but didn’t. “What are you doing here.”

  “I told her to come,” said Andrezej. “A dirty trick, I know,” he added as she rushed past him and grabbed Brano.

  He thought he would fall, but he didn’t. He wrapped his arms around her waist and stared at his grinning father over her shoulder.

  Her whispered voice in his ear was choked. “I think it’s not bad idea you come with me home, Brani.”

  Brano kissed the hair over her ear. His father closed the door.

  “Tomorrow,” he told her. He couldn’t hear his own voice because of the ringing in his ears. “We’ll drive somewhere tomorrow. Is that all right?”

  She pulled back, blinking. “You mean it?”

  “Pa da,” he said, then kissed her lips. He couldn’t feel them, because only now had everything become clear, all the lies, and it numbed every part of him. He said, “We’ll go to the Salzkammergut.”

  She nodded vehemently into his sore neck.

  He kissed her again, then walked over to his father by the door. “You’re right, this wasn’t fair, but I understand. Everything.”

  “I’ll do anything to keep you, Brani.”

  He patted his father’s cheek. “Would you tell me the name of your inside man?”

  Andrezej Sev smiled. “I don’t think you’ll demand that of me.”

  “You don’t know me anymore, Tati.”

  “I know people.”

  Brano reached for the door. “This person, he’s reached the rank of lieutenant general, hasn’t he?”

  The smile slid from his father’s face; then he pouted his lips. It was almost obscene in its falsity. “I’d heard you were one of the best, and it seems you really are. Ironic the ways your son can make you proud.”

  “Are you going to let me leave this hotel?”

  “I told you before. I’ll do anything to keep my son.”

  Brano nodded. “Three o’clock.”

  “At the Temple of Theseus.” His father leaned closer. “You’ll be happy,” he whispered. “As happy as anyone can be. Shirley’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  Brano looked back at Dijana, who stood beside the desk, her hands fidgeting at her sides. He wasn’t sure his tingling feet would carry him all the way out of the hotel, but they did.

  1 MAY 1967, MONDAY

  •

  On the drive to the airport, they ran into a parade. The participants were dressed in everyday work clothes, and spread throughout were young men and women with long hair, who reminded Brano of Dijana’s friend Wolfgang. A few held red flags with the hammer-and-sickle. One of them started a song, and that was when Brano remembered. Arise ye workers from your slumbers. Another red flag was raised. Arise ye prisoners of want. It was May Day, and even here the proletariat was showing its muscle. Cerny smiled, but Brano couldn’t.

  The Flughafen Wien was long and modern, the departures area shining marble and glass. In the line to the Tis-Air check-in counter, Cerny set down his bag and turned to Brano.

  “How do you feel?”

  “All right, Comrade Colonel.”

  “You’ve done great work, you realize this?”

  “Thank you, Comrade Colonel.”

  “For God’s sake, Brano, call me Laszlo.”

  Brano smiled.

  “You’ve earned this, you know.” He looked over Brano’s shoulder at the taxi stand just outside the glass wall. “By the time I get back and they realize you’re not with me, you could be anywhere. Well, anywhere except the Salzkammergut—that’s on the recording.”

  Brano followed his gaze. “So could you.”

  “Me?” Cerny laughed. “I’ve got a conspirator to nail against the wall!” The line shortened, and Brano moved the colonel’s bag for him.

  “Well?”

  Brano took a long breath and squinted at the sunlight pouring through the windows. “I need to step away a minute.”

  “Sure,” said Cerny. “A minute.” He patted Brano’s shoulder, then, hesitantly, gave him a hug, smothering him in the familiar scent of stale cigarettes.

  Brano walked across the marble floor without looking back, then turned a corner to a line of pay phones by the bathrooms—where, many months ago, he had knocked out a man. He slipped a coin into the closest phone and took a stiff card out of his pocket. On one side was that Raiffeisenbank account number; on the other, a telephone number.

  “Please state your extension.”

  “Two-zero-eight is the old extension,” said Brano. “But he should be in Accounting now. Ludwig.”

  After some clicks, he heard two rings, then a man’s voice. “Ja?”

  “It’s me.”

  “It’s …” A sigh. “You fucking bastard.”

  “Thank you for the hospitality, but I’m leaving now.”

  “Do you know what you’ve done to my career, Brano?”

  “Go to Schönbrunn, to the Roman Ruins. You’ll find the body of Filip Lutz.”

&nbs
p; “So he wasn’t paranoid, was he? You did kill him.”

  “Not me. It was Colonel Laszlo Cerny.”

  “Of your ministry?”

  “He’s leaving as well, but I thought this might help get you out of Accounting.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Just trying to return your hospitality.”

  Ludwig grunted. “You really are a queer one, Brano.”

  When he returned, Cerny was at the head of the line, flirting with the girl behind the counter. Brano tapped his shoulder and watched the fog of surprise seep into his face. “Brano?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

  Cerny rapped the counter with his knuckles, regaining his composure. “Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed. It would be a terrible thing to lose you.”

  They were squeezed into their cramped seats, thirty thousand feet above the Austrian border with Hungary, sipping from cans of Zipfer beer. Cerny stared out the window at clouds. “It’s funny.”

  Brano saw nothing of interest out the window. “What is?”

  “Up here everything looks the same.”

  “You’re sounding as sentimental as my father.”

  “It’s true, though. And when we land we’ll forget what it was like up here. We’ll get back to work. We’ll interrogate the Lieutenant General and search the poor bastard’s belongings until we’ve come up with the evidence.”

  “We don’t need the evidence.”

  “You want to just shoot him? Brano, there are some legal issues involved, you know.”

  “We both know the Lieutenant General isn’t the man we’re after.” Cerny looked at him.

  “I’m sorry, Laszlo. It’s you.”

  The colonel brought his eyebrows together. He smiled. “You need sleep, Brano.”

  “You shouldn’t have trusted my father. He’s too sentimental. He wanted me to stay in Vienna so badly that he blew the entire operation.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  Brano had known it ever since his father’s hotel room, but only later, in bed, was he able to work backward through each moment to convince himself of what he could hardly accept. “My father knew I was coming to visit him. He prepared for it by inviting Dijana. How did he know?”

  Cerny didn’t answer.

  “Only two people knew I was going to visit him. Romek and you. You called my father and told him to expect me.”

  Cerny clapped a hand on the armrest. “This is incredible, Brano! Of course your father knew—don’t you see? We both know how loyal Romek is to the Lieutenant General. He lied to me and called him anyway. The Lieutenant General contacted your father.” He shrugged, as if this were simple mathematics. “That is how your father knew you were coming. And that’s why we’re going to have to be careful when we land.”

  Brano sighed. “Romek is a nuisance, but more than anything, he’s honest. We all listened to the recording together—he believed that the Lieutenant General was guilty. If Romek had contacted him, he would have warned us before we left.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. But more importantly, my father let me think that the Lieutenant General was the man. He was prepared to do it.”

  “Like you said, he’s sentimental. He’d admit anything to keep you.”

  “And it doesn’t matter how much history we have—I would never give you the opportunity to defect. Both of us could give away too much.”

  The colonel’s face loosened, and he turned to look through the window at the bed of clouds beneath them. “Your father’s a good man, but he’s a fool.”

  “I know,” said Brano.

  Cerny pursed his lips.

  “Maybe you can clear up some things for me, Laszlo.”

  The colonel shrugged.

  “Why did you want Lutz dead? He wasn’t selling anything that I know of.”

  He puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. “No, Filip Lutz was always loyal. But it had to be done. Because of Bertrand Richter.”

  He watched as the colonel’s features relaxed; he was settling into a serene shock. “The Russians knew Lutz’s name,” said Brano. “So he had to be sacrificed in order to keep you above suspicion. But Lochert could have done it.”

  Cerny surprised Brano by smiling. “If Lochert killed him, the Americans would think the operation was eating itself up. They’d take back our funding. The only way was to find someone else to do it. It was your father’s idea to bring you over. He’d tried to make you stay in August, and he wanted to try it again. I told him it was too much of a stretch, but he can be very persuasive. He was afraid that if the operation failed, you’d be executed along with me. It made a kind of sense at the time—we get you into the West, and you take care of our problem. He already knew about Jan Soroka approaching the Americans for help. Sometimes circumstances come together in surprising ways.”

  Brano touched the back of the seat in front of him, counting the levels of conspiracy. He dropped his hand. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you?”

  The colonel considered that. “Remember when Irina killed herself? Of course you remember. You were a great help to me then, and I’ve never forgotten it. But that was when it started.”

  “When what started?”

  “The doubt.” Cerny straightened in his chair and glanced over the seat at the heads of the other passengers. “I can’t say I didn’t see it before, but in truth I didn’t care. I saw the corruption. I was aware of how we throw around our power, stick our own people in prison, send them to camps, shoot them. Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Remember back in the war, when we talked about the coming age of socialism?”

  Brano nodded.

  “Well, forget about it, One-Shot. Because it’s never going to happen. The only thing going on east of the Curtain is a series of power struggles. The workers of the world don’t even exist. We’ve become a three-class society—those who are in prison—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Brano. “I know the joke.”

  Cerny shifted his knees against the next seat. “I knew this before I ran into your father a couple years ago. He had already placed his first fifty or so in villages here and there, but he needed help from the inside. I made myself available.”

  “And a year later,” said Brano, “you were walking around with my father at that reactor in Vámosoroszi, doing reconnaissance. But you didn’t expect someone would actually come to work on a Saturday.”

  “You never expect that kind of work ethic in our country.” He shrugged. “Jan’s friend had a lot of questions.”

  “So you killed him.”

  Any hint of a smile disappeared. “This operation is much larger than the lives of a few men—larger, even, than mine.”

  “And the Americans paid Jan to keep it a secret.”

  “The Americans know very little because they don’t want to know. Despite what you think, they don’t enjoy lying to their senators. Jan’s payment was from your father, from the Committee. The embassy was just a meeting place.”

  Brano looked past him through the window. Above the clouds, the sky was bright blue. “You were the one who gave away our Viennese network. You were GAVRILO.”

  Cerny rubbed his temples. “They weren’t supposed to use my information. That was the deal. Not directly, at least. But some idiot in Langley began trading it with your friend Ludwig. I have no idea why. And Ludwig, with about as much subtlety as an elephant, ripped apart the network. See, the danger of conspiracies is that the more people involved, the more chance there is for idiocy. Then Richter started talking to the Russians, and it felt like the whole thing was unraveling. So you were sent in to fix the situation.”

  “You would be saved from suspicion, get rid of your leak, and keep the American money coming.”

  “Something like that.”

  Brano looked into his face. He had thought it would look different now, Machiavellian, but it lo
oked as paternal as it always had. “And do you believe like my father, that it doesn’t matter that this whole thing will be crushed by Russian troops within days?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Cerny. “You’ve been inside too long. We’re not trying to collect power. We’re trying to weaken an evil power, the one we’ve both served all our lives.” He shifted in the seat and grinned almost bashfully. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, all this talk is disrupting my bladder.”

  Brano did not hate the colonel. Hatred and love were not things that mattered in the end. He simply wanted to understand, and he could not. He could follow the stories, the arguments, even the justifications. Yes, everyone knew the system was corrupt. But even if the system is corrupt, the fact is that it is your system; it is your world.

  He got out of his seat to let Cerny pass. He watched the old man move slowly down the corridor and pause at the bathroom door, look back, and smile again before going inside.

  Brano had wanted it this way, for him and the colonel to speak as equals, for him to learn all he could in a secure environment. He wanted to know as much as he could before handing the colonel over to the men who would be waiting for them at the airport. And the colonel, like Ewa Nubsch, felt the need to tell Brano everything. The colonel needed to make his first confession to a friend.

  He didn’t know how long he had slept; he only knew that he was waking. A voice, at first unintelligible, spoke to him through a speaker: … making our descent. Please fasten your seat belts. He opened his eyes and saw, first of all, that the seat beside him was empty.

  He was on his feet. In the next seat back, a small boy stared at him, and at the front of the plane, an impatient-looking man stood beside the toilet door with his arms crossed over his chest.

  That was when he knew.

  He crossed the distance quickly but felt pain in his weak left leg, as if it were trying to hold him back. He reached for the locked door as the man said, “Hey—I was here first.” He pounded on it and listened, but heard only the roar of the engines.

  He told the man to get back.

  “Look, I was—”

  Brano grabbed the man’s shirt and pushed him into a pair of empty seats, then banged again. He braced himself against the wall and shoved his right foot into the door.