36 Yalta Boulevard

FEBRUARY TO MARCH 1967

Ludwig did not return that night, nor the next day. Brano took a bath and then slept in a bedroom with boards nailed over the windows. The lock on the door worked only from the outside, and each morning the guard who unlocked it was different from the one who had locked it the previous night.

His guards seemed never to tire. They stood with their hands crossed over their groins and watched him. This was how it worked. Time was a formidable tool, and it could be used in many ways. In the morning, the fat guard opened a cardboard box filled with pastries and coffee, and Brano ate with him. The tall one arrived much later with dinner. On the third day, the fat guard opened a second box as well: Brano’s clothes, cleaned and pressed. No one spoke. Time and silence.

At first Ludwig’s offer had shocked him-not the fact that a deal had been offered (he’d suspected something in exchange for his cooperation), but the nature of the deal itself. In all his worries and predictions of the last week, it had never occurred to him that he would want to stay in the West, particularly in Vienna. It was a cold city, all charm removed by the flagrant displays of capital: the bankers, international corporations, the trite exploitation of their musical history. It was a city without a soul, and it was the scene of his greatest failure.

And why would he leave his country? He knew why others left: They were impatient. Socialism, like any egalitarian system, is not born whole. It moves slowly from the inequities of capitalism to the long restructuring of the dictatorship of the proletariat, before finally reaching the full glory of pure communism. Lenin made no secret of progress’s sluggishness. Those who left were individualists, or opportunists, who felt that the realization of true human equality was not worth a few years of discomfort. Brano felt differently. He did not mind the occasional breadlines, the glitches in production that filled the shoe stores with only one style of footwear, nor the periodic interruptions in hot water and electricity that individualists decried. Perhaps Ludwig was right; he was an idealist.

The opaque byzantine machinations of Yalta were also becoming clearer. If Cerny knew he would be picked up in Austria-and he had to suspect this-then printing his murder conviction in The Spark made sense, as did the Doctor’s failed promise. Cerny knew the Austrians would never believe Brano had left his home for ideological reasons. So he had given Brano a personal reason.

Brano, in the eyes of the Austrians, would be another Bogdan Stashin-ski, the KGB assassin who had defected in 1961, in Paris, after just two jobs. Simply because he couldn’t take it any longer.

But again, why? Soroka was far from his reach, and once again Brano was alone with the enemy. Ludwig’s threat to send him back home was merely that-a threat. So, here he would stay.

On the third night, Ludwig settled on the sofa and crossed an ankle over his knee. “Tell me, then. Why have you come to Austria?”

“I’ve been framed for a murder, and the only way out of it was to leave the country.”

“Of course. An ex-member of the Ministry for State Security is framed by a drunk peasant, and he can’t get himself out of the mess? You must think we’re idiots, Brano.”

“I can only tell you what I know.”

“Which is all we ask.”

Brano waited.

“All right. Your people run a lot of operations out of Vienna. Who doesn’t, these days? Neutral countries breed this kind of intrigue. Tell us about them.”

“I cannot.”

“Because you choose not to?”

“I simply cannot.”

“Okay,” said Ludwig. He got up again. “We’ll talk later.”

Ludwig was patient. He came and went many times, and in the periods between, Brano ate pastries with the fat guard, and sometimes they watched television-insipid programs with names like Batman and Gespensterparty.

The struggle, it seemed, was not against fear but boredom.

His guards were polite but well trained; they knew their duty. Their silence was meant to give Brano a sense of relief each time Ludwig returned and spoke. That relief would help Brano to eventually open up.

At least, that was how he understood the technique until the seventh time Ludwig returned to the house, three weeks into his stay.

He smiled like every other time, but now he had a small briefcase. He placed it on the coffee table. “You’re feeling well, Brano?”

“I feel all right.”

“Good, good.” Ludwig’s eyes wandered, lost for a second, then he sat down. “You’ll never guess what happened today, in India.”

“I probably won’t.”

Ludwig smiled. “Svetlana Alliluyeva walked into the United States embassy in Delhi and asked for asylum.”

“Stalin’s daughter?”

“The very one. Seems she was delivering her lover’s ashes to the Ganges, and after thinking it over decided there was no longer any reason to remain in that hellhole they call the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, believe it, Brano. It’ll make the news by tonight. Want to know what’s in here?” he said, tapping the suitcase.

Brano shrugged.

Ludwig opened the latches, then raised the lid. He turned it around so Brano could see.

Inside was a corroded battery a little smaller than one used in an automobile-red letters told him it was made by the Italian Fiamm company. Attached to the terminals was a red switch with two long leads ending in alligator clips.

“What’s that for?” he asked stupidly.

“Karl,” said Ludwig.

The fat one stepped behind the chair and grabbed Brano’s arms, twisting them back and quickly tying his wrists together with a braided rope.

“I don’t understand,” said Brano.

Ludwig tied his ankles together, and then Karl placed the burlap bag over his head again.

Through the darkness, Ludwig spoke to him. “You’ve been through these sorts of things. We know this. And it was my hope that, knowing what was possible, you would choose to work with us. But you’ve been stubborn. So, then. Austrian hospitality, it seems, can only get one so far, and now we must rely on the methods of our fathers.”

Brano felt hands on his chest. They grasped his shirt and ripped it open. He heard the click of a button hitting the floor. A sharp, cold pain in his left nipple-the first alligator clip-then the other.

“Karl?” he heard. “Can you show me how to work this damn thing?”

This, then, was what he was trained for. No longer boredom, but fear-not of pain, but of the knowledge that your life is no longer in your hands. How long he lasted he wasn’t sure, but the cold, jaw-grinding shocks went through him many times-short pulses that became, over time, longer. Sometimes he could hold the pain in his hand, but often it slipped through his fingers and filled his rigid body. His organs hardened with each shock, and his fingers clenched behind his back. And, like everyone in the end, he talked.

He gave them a list of names. That was where he started, with the list of Yalta Boulevard’s local informers, because the first impulse of anyone who has been broken is to give away others. Retribution isn’t a worry-all you want is your life back.

Then he gave them two names they already knew: Austrian agents who also worked for Yalta. One had been bought, the other blackmailed with photographs of him in bed with a young Polish boy. Brano told what little he knew of the information they had handed over.

But these admissions were decisions; even through the pain he could still think. The two double agents had served their purpose months ago and were no longer of use. The informers he handed over were a mix of the uncooperative and unproductive. And in a city like Vienna there were so many of these that the names could go on for a long time, giving the illusion of completeness yet in reality telling nothing.

Then Ludwig reached further back, to 1964. He was in West Berlin, no? Brano quickly verified this. And who was the West Berlin rezidenft Again, this was a man who had since been brought back home, so he answered. And what did Brano do there? He followed orders.

Ludwig closed the circuit.

“More specific, Brano.”

He told them of various operations he’d taken part in over that year, none of which concerned Austria. He’d helped manage three informers, had once run a disinformation campaign against British intelligence, had arranged the practical details of two incoming operatives, and had killed one man.

“Name?”

He admitted that as well, because by now he could no longer distinguish what was important from what was not. All questions had answers.

“What about Bertrand Richter?”

“He was giving you information.”

“What made you think that?”

“I gave him false information, and he delivered it to you. He told you a West German truck would carry guns into Hungary. He had to be eliminated.”

“By whom?”

“By Erich Tobler,” he lied.

The sound of paper shuffling. “That’s the informer who lives on Hauptstra?e.”

“Yes,” said Brano. “He’s the one.”

“We assumed it was you. You did leave Austria the same evening the body was discovered.”

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to do it myself-I was the rezident. There are people trained for that.”

“Okay,” said Ludwig. Papers again. “Tell me why you’re in Austria.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“You’ve lied to me a hundred times.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Try again, Brano.”

“What do you want from me?”

Movement. Then a hand removed the burlap bag. He blinked, the light stinging his eyes, and looked down at the metal teeth digging into his nipples, the bruises around them, and the blood. He could no longer feel his chest.

Ludwig was on the sofa, and between them the coffee table was covered with scribbled pages ripped out of a notebook. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don’t know why you’re being so unreasonable. We all know you’re not here because of a drunk peasant. You’re here for another reason. And this reason has a name: Dijana Frankovic.”

Brano stared at him, unable to answer. After all the secrets spilled and networks made useless, Ludwig was asking about a matter of personal desire. Perhaps they thought she was part of his network, he didn’t know. But bringing her up provoked that one thing Brano had been able to sidestep for three weeks. It was one of Cerny’s dictums: Never hate your enemy. Hatred means you underestimate; your hatred makes you blind.

“Dijana Frankovic is connected to nothing. I can’t explain it.” He inhaled, trying not to weep, his stomach knotting. “Dijana Frankovic is an innocent. She just stumbled into the wrong man. She fell in love.”

Ludwig smiled doubtfully, the same smile Colonel Cerny gave him when he told Brano she was obviously a spy. “Tell me, Brano. You were sent to follow Jan Soroka, to track his path. Why, then, once you knew you’d be picked up by us, didn’t you arrest the Sorokas, or simply turn back?”

Brano was asking himself the same question. He took a deep breath, and the tight flesh on his rising chest began to ache. He’d had orders, but he could have interpreted them however he liked. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said.

“About what?”

“It wasn’t just her in love with me.”

“I knew it!” Ludwig slapped his knee and turned to Karl. “Didn’t I tell you? All idealists are, beneath the surface, just romantics. Didn’t I say that?”

Karl nodded.

Brano exhaled and closed his eyes. Then he opened them, blinking, but couldn’t quite get the living room into focus. He felt very old.