36 Yalta Boulevard

19 MARCH 1967, SUNDAY

He’d spent the last week sore and sleepless, fearing each night that when Ludwig came the next day, it would be with Dijana Frankovic in tow, and he’d give way to the hatred that tugged at him. But when Ludwig arrived each morning, it was with a notebook and pen, and the questions continued. Until Sunday, when he brought a cardboard box. Brano shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Ludwig set the box on the coffee table. “Go ahead, Brano. Something for you.” Brano reached forward and opened it.

Inside was a suit, slate gray jacket and pants, and beneath, a pressed white shirt.

“Try it on. I guessed your measurements yesterday. Let’s see how well I did.”

Ludwig had guessed perfectly. Despite the soreness in his nipples when he buttoned the shirt, each piece of clothing fit as if it had been measured for him, and the material was strong and very fine. Ludwig put his hand on his chin.

“Like new, Brano. Very good.”

“What now?”

“Now, we take you to your new home.”

They used the burlap bag again, and when it was removed they were making their way through farmland toward Vienna. It was the same car that had brought him in from the Ferto Lake, the gray Renault. Karl sat in the backseat with him while the tall guard drove. Ludwig, in the passenger seat, gazed ahead as the road widened and rose, the familiar cityscape coming into view.

“Where’s my new home?”

Ludwig twisted back and winked. “A surprise.”

They entered Vienna from the southeast, through the Simmering and Landstra?e districts, then along the Ringstra?e that circled the inner city, past the Stadtpark and the immense buildings of the Museum Quarter. Along Mariahilfer Stra?e, storefronts loomed, the sidewalks packed. A left just before the Westbahnhof, a few more streets, then they parked.

“Not a bad area,” said Ludwig. “You can do your shopping just up the road.”

“So I’m allowed to leave?”

“Leave?”

“My new home. You’re not taking me to prison.”

Though he’d often smiled, this was the first time Ludwig laughed in Brano’s presence, a choked sound from a red face. “Christ, Brano. You’ve got an imagination.”

His new home was a quaint apartment building at number 25 Web-Gasse. White Secessionist women’s faces looked down from a high floor.

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long are you going to let me stay here?”

“As long as you want, Brano. Just check in with us weekly-each meeting we’ll renew your visa-and sometimes we can talk. Why should we treat you the way you treat people?”

“How do I treat people?”

“Just read the newspaper, Brano. Everyone knows what you guys do.”

Brano almost replied, but the week-old soreness beneath his shirt convinced him otherwise. His impulse was to give a list of agents who had been lost in Vienna over the last three years. Ignac Janke had turned up in a landfill outside town with burn marks covering his chest and two fingers missing. Alfonz Schmidt drowned, but from motor oil poured down his throat. Kristina Urban, the old Vienna rezident, at least experienced a moment of flight when she was thrown from that high window of the Hotel Inter-Continental. And last September, after returning to the Capital, Cerny told him that one of his three agents suspected of being GAVRILO, Theodore Kraus, had turned up at an Austrian farmhouse. He had somehow escaped his captors, though by that point he was blind and mute, the result of haphazard operations with a kitchen knife.

“There’s a war on,” he said. “None of us know what to expect.”

The Austrian shrugged. “You’re right about that, Brano. Just consider yourself blessed.”

They took a rickety elevator to the fifth floor; then Karl placed Brano’s suitcase just inside the barred door of number 3.

The apartment was large enough for a family-two bedrooms and a vast kitchen, a dining room filled with a huge polished table. Everything was stocked: food, furniture, linens; his clothes had even been hung in the wardrobe. It was unimaginably large compared to his twelfth-floor two-room in a concrete tower back in the Capital. “Hope you don’t mind the style,” said Ludwig.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Tell that to my wife.”

Karl seemed to think that was funny.

“No one lives on this floor, though some old folks are below you. They shouldn’t be any trouble.”

“I’m sure they won’t be.”

In the living room, by the twenty-inch television, Ludwig sat on the blue sofa. “It’s an easy deal, you can’t deny it. Once a week you and I meet. Let’s say Sunday, at one. Sound good?”

“Okay,” said Brano. “Where?”

“Cafe Mozart on Albertinaplatz. You know it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good. Cafe Mozart at one every Sunday.” He placed Brano’s maroon passport on the coffee table. “This has a one-week visa stamp. Each Sunday I’ll give you a new one. For that, you and I talk, and I don’t do all the talking. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“If you’re contacted by anyone-and I’m sure you will be at some time-you let me know. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you don’t leave Vienna.”

“I expected that.”

“You should, Brano. Because we’re giving you everything. Here,” he said, handing over a small stiff card with a long number on it. “That’s your account number at the Raiffeisenbank. Don’t go crazy, now. We’re just civil servants, after all.”

“Of course.”

“On the other side I’ve written my work number. For emergencies.” “Okay.”

Karl took a ring of three keys out of his pocket and placed it on the coffee table. “Any questions?” asked Ludwig.

Brano looked at Karl standing behind Ludwig, smiling, his hands clasped in front of himself. Then he focused on Ludwig. “Why?”

Ludwig flared his nostrils and breathed loudly. “Because, Brano, we’re no fools. You’ll only be of use to us when you’re on the street. In a prison cell you’re no use to anyone.”

“But why do you trust me?”

“Who ever said I did?” He forced a chuckle. “Brano, I don’t trust you at all. But consider this a job. Right? We’ve got enough unemployed in Vienna.”

He patted his thighs and stood up. He stuck out his hand.

Brano shook it.

Then Ludwig and Karl walked out the door.

For a while Brano stood in the empty living room, staring at the door. He thought nothing, except that silence-the physical silence of an empty room-was a strange thing. Then he snatched the keys from the coffee table and locked the door.

He crept back past the sofa to the French windows. They were open, covered by translucent white curtains that stirred in the breeze. He tried to see the street but couldn’t without leaning his head out to where it could be seen from below. So he parted the curtains and quickly peered down.

The space where they had parked was empty.

He looked again to be sure, then gazed down the length of the street-from Mariahilfer down to Gumpendorfer Stra?e-and saw only a few car roofs and some pedestrians, small from this height, going to and from their homes. His hands on the window frame shook, but not from elation. He knew that what he did not see still existed. To prove it to himself he walked over to the beige telephone that hung on the wall in the foyer, beside the bare coatrack, and lifted the receiver to his ear. He hung up and repeated the procedure three times, each time recognizing that additional click of the phone tap he would have installed had he been them. Then he turned back to the living room, and in the fan-shaped overhead lamp, in the dials of the large television, in the electric clock hanging on the wall-in all these things he knew he had an enemy.