36 Yalta Boulevard

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 Ringstra?e. 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 Frankovic, he wanted a bed. He got out at Schottenring and crossed the street. The embassy was on Ebendorferstra?e, between Universitatsstra?e 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 Ebendorferstra?e 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 facade 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.

“ Gru? 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.