36 Yalta Boulevard

24 APRIL 1967, MONDAY

Brano didn’t wake until seven the next morning. It had been a fitful sleep, but when he woke the fog had cleared from his head. He sat up and gazed at the disassembled pistol.

Before showering, he opened the Jakob Bieniek passport and propped it just below the bathroom mirror. Bieniek’s expression was nondescript and bland, and Brano found it easy to imitate. The moles were placed differently, but no one would notice. His beard was a different shade, but that, too, was unimportant. The hair, though. Bieniek’s scalp was wide, bald, and pale, while Brano’s was not. He took out the razor and shaving cream, ran water over his head, and worked the foam into his hair.

He left the hotel at nine and spent the next hour on streetcars, changing often, until he had followed an arc around to Nu?dorfer Stra?e. He got out one stop late and found a bookstore a half block north of her apartment.

“ Gru? Gott,” said a spectacled woman behind a desk. He smiled at her, and she watched him limp to the wall of used paperback fiction beside the front window. The street was busy with traffic, cars parked tight against the curb.

“Looking for something in particular?”

“Just browsing, danke,” said Brano. He gazed at the creased spines. Murder mysteries, cowboy fiction, sex-themed thrillers.

Across the street, a small Peugeot pulled out, giving Brano an unhindered view of the car behind it, where the driver was reading a newspaper. Brano picked a book at random-an English writer with a French surname-and flipped through it. The driver turned to the next page, and he caught a flash of sunburned face, more faded than before but still clearly damaged.

Brano closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and thanked the woman for her assistance.

He was running into dead ends. Ludwig had locked down the two obvious places Brano would be drawn to-one for safety, the other for sentimentality. He found himself respecting Ludwig’s fortitude.

So Brano would ignore safety and sentimentality for the moment and focus on what was probably most important: information.

He walked east, toward the Danube Canal, and found a post office near the university. The woman at the desk told him to go to booth number 7, and he waited there, watching strangers until the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

Regina Haliniak, her voice muted by miles of telephone line, said, “Importation Register, First District.”

“Regina, it’s Brano.”

“Good to hear from you, Brano.”

“Can I speak to the Comrade Colonel?”

“He’s not there with you?”

“In Vienna?”

“He left… four? Yes, four days ago. I thought he was going to meet with you.”

“Oh.”

“You all right? There was some fuss a few days ago about you, but no one tells me anything.”

“I’m fine, Regina.”

“Hold on, Brano. Let me patch you through to the Lieutenant General. He wanted to speak to you if you called.”

“No, wait-” Brano started to say, but she was already gone, replaced by a monotone ring. And though he considered it, he did not hang up.

“Brano,” said the congested voice that took him back, briefly, to a small, humid room in the basement of Yalta 36. “Where are you?”

“Vienna.”

“What on earth is going on over there?”

Brano paused. There were no men standing over him with fists, but he felt the same anxiety he’d felt in August. “I’d like to know what’s going on myself, Comrade Lieutenant General.”

He heard static, then: “Tell me, Brano. Why is Josef Lochert dead?”

“Self-defense.”

“And why, then, would you need to defend yourself against the Vienna rezidentr?”

“Because I learned he was a traitor.”

The Lieutenant General didn’t answer at first. There was noise on his side, perhaps papers being shuffled. “You damn well better be able to prove this. Or else a factory job will be just a dream.”

Brano gazed across the post office, where people were becoming blurry. “I believe I can collect the evidence.”

“Go to the embassy, Brano. Major Romek will take your statement, and then we’ll decide what to do.”

“I can’t, comrade.”

“What?”

“The Austrians are watching it. I wouldn’t be able to make it to the front gate.”

“Then come home. We can arrange a pickup in the Stadtpark.”

He rubbed his face. He had nearly died trying to get home. “With respect, I suggest I wait for Colonel Cerny. I was told he’s in Vienna.”

“I see,” said the Lieutenant General. “That’s the way you’d like to play it?”

“That’s the way I’d like to play it. Please let him know that I’m staying at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, under the name Bieniek.”

“Bieniek?” The Lieutenant General let out a laugh that became a cough. “Priceless, Brano.”

He waited until nightfall before visiting the Carp, spending the intervening hours at cafes farther north. He limited his outdoor time, and when he was on the street, he kept his hat low over his forehead, stroking his beard.

He approached Sterngasse from Fleischmarkt, waiting near the top of the steps, at Desider Friedmannplatz. From there he could see down the short pedestrian street to the next set of stairs leading down to Marc-Aurel-Stra?e. It was almost eight o’clock and had become cool. He buttoned his jacket and leaned against the railing, clearing his mind for the mental silence that made surveillance work bearable.

Through the window he saw a small crowd of familiars. Lutz’s translator sat with the short man from Ersek’s party, and Ersek was explaining something to Monika at the bar. Lutz was not around, but Brano did recognize the man with faint features who wobbled toward the front door and leaned against it, pushing through to the street.

He took two steps back, deeper into the darkness.

Jan Soroka came out, then paused by the Carp’s window, breathing heavily, talking to himself. “Yes, you know you can make it.”

Then Jan turned and wandered down the stairs leading to Marc-Aurel-Stra?e.

With his hands in his pockets, Brano stayed close to the opposite wall as he passed the Carp, then descended the steps. Jan was extremely drunk. He paused now and then, and once he put a hand against the wall, bowed his head, and rested before moving on.

They shared a tram southward, past the Stadtpark, Brano sitting in the back of the car while Jan slumped in the front. Occasionally he raised his head, shook it, and squinted out the dark window. He seemed to know where he was going.

They got off at Salesiandergasse, and during that last stretch along the sidewalk, Soroka spoke to himself again. Brano couldn’t make out all the words, but twice he heard “Li,” the second time louder than the first. Soroka stopped at number 6 Jauresgasse and began searching for his keys.

Brano closed the distance between them as quickly as possible, his left foot dragging across the wet sidewalk as he pulled out Josef Lochert’s pistol and pressed it against Soroka’s back.

“Hello, Jan.”

Soroka fell to the steps. His hands fluttered a moment, then settled. He squinted. “ Brano? Jesus, you know how to fucking scare a man.”

Brano switched the gun to his weak left hand and helped pull him up. “The keys?”

Soroka looked at the gun. “Sure. Here. It’s the big one.”

Brano used the long key on the front door and walked with him to a ground-floor apartment. Just outside the door, Soroka looked at the gun again.

“Brano, should I be scared?”

He opened the door. “No, Jan. I’m the one who’s scared.”

While Soroka collapsed on the sofa, Brano went to make coffee. He stuck his head out of the kitchen now and then to be sure Jan hadn’t left. By the time the coffee was poured, Brano had to shake him awake.

“Come on, Jan. Drink this. We need to talk.”

Soroka forced himself into an upright position and accepted the cup. “It’s a bad night for talking.”

“It’s the only night we’ve got.”

Soroka sipped, then pursed his lips. “This isn’t bad.”

“I make a good cup of coffee. Can you focus?”

“Just barely.”

“Then drink more.”

Brano waited until he’d finished the first cup, then poured him a second. Jan squinted at him. “Something wrong with your face?”

“I’m bald.”

“Yeah, yeah. But your mouth. It looks kind of funny.”

“It’s nothing.” Brano turned on a radio beside a few books on a shelf and found a station playing Austrian waltzes.

Jan smiled. “You like this stuff?”

“No, but it’s lively.”

He tilted his head, unsure if he agreed, and started on his second cup. He looked tired, but it was more than the fatigue of a drinking night.

“Why are you here, Jan?”

“In Vienna?”

Brano nodded.

“I thought you of all people would know. Everyone else does.”

“Lia?”

“Yeah. We got to Chicago, Illinois, and that’s when she told me she wanted a divorce. She didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“Did she give you a reason?”

“She said she couldn’t trust me. I get her out of that hellhole, I bring her to the richest country on earth, and she can’t trust me?”

“Well, Jan, you did leave her behind at first.”

“That’s what she kept saying.” He looked into his cup, frowned, and put it on the coffee table. “So I think to myself, where do I go now? Do I stay there? My English is terrible, and Chicago is… well, it’s huge. Have you been?”

Brano shook his head.

“Don’t bother. It’s cold, too. My God, is it cold.”

“Then I won’t bother.”

“This was the only place I could think of. But I’ve been here a week, and now it’s coming back to me. Why I didn’t want to stay in the first place. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should just go back to Bobrka. You ever think that?”

“Tell me. Tell me what you’ve heard since you’ve returned.”

“About you?” Jan grunted. “Ludwig was all over the place last week. You’ve really pissed him off. He says you killed a man and ran away.”

“Does he think you know where I am?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. He keeps asking about…”

“About what?”

“I don’t suppose it matters now, does it?”

“What doesn’t matter?”

Soroka settled his forearms across his knees. “What you always asked me-what did I sell the Americans?”

Brano sat down finally. “What did you sell them?”

“A story. Well, not the story, really, but my silence.”

“Explain.”

He took a breath. “You know where I was before I went to Vienna?”

“At a conference.”

“That’s right. On ‘the future of power in the socialist neighborhood.’ Sounds good, doesn’t it? It wasn’t much of a conference, though, just a lot of empty speeches, but Gyula was quite nice for a spa town. Remember I told you about my visit to see Mihai?”

“Of course. When you were sixteen.”

“Turned out that another of the Pioneers in that group, Gregor Samec, grew up to be a scientist. Working in nuclear energy. He was one of the speakers at the conference. So I got in touch with him, and we went out to a bar. You’ve been there, to Gyula?”

“It’s very nice.”

“It’s excellent. You take the baths, then go get drunk. Gregor, though, wasn’t enjoying it. He was nervous. It took a couple bottles, but I finally got it out of him: He thought he was being followed.”

Soroka blanked for a moment, as if he’d pass out, until Brano said, “Why did Gregor think he was being followed?”

He blinked. “Because he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to see. He was helping set up a test reactor in Vamosoroszi, near the Hungarian border. On the previous Saturday, he’d returned to pick up some papers he’d forgotten and found two men taking photos of the reactor and the field around it.”

“What men?”

“Wait.” He held up a finger. “Well, he told them they were breaking the law. One of the men answered by showing him the cover of his identity card. It was from the Ministry for State Security. He told Gregor that if he mentioned this to anyone, he was a dead man.”

“Is this true?”

“He said it was. But I tried to calm him. After all, he hadn’t seen the men since then, and I suggested he was just becoming paranoid, which was understandable.”

“And that’s what you told the Americans?”

“I told the Americans that the next day I read in The Spark that Gregor Samec was found outside one of those wine bars. He’d been shot in the head.” He snorted. “And so I was scared, too. Some Yugoslav gas researchers helped me leave with them, and from Zagreb it wasn’t too difficult to get to Vienna. The Americans. They paid me not to tell anyone else the story.”

“Why?”

“How should I know?” he asked. “And why should I care? I was broke, and they were willing to pay me. But I’m not as slow as I look. You see, Gregor, that night in Gyula, when he told me his story, he said that there were two men. A state security agent and someone else.”

“Yes?”

“That someone else, he told me, was an old man who didn’t say a thing. He had a white mustache and beard. And as I was sitting in the American embassy, across from a white-bearded old man telling me not to breathe the story to anyone, I realized that this was the bearded man from Gregor’s story. He’s the one who paid for my silence, then Later brokered the other deal-the Americans would get me inside only if I got you out. That was the deal.”

Brano pressed his palms together in front of his nose. “Andrew.”

“Yeah. That’s how he introduced himself to me,” said Soroka. “You know him?”

“Why did he want me out?”

“I don’t know.” Soroka shook his head. “But he knew a lot about you. Names of your family, what to do to provoke you.”

Brano let this sink in. He’d always suspected the Committee was behind smuggling him here, but now it was clear. Not only the Committee but Andrew, the old man who left their literature in his mailbox.

“What about the other man? At the reactor. What did he look like?”

“Gregor didn’t say; I didn’t ask.”

“Have you seen Filip Lutz?”

“He’s disappeared. Ersek said he heard about what you did to this Lochert character and is scared you’ll be after him next.”

“Why does he think that?”

“Because you’re a spy, Brano.”

“I was a spy.”

Jan looked at him. “How should I know the difference?”

“Do you know anything about the fourteenth of May?”

“What day of the week is that?”

“Sunday. Do you know something?”

“Should I?”

Brano tried to cross his left leg over his right, but it was difficult, so he left both feet on the floor. He covered his face and rubbed his palms into his eyes.

“Have you talked to your Dijana Frankovic yet?”

Brano uncovered his eyes. “Why?”

“She’s worried to hell about you. She goes to the Carp every night and asks if anyone knows where you are. She’s making a real nuisance of herself.” He smiled. “My professional opinion is she’s in love with you.”

Brano nodded.

“Are you in love with her?”

Brano looked up, but Jan wasn’t smiling. “I’m afraid so.”

Then Jan nodded as well, seriously. He allowed a small grin to creep across his face. “I know I look like hell. But you-Brano, you look even worse. This is what love does to a man. No?”