36 Yalta Boulevard

27 APRIL 1967, THURSDAY

Johannesgasse 4 was a cinema, the Metro Lichtspiele, and its first show of the day, to begin at 11:20, was Det Sjunde Inseglet-The Seventh Seal — by a morose Swede named Bergman. That was an hour from now, so Brano wandered back down Kartner and looked into the clothing stores and through windows at the faces of those who passed. He was back at the Lichtspiele by eleven, as the box office opened. He bought a ticket, went inside, and found a seat in the rear.

The cinema was empty for the next ten minutes, and he looked around at the ornate walls and the curtain covering the screen, waiting. The first visitor was an old man with a cane who took a center seat. Then a young couple appeared and sat in the front.

Two serious-looking young men with glasses arrived. One returned his stare, but they continued ahead, sitting near the old man.

The crowd consisted of mostly older Viennese looking for a brief escape from the boredom of their retirements. One of the old men, behind a small crowd, turned and looked back. It was that familiar, mustached face he was beginning to fear he’d never see again. Cerny lit up when he spotted Brano, smiling as he twisted to fit between rows of seats. He took the one beside Brano.

They didn’t shake hands, but Cerny patted his thigh. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get your message from Regina, One-Shot. I was afraid we’d lost you.”

“It was close. I got sick.”

“Sick?” Cerny squinted at him. “Your face-it’s different.”

“It seems I had a stroke, Comrade Colonel.”

“A-” Cerny didn’t finish the sentence. “Well, I guess that decides it. I’m sending you home.”

“What?”

Cerny’s next words were drowned out by a blast of music. Then it silenced and the lights dimmed.

Brano leaned closer. “I didn’t hear that.”

“I said that you’ve done more than enough for the cause of socialism. I’m not going to lose one of my closest friends. Just tell me what you know and we’ll put you on a plane.”

In a whisper, Brano outlined the plot as he understood it. A league of men trying to start a revolution on Pentecost. “The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations. One of the conspirators, Bertrand Richter, tried to sell the plans to the Russians. Lochert learned of this. He had photographs of KGB agents in the apartment Bertrand Richter bought for Dijana Frankovic. Lochert used Yalta Boulevard to get rid of Richter and protect the conspiracy, as well as himself. He was GAVRILO all along. Dijana Frankovic was never a spy.”

Cerny nodded at the screen, where a bird hovered against dark clouds, then a Crusade soldier rested on a barren beach; subtitles told them what happened when the Lamb opened the seventh seal. “Go on.”

“It’s become clear that everything is in place for the fourteenth of May. My father’s operatives are already in the country, waiting for the moment to attack.”

Cerny squinted at him. “Your father? I thought he was dead.”

“I did, too. His new name is Andrew Stamer.”

“Andrew Stamer? Christ. Are you all right?”

Brano leaned closer. “What?”

“It must have been a shock.”

“I’ve gotten over it,” he said, unsure if that was a lie. “But the crucial point is that someone in the Ministry is working with him. Last June this person helped my father enter our country, and they visited the Vamosoroszi test reactor together.”

“June?”

Brano nodded. “This is what separates his plan from Frank Wisner’s operations. Wisner never had a highly placed insider. If we find this person, the whole thing might fall apart.”

Cerny squinted at him, taking this in.

“Now you,” said Brano. “You have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Sounds like you’ve figured it all out, One-Shot. We first learned of the plot from the Russians, who had gotten what they knew from Richter.” He grinned. “If that bastard hadn’t been so greedy, wasting time trying to raise the price for his information, it would have ended last August.”

“So you knew about it that long ago? And you didn’t tell me?”

“All we knew was that something substantial was going on. The only name Richter had given the Russians was Filip Lutz. At the same time, our Vienna network was being decimated by the Austrians, and we felt that if you could reconstruct it by finding GAVRILO, then we’d be able to deal with this properly. But we all know how that tour of duty ended.”

Brano touched his shaved scalp. “But if you knew Richter had information, then why did you give the order for him to be executed?”

“We didn’t know,” said Cerny. “I guess the Russians knew we had a mole, because they wouldn’t tell us who their informant was.” He licked his lips. “Anyway, it was the Comrade Lieutenant General’s decision to kill Richter.”

“And what about Bieniek?”

“Who?”

“Jakob Bieniek, the man I was framed for killing.” Cerny again looked at the screen. “He was the key to getting us inside. We knew about this Andrew Stamer, that he wanted to get you west, through Jan Soroka, but we didn’t know why. We certainly didn’t know who he was.”

“How did you learn that he wanted to bring me west?”

“Josef Lochert. He said you would only be held a short time and then be given freedom within Vienna. That was Andrew-your father’s-deal with the Abwehramt.” Cerny wrinkled his eyes. “Your father? ”

Brano nodded.

“Well, we decided to use their plan against them, but since you would be interrogated, we couldn’t brief you. You’d come to Vienna, and then you’d be able to get rid of Lutz.”

“But I’m telling you,” said Brano, “Lutz isn’t controlling the operation. He’s better to us alive.”

“That may be true, but at the time we thought otherwise. The Lieutenant General wanted Lutz dead. You were the one man I knew I could trust to do this.”

“But I failed.”

On the screen, Death told the Crusader that, yes, he was quite a skillful chess player.

“You were faced with unprecedented complications, Brano. It’s not your fault. I know this. You can go home without shame.”

“And the inside man?”

Cerny cleared his throat. “Let me make some calls from the embassy. I have friends at home who can make inquiries.”

“What can I do?”

“You can go home, Brano. I’ve got papers for you, and there’s an eleven o’clock flight tonight. I’ll drive you-I’ve got a diplomatic car.”

“And you?”

He sighed. “I’m going to kill Filip Lutz.”

“But I told you-”

The colonel raised a hand. “It doesn’t matter if he’s important or not. If we don’t get rid of Lutz, suspicion in Yalta is going to fall on you-don’t forget that. You don’t have evidence, only speculation. Lutz’s death will buy us time to collect evidence on the mole in the Ministry.”

Brano looked at his hands on his knees, then said, “No.”

“What?”

“I killed Lochert. I dropped out of contact for a long time. I even gave information to the Austrians. When I spoke with the Lieutenant General, it was clear. If I go back now, it’ll be to a firing squad,” he said, realizing he was echoing his father’s words.

Cerny considered this, his face impassive. “Perhaps you’re right. Okay. Stay in Vienna until it’s done, and I’ll tell them you took care of Lutz. That should help your case.”

“I don’t want you to lie for me.”

“I don’t mind lying for you, One-Shot.”

“They’ll interrogate you.”

Cerny gave him a pained expression. “If you insist, I’ll let you do it. Tomorrow morning. Can you get to the Schonbrunn Palace at nine-thirty? Lutz is meeting someone there at ten.”

“Who’s he meeting?”

Cerny smiled. “He thinks he’s meeting Andrew, your father. But we’ll be there instead. At the Roman Ruins. You know where that is?”

“Of course.”

“Are you staying at the hotel tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” said Cerny. He looked up to where the Crusader and his assistant were riding horses along the shore. “You know, I always hated this movie.”

Brano returned to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, nodded at the bellboy, and took his key from the woman at the front desk. In his room, he pulled the curtains shut and lay down for an afternoon nap. There was nothing to do but wait for the execution of Filip Lutz, then the flight back home. For the first time in months, he felt he knew what tomorrow had in store.

Yalta Boulevard, like any office in the world, was riddled with alliances and feuds. One vice of the dictatorship of the proletariat was that absolute power led inevitably to favoritism, cadres, and corruption. Those in the Ministry devoted to the original ideals had to be vigilant in order to keep the Ministry pure. This in turn led to schisms and power struggles. The ideals of the Ministry, like socialism itself, were under constant threat. For twenty years, Brano had remained in Cerny’s camp, and together they had fought skirmishes to hold on to their positions. The only difference between their office and most others in the world was that when they lost a skirmish, they could end up dead.

Which was why, drifting into an uncomfortable sleep, he began to picture a life in the Salzkammergut, a house on a lake, the simple existence of chopping firewood and visiting the local market, of mixing with the kinds of farmers who had once populated his childhood. Dijana was there, with her tarot cards and acoustic guitar and her inventive syntax. It was a world where the cost of any skirmish was only hurt feelings.

That’s when he considered it first in its entirety. An escape. Finding her was simple. A car could be acquired. And under the names Herr and Frau Bieniek they would check into a quaint pension surrounded by mountains.

A first step, until he’d wandered the local graveyards to find a stillborn child born the same year as him, 1917, whose identity he could borrow.

He sank into his dream uncritically, slipping through years, houses in southern France or the Italian coast, and wondered why he’d never thought through all of this before.

The Jazzklub Abel was on the other side of the Danube Canal, over the Marienbrucke, past the Church of the Brothers of Mercy, at Gro?e Moihrengasse 26. The evening shadows hid the grime as he walked down from Johannes-von-Gott Platz, and through the front door he entered a courtyard fallen into disrepair. There was no sign of Ludwig’s men; perhaps he’d given up. In the back, beside a gnarled fence, was a flat, abandoned apartment building with a small, hand-painted sign- JAZZKLUB ABEL — attached to its windowless door. It was almost seven o’clock, but he heard nothing from inside. The door was locked. He rapped with the knuckles of his right hand.

After a minute, he knocked again and heard heavy footsteps on the other side. Then the door opened, and he was faced with a large man in his sixties, bald, wearing tortoise-shell glasses like the British spy in the film Brano had seen a long time ago.

Ja? ”

Brano tried to smile. “Is Dijana here? I’m a friend.”

“Dee?” Abel Cohen frowned as he made the connection. “So you’re the one.”

Brano shrugged.

“Well, come in.”

He opened the door for Brano, then trotted down concrete stairs without looking back. Brano followed him into a long basement with a low, arched ceiling blackened by decades of cigarettes. An empty wooden stage sat at the far end, and crowded throughout were round tables and chairs.

“No business?” asked Brano.

“We’re just opening,” Abel said tonelessly, then walked behind a wooden bar through a door. “Dee!” he called as he disappeared.

“ Da? ”

Whispers.

Then she was in the doorway, wiping her fingers quickly with a white towel. “Oh, Brani.”

She flung herself at him, kissing his face as she held on to his neck. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, she covered it with hers, humming mmm. Finally, she pulled back.

“Where you have been?” she said with feigned anger.

“I’ve been working.”

“My spy ” she said. “And you feel… how you feel?”

“Excuse me.”

They both looked up at Abel, who stood in the kitchen doorway.

“I need to open up. And a cigarette.”

“You need a cigarette?” Brano reached into his pocket.

“No,” said Abel. “I’ll have a cigarette outside.”

“ Danke, Abelski,” said Dijana. “We’ll talk quickly.”

Abel, more sheepishly than his size would suggest, jogged up the stairs. They felt a cool wind as he opened the door and stepped outside.

“He is good, no?”

“He seems so.”

“Tell me, dragi. You stop to working and I take care of you. You are sick. We go to Salzkammergut?”

Her expression was hopeful in a way that only women can make convincing. Childish and naive. Brano had spent a lifetime taking apart the imperfections in earnest expressions, but with Dijana it was impossible. Her earnest expressions were exactly what they seemed. He imagined that face in that house on that lake. Earnest, trusting.

During his walk from the hotel to here, he’d gone through that dream again, but critically, picking it apart, analyzing it. There was only one flaw he could find, but it brought down everything: What would the lies, and a mind like his, corrupted from a young age, do over the years to a woman who could not be taken apart, who did not calculate and scheme? On the Marienbrucke the answer came to him: They would ruin her.

He said, “There’s something I have to tell you first.”

“ Da,” she said. “I know. You is a spy for your country. You tell me that.”

“There’s more,” he said. “You have to know this.”

“Okay.” She nodded, her face very serious. “I am on the ready.”

What he wanted to do now, more than anything, was to come up with some innocuous fiction-that he had no money, or that he was married. Or even the simple truth that he was leaving. But despite the sometimes comical effect of her grammatical blunders, Dijana Frankovic was the most serious of women. She had spent the last years rebuilding her life from nothing and would not accept half measures. Her decisions-whether her decision to be with him or her decision to take on a low-paying waitress job because she’d uncovered the fraud of her previous career-were absolute. She had more integrity than anyone else in this cold city, and she deserved the truth. So he said, “Bertrand. I was involved in his death.”

She let go of him. “You kill Bertrand?”

“No,” he said, “but I arranged it. I believed at the time that he was selling information. He worked for us-for me-and I thought he was selling our secrets to the West. It was a mistake. I was wrong. But I had reason to believe it. There was a reason, it seemed, at the time.”

He was babbling, so he stopped. Her expression was more like surprise than anger, and perhaps that’s why he clarified it for her.

“I ordered his execution.”

Footsteps clattered behind him. Two young men-Wolfgang and another long-haired friend-followed by Abel. They all nodded hello as they passed.

“I must to working,” said Dijana. She brought a hand to her mouth, the nail of her thumb caught between her teeth.

“I had to tell you.”

“ Da,” she said, staring at some point in the air between them. “Thank you for your honestly. But I must to working.”

She turned away; and he, feeling as if he were at that party again, stoned, wanting nothing more than to keep this remarkable illusion, reached out and grabbed her wrist.

With more speed than he would have expected, she spun around and struck his face with her open hand.

“Get away from me, Brano Sev.”