“I don’t remember that at all, Brani.”
He opened his eyes as Andrezej Sev broke away from the telephone to speak with a large man in a white chef’s hat.
“They want their phone back. Can I answer your questions face-to-face?”
“One last thing,” said Brano. “Are you going to wildly parachute soldiers into the country on Pentecost? While the Hungarians or the Czechs just close their eyes as you fly over their territory?”
“You’ve been doing so well up to now, Brani,” said Andrezej Sev. “You’ve been making your father proud. But of course we’re not parachuting anybody in on Pentecost.”
“Because,” said Brano, scratching the paint flaking off the telephone. “Because they’re already there. You’ve already sent in your men, probably through the same path Jan used to get in.”
“You can think what you like, Brano. I have a feeling Yalta Boulevard will find your stories hard to swallow, given the storyteller.
Ja, ja
,” he said to the chef. “Brani, can we meet?”
“I’ll call.”
“Well, I—” Andrezej Sev began, but by then Brano had hung up.
His father had changed in the last twenty years. It was the same man—he had no doubt of that—but perhaps it was the American lifestyle that had made him into such a natural liar. He knew how to tease his son with half facts and outright fabrications. There was no reason to believe that he had brought Brano here for his safety; the fact was, it was his father’s operation that had ended his career back in August. Andrezej Sev worked with the American fundamentalists, and the CIA was likely part of his background as well. There were too many loose threads; everything remained just beyond his reach. And this, as Dijana had explained, was the essence of
zbrka
.
He took a tram down to Soroka’s neighborhood and rang his bell but got no answer. Behind the building was a large courtyard with grass and picnic tables and groups of mothers chatting while their children ran in circles. He sat at an empty table and stared at the children without seeing them.
He understood the outline. His father, using the cover of the Committee for Liberty, had worked with Lochert, Lutz, and Richter over what must have been a number of years, recruiting émigrés, training them, and then sending them back into the country to wait. Loretta Reich, the Committee’s secretary, had been kind enough to point out that his father had been close to Frank Wisner, who ran the earlier attempts to undermine the People’s Democracies. Andrezej Sev had no doubt learned from Wisner’s endless mistakes. Now their men had been placed—all they were waiting for was the prearranged date.
And in the middle of it all, his father was trying to convince him to defect.
Brano rubbed his head as children squealed, running past him.
There had been perhaps three moments during that phone call when he wanted to cross the street, walk up to Andrezej Sev, and hit him. Because he sounded like all fathers of the world who drop contact for years and then expect to be welcomed back. Like exiles, they live so long in their cloistered worlds, distracted by their petty obsessions, that it never occurs to them that their families no longer need them and, in fact, no longer want them.
But that wasn’t it, he realized as a small blonde girl ran over to him to retrieve her ball. Narrow-mindedness and stupidity were no reasons to strike a man. It was commonness. It was that Brano’s father turned out to be like all fathers in the world. He was a disappointment.
By evening he had returned to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. The woman at the desk set down her book when he approached. She stood up. “Mister Bieniek?”
“Yes?”
She handed him an envelope. “This is for you.’
“Thank you.”
There was a brief note inside, on Kaiserin Elisabeth stationery:
Johannesgasse 4, 11:20
.
“When did this come?”
“Around noon. A phone call.”
“Where is Johannesgasse?”
“Very near. Down Kärtner StraßE, away from the cathedral, two blocks.”
“You don’t know the name of the person who left this?”
She shook her head. “I asked, but he said you’d know who he was.”
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 Kärtner 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 Franković. Lochert used Yalta Boulevard to get rid of Richter and protect the conspiracy, as well as himself. He was
GAVRILO
all along. Dijana Franković 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 Vámosoroszi 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 Schönbrunn 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.