Yalta Boulevard (2 page)

Through double doors he found an empty sitting room, where a regal patterned carpet stretched beneath a domed glass ceiling. In a portrait above the cold fireplace, Queen Elisabeth looked as if nothing could amuse her. He settled on one of the padded chairs arranged around polished coffee tables and flipped absently through a copy of the day’s
Kurier
.

He could wait here for hours—but for what? Perhaps nothing. He read that a German writer named Pohl had just died; the Americans had begun broadcasting on Radio Free Asia; and in the back, a concerned reader had written in to protest U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of war in Vietnam.

But none of these could compare to his mystery. He folded the newspaper as the double doors opened, and the bellboy walked up to him. His loose blond hair hung low over his bright blue eyes, and his smile seemed completely insincere. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I just wanted to get my key.”

The boy winked. “Let me take care of that for you.”

“I appreciate it.”

He followed the bellboy back into the lobby and watched him approach the desk. “
Drei-zwei-eins
.”

The woman set her book aside and reached back to the wall of slots. She handed over a key on a weighted ring and an envelope.

The bellboy gave him both items, saying of the envelope, “This was left for you last night.”

“By whom?”

The bellboy looked back at the desk clerk. She said, “I wasn’t here last night.”

The bellboy shrugged. “Would you like me to accompany you, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

“
Grüß Gott
,” said the bellboy.

He took the elevator up three floors without opening the envelope. His patience was a surprise. The natural impulse was to rip it open, but instead he slipped it into his jacket pocket and walked down the hallway to the door marked 321.

The room was large and clean but lived-in. He crossed the carpeted floor to an empty suitcase in the corner and found that the wardrobe was filled with clothes. Inside the envelope was a wallet—old, the leather well worn—with money, schillings and koronas (these pink and pale-blue bills began a trickle of associations), and a faded photograph of mountains he knew were the Carpathians.

There was no other identification in the wallet, but details were beginning to come to him. This room was familiar, and this—

He crouched beside the wardrobe and reached beneath. His fingers found it quickly, and he was soon peeling off the tape that attached a maroon passport to the underside of the wardrobe. He opened the passport and found a photograph of himself with his three moles. Above a name.

SEV, BRANO OLESKY

Even now, with the evidence in front of him, his name was strange, three words that could not quite fit in his mouth. He was forty-nine years old. His country—he was an Easterner, and that felt right. But not comfortable. He stepped over and locked his door.

A passport, a wallet, and a phone number, which he took out of his pocket and read again. Dijana FrankoviĆ. He lifted the phone.

It rang seven times before he hung up, and with each muted buzz another fragment came to him:

A party in a large, smoky apartment, full of people.

Him with a drink in his hand, asking a short, wrinkled man,
Have you seen Bertrand?
The man shakes his head and walks away.

A crowd of young people cross-legged on the living room floor around a long-haired man strumming an acoustic guitar. Everyone singing in unison:
Love, love me do. You know I love you …

A drunk woman with striking brown eyes edged in green, and black hair pulled behind her ear.
Bertrand?
she says. /
tell him go to hell
. Da.
He is boring
.

Awkward dancing—him with the brown-eyed one, who whispers into his ear.
Brano Sev, I am in the—

Again with her, but the air is fresh, her arm linked with his as they make their way down the sidewalk. “
Zbrka
,” she tells him,
is Serbian word what mean … confusion
. Da.
What is confusion of too many thing
.

Then blackness, but her voice:
You want I should read your future?

He cradled the receiver and closed his eyes, trying without success to dredge up more.

In the shower he examined himself. There was no more blood but a remarkable number of scars. A long white thread etched down his right thigh, and there were two punctures above his left breast. Drying himself in front of the mirror, he found more marks on his back and a knot of white tissue on his shoulder. He wondered how he could have earned these.

Then the telephone rang.

“Herr Sev?” said a woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“This is the front desk. A gentleman is coming up to speak with you.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But I felt you should know … he told me you had left town, and he was here to collect your things.”

Brano Sev was suddenly aware of his nudity. “My things?”

“Yes, sir. I told him you were in your room, and he seemed very surprised.”

“Thank you.”

He dressed quickly, slipping his wallet and passport into his pockets. He was buttoning his shirt when the rap on the door came.

“Yes?”

A hesitant, deep voice, but not German. It was his own Slavic tongue. “It’s me, Brano. Let me in.”

“Who?”

A pause. “You’re not going to pull that code-word crap with me, are you? It’s me, Lochert. Now open up.”

Brano unlocked the door and stepped back. “Come in.”

He was faced with a tall blond man with a thin, halfhearted mustache above pursed lips. “Well?” said Lochert. “You want to hit me or something?”

“Should I?”

That seemed to relieve the visitor, and he closed the door. “Look, Brano, I don’t know what happened last night. I guess we were attacked. But at least Gavrilo’s dead.”

“Who’s Gavrilo?”

“What are you getting at, Brano?”

“Just tell me who Gavrilo is.”

Lochert blinked a few times. “
GAVRILO
is the code name for Bertrand Richter.”

Brano reached into his pocket and handed over the library card. Lochert examined it.

“Yeah? And?”

“Why is Bertrand Richter dead?”

Lochert rubbed the edge of the card with a thumb. “What’s going on, Brano?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean you don’t remember?”

“Just what I said. I don’t remember a thing. I woke up in the Volksgarten this morning and I don’t know how I got there. I’m not even sure who I am.”

Lochert cleared his throat and pursed his lips again. He sat on the bed. “Amnesia?”

“Yes. Amnesia.”

“You don’t remember me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Amazing.” Lochert stood again. “Incredible!” He walked to the door, then back, tapping Bertrand Richter’s library card against his thigh. “Okay, right. Don’t worry about anything, Brano. Where’s your phone?” Before he could answer, Lochert had found it and was dialing. He covered the mouthpiece with a hand and said to Brano, “Pack.”

Brano stared at him.

“
Pack
. You’re flying out of here.” Lochert uncovered the mouthpiece. “Yeah, it’s me. I’ve found him. No, but you won’t believe the condition.” He waved a hand at Brano and said to him, “Come on.”

Brano emptied out the wardrobe as Lochert spoke.

“Exactly … Two o’clock, TisAir. Right. The main terminal.” Then he hung up. “The ticket’s being reserved. All you have to do is pay for it.”

Brano stopped packing. “Where am I going?”

“You’re going home, Brano. Where you belong.”

They took care of the bill together, the flaxen desk clerk watching carefully. “A receipt, please,” said Lochert, and she made one out under his name, Josef Lochert. The bellboy opened the front door and nodded courteously when Brano handed him a tip.

When they got into a white Mercedes parked farther down Weihburg-Gasse, Brano noticed the plates. “Diplomatic car?”

Lochert started the engine. “Useful. I can speed if I want.”

Brano watched the city slide by as they made their way along the Ringstrasse past enormous Habsburg monoliths. They didn’t speak for a while, until Brano asked, “Did I kill him?”

“Bertrand?”

“Yes.”

Lochert stared at the road a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, of course you did.”

“Why?”

“Because, Brano, he was a traitor. Don’t become moral on me, now. That man got what was coming to him.”

“But how was he a traitor?”

“He was selling us out to the Austrians. We used the code
GAVRILO
because we didn’t know who he was. Is that clear enough?”

“Who’s we?”

Lochert tapped the wheel and looked over at him. “You really don’t remember a thing, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Both of us work for the Ministry for State Security, on Yalta Boulevard.”

“The Ministry for …” Tourists jogged across the road in front of them. “I’m a spy?”

Josef Lochert laughed a loud, punchy laugh. “Listen to you! Major Brano Oleksy Sev asking me if he’s a spy!”

“What about Dijana Franković?”

He licked his lips. “She’s nobody, okay? A whore. And trouble. Forget about her. And stop with the questions. You’ll get all your answers soon enough.”

Lochert dropped him off at the Flughafen Wien departures door and handed his bag over from the backseat. Brano placed it on the curb. “You said it’s reserved?”

“Yeah,” said Lochert from inside the car. “Hand over your passport at the TisAir desk. It’s the two o’clock flight.”

“Okay.”

“Have a good trip, Brano,” he said. “Now close the door.”

Brano watched the Mercedes drive away.

The airport was cool, with a vast marble floor leading to a row of airline desks. He waited behind a businessman arguing with the young woman standing under the
TISA AERO-TRANSPORT
sign, until the man, frustrated, walked off. The woman smiled at Brano.

“May I help you?”

“I have a reservation.” He handed over his passport. “The two o’clock flight.”

The woman examined a list on the desk. “I’m afraid there’s no reservation for you, Herr Sev.”

“But my friend made the call.”

She read over the list again. “No, there’s not one here, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a free seat.”

He paid for the ticket, handed over his bag, and asked for the bathroom. “Just past the lounge,” she said, pointing.

He lit a cigarette as he passed tired-looking travelers sitting with their bags, some reading newspapers, others books. Beside the bathrooms was a line of pay phones, and he considered trying Dijana Franković’s number again. Much later, he would wonder if calling again would have changed anything that followed. But there’s never any way to know these things.

He washed sweat from his forehead and stared at himself again in the mirror. He was becoming used to this round, flat-cheekboned face and could even spot his ethnicity—Polish features. From the northern part of his country, perhaps. But that was all the mirror told him.

At the urinal, he felt dizzy again, the spot on the back of his head aching. A large man in a suit took the urinal next to him, then looked over.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine. Just a little dizziness.”

This Austrian, Brano noticed, didn’t unzip his fly. “You’re Brano Sev, right?”

“I—” He zipped himself up. “Do I know you?”

“No, Brano,” said the Austrian. He reached into his jacket pocket but didn’t take his hand back out. “Why don’t you come with me?”

The dizziness was intensifying. “Where?”

“We’ll have a little talk.”

“I have a plane to catch.”

As the Austrian stepped closer, his hand withdrew, holding a small pistol. “Forget about the plane, Brano.”

Brano’s head cleared. He leaned forward, as if to be sick.

“Hey, are you—” said the Austrian, crouching, but didn’t finish because Brano swung his head back up into the man’s nose, at the same time thrusting a fist into the man’s stomach. The Austrian stumbled back, a hand on his bloody nose, the other trying to keep hold of the pistol. Brano kneed him in the groin and twisted the gun hand until he had the pistol. He stepped back.

The Austrian stared at him, covering his nose and his groin.

“How many more?” said Brano.

“Jesus, Brano. I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“How many more?”

The Austrian leaned against the sinks, then looked in the mirror. His eyes dripped and his nose bled. “Just one. He’s watching the front exit.”

“How long before he comes inside?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes. Look at this goddamned nose!”

“And you. You know who I am?”

“I wouldn’t be any good if I didn’t know who you were. The new Kristina Urban, the Vienna
rezident
.”

“Who do you work for?”

The Austrian was becoming impatient. “Who do you
think
I work for?”

“Just answer the question.”

“The
Abwehramt
, obviously. What’s with all these questions?”

Everything Brano had done in this bathroom had been automatic, as if he were being controlled from somewhere else. Now he tried to think. The
Abwehramt
was Austrian foreign intelligence. He was the Vienna
rezident
, who controlled his country’s intelligence operations in Vienna. And he had killed a man named Bertrand Richter.

“Why do you want me?”

“Because we were told to get you.”

“Why were you told to get me?”

The Austrian finally let go of his groin and uncovered his nose. It was beginning to swell. “You’ve been in this business long enough to know that we just do what we’re told, and we seldom know why.”

“Come here,” Brano said as he walked to one of the stalls. He opened the door. “Come on. Inside.”

He stepped back as the Austrian entered the stall and turned around.

“Face the wall.”

“Christ, Brano. There’s no need to shoot me.”

Brano swung the pistol into the back of the Austrian’s neck and watched him crumple onto the toilet.