Yalta Boulevard (27 page)

Brano shook his head.

“Easy work, I wait the table.” She shrugged. “A real job, no? But I like people what is there. Musicians. Folk music. You like?”

“I don’t really know it.”

“Wolfgang, he teach me guitar. Just little. And I’m thinking maybe it’s not bad idea I learn to sing. What you think?”

She smiled hugely, waiting for his approval. He couldn’t say anything for a moment, because she was here, finally, with him. She smiled a lot—he’d forgotten that—and her teeth were large and clean and straight. He felt like he’d been drinking, but he hadn’t been.

“I think it’s a great idea, Dijana.”

“Dobro
,” she said. Good.

“And you’re finished with the tarot cards?”

She nodded seriously.

“Why?”

“Because it’s silly,” she said, standing again. “That’s something what you know. Okay, I thought maybe there is something in it. You know. Something like truth. But I change a lot since August.
Da
. First you come. Then Bertrand die. And tarot, it seem … I don’t know. Stupid. Wolfgang, he say to me about tarot,
You know, Dijana, that is old world
. Is true. This is new world.”

“You’re brand-new.”

“And my hair?” Hesitantly, she touched it. “You like my hair?”

“I love it,” said Brano.

They talked, and Brano slowly readjusted to the peculiar rhythms of her speech, the forgotten flow of her thoughts. She laughed regularly, and while in his career he often associated laughter with nervousness, this was not the case with Dijana. She simply found more things in this world funny than he did.

As she told him more about her life, the job, the music, the friends, and even her developing interest in Buddhism, Brano realized that they were just as unlike as before, perhaps more so. Her evenings were spent in smoky music clubs discussing political hymns and peace marches and mysticism. His evenings were spent planning his survival. And she
was
young—even Cerny had pointed this out. A woman in her midtwenties was still jumping around the spectrum, trying to find something that would settle her nerves and guide her through the
zbrka
of modern life. She had left her own country behind, which only added to her need. The tarot cards hadn’t done it, so now she was throwing herself into the world of popular music and Eastern religion. That, no doubt, would not satisfy her either, and she would be faced with more years of dissatisfaction.

He watched her face as she explained to him the idea behind reincarnation, and to avoid making an expression that betrayed his real opinion, he stopped listening and noticed how her cheeks puffed up when she spoke, her fingertips tapped the table, and her neck, just visible above her turtleneck, was very pale.

“You know what?” she said.

“What?”

“You listening to anything I saying.”

He remembered that that night in August she had often confused “anything” with “nothing.” He laughed, then she laughed. “You’re right,” he said.

She stood up. “Is okay. But you must to go now.”

“Go?”

“
Pa da
. I have things I must to do.”

He patted his thighs and stood up, warmth rushing to his face. He started to look for his coat but realized he’d never taken it off. She walked him to the door. “Really, you are here?”

“Really, I am.”

Then she reached her arms around him, squeezed, and kissed him on the lips. She tasted of chewing gum, but he hadn’t seen her using any. Her lips parted, and he felt her large, strong teeth against his tongue, then her tongue entered his mouth. He held her tight until she let him go.

“I not drunk this time,
dragi
. Yes, but not now, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, nodding dumbly. “But when?”

“I just—” she began. “Only not so fast. Okay?” When she smiled again her shoulders settled.

Then she closed the door.

When he left the building, Brano spotted the sunburned man putting away his camera. Brano caught his eye by waving and, inexplicably, blew the man a kiss.

10 APRIL 1967, MONDAY
•

Brano knew
a little about the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations. Their primary work was using tourists to smuggle pamphlets and Beatles records into the East, where they tended to litter the corridors of the Hotel Metropol. Among the groups devoted to ending the communist experiment, they were low on the list of priorities. They were, like most êmigrê groups, more style than substance, only platforms to be heard from, because their new countries never listened. And so they spoke to their own kind, received applause, and returned to their empty apartments rejuvenated. The Committee was different in that it was formed not by exiles but by American Christian fundamentalists who plucked their workers from the exile communities.

The Committee’s Vienna branch lay in the Innere Stadt, part of a Habsburg complex on Schulerstraße, behind St. Stephen’s Cathedral. He had expected something farther out, in the cheaper districts, but at number 9 he found the small bronze plaque with a symbol of a sun rising over

CLCN

INTERNATIONAL

He pressed the buzzer.

“Hallo?”

Brano leaned close to the speaker. “I’m here for the Filip Lutz lecture.”

The door hummed.

The office was on the second floor, and as he climbed the stairs Brano tried without success to push Dijana from his mind. It irritated him that he had been too confused to leave his phone number, but he assured himself that she was resourceful enough to track him down when she was ready, when she had done those unknown things that were required of her first.

There was another plaque on the open door that spelled out the name of the organization, above a Latin motto:
IGITUR QUI DESIDERAT PACEM, PRAEPARET BELLUM
. Whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.

In the foyer, beside a rack overflowing with coats, stood a small woman with thick eyebrows. She pumped his hand energetically. “So glad to
meet
you,” she said in childlike English. “So
glad
you could make it! I am Loretta Reich, the Committee’s press agent, and you—oh!” She put a hand to her mouth. “I mean, is English okay?”

He nodded. “I’m Brano Sev. Filip invited me.”

“A friend of
Filip’s!”
She placed a finger on Brano’s forearm. “Well, we’re just tickled
pink
he agreed to do this for us. You know, without Filip we’d hardly get a thing done around here. He’s
invaluable
. Oh!” She looked around. “Let’s get you out of that coat and get you something to drink.” Then she laughed, showing all her teeth.

Loretta brought him into the large main room, where twenty people milled around rows of metal folding chairs, drinking. Lutz was beside a tall window that overlooked Schulerstraße, entertaining a semicircle of admirers, both men and women. Others looked American—tall young men with tans and tailored suits they wore with ease. One stood in a corner quietly talking to an old man with a white mustache and beard—the shadow with the Volkswagen who liked to sit outside his apartment. The old man noticed him looking, then gave a smile and a half nod.

“I hope you don’t mind zinfandel—the cabernet’s all gone!” Loretta laughed as she handed Brano a glass. “These people know how to drink!”

“How long have you been here in Vienna?”

Loretta tilted her head. “Well,
I’ve
only been here since November, but the office … we started it three years ago, in 1964.” Then she took a breath. “We do a lot of good work.”

“Like what?”

“Anti-communist seminars, mostly. Oh, we’ve had some success in the Austrian universities, particularly the Christian schools. And we’ve lobbied members of the Austrian and West German governments to include anti-communist education within their national curriculums.”

“You’re not recruiting again, Loretta?” Lutz tapped her shoulder with a cylinder of papers, which seemed to be her cue—she moved on. In his other hand was a glass. “Brano, glad you could make it.”

“You ready to speak?”

“Trying desperately to get drunk first.” He looked back over the crowd and took a sip. “See anyone you know?”

“A few familiar faces. Who’s that guy with the beard?”

Lutz squinted at the corner, where the white-haired man was still talking with his American friend. “Oh, that’s Andrew. Andrew Stamer. Left our country a while ago. Now I suppose you can call him an American. One of the founding members of the Committee.”

“He’s not Austrian?”

Lutz shook his head as Brano gazed at the old man, reviewing the two times he’d seen him outside the Web-Gasse apartment. Not one of Ludwig’s men, then, but a lone crusader who had somehow learned who and where Brano was, and was trying to reeducate him with cheap pamphlets.

Lutz noticed him staring. “You probably don’t want to meet him unless you’re planning to convert. He can be very persuasive. Most of these Christians are.”

“So you’re saying this isn’t a front for the CIA?”

Surprise slid into Lutz’s face. “I keep forgetting what you used to do.”

Brano cocked his head, as if agreeing.

“Which reminds me, you still need to tell me your story.
Escape from the Crocodile
needs some tales of adventure.”

As the crowd swelled, Brano recognized more faces from his Vienna files and heard accented English everywhere—Hungarian, Polish, Yugoslav, Czech, even Russian. They met and hugged and kissed cheeks, as if part of a secret society. But there was nothing secret about any of them. They all wore their faith on their sleeve; they were apparatchiks for their most precious word:
liberty
.

Ersek Nanz arrived a few minutes later to harangue Brano for not spending more time at the Carp. Brano shrugged and went for another glass of zinfandel. Beside the bottles were stacks of the Committee’s pamphlets with such titles as
What Is Communism?
and
Watch Out! There’s a Marxist Behind You!
and
Christ’s Words on Profit
. On the wall was a line of bronze plaques mounted on wood; on each was a name and a year.

Loretta came up. “You like our wall of martyrs?”

Brano squinted at the names. There was the man his sister praised, Father Jacek Wieslowski, as well as Yuli Daniel, a Russian writer who had been given five years’ imprisonment last year for publishing anti-Soviet works in the West. At the end was the old head of the Office of Policy Coordination who had killed himself, Frank Wisner.

“Frank Wisner?” he asked.

Loretta nodded earnestly. “Yes, yes. A great man, sadly gone. Andrew knew him well.”

“They were old friends?”

“I think so, yes. During Wisner’s last year, in London. Very close, those two. Frank Wisner’s determination is an inspiration to us all.” She touched the corner of Wisner’s plaque wistfully, then wandered away.

Brano looked around for Andrew Stamer, but he was no longer in the room. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find the pockmarked, scarred face of Sasha Lytvyn. “Brano Sev.”

“Hello, Sasha.”

The man smelled of something stronger than zinfandel, but he held no glass. Instead, his hands twitched at his sides. “I thought I saw you at the party.”

Brano held his wine glass between them. “I saw you as well.”

“You’ve been in Vienna a long time?”

“Not very long. You?”

“A decade. But I never forgot you, Brano.”

“How is your arm?”

“My—” Sasha looked down at his left arm, then unbuttoned the cuff. He slid back the sleeve to expose a forearm covered in mottled, burned flesh.

“About the same,” said Brano. Lutz was taking his place at the head of the room, behind a small podium. “Take care, Sasha.”

Brano walked to an empty seat in the rear, and when he glanced back saw Sasha Lytvyn in the foyer, reaching for his coat.

A small American with round glasses stood beside Lutz. He looked nervous, but once the room quieted he took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and began to read, introducing Lutz as a “distinguished scholar of the communist world” who was “famous for his insightful articles in
Kurier.”

The applause was loud, vibrating the walls. Some men whistled.

Lutz smiled and pressed the air for silence. Finally the crowd settled, and Lutz licked his teeth. “I didn’t know we had so many fans of yellow journalism in Vienna!”

Laughter.

“But, really, it is an honor to be invited here to speak to all of you. Thank you, Jeremy,” he said, nodding at the small man, now sitting in the front row. A smattering of applause. Lutz took a sip of wine from the glass sitting on the podium, then said, “We like to make jokes, but what I’ve come here to talk to you about tonight is a deadly serious subject. Over the last years we’ve heard a lot of talk coming from Moscow and Bucharest and Warsaw and my own home about the idea of international peace. The communist world, the message goes, is focused on the aim that all good men have in their hearts: peace in our time. And I think that all good men, upon hearing this for the first time, think,
Well, why not? That’s an admirable thing for them to say.”

There were a few chuckles from the audience.

“No, don’t laugh. This is an honest response to the press releases issued by the International Communist Party. But the problem is that honest responses assume that the original statement is honest. And that is what I’ve come here to examine today.”

Lutz went on, but Brano focused instead on the heads lined up in front of him. Men and women alike seemed transfixed by Lutz’s vibrant voice, and sometimes they nodded ecstatic agreement. Lutz was casual. He could have been standing in a bar, giving a lecture on seduction. He knew all these people and was speaking to friends about something they all already agreed on. And when he said, “You know the old Hungarian joke: We’re a three-class society—those who have been in prison, those who are there, and those who are heading there,” everyone nodded because they already knew this as well. There was no one—except, perhaps, himself—to convert. The lecture, it seemed, had no point.