Yalta Boulevard (41 page)

“The Office of Policy Coordination.”

He nodded.

“We’re all apparatchiks for someone.”

His father squinted, then went on. “I moved to Virginia and helped train agents.”

“How long did you do this?”

Andrezej Sev shrugged. “Until “fifty-three? Yes, “fifty-three.”

“Until the rollback operation was shut down.”

The elder Sev got up and took an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes from the dresser. He offered one, but Brano declined. So he lit one for himself and sat on the bed again. “We’re getting off track. The point is that my relationship to happiness changed. I still knew I’d never achieve happiness, but the Americans firmly believe you must try to find it. It keeps them in motion.”

This was a different man. The younger Andrezej Sev would have never gone into lengthy discussions of the intangibles of
happiness
or even
love
. Andrezej Sev had had the classic provincial mind—survival and subsistence. America had changed him into a creature with the leisure time to worry about such things; he’d become a creature of weekend television and football games and Main Street parades, while his new country’s soldiers slaughtered villagers in the jungles of Asia. And he’d become proud—pride was all over him. They were strangers on opposite sides of an iron fence.

“It’s my fault,” said Brano.

“What?”

“That you’ve become …” He tried to think of the right word. “
This
.” His father stared at him. “Maybe Mother was right. Maybe I should have put you in prison.”

Andrezej Sev’s face dropped. He licked his lips. “You’re blaming yourself for what I’ve become?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, don’t.” He took a drag and spilled smoke into the room. “If you want to know the moment that changed me, you have to look later. A Saturday afternoon in 1951. It was summer, and I went with my new wife down to Virginia Beach with the other thousand vacationers.” He grinned. “Shirley had bought me an air mattress, because she knew I didn’t like to swim. Well, the fact was I
couldn’t
swim, but I didn’t want to admit that to her. We blew it up together, and I took it out to where the water came to my waist and climbed on it. I lay on my back and closed my eyes. It was very peaceful, and I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again I was far out, past the pier. I panicked. I don’t know why, but I completely panicked. I began screaming like a child and fell off the mattress, into the water, and sank like a rock. I was sure, at that moment, that I was a dead man.”

“But you made it to shore,” said Brano.

“Not on my own, I didn’t. I got to the surface, yes, and I clutched the mattress to stay up. I kicked and splashed and made it to the end of the pier and held on to the piling. It was covered with barnacles that scratched the hell out of my chest and pierced the mattress. It deflated. I tell you, I was crying then. Weeping uncontrollably. And the next thing I knew, this big strong man—he’d seen Shirley screaming from the beach—had swum out to me, and he was telling me very calmly to let go of the piling. He carried me back to shore.”

There was silence for a moment, as Brano looked into his father’s eyes. “Why are you telling me this story?”

“You’re not going to like the reason.”

“Try me.”

“Well,” he said, leaning back, “I got to the shore and Shirley dried me off. She was crying. She thought I’d drown out there. And when I saw her tears, I knew. I learned it in one moment.” He paused again. “Brani, God truly exists.”

Brano felt the vibration of the wire recorder against his heart. “Is that what you call a miracle?”

“It’s what I call knowledge.”

Brano felt an urge to stand up, walk out of the room, and throw himself down the stairwell. This was more than he wanted to know. His mother had been right all along. But the vibration kept him in his seat. “So I suppose this explains your Christian friends.”

“They’re good people.”

“Maybe,” he said, rearranging the lines he’d put together on the way over here. “But if I come to America, you won’t force me to attend your church, will you?”

A large smile spread over his father’s face. “All I want is for you to be near me. I want to know my son again. Don’t worry, I’m not as evangelical as my friends.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Andrezej Sev leaned forward and patted Brano’s knee. “You’ve made me a happy man, Brani. You really have.”

“How do I do it?”

“We can do it now, if you like. I make a phone call and wait for my friends to show up. Then it’s just a trip to the embassy. You’ll be completely safe.”

“And then what happens?”

Andrezej Sev’s eyes grew as he lit another cigarette. “Nothing much. A quick debriefing, no more than a day—and nothing like Ludwig’s, you can be assured of that. Then we fly you to Virginia. A week or two more at Langley, and that’s the end of it. A new passport with a new name. It’s that simple.”

“And money?”

His father paused. “Start-up finances, until you get a job. If you need more, I’ll take care of it myself.”

Brano nodded, the lie becoming visual in his head: televisions, football games, parades—and possibly even her. “But I can’t leave yet. I have a few more things to do. We can meet tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“In the Volksgarten. You know the Temple of Theseus?”

“Of course.”

“Tomorrow at three, inside the Temple of Theseus.”

His father leaned back again and raised his hands toward his god, then clapped them together. His face reddened with pleasure. “This calls for a drink!” He went to the bedside table, removed a metal flask from the drawer, and poured palinka into two glasses he fetched from the bathroom. “To freedom,” said his father.

“To freedom,” said Brano, but inaudibly.

They drank their palinkas in a single swallow.

“I figured most of it out,” said Brano. “This conspiracy you’re hatching with Lutz.”

“And Lochert,” said Andrezej, refilling their glasses. “Or we were until he decided to try and kill you. A terrible man. We never should have used him.”

“You smuggle in men—sleepers, told to wake up on Pentecost and start a revolution. There are a lot of them?”

“Enough.”

Brano took another sip. The palinka was rough on his throat. “The CIA tried this before, when you were working for Frank Wisner. Nearly every operation failed. I couldn’t understand why you’d try it again.”

“One thing we’ve had,” said his father, “is security. The Wiz—he was a genius, but his operation was full of leaks. Kim Philby, for example.”

“You had a leak, too. But you and Lochert used me to get rid of Bertrand Richter.”

“Yes. And I have to admit Josef did knock you out under my orders. I hoped that you’d be picked up by the Austrians for killing Richter, and then I could bring you home with me. If we just kidnapped you off the street, Yalta would suspect something.” Andrezej Sev smiled. “But you, Brano, you’re better than that, aren’t you? I was there in the park when you woke to that policeman. You talked your way out of that pretty well.”

Brano blinked, recalling the bearded man in the Volksgarten, watching him struggle with his memory and a haughty Austrian policeman.

His father pointed a finger. “But you didn’t remember a thing. Lochert called me from your hotel room, and I told him to take you to the airport. Then I called my Austrian friends. I thought they’d be able to catch you without much trouble. Hmm.” He shook his head. “And the next thing I knew you were back in the Capital.”

“I returned to an interrogation, and then I lost my job.”

“I heard about it from Lochert. That report he filed was not sanctioned by me, rest assured.”

“Maybe your inside man sanctioned it.”

Andrezej Sev looked at him.

“It’s not enough to get your soldiers into the country,” said Brano. “You need someone to stall the reaction to their uprising. Otherwise it’ll be crushed in an hour. Who was the state security officer you were with at Vámosoroszi?”

“I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

There was a knock on the door, and Brano stood.

His father patted the air for calm. “
Ja
?”

“Maid,” said a voice.

“Please come back later. I’m working.”

They heard the cart squeak down the corridor.

Brano settled down again and reached for the flask. “In the end, there’s one thing I don’t understand. You might cause trouble for a few days, but the Russians will come in, the same way they did in Hungary. Executions will follow, and in the end it’ll make no difference.”

“Brano,” said Andrezej Sev, taking on a tone that seemed very proud and fatherly, “neither of us knows what will happen. But even if it does fail, do you really think it’ll make no difference? Humans have the gift of memory. They learn from their mistakes, so that when they try again they will succeed.”

“And it doesn’t matter that hundreds will die.”

“This is history, Brano. It’s bigger than anyone. Even your dear Stalin understood this.
A million dead is a statistic
. What we’re doing is not about today; it’s about tomorrow.”

Brano looked into his glass, his cheeks warm. “It’s easy to talk about history in this hotel.”

“You understand, but you don’t want to. We fight in the same way. Your Ministry sacrifices agents all the time—not to win battles, but in order to win the war. Don’t underestimate the strength of collective memory. When the Russians marched into Budapest, the International Communist Party lost members in droves. It will happen again. And by the end they will have no support outside the countries they hold by force. The Empire will crumble, captive nation by captive nation.”

His father’s eyes were rapturous, reminding him of Klara’s when she left her church. There was no point debating with this man.

“So tell me, Brani. What made you decide to come over? Have you finally had enough?”

He shrugged.

“You’ve been a good soldier, Brano. I’ve seen your files. But every good soldier reaches a point where the lies and the double-dealing finally take their toll. They start to lose the sense of why they do what they do. They start to forget who they are.”

Brano forced a smile. “You’re not far from the truth.”

“And the loneliness?”

“I’m tired of that as well,” he said into his glass. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Like you said before, if I return home, it will be to a firing squad.”

“Don’t hate me, Brano.”

“I never hate my enemy.”

Andrezej Sev frowned, then began to say something that was interrupted by another knock at the door. Two raps, a pause, then one more. He smiled, patted Brano’s knee, and walked to the door as Brano stood, unsure. Then his father opened it.

Standing there, watching it open, Brano felt sure it would reveal Ludwig, or Karl, or maybe even the Lieutenant General. Nothing prepared him for Dijana, a hat in her hands, below a hopeful face.

Brano started to smile but didn’t. “What are you doing here.”

“I told her to come,” said Andrezej. “A dirty trick, I know,” he added as she rushed past him and grabbed Brano.

He thought he would fall, but he didn’t. He wrapped his arms around her waist and stared at his grinning father over her shoulder.

Her whispered voice in his ear was choked. “I think it’s not bad idea you come with me home, Brani.”

Brano kissed the hair over her ear. His father closed the door.

“Tomorrow,” he told her. He couldn’t hear his own voice because of the ringing in his ears. “We’ll drive somewhere tomorrow. Is that all right?”

She pulled back, blinking. “You mean it?”

“
Pa da
,” he said, then kissed her lips. He couldn’t feel them, because only now had everything become clear, all the lies, and it numbed every part of him. He said, “We’ll go to the Salzkammergut.”

She nodded vehemently into his sore neck.

He kissed her again, then walked over to his father by the door. “You’re right, this wasn’t fair, but I understand. Everything.”

“I’ll do anything to keep you, Brani.”

He patted his father’s cheek. “Would you tell me the name of your inside man?”

Andrezej Sev smiled. “I don’t think you’ll demand that of me.”

“You don’t know me anymore, Tati.”

“I know people.”

Brano reached for the door. “This person, he’s reached the rank of lieutenant general, hasn’t he?”

The smile slid from his father’s face; then he pouted his lips. It was almost obscene in its falsity. “I’d heard you were one of the best, and it seems you really are. Ironic the ways your son can make you proud.”

“Are you going to let me leave this hotel?”

“I told you before. I’ll do anything to keep my son.”

Brano nodded. “Three o’clock.”

“At the Temple of Theseus.” His father leaned closer. “You’ll be happy,” he whispered. “As happy as anyone can be. Shirley’s looking forward to meeting you.”

Brano looked back at Dijana, who stood beside the desk, her hands fidgeting at her sides. He wasn’t sure his tingling feet would carry him all the way out of the hotel, but they did.

1 MAY 1967, MONDAY
•

On the
drive to the airport, they ran into a parade. The participants were dressed in everyday work clothes, and spread throughout were young men and women with long hair, who reminded Brano of Dijana’s friend Wolfgang. A few held red flags with the hammer-and-sickle. One of them started a song, and that was when Brano remembered.
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
. Another red flag was raised.
Arise ye prisoners of want
. It was May Day, and even here the proletariat was showing its muscle. Cerny smiled, but Brano couldn’t.

The Flughafen Wien was long and modern, the departures area shining marble and glass. In the line to the Tis-Air check-in counter, Cerny set down his bag and turned to Brano.

“How do you feel?”

“All right, Comrade Colonel.”

“You’ve done great work, you realize this?”

“Thank you, Comrade Colonel.”

“For God’s sake, Brano, call me Laszlo.”