well, strange.”
“How?”
Rasko used the flashlight to investigate the ground around the body. “He was a hermit, Comrade Sev. He dropped out of touch with everyone, which is a feat in Bobrka.”
“His job?”
“Delivered milk from the distribution point in Krosno. But even when he was driving, he wore these tailored suits. See those pants? And his shoes-always polished. He looked foolish.” Rasko shook his head. “What happened to him?”
“Looks like a razor blade, or a few of them, used many times.” Brano followed the flashlight beam with Rasko, walking around the body.
“A match.” Rasko crouched to pick it up.
“It’s mine.”
“Oh.” He paused. “So what were you doing out here?”
“Just walking. I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you came out here? ”
“Aren’t many trees in the Capital.”
Rasko stood still a moment, thinking. “No one really liked Jakob, but I can’t imagine anybody who’d feel this way about him.”
“Somebody did.”
Then they were quiet, staring at the now-cold body. Rasko took a length of wide red ribbon from his pocket and tied it to a tree. “Let’s go.”
At the militiaman’s house, Brano drank a glass of tap water while Rasko called the village doctor, who would get the body in the morning. Rasko told the doctor to watch for the red ribbon. Then he poured a tall vodka for himself and sat across from Brano. “Want to come with me tomorrow?”
“Where?”
“To Jakob’s house. See if we can turn up something.”
“If I won’t be in the way.”
“I’m alone here, Comrade Sev. Your presence can only help.”
Steinhauer, Olen
36 Yalta Boulevard
10 FEBRUARY 1967, FRIDAY
He slept lightly and woke at seven in a sweat. Though he could not remember it, he knew he had again dreamed of that week just after his return from Vienna, spent in the basement of Yalta Boulevard 36.
The Lieutenant General had accompanied him in the white Mercedes from the airport into town. Brano, with his memory now intact, knew better than to speak, and when the other three men guided him to the large double doors of Yalta 36, the Lieutenant General only said, You better cook up some goddamned brilliant answers for us.
But he didn’t come with Brano as the men walked him past a stunned Regina Haliniak at the front desk, along the corridor of unmarked doors to the stairwell that brought them down to the basement. He’d led enough men to these damp, windowless cells to know the route, and even said hello to Stanko, the stout man with round glasses who kept the guardroom organized. Stanko, nodding, could come up with no reply.
A Ministry doctor visited him that night, listened to his heart, and asked him questions. For the memory loss, he could offer no authoritative explanation but suggested stroke. You’re not young, Brano.
The interrogation began the next day, when he was dragged to another room with a table and two chairs. What would always strike him as the great irony of those sessions was that each morning on the table sat a glass of water and the headache powders Brano’s doctor had prescribed, and only after he’d taken them did the Lieutenant General’s assistants feel free to begin what the Americans liked to call his “softening up.” Not until blood flowed did the Lieutenant General arrive.
You set up office in a hotel.
Yes, said Brano. The embassy wasn’t secure.
Maybe you were afraid Major Romek would listen in on your schemes?
I thought nothing of the sort.
Kaspar.
One of the guards struck him across the back of the head.
Don’t be impertinent, Brano.
Working back from the Lieutenant General’s questions, Brano could piece together Lochert’s inventive report. He claimed not only that Brano had attacked him in the Volksgarten the night of the Richter murder but also that over the previous month he had been trying to sabotage the investigation into the identity of GAVRILO. Brano had undermined security at the embassy, consciously casting doubt on the abilities of their head of security, Nikolai Romek, by planting electronic bugs. Why? Because Brano needed an excuse to run his operations outside the embassy, where he could not be watched, at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth. From there he could meet with whomever he wanted.
Lochert, his report claimed, was confused about the why of Brano’s treachery. Only after the incident in the Volksgarten was he able to piece together the details. Brano arrived late because of a liaison with a certain Dijana Frankovic, Yugoslav national, who, besides being the girlfriend of Bertrand Richter, was known to have entertained KGB agents in her apartment on Doblinger Hauptstraee. Brano, Lochert finally realized, was working for the Russians-who, for their own reasons, wanted to hinder Yalta Boulevard’s investigation into the source of their Vienna leak.
This was all, of course, a lie, and two weeks later, after he’d been released from his Yalta cell and given his new labor assignment at the tractor factory, he and Colonel Cerny took a walk together in Victory Park. But why? Brano asked him. Why did he do this?
Cerny had thought it through over the last weeks. Lochert’s lived in Vienna almost a decade; he knows the city and its networks better than anyone. We sent him to Vienna because he grew up in one of those Saxon villages in the Carpathians; we felt he understood the Germanic mindset. And then Kristina Urban was killed.
He expected promotion.
But he’s a simpleton, said Cerny, because the Ministry never planned to promote a hired gun-a half-educated Saxon thug-to the level of rezident. Then you arrived, with only minor Austrian experience, and Lochert’s pride… well, he couldn’t take it, could he?
If the Lieutenant General believes his story, why aren’t I in prison?
Why aren’t you dead, you mean. Cerny gripped his arm and whispered, Because you’ve got me, Brano. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.
He wiped the sweat off himself with a hand towel, and as he finished dressing, Mother stumbled to his bedroom door. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Where were you last night? Did you get any sleep?”
“Some. I’ve got to run.”
“Where?”
“To meet Captain Rasko.”
She leaned against the wall, stifling a yawn. “Why on earth are you seeing him this early?”
“There was a murder last night.”
“There was… what? ”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” He kissed her forehead.
Captain Rasko had not yet dressed. He asked Brano to make some coffee, then sprinted back to the bedroom. Brano picked through piles of dishes for the coffeepot and cleaned it thoroughly. There was a bag of ground beans in the cabinet.
Rasko straightened his tie as he drank. “This is better than my coffee.”
“I cleaned the pot.”
