Ludwig stared at him a moment. “We’ll check on those cafes, you understand? I don’t want to find out you’ve been lying to me.”
“Anke, the waitress at the Arabia, should remember me. We had a nice discussion.”
“About what?”
“About the demise of capitalism.”
Ludwig looked ahead a moment. “So now can you tell me why?”
“Why?”
“Why you’re acting like a spoiled child.”
Karl was watching the enormous Natural History Museum slide by.
“I suppose I’m bored.”
“Bored?”
Karl turned to look at him.
“I’ve been here awhile, and I’ve only talked to you. How else am I supposed to feel?”
Ludwig pursed his lips. “Well, what do you think of that, Karl?”
Karl shrugged.
“I told you this before, Brano. You need to meet people. Who doesn’t? Maybe some of your own kind?”
“My kind?”
“I don’t mean spies, Brano. I mean your own countrymen.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll tell you what. You go over to Sterngasse. You know where that is?”
“I can find it on the map.”
“Good, good. There’s a bar there. The Carp. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“I think I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, you go there, and I assure you you’ll make friends.”
“Okay,” said Brano.
“You’ll give it a try?”
“I will.”
“Good, good. You make some friends and try to be nice. Is it a deal?”
“Okay.”
Ludwig smiled finally. “Because I know that Karl, for one, doesn’t want to have to put those clips on your tits again. Do you, Karl?”
Karl shrugged and stared out the window.
31 MARCH 1967, FRIDAY
Of course he knew the Carp. It was a dingy place in the narrow maze of Vienna’s old fishing district-on Sterngasse, off of Desider Friedmannplatz. He knew what and where it was, though he’d avoided it personally. He’d instead sent his informants into its dark interior to listen to the exiles’ stories of dissatisfaction. Ingrid Petritsch had been one of his better informants; she could maneuver herself among the barstools and flirt the information out of any man, because the exiles would say anything to impress a beautiful woman. They would always explain to her, as if to a child, that their own capital was superior to cold Vienna, though none of them had the courage to return home. Then Ingrid would touch their arms and ask for more.
But Ingrid, after Bertrand Richter’s death, decided she’d had enough. Cerny had told him this over drinks. She married an English businessman and was now living in London. A goddamned waste, he’d said. She won’t even talk to our local man now.
In the morning he woke later than usual and did not bother with Eszterhazy Park. Instead, he picked up a Kurier and took it east, to the vast grounds of the Schonbrunn Palace, where, when he wasn’t reading the newspaper’s personals, he gazed at squares of black soil in the enormous gardens being tended by workers in preparation for spring. He mixed with a busload of Italians who shouted at their wives and children, then stopped beside a Grecian sculpture and stared at the crisp blue sky, where a single unformed cloud floated.
At sunset, he took the tram back into town, to Schwedenplatz by the Danube, then found Sterngasse. It was a short pedestrian street ending in stairs, dirty by Viennese standards but relatively clean to Brano’s eyes. Arched above the door was a wooden carp, silver paint peeling off its ribs.
There were only a few customers this early, so Brano settled at the bar. The black-haired bartender, a woman of about sixty, smoked beside a wall of palinkas and vodkas, reading a newspaper. She wore large hoop earrings. Behind the bottles, a large mirrored wall allowed him to see his own tired face. In the corner, a wide, glowing jukebox played jazz music.
“Guten Abend,” she said when she noticed him.
“Good evening.”
She smiled. “One of our boys. What can I get you?”
He rapped the counter with a knuckle. “A beer, I think.”
Her name was Monika, and she asked how long had he been here, where was he from, and was he going to stay?
He nodded morosely into his glass, as if he really were one of them.
“Don’t worry, dear.” She placed a calloused hand on his wrist. “It gets better.”
He looked at her.
“You did the right thing,” she said. “You came here. It’s all going to change from this point on.”
“That’s good news.”
For the next hour, he drank while Monika asked the occasional question-not probing, just to show she was interested. She seemed to respect his vague answers, because she had been around long enough to know that not all exiles wanted to regale the world with stories of their escapes. When she asked what he did for a living, he paused. He would have liked, at that moment, to speak of one of the elaborate pasts he’d toyed with in the Schonbrunn gardens, but one never knew who would walk through the door and prove him wrong. He didn’t know how long he’d be here, and with each week the chances of being discovered would multiply. He said, “I was a spy.”
She stopped wiping the glass in her hand. “You’re kidding.”
“I finally saw the error of my ways.”
“You’re not pulling my leg?”
“I wish I was.”
“What did you do?”
Spies come in different flavors, and Brano chose the blandest. “I worked in the Metropol, mostly. I spent time with Western businessmen and passed on what I learned.”
“To Yalta?”
Brano nodded.
She put down the glass. “That’s the last thing I’d expect someone to admit. So it must be true.”
A low-level operative-really, a mere informer-was an easy cover to maintain. No records were kept on such people, and while it was an embarrassing thing to admit, it was better than the complete truth. He smiled at Monika-a shy, embarrassed smile-and said, “It’s not the kind of thing I’d want to advertise, but I should come clean about it sooner rather than later.”
Then the noise began, in the form of a short blond man who stomped through the doors and shouted in German, “Where the fuck is he, huh? Where the fuck is that useless bastard?”
Monika raised her voice. “Don’t shout in my bar, Ersek.”
Ersek’s watery eyes blinked at her a few times. “Just tell me where the fuck Sasha is.”
“I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Don’t give me that, Monika. You’re protecting him.”
“You’re a paranoid man. Have a beer and shut up.”
Ersek looked around the bar, then grunted and climbed onto a stool. He nodded at Brano and accepted a beer
