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 emigre 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 Schulerstra?e, 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 Schulerstra?e, 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,
