“It’ll be the same as Budapest in ’fifty-six,” said Brano. “They can start a revolution, but Russian tanks will end it. The Americans won’t send their army to back it up, and even if they wanted to they’d have to go through Hungary or Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia first. No. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe they know something we don’t,” said Lochert. “Or maybe they just want to disrupt things. We can’t take chances. The CIA have placed themselves far enough away to deny they had any part in it. To Yalta, that suggests something quite serious.”
Brano nodded.
“And you had better watch your back with that woman.”
“What?”
“Your Fraulein Frankovic. She’s working with the Russians.”
Brano smiled. “That’s the story you gave Cerny, but don’t think I’ll believe it.”
Lochert reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope. He held it out.
Inside, Brano found four black-and-white photographs. In the first, two men in suits entered Dijana’s apartment block. The next three were taken with a telephoto from another building through her window. Dijana with a tray of drinks, smiling at the men, then talking very seriously.
“You know the tall one, don’t you?”
Brano had trouble bringing Lochert into focus. “Major Alexis Gogol, head of KGB counterintelligence in Austria.”
“I don’t have to tell you why we don’t want the Russians getting wind of this. The Ministry has enough problems maintaining any sense of autonomy. This would ruin us.”
Brano went through the photos again.
“Keep them if you want,” said Lochert. “I just want to be sure you understand your orders. Do you, comrade?”
Brano said that he did.
Lochert stepped over to the door and touched the handle. He looked back. “I don’t imagine killing Lutz will be easy, but trust me-it’s a vital operation.”
Brano nodded.
Then Lochert walked out the door.
That evening in her apartment, Dijana cooked a layered Balkan pastry with a mixture of ground beef and pork and cream. Gibanica, a dish he’d had in Belgrade years before, and though it was a favorite of his, he couldn’t taste a thing. They ate at the cramped kitchen table and drank red wine from coffee mugs-she didn’t own any wineglasses.
He had watched her carefully since returning from his meeting. He was trying to read signs of betrayal in the way she kissed him when he arrived and helped with his coat. What before had seemed the lucky virtues in a woman who loved him had become the techniques of seduction. There were schools in the Soviet Union that taught pretty Russian girls how to become, in the vernacular, “swallows.” They learned how to extract information from traveling Western businessmen and diplomats, or simply to bed them for the hidden cameras. Before eating, as he washed his hands in her bathroom, he even cupped his hands around his eyes and leaned close to the mirror, as if there really would be two-way glass and a remote 35 mm.
“You like?”
Brano nodded, stuffing more gibanica into his mouth. “You’re a good cook, Dijana.”
“I must to be. You don’t cook?”
Brano shook his head.
“What I thought. You are not comfortable at the kitchen.”
“How long have you lived in this apartment?”
She rolled her eyes, thinking. “One year? Da, one year.”
“Is it expensive to rent?”
“Da. But I not rent. It’s mine.”
“You own it?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t think you earned that much.”
She waved her fork at him. “Pa da. Is true, but-you want I should tell you?”
“Of course.”
She frowned at her plate. “Was Bertrand. He buy it for me. I say no, really. I like Bertrand, but know I won’t be with him so long. I tell him this, too, but he was-I don’t know. He say it’s okay, he just want to buy it for me.” She smiled. “He was good man, no?”
After dinner, they settled on the couch and listened to one of Dijana’s records, an American folk singer named Joan Baez. “I not understand so much,” she told him as she settled into his arm. “But I think maybe I can to learn English with this music, no?”
“I knew a man who was learning French from Juliette Greco records.”
“Really?”
They fell quiet as the young American sang in her soft voice, but Brano was not interested in the music. He wanted to ask her directly about Lochert’s accusations. She had met with Russian agents in this very apartment, in this room-through the window he could see the building across the street where the camera must have been placed. But if he brought it up, she’d demand to know how he knew. So he said, “You liked Bertrand, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” she said into his chest. “I don’t go to the bed with a man what I don’t like.”
“Of course.”
“But you know something?”
“What?”
“Bertrand, he scared of you.”
“Me? He mentioned me?”
“Once, da. He was drunk, and he say, That Brano Sev-he is a dangerous one.”
Brano’s arm around Dijana became cool. “Why did he say that?”
“He say you are a spy.” She shifted a little. “That is true?” “I was a spy, yes.”
“You kill people?”
He looked down at the crown of her head, encircled by his tingling arm. “No,” he lied. “I wasn’t that kind of spy.”
“I thought not.” Then she sat up and looked at him. “But you can? You know how.”
He nodded.
She looked at the record player. It had reached the end, and they could hear the quiet shht shht of the needle’s revolution. She smiled. “So you can to protect me?”
“Of course.”
She turned the record over, filling the room with music again, then sat down and stared at him a moment before speaking. “Why you are cold tonight?”
“Am I cold?”
“Yes,” she said. “You not kissing me.”
“Sorry.” He leaned over and kissed her, but she didn’t return the kiss.
“Why you are not a spy no more?”
“Because I didn’t want to be.”
She nodded. “How long will you staying in Vienna?”
“I don’t know.”
“Long time?”
“Maybe forever, Dijana.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her, and she settled again beneath his arm. Brano watched her face as she gradually fell asleep.
