and a cheap, wide-brimmed hat. He wore the hat as he left the haberdasher’s, then took a bus to Concordiaplatz and walked the rest of the way.
He turned right at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and was soon on Weihburg-Gasse. Number 3’s white facade looked as it had in August, but a different bellboy stood under the glass awning. The bellboy, however, said the same thing the other had.
“ Gru? Gott.”
Brano nodded his reply and entered the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth.
The same woman sat behind the desk, now reading a different book. Her flaxen hair was styled differently. It was longer, more natural. He asked if they had a room free. They did, in fact. Then she smiled and asked for his documents.
“Sorry,” he said as he handed over the passport. “It got wet.”
Although they were well trained and professional, both the bellboy and the clerk had taken notice of his limp, of the way this man spoke through the side of his mouth, as if delivering secrets. Perhaps they also noticed that he did not remove his hat. He tried not to let this worry him. The one safe house he knew of was no longer safe, and he doubted that Ludwig and his associates would spend the manpower looking for him in the tourist center.
She compared the photograph in Jakob Bieniek’s passport to Brano’s bearded face. She wrote down the passport number. She handed it back with a key and thanked him. “Any luggage, Mr. Bieniek?”
No, Mr. Bieniek had no luggage.
But the bellboy, who had come inside during his registration, helped him with the elevator nonetheless. Did he need assistance getting to the room? No, Mr. Bieniek did not need help, but he still gave the boy a small compensation for his efforts.
In the room, he took apart the pistol, spread the pieces across the desk, and checked each for rust. There were five cartridges left in the clip, which he also laid out, to let everything air-dry.
24 APRIL 1967, MONDAY
Brano didn’t wake until seven the next morning. It had been a fitful sleep, but when he woke the fog had cleared from his head. He sat up and gazed at the disassembled pistol.
Before showering, he opened the Jakob Bieniek passport and propped it just below the bathroom mirror. Bieniek’s expression was nondescript and bland, and Brano found it easy to imitate. The moles were placed differently, but no one would notice. His beard was a different shade, but that, too, was unimportant. The hair, though. Bieniek’s scalp was wide, bald, and pale, while Brano’s was not. He took out the razor and shaving cream, ran water over his head, and worked the foam into his hair.
He left the hotel at nine and spent the next hour on streetcars, changing often, until he had followed an arc around to Nu?dorfer Stra?e. He got out one stop late and found a bookstore a half block north of her apartment.
“ Gru? Gott,” said a spectacled woman behind a desk. He smiled at her, and she watched him limp to the wall of used paperback fiction beside the front window. The street was busy with traffic, cars parked tight against the curb.
“Looking for something in particular?”
“Just browsing, danke,” said Brano. He gazed at the creased spines. Murder mysteries, cowboy fiction, sex- themed thrillers.
Across the street, a small Peugeot pulled out, giving Brano an unhindered view of the car behind it, where the driver was reading a newspaper. Brano picked a book at random-an English writer with a French surname-and flipped through it. The driver turned to the next page, and he caught a flash of sunburned face, more faded than before but still clearly damaged.
Brano closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and thanked the woman for her assistance.
He was running into dead ends. Ludwig had locked down the two obvious places Brano would be drawn to- one for safety, the other for sentimentality. He found himself respecting Ludwig’s fortitude.
So Brano would ignore safety and sentimentality for the moment and focus on what was probably most important: information.
He walked east, toward the Danube Canal, and found a post office near the university. The woman at the desk told him to go to booth number 7, and he waited there, watching strangers until the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
Regina Haliniak, her voice muted by miles of telephone line, said, “Importation Register, First District.”
“Regina, it’s Brano.”
“Good to hear from you, Brano.”
“Can I speak to the Comrade Colonel?”
“He’s not there with you?”
“In Vienna?”
“He left… four? Yes, four days ago. I thought he was going to meet with you.”
“Oh.”
“You all right? There was some fuss a few days ago about you, but no one tells me anything.”
“I’m fine, Regina.”
“Hold on, Brano. Let me patch you through to the Lieutenant General. He wanted to speak to you if you called.”
“No, wait-” Brano started to say, but she was already gone, replaced by a monotone ring. And though he considered it, he did not hang up.
“Brano,” said the congested voice that took him back, briefly, to a small, humid room in the basement of Yalta 36. “Where are you?”
“Vienna.”
“What on earth is going on over there?”
Brano paused. There were no men standing over him with fists, but he felt the same anxiety he’d felt in August. “I’d like to know what’s going on myself, Comrade Lieutenant General.”
He heard static, then: “Tell me, Brano. Why is Josef Lochert dead?”
“Self-defense.”
“And why, then, would you need to defend yourself against the Vienna rezidentr?”
“Because I learned he was a traitor.”
The Lieutenant General didn’t answer at first. There was noise on his side, perhaps papers being shuffled. “You damn well better be able to prove this. Or else a factory job will be just a dream.”
Brano gazed across the post office, where people were becoming blurry. “I believe I can collect the evidence.”
“Go to the embassy, Brano. Major Romek will take your statement, and then we’ll decide what to do.”
“I can’t, comrade.”
“What?”
“The Austrians are watching it. I wouldn’t be able to make it to the front gate.”
“Then come home. We can arrange a pickup in the Stadtpark.”
He rubbed his face. He had nearly died trying to get home. “With respect, I suggest I wait for Colonel Cerny. I was told he’s in Vienna.”
“I see,” said the Lieutenant General. “That’s the way you’d like to play it?”
“That’s the way I’d like to play it. Please let him know that I’m staying at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, under the name Bieniek.”
“Bieniek?” The Lieutenant General let out a laugh that became a cough. “Priceless, Brano.”
He waited until nightfall before visiting the Carp, spending the intervening hours at cafes farther north. He limited his outdoor time, and when he was on the street, he kept his hat low over his forehead, stroking his beard.
He approached Sterngasse from Fleischmarkt, waiting near the top of the steps, at Desider Friedmannplatz.
