They were halfway across the bridge. The sunburned man was five paces ahead of him; Dijana was ten more. The street was empty of traffic. Brano jogged those first five paces, his left leg cumbersome, pulled out the pistol with his right hand, and swung its butt into the shadow’s neck.
He let out a shout but did not fall. Brano swung again as the man thrust back an elbow, catching his ribs. But the pain stayed solidly in Brano’s fist, and he hit the neck again, then leapt on the man’s back, an arm over his trachea. The sunburned man fought back, and they wrestled to the railing.
“ Brani! ”
He ignored her and twisted a pistol from the shadow’s hand, tossing it into the canal. Grunting, Brano struck his neck again and felt the body relax. The man was weak but not unconscious. Brano hefted the man’s top half over the railing, ignoring the moans-“ Nein, nein ”-and grabbed his kicking feet. He lifted, and the man tumbled over the edge.
“ Brani! ”
He waited for the break in the water, the shadow’s head surfacing, arms splashing. German curses burst from the man’s lips.
“Brano Oleksy Sev!” said Dijana.
When she hugged him, her leather jacket squeaking, he smelled the cigarettes in her hair.
She pulled her head off his shoulder to look at the railing. “He is-”
“He’s all right. I didn’t want to kill him.”
Three men in ties fidgeted nearby, as if something were required of them but they didn’t know what it was.
“I’m a policeman,” Brano told them.
The men looked at each other.
Very seriously, he said, “Now, please excuse us.” He took Dijana’s hand and began walking away.
“What you are doing?” Dijana whispered, barely suppressing a giggle.
“Just keep walking.”
Once they’d reached the other side of the bridge, Brano glanced back. The men were gone.
“Brani, what is happen?”
“Follow me.”
Still holding her hand, he led her to the end of Gredlerstra?e, then left on Taborstra?e, to the Church of the Brothers of Mercy. He pushed through the wooden doors into a plain entryway with notices for upcoming sermons.
“ Dragi is Catholic now?”
They continued into the church, but an iron gate closed off access to the pews, so they moved back into a dark corner, beneath enormous portraits of saints.
“ Dragi,” she said. “What is wrong with you? You look bad. Your hair…“ She removed his hat and touched his shaved scalp with cool fingers, her nose wrinkling.
“It’s a kind of disguise,” he said.
She put her hands on his beard, a thumb touching the sloped left corner of his mouth. “What is-”
“I’m all right, don’t worry about me.”
She hugged him again. “I was very worry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I had to leave.”
“Who is this men?”
“What men?”
“They come,” she said, looking at his forehead. “They ask where are you. This man, Luvi-”
“Ludwig?”
“ Da, Ludwig. He say you kill a man. Brani, tell me. This is true?”
“Yes.” When he said this he was looking at the marble checkerboard floor. “He was trying to kill me.”
“Kill you? But why, Brani?”
“I can’t explain.”
“ Dragi, you make no sense.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just had to talk to you again.”
“And I to you, but what you must say?”
He had nothing to say. He’d followed her all day and had attacked a man to get to her. All that he’d known was that it was necessary. He rubbed his eyes.
He had become that thing that for men in his business was the beginning of the end. Dijana had turned him into a sentimental old man.
He stroked her hair as far behind her ears as it would go and whispered, “I just want to say I miss you.”
Then he pinned her to the cold church wall and covered her mouth with his. After a minute, he pulled back, watching how she licked her lips. “I like the way what you miss me. But I must to tell you something.”
He waited.
“I was on the Carp today. Of course, like every day, I looking for you. But this man, he come and talk.”
“His name is Andrew. I saw him.”
“You saw him?”
“I was following you.”
She arched an eyebrow and cocked her head. “ Da? ”
“ Da.”
She kissed him again. “Well, this man, I knowed him, too. From before. He was friend for Bertrand.”
“Not one of his Russian contacts?”
She shook her head. “No. He friend for Lutz and for that Josef Lochert. And now he looking for you. He say he your father.”
Brano looked into her eyes, waiting for something to clear up the grammatical mistake that had obviously ruined the sense of what she wanted to say. “Can you repeat that?”
“This man, he your father. Well, he want to meet with you. He say if I see you, I will to tell you.” She leaned closer. “Brani?”
He had stepped back a few paces, his back now against the iron gate protecting the pews. Andrew, they had called him. The Americanization of Andrezej. How could he not have seen this? How could he not have recognized him? She put her hands on his shoulders. He leaned his head close to her ear and whispered, “My father?”
“Pa da. You not know?”
He shook his head against her shoulder as she rubbed the back of his head.
“ Shh,” she said. “I am sorry.”
Brano could not remember the last time he had wept. Perhaps when Regina Haliniak left him for Zoran the lieutenant-but no, not even then. It was possible that the last time he’d wept was during the war, after his friend Marek Piotrowski was killed. But that time, at least, there had been a reason for weeping. Now, in a Viennese Catholic church, he was crying uncontrollably on this girl’s shoulder, and he didn’t know why. She cooed and kissed his bald head, and her voice finally brought him out of it.
“You will to meet him?”
He wiped his nose with a palm, then raised his head. “I should. What else did he say?”
She thumbed some wetness from his cheek. “He say he is reason what you are here. In Vienna. And he give me this.” She reached into a pocket and handed him a napkin from the Carp, with Inter-Continental 516 written on it in pencil. “He say you call him, and he will come right away.” She touched his face again. “You will call? He seem very worry.”
“Yes. I will call.” He sniffed again and looked around. The church’s arid smell was getting to him. “We should go now. They’ll be looking for me.”
“You come home, I will take care for you.”
He kissed her, and she held on to his neck as he explained. “If I stay with you, they’ll find me. They’re already watching you-the man I attacked was with you all day.”
“ Pa da. I knowed that. He’s very bad, no?”
“It’s my fault. They’re looking for me.”
“Then we go,” she said, smiling. “We make a trip to Salzkammergut and swim in the lake.”
