His father paused again. “What do you want from me, Brano? Apologies? You’re the one who sent me away.”
He placed a hand on the window of the booth to steady himself. “You sound like Mother now.”
“Brano Oleksy Sev,” said that voice.
“Yes, Tati?”
“We’ll get sentimental later. You can even hit me if you like. But now I’m trying to save your life. You killed Josef Lochert, and, no matter the reason, you know the only thing that awaits you back home is a firing squad.”
Brano nodded into the phone because he’d known this ever since the Comrade Lieutenant General mentioned a pickup in the Stadtpark. He sniffed, then cleared his throat. “You and Filip Lutz are trying to overthrow my government.”
“You make it sound so easy.” Andrezej Sev snorted a laugh. “Is that what Lochert told you before you killed him?”
Brano closed his eyes. “Lochert tried to make me believe that Filip Lutz was running the operation, but that was only to protect the real head. You. You were the one seen last June at the Vamosoroszi test reactor by a worker named Gregor Samec.”
“I don’t remember being there.”
“But you were. Perhaps you were scouting landing areas, or perhaps you were figuring out how to create a meltdown. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter now. But you were with someone else, a state security agent. I want to know who it was.”
“I don’t remember that at all, Brani.”
He opened his eyes as Andrezej Sev broke away from the telephone to speak with a large man in a white chef’s hat.
“They want their phone back. Can I answer your questions face-to-face?”
“One last thing,” said Brano. “Are you going to wildly parachute soldiers into the country on Pentecost? While the Hungarians or the Czechs just close their eyes as you fly over their territory?”
“You’ve been doing so well up to now, Brani,” said Andrezej Sev. “You’ve been making your father proud. But of course we’re not parachuting anybody in on Pentecost.”
“Because,” said Brano, scratching the paint flaking off the telephone. “Because they’re already there. You’ve already sent in your men, probably through the same path Jan used to get in.”
“You can think what you like, Brano. I have a feeling Yalta Boulevard will find your stories hard to swallow, given the storyteller. Ja, ja,” he said to the chef. “Brani, can we meet?”
“I’ll call.”
“Well, I-” Andrezej Sev began, but by then Brano had hung up.
His father had changed in the last twenty years. It was the same man-he had no doubt of that-but perhaps it was the American lifestyle that had made him into such a natural liar. He knew how to tease his son with half facts and outright fabrications. There was no reason to believe that he had brought Brano here for his safety; the fact was, it was his father’s operation that had ended his career back in August. Andrezej Sev worked with the American fundamentalists, and the CIA was likely part of his background as well. There were too many loose threads; everything remained just beyond his reach. And this, as Dijana had explained, was the essence of zbrka.
He took a tram down to Soroka’s neighborhood and rang his bell but got no answer. Behind the building was a large courtyard with grass and picnic tables and groups of mothers chatting while their children ran in circles. He sat at an empty table and stared at the children without seeing them.
He understood the outline. His father, using the cover of the Committee for Liberty, had worked with Lochert, Lutz, and Richter over what must have been a number of years, recruiting emigres, training them, and then sending them back into the country to wait. Loretta Reich, the Committee’s secretary, had been kind enough to point out that his father had been close to Frank Wisner, who ran the earlier attempts to undermine the People’s Democracies. Andrezej Sev had no doubt learned from Wisner’s endless mistakes. Now their men had been placed-all they were waiting for was the prearranged date.
And in the middle of it all, his father was trying to convince him to defect.
Brano rubbed his head as children squealed, running past him.
There had been perhaps three moments during that phone call when he wanted to cross the street, walk up to Andrezej Sev, and hit him. Because he sounded like all fathers of the world who drop contact for years and then expect to be welcomed back. Like exiles, they live so long in their cloistered worlds, distracted by their petty obsessions, that it never occurs to them that their families no longer need them and, in fact, no longer want them.
But that wasn’t it, he realized as a small blonde girl ran over to him to retrieve her ball. Narrow-mindedness and stupidity were no reasons to strike a man. It was commonness. It was that Brano’s father turned out to be like all fathers in the world. He was a disappointment.
By evening he had returned to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. The woman at the desk set down her book when he approached. She stood up. “Mister Bieniek?”
“Yes?”
She handed him an envelope. “This is for you.’
“Thank you.”
There was a brief note inside, on Kaiserin Elisabeth stationery: Johannesgasse 4, 11:20.
“When did this come?”
“Around noon. A phone call.”
“Where is Johannesgasse?”
“Very near. Down Kartner Stra?E, away from the cathedral, two blocks.”
“You don’t know the name of the person who left this?”
She shook her head. “I asked, but he said you’d know who he was.”
27 APRIL 1967, THURSDAY
Johannesgasse 4 was a cinema, the Metro Lichtspiele, and its first show of the day, to begin at 11:20, was Det Sjunde Inseglet-The Seventh Seal — by a morose Swede named Bergman. That was an hour from now, so Brano wandered back down Kartner and looked into the clothing stores and through windows at the faces of those who passed. He was back at the Lichtspiele by eleven, as the box office opened. He bought a ticket, went inside, and found a seat in the rear.
The cinema was empty for the next ten minutes, and he looked around at the ornate walls and the curtain covering the screen, waiting. The first visitor was an old man with a cane who took a center seat. Then a young couple appeared and sat in the front.
Two serious-looking young men with glasses arrived. One returned his stare, but they continued ahead, sitting near the old man.
The crowd consisted of mostly older Viennese looking for a brief escape from the boredom of their retirements. One of the old men, behind a small crowd, turned and looked back. It was that familiar, mustached face he was beginning to fear he’d never see again. Cerny lit up when he spotted Brano, smiling as he twisted to fit between rows of seats. He took the one beside Brano.
They didn’t shake hands, but Cerny patted his thigh. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get your message from Regina, One-Shot. I was afraid we’d lost you.”
“It was close. I got sick.”
“Sick?” Cerny squinted at him. “Your face-it’s different.”
“It seems I had a stroke, Comrade Colonel.”
“A-” Cerny didn’t finish the sentence. “Well, I guess that decides it. I’m sending you home.”
“What?”
Cerny’s next words were drowned out by a blast of music. Then it silenced and the lights dimmed.
