His father was no longer just a chipped front tooth, and Dijana-she was so much more than the memory of a single night that had kept him warm at the Pidkora People’s Factory those final months of last year.
The waiter placed a fresh melange on the table and took the empty cup. He smiled at Brano, then walked away.
Should he have told her? There were moments last night, tangled in his wet sheets, when he had been sure that with those few words he had killed any possibility of his own happiness. Now, bringing the cup to his lips, that conviction returned.
No lakeside house, no acoustic guitar. No charming sentence structures and no more desire.
He’d once believed that those who fled socialism were opportunists, and perhaps that was true of him as well. Dijana was an opportunity to have something that his own country had been unable to give him.
And what was left to him now? An assassination, and then the possibility of a firing squad.
A clock on the wall told him it was nine.
He paid and started down the busy street, following the stone wall of the Schonbrunn grounds. He touched the spot on the back of his head, then lit another cigarette.
Cerny had once said that young men were ideal for assassination. They didn’t overthink. For them, the only worry is their own safety. Will they be able to get in, do the job, and make it out again? Unlike old men, they don’t concern themselves with the whys and the repercussions, as Brano found himself doing as he approached the front gate.
The colonel’s reasoning was valid enough. Lutz’s death would hold the Ministry wolves at bay until they could uncover the mole. The Lieutenant General, in particular, was waiting for the opportunity to finish what he’d started in August. This time, as he’d said, a factory job would be just a dream.
Brano paused in front of the unbearably regal palace, then followed a crowd of tourists around the left side, to enter the gardens.
Filip Lutz was connected to a conspiracy to undermine socialism. He had no doubt about this. But Lutz was, like Brano, a pawn. His death would not frighten the surviving conspirators-Andrezej Sev and the unknown Ministry figure-into inaction. Lutz’s only value was the information he carried in his head. Which meant that the only reasonable course of action was to make him talk. And then, if necessary, kill him.
He walked down the long stretch of garden leading behind the palace to the Neptune Fountain as he considered his phrasing, how he would explain this simple fact to Cerny. They could return to the Capital with enough information to salvage their position.
At the end of the Great Parterre he turned left, trees rising on both sides. The tourists thinned here, and up ahead he could see the imitation antiquity of the Roman Ruins.
By the time he reached the half-buried columns and worn arches and started walking around the pool filled with shattered fragments of lost splendor, he believed he had assembled the correct argument. That conviction only accentuated his surprise when he reached the hidden side of the pool and found Cerny with one knee in the dirt, a pistol equipped with a silencer in his hand, looking down on Filip Lutz. Lutz lay facedown at the edge of the water with a hole in the back of his skull.
Cerny looked up, his face inert. He wiped his mustache. When he spoke his voice was almost a whisper. “Brano,” he said, then looked back at Lutz’s body. “You’re here.”
“You’ve already done it.”
“The first one didn’t,” Cerny said. “The first one didn’t kill him. It was in the stomach. So I had to do it again.” The hand on his thigh shook. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“He came early.”
Cerny rose to his feet and wiped dirt from his knees. “Yes.” He blinked a few times. He rubbed his eyes.
Something smelled strange here. Sweet. “He would have been more use to us alive.”
Cerny gazed at the body. “I don’t know.” He looked past Brano, and Brano followed his gaze through the underbrush, but they were alone. Cerny’s face was very red as he stepped back and leaned against a tree. “I haven’t been in the field for over a decade, do you realize that? I send you guys out here all the time, but I forget it’s the hardest job in the world.”
Brano nodded.
“I did it for you, One-Shot. For both of us.” He took a long, loud breath through his nose and tapped his head against the bark. “I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
Brano looked at his red face, which was covered in sweat.
“Comrade Colonel?”
The colonel bit his lower lip and reached into a pocket. “I forgot.” His hand came out holding a long syringe. “Jesus, Brano. I don’t think I can do it.” He slid, panting, down the tree as Brano ran over to him and took the syringe. In the same pocket he found a glass bottle of insulin and began. The colonel fell to the side, trying to pull out his shirt. Brano filled the syringe with insulin, then held it up to the light, squeezing, until all the air was out.
“ Christ,” muttered Cerny.
Brano tugged the colonel’s shirt out of his pants and gripped the ample fat around his waist, which was cold and wet. Then he plunged the needle in, trying to ignore the dead body lying just behind him.
He waited for the colonel to recover, then helped him back through the gardens, out the front of the palace, to the car park where Cerny’s diplomatic Mercedes waited. Some tourists watched, and a Frenchman offered assistance, which Brano declined. The colonel took the wheel but didn’t start the ignition. His breaths were heavy.
“It’s all right,” said Brano. “You’re not expected to do fieldwork. It has to be difficult.”
“I’ll be okay.” Cerny patted Brano’s knee with a weak hand. He took a deep breath. “But I’ve learned a few things. Since we last talked.”
“What?”
“My contacts,” he said, then cleared his throat. “My contacts have made some progress back in the Capital. During the months you’ve been in Vienna, one officer is on record as having made more than twenty calls to speak with our dear departed friend Josef Lochert.”
“Who?”
“Take a guess.”
The answer slipped from his mouth without reflection. “The Comrade Lieutenant General. Who also ordered Lutz’s execution.”
Cerny nodded. “You know what’s going to happen when we get to the embassy, don’t you?”
“I have some idea.”
“I’m not sure you do,” he said. “I know you killed Lochert in self-defense, but as far as Major Romek’s concerned, you’re a murderer. And probably a double agent.” He frowned, as if realizing something else. “He’s going to want to interrogate you, and it won’t be easy. There’s nothing I can do about that. I don’t know who I can trust.”
Brano nodded.
“I’ll tell the Ministry you took care of Lutz, but they won’t believe that until the Austrians print his death in the newspaper. They know how loyal I am to you.”
Brano didn’t answer, and the colonel started the car. He drove slowly.
“What about your father?”
“What about him?”
“He wants you to defect, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Father and son, but so different.” He smiled. “Irina used to say that children always act the same as their parents. Either they do it for the same beliefs, or they reverse those beliefs but commit themselves in exactly the same way.”
Brano nodded as Cerny leaned into a turn.
“Listen, One-Shot. I’m worried about you.”
They were driving east toward the Ringstra?e. A light ahead of them turned red, and Cerny slowed. Brano said, “I don’t have any choice. I have to go to the embassy and tell them everything I know.”
