“Your father, huh?”
“Yes.”
Romek wrote something down.
Brano gave a step-by-step review of his two meetings with Lochert, ending with his murder.
“But you’re leaving something out, Brano.”
“What am I leaving out?”
“Your girlfriend.”
Brano closed his eyes and told everything he knew about Dijana Frankovic, including the information she’d given him about Bertrand Richter’s meetings with the Russians.
“And she didn’t ask him about it?”
“She believes in privacy.”
“Go on.”
The stroke was only a brief story, though he gave the names of the men who helped him on the border. “They don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am.”
“What about when you came back? You were no longer being followed, so why didn’t you report here immediately?”
“I tried, but I wouldn’t have made it to the gate. There was an Austrian watching the street. He’s still there now.”
“Oh, is he?”
“He has a crew cut, and he’s sitting in a gray Renault.”
“Dragan,” Romek said to the big man in the corner, and Dragan stood up and left the room. Romek smiled at Brano. “Go on.”
“I called Yalta Boulevard on Monday. I spoke with the Comrade Lieutenant General.”
“Yes,” said Romek. “And he ordered you to go home. Who else have you spoken to since you returned?”
“My father, Jan Soroka, and Dijana Frankovic. Yesterday, Colonel Cerny contacted me.”
“And so?”
“And what?”
“Now, Brano, it’s time for you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”
Brano almost smiled. It wasn’t the kind of tale a simple man like Romek would be able to absorb. It was too confused, too indirect. But more important, Romek would pass anything he heard in this room directly back to Yalta Boulevard. “That’s classified information. I’ll have to talk to Cerny first.”
Romek shook his head slowly. “And I thought you were being cooperative, Brano. Remember what I said, everything outside this room does not exist.”
“I can’t take that leap of faith, Nikolai.”
Dragan didn’t speak when he returned, only nodded at Romek’s questioning gaze.
“Okay, at least one part of your incredible story has been verified. Shall I go get the Comrade Colonel?”
“If you want to learn more, yes.”
Romek patted the table and stood up. Before leaving, he gave a quick nod past Brano’s shoulder to Dragan, similar to the one Dragan had given him, and said, “Not the head. We don’t want another stroke.” Then he walked through the door and locked it.
For a moment there was nothing. Brano stared at the closed door, listening to Dragan’s light breaths behind him, waiting. Then Dragan approached. He had the heavy, flat-footed step of his kind. The young, unreflective violence that served the Ministry so well. And when Dragan said, “Stand up,” Brano was surprised that the voice was so high, and light. The voice of the kind of man who tended flowers in his free time.
He stood and turned to face the man. Dragan had bright, twinkling eyes, too, but no smile. He punched Brano in the stomach.
Brano did not fight back, because he knew his role here. To be cowed. A second fist struck his chest, knocking him across the table. This is nothing, he told himself, but without conviction. Dragan stepped around the table and lifted him again, then kneed his testicles.
Dijana was right. This world of men with endless questions that no answers would satisfy was a hateful place. He’d always known this, despite the meager justifications he had clung to for years. There had been so many justifications, hundreds, but now he was having trouble remembering what they could have been.
Brano was in the chair again when the door opened. His limp hands hung between his knees, his head fallen to the side. He tried to make out Romek through the tears, and Romek leaned close to help. “Brano,” he whispered. “There’s someone to see you.”
Then he straightened and stepped back as Cerny leaned down. The colonel sniffed, wiped his mustache, and said, “Tell them, Brano. There’s no reason to hide it now. He can’t get you here.”
Brano raised his head. “Who?”
“You know who. Just tell them everything. You can trust Comrade Romek. I have his promise that he’ll keep this quiet for as long as necessary.”
“Dragan,” said Romek. “You’re not needed now.”
Dragan walked out.
“And you, Comrade Colonel.”
Cerny looked at Brano. “Remember what I told you. We’ll get him, don’t worry.” The colonel left.
Romek returned to his seat on the other side of the table. “Now, if you please. I don’t have all day.”
So Brano began to speak, and in speaking felt that the world had become less infused with zbrka. Despite the pain, the world was now simpler, a place where he could share the burden of his knowledge.
There was a conspiracy, he told Romek. A conspiracy to undermine socialism in their country. The conspiracy would take the form of an armed revolution, its soldiers made up of emigres who had, over the past few years, been smuggled back into their country. Unlike similar operations conducted in the early fifties by the Office of Policy Coordination, under the stewardship of the CIA, this one was run by a religious group-the Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations-with only a loose, probably financial, connection to the CIA. The central conspirators included Filip Lutz and Bertrand Richter, both now dead, as well as Brano’s father. Lochert had been among their number, which was why he had attempted to kill Brano-because Brano was asking too many questions. There was also another person, placed inside the Ministry itself, who could retard their government’s reaction to the uprising.
“Who is this person?”
“Comrade Cerny and I suspect it is the Lieutenant General.”
“Then why hasn’t he been arrested?”
“Because we don’t have enough evidence.”
Romek touched his pencil to his lips. “The Comrade Colonel told me that you were responsible for Filip Lutz’s death. Correct?”
Brano hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you instead interrogate him? If the crux of the problem is a mole in Yalta, then why did you kill a man who could identify this person?”
“I was following orders.”
“Whose?”
“The Comrade Lieutenant General’s.”
Romek smiled and pointed at Brano, as if he’d made a particularly good point. “But Lutz wasn’t the only one, was he? Josef Lochert could have given us the information.”
“I was acting in self-defense.”
“Of course you were. But you weren’t acting in self-defense when you, or Lochert-it doesn’t matter, but you did it together-killed Bertrand Richter, who was making a deal to sell this name to the KGB.”
Brano looked at him.
“It seems to me,” said Romek, touching a finger to the tabletop, “that you have gotten rid of anyone who could implicate you in the whole scheme. I imagine the final conspirator with this knowledge-your father-would be difficult to capture, wouldn’t he?”
“I imagine so.”
