Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  “And you gave the information to the Ministry.”

  “And us,” said Ludwig. He seemed annoyed at being left out of the conversation.

  “Did she know?” I said. “Did she know she was also supplying the Austrians with information?”

  “I made sure she didn’t know,” said Brano. “That would’ve put her in danger.”

  “What about her file? Rosta Gorski said it wasn’t in the archives.”

  “A precaution,” said Brano. “Before I retired, I went through and cleared out everything on her. I didn’t want her being passed on to another controller, someone who might force her to go back to work.”

  Jelena came in, smiling, and noticed the silence. Her smile disappeared. She sat in a metal-framed chair clutching a glass of orange juice.

  Brano finally said, “Lena was practical. That’s why she agreed to work for the Ministry. It was the only way to keep her and your lifestyle. She knew you didn’t want to leave the country, but she didn’t blame you for it. It was more important that you remain happy. She knew you’d only be happy at home.”

  I’d heard enough. I didn’t want to ask more, because Lena wouldn’t want me to. I’d had enough information to deal with for one day. For the rest of my life, even. I took another of Ludwig’s cigarettes and lit it. “Okay. Let’s talk about Michalec. When does he get here?”

  Brano raised his hand and looked at his silver wristwatch. “In three and a half hours. Two twenty P.M.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  •

  Brano, as usual, understood the situation better than I did. If I’d trusted him, everything would have turned out differently, perhaps better, and I wouldn’t feel the need to write all this out. The plan was simple. When Michalec’s plane landed at two twenty in the afternoon, his entourage would drive him to our embassy. On the way, Ludwig’s men would intercept the vehicle and arrest Michalec for espionage. “Why not arrest him when he lands?” I said.

  Brano shook his head, but Ludwig answered. “We want it to be sensational. We want witnesses; we want the press to be interested. There won’t be press waiting at the airport, because we can’t publicize a meeting that isn’t going to happen. But out in the street, screeching tires and pistols waving … the newspapers will be all over the story.”

  I still didn’t quite comprehend it. “But what do you get out of this, Ludwig? How’s all this in Austria’s best interests?”

  Ludwig looked at Brano, who shrugged. “Tell him.”

  “We’re not entirely neutral,” Ludwig said. “We’ve never been. How do you think the French get money into the East? They get it in through us. And when we feel like it, we supplement their money with our own. Your friend Ferenc—he and his people are beneficiaries of our generosity. Brano saw to that. Like the Americans, we don’t want to see our money go to waste.”

  I looked at Brano, then the Austrian. “Ferenc never told me this.”

  “He knows better,” said Ludwig.

  I suppose it’s true of all revolutions. When there appear to be two or three sides fighting over a country, each side is made up of infinite smaller interests, working to make their money pay off in the end. No one wants to be on the losing side.

  Even sitting in a room with these power brokers explaining everything so clearly, it was still confusing. Magda was right about me. I was too simple for this world.

  Jelena finished her orange juice and said, “Can you imagine what it’s like growing up around this kind of stuff?”

  I shook my head.

  “She takes it well,” said Brano.

  “She takes after me,” Dijana muttered as she got up to clear away the food.

  After I’d showered and changed into some of Brano’s clothes, which were a little loose on me, he came up to the bedroom with two glasses of Serbian rakija. We sat at a small table by the window, looking out over a forest of maples, and he showed me copies of some of the photographs to be used against Jerzy Michalec. There was Jerzy in a hotel room, clearly marked as the Vienna Inter-Continental by papers on the desk, crouched in a corner, installing a microphone in the overhead lamp, his open briefcase on the bed full of equipment. In another, shot from a passing car, he leaned against a doorway with a camera propped against his face. Another one was a photograph of a Hungarian 37M Femaru pistol laid flat on a table, with a card displaying a magnified thumbprint. “What this?” I asked.

  “A murder weapon. Killed a well-known emigre named Filip Lutz in 1967. That’s Michalec’s print.”

  “He killed an emigre?”

  Brano paused, considering what to reveal to me, and since it doesn’t matter now I won’t hide it either. “He didn’t kill anyone. Michalec only did surveillance, but I’m framing him for this one. He was in Vienna at the time, though I didn’t know it. He was taking photographs of me.”

  “Do you know who the murderer was?”

  “Someone else pulled the trigger, but it was my fault. A chief of mine did it.”

  “Oh,” I said. Asking a question about Brano Sev’s life only provoked more questions.

  “Tying him to a murder, rather than just basic surveillance, will let us hold him long enough to ruin his reputation.”

  It seemed like a well thought-out plan, but I was still unsure. I was unsure of Brano. So I asked him what I’d wanted to ask all day. “I don’t get it. You, of all people. You’ve been a communist all your life. I thought you were one of the true believers.”

  Brano set down the glass and crossed his hands over his lap. When he talked, it was in a whisper. “Emil, I’ve spent my whole life defending socialism. It sounds silly, particularly now that it’s falling apart, but I’ve never stopped believing in it. Socialism—and, yes, communism—were always more important than my own skin. Not more important than my girls, no, but more important than me.” He picked up his glass and took a sip. “But all along the way, decade after decade, I kept running into people like Jerzy Michalec. From the bottom rungs to the top. People who think socialism’s a joke. That it’s only a tool for their own gain. And now,” he said, grunting sourly, “now we’re faced with what’s probably the failure of everything I’ve worked for all my life. Why? Because socialism has been crippled the whole time by people like Jerzy Michalec.” He cleared his throat. “It makes a joke of everything I’ve tried to do. It makes a joke out of my entire life. And that doesn’t sit well with me.”

  He took another drink, as if the discussion were over. So I prodded: “If you’ve always worked for socialism, why were you helping out Ferenc and his people?”

  He set down his glass again. “You have to understand that what we had in our country wasn’t socialism. It was totalitarianism. I always knew that, but I believed—foolishly—that it was just the first step. Marx talked about it. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It’s supposed to be a transitional phase. You control the economy and adjust it in preparation for pure communism. It looks good on paper,” he said, smiling. “It really does. But Marx was as naive as I was. He thought that greed would lose its power when people were faced with the possibility of Utopia. It took me a long time to see the mistake. People like Jerzy Michalec, Tomiak Pankov, and even Nikolai Romek—they’re the reason we’ll never see pure communism on this earth. They eat it up from the inside.”

  He shook his head and finished the shot. I brought my own glass to my lips but realized it was empty. Was Brano Sev really serious? Yes—it was all over the old agent’s face. I felt sorry for him. He was the only true believer I’d ever met. I began to see my old country as if it were a church full of atheists, where the only Christian wasn’t even standing at the podium but sitting in the back pews.

  “You’re full of surprises, Brano.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “The problem is that no one has ever believed me.”

  We let that sit between us a while as we stared out at the maples. Then I asked him why I was there. “You don’t need me for any of this.”

  He nodded. “That’s true, but I
wanted you to see it for yourself. I feel responsible for what’s happened, and it’s the only thing I can think of to help you. I want you to be there when the man who murdered your wife is taken down.”

  Everyone makes mistakes, even Brano Oleksy Sev.

  He left me alone to get some rest, and that, too, was a mistake. It gave me too much time to think through my anger and come out the other end. It allowed me the time to betray him.

  Whoever made the mistake, what followed was not Brano Sev’s fault. It was mine. I can claim some temporary insanity, I suppose, but that’s not right either. The truth is, I knew what I was doing every step of the way, and the blame is entirely mine. Remember that.

  There was a telephone in the room, and I listened a moment for the dial tone, then called the operator. She had a heavy Vienna accent, which I found endearing, and after she’d given me the number of my embassy, she said, “GruB Gott,” which I liked as well. I didn’t like the sound of the male secretary who picked up at the embassy. When I told him I needed to speak with the ambassador, he refused outright.

  “Get him on now,” I said. “I have information on a plot against Jerzy Michalec’s life.”

  A half hour later, when Brano came up to fetch me, I made a show of rubbing my temples. “Sorry, Brano. I appreciate you bringing me here, but I can’t. I can’t look at that man again, not after what he did to Lena.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and patted my knee affectionately. “Like I said before, Emil, you always have a choice. You can even stay if you want. In the West. Think about it.”

  “Thanks.”

  I walked with him across the hall to his study and watched him take a key from his desk and use it on a cabinet where he kept three handguns. He took out a Makarov and proceeded to load it. “It’s important he not be killed,” Brano told me, as if he suspected.

  I nodded, as if I agreed.

  “If we kill him, then we lose leverage over the son. A dead father is less threat to Gorski’s political career than a living one with a corrupt past.”

  Again I nodded.

  Brano locked the cabinet, put the key back in his desk, and slipped the Makarov into his belt.

  I stood with Dijana and Jelena and shook Brano and Ludwig’s hands and wished them luck. They went to the BMW. First they would meet up with Ludwig’s men near the airport, then take their positions. That gave me time. They drove off, leaving the Volkswagen behind, and after they were gone Dijana said, “I’m scared. That bastard always tells me he’s retired, then he pulls something like this.”

  “Dad’s a professional liar,” said Jelena. She seemed amused by that fact. “A commie pinko liar.”

  “He’ll be fine,” I said, then sighed audibly. “Listen. Do you mind if I borrow your car? I’d like to clear my head.”

  Dijana rubbed my arm tenderly. “Of course.”

  “I’ll go up for my hat,” I said. “Be right back.”

  “Take your time,” said Dijana. “And let me give you some spending money.”

  She really was very nice. They both were. Brano was an unbelievably lucky man.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  •

  Brano and Ludwig parked in a lot near the airstrip beside another BMW. They talked over the details of the operation with two of Ludwig’s men and verified their radios were operating. The two assistants waited just outside the airport entrance; Brano and Ludwig would wait outside the arrivals gate for the blue-plated embassy car to leave. Once they were in pursuit, they’d radio ahead to the others, and everyone would go into town together, sandwiching the embassy car with Jerzy Michalec inside.

  Then, on the Ring Road around the old town, the first car would screech to a stop, turning aside so Michalec couldn’t pass, and Brano and Ludwig would do the same thing. Ludwig had already tipped off a journalist from Der Standard, who would be waiting at the intersection with a camera.

  It proceeded according to plan. Brano pointed at a tall old man in a hat and sunglasses who stepped into the back of the embassy car, and then he radioed to Ludwig’s men. There were a couple of points along the A4 where Brano worried they were losing the car, but Ludwig knew the roads, and he knew how to drive so that he wouldn’t be noticed. The traffic thickened, but Ludwig remained on track, and when they reached the Ring Road, Ludwig even pointed

  at a man standing by the crosswalk at Dr. K. Renner and Volks-gartenstraSe. “There’s Jan. He’s got the camera.”

  Brano picked up the radio and said, “Now.”

  The BMW in front turned sharply, screeching up on two wheels, and stopped. Doors popped open, and Ludwig’s men jumped out, guns in view, screaming in German for the driver and passenger to show their hands.

  From behind, Ludwig and Brano did the same thing. Brano, because of his age, moved slower, but they waited for him to reach the back door and rip it open, finding an old man in a hat and sunglasses wailing in our language for him to please not shoot. Brano lowered his gun and took the sunglasses off the man’s face. A moment of shock.

  According to Der Standard’s evening edition, the old man’s name was Gustav Hegy, one of Michalec’s personal assistants, of which he had many.

  It took a minute, Brano working back over everything that had come before this moment. He was smart—he’d always been smart— and even with so little information he was able to see that I’d betrayed him. He grabbed Ludwig and shouted, “Airport!”

  A half hour before that moment, I sat in the driver’s seat of Brano’s Volkswagen, Brano’s heavy Walther PP on the passenger’s seat. I’d stopped a few cars behind Ludwig’s BMW and waited as the old man got into the embassy car and Brano and Ludwig followed. Then I started the engine. Ten minutes later, Jerzy Michalec appeared with his large bodyguard, looked around, and walked over to a Mercedes taxi.

  I gunned the engine and squealed around parked cars, nearly hitting a woman crossing the lane. At the sound of the tires, Michalec looked up. He couldn’t make out my features but knew the Volkswagen was coming for him. He stepped back from the waiting taxi and tugged his bodyguard’s sleeve, and the big man reached into his jacket.

  I struck the back of the taxi, knocking it a few feet, and pushed open my door. With the pistol in my left hand, I reached around the windshield. I fired twice. The recoil hurt my palm. The bodyguard, still reaching for his gun, jerked and fell on the pavement, kicking wildly.

  Screams burst out, and people ran. Michalec froze, then dived behind the taxi. I got out of the car, my heart banging. The taxi driver’s hairy hands were raised above his head, his eyes wide. I told him to lie down, but since I spoke in my language, he didn’t understand.

  My ears hurt. My hands and feet and stomach ached. I continued around the front of the taxi, the Walther low, but found only the groaning bodyguard on the concrete, his wide, enormous chest wet with blood.

  I looked around—Michalec had disappeared. Somehow. Then, on the other side of the taxi, I saw him trying to run and realized my mistake. He had slipped around the crushed rear of the taxi.

  I went after him, down the covered arrivals lane, and when he stepped out from a car to cross back into the airport, I stopped, raised the gun, gasping, and shot—but missed.

  He made it through the glass doors as I shot again, shattering glass behind him, but it didn’t slow him at all. I followed, clutching the heavy pistol, and when I got inside, passing a brightly lit gift shop empty of people, I had to stop to figure out where he’d gone. Off to my left, past a McDonald’s, two uniformed guards stared at me, confused, then reached for their sidearms. So I ran right, past an unstaffed information desk, through bewildered travelers, and out a pair of glass doors to the sidewalk again. Directly in front of me, by a sign reading SUDBAHNHOF-WESTBAHNHOF, a large, sooty yellow bus pulled away from the curb.

  Its windows were tinted, but between gasps of cold air I could just make out a form collapsing into the fifth seat—an old man, also gasping, pulling at his tie.

  Then the bus was gone in a roar of
stinking exhaust, making a wide berth for the commotion around the mess I’d caused—the wreck of Brano’s VW, the taxi, and Michalec’s now-unconscious bodyguard. Policemen spoke into radios, and onlookers crowded in.

  For a moment, I believed it was finished. I’d finally reached the end. My heart thumped against the inside of my chest, so painful that I expected that tingling in the arm and the sharp seizure of a heart attack. A part of me even welcomed the rest.

  But there’s something in human beings that, despite all the disappointments, shame, and heartbreak, keeps us ticking. I don’t know what it is, but it came for me during that two-second pause. A dirty green Opel pulled up to the bus stop and let out a young woman. My legs moved me forward. The woman, a pretty brunette standing beside the open passenger door, smiled queerly at me. Then she saw the pistol in my hand. She screamed.

  Behind me, a man—probably one of the security guards— shouted, “Halt!”

  I didn’t halt. I pushed the young woman aside, got into the car, pointed the pistol at the older woman behind the wheel, and told her to drive: “Fahren!”

  As I write this now, the entire scene seems completely improbable. A pistol, a chase, two old men who would be of better use dying in front of their televisions, and a car hijacking.

  But this is how I remember it, and I’m backed up by the Vienna airport’s security footage, which is now on file with Ludwig’s superiors in the Defense Ministry, the Bundesministerium fur Lan-desverteidigung, at RoBauer Lande 1, Vienna. You can certainly ask to see the video; whether or not they let you is a different matter.

  What you won’t see on that black-and-white video feed is the face of Frau Ingrid Shappelhorn, the fifty-eight-year-old widow who had just dropped off her daughter, Christiane, to catch a flight to meet her fiance, a Dutch journalist named Rolf. Of course, Christiane didn’t make her flight, and Rolf was left standing in the Brussels airport,bewildered. Ingrid, the most unfortunate of them all, was stuck with a sixty-four-year-old madman clutching a Walther PP, screaming at her to drive. Which she did in a panic, tires burning against the road.