36 Yalta Boulevard

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Pretty morbid, yes, but it suits me fine. Damn!” He flailed his arms against unseen branches, then fell. Brano crouched, reaching out a hand. He heard Jast’s voice. “What the hell?” And then, “Jesus Christ, what—” Then nothing.

  Brano lit another match, which shook as his eyes focused. Pavel Jast also saw what he had tripped over, and leapt up, muttering, “Oh fuck oh fuck.”

  On the ground was a shirtless man, short and heavy, mouth gagged tight over a beard, his stomach and chest and arms covered by numerous tiny cuts. They had bled, tinting the white body pink. Brano touched the sticky, dead wrist, then the still-warm chest, and glanced at the well-tailored black pants and scuffed shoes. He dropped the match and lit another, while Jast jumped from foot to foot, babbling words Brano could no longer make out.

  Before they split up at the edge of the woods, Jast told him how to get to Captain Rasko’s home. Brano returned to the dark village, which was no longer haunted by howls from the forest, continued past the church, and near the Militia station opened the wooden gate to a low one-bedroom. He knocked on the loose front door, then did it again. Something fell behind a window; a light came on. The lace curtain was pulled back slightly. Finally, Captain Rasko stood in the doorway, hands shoved in the pockets of a gray robe, his black hair sleep-pressed into an angle. “Comrade Sev,” he said, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

  “Sorry to wake you, Comrade Captain. I’m afraid there’s been a murder. In the woods near the cooperative.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  Rasko stepped back, and Brano entered. There were piles of clothes in the living room and a pungent smell from the kitchen. “Last murder we had was two years ago,” said Rasko.

  “You’d better come look at it.”

  “And that murder was before my time. I’ve only been Militia chief a year. I don’t even have a staff.”

  Brano waited.

  “I suppose I should get dressed.”

  “I suppose you should.”

  Despite the darkness, Brano was able to take him directly to the body. Rasko ran his flashlight beam up and down it. “Jakob.”

  “You know him?”

  “Of course. Jakob Bieniek. I know him as well as anyone else knows him.” He crouched, made a face, and touched the gag, turning the head aside. “After his wife, Janica, died—I guess that was five years ago—he became … well, strange.”

  “How?”

  Rasko used the flashlight to investigate the ground around the body. “He was a hermit, Comrade Sev. He dropped out of touch with everyone, which is a feat in Bobrka.”

  “His job?”

  “Delivered milk from the distribution point in Krosno. But even when he was driving, he wore these tailored suits. See those pants? And his shoes—always polished. He looked foolish.” Rasko shook his head. “What happened to him?”

  “Looks like a razor blade, or a few of them, used many times.” Brano followed the flashlight beam with Rasko, walking around the body.

  “A match.” Rasko crouched to pick it up.

  “It’s mine.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “So what were you doing out here?”

  “Just walking. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you came out here?”

  “Aren’t many trees in the Capital.”

  Rasko stood still a moment, thinking. “No one really liked Jakob, but I can’t imagine anybody who’d feel this way about him.”

  “Somebody did.”

  Then they were quiet, staring at the now-cold body. Rasko took a length of wide red ribbon from his pocket and tied it to a tree. “Let’s go.”

  At the militiaman’s house, Brano drank a glass of tap water while Rasko called the village doctor, who would get the body in the morning. Rasko told the doctor to watch for the red ribbon. Then he poured a tall vodka for himself and sat across from Brano. “Want to come with me tomorrow?”

  “Where?”

  “To Jakob’s house. See if we can turn up something.”

  “If I won’t be in the way.”

  “I’m alone here, Comrade Sev. Your presence can only help.”

  10 FEBRUARY 1967, FRIDAY

  •

  He slept lightly and woke at seven in a sweat. Though he could not remember it, he knew he had again dreamed of that week just after his return from Vienna, spent in the basement of Yalta Boulevard 36.

  The Lieutenant General had accompanied him in the white Mercedes from the airport into town. Brano, with his memory now intact, knew better than to speak, and when the other three men guided him to the large double doors of Yalta 36, the Lieutenant General only said, You better cook up some goddamned brilliant answers for us.

  But he didn’t come with Brano as the men walked him past a stunned Regina Haliniak at the front desk, along the corridor of unmarked doors to the stairwell that brought them down to the basement. He’d led enough men to these damp, windowless cells to know the route, and even said hello to Stanko, the stout man with round glasses who kept the guardroom organized. Stanko, nodding, could come up with no reply.

  A Ministry doctor visited him that night, listened to his heart, and asked him questions. For the memory loss, he could offer no authoritative explanation but suggested stroke. You’re not young, Brano.

  The interrogation began the next day, when he was dragged to another room with a table and two chairs. What would always strike him as the great irony of those sessions was that each morning on the table sat a glass of water and the headache powders Brano’s doctor had prescribed, and only after he’d taken them did the Lieutenant General’s assistants feel free to begin what the Americans liked to call his “softening up.” Not until blood flowed did the Lieutenant General arrive.

  You set up office in a hotel.

  Yes, said Brano. The embassy wasn’t secure.

  Maybe you were afraid Major Romek would listen in on your schemes?

  I thought nothing of the sort.

  Kaspar.

  One of the guards struck him across the back of the head.

  Don’t be impertinent, Brano.

  Working back from the Lieutenant General’s questions, Brano could piece together Lochert’s inventive report. He claimed not only that Brano had attacked him in the Volksgarten the night of the Richter murder but also that over the previous month he had been trying to sabotage the investigation into the identity of GAVRILO. Brano had undermined security at the embassy, consciously casting doubt on the abilities of their head of security, Nikolai Romek, by planting electronic bugs. Why? Because Brano needed an excuse to run his operations outside the embassy, where he could not be watched, at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth. From there he could meet with whomever he wanted.

  Lochert, his report claimed, was confused about the why of Brano’s treachery. Only after the incident in the Volksgarten was he able to piece together the details. Brano arrived late because of a liaison with a certain Dijana Franković, Yugoslav national, who, besides being the girlfriend of Bertrand Richter, was known to have entertained KGB agents in her apartment on Döblinger Hauptstraée. Brano, Lochert finally realized, was working for the Russians—who, for their own reasons, wanted to hinder Yalta Boulevard’s investigation into the source of their Vienna leak.

  This was all, of course, a lie, and two weeks later, after he’d been released from his Yalta cell and given his new labor assignment at the tractor factory, he and Colonel Cerny took a walk together in Victory Park. But why? Brano asked him. Why did he do this?

  Cerny had thought it through over the last weeks. Lochert’s lived in Vienna almost a decade; he knows the city and its networks better than anyone. We sent him to Vienna because he grew up in one of those Saxon villages in the Carpathians; we felt he understood the Germanic mindset. And then Kristina Urban was killed.

  He expected promotion.

  But he’s a simpleton, said Cerny, because the Ministry never planned to promote a hired gun—a half-educated
Saxon thug—to the level of rezident. Then you arrived, with only minor Austrian experience, and Lochert’s pride … well, he couldn’t take it, could he?

  If the Lieutenant General believes his story, why aren’t I in prison?

  Why aren’t you dead, you mean. Cerny gripped his arm and whispered, Because you’ve got me, Brano. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.

  He wiped the sweat off himself with a hand towel, and as he finished dressing, Mother stumbled to his bedroom door. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Where were you last night? Did you get any sleep?”

  “Some. I’ve got to run.”

  “Where?”

  “To meet Captain Rasko.”

  She leaned against the wall, stifling a yawn. “Why on earth are you seeing him this early?”

  “There was a murder last night.”

  “There was … what?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.” He kissed her forehead.

  Captain Rasko had not yet dressed. He asked Brano to make some coffee, then sprinted back to the bedroom. Brano picked through piles of dishes for the coffeepot and cleaned it thoroughly. There was a bag of ground beans in the cabinet.

  Rasko straightened his tie as he drank. “This is better than my coffee.”

  “I cleaned the pot.”

  “Oh, is that the trick?”

  Brano set down his cup and used a rag to wipe the counter clean. “You told me you hadn’t dealt with murder before. What kinds of crimes do you usually deal with?”

  “Petty stuff. Fistfights and drunkenness. Thievery. Gambling—the boys here like Cucumber best—but I only become aware of gambling when it leads to fistfights or thievery. These guys are serious about their card games.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Had your breakfast yet?”

  “I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

  “Good. Because we’re going to see the body first.”

  As they parked behind the doctor’s house, two small blond boys in pale blue pajamas ran out the back door, whistling clouds of breath into the cold air as they reached Rasko’s side. They called him “uncle” and held his legs as he tried to approach the back door, where the doctor, an old man in a white smock, stood smoking. Rasko rubbed the boys’ heads. “Juliusz, meet Major Brano Sev.”

  Juliusz came down a step. “Sev? Iwona’s … ?”

  Brano nodded.

  “From the Capital, right?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor held out a damp hand but didn’t smile. “Pleased to meet you.” While the boys fought in their room, the men settled in the kitchen with coffee and cigarettes. Juliusz had picked up Jakob Bieniek’s body just before dawn and made a preliminary examination. “A savage. That’s who did it. I counted a hundred and thirty-four slices, but my eyes got tired toward the end. There are more.”

  “Was it done there?” asked Brano.

  “Eh?”

  “Was he killed in the woods, or was his body brought there afterward?”

  “The woods,” said the doctor. “Yes, in the woods. He got leaves in his hair—what little he has—while he was struggling. And when he was attacked he still had his shirt on. There were fibers in some cuts.”

  Rasko looked at his hands. Brano took a final sip of coffee and stood up. “Shall we see the body?”

  Juliusz had laid Bieniek on a table in a sunny room with large windows and white cabinets that held his equipment. One white napkin covered his face, another his genitalia. Between them, his stomach rose like a low mountain, etched, like his arms, with white marks, each between a couple of inches and half a foot long. The longer slices had split and puckered the flesh. All the blood had been washed away.

  The doctor removed the face napkin and stepped back.

  “How about that,” said Rasko. “He kind of looks like Comrade Sev, doesn’t he?”

  The doctor bent over Bieniek’s white face, which was blemished where the gag had stretched over his lips and cheeks, then glanced back at Brano. “You know, you’re right.”

  They were both right. Like Brano’s, Bieniek’s face was wide and round, with flat cheekbones, and he even had a mole on his left cheek, where Brano’s three moles lay. But unlike Brano, Bieniek was fat, his scalp was almost bald, and he had a thin beard that was more than a few days’ forgetfulness.

  “Here,” said Juliusz. He opened a cabinet and took out a brown paper bag that he handed to Rasko. “These are the handkerchiefs used to keep him quiet. One in his mouth, the other around it.”

  Rasko took the bag but did not open it.

  “And these are his documents?” Brano pointed at a maroon passport on the table.

  “Yes.”

  Brano glanced at the passport photo—a clean-shaven version of the man on the table, smiling, with color in his cheeks—and slid it into his pocket. “Are we sure he died from the cuts?”

  “I’d bet on it,” said Juliusz. “Once the carotid artery was hit, the fight was over.”

  “Razor blade?”

  “I’d bet on that, too.”

  “Any thoughts on the assailant?”

  The doctor blinked a few times. “Don’t know how many there were—it could have been a single energetic killer. But whoever it was, he didn’t know a thing about anatomy. Cutting that artery was dumb luck.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  The doctor inhaled. “Comrade Major, this isn’t the Capital.”

  Brano looked at Rasko. “Do you have any questions?”

  Captain Rasko was staring at Jakob Bieniek’s swollen ankles.

  “Comrade Captain?”

  His tongue danced inside his cheek. “No, no more questions.”

  Jakob Bieniek’s house was on the edge of the center, another two-bedroom surrounded by ridged, frozen mud. Like Klara and Lucjan’s house, this one had been painted a Sanok white that the weather had quickly turned gray. There was no walkway, just a path of old boot prints leading to the locked front door. Rasko nodded at the window over the door handle. “Shall I?”

  “Be my guest,” said Brano.

  He shoved an elbow into the glass, knocked aside some loose pieces, then unlocked the door from the inside.

  The place smelled sour, as if something were rotting in the back room, but it was only the smell of a shut-in who allowed his unwashed body to fester in a small, airtight space.

  “What a shithole,” said Rasko.

  Unlike Dijana Franković, Brano Sev did not believe in fate, but as he walked through Jakob Bieniek’s cluttered, musty living quarters, he thought that if fate had dealt him a different hand, this could easily have been him. The instinctual urge for solitude he shared with this dead milkman was a curse in a small town; it was punished by internal exile. Bieniek’s exile may have been chosen at first, after his wife’s death, but soon a whispered pact among the townsfolk had assured that he could not escape his sphere of silence. Brano had experienced that silence in the Capital, but unlike Bieniek, Brano had had Yalta Boulevard. Yalta had encouraged his hermetic nature; the Ministry rewarded the virtues of solitude and secrecy.

  The furniture in the living room was threadbare, the kitchen worse than even Rasko’s. But the stink was centered in the bedroom, where greasy plates and filthy underwear were spread about. At the end of the bed, a small, cluttered desk looked out the front window, and beside the desk sat two cardboard boxes stuffed with papers.

  While Rasko opened the window, Brano squatted and leafed through the boxes. At first he couldn’t decipher the quick scribbles. He brought a few pages to the desk for better light.

  “What’s that?” asked Rasko.

  Brano read aloud: “16 October 1966: Maria eats liver with potatoes on Mondays. She’s done it three weeks running, so that is a rule of thumb. She does it for strength, maybe, because on Monday afternoons Wiktor comes to visit and she has to clean the house afterward, before Krysztof returns.” He looked up. “Who are Maria and Krysztof?”

  “The Rzepkas. Married. Live a couple str
eets away. Are all the pages like this?”

  They were. The subjects changed, but the project did not. Jakob Bieniek had been keeping track of his neighbors with an unsettling eye for detail. He noted Lubomir Winieckim’s suspiciously brief grieving period after his wife Alina’s death, and before he’d been seen kissing the very pregnant Krystyna Knippelberg.

  “I never realized he was actually crazy,” said Rasko.

  Brano pulled out page after page of questionable activities—the Szybalskis, the Gargases, the Lisiewiczes. There was a method here, each sheet focused solely on one person, each comment preceded by a date. But the pages weren’t filed alphabetically; they were erratic, the excitement of a hermit’s secret knowledge leaving no time for order.

  The disturbing sense of a missed fate swelled again. Not only did he share the reclusive nature of this dead man, the same face, too, but they shared the same profession. They were watchers and, each in his own way, judges.

  “Some of this may be of use to you,” he said.

  “Dirty laundry, that’s all it is.”

  “I mean for the case. Jakob could have been blackmailing someone.”

  “Of course!”

  Brano placed a stack on the desk. “Why don’t you go into town and ask around for information? The townspeople won’t talk to me.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “And I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.”

  Once Rasko was gone, Brano settled on the floor, legs crossed. He started through the pages, sometimes pausing on a familiar name, reading a line here and there, but continuing until, a little after noon, he found what he was looking for.

  SOROKA, JAN

  28 January 1967: A surprise. Jan Soroka walks in the main square as if he’s been here all his life. We all know (see K. Knippelberg—11 September 1966) he left his wife in the Capital, and now, 5 months later, he walks through Bóbrka, smiling like a fool at everyone. When I passed him I remained silent to hide my surprise. I don’t know if he noticed …

  30 January 1967: Overheard at the bar: The gambler Pavel Jast said Soroka’s been with a mistress these past months. A Dijana Franković, from Szuha. I never thought Soroka was that kind of man, but if nothing else my studies have shown me you don’t know who anyone is, ever …