Yalta Boulevard Read Online Free PDF Page A

then there’s a chance—
    “That your wife?” the waitress asked.
    Brano closed the file. “Wife?”
    “She’s pretty.”
    “Thank you.”
    Among the papers he found a brief typed summary of the file’s contents. Soroka had been born in 1934 in Sanok, to Wladislaw and Soft Soroka, farmers. His childhood was not mentioned, nor his parents’ 1947 transfer to the Bóbrka Petroleum Works, though it was noted that in 1950, at sixteen, Jan was part of a Red Pioneer trip to the Capital to shake hands with General Secretary Mihai and see the sights. When he was twenty-three, Jan applied for and received permission to move to the Capital, where he advised the Central Gas Industry Committee as part of the industrial reform program Mihai had implemented the year before, in 1956, some months before his death. Before he disappeared, Soroka attended a conference in the spa town of Gyula on “the future of power in the socialist neighborhood,” attended by scientists from all over the Empire, specialists in gas, petroleum, and nuclear energy. But a week after it ended, his wife, Lia, filed a missing person’s report—Jan had never returned home. Militia Lieutenant Emil Brod investigated it—but without success. A line toward the end of the summary said, “ EXTERNAL ACTIVITIES : See attached.”
    The Vienna report’s five pages speculated on Soroka’s date of entry into Austria—21 August, six days after Brano had left—and listed various places he had visited. The list was not exceptional. There were the regular sights—the Stephansdom, the MAK, the Schönbrunn Palace—and bars where one might run into one’s own countrymen, the most well known being the Carp, on Sterngasse. Then, on 25 August, a Thursday, he first entered the American embassy. During that five-hour visit, his hotel room was searched, but nothing of interest was found. Soroka returned to the embassy the next day, for only an hour. He then went to the Carp and got drunk.
    On the following Monday, he appeared for the first time at the Raiffeisen-bank and, as far as the agents could discern from their vantage on the other side of the lobby, opened an account. This was never properly verified.
    The report became sporadic after that, skimming over the following three months with summaries. Soroka began eating in specific restaurants and going to a limited number of bars—the Carp most often—and made brief friendships before dropping out of touch. It was the life of a dissatisfied exile. A couple of these acquaintances were agents who tried to get the story out of him, but short of a full interrogation there was no way to learn more. He was not considered important enough to abduct—which, the report speculated, was probably a mistake, because on 18 November he returned to the American embassy and did not emerge again.
    Brano said, Who’s the Vienna rezident now?
    Cerny pressed his lips together. Josef Lochert .
    He —But Brano didn’t finish the sentence. After his expulsion from the Ministry and five months standing beside an automated belt, this was, finally, something. So where does Soroka say he’s been all this time?
    The Comrade Colonel grunted his delight. You’ll like this. He says he’s been with a mistress in Szuha—a small village near the Ukrainian border. Guess her name .
    I don’t know .
    Dijana Franković .
    Brano flinched.
    Yes , said Cerny. I don’t know what the Americans are up to. They know we’re aware Soroka was in Vienna, but they’re willing to send him in with a terrible cover. We want to know what’s going on .
    We?
    Myself, and the Comrade Lieutenant General .
    I see .
    Don’t misjudge him , said Cerny. What he did to you was what he thought he had to do .
    He wanted me in prison .
    Colonel Cerny shook the newspaper at him. Well, when Josef Lochert reported that you’d attacked him and tried to sabotage the operation … what did you expect him to think?
    Thank you again, by the way , said Brano. For keeping me