Yalta Boulevard Read Free

reserved?”
    “Yeah,” said Lochert from inside the car. “Hand over your passport at the TisAir desk. It’s the two o’clock flight.”
    “Okay.”
    “Have a good trip, Brano,” he said. “Now close the door.”
    Brano watched the Mercedes drive away.
    The airport was cool, with a vast marble floor leading to a row of airline desks. He waited behind a businessman arguing with the young woman standing under the TISA AERO-TRANSPORT sign, until the man, frustrated, walked off. The woman smiled at Brano.
    “May I help you?”
    “I have a reservation.” He handed over his passport. “The two o’clock flight.”
    The woman examined a list on the desk. “I’m afraid there’s no reservation for you, Herr Sev.”
    “But my friend made the call.”
    She read over the list again. “No, there’s not one here, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a free seat.”
    He paid for the ticket, handed over his bag, and asked for the bathroom. “Just past the lounge,” she said, pointing.
    He lit a cigarette as he passed tired-looking travelers sitting with their bags, some reading newspapers, others books. Beside the bathrooms was a line of pay phones, and he considered trying Dijana Franković’s number again. Much later, he would wonder if calling again would have changed anything that followed. But there’s never any way to know these things.
    He washed sweat from his forehead and stared at himself again in the mirror. He was becoming used to this round, flat-cheekboned face and could even spot his ethnicity—Polish features. From the northern part of his country, perhaps. But that was all the mirror told him.
    At the urinal, he felt dizzy again, the spot on the back of his head aching. A large man in a suit took the urinal next to him, then looked over.
    “You all right?”
    “I’m fine. Just a little dizziness.”
    This Austrian, Brano noticed, didn’t unzip his fly. “You’re Brano Sev, right?”
    “I—” He zipped himself up. “Do I know you?”
    “No, Brano,” said the Austrian. He reached into his jacket pocket but didn’t take his hand back out. “Why don’t you come with me?”
    The dizziness was intensifying. “Where?”
    “We’ll have a little talk.”
    “I have a plane to catch.”
    As the Austrian stepped closer, his hand withdrew, holding a small pistol. “Forget about the plane, Brano.”
    Brano’s head cleared. He leaned forward, as if to be sick.
    “Hey, are you—” said the Austrian, crouching, but didn’t finish because Brano swung his head back up into the man’s nose, at the same time thrusting a fist into the man’s stomach. The Austrian stumbled back, a hand on his bloody nose, the other trying to keep hold of the pistol. Brano kneed him in the groin and twisted the gun hand until he had the pistol. He stepped back.
    The Austrian stared at him, covering his nose and his groin.
    “How many more?” said Brano.
    “Jesus, Brano. I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
    “How many more?”
    The Austrian leaned against the sinks, then looked in the mirror. His eyes dripped and his nose bled. “Just one. He’s watching the front exit.”
    “How long before he comes inside?”
    “Ten, fifteen minutes. Look at this goddamned nose!”
    “And you. You know who I am?”
    “I wouldn’t be any good if I didn’t know who you were. The new Kristina Urban, the Vienna rezident .”
    “Who do you work for?”
    The Austrian was becoming impatient. “Who do you think I work for?”
    “Just answer the question.”
    “The Abwehramt , obviously. What’s with all these questions?”
    Everything Brano had done in this bathroom had been automatic, as if he were being controlled from somewhere else. Now he tried to think. The Abwehramt was Austrian foreign intelligence. He was the Vienna rezident , who controlled his country’s intelligence operations in Vienna. And he had killed a man named Bertrand Richter.
    “Why do you want me?”
    “Because we were told to get you.”
    “Why were