Read Online Yalta Boulevard by Olen Steinhauer - Free Book Online

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