When Brian asked at the bar for Ivan, the bartender’s face turned sour. “That cocksucking Russian hasn’t shown his face here for a couple of weeks,” he spat in contemptuous English. “But if you see him, tell him I’d like the twenty-five hundred koruna he owes me.”
“Any suggestions on where we might find him?” Brian asked. “Just in case we wanted to pass your message along.”
The bartender poured out the two martinis he’d been mixing, then barked something in Slovak to a hostile-looking cocktail waitress in a black minidress and knee-high boots.
She set her tray on the bar and lit a cigarette, giving Brian the once-over, her eyes flicking briefly and dismissively in my direction. “Lately he’s been hanging out at Charlie’s Pub,” she said. “Over on Spitalska. You know it?”
Brian nodded.
The waitress took a long drag off her cigarette, then let the smoke filter slowly out through her nostrils. “Will you give him a message from me, too?” she asked. “Tell him Yana says to go fuck himself.”
“Your friend Ivan’s a popular guy,” I said as we made our way back to the SEAT.
“I never promised Mr. Congeniality,” Brian countered. “Besides, he’s not all that bad. People don’t like Russians here.”
“He does seem to have a way with the ladies.”
“You picked up on that, huh?”
“Speaking of ladies, I think that waitress had the hots for you.”
Brian smiled. “She’s not really my type. I’m more a marked-for-death amnesiac kind of guy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But seriously, how do you know this Ivan character?”
“I hitched a ride out of Khartoum with him a few years ago. We had to lay over for twelve hours at Lake Victoria waiting for a load of frozen tilapia. He and I just kind of hit it off.”
“And what were you doing in Khartoum?” I asked as we reached the Seat and stopped walking.
Brian put his hand on the car’s roof, suddenly serious. “You really want to know?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“I was escorting a shipment of small arms to the SPLA,” he said grimly. Then he unlocked the SEAT’s door and slid into the driver’s seat.
I slipped in beside him and tugged my door closed. Brian started the engine, pulling away from the curb.
“Did you really believe it?” I asked, as we rattled down the narrow, cobbled streets. “I mean God and country and all that. Weren’t there times when you didn’t know?”
A cluster of snow-dusted bar hoppers stumbled into the street in front of us, and Brian braked to a stop. We watched in silence as they crossed our headlights, arms linked for warmth and balance, breath rising in one great cloud, like steam from some giant engine.
“Are you asking about me?” Brian said finally. “Because I can’t tell you how you felt, whether you knew or not.” The last of the group raised a mittened hand and waved his thanks to us, then stepped up onto the sidewalk and out of our lights.
“That wasn’t fair,” I said.
Brian sighed. “I’ve never pretended our system is perfect, but it’s the best I’ve ever seen.” He shifted the Seat into gear and eased forward on the slick cobbles, then gestured to the world beyond the car windows, the snowy streets and dark Hapsburg buildings. “The alternative didn’t work out too well here.”
“No,” I agreed, though I wasn’t sure the failure of the Soviet system was a justification for greed. Such logic seemed cynical at best. “Were you here?” I asked. “During the cold war.”
Brian shook his head. “That was before my time. I watched the Berlin Wall come down on a TV in the base canteen.”
I’d seen news footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crowds at the Brandenburg gate. Several of the sisters at the convent had been old enough to remember when the city had been divided, and had talked of brothers and sisters separated from each other.
“My family in the Czech Republic lost everything after the war,” Brian said as we pulled to a stop across from a brightly lit building fronted by four movie marquees. “That’s when my grandparents came to the U.S., after the Communist coup in nineteen forty-eight. My father was still a boy.” He cut the engine and looked over at me. “Here we are.”
I could see why the notorious Ivan had chosen Charlie’s as his home base. The clientele here was far less sophisticated than at the little jazz bar, and conveniently more transient. A good portion of the women were obvious non-locals, Americans and Brits searching for something off the well-beaten Prague and Budapest path. Ivan could piss people off here to his heart’s delight, secure in the knowledge they’d be gone in a week or two, and that someone just as willing would take their place.
The large club was a model for sensory overload, crammed with big-screen televisions, pulsating with loud pop music. There was no dance floor, so people gyrated among the tables, lit cigarettes waving dangerously about. I followed Brian to the bar and waited while he flagged down one of the bartenders, a suspiciously tan woman in a halter top and hip-hugger jeans.
It was too loud for me to hear their exchange, but the woman said something to Brian, the now-familiar look of disgust on her face telling me we’d most likely found our man. Sneering, she pointed toward a table in the far corner of the bar where a wiry man with slicked-back hair and a long leather coat was drinking with two blondes.
“There’s our man,” Brian said, starting toward the threesome.
Whatever favors Ivan owed Brian must have been far less odious than his debt to the bartender at the jazz bar. The Russian spotted us well before we’d reached the table, and stood up with his arms out in a ready embrace, seeming genuinely pleased by the interruption. After clamping Brian in a bear hug, he turned to the two blondes and dismissed them, then motioned for us to sit.
“Son of a bitch.” Ivan grinned, punching Brian jovially on the shoulder. His accent was pure Russian, almost a caricature of itself, the i in bitch long and hard so that the word came out sounding more like beach. “What the fuck are you doing in this shithole?”
“We just drove in,” Brian said, then motioned to me. “This is my friend Eve. Eve, meet Ivan.”
Ivan looked me over, then flashed Brian a look of collusion. “This cocksucker saved my life,” the Russian bellowed, hooking his arm across Brian’s shoulders, leaning close enough to me that I could smell the liquor on his breath. “Did he tell you that?”
I shook my head and glanced at Brian.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
Ivan downed the remaining contents of his glass. “You here on business or pleasure?” he asked, scanning the crowd.
“We need a favor,” Brian told him, shouting to be heard above the music.
Ivan caught sight of a cocktail waitress and waved to her, holding up three fingers, making a circular motion around the table. The woman nodded and started for the bar.
“A favor?” Ivan said, raising his eyebrows, pulling a pack of Marlboros from his coat.
“You still flying for Bruns Werner?” Brian asked.
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“We need you to arrange a meeting with him.”
Ivan laughed. “Go fuck yourself, man.”
“I’m serious,” Brian told him.
The waitress appeared and set three shotglasses on the table. Ivan paid her, then waved her off. “Drink!” he exhorted us, picking up his glass and draining it with a quick tilt of the head.
“What is it?” I asked Brian, sniffing at the clear liquid.
“Slivovitz,” he said. “Plum brandy. Nasty stuff.”
I took another sniff and drank most of the shot. It was rough and potent, like the brandy the Tanes made from what was left of the wine pressings each fall.