Vienna
By treaty in 1955, Austria’s post-war occupation had ended. The country’s neutrality was both guaranteed and enforced. It would not join the Warsaw Pact, nor would it be part of NATO. The last twenty-odd thousand Russian, French, American, and British troops departed—the zones of the country abolished and the sectors of Vienna restored to their civil status as Bezirke. All things considered, Vienna fared better than Berlin by 1958. Nobody was arguing over it any more, almost overnight it had ceased to be the most spied-in and spied-upon city in Europe, and if it didn’t immediately settle back to a life of swaying waltzes and strong coffee … well, you can’t have everything.
Berlin was still two cities, divided by a fairly neat if meandering line between the Russian sector in the east and all the other sectors in the west. Vienna’s dividing line had never been quite so clean. In fact, it was more of a mess. The French had a tidy cluster of districts, so did the Americans, but the Russians and the British jigsawed. And the whole of the city centre was subject to four-power administration, resulting in four-men-in-a-jeep, jack-in-the-box patrols consisting of one soldier from each army, a motley formula that might have led to a United Nations in miniature (and on wheels) but more often than not merely led to arguments about lunch and beer. And lest you forgot whose turf you were on, there had been regular white pavement-demarcation stencils.
Troy found himself looking at one, scuffed and fading on the cobblestones that marked the line between the Landstraße Bezirk (3), which had been British, and the Wieden Bezirk (4), which had been Russian, on the Schwarzenbergplatz:
CОВЕТСКИЙ CEKTOP
He wondered if there’d ever be a day when the Second World War wasn’t a visible remnant in half the cities in Europe, scars upon the body politic. This one could have been scrubbed away. Its survival was deliberate. An act of conservation, not an error of omission.
He scraped at it with the sole of his left shoe.
“You’re destroying a bit of history,” said Gus Fforde.
“Really? I wonder how many poor Russian conscripts wasted days of their own history going around painting this on every street corner?”
“Marginally better than whitewashing piles of coal, I should think. And God knows plenty of our Tommies did that.”
“Touché, Gus,” Troy replied. “However, you will appreciate that where Britain and Russia once met might blur the definition of ‘our’ in my case.”
Gus had met Troy outside the Hotel Sacher on his way to work, as First Secretary at the British Embassy on Rennweg, only a few yards from where they were standing. Gus and Troy had been at school together. Their mutual loyalty was boundless. In 1956, Gus had arranged Troy’s marriage in Vienna to Larissa Tosca, knowing full well that she had been a Soviet agent. He had pulled every string at his fingertips, told a dozen lies, and given her the security of a British passport. And loyal still, he had asked no questions when the marriage had exploded later the same year and Tosca had vanished yet again.
Troy had skipped breakfast to walk with Gus. His first morning without family in the best part of a fortnight. “Family and friends” was a phrase used so often to define emotional territory as to be little short of cliché—one that baffled Troy. They weren’t the same thing at all. Troy thought they needed a stencil to make that clear:
You Are Now Leaving Family—This Is A Friend Вы покидаете семью—это друг
“I hope Rod’s enjoying this,” Gus said, just as they reached the embassy.
“Oh yes. He was nostalgic by proxy all the way here. Reading the old man’s diaries, retracing the journey. It’s different from now on. He’s nostalgic for himself. He’s reliving the Vienna he knew before they kicked him out after the Anschluss in ‘38. And he’s imagining the Vienna he never knew. He was born here, after all.”
“Jolly good.”
“Why do I find that ominous?”
“God—am I so bad at dissembling? Not ominous, no. It’s just that I might be putting a bit of a damper on the fun.”
“How?”
“Someone back in London told the ambassador Rod’s here. I know this is a holiday, but the ambassador is not the sort of bloke not to take a politician’s visit seriously—in this case, too seriously. Wanted to know why I hadn’t told him. Pooh-poohed me saying it was a private visit and is pretty insistent on … dunno what to call it … not black tie …”
“Just as well. None of us travelled with evening dress.”
“And not a reception as such …”
“A bit of a do?”
“Exactly.”
“I think Rod will be delighted.”
“Really? And you?”
“I’ll tolerate it. Just see that you water my sister’s wine if you don’t want a diplomatic incident.”
“Ah … Sasha. Plus ça change. I’ll never forget her thrusting her hand down my trousers when I was fourteen and tweaking my John Thomas.”
“Gus. I do wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“Shall we say tomorrow night, seven thirty for eight, here?”
“I’ll tell him.”