by Daniel Silva
Gabriel finished the first newspaper. He ordered another Schlagobers and opened a magazine called Profil. He looked around the café. It was rapidly filling with Viennese office workers stopping for a coffee or a drink on the way home from work. Unfortunately none bore even a remote resemblance to Max Klein’s description of Ludwig Vogel.
By five o’clock, Gabriel had drunk three cups of coffee and was beginning to despair of ever seeing Ludwig Vogel. Then he noticed that his waiter was wringing his hands with excitement and shifting his weight from foot to foot. Gabriel followed the line of the waiter’s gaze and saw an elderly gentleman coming through the door—An Austrian of the old school, if you know what I mean, Mr. Argov. Yes, I do, thought Gabriel. Good afternoon, Herr Vogel.
HIS HAIR WAS nearly white, deeply receded, and combed very close to his scalp. His mouth was small and taut, his clothing expensive and elegantly worn: gray flannel trousers, a double-breasted blazer, a burgundy-colored ascot. The waiter helped him off with his overcoat and led him to a table, just a few feet from Gabriel’s.
“An Einspänner, Karl. Nothing more.”
Confident, baritone, a voice used to giving orders.
“Can I tempt you with a Sachertorte? Or an apple strudel? It’s very fresh tonight.”
A weary shake of the head, once to the left, once to the right.
“Not today, Karl. Just coffee.”
“As you wish, Herr Vogel.”
Vogel sat down. At that same instant, two tables away, his bodyguard sat, too. Klein hadn’t mentioned the bodyguard. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed him. Perhaps he was a new addition. Gabriel forced himself to look down at his magazine.
The seating arrangements were far from optimal. As luck would have it, Vogel was facing Gabriel directly. A more oblique angle would have allowed Gabriel to observe him without fear of being noticed. What’s more, the bodyguard was seated just behind Vogel, his eyes on the move. Judging from the bulge in the left side of his suit jacket, he was carrying a weapon in a shoulder holster. Gabriel considered changing tables but feared it would arouse Vogel’s suspicion, so he stayed put and sneaked glances at him over the top of his magazine.
And on it went for the next forty-five minutes. Gabriel finished the last of his reading material and started in on Die Presse again. He ordered a fourth Schlagobers. At some point he became aware that he too was being watched, not by the bodyguard but by Vogel himself. A moment later, he heard Vogel say, “It’s damned cold tonight, Karl. How about a small glass of brandy before I leave?”
“Of course, Herr Vogel.”
“And one for the gentleman at that table over there, Karl.”
Gabriel looked up and saw two pairs of eyes studying him, the small, dull eyes of the fawning waiter, and Vogel’s, which were blue and bottomless. His small mouth had curled into a humorless smile. Gabriel didn’t know quite how to react, and Ludwig Vogel was clearly enjoying his discomfort.
“I was just leaving,” Gabriel said in German, “but thank you very much.”
“As you wish.” Vogel looked at the waiter. “Come to think of it, Karl, I think I’ll be going, too.”
Vogel stood suddenly. He handed the waiter a few bills, then walked to Gabriel’s table.
“I offered to buy you a brandy because I noticed you were looking at me,” Vogel said. “Have we ever met before?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Gabriel said. “And if I was looking at you, I meant nothing by it. I just enjoy looking at faces in Viennese coffeehouses.” He hesitated, then added, “One never knows whom one might run into.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Another humorless smile. “Are you sure we’ve never met before? Your face seems very familiar to me.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“You’re new to the Central,” Vogel said with certainty. “I come here every afternoon. You might say I’m Karl’s best customer. I know I’ve never seen you here before.”
“I usually take my coffee at Sperl.”
“Ah, Sperl. Their strudel is good, but I’m afraid the sound of the billiards tables intrudes on my concentration. I must say, I’m fond of the Central. Perhaps we’ll see each other again.”
“Perhaps,” Gabriel said noncommittally.
“There was an old man who used to come here often. He was about my age. We used to have lovely conversations. He hasn’t come for some time. I hope he’s all right. When one is old, things have a way of going wrong very quickly.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe he’s just moved on to another coffeehouse.”
“Perhaps,” Vogel said. Then he wished Gabriel a pleasant evening and walked into the street. The bodyguard followed discreetly after him. Through the glass, Gabriel saw a Mercedes sedan slide forward. Vogel shot one more glance in Gabriel’s direction before lowering himself into the back seat. Then the door closed and the car sped away.
Gabriel sat for a moment, turning over the details of the unexpected encounter. Then he paid his check and walked into the frigid evening. He knew he had just been sent a warning. He also knew that his time in Austria was limited.
THE AMERICAN WAS the last to depart Café Central. He paused in the doorway to turn up the collar of his Burberry overcoat, doing his best to avoid looking like a spy, and watched the Israeli disappear into the darkened street. Then he turned and headed in the opposite direction. It had been an interesting afternoon. A ballsy move on Vogel’s part, but then that was Vogel’s style.
The embassy was in the Ninth District, a bit of a trek, but the American decided it was a good night for walking. He liked walking in Vienna. It suited him. He’d wanted nothing more than to be a spy in the city of spies and had spent his youth preparing himself. He’d studied German at his grandmother’s knee and Soviet policy with the brightest minds in the field at Harvard. After graduation, the doors to the Agency were thrown open to him. Then the Empire crumbled and a new threat rose from the sands of the Middle East. Fluent German and a graduate degree from Harvard didn’t count for much in the new Agency. Today’s stars were human action figures who could live off worms and grubs and walk a hundred miles with some hill tribesman without complaining of so much as a blister. The American had got Vienna, but the Vienna that awaited him had lost her old importance. She was suddenly just another European backwater, a cul-de-sac, a place to quietly end a career, not launch one.
Thank God for the Vogel affair. It had livened things up a bit, even if it was only temporary.
The American turned into the Boltzmanngasse and paused at the formidable security gate. The Marine guard checked his identification card and permitted him to enter. The American had official cover. He worked in Cultural. It only reinforced his feelings of obsolescence. A spy, working with Cultural cover in Vienna. How perfectly quaint.
He rode the lift up to the fourth floor and paused at a door with a combination lock. Behind it was the nerve center of the Agency’s Vienna station. The American sat down before a computer, logged on, and tapped out a brief cable to Headquarters. It was addressed to a man named Carter, the deputy director for operations. Carter hated chatty cables. He’d ordered the American to find out one simple piece of information. The American had done it. The last thing Carter needed was a blow-by-blow account of his harrowing exploits at Café Central. Once it might have sounded compelling. Not anymore.
He typed five words—Avraham is in the game—and fired it into the secure ether. He waited for a response. To pass the time, he worked on an analysis of the upcoming election. He doubted it would be required reading on the seventh floor at Langley.
His computer beeped. He had a message waiting. He clicked on it, and words appeared on the screen.
Keep Elijah under watch.
The American hastily tapped out another message: What if Elijah leaves town?
Two minutes later: Keep Elijah under watch.
The American logged off. He put aside the report on the election. He was back in the game, at least for now.
GABRIEL SP
ENT THE rest of that evening at the hospital. Marguerite, the night nurse, came on duty an hour after he arrived. When the doctor had completed his examination, she permitted him to sit at Eli’s bedside. For a second time, she suggested Gabriel talk to him, then she slipped from the room to give him a few moments of privacy. Gabriel didn’t know what to say, so he leaned close to Eli’s ear and whispered to him in Hebrew about the case: Max Klein, Renate Hoffmann, Ludwig Vogel…Eli lay motionless, his head bandaged, his eyes bound. Later, in the corridor, Marguerite confided to Gabriel that there had been no improvement in Eli’s condition. Gabriel sat in the adjoining waiting room for another hour, watching Eli through the glass, then took a taxi back to his hotel.
In his room he sat down at the desk and switched on the lamp. In the top drawer he found a few sheets of hotel stationery and a pencil. He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured Vogel as he had seen him that afternoon in Café Central.
“Are you sure we’ve never met before? Your face seems very familiar to me.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
Gabriel opened his eyes again and started sketching. Five minutes later, Vogel’s face was staring up at him. What might he have looked like as a young man? He began to sketch again. He thickened the hair, removed the hoods and crinkles from the eyes. He smoothed the furrows from the forehead, tightened the skin on the cheeks and along the jawline, erased the deep troughs leading from the base of the nose to the corners of the small mouth.
Satisfied, he placed the new sketch next to the first. He began a third version of the man, this time with the high-collared tunic and peaked cap of an SS man. The image, when it was complete, set fire to the skin of his neck.
He opened the file Renate Hoffmann had given him and read the name of the village where Vogel had his country house. He located the village on a tourist map he found in the desk drawer, then dialed a rental car office and reserved a car for the morning.
He carried the sketches to the bed and, with his head propped on the pillow, stared at the three different versions of Vogel’s face. The last, the one of Vogel in the uniform of the SS, seemed vaguely familiar to him. He had the nagging sensation he had seen the man someplace before. After an hour, he sat up and carried the sketches into the bathroom. Standing at the sink, he burned the images in the same order he had sketched them: Vogel as prosperous Viennese gentleman, Vogel fifty years younger, Vogel as SS murderer…
9
VIENNA
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Gabriel went shopping in the Kärntnerstrasse. The sky was a dome of pale blue streaked with alabaster. Crossing the Stephansplatz, he was nearly toppled by the wind. It was an Arctic wind, chilled by the fjords and glaciers of Norway, strengthened by the icy plains of Poland, and now it was hammering against the gates of Vienna like a barbarian horde.
He entered a department store, glanced at the directory, and rode the escalator up to the floor that sold outerwear. There he selected a dark blue ski jacket, a thick fleece pullover, heavy gloves, and waterproof hiking boots. He paid for his things and went out again, strolling the Kärntnerstrasse with a plastic bag in each hand, checking his tail.
The rental car office was a few streets away from his hotel. A silver Opel station wagon awaited him. He loaded the bags into the back seat, signed the necessary papers, and sped away. He drove in circles for a half hour, looking for signs of surveillance, then made his way to the entrance of the A1 motorway and headed west.
The clouds thickened gradually, the morning sun vanished. By the time he reached Linz, it was snowing heavily. He stopped at a gas station and changed into the clothing he’d bought in Vienna, then pulled back onto the A1 and made the final run into Salzburg.
It was midafternoon when he arrived. He left the Opel in a car park and spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering the streets and squares of the old city, playing the part of a tourist. He climbed the carved steps leading up the Mönchsberg and admired the view of Salzburg from the height of the church steeples. Then it was over to the Universitätsplatz to see the Baroque masterpieces of Fischer von Erlach. When darkness fell, he went back down to the old city and dined on Tyrolean ravioli in a quaint restaurant with hunting trophies on the dark-paneled walls.
By eight o’clock, he was behind the wheel of the Opel again, heading east out of Salzburg into the heart of the Salzkammergut. The snowfall grew heavier as the highway climbed steadily into the mountains. He passed through a village called Hof on the southern shore of the Fuschlsee; then, a few miles farther on, he came to the Wolfgangsee. The town for which it was named, St. Wolfgang, stood on the opposite shore of the lake. He could just make out the shadowed spire of the Pilgrimage Church. He remembered it contained one of the finest Gothic altarpieces in all of Austria.
In the sleepy village of Zichenbach, he made a right turn into a narrow lane that rose sharply up the slope of the mountain. The town fell away behind him. There were cottages along the road, with snow-covered roofs and smoke curling from the chimneys. A dog ran out from one of them and barked as Gabriel passed.
He drove across a one-lane bridge, then slowed to a stop. The road seemed to have given up in exhaustion. A narrower path, barely wide enough to accommodate a car, continued into a birch forest. About thirty meters farther on was a gate. He shut down the engine. The deep silence of the forest was oppressive.
He removed the flashlight from the glove compartment and climbed out. The gate was shoulder-high and fashioned of old timber. A sign warned that the property on the other side was private and that hunting and hiking were strictly verboten and punishable by fines and imprisonment. Gabriel put a foot on the middle slat, hauled himself over the top, and dropped into the downy blanket of snow on the other side.
He switched on the flashlight, illuminating the path. It rose at a sharp incline and curved off to the right, disappearing behind a wall of birch. There were no footprints and no tire tracks. Gabriel doused the light and hesitated a moment while his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, then started walking again.
Five minutes later, he came upon a large clearing. At the top of the clearing, about a hundred meters away, stood the house, a traditional alpine chalet, very large, with a pitched roof and eaves that hung well beyond the outer walls of the structure. He paused for a moment, listening for any sign his approach had been detected. Satisfied, he circled the clearing, keeping to the tree line. The house was in complete darkness, no lights burning inside, none on the exterior. There were no vehicles.
He stood for a moment, debating whether he should commit a crime on Austrian soil by breaking into the house. The unoccupied chalet represented a chance to peer into Vogel’s life, a chance that would surely not come his way again anytime soon. He was reminded of a recurring dream. Titian wishes to consult with Gabriel on a restoration, but Gabriel keeps putting Titian off because he’s hopelessly behind schedule and can’t take the time for a meeting. Titian is terribly offended and rescinds the offer in a rage. Gabriel, alone before a limitless canvas, forges on without the master’s help.
He started across the clearing. A glance over his shoulder confirmed what he already knew—he was leaving an obvious trail of human footprints leading from the edge of the trees to the back of the house. Unless it snowed again soon, the tracks would remain visible for anyone to see. Keep moving. Titian is waiting.
He arrived at the rear of the chalet. The length of the exterior wall was stacked with firewood. At the end of the woodpile was a door. Gabriel tried the latch. Locked, of course. He removed his gloves and took out the thin metal strip that he habitually carried in his wallet. He worked it gently inside the keyhole until he felt the mechanism give way. Then he turned the latch and stepped inside.
HE SWITCHED ON the flashlight and found he was standing in a mudroom. Three pairs of Wellington boots stood at attention against the wall. A loden-cloth coat hung from a hook. Gabriel searched the pockets: some loose change, a wadded handkerchief, crinkled by an old man’s dried phlegm.
He stepped through a doorway and was confronted by a flight of stairs. He climbed swiftly upward, flashlight in hand, until he came to another door. This one was unlocked. Gabriel eased it open. The groan of the dry hinges echoed in the vast silence of the house.
He found himself in a pantry, which looked as though it had been looted by an army in retreat. The shelves were nearly bare and covered in a fine layer of dust. The adjoining kitchen was a combination of modern and traditional: German-made appliances with stainless-steel fronts, cast-iron pots hanging over a large open hearth. He opened the refrigerator: a half-drunk bottle of Austrian white wine, a lump of cheese green with mold, a few jars of ancient condiments.
He walked through a dining room into a large great room. He played the light around the room and stopped when it fell upon an antique writing table. There was one drawer. Warped by the cold, it was wedged tightly shut. Gabriel pulled hard and nearly tore it off the runners. He shone the light inside: pens and pencils, rusted paper clips, a stack of business stationery from Danube Valley Trade and Investment, personal stationery: From the desk of Ludwig Vogel…
Gabriel closed the drawer and shone the light on the surface of the desk. In a wooden paper tray was a stack of correspondence. He leafed through the pages: a few private letters, documents that appeared to be related to Vogel’s business dealings. Attached to some of the documents were memoranda, all written in the same spidery script. He seized the papers, folded them in half, and pushed them down the front of his jacket.
