by M. J. Rose
“We’re in Vienna, and this is the Vienna Philharmonic playing one of their most beloved composers. A once-in-a-lifetime experience for a lot of people.”
Chapter 85
The Memorist Society
Thursday, May 1st—5:47 p.m.
While the medics worked on her father, Meer stood in the small space with her back up against the wall feeling the rocks pressing into her. Why was it taking so long for them to turn to her and tell her he was fine, that they’d gotten here in time, that he’d had another attack but he’d be all right?
Another minute passed. Then another. Finally one of the medics stood and wearily walked toward her. Too slowly, as if this was an effort for him. At the same time she saw the others getting up. Why were they stopping?
Three steps and she was by her father’s side, holding his hand, waiting for his fingers to curl to meet hers.
“Daddy?”
Meer looked down at him but couldn’t see his face, didn’t understand at first that tears were making her whole world invisible.
“His heart…” the medic said.
None of the words made any sense.
“…was too weak to…”
Someone gently put a blanket around her shoulders. “You’re in shock and you have to stay warm,” she said. “Let me help you up. We need to move your father, now.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“To the hospital.”
“But I thought…” Meer’s heart banged against her rib cage. “He’s alive?”
She saw the reaction in the woman’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, no. We need to take your father to the hospital for the autopsy.”
“My father’s Jewish,” Meer protested. “Autopsies are against our religion. I need to talk to a rabbi.” She noticed the woman held her father’s watch and wallet. Suddenly his things and being able to hold them was all that mattered to her.
“Can I have those?” Meer asked.
“I’m sorry, we have to give them to the police. They’re waiting outside. You’re going to have to talk to them about the autopsy and about your father’s personal items.”
Chapter 86
Underneath the Musikverein Concert Hall
Thursday, May 1st—6:12 p.m.
The light in the cave never changed. It was eternal night no matter what time of the day it was but David was watching the clock carefully. The concert would be starting in approximately an hour. He sensed a kind of elation bubbling up from deep in his chest. The sadness, grief and rage were, at last, almost over. His fingers caressed the small suitcase beside him: regulation size to fit under the seat in a commercial airliner, with wheels and a retractable handle for easy portability. Sometimes on the first night of a trip he’d find a note tucked into the front pocket from one of the kids. A child’s block letters: I miss you already. Hurry home.
No hurrying home now to a house that no longer stood. To kids who were blown up into the night sky, never to come back to earth.
Now the only item in the suitcase was his rain slicker, a little thicker than normal since it was wrapped around a four-inch-long brick of putty that he’d picked up in the Czech Republic on Monday: four hundred grams of somewhat malleable Semtex 1A. Half of this amount was all it had taken to blow Flight 103 out of the air. But the concert hall was bigger. This should be the right amount of the IRA’s favorite explosive to expose the guts of the building to the stars shining down from the sky. All for just four hundred and forty euros, the cost of two very good bicycles for his sons, or a gold bracelet set with turquoise birthstones for his wife, or a new set of woodworking tools for his father.
In the silence before the symphony, David unwrapped his slicker, exposing the two halves of the red block that would have looked like Play-Doh to his middle son.
When he’d inspected his purchase on Monday it had been whole but he’d cut into it to check for another of Tom Paxton’s bugs and, sure enough, had found one. Tossing that device onto the subway rails, he’d thought about Global Security Inc. and how with that one flick of his wrist, he was almost single-handedly dooming the company. Especially after Paxton had been so clever and bribed all those separate arms dealers to inform on their buyers.
But he didn’t feel sorry for Paxton. At the rate the man was expanding his empire, David guessed Paxton didn’t know that the Israeli security company he’d purchased three months earlier had been the one that had failed to protect David’s family.
Unzipping the suitcase’s outside pocket, David reached in and pulled out the rest of the paraphernalia he’d need: a battery pack and a det cord the thickness of a pencil, which would set off the blasting cap, which in turn would set off the Semtex. All he would have to do was stick the cap with the cord rolled around it into the explosive.
The assemblage looked like one of Ben’s science projects but he couldn’t think about that now.
David practiced the actions he’d be taking in approximately seventy-six minutes—the length of time it would take to play to the end of Beethoven’s heroic Third Symphony, depending, of course, on this particular orchestra’s pacing and the length of time between movements.
David had timed his efforts to the moment in the symphony when the minor key music of the third movement comes back in the middle of the triumphant major key third movement. He didn’t just want an ending, but an elegant ending. So during the final coda, when the last notes of the monumental piece rang out, David would activate the detonating cord using the wire connected to the battery pack. With the current applied, the assemblage would become a short circuit, turn red-hot and explode. Like a lightbulb burning out, was the way a top security analyst had explained it to him years ago when David was writing an exposé of terrorist tactics in one of the many Gaza Strip uprisings. Like the light burning out the lives of his wife and each of his children and his parents and his aunts and uncles and cousins. Caressing the wires as if they were strands of his wife’s heavy raven hair, for a moment he could almost imagine the scent of the lemony lotion she uses—used—to counteract the arid desert air.
With a start, David looked around. He’d heard something. A sound. Close by. Not music. Not rats. Not a human voice. It was coming from the air shaft. He heard it again. The sound of rocks crashing. Or a wall collapsing. And then faraway muffled shouts. A disaster? Or an expedition? None of the questions mattered anymore. Only the answers did. And only time would give those up.
Chapter 87
Thursday, May 1st—6:15 p.m.
“His name is Sebastian Otto,” Meer said, getting the words out of her mouth as fast as she could as if that would take away her nausea. “He locked us in and left. Left with the gas turned on, and I know where he is…where he’s going. To see his son at the Steinhof hospital. Nicolas Otto. Sebastian thinks he can help his son…that’s why he killed my father…” She wanted to cry, could feel the tears just behind the words but she needed to tell them what they needed to know so they could find Sebastian. To arrest him. For doing this.
While Inspector Schmit called in the information, Inspector Krantz helped Meer into the patrol car, explaining he needed to take her to the police station for her statement and then apologizing for the intrusion.
“No. I want to go to the hospital. To stay with my father.”
“All right, we can find a room at the hospital and talk there,” Krantz said as he started the car.
Schmit hung up and turned to Meer. “We have men on the way to Steinhof.”
“Do we have a description of Herr Otto?” Krantz asked his partner as he drove off.
From the back seat she could see Schmit’s neck turn slightly red. “Would you mind, Miss Logan?” he asked.
She described Sebastian and as soon as she was done tried to picture her father’s face. Not the way he looked on the gurney as the medics pulled the blanket over him—gray and inert—but any other time—a day in New York when they were having lunch and he was telling her about finding one of his Torahs. But his face eluded h
er.
Swallowing her emotions, she looked out the window at the passersby on the street. The rain had stopped but the sidewalks were still wet and most people were carrying dripping umbrellas. Three jean-clad teenagers all wearing earbuds were talking to each other on a corner. An elderly woman holding a light blue shopping bag with gold letters on it walked beside a mother pushing a baby carriage that had a red balloon attached to its handlebar. The traffic was heavy and the police car traveled slowly, so slowly they were going at the same speed as the balloon. For two more blocks, Meer watched the red dot instead of the ambulance, and then the traffic eased and they sped off. Twisting around, she kept her eyes on the balloon as it got smaller and smaller until it was completely invisible. When she could no longer make it out at all, a new wave of sadness crashed over her. Putting her fist up to her mouth, she forced the sob back.
Krantz must have noticed her sudden movement in the rearview mirror because he said: “We are almost there. Is there anyone you need us to contact?”
“Malachai Samuels.”
“Is he back in the States?”
“No. Here. At my hotel.”
He made a note. “Anyone else?”
There must be but she couldn’t think of who. Couldn’t think at all. She kept seeing her father lying, unmoving, with the medics surrounding him.
The car veered to the right into the emergency entrance of the hospital where five ambulances were parked. Meer didn’t know which one carried her father’s bo—She couldn’t even think the whole word. Jumping out of the car, looking at the five identical vans, she panicked.
Sensing her confusion, Krantz came around to her side. “Your father is already inside,” he said, offering his arm but she shook her head and preceded him toward the double glass doors.
The antiseptic smell hit her as soon as she entered the lobby. Now that she was inside, she didn’t know where to go and looked around, lost.
“We’ve secured a room where we can talk. Please come this way,” Krantz said, after he gave her a few moments alone with her father’s body.
In the middle of a round table was a bouquet of drooping daisies in a glass vase and half a dozen pieces of a child’s puzzle. Inspector Fiske, the officer she’d met almost a week ago after the robbery and Ruth’s murder, was waiting, writing in a notebook when she walked in. His sad, basset-hound eyes looked up at her sympathetically. “I know this is a very hard time for you,” he offered.
She nodded. Spoke quickly. It was too soon to hear condolences. “Am I under suspicion?”
“No.”
Krantz and Schmit were standing behind her, not sitting down at the table. “Then why are they standing by the door? Making sure I don’t run away?”
“I’m not worried about you running away. They’re there to protect you.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?”
Krantz tried to hide his reaction by writing something in his notebook, but Meer had noticed how he’d recoiled.
“But we were following you,” he said.
She was startled. “Why?”
“We caught the report about what happened in Baden to you and Sebastian Otto and put a detail on you, which you managed to slip right after you left Malachai Samuels—and his police detail—in the park and jumped on a tram.”
Meer could feel Sebastian’s fingers gripping her arm and pulling her onto the moving vehicle. At the time she’d believed him when he’d said he was trying to evade whoever had attacked them in the woods, whoever wanted to use her to find the flute. She’d believed him when he’d lost Malachai in Rathaus Park by accident. But now she knew better. By grabbing her like that he’d managed to separate her from Malachai and the police following them. Was that the point when Sebastian had gone from helping her to trying to do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted? Or was it, as he’d told her in the vault, when she refused to play the song for him early this morning?
Schmit’s phone rang and he answered it. Meanwhile Krantz asked Meer another few questions about the timeline of what had happened in the vault under the Memorist Society but she stopped halfway through her answer when she heard Schmit say Sebastian’s name on the phone.
“What is it?” she asked Krantz.
“I don’t know what—” He’d just started to speak when Schmit snapped his phone shut.
“Sebastian Otto isn’t at Steinhof. He hasn’t been there since the day before yesterday but he called the nurses’ station a half hour ago. Our men are looking for the nurse he spoke to. Seems she’s on break.”
Meer thought about Sebastian as a father…thought about her own father…the adventurer who fired guns and got arrested and smuggled treasures across borders…who would have done anything to help her. Broken any law. Committed any crime.
“Inspector, there’s a special concert tonight at the Musikverein. I think it’s going to be broadcast, is that right?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Can you find out for sure?”
His forehead creased in consternation. “Why do you want to know?”
“Please…”
Over his shoulder he asked Fiske, who answered in English. “Yes, it will be broadcast.”
“What time is it now?” She’d lost her watch in one of the tunnels.
“Almost seven,” Krantz said.
“We have to go. That’s where Sebastian is. I have to talk to him…to stop him.”
Chapter 88
Thursday, May 1st—7:18 p.m.
David Yalom’s fingers rested on the detonating device, playing with it as if it were the ring on his wife’s finger that he used to twist around and around when they sat in a dark theater watching a movie or listening to a concert. There were people he knew by name up above him in the hall who would not survive the blast. Tom Paxton and Bill Vine, plus dozens of other executives and heads of government agencies from every country in the world—so many of whom he’d interviewed and written about over the years. They were in their seats now, listening to the performance, having no idea what the grand finale of Beethoven’s Third would be like tonight.
At 9:50 p.m., David’s computer would e-mail a series of articles he’d composed to three major newspapers simultaneously. The manifesto he’d been working on was a confession no one would ignore. The basics that he learned in journalism school so long ago—the who what where when and why of the bombing of the Vienna ISTA Conference—would be delivered in the crisp prose he’d always been known for.
Only those left behind would be able to judge if David’s sacrifice was worth it.
The first movement ended and there were a few beats of silence and then the glorious symphony filled the underground cavern again, drowning out David’s beating heart and the rats’ scratchings.
David imagined that in the audience each of his children and every member of his family was sitting on the plush seats, programs discarded on the floor or scrunched in their hands, faces rapt, eyes half shut, listening. In less than an hour the explosion would both destroy him and resurrect them. He would become memory as they were memory now and they would all be together again in the past. He felt very close to them now. To his end and their end. His nerves were untangled and smoothed out for the first time in months; the music had calmed him, the music and the knowledge that even if they were to find him now he’d have enough time to press the detonator.
He only needed a few seconds.
And that might be all he had because the men chasing him were nearby. One layer of stones and one shaft of light nearby. David had guessed they were Paxton’s men because they spoke English with American accents but he couldn’t be certain. The men could have been hired by Abdul to track him to these underground caverns. They were close though. That he was sure of. He could hear them in the shaft, getting closer and closer to his hiding place.
He was actually rooting for them to be Tom Paxton’s men and half hoping they would find him and outsmart him. Prove that this time their mousetraps were as good as t
hey said they were. Prove they’d improved since their failure a year and a half ago. At one time, David had been impressed by the brash American so convinced of his own ability and he wished, just once, the good guys could win.
Chapter 89
Musikverein Concert Hall
Thursday, May 1st—7:37 p.m.
The mayor, Herman Strauss, and his very much younger wife, Annabelle, sat in the front row. Toying with a covered button on the sleeve of her ruby evening dress, which had been chosen in homage to the ruby and gold concert hall, she was busy looking around. While she noted who was there, who they were with, and what they were wearing, her husband listened intently to the music. She was bored. Bored with the music. Bored with the endless events. Herman hadn’t taken her to this many official functions when they were dating, but now it seemed as if that was all they ever did. And if she heard once more how much his dear departed wife had loved classical music she was going to spit.
Strauss was indeed oblivious to his wife’s boredom. The Austrian sat at attention in his red velvet chair, proud of his Philharmonic and the superlative job they were doing. He noticed that many of the dignitaries from other countries seemed more than appreciative; they looked astonished. Strauss was sure that even people who couldn’t care less about classical music had to be moved, despite themselves. He knew something spectacular was happening tonight, that this wasn’t an ordinary performance. Didn’t everyone in the audience suspect it?
