Pagin picked one up and brandished it in front of his face. Mar-gont took one as well. The object was heavy, and weighed down by the oath associated with it. Lefine took the last one, although to him it was all a kind of game rather than a real pledge.
‘I bought them for you,’ continued Relmyer. ‘I wanted to retrieve the ones from my former friends but they had lost them or thrown them away. Only Luise kept hers, in her drawing room.’
‘She even added some of her own, perhaps to compensate for those she felt had disappeared with the other conspirators.' hazarded Margont.
To think that as soon as I came back I went to find them and not Luise! Now that that has been sorted out, let’s see where we are. Luise is late, but I can’t wait any more.’
Margont related his discussion with Lefine in the hospital. Relmy-er said that so far he had not obtained any results, either at the Kriegsministerium or following his interrogation of the man who had stolen the archive material. Although military documents had been found at his house and the general staff were studying those, large sums of money earned from his illicit trade had also been found. As for Johann Crich of Mazenau, he most certainly did not exist, nor had Pagin been able to find out anything about the disappearance of the young boys supposedly killed in battle.
‘I have news!’ Lefine announced proudly. ‘Our man serves in the Viennese Volunteer regiment. One of the prisoners finally talked! He revealed that it was an officer of the Viennese Volunteers who planned that attack. But he does not know his name or his battalion.’
‘What do you mean, someone talked?’ Relmyer was annoyed. ‘I ask every day and I’m always told there’s no news!’
‘That’s because the men who interrogate the prisoners will never reveal what they learn to you,’ replied Lefine. ‘They suspect you of being a traitor. You are of Austrian origin, and it’s you who led that expedition that was almost annihilated. If Major Batichut and your colonel had not sprung to your defence, in this current climate, you would have been interrogated yourself by the officers charged with the struggle against the partisans.’
Once more, Relmyer felt betrayed. There were so few people ready to help him that they could all be gathered together round a cafe table, a derisory fragment of the world.
‘If our man really serves in the Viennese Volunteers and not in the Landwehr,’ continued Lefine, ‘that gives us several clues about him. The Landwehr is a militia created by Archduke Charles when the Austrian army, like so many others, began to be puffed with
pride. Service in the Landwehr is obligatory between eighteen and forty-five, with a great many exceptions stipulated in the regulations: invalids, students, people indispensable to the smooth functioning of society - teachers, different kinds of merchants, policemen, administrative employees, doctors ... The principle of volunteer regiments is to incorporate at the last moment the largest possible number of those exempt from service in the Landwehr.’
Margont rejoiced. ‘Conclusion: there is every chance that our man has a job that exempts him from serving in the militia. But whatever he does is not enough to excuse him from the Volunteers. He’s an officer and we know that he is probably not a military man by training. So why does he have such a high rank? Because he’s a personality: a big landowner, a noble, a high-ranking administrative official ...’
Margont’s face lit up as he spoke. He was pursuing this inquiry with tenacity, refusing to become discouraged, and he was jubilant at every step forward.
‘Perhaps he works at the Ministry of War? That way he would personally have access to the military registers. If not, if he is a high-ranking administrator he will have contacts: his position must have helped him ensure that someone manipulated the lists of regimental losses. Fernand, we must find out the exact causes for exemption from service in the Landwehr.’
‘Alas, that’s impossible. The Austrians have not left us such a document.’
‘How many Viennese Volunteer regiments are there?’
‘There are six battalions of six to nine hundred men. The sixth, so nine hundred soldiers, participated in the defence of Vienna and was finished off when the city fell, so forget them. In the three thousand five hundred Volunteers that remain, there must be a good one hundred subaltern officers.
‘Why did he volunteer?’ wondered Margont aloud.
‘To defend his country ...’ Relmyer suggested.
‘No, he doesn’t care about his country. Look at the considerable efforts he’s taken to commit his crimes. He devotes a large part of
his time to preparing his kidnappings and afterwards, covering his tracks. I think his crimes are the only thing that really interests him in life.’
‘So, it’s to be able to attract his prey better to where he wants them. Like he tried to do with Wilhelm.’
‘No. There’s no need to be a soldier in order to pretend to be one. In my opinion, he was forced into the Volunteers. Or he joined up loudly declaring his “patriotism”, or he would have had to seek new employment. So I think he’s an important functionary.’
‘That’s speculation,’ objected Relmyer.
‘True. But we can state with certainty that he was not very patriotic during the ambush. He abandoned his men just after firing on you. Seeing the officer who had organised the ambush flee contributed to triggering the collapse of the Austrians. His action was solely personal, he couldn’t give a fig about that battle.’
And neither could you, Lukas, Margont added to himself.
Everyone had delivered the information they had gathered and conversation petered out. Their investigation was stalling again and still Luise had not arrived. The war had, though. Everywhere soldiers were strolling: Bavarians who felt more affinity with the French than the Prussians, whose desire to take over the whole Germanic world was growing; Saxon infantrymen who joked with the French dragoons who had sabred them a few years earlier at the Battle of lena; officers striding with determination, avid to bound to the top of the hierarchy; artillerymen who talked too loudly because their cannon had gradually rendered them deaf... Margont could not believe how much the army had changed since 1805. Between 1805 and 1809 was but a short time, yet 1805 seemed to belong to a whole different era. At the time of Auster-litz, the French army had been made up of volunteer troops and hardened combatants. Now the allies - Italians, Saxons, Wurttem-bergers, Hessians, Bavarians, Polish ... constituted an increasingly important part. And they had often previously been enemies. As for the number of French conscripts, they had become dangerously elevated in number. These soldiers, inexperienced and more or less motivated, replaced the veterans killed on the battlefield or mobilised for guerrilla warfare in Spain. The Empire depended on its army. Now Margont detected little fissures ... and this reawakened his fear of dying. That fear inhabited every soldier. You grew accustomed to it as best you could, but regularly, without warning, it overcame you. Margont reacted. He needed more life, immediately, even here!
‘Herr Ober! Coffee, cream and patisseries!’ he ordered.
‘And some schnapps!’ added Lefine.
The waiter brought them everything straight away, smiling to himself as he imagined the look on their faces when he presented them with the bill ...
Luise finally arrived, accompanied by the two hussars whom Relmyer had ordered to protect Luise in this city full of soldiers. She did not reply to their greetings and put a piece of paper on the table in the middle of the cups and the crumbs.
‘Here are the names of several people who maintain the register of effective Austrian soldiers. There are thirty-two of them.’
CHAPTER 23
THE days slipped by. Summer had succeeded spring, and the heat was becoming unbearable. The military climate, like a crystal goblet placed in the middle of the oven of these days of heat wave, was approaching the point at which it would explode into a titanic battle. Now Napoleon was spending his days reviewing his troops. By the same token he frequently inspected the bridges, worried that the Austrians might use
their tactic of broken bridges that had been so successful at Essling. The bridges, impressive pieces of workmanship, were now all over the place, as though it had been necessary to build them ceaselessly in order to forget the constant collapse of the first ones. They linked the west bank of the Danube to the Isle of Lobau and to the neighbouring islands, and the islands to each other, weaving a sort of spiders web. Lampposts had even been installed on certain of the bridges, which were protected with landing stages on stilts upriver, fortifications loaded with cannon, troops, a flotilla of ten gunners and myriad little boats.
During this period Margont, Lefine, Relmyer, Pagin and Luise tried to find out a little more about the thirty-two suspects by questioning the reluctant Viennese prisoners. They hit so many obstacles that they gradually became discouraged. Relmyer was convinced that the assassin had tampered with the registers himself. So many names had been added that an accomplice would in the end have guessed what was going on, and who would agree to be associated with such ignominy? As a result, against Margont’s advice, he began to strike off the names of those who manifestly could not be the murderer. He treated them like suspects who had been cleared; he saw everything in black and white, with no grey areas. What’s more, if his hypothesis was not correct, there was a risk that their inquiry would fail, and Relmyer simply could not contemplate such a thing. He therefore persisted in hoping that one of the biographies and one of the descriptions tallied with what they knew about the assassin. And there was another problem. Their list of suspects was necessarily incomplete. Relmyer, knowing that, became more and more tense. The passage of time obsessed him, and at night he was on the verge of exasperation. According to him, no one was making progress fast enough. They met regularly in a cafe to review the situation, but even the cafe ambience no longer relieved their tension.
On 14 June, in Raab, Prince Eugene, won a great victory against Archduke John’s forces and his Hungarian reinforcements. On 24 June, he defeated the Austrians again, supported this time by the Croatians. So Prince Eugene found himself free to join Napoleon. A short time later, the first elements of his army could be seen arriving. Day after day Eugene’s divisions appeared. Each one was like a weight adding to Napoleon’s side of the scales, tipping the balance more and more in his favour.
On 30 June, everyone was once again seated round a table in a Viennese cafe. Luise revealed what she had learnt about the various names on the list, but whatever she was able to tell them, it was never enough to satisfy Relmyer.
‘In short, this Monsieur Liedel is married, has two children, brown hair and he lives in the Naglergasse,’ he said, starting to lose his temper. ‘Perfect. And so? We can’t go and see him because he serves in the Viennese Volunteer force and is stationed on the other side of the Danube. He might be our man but equally he might not. That’s the twelfth like that. They all work in the same ministry, they’re all in the same boat, and in any case no one wants to talk to us about them because we serve in the French army!’
‘Let’s search their homes for a portrait,’ proposed Lefine.
‘I’m not sure ...’ demurred Relmyer doubtfully.
Having your portrait painted was a costly habit of the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie: not everyone did it. There was also another, much more intractable problem.
‘If we act like that, I doubt well even get as far as the fifth house,’ warned Margont. ‘The inhabitants will complain about us, well be taken for looters, and shot. Perhaps with a little luck well only spend a few days in prison and well be released the day before the great battle ...’
I’d do it!’ Pagin defied him.
Relmyer thanked the young hussar with a tap on the shoulder. ‘Quentin is right. The confrontation is imminent, so the Emperor is being more respectful than ever to the Viennese.’
‘We’ll have to meet one of these men,’ repeated Margont for the nth time.
‘After all, they haven’t all joined the army or fled the capital,’ said Luise. ‘We must surely be able to lay our hands on one of them.’ Margont scanned the list. Relmyer had covered it with his minute, angry handwriting, adding information and ink stains.
‘Stop rereading the list endlessly!’ he exploded.
Margont’s forefinger indicated a name: Konrad Sowsky.
‘That one is crossed off!’ Relmyer declared angrily. ‘We’re not progressing fast enough: must you keep going back over the same things?’ As Margont’s forefinger was still indicating the man, he added: ‘That’s not our man, Sowsky is obese.’
‘Yes, I know that’s the reason you’ve struck him off,’ replied Margont. ‘But how obese is he?’
Relmyer stared at him as though he were mad. Luise intervened. ‘He must weigh much more than a hundred kilos. I was able to talk to his wife and to certain of his neighbours who described him to me. They told me that Sowsky moves with extreme difficulty and that he gets breathless very easily.’
Therefore it’s impossible that he’s our man,’ Relmyer repeated. ‘Just as it’s impossible that he serves in the Viennese Volunteer force and that he is with the Austrian army, contrary to what his wife claimed to you, Luise. No Volunteer battalion would accept an invalid into its ranks. He must have stayed in Vienna!’
CHAPTER 24
THE house was small, squashed between two much larger buildings; an insignificant dwelling in a modest district. While Relmyer repeatedly hammered on the door, Margont turned to Lefine and Pagin.
‘Fernand, go and take a casual look round. You, Pagin, make sure none of the neighbours leave, otherwise one of them might attract the attention of the gendarmes. But no brutality!’
Finally the door was opened by an Austrian woman with black hair streaked with grey pulled back in a chignon. She stood in the doorway, barring entry.
Luise spoke to her softly: ‘Do you remember me, Frau Sowsky? Luise Mitterburg. I came the day before yesterday to ask you about your husband.’
‘He’s not here, I told you.’
‘I can vouch for these two officers.’
‘He’s here and we’re coming in,’ cut in Relmyer in an
uncompromising tone. ‘We would like to talk to him.’
Madame Sowsky gave in, seeing that it was useless to annoy the hussar any further by defending the lost cause of her lie ... Her husband was easy to find. He was sitting in the gloom in his bedroom, the coolest place in the house. As Margont’s eye fell on him, he felt immense pity. His wife was over forty years old, but how old was he? It was impossible to tell. His excessive fat stretched his skin, filling out the grooves of his wrinkles. His protuberant stomach was literally crushing him in his armchair, and his legs, swollen and reddened with oedema, were putting him on the rack. He must have weighed a hundred and eighty kilos.
‘He’s ill, like his father before him,’ sobbed his wife. ‘Shame on you! May God strike you down!’
‘We won’t stay long,’ Margont told her tactfully.
Relmyer stared at the suffering man. His own pain was just as intense, even if it was much less visible. It was a little like looking in a mirror - the body in front of him was a reflection of his spirit.
This bitter thought increased his aggression.
‘Herr Sowsky, I want to speak to you about the army registers,’ he announced menacingly in German.
The man smiled. ‘Your accent is impeccable. You’re Austrian?’ These few words were enough to exhaust him. His obesity was slowly strangling him, compressing his lungs. Relmyer was going to continue when Sowsky waved a languid hand.
‘It’s no use! I am a patriot, Monsieur, and you are a traitor. Torture me, kill me if you like - that will hardly be an effort for you as I’m already dead - but I will never talk.’
His face was becoming purple, the price of having spoken so many words. But Sowsky had something more to say. He raised his arm: ‘Long live Austria!’
His wife, in spite of her anguish, looked at them defiantly.
‘Do you know why he works at the Kriegsministerium
? It’s because his health prevented him from becoming a soldier. You can cut me up in front of his eyes, he won’t say anything and I, I will shout at him to remain silent.’
Margont was disorientated by the turn of the conversation.
‘No one is going to torture anyone. The military registers have been falsified. Names have been added to the list of losses but the people added, young boys, have never served in the regiments in question. I’m talking about the Infanterie-regimenter 9, 20, 23, 29 and 49, and the Viennese Volunteer Chasseurs. We only want to know the name of the employee responsible for that.’
Sowsky said nothing, but his face, now attentive rather than stubborn, gave him away. The manipulation had been discovered and Sowsky knew about it. The seconds ticked slowly by, like the passing of time before a rolling coin falls on its side. The coin landed on the wrong side.
‘I won’t tell you anything. The affair was discovered weeks ago ...’ He had to pause to catch his breath. So the document that Relmy-er had searched so hard for in the Kreigsministerium did exist. However, Relmyer would never succeed in finding it. On the other hand, he was in the presence of someone who had read the letter or whatever it was that had been spoken of.
‘An inquiry has been started,’ went on Sowsky with difficulty. ‘It was interrupted by the war but, after the retreat of your army, the investigation will be taken up again.’
‘I’m sure there’s a suspect! What’s his name?’ shouted Relmyer. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
Obviously he was lying.
Relmyer tried to control himself. How far would he go in order to oblige the man to speak? To resolve his quest was he going to become a disgusting executioner like the murderer he was tracking? Margont spoke in measured tones. There was already enough tension in the room without adding to it.
‘Did you ask why these falsifications took place? Do you know what happened to the young men concerned?’
Sowsky did not answer. Yes, he had asked himself that question several times. Like all honest functionaries, cheating appalled him. ‘They were assassinated,’ continued Margont.
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