The Silence

by Sydney J Jones

  ‘Look, you. If I find out you’ve been talking with reporters, this continent won’t be big enough for you. Understand? I have friends, powerful friends, everywhere. Now you take your rotten carcass back to Hamburg where I found you.’

  Werthen expected that he would have to intervene. Surely the much larger and stronger Feininger could squash Remington with one of his granite fists. Instead, the man snuffled once, made a feeble attempt at an apology, which Remington waved off, and meekly left the tent.

  ‘And remember. The buckskins stay here.’ Then to Werthen: ‘But who they will fit, I don’t know.’ He took a long breath. ‘You folks know how to keep a secret, I suppose.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Werthen said.

  ‘Of course,’ Gross added.

  ‘So what brings you here? I mean, other than the show?’

  ‘As I said, we have just a few questions.’

  ‘Are you from the police? My licenses are all in order, I can tell you that.’

  ‘We are private inquiry agents,’ Werthen said.

  ‘You mean like Pinkertons?’

  ‘Somewhat,’ Werthen said, not enjoying the comparison to that agency known for hiring out as a private army for American industrialists to keep their workers in line. He made quick introductions, but Remington had obviously never heard of Gross, nor of his criminalistic studies.

  Gross jumped in as the man appeared to be ready to end the conversation.

  ‘We will trade favors. Our silence about your nationality in return for a short interview. I assume that would be amenable to you.’

  ‘I have a show to put on,’ Remington said.

  ‘Very brief questions,’ Gross said.

  Remington sighed. ‘Follow me.’

  They did so, leaving the reception area in the front of the tent for Remington’s private dressing room in the shadowy depths. He would, of course, be billeted at the Sacher Hotel or some such establishment in the city, but here he kept his trunk of costumes, for he took part in the show as the master of ceremonies, announcing each act.

  They took seats at a deal table in his dressing area.

  ‘Now, what is it?’

  Gross led the way. ‘We understand you are interested in purchasing a tract of the Vienna Woods.’

  The statement took Remington by surprise. ‘Who says?’

  ‘It has been reported,’ Gross replied.

  ‘Damn,’ he said in English. Then once again in German: ‘What is it to you?’

  ‘We want to know if in fact this is true. And remember, we are trading favors here,’ Gross added.

  ‘One word of this to the press—’ Remington wagged a stubby finger at Gross.

  ‘We are investigating two murders, Herr Remminghaus. I can make no such assurances to you regarding this illicit sale.’

  ‘There’s nothing illegal about it.’ The deal table shook under his pounding fist.

  ‘Then you should feel no constraints in assisting us in our inquiries. I repeat, is it true you have been involved in negotiations for sale of acreage in the Vienna Woods?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Not just acreage, but nearly half of it.’

  This made Werthen exhale with almost a whistle.

  ‘Yes, monumental, eh? We Americans do not do things by half measures.’

  Spoken like a true transplanted German, Werthen thought.

  ‘And with whom were you in negotiations?’

  ‘That’s obvious now, isn’t it?’

  Gross looked sternly at him. ‘If it were, I would not be asking. I am not here to waste your time or my own.’

  ‘With Mayor Lueger, of course. He’s the only one could authorize a sale of this magnitude. A forward-looking man, Karl Lueger.’

  ‘The asking price?’

  ‘Now that is going too far. How do I know you aren’t representing the other bidders?’

  Gross straightened in his chair. ‘Then you know that there are others involved?’

  ‘What’s an auction without bidders?’ Remington seemed vastly entertained at the idea of a bidding war. ‘So you’ll understand my reluctance to make the amount of my bid public. Enough to say it’s in the millions.’

  ‘Crowns or florins?’ Werthen interjected.

  Remington looked pityingly at him. ‘Dollars. Greenbacks. Real money.’

  ‘When are the bids to be tallied?’ Gross asked.

  ‘You mean when do I know if I won? That would be next Wednesday.’

  My god, thought Werthen. They had only a handful of days to prevent this travesty from happening.

  ‘Very well,’ Gross concluded. ‘I must thank you for your time, Herr Remminghaus.’

  ‘It is Remington now. All legally changed. I like to do things on the up and up.’

  They rose to leave, but Werthen could not restrain himself.

  ‘If you do not mind telling me, what plans do you have for the Woods?’

  ‘No, I do not mind at all talking about my Tales from the Vienna Woods.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s the name I’ve selected for the park.’

  ‘You’re making a park out of the Vienna Woods?’ Werthen asked. ‘But it is already a park, a wild park.’

  ‘Mine will be unique, a very particular sort of park, I can tell you that. One that will bring visitors from all over the world. You see, I have been at this entertainment job nigh on to three decades now. And I tell you, entertainment is the industry of the future. Travel and tourism, those are the growth industries of the twentieth century. Great times ahead.’

  ‘And in what way is your park going to be “particular,” as you say?’ Werthen queried.

  ‘Well, Tales of the Vienna Woods will be in the vanguard of tourist destinations for a new century. Your average visitor to Europe, he doesn’t know a whole lot about cultural things. Doesn’t really know where to go and what to see. I intend to simplify travel. Concentrate the experience. I’ve learned a bit with my Wild West Show. So there will be re-enactments. Great moments in Austrian history, from the Habsburg coronation to Mozart at the piano and Strauss leading a waltz. Imagine a re-creation of the siege of Vienna with hordes of bloody Turks at the city gates. Or a fortress like in Salzburg so the tourist can focus his travel. Or the Gross Glockner right here in Vienna’s backyard. Well, a smaller model. Alps with manufactured snow year-round.’

  ‘But Austria has these things for real,’ Werthen said.

  ‘Not in one place and in one time. That’s the genius of my travel itineraries. Simplification. Concentration. We are in negotiations for a bit of land near Milan now. It’ll have models of the Roman Colosseum, St Peter’s, the Forum. Put in a leaning tower, the Venetian canals.’

  ‘That sounds dreadful,’ Gross suddenly said.

  ‘What’s so dreadful about it? After all, you have the “Venice in Vienna” park right here in the Prater. I’m only expanding on the idea. We’ll have medieval lanes with men in livery, sedan chairs at the ready. I can see it, almost smell it.’

  ‘And it smells, sir, of offal,’ Gross blurted out. ‘Good day to you.’

  Gross stomped off leaving Werthen to attempt a quasi-polite farewell.

  ‘Your friend has a definite problem,’ Remington said. ‘He should get out of the classroom more. Into the real world of ideas and progress.’

  ‘I will suggest it to him, Mr Remington.’

  ‘You’re not staying for the shows?’

  ‘Maybe another day.’

  ‘You just tell them at the front ticket window you’re a friend of Taylor Remington. You’ll get a day pass.’

  ‘Very generous. And thank you for your cooperation.’

  ‘Remember,’ the man shouted as Werthen was leaving. ‘Thomas Remminghaus exists no longer. It is Taylor Remington. Done all legal in New York City.’

  Werthen caught up with Gross just outside the tent.

  ‘We know now,’ the criminologist said.

  ‘Yes,’ Werthen agreed. ‘If that is the future, I am not sure I want to know.
’

  ‘That is not the future, I guarantee you. Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  ‘One thing seems clear,’ Werthen said.

  Gross waited for him to continue.

  ‘It would seem Remington is not responsible for the deaths of Steinwitz and Praetor.’

  ‘What leads you to deduce that, dear friend?’

  ‘Well, we are still alive and able to discuss our interview with the man. If those two posed such a dire threat to Remington that he or his lackeys killed them, then would we not also be seen as a comparable threat that needs eliminating?’

  ‘Good. And the second reason?’

  Werthen shook his head. ‘I did not mention a second reason.’

  ‘Then I shall for you. Remington and his show only arrived in Vienna last Sunday. After the deaths of both men.’

  ‘How long have you known this?’

  ‘I ascertained it last night from the clerk at my hotel. It seems Mr Remington is a guest there as well. He must have already been in communication with Lueger before his arrival. But his physical presence here began last Sunday, that is certain. I placed a call to Drechsler this morning to make sure. The foreign registration office shows Remington’s entrance at Braunau am Inn on February 18, along with his menagerie.’

  ‘Advokat Werthen!’

  Werthen turned at the sound of his name and saw Fräulein Metzinger with young Heidl Beer and, of all people, young Ludwig Wittgenstein.

  ‘I had no idea you were an enthusiast of the Old West,’ his assistant said.

  ‘Actually we are here on business. But it looks like you are prepared for a good time.’

  Both young boys had large bags of popcorn in their hands.

  ‘And how were you able to effect an escape this time, Master Wittgenstein?’

  The boy blushed. ‘Well, I practiced a bit of magic.’

  He nudged Heidl as he spoke, for the other boy was obviously in on the scheme.

  ‘Yes?’ Werthen said. ‘Don’t worry. I am no longer representing your father.’

  ‘Saturday afternoon is my piano lesson. I go to Madame du Pauly in the First District for my torture and am not expected back until teatime. So—’

  ‘Allow me a conjecture,’ Gross said. ‘You had your young friend here, Herr Heidl Beer, appear in all his finery at Madame du Pauly’s with a message.’

  Young Wittgenstein’s eyes grew large at Gross’s speculation.

  ‘Ah, I see I am close to the truth. Perhaps the message would be from your parents, stating that you needed to return home. A sensitive young lad like you would not use illness as an excuse; that could have an unfortunate resonance.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t tell anybody,’ Ludwig said, turning on Heidl.

  ‘I didn’t.’ The other boy sounded outraged at the suggestion.

  ‘Thus, barring medical emergency, I would suggest the unexpected arrival of a favorite relative. An aunt, perhaps. Or an uncle, latterly traveling in South America.’

  ‘You’re a wizard,’ Wittgenstein said.

  Gross shrugged. ‘No. Merely a reader of the “Notables” column in the daily paper. I see your uncle did return from Paraguay this very week.’

  Wittgenstein now looked disappointed, and huddled himself into his fur-collared coat.

  ‘Explanation ruins magic,’ he said.

  He sat back in the first-class coach of the Alpine Express and watched the snow-blanketed landscape race by outside his window. The time away from Vienna had done him good; no longer was his left foot so swollen and painful. Gout, the doctors said, but he knew better. It was only a matter of time. He could try to control his disease, but he knew that eventually it would get the better of him.

  He lit a Gross Glockner cigar, only his third of the day, and exhaled a wreath of blue smoke into the compartment where he sat alone. He had taken the entire car; his aides were scattered in the other compartments.

  The train whistled through the station at St Pölten. Its platforms were empty except for a mother and her small daughter standing at her side, thumb in her mouth, staring wide-eyed at the express flying past her, ruffling her long mauve skirts.

  How long did he have? No one was saying, but he tried to live each day as fully as possible. Keep your mind in the present; the future will take care of itself.

  But events in the present were now intruding on his future. His vendetta against the Habsburgs was so near to coming to successful closure, all his careful machinations about to come to fruition.

  Yet at the same time everything was beginning to unravel. He understood from Bielohlawek that investigators were snooping about, picking at the ashes of Steinwitz’s death, nosing around the affairs of the Rathaus. If so, it was only a matter of time until they would make associations, put the pieces together. The press had not come into it yet, but that, too, was only a matter of time.

  He had to contain this, at least until Wednesday. Then let the critics wail and gnash their teeth. He would weather it. The Christian Democrats would weather it. He could always count on the small people of Vienna who loved him like a saint. He could always blame it on the Jews. After all, the Jew Wittgenstein represented one group of bidders; Remington, or whatever he chose to call himself, the other. And he, Mayor Lueger, had done his homework on Taylor Remington, formerly Thomas Remminghaus. The man was a chameleon. Not only had he re-created himself as a frontier American, a character out of the pages of Karl May, but before that he had already reinvented himself as a German. For, Lueger and his aides had discovered, the impresario and his family had originally hailed from Galicia, where his name as a young boy was Tomas Remstein. The Jewish Remstein.

  Lueger looked at his bearded handsome reflection in the window of his train compartment and smiled contentedly.

  Once again, the Jews did it. The despoilers of the country.

  And once the money was collected there were a thousand and one ways to conceal its uses. Through years of redirecting ‘gifts’ from industrialists and municipal funds toward campaign expenditures, Lueger and his team had devised a Byzantine structure of funding channels and money redirection and ‘cleaning’ that not even a Swiss bank director could follow. Just get him the money from the sale, and it would be safe.

  Lueger looked at the stub of cigar wedged between his forefinger and middle finger. Those fingers were stained almost as dark as the cigar itself. He had long ago given up on trying to eradicate that nicotine stain.

  But this stain of disclosure was another matter. Only a few more days of containing this affair.

  Was it time to enlist Kulowski’s aid in the matter?

  Karl Lueger was a tidy man in his personal habits; he liked to have his desk neatly arranged, his affairs in order. Hildegard, his older sister, looked after domestic arrangements at his simple apartment in the Rathaus. Lunch was always on the table promptly at twelve ten. Clean suits and freshly polished gold cufflinks awaited him every morning after his bath. His life was untroubled by marriage. Like a priest to the church, he felt he was married to politics, to his duties as mayor of the finest city in Europe. He found release with Marianne, but that, like the state of his health, was a closely guarded secret.

  Now, his orderly plans were at risk of becoming messy in the extreme. And all because his old school chum Steinwitz had suddenly found a conscience. That was a deep betrayal. Middle-class boys, the both of them. And the Theresianum had been the making of them. They were the bright boys, the day boys, the first of their generation to claw their way into the lair of privilege and nobility. And Lueger had not forgotten his friend Steinwitz. He had taken him with him on his meteoric rise in Vienna politics. He had made the man. And to be paid back in such a pitiless manner. It was really too much. Where was the man’s sense of loyalty? The killing paid him back, though. He could almost understand—

  His thoughts were interrupted when the door to his compartment opened unexpectedly, letting in the noise of the rushing train. Kulowski stood there, looking uncomfortable
as usual in a suit that appeared at least one size too small.

  ‘Just to let you know we will be there in ten minutes, chief.’

  ‘I am quite aware of that,’ Lueger said, irritated at having been torn out of his thoughts.

  ‘You told me to remind you.’

  ‘And now you have.’ Lueger waved his cigar dismissively at the man.

  After the door closed, Lueger leaned back against the linen-covered headrest, closed his eyes and said quietly out loud, ‘Buffalo.’

  But at least Kulowski was loyal.

  Sixteen

  Sunday morning Werthen awoke to a nearly silent world. It was not just that Sundays were usually more quiet than other days, with less traffic and fewer pedestrians on the street. He knew this Sunday was special.

  His robe on, he looked out the front windows of the sitting room and saw a swirling mass of snow coming from the skies. A childish glee filled him.

  All morning long it snowed with an intensity that he had not known since his youth. The green ceramic oven in the sitting room hummed with heat and outside the snow fell silently. A white, mute presence. They did not even attempt their usual Sunday stroll around the Ringstrasse.

  He determined to take his mind off the case for at least one day. Really, he had no choice. The Viennese were sticklers for Sunday-day-of-rest. There were no interviews he could conduct, no leads to follow on the hallowed Sunday.

  So, he and Berthe sat reading in the sitting room while Frieda gurgled and lolled about on a large blanket between them on the leather sofa. Werthen held his little daughter through her morning nap, marveling, as millennia of doting parents have, at the absolute perfection of their progeny. Today he was focusing on her ears, miracles of precision and sweetness. The pinkness of the lobes, the almost translucent quality of the skin filled him with a sudden awe. Were he a religious man he would have put it down to God’s doing.

  This thought spurred others: he would have to come to terms with his battling parents and father-in-law sometime. Herr Meisner should be here; should be enjoying his granddaughter. He felt guilt at this, but it was as much his father-in-law’s fault as theirs. He was a stubborn goat. At least he had gotten his parents to remain quiet about a possible baptism, yet he knew it was only a matter of time before they began clamoring again for a proper church ceremony. The old hypocrites, he thought, not without a certain degree of fondness.