A Death in Vienna

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 SPENT 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.