A Death in Vienna

He raised his hand defensively, and the blow was absorbed by his heavy coat. Gabriel let go of the flashlight and kicked the man hard on the inside of his knee. He groaned in pain and threw a wild punch. Gabriel stepped away, easily avoiding it, careful not to lose his footing in the snow. His opponent was a large man, some six inches taller than Gabriel and at least fifty pounds heavier. If things deteriorated into a wrestling match, the outcome would be thrown into question.

The man threw another wild punch, a roundhouse that glanced off the front of Gabriel’s chin. He ended up off balance, leaning over to the left, with his right arm down. Gabriel seized the arm and stepped forward. He drew back his elbow and drove it twice into the man’s cheekbone, careful to avoid the killing zone in front of the ear. The man collapsed into the snow, dazed. Gabriel hit him in the head with the flashlight for good measure, and the man fell unconscious.

Gabriel looked over his shoulder and saw that there was no one on the track. He unzipped the man’s jacket and searched for a billfold. He found one in an interior breast pocket. Inside was an identification badge. The name did not concern him; the affiliation did. The man lying unconscious in the snow was a Staatspolizei officer.

Gabriel resumed his search of the unconscious man and found, in the breast pocket of his jacket, a small leather-bound policeman’s notepad. Written on the first page, in childlike block letters, was the registration number for Gabriel’s rental car.

10 VIENNA

NEXT MORNING, GABRIEL made two telephone calls upon his return to Vienna. The first was to a number located inside the Israeli embassy. He identified himself as Kluge, one of his many telephone names, and said he was calling to confirm an appointment with a Mr. Rubin in Consular. After a moment the voice at the other end of the line said, “The Opernpassage-do you know it?”

Gabriel indicated, with some irritation, that he did. The Opernpassage was a dingy, pedestrian thoroughfare beneath the Karlsplatz.

“Enter the passage from the north,” the voice said. “Halfway down, on your right side, you’ll see a hat shop. Walk past that shop at precisely ten o’clock.”

Gabriel broke the connection, then dialed Max Klein’s apartment in the Second District. There was no answer. He hung the receiver back on the hook and stood for a moment, wondering where Klein could be.

He had ninety minutes until his meeting with the courier. He decided to use the time productively by ridding himself of the rental car. The situation had to be handled carefully. Gabriel had taken the Staatspolizei officer’s notebook. If by some chance the policeman had managed to remember the registration number after being knocked unconscious, it would have taken him only minutes to trace the car to the rental agent in Vienna, and then to an Israeli named Gideon Argov.

Gabriel crossed the Danube and drove around the modern United Nations complex, looking for a parking space on the street. He found one, about a five-minute walk from the U-Bahn station, and pulled in. He raised the hood and loosened the battery cables, then climbed behind the wheel and turned the key. Greeted by silence, he closed the hood and walked away.

From a phone booth in the U-Bahn station he called the rental car office to inform them that their Opel had broken down and needed to be collected. He permitted a note of indignation to creep into his voice, and the attendant at the other end of the line was highly apologetic. There was nothing in the clerk’s voice to indicate the company had been contacted by the police concerning a burglary the previous evening in the Salzkammergut.

A train rolled into the station. Gabriel hung up and boarded the last carriage. Fifteen minutes later, he was entering the Opernpassage-from the north, just as the man from the embassy had instructed. It was filled with morning commuters spilling from the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station, the air thick with the stench of fast food and cigarettes. An Albanian with drugged eyes asked Gabriel for a euro to buy food. Gabriel slipped past without a word and made his way toward the hatter.

The man from the embassy was coming out as Gabriel approached. Blond and blue-eyed, he wore a mackintosh raincoat with a scarf wrapped tightly around his throat. A plastic bag bearing the name of the hatter hung from his right hand. They were known to each other. His name was Ben-Avraham.

They walked side by side toward the exit at the other end of the passage. Gabriel handed over an envelope containing all the material he had gathered since his arrival in Austria: the dossier given to him by Renate Hoffmann, the watch and the ring taken from Ludwig Vogel’s armoire, the photograph concealed in the Bible. Ben-Avraham slipped the envelope into the plastic bag.

“Get it home,” Gabriel said. “Quickly.”

Ben-Avraham nodded tersely. “And the receiving party at King Saul Boulevard?”

“It’s not going to King Saul Boulevard.”

Ben-Avraham raised an eyebrow suggestively. “You know the rules. Everything goes through Headquarters.”

“Not this,” Gabriel said, nodding toward the plastic bag. “It goes to the Old Man.”

They reached the end of the passage. Gabriel turned and started in the opposite direction. Ben-Avraham followed after him. Gabriel could see what he was thinking. Should he violate a petty Office dictum and risk the wrath of Lev-who loved nothing more than enforcing petty Office dictums-or should he perform a small favor for Gabriel Allon and Ari Shamron? Ben-Avraham’s deliberation did not last long. Gabriel had not expected it would. Lev was not the type to inspire personal devotion among his troops. Lev was the man of the hour, but Shamron was theMemuneh, and theMemuneh was eternal.

Gabriel, with a sideways movement of his eyes, sent Ben-Avraham on his way. He spent ten minutes pacing the length of the Opernpassage, searching for any sign of surveillance, then went back up to the street. From a public telephone he tried Max Klein’s number a second time. There was still no answer.

He climbed on a passing streetcar and rode it around the city center to the Second District. It took him a few moments to find Klein’s address. In the foyer, he pressed the buzzer for the apartment but received no response. The caretaker, a middle-aged woman in a flowered frock, poked her head from her apartment and eyed Gabriel suspiciously.

“Who are you looking for?”

Gabriel answered truthfully.

“He usually goes to the synagogue in the morning. Have you tried there?”

The Jewish Quarter was just on the other side of the Danube Canal, a ten-minute walk at most. As usual, the synagogue was under guard. Gabriel, despite his passport, had to pass through a magnetometer before being admitted. He took a kippah from the basket and covered his head before entering the sanctuary. A few elderly men were praying near the bimah. None of them was Max Klein. In the foyer he asked the security guard whether he’d seen Klein that morning. The guard shook his head and suggested Gabriel try the community center.

Gabriel walked next door and was admitted by a Russian Jew named Natalia. Yes, she told him, Max Klein often spends his morning at the center, but she hadn’t seen him today. “Sometimes, the old ones have coffee at the Café Schottenring,” she said. “It’s at Number Nineteen. You might find him there.”

There was indeed a group of elderly Viennese Jews having coffee at the Café Schottenring, but Klein wasn’t one of them. Gabriel asked if he’d been there that morning, and six gray heads shook in unison.

Frustrated, he walked back across the Danube Canal to the Second District and returned to Klein’s apartment building. He pressed the buzzer and once again received no response. Then he knocked on the door of the caretaker’s apartment. Seeing Gabriel for a second time, her face turned suddenly grave.