A Death in Vienna (15 page)

B
ISHOP
D
REXLER LISTENED
to the audio tape one final time, then dialed the number in Vienna.

“I’m afraid we have a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

Drexler told the man in Vienna about the visitors to the Anima that morning: Monsignor Donati and a professor from Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

“What did he call himself?”

“Rubenstein. He claimed to be a researcher on the Historical Commission.”

“He was no professor.”

“I gathered that, but I was hardly in a position to challenge his bona fides. Monsignor Donati is a very powerful man within the Vatican. There’s only one more powerful, and that’s the heretic he works for.”

“What were they after?”

“Documentation about assistance given by Bishop Hudal to a certain Austrian refugee after the war.”

There was a long silence before the man posed his next question.

“Have they left the Anima?”

“Yes, about an hour ago.”

“Why did you wait so long to telephone?”

“I was hoping to provide you with some information that can be put to good use.”

“Can you?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Tell me.”

“The professor is staying at the Cardinal Hotel on the Via Giulia. And he’s checked into the room in the name of René Duran, with a Canadian passport.”

“I
NEED YOU
to collect a clock in Rome.”

“When?”

“Immediately.”

“Where is it?”

“There’s a man staying at the Cardinal Hotel on the Via Giulia. He’s registered in the name of René Duran, but sometimes he’s using the name of Rubenstein.”

“How long will he be in Rome?”

“Unclear, which is why you need to leave now. There’s an Alitalia flight leaving for Rome in two hours. A business-class seat has been reserved in your name.”

“If I’m traveling by plane, I won’t be able to bring the tools I’ll need for the repair. I’ll need someone to supply me those tools in Rome.”

“I have just the man.” He recited a telephone number, which the Clockmaker committed to memory. “He’s very professional, and most important, extremely discreet. I wouldn’t send you to him otherwise.”

“Do you have a photograph of this gentleman, Duran?”

“It will be coming over your fax machine momentarily.”

The Clockmaker hung up the phone and switched off the lights at the front of the shop. Then he entered his workshop and opened a storage cabinet. Inside was a small overnight bag, containing a change of clothing and a shaving kit. The fax machine rang. The Clockmaker pulled on an overcoat and hat while the face of a dead man eased slowly into view.

G
ABRIEL TOOK A
table inside Doney the following morning to have coffee. Thirty minutes later, a man entered and went to the bar. He had hair like steel wool and acne scars on his broad cheeks. His clothing was expensive but worn poorly. He drank two espressos rapid-fire and kept a cigarette working the entire time. Gabriel looked down at his
La Repùbblica
and smiled. Shimon Pazner had been the Office man in Rome for five years, yet he had still not lost the prickly exterior of a Negev settler.

Pazner paid his bill and went to the toilet. When he came out, he was wearing sunglasses, the signal that the meeting was on. He headed through the revolving door, paused on the pavement of the Via Veneto, then turned right and started walking. Gabriel left money on the table and followed after him.

Pazner crossed the Corso d’Italia and entered the Villa Borghese. Gabriel walked a little farther along the Corso and entered the park at another point. He met Pazner on a tree-lined footpath and introduced himself as René Duran of Montreal. Together they walked toward the Galleria. Pazner lit a cigarette.

“Word is you had a close shave up in the Alps the other night.”

“Word travels fast.”

“The Office is like a Jewish sewing circle, you know that. But you have a bigger problem. Lev has laid down the law. Allon is off limits. Allon, should he come knocking on your door, is to be turned into the street.” Pazner spat at the ground. “I’m here out of loyalty to the Old Man, not you, Monsieur
Duran.
This had better be good.”

They sat on a marble bench in the forecourt of the Galleria Borghese and looked in opposite directions for watchers. Gabriel told Pazner about the SS man Erich Radek who had traveled to Syria under the name Otto Krebs. “He didn’t go to Damascus to study ancient civilization,” Gabriel said. “The Syrians let him in for a reason. If he was close to the regime, he might show up in the files.”

“So you want me to run a search and see if we can place him in Damascus?”

“Exactly.”

“And how do you expect me to request this search without Lev and Security finding out about it?”

Gabriel looked at Pazner as though he found the question insulting. Pazner retreated. “All right, let’s say I might have a girl in Research who can have a quiet look through the files for me.”

“Just one girl?”

Pazner shrugged and tossed his cigarette onto the gravel. “It still sounds like a long shot to me. Where are you staying?”

Gabriel told him.

“There’s a place called La Carbonara on the northern end of the Campo dei Fiori, near the fountain.”

“I know it.”

“Be there at eight o’clock. There’ll be a reservation in the name of Brunacci for eight-thirty. If the reservation is for two, that means the search was a bust. If it’s for four, come to the Piazza Farnese.”

O
N THE OPPOSITE
bank of the Tiber, in a small square a few paces from St. Anne’s Gate, the Clockmaker sat in the cold late-afternoon shadows of an outdoor café, sipping a cappuccino. At the next table, a pair of cassocked priests were engaged in animated conversation. The Clockmaker, though he spoke no Italian, assumed them to be Vatican bureaucrats. A hunchbacked alley cat threaded its way between the Clockmaker’s legs and begged for food. He trapped the animal between his ankles and squeezed, slowly increasing the pressure, until the cat let out a strangled howl and scampered off. The priests looked up in disapproval; the Clockmaker left money on the table and walked away. Imagine, cats in a café. He was looking forward to concluding his business in Rome and returning to Vienna.

He walked along the edge of Bernini’s Colonnade and paused for a moment to peer down the broad Via della Conciliazione toward the Tiber. A tourist thrust a disposable camera toward him and pleaded, in some indecipherable Slavic tongue, for the Clockmaker to take his photograph in front of the Vatican. The Austrian wordlessly pointed toward his wristwatch, indicating he was late for an appointment, and turned his back.

He crossed the large, thunderous square just beyond the opening in the Colonnade. It bore the name of a recent pope. The Clockmaker, though he had few interests other than antique timepieces, knew that this pope was a rather controversial figure. He found the intrigue swirling about him rather amusing. So he did not help the Jews during the war. Since when was it the responsibility of a pope to help Jews? They were, after all, the enemies of the Church.

He turned into the mouth of a narrow street, leading away from the Vatican toward the base of the Janiculum park. It was deeply shadowed and lined with ocher-colored buildings covered in a powdery dust. The Clockmaker walked the cracked pavement, searching for the address he had been given earlier that morning by telephone. He found it but hesitated before entering. Stenciled to the sooty glass were the words
A
RTICOLI
R
ELIGIOSI
.
Below, in smaller letters, was the name G
IUSEPPE
M
ONDIANI
. The Clockmaker consulted the slip of paper where he’d written the address. Number 22 Via Borgo Santo Spirito. He had come to the right place.

He pressed his face to the glass. The room on the other side was cluttered with crucifixes, statues of the Virgin, carvings of long-dead saints, rosaries and medals, all certified to have been blessed by
il papa
himself. Everything seemed to be covered with the fine, flourlike dust from the street. The Clockmaker, though raised in a strict Austrian Catholic home, wondered what would compel a person to pray to a statue. He no longer believed in God or the Church, nor did he believe in fate, divine intervention, an afterlife, or luck. He believed men controlled the course of their lives, just as the wheelwork of a clock controlled the motion of the hands.

He pulled open the door and stepped inside, accompanied by the tinkle of a small bell. A man emerged from a back room, dressed in an amber V-neck sweater with no shirt beneath and tan gabardine trousers that no longer held a crease. His limp, thinning hair was waxed into place atop his head. The Clockmaker, even from several paces away, could smell his offensive aftershave. He wondered whether the men of the Vatican knew their blessed religious articles were being dispensed by so reprehensible a creature.

“May I help you?”

“I’m looking for Signor Mondiani.”

He nodded, as if to say the Clockmaker had found the man he was looking for. A watery smile revealed the fact that he was missing several teeth. “You must be the gentleman from Vienna,” Mondiani said. “I recognize your voice.”

He held out his hand. It was spongy and damp, just as the Clockmaker had feared. Mondiani locked the front door and hung a sign in the window that said, in English and Italian, that the shop was now closed. Then he led the Clockmaker through a doorway and up a flight of rickety wooden stairs. At the top of the steps was a small office. The curtains were drawn, and the air was heavy with the scent of a woman’s perfume. And something else, sour and ammonialike. Mondiani gestured toward the couch. The Clockmaker looked down; an image flashed before his eyes. He remained standing. Mondiani shrugged his narrow shoulders—
As you wish.

The Italian sat down at his desk, straightened some papers, and smoothed his hair. It was dyed an unnatural shade of orange-black. The Clockmaker, balding with a salt-and-pepper fringe, seemed to be making him more self-conscious than he already was.

“Your colleague from Vienna said you required a weapon.” Mondiani pulled open a desk drawer, removed a dark item with a flat metallic finish, and laid it reverently on his coffee-stained desk blotter, as though it were a sacred relic. “I trust you’ll find this satisfactory.”

The Clockmaker held out his hand. Mondiani placed the weapon in his palm.

“As you can see, it’s a Glock nine-millimeter. I trust you’re familiar with the Glock. After all, it is an Austrian-made weapon.”

The Clockmaker raised his eyes from the weapon. “Has this been blessed by the Holy Father, like the rest of your inventory?”

Mondiani, judging from his dark expression, did not find the remark humorous. He reached into the open drawer once again and produced a box of ammunition.

“Do you require a second cartridge?”

The Clockmaker did not intend to get into a gunfight, but still, one always felt better with a loaded spare cartridge in one’s hip pocket. He nodded; a second appeared on the blotter.

The Clockmaker broke open the box of ammunition and began thumbing rounds into the cartridges. Mondiani asked whether he required a silencer. The Clockmaker, his gaze down, nodded in the affirmative.

“Unlike the weapon itself, this is not manufactured in Austria. It was made right here,” Mondiani said with excessive pride. “In Italy. It is very effective. The gun will emit little more than a whisper when fired.”

The Clockmaker held the silencer to his right eye and peered through the barrel. Satisfied with the craftsmanship, he placed it on the desk, next to the other things.

“Do you require anything else?”

The Clockmaker reminded Signor Mondiani that he had requested a motorbike.

“Ah yes, the
motorino,
” Mondiani said, holding a set of keys aloft. “It’s parked outside the shop. There are two helmets, just as you requested, different colors. I chose black and red. I hope that’s satisfactory.”

The Clockmaker glanced at his watch. Mondiani took the hint and moved things along. On a steno pad, with a chewed pencil, he prepared the invoice.

“The weapon is clean and untraceable,” he said, the pencil scratching across the paper. “I suggest you drop it into the Tiber when you’re finished. The Polizia di Stato will never find it there.”

“And the motorbike?”

“Stolen,” said Mondiani. “Leave it in a public place with the keys in the ignition—a busy piazza, for example. I’m sure that within a few minutes, it will find a new home.”

Mondiani circled the final figure and turned the pad around so the Clockmaker could see. It was in euros, thank God. The Clockmaker, despite the fact he was a businessman himself, had always loathed making transactions in lire.

“Rather steep, is it not, Signor Mondiani?”

Mondiani shrugged and treated the Clockmaker to another hideous smile. The Clockmaker picked up the silencer and screwed it carefully into the end of the barrel. “This charge here,” the Clockmaker said, tapping the steno pad with the forefinger of his free hand. “What is that for?”

“That is my brokerage fee.” Mondiani managed to say this with a completely straight face.

“You’ve charged me three times as much for the Glock as I would pay in Austria. That, Signor Mondiani, is your brokerage fee.”

Mondiani folded his arms defiantly. “It is the
Italian
way. Do you want your weapon or not?”

“Yes,” said the Clockmaker, “but at a reasonable price.”

“I’m afraid that’s the going rate in Rome at the moment.”

“For an Italian, or just for foreigners?”

“It might be better if you took your business elsewhere.” Mondiani held out his hand. It was trembling. “Give me the gun, please, and see yourself out.”

The Clockmaker sighed. Perhaps it was better this way. Signor Mondiani, despite the assurances of the man from Vienna, was hardly the type to inspire trust. The Clockmaker, in a swift movement, rammed a cartridge into the Glock and chambered the first round. Signor Mondiani’s hands came up defensively. The shots pierced his palms before striking his face. The Clockmaker, as he slipped out of the office, realized that Mondiani had been honest about at least one thing. The gun, when fired, emitted little more than a whisper.

H
E LET HIMSELF
out of the shop and locked the door behind him. It was nearly dark now; the dome of the Basilica had receded into the blackening sky. He inserted the key into the ignition of the motorbike and started the engine. A moment later he was speeding down the Via della Conciliazione toward the mud-colored walls of the Castel San Angelo. He sped across the Tiber, then made his way through the narrow streets of Centro Storico, until he came to the Via Giulia.

He parked outside the Cardinal Hotel, removed his helmet, and went into the lobby, then turned to the right and entered a small, catacomblike bar with walls fashioned of ancient Roman granite. He ordered a Coke from the bartender—he was confident he could accomplish this feat without betraying his Austrian-German accent—and carried the drink to a small table adjacent to the passageway between the lobby and the bar. To pass the time, he snacked on pistachio nuts and leafed through a stack of Italian newspapers.

At seven-thirty a man stepped out of the elevator: short dark hair, gray at the temples, very green eyes. He left his room key at the front desk and went into the street.

The Clockmaker finished his Coke, then went outside. He swung his leg over Signor Mondiani’s
motorino
and started the engine. The black helmet was hanging by its strap from the handlebars. The Clockmaker removed the red helmet from the rear storage compartment and put it on, then placed the black one into the compartment and closed the lid.

He looked up and watched the figure of the green-eyed man retreating steadily into the darkness of the Via Giulia. Then he pulled back on the throttle and eased slowly after him.