J. Jones - The Third Place

He had a more limited goal. He wanted to destroy one small faction of the city; he would strike off the head of the snake. He tensed his hand in excitement at this thought, stopping just as it began to apply pressure on the rubber ball in his pocket. Klavan let out a barking laugh at his near accidental suicide. A young woman bundled in furs and wool scurried past at that moment and cast him a suspicious glance. He winked at her seductively and this sent her bustling along at increased speed.

He stopped outside the massive wrought-iron gates, looking at the rather pleasant classical facade – two wings jutting out from a central hall. The steep roofs were coated in snow; the bare trees of the first courtyard were still powdered white; the Habsburg eagle surmounted the third-story balustrade. Office 3G was in the rear of the third story of the left-hand wing.

He put his hand to the gate and pushed it open.

He had his story arranged, rehearsing it once more as he walked toward the main entrance past the statue of Hygieia, the goddess of health. At least he assumed that was who it was, with a snake wrapped around her arm and feeding from a bowl she held.

Symbols. Klavan hated symbols. Hygieia was the daughter of Aesculapius, god of medicine, whose own symbol was a snake curled around a rod. Snakes shed their skin, so the ancients took them as symbols of regeneration. Aesculapius’s daughter kept the healing snake and added a bowl, the symbol of pharmacy. Another example of the useless information pumped into his brain during his all too brief stay at the music academy in St Petersburg.

That’s why I hate symbols, Klavan told himself as he passed by the scantily clad statue. Too cerebral. Klavan much preferred action.

There would be plenty of that soon.

A sign at the main doors let visitors know that the Josefinium Collection of Anatomy and Pathology was open only on Saturday mornings and to men only. The 1200 wax figures, produced in Florence and painstakingly shipped from there, would not be allowed to corrupt the tender sensibilities of Viennese ladies.

It was the left wing that was Klavan’s destination. Here was one of the finest medical libraries in Europe, taking up two floors of that wing.

He let himself in the main door and headed to the left. Today he was Professor Doktor Wilhelm Schieff of Hamburg come to do research otolaryngology, a Viennese specialty. The young man seated at the registration desk leading to the library took the identity papers Klavan offered him and which, together with several other false identities, he had stored in a rental locker at the central station in Brussels. Like the suicide bomb he wore, such papers were Klavan’s insurance in an insecure world. In an emergency he could find other identities as well.

The young bureaucrat looked carefully at the papers. Klavan was unconcerned: they had been produced by the Office of Documents at his former employers, the Russian Military Intelligence. But the young man was hardly looking for forgeries; who would go to such lengths to be allowed in the medical library?

No. Klavan figured this was merely his way of appearing important, of making his shit work appear vital to the country.

Klavan made out the pulsing artery in his throat he would cut were this a true ‘situation’.

That was what his trainer, Kolinsky, called a life-and-death confrontation. ‘You have a situation, you need to know already where to strike your adversary. Determining that once the situation begins can mean defeat.’

Which meant death, of course, only Kolinsky liked to deal in polite evasions and euphemisms.

‘Any person you see or meet, first thing is the examination for weak spots where you can strike. You don’t care what he does for a living,’ Kolinsky preached, ‘you don’t care if he is married or parts his hair on the right. You want to know his dominant hand, you want to judge his reach, look at his face for scars of other battles, see how he plants his feet. If you want to stay alive, you know these things before you ever shake his hand.’

The registrar handed back his identity papers and without speaking gestured Klavan to the door of the reading room. Klavan left his heavy coat at the cloakroom and then, entering the library, he found a large space, well lit with floor-to-ceiling windows. Several large tables were in the center of the parquet floor with chairs. He found free space at a more private table at the edge of the room by a window. He put down the brown pig leather briefcase on the tabletop to reserve his place and went to the card catalogue. He had bought the case today on the walk along the Ring especially for this visit. He had also purchased a number of pocket handkerchiefs and stored them in the back along with a notebook and pen. He opened the case and took out the pad and pen along with one of the handkerchiefs, which he’d shoved into his front pants pocket. He would need that later for padding.

Klavan checked the card catalogue industriously for several minutes, filled out five request cards and handed them to a white-coated attendant who would fetch the books from the shelves. He watched as the attendant went out of the room and headed for the stairs at the rear of this wing.

Klavan took up his place again at the table by the window, opening his empty notebook as if looking at notes. Five minutes later the attendant returned with four heavy tomes on the principles of otolaryngology and individual aspects of throat diseases.

‘Sorry, sir, but Treatise on Nasal Fungal Aspects is currently at the bindery being repaired.’

Klavan made a great show of being annoyed by this information before waving the attendant away. He spread out the books on the table in front of him and began a careful inspection – not of their contents, but of the plan now hatching in his mind.

He knew now that the books were stored on the second floor and that white-coated attendants seemed to have easy access to that territory. He checked the clock on the wall next to the portrait of Joseph II. It was still twenty minutes until the sacred Viennese lunchtime. The library would close for ninety minutes, according to the listing on the front door. And that would give him his chance.

At ten minutes to noon, he packed his briefcase, placing it on one of the chairs, and left the books on the desk.

‘I assume I can leave the books for later,’ he said to another attendant, and the man nodded.

‘They’ll be here when you return from lunch sir. Mahlzeit ,’ he added in that annoying salutation the Viennese employed at times of eating, a much-diminished form of bon appetit .

Klavan gritted his teeth as he returned the greeting. ‘And where might I find the washrooms?’

The attendant went out into the main rotunda and directed him to a set of doors just beyond those leading up to the stored books.

‘But best to hurry, sir. Wouldn’t want to get locked in and miss your lunch.’

‘Most certainly,’ Klavan agreed, but that was exactly what he did want.

There was no one in the washroom. He took up position in an empty stall in case one of the attendants was the overly conscientious sort. As the minutes ticked away, he discovered this had been a wise move, as someone called into the washroom at noon to announce the mealtime closing. He heard the door close slowly behind this herald, but was in no hurry to come down from his perch, sitting in a squat on the toilet seat so that his feet would not show under the stall door. He gave it another five minutes before getting down from the toilet and proceeding cautiously to the door of the washroom. He put his ear to the white enameled door but could near nothing from the outside. To be safe, he gave it another five minutes, then slowly opened the washroom door, peering out toward the entrance. The hallway was empty; no sign of assistants or the registrar by the library. He quickly made his way to the door across the hall leading up to the second floor, through which he had earlier seen one of the assistants disappear. He was in luck, for this door opened to a sort of landing before the stairs; on hooks next to the door hung several of the white coats the assistants wore. Perhaps this was where they divested themselves of their uniform before heading off to lunch.