J. Jones - The Third Place

Montenuovo shook his head. ‘We can close a theater down, but an entire city?’

It was a statement that resonated with Werthen. He needed to get Berthe and Frieda out of Vienna until this was sorted out. Klavan was crazy enough to follow through with such a threat, he knew.

Gross spoke again, picking up the conversation from several statements before. ‘Not without impunity.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Prince Montenuovo looked at him as if he were wearing his hair backwards.

‘You said Klavan could carry out his threat with impunity. But that is not the case. We will stop him.’

Or die trying, Werthen thought.

‘I’m not going without you, and that’s final.’

‘Think of our daughter then.’

‘We don’t even know if he has the bacilli.’

‘Do you really want to wager against Klavan’s perfidy?’ Werthen asked.

She sighed at this, for she was witness to it herself when they were last confronted with the man.

‘And there is your father and his bride-to-be, as well as my parents.’

‘They should go back to Hohelande,’ Berthe said before she could stop herself. ‘I mean, it would be safer for them there.’

‘Yes, but who is going to tell them to go? They would only get suspicious and ask questions. The fewer people who know about this affair the better, or else panic will set in. There could be riots.’

She still kept her arms crossed stubbornly in front of her, the muscle in her jaw twitching.

‘Invite everyone for a nice house party in the country to celebrate Easter.’

‘My father, the Talmud scholar, celebrating Easter? None of us are Christians except for your parents, and that’s only on paper.’

‘Spring, then. Make it a vernal celebration. No one need be the wiser.’

‘I don’t like putting my tail between my legs.’

‘I am not asking for acrobatics, schatz , just a simple sojourn in the Vienna Woods.’

‘And don’t be so humorous. I’ll worry myself sick over you.’

The Emperor Franz Josef finished his solitary meal later that evening and went back to his Spartan quarters to continue work. So many petitioners, but he needed to read each request individually.

He wished he had the ear of his dear Katharina, but she was still upset about the matter of the missing letter. He’d never accused her, but she obviously felt guilty and so took out her feelings on him. There was no word from her about the little mix up the day before at the ceremonial washing of the feet. He was sure her spies let Katharina know about the attempt on his life. But not even that would break her silence. And he could use his silence broken now; just to hear the pleasant melody of her laughter.

Such a long life it has been, he thought. He felt indestructible in a certain way. After all, how can you kill someone half dead already? The tragedies of the last years had taken their toll: the death of his son and wife. That is how he always thought of those two tragedies: bound together as one death.

A knock at his door and he turned to face it as he said, ‘Enter.’

He was surprised to see Prince Montenuovo at his door, one of the emperor’s guard behind him.

‘Isn’t it rather late for you to be in attendance, Prince? There must be some theatrical performance, some dinner party which you would rather be attending.’

Then Franz Josef saw the solemn expression on the prince’s face. ‘There is something you need to know, Your Majesty.’

Montenuovo told Franz Josef all the details of this dire new threat to Vienna, and the emperor remained still throughout, as if listening to a bedtime story, a fantasy.

When Montenuovo finished, the emperor said, with almost a frisson of pride, ‘And all this just because the swine could not kill me? What a petty man he must be. Were I younger I would challenge him to a duel.’

The casual remark in the face of such grave danger would remain with Montenuovo for the rest of his life.

Saturday morning and still no word from Klavan.

Werthen and Gross, however, were not merely sitting and waiting for that psychopath to determine the rules of the game. After sending Berthe, Frieda and the in-laws off to the country (Frau Blatschky was due to visit her sister in Linz this weekend and so did not have to be convinced to leave Vienna), Werthen joined Gross at the Lower Belvedere for a war council.

The archduke had a grim look on his face. ‘The fool Montenuovo is fearful of causing concern in the populace. He refuses to put the army out in the streets to hunt for this animal. Well, I’m damned if I’ll be timid about this threat. I have a battalion of dragoons in my service and they will be scouring the city for Klavan.’

Werthen partly agreed with Montenuovo on this one, but said nothing. Troops questioning the public with a description as vague as the one they would have of Klavan were sure to raise suspicion and anxiety. But what else was there to do? Police had already notified all legitimate hotels, pensions and lodging houses in the capital. Klavan’s last known description – dressed in Trachten – was used with the caveat that he may have changed attire by now. And the only distinctive feature of the nondescript Klavan – his stiff little fingers – was being emphasized.

‘Do your men have a likely story?’ Gross asked Franz Ferdinand. ‘They are sure to arouse curiosity with their questioning.’

A flicker of smile crossed the archduke’s face. ‘As a matter of fact, they do. I instructed them to tell any curious citizen that the man was being sought in connection with selling our military secrets. Hardly far from the truth in light of Klavan’s activities the last time he visited Vienna.’

‘And sure to work up a patriotic fervor in the populace,’ Gross said. ‘Make them eager to help out. But not so eager that they might attack Klavan were they to see him, one hopes. Force him to actually use the vial of bacilli.’

Franz Ferdinand looked stunned. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ He shook his head. ‘But then one had to do something. It’s the infernal waiting that wears one down.’

Contingency plans were being arranged by Doktor Nothnagel and his colleagues at the General Hospital in the event that Klavan was not bluffing. Quarantine huts were being constructed in the grounds around the hospital, as they had been in the 1898 plague scare. This time, however, it was not a matter of a few huts, but of hundreds. Lord knows how they were going to explain those away when the public became aware of them, thought Werthen.

They all traveled together in one carriage. Berthe made it sound like a happy family get-together. They could all help out preparing the house in Laab im Walde for summer residency. She deeply loved the old farmstead they had purchased a few years earlier. From the seventeenth century, the farm was what was called a four-square: a house that was more like a fort built in a rectangle around a central courtyard. They had opened it up somewhat, putting in a series of high windows on the outer walls that gave onto the fields beyond and the grass tennis court Werthen’s father had arranged for.

Today, however, she approached the place with foreboding. Her family was not complete; Werthen’s absence was keenly felt. She tried to keep a gay facade so as not to make the others suspicious.

She had also felt like a coward abandoning Vienna and the Viennese in this time of danger. She felt as she imagined a captain might who abandons his ship, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves in cold Atlantic waters. She had contacted Erika, their legal secretary and friend, and told her cryptically that this might be a good weekend for a trip with her fiance, Herr Sonnenthal. But Erika said he was too busy trying to verify a rumor of another attempt on the emperor’s life. She had been about to tell Erika of the plague threat, but remembered her husband’s warning about not spreading the news and causing a panic that might be deadlier than even the bacilli. She had also placed a call to Frau Rosa Mayreder, and was happy to discover from her maid that Rosa and her husband had gone to an architectural conference in Paris. Should she tell the maid to leave town? Where would it ever stop? And what of young Franzl and his aunt and Frau Blau, the painter. Klimt, and a hundred more? There was no end to it; she could not warn her entire circle of friends and acquaintances, yet she still felt a coward for slipping away.