Daniel Silva - A Death in Vienna

“Only that my worst fears about Vienna turned out to be true. Why don’t you tell me the rest?”

Which he did, beginning with his flight from Vienna and concluding with the information he had picked up earlier that night from Shimon Pazner.

“So who sent that man to Rome to kill you?”

“I think it’s safe to assume it was the same person who engineered the murder of Max Klein.”

“How did they find you here?”

Gabriel had been asking himself that same question. His suspicions fell upon the rosy-cheeked Austrian rector of the Anima, Bishop Theodor Drexler.

“So where are we going next?” Chiara asked.

“We?”

“Shamron told me to watch your back. You want me to disobey a direct order from the Memuneh?”

“He told you to watch me in Rome.”

“It was an open-ended assignment,” she replied, her tone defiant.

Gabriel lay there for a moment, stroking her hair. Truth was, he could use a traveling companion and a second pair of eyes in the field. Given the obvious risks involved, he would have preferred someone other than the woman he loved. But then, she had proven herself a valuable partner.

There was a secure telephone on the bedside table. He dialed Jerusalem and woke Moshe Rivlin from a heavy sleep. Rivlin gave him the name of a man in Buenos Aires, along with a telephone number and an address in the barrio San Telmo. Then Gabriel called Aerolineas Argentinas and booked two business-class seats on a flight the following evening. He hung up the receiver. Chiara rested her cheek against his chest.

“You were shouting something back there in that alley when you were running toward me,” she said. “Do you remember what you were saying?”

He couldn’t. It was as if he had awakened unable to recall the dreams that disturbed his sleep.

“You were calling out to her,” Chiara said.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

He remembered the image that had flashed before his eyes during that mind-bending flight from the man on the motorino. He supposed it was indeed possible he had been calling out to his mother. Since reading her testimony he had been thinking of little else.

“Are you sure it was Erich Radek who murdered those poor girls in Poland?”

“As sure as onecan be sixty years after the fact.”

“And if Ludwig Vogel is actually Erich Radek?”

Gabriel reached up and switched off the lamp.

THE VIA DELLA Pace was deserted. The Clockmaker stopped at the gates of the Anima and shut down the engine of the motorino. He reached out, his hand trembling, and pressed the button of the intercom. There was no reply. He rang the bell again. This time an adolescent voice greeted him in Italian. The Clockmaker, in German, asked to see the rector.

“I’m afraid it’s not possible. Please telephone in the morning to make an appointment, and Bishop Drexler will be happy to see you. Buonanotte, signore.”

The Clockmaker leaned hard on the intercom button. “I was told to come here by a friend of the bishop’s from Vienna. It’s an emergency.”

“What was the man’s name?”

The Clockmaker answered the question truthfully.

A silence, then: “I’ll be down in a moment, signore.”

The Clockmaker opened his jacket and examined the puckered wound just below his right clavicle. The heat of the round had cauterized the vessels near the skin. There was little blood, just an intense throbbing and the chills of shock and fever. A small-caliber weapon, he guessed, most likely a.22. Not the kind of weapon to inflict serious internal damage. Still, he needed a doctor to remove the round and thoroughly clean the wound before sepsis set in.

He looked up. A cassocked figure appeared in the forecourt and warily approached the gate-a novice, a boy of perhaps fifteen, with the face of an angel. “The rector says it is not convenient for you to come to the seminary at this time,” the novice said. “The rector suggests that you find somewhere else to go tonight.”

The Clockmaker drew his Glock and pointed it at the angelic face.

“Open the gate,” he whispered. “Now.”

“YES, BUT WHY did you have to send him here?” The bishop’s voice rose suddenly, as if he were warning a congregation of souls about the dangers of sin. “It would be better for all involved if he left Rome immediately.”

“He can’t travel, Theodor. He needs a doctor and a place to rest.”

“I can see that.” His eyes settled briefly on the figure seated on the opposite side of his desk, the man with salt-and-pepper hair and the heavy shoulders of a circus strongman. “But you must realize that you’re placing the Anima in a terribly compromising position.”

“The position of the Anima will look much worse if our friend Professor Rubenstein is successful.”

The Bishop sighed heavily. “He can remain here for twenty-four hours, not a minute more.”

“And you’ll find him a doctor? Someone discreet?”

“I know just the fellow. He helped me a couple of years ago when one of the boys got into a bit of a scrape with a Roman tough. I’m sure I can count on his discretion in this matter, though a bullet wound is hardly an everyday occurrence at a seminary.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to explain it. You have a very nimble mind, Theodor. May I speak with him a moment?”

The bishop held out the receiver. The Clockmaker grasped it with a bloodstained hand. Then he looked up at the prelate and, with a sideways nod of his head, sent him fleeing from his own office. The assassin brought the telephone to his ear. The man from Vienna asked what had gone wrong.

“You didn’t tell me the target was under protection. That’s what went wrong.”

The Clockmaker then described the sudden appearance of the second person on a motorcycle. There was a moment of silence on the line, then the man from Vienna spoke in a confessional tone.

“In my rush to dispatch you to Rome, I neglected to relay an important piece of information about the target. In retrospect, that was a miscalculation on my part.”

“An important piece of information? And what might that be?”

The man from Vienna acknowledged that the target was once connected to Israeli intelligence. “Judging from the events tonight in Rome,” he said, “those connections remain as strong as ever.”

For the love of God, thought the Clockmaker. An Israeli agent? It was no minor detail. He had a good mind to return to Vienna and leave the old man to deal with the mess himself. He decided instead to turn the situation to his own financial advantage. But there was something else. Never before had he failed to execute the terms of a contract. It wasn’t just a question of professional pride and reputation. He simply didn’t think it was wise to leave a potential enemy lying about, especially an enemy connected with an intelligence service as ruthless as Israel ’s. His shoulder began to throb. He looked forward to putting a bullet into that stinking Jew. And his friend.

“My price for this assignment just went up,” the Clockmaker said. “Substantially.”

“I expected that,” replied the man from Vienna. “I will double the fee.”

“Triple,” countered the Clockmaker, and after a moment’s hesitation, the man from Vienna consented.

“But can you locate him again?”

“We hold one significant advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“We know the trail he’s following, and we know where he’s going next. Bishop Drexler will see that you get the necessary treatment for your wound. In the meantime, get some rest. I’m quite confident you’ll be hearing from me again shortly.”

ALFONSO RAMIREZ SHOULD have been dead long ago. He was, without a doubt, one of the most courageous men in Argentina and all of Latin America. A crusading journalist and writer, he had made it his life’s work to chip away at the walls surrounding Argentina and its murderous past. Considered too controversial and dangerous to be employed by Argentine publications, he published most of his work in the United States and Europe. Few Argentines, beyond the political and financial elite, ever read a word Ramirez wrote.