Armand Cabasson - Wolf Hunt

‘That’s speculation,’ objected Relmyer.

‘True. But we can state with certainty that he was not very patriotic during the ambush. He abandoned his men just after firing on you. Seeing the officer who had organised the ambush flee contributed to triggering the collapse of the Austrians. His action was solely personal, he couldn’t give a fig about that battle.’

And neither could you, Lukas, Margont added to himself.

Everyone had delivered the information they had gathered and conversation petered out. Their investigation was stalling again and still Luise had not arrived. The war had, though. Everywhere soldiers were strolling: Bavarians who felt more affinity with the French than the Prussians, whose desire to take over the whole Germanic world was growing; Saxon infantrymen who joked with the French dragoons who had sabred them a few years earlier at the Battle of lena; officers striding with determination, avid to bound to the top of the hierarchy; artillerymen who talked too loudly because their cannon had gradually rendered them deaf... Margont could not believe how much the army had changed since 1805. Between 1805 and 1809 was but a short time, yet 1805 seemed to belong to a whole different era. At the time of Auster-litz, the French army had been made up of volunteer troops and hardened combatants. Now the allies - Italians, Saxons, Wurttem-bergers, Hessians, Bavarians, Polish ... constituted an increasingly important part. And they had often previously been enemies. As for the number of French conscripts, they had become dangerously elevated in number. These soldiers, inexperienced and more or less motivated, replaced the veterans killed on the battlefield or mobilised for guerrilla warfare in Spain. The Empire depended on its army. Now Margont detected little fissures ... and this reawakened his fear of dying. That fear inhabited every soldier. You grew accustomed to it as best you could, but regularly, without warning, it overcame you. Margont reacted. He needed more life, immediately, even here!

‘Herr Ober! Coffee, cream and patisseries!’ he ordered.

‘And some schnapps!’ added Lefine.

The waiter brought them everything straight away, smiling to himself as he imagined the look on their faces when he presented them with the bill ...

Luise finally arrived, accompanied by the two hussars whom Relmyer had ordered to protect Luise in this city full of soldiers. She did not reply to their greetings and put a piece of paper on the table in the middle of the cups and the crumbs.

‘Here are the names of several people who maintain the register of effective Austrian soldiers. There are thirty-two of them.’

CHAPTER 23

THE days slipped by. Summer had succeeded spring, and the heat was becoming unbearable. The military climate, like a crystal goblet placed in the middle of the oven of these days of heat wave, was approaching the point at which it would explode into a titanic battle. Now Napoleon was spending his days reviewing his troops. By the same token he frequently inspected the bridges, worried that the Austrians might use their tactic of broken bridges that had been so successful at Essling. The bridges, impressive pieces of workmanship, were now all over the place, as though it had been necessary to build them ceaselessly in order to forget the constant collapse of the first ones. They linked the west bank of the Danube to the Isle of Lobau and to the neighbouring islands, and the islands to each other, weaving a sort of spiders web. Lampposts had even been installed on certain of the bridges, which were protected with landing stages on stilts upriver, fortifications loaded with cannon, troops, a flotilla of ten gunners and myriad little boats.

During this period Margont, Lefine, Relmyer, Pagin and Luise tried to find out a little more about the thirty-two suspects by questioning the reluctant Viennese prisoners. They hit so many obstacles that they gradually became discouraged. Relmyer was convinced that the assassin had tampered with the registers himself. So many names had been added that an accomplice would in the end have guessed what was going on, and who would agree to be associated with such ignominy? As a result, against Margont’s advice, he began to strike off the names of those who manifestly could not be the murderer. He treated them like suspects who had been cleared; he saw everything in black and white, with no grey areas. What’s more, if his hypothesis was not correct, there was a risk that their inquiry would fail, and Relmyer simply could not contemplate such a thing. He therefore persisted in hoping that one of the biographies and one of the descriptions tallied with what they knew about the assassin. And there was another problem. Their list of suspects was necessarily incomplete. Relmyer, knowing that, became more and more tense. The passage of time obsessed him, and at night he was on the verge of exasperation. According to him, no one was making progress fast enough. They met regularly in a cafe to review the situation, but even the cafe ambience no longer relieved their tension.

On 14 June, in Raab, Prince Eugene, won a great victory against Archduke John’s forces and his Hungarian reinforcements. On 24 June, he defeated the Austrians again, supported this time by the Croatians. So Prince Eugene found himself free to join Napoleon. A short time later, the first elements of his army could be seen arriving. Day after day Eugene’s divisions appeared. Each one was like a weight adding to Napoleon’s side of the scales, tipping the balance more and more in his favour.

On 30 June, everyone was once again seated round a table in a Viennese cafe. Luise revealed what she had learnt about the various names on the list, but whatever she was able to tell them, it was never enough to satisfy Relmyer.

‘In short, this Monsieur Liedel is married, has two children, brown hair and he lives in the Naglergasse,’ he said, starting to lose his temper. ‘Perfect. And so? We can’t go and see him because he serves in the Viennese Volunteer force and is stationed on the other side of the Danube. He might be our man but equally he might not. That’s the twelfth like that. They all work in the same ministry, they’re all in the same boat, and in any case no one wants to talk to us about them because we serve in the French army!’

‘Let’s search their homes for a portrait,’ proposed Lefine.

‘I’m not sure ...’ demurred Relmyer doubtfully.

Having your portrait painted was a costly habit of the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie: not everyone did it. There was also another, much more intractable problem.

‘If we act like that, I doubt well even get as far as the fifth house,’ warned Margont. ‘The inhabitants will complain about us, well be taken for looters, and shot. Perhaps with a little luck well only spend a few days in prison and well be released the day before the great battle ...’

I’d do it!’ Pagin defied him.

Relmyer thanked the young hussar with a tap on the shoulder. ‘Quentin is right. The confrontation is imminent, so the Emperor is being more respectful than ever to the Viennese.’

‘We’ll have to meet one of these men,’ repeated Margont for the nth time.

‘After all, they haven’t all joined the army or fled the capital,’ said Luise. ‘We must surely be able to lay our hands on one of them.’ Margont scanned the list. Relmyer had covered it with his minute, angry handwriting, adding information and ink stains.

‘Stop rereading the list endlessly!’ he exploded.

Margont’s forefinger indicated a name: Konrad Sowsky.

‘That one is crossed off!’ Relmyer declared angrily. ‘We’re not progressing fast enough: must you keep going back over the same things?’ As Margont’s forefinger was still indicating the man, he added: ‘That’s not our man, Sowsky is obese.’