Armand Cabasson - Wolf Hunt

‘No.’

‘It’s over,’ decreed Lefine. ‘The assassin beat us. He’s cleverer than us, or luck gave him all the best cards, a very fine hand. Now there’s only one thing we have to concentrate on: the battle to come. Let’s do our work, and try to come out of it alive with all our limbs intact. I’m quite happy to fight to the death as long as it’s not my death.’

‘But we haven’t lost yet!’

‘Apparently we’re lining up a hundred and ninety thousand men and six hundred cannon! And the Austrians, probably about a hundred and forty thousand and four hundred pieces of artillery. My source is reliable; it’s one of my friends who serves on the general staff. But where did they find those three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers? You’d think they bought them at auction. Bids for victory, please! I have a hundred thousand men for the Austrians, a hundred thousand! A hundred and twenty thousand for Napoleon, yes I did say a hundred and twenty thousand! A hundred and forty thousand for the Archduke! Come on, Monsieur

Napoleon, make an effort, damn you! A hundred and ninety thousand for the French? By thunder, he just doesn’t want to lose, the bugger! Have you ever seen two such enormous armies facing each other? How many will we be next time, ten million against ten million?’

‘It was all too perfect and that’s what’s wrong with it!' exclaimed Margont.

‘It’s all very well, numerical superiority, except that each time one of our regiments reaches Austrian soil, all the enemy divisions are going to converge their fire against it. The regiments will arrive one by one, in single file, so we will always find ourselves one against ten. That will mean a succession of little Battles of Essling. The Austrians will methodically crush us as we arrive. If the Emperor does not find a way of parrying their attack, we will all be massacred, even if there were to be a million of us!’

Margont stared at him long and hard.

‘What are you talking about, with your millions? Are you actually going to listen to me? The murderer was just putting us off his

trail with Teyhern. But it was too perfect, too well executed to be totally false. It’s in the word “too” that the solution lies. We have not stopped drawing closer to the assassin: we have discovered that the registers were tampered with, Relmyer forced him to show himself again, we know that he serves in the Viennese Volunteer regiment ... The false trail of Teyhern worked: Relmyer believed in it, so did I ... The man we’re looking for panicked after the setback of the ambush. He had very little time to put together the scheme that made us confuse him with Teyhern. Think about the difficulties he must have overcome to set up that scenario ... Our man had to prepare his crime rapidly because a large part of his time was taken up with the army. How could he have acted so quickly? He must have known Teyhern very well, he knew everything about him. What’s more, for him to leave us such a precious clue as his portrait must mean that he’s starting to lose his grip! We are so close to the real culprit! It’s as if we’re in the right street but we knocked at the wrong door. The assassin and Teyhern knew each other extremely well! We have to find out more about this

Teyhern.’

Lefine seized a stick and shook up the fire, which was cooking the soup rather slowly.

‘We have a hundred and forty thousand Austrians on one side and a murderer on the other, and you choose to worry about the murderer? We’ll see to it after the battle! I know, it’s possible that the man has locked up a young boy somewhere. But that’s only a hypothesis.’

‘I really believe it is a possibility. And that’s not all. We are very close to him, he has murdered his accomplice, the Austrian army is investigating the business of the falsified records ... For him, it’s the end: he has held out a long time, but his world of hypocrisies and of manipulations is beginning to crack at the seams. If we don’t name him, Relmyer will, or Luise, or the Austrian military authorities ... He’s going to flee, Fernand. He knows that someone is going to unmask him, it’s no longer a question of weeks; he knows it will happen in days. The battle is keeping us here, because there are so many patrols on the lookout for deserters. But,

as soon as he has the chance, he will leave the region, possibly Austria. We’re running out of time to catch him.’

Margont finally stopped pacing up and down; he had just taken a decision.

‘I’m going to see Luise. Only she can find out about Teyhern.’ ‘You’re joking! What about our orders? We are not allowed to leave our regiments. The imperial police don’t take it lightly when a battle is imminent.’

‘Jean-Quenin can scrawl me a note. He can pretend that I’ve come down with typhus and they’ll send me away in horror. I’ll leave straight away. I’ll be back before nightfall.’

Margont was too stubborn to allow anyone to change his mind. If the major wondered about his absence, Lefine, Saber and Pique-bois would come up with something. They were used to doing that.

CHAPTER 29

MARGONT made his way amongst the cohorts of regiments, crossing long convoys of artillery that blocked the roads, regiments that were behind schedule, recovered invalids looking for their battalions, impatient couriers ... In Vienna, he skirted round the large avenues, his horse splashing through the mud of the narrow streets, while the large thoroughfares rang to the sound of the hoofs of the squadrons.

Luise was watching the troop movements from her window. She was hoping to see Relmyer or Margont pass by, unlikely as that was, and she despaired at the size of the army that was about to be unleashed against her own side. She was dumbfounded when she saw Margont silhouetted against the garden gate. She hastened to go to open it for him, deaf to her mother’s protestations, and led him into a back room, while Margont apologised profusely.

‘How are you? Has your wound healed?’ she asked immediately.

‘Yes, I’m very well, completely recovered.’

‘And Lukas? Has he finally found Teyhern? Did he confess?’ Margont brought Luise up to date with everything that had happened. Her face clouded. Old sorrows resurfaced, mixing with her present worry.

‘This has been going on so long, and each time we think we’ve got him, he disappears again. Will it never be over? It’s as if we’re being tortured by a ghost.’

Margont was struck by that last word.

‘Luise, you’re going to have to find out as much as possible about Teyhern. He’s very close to the man we’re after, and knows him extremely well.’

‘I’ve already started. I knew that it might be useful to you. But it’s not easy ... Vienna is in turmoil ... Like our lives.’

‘We don’t have much time. I think our man will flee as soon as he has the chance ...’

Margont put the portrait of the culprit on a chest of drawers.

‘This picture is small, so easy to carry about with you. Show it whenever possible to the people you question.’

Luise studied the face, which she was seeing for the first time. He was smiling enigmatically. She had the impression he was laughing at them. When he had posed for the painting, had he considered the possibility that one day people trying to catch him for his crimes would look at this portrait? Was that the explanation for his ironic, scornful smile?

Luise turned away and looked Margont in the eye.

‘Your regiment and the 8th Hussars - will you be held in reserve or will you be first in line?’

‘Only the Emperor knows that.’

‘I forbid you to get yourselves killed, you and Lukas! I don’t care what you have to do to stay alive.’

Madame Mitterburg called through the door, asking if everything was all right. Luise replied briefly that it was. Suddenly a dam broke inside her and she felt frail, insignificant and derisory. It was perhaps the last time she would ever see Margont. In just a single day, the war could kill him and wipe out Lukas. So she might lose everything all over again! She had reproached Relmyer for reviving the past at the risk of committing the same errors, but now she was acting in exactly the same way by attaching herself to two people who might well be dead the next day.