aristocracy, descendants of the original Portuguese settlers who had
been in the country for at least four hundred years. They were the land
barons, the owners of paper mills and newspapers and publishing houses
and playing-card factories, the hotel magnates–the richest of the rich,
as the long line of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces parked in front of the
clubhouse attested.
Tonight many of them had turned out, resplendent in white tie and tails,
to celebrate the wedding of the daughter of one of Brazil’s plutocrats,
Doutor Otavio Carvalho Pinto. His daughter, Fernanda, was marrying into
an equally illustrious family, the Alcantara Ma chados.
One of the guests was a dignified, white-haired man of almost ninety.
Although he was not one of the quatrocentoes–he was in fact a native of
Lisbon who had immigrated to Sao Paulo in the fifties–he was an
enormously wealthy banker and landowner, and he had been for decades a
business partner and friend of the bride’s father.
The old man’s name was Jorge Ramago, and he sat watching the couples
dance, his noisettes de veau Perigourdine untouched. One of the
waitresses, a dark-haired young woman, tentatively approached the old
man and said in Portuguese, “Senor Ramago, there is a telephone call for
you.”
Ramago turned slowly to look at her. “Telephone?”
“Yes, serior, they say it is urgent. From your home. Your wife.”
Ramago at once looked worried. “Where?–where?–” he faltered.
“This way, sir,” the waitress said, and she gently helped him to his
feet. They walked slowly across the banquet room, for the old Lisboner
was afflicted with rheumatism, though he was otherwise in excellent
health.
Outside the banquet room, the waitress guided Ramago to an antique
wooden telephone booth and assisted him into it, solicitously smoothing
his rumpled dinner jacket.
Just as Ramago reached for the telephone, he felt a sharp pinprick in
his upper thigh. He gasped, looked around, but the waitress was gone.
The pain quickly subsided, though, and he put the handset up to his ear
and listened. But all he could hear was the dial tone.
“There is no one on the line,” Ramago managed to say to no one just
before he lost consciousness.
A minute or so later, one of the waiters noticed the old man passed out
in the telephone booth. Alarmed, he called out for help.
The Austrian Alps
Patient Eighteen was awakened at midnight.
One of the nurses gently applied a tourniquet to his upper arm and began
to draw blood.
“What the hell is this?” he groaned.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the nurse said. Her English was heavily accented. “We
are required to take venous blood samples every four hours from midnight
on, throughout the day.”
“Good God, for what?”
“It is to measure the levels of your serum Epo–erythropoietin.”
“I didn’t know I had any.” All this medical stuff was unsettling, but
he knew there was much more to come.
“Please, go back to sleep, sir. You have a long day ahead of you.”
Breakfast was served in a lavish banquet room with the others. There
was a buffet overflowing with fresh fruits, freshly baked biscuits and
rolls, breakfast sausages, eggs, bacon, and ham.
When Patient Eighteen finished, he was escorted to an examination room
in another wing.
There, another nurse gingerly cut into the skin of the inner part of his
upper arm with a small scalpel.
He moaned.
“I’m sorry if I caused you pain,” the nurse said.
“My entire damned body’s one big pain. What’s this for?”
“A skin biopsy to examine the elastic fibers in the reticular dermis,”
she replied, applying a bandage.
In the background, two white-coated physicians were quietly conferring
in German. Patient Eighteen understood every word.
“His brain function is somewhat impaired,” the short, rotund one said,
“but nothing you wouldn’t expect in a man of his age. No sign of senile
dementia or Alzheimer’s.”
A tall, thin, gray-faced man said, “What about cardiac muscle mass?”
“Acceptable. But we measured the blood pressure at the posterior tibial
artery, this time using Doppler ultrasonography, and we did find some
peripheral arterial disease.”
“So his blood pressure is elevated.”
“Somewhat, but we expected that.”
“Have you counted the number of pitted blood cells?”
“I believe that’s being done in the lab right now.”
“Good. I think this one is a good candidate. I suggest we accelerate
the tests.”
A good candidate, Patient Eighteen thought. So it would happen after
all. He turned to the conferring doctors behind and smiled widely at
them, feigning gratitude.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
Vienna
The private investigator was almost half an hour late. Ben sat in the
spacious lobby of his hotel just off the Karntner Strasse, his melange
untouched, waiting for the detective whose name he had plucked from the
yellow pages.
He knew there were far better ways to find the name of a PI than the
Vienna telephone book–such as calling one of his several business
contacts here and asking for a recommendation. But his instincts told
him to avoid anyone he knew right now if he could possibly help it.
He’d gotten on the first train, showed up unannounced at a small hotel,
and been lucky enough to get a room, registering under the name Robert
Simon, one of his brother’s aliases. He was asked for his passport, and
held his breath as it was inspected, but it obviously looked in order,
plausibly battered and stamped, as if from a few years’ use.
The first thing he’d done was to look through the Vienna phone book for
an investigator who seemed, from his advertisement anyway, reputable.
Several were located in the first district, the heart of the city where
Ben’s hotel was; one in particular advertised his services in locating
long lost relatives. Ben had hired him over the phone, asking him to
run a background check on an Austrian citizen.
Now he was beginning to wonder whether the PI was going to show at all.
Then a portly man of about forty plopped himself into the chair across
the low table from Ben. “You are Mr. Simon?” He set down a battered
leather portfolio on the table.
“That’s me.”
“Hans Hoffman,” the PI said. “You have the money?”
“Nice to meet you too,” Ben said sardonically. He took out his wallet,
counted out four hundred dollars, and slid it across the table.
Hoffman stared at it for a moment.
“Something wrong?” Ben asked. “You prefer Austrian shillings? Sorry, I
haven’t gone to a bank yet.”
“There was an additional expense involved,” the detective said.
“Oh really?”
“A courtesy payment to an old buddy of mine in the HNA, the Heeres
Nachrichtenamt–Austrian military intelligence.”
“Translation, a bribe,” Ben said.
Hoffman shrugged.
“I don’t imagine this buddy of yours gave you a receipt?”
Hoffman sighed. “This is how we do things here. You can’t get the sort
of information you’re looking for without exploring various channels.
This friend will have to use his military intelligence ID card to get
information. It will be another two hundred dollars. The number–it
was unlisted, by the way–and address I can get you now.”
Ben counted it out; it was the end of his cash.
The detective counted the bills. “I don’t know why you wanted this
person’s number and address, but you must be involved in some
interesting business.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your man is a very important figure in Vienna.” He signaled for the
waitress; when she came, he ordered a melange and a Maximilian torte.
From his briefcase he removed a laptop computer, snapped it open, and
turned it on. “The very latest in biometrics,” he said proudly.
“Fingertip sensor. Uses my fingerprint as a password. Without it, the
computer’s locked. No one does these things like the Germans.”
The detective tapped at the keys for a few seconds, then turned it
around to face Ben. The screen was blank except for the name and
address of Jorgen Lenz.
“You know him?” Hoffman said, turning the laptop back toward himself.
“He is an acquaintance of yours?”
“Not exactly. Tell me about him.”
“Ah, well, Dr. Lenz is one of the wealthiest men in Vienna, a leading
philanthropist and patron of the arts. His family foundation builds
medical clinics for the poor. He’s also on the board of the Vienna
Philharmonic.”
The waitress set down a coffee and pastry in front of Hoffman. The
detective lunged for them before the waitress had even turned to leave.
“What kind of doctor is Dr. Lenz?”
“A medical doctor, but he gave up his practice years ago.”
“How old?”
“In his fifties, I would say.”
“Medicine must be something of a family tradition.”
Hoffman laughed. “You’re remembering his father, Gerhard Lenz. An
interesting case. Our country is perhaps not the most progressive, in
some ways. My compatriots would prefer to forget any such
unpleasantness. It’s the Austrian way: as the saving goes, we’ve
convinced ourselves that Beethoven was an Austrian, and Hitler was a
German. But Jorgen is cut from a different cloth. This is a son who