seeks to make up for the crimes of the father.”
“Really?”
“Oh, very much. Jurgen Lenz is resented in some circles for being so
outspoken about these crimes. Even denouncing his own father. He is
known to feel deep shame about what his father did.” He looked at his
torte impatiently. “But unlike many children of the famous Nazis, he
does something about it. The Lenz Foundation is Austria’s leading
supporter of Holocaust studies, historical scholarship, libraries in
Israel… they fund anything that seeks to fight hate crimes, racism,
that sort of thing.” He returned to his pastry, wolfing it down as if
fearing it would be snatched away.
Lenz’s son was a leading anti-Nazi? Perhaps they had more in common
than he had supposed. “All right,” Ben said, gesturing to the waitress
for the check with the universal air-scrawl. “Thank you.”
“Anything else I can do for you?” the detective asked, brushing crumbs
off the lapels of his jacket.
Trevor Griffiths left his hotel, the Imperial, on the Ka’rntner Ring a
few blocks from the Opera. Not only was the Imperial the finest hotel
in Vienna, Trevor reflected, but it was famous as the headquarters of
the Nazis during the war, the location from which they governed the
city. He liked the hotel anyway.
It was a short stroll down Mariahilfer Strasse to a small bar on
Neubaugasse. The garish red neon sign flashed the bar’s name: broadway
CLUB. He sat in a booth at the back of the ill-lit basement room and
waited. In his bespoke gray worsted double-breasted suit, he looked
somewhat “out of place here, like a businessman, a high-level executive
perhaps, or a prosperous attorney.
The bar was choked with foul cigarette smoke. Trevor could not tolerate
it, hated the way his hair and clothes would stink afterward. He glanced
at his watch, an Audemars Piguet, top of the line, one of the few
indulgences he allowed himself. Expensive suits and watches and good
rough sex. What else was there, really, if you had no interest in food,
art, or music?
He was impatient. The Austrian contact was late, and Trevor could not
abide tardiness.
Finally, after almost half an hour, the Austrian showed up, a square,
hulking troglodyte named Otto. Otto slid into the booth and placed a
worn red felt bag in front of Trevor.
“You’re English, yes?”
Trevor nodded, zipped open the bag. It contained two large metal
pieces, a 9 mm Makarov, the barrel threaded for a silencer, and the
long, perforated sound-suppressor itself. “Ammo?” Trevor asked.
“Is in there,” Otto said. “Nine by eighteen. Lots.”
The Makarov was a good choice. Unlike the 9 mm Parabellum, it was
subsonic. “What’s the make?” Trevor asked. “Hungarian? Chinese?”
“Russian. But it’s good one.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand shillings.”
Trevor grimaced. He didn’t mind spending money, but he resented highway
robbery. He switched to German, so Otto, whose English was poor, would
miss nothing. “Der Markt 1st mit Makarovs iiberschwemmt.” The market’s
flooded with Makarovs.
Otto became suddenly alert.
“These things are a dime a dozen,” Trevor continued in German. “Everyone
makes them, they’re all over the place. I’ll give you a thousand
shillings, and you should count yourself lucky to get that.”
Respect entered Otto’s expression. “You’re German?” he asked, amazed.
Actually, if Otto were a perceptive listener, he’d have placed Trevor’s
German as coming from the Dresden region.
Trevor had not spoken German in quite a while; he’d had no opportunity
to do so. But it came back easily.
It was, after all, his native tongue.
Anna had dinner alone at a Mdvenpick restaurant a few blocks from her
hotel. There was nothing on the menu that interested her, and she
decided she was no connoisseur of Swiss cuisine.
Normally, she found dining alone in a foreign city depressing, but
tonight she was too absorbed in her thoughts to feel lonely. She was
seated by the window, in a long row of lone diners, most of them reading
newspapers or books.
At the American consulate, she used a secure fax line to transmit
everything she had on Hartman, including his credit cards, to the I.C.U
and had asked that the ID unit contact each of the credit-card companies
and activate an instant trace, so that they would be informed within
minutes whenever he used one of the cards.
She had also asked them to dig up whatever they could on Hartman
himself, and someone had called her back on the encrypted cell phone
less than an hour later.
They had struck gold.
According to Hartman’s office, he was on vacation in Switzerland, but
hadn’t checked in with the office in several days. They didn’t have his
travel itinerary; he hadn’t provided one. They had no way to contact
him.
But then the ID tech had learned something interesting; Hartman’s only
sibling, a twin brother, had died in a plane crash in Switzerland four
years earlier. Apparently he’d been on some Swiss-gold crusade before
his death. She didn’t know what to make of that except that it raised
all sorts of questions.
And Benjamin Hartman, the tech told her, was loaded. The company he
worked for, Hartman Capital Management, managed investment funds and had
been founded by Hartman’s father.
Who was a well-known philanthropist and a Holocaust survivor.
Possibilities suggested themselves. Poor little rich boy, son of a
survivor, gets it in his head that the Swiss bankers haven’t been doing
right by the Holocaust victims. Now his twin takes up the same crusade,
trying for some sort of misguided revenge on a Swiss banking bigwig. A
rich boy’s half-cocked vendetta.
Or maybe he was in it deeper working for whatever this Sigma outfit had
morphed into. For some unexplained reason.
Then the question was, where did he get the names and addresses of all
these old men in hiding?
And how was his brother’s death connected if at all?
At a little after nine o’clock in the evening she returned to the hotel
and was handed a message slip by the night manager. Thomas Schmid, the
homicide detective, had called.
She called him back immediately from the room. He was still in his
office.
“We have some of the autopsy results back,” he said. “On that poison
you asked the toxicology people to screen for?”
“Yes?”
“They found that neurotoxin in the ocular fluid, a positive match.
Rossignol was indeed poisoned.”
Anna sat down in the chair beside the phone. Progress. She felt the
pleasant tingle she always had when there was a breakthrough. “Did they
find an injection mark on the body?”
“Not as yet, but they say it’s very difficult to find tiny marks like
that. They say they will keep looking.”
“When was he killed?”
“Apparently this morning, shortly before we got there.”
“That means Hartman may still be in Zurich. Are you on top of that?”
A pause, then Schmid said coldly, “I am on top of that.”
“Any news on the bank records?”
“The banks will cooperate, but they take their time. They also have
their procedures.”
“Of course.”
“We should have Rossignol’s bank records by tomorrow ”
On her end of the line a beep interrupted Schmid. “One second, I think
I’ve got another call coming in.” She pressed the “flash” button. The
hotel operator told her it was a call from her office in Washington.
“Miss Navarro, this is Robert Polozzi in ID.”
“Thanks for calling. Turn up anything?”
“MasterCard security just called. Hartman used his card a few minutes
ago. He made a charge at a restaurant in Vienna.”
Kent, England
At his country estate in Westerham, Kent, Sir Edward Downey, the retired
Prime Minister of England, was in the middle of a game of chess in the
rose garden with his grandson when the telephone rang.
“Not again,” eight-year-old Christopher groaned.
“Hold your horses, young man,” Sir Edward snapped good-naturedly.
“Sir Edward, it’s Mr. Holland,” the voice said.
“Mr. Holland, is everything all right?” Sir Edward asked, suddenly
concerned. “Our meeting is still going ahead as scheduled?”
“Oh, without a doubt. But a minor matter has come up and I wondered
whether you might be able to help.”
As he listened, Sir Edward gave his grandson a menacing scowl, at which
Christopher giggled, as he always did. “Well, Mr. Holland, let me make
a few calls and see what I can do.”
Vienna
Jurgen Lenz’s house was in an exclusive, densely wooded district in the
southwest part of Vienna called Hietzing: an enclave of some of Vienna’s
wealthiest residents. Lenz’s house, or, more properly, his villa, was
large, modern, an intriguing and handsome mix of Tyrolean architecture
and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The element of surprise, Ben thought. / need it when I confront Lenz.
In part, it was a question of survival. He didn’t want Peter’s
murderers to discover he was in Vienna, and, despite the seed of doubt
that Hoff man had planted, the likeliest assumption was that Lenz was
one of them.