Daniel Silva GABRIEL ALLON Novels 1-4 (141 page)

The caretaker came to his side. They looked at each other. She nodded. Gabriel seized the latch with both hands and drove his shoulder into the door. The wood splintered, and he stumbled into the bedroom.

Here, as in the sitting room, the curtains were drawn. Gabriel ran his hand along the wall, groping in the gloom until he found a switch. A small bedside lamp threw a cone of light on the figure lying on the bed.

The caretaker gasped.

Gabriel eased forward. Max Klein’s head was covered by a clear plastic bag, and a gold-braided cord was wrapped around his neck. His eyes stared at Gabriel through the fogged plastic.

“I’ll call the police,” the caretaker said.

Gabriel sat at the end of the bed and buried his face in his hands.

IT TOOK TWENTY minutes for the first police to arrive. Their apathetic manner suggested an assumption of suicide. In a way this was fortunate for Gabriel, because suspicion of foul play would have significantly altered the nature of the encounter. He was interviewed twice, once by the uniformed officers who had first responded to the call, then again by a Staatspolizei detective called Greiner. Gabriel said his name was Gideon Argov and that he worked for the Jerusalem office of Wartime Claims and Inquiries. That he had come to Vienna after the bombing to be with his friend Eli Lavon. That Max Klein was an old friend of his father, and that his father suggested he look up Klein and see how the old man was getting on. He didn’t mention his meeting with Klein two nights earlier, nor did he inform the police of Klein’s suspicions about Ludwig Vogel. His passport was examined, as was his business card. Telephone numbers were written in small black notebooks. Condolences were offered. The caretaker made tea. It was all very polite.

Shortly after noon, a pair of ambulance attendants came to collect the body. The detective handed Gabriel a card and told him he was free to leave. Gabriel went out into the street and walked around the corner. In a shadowed alleyway, he leaned against the sooty bricks and closed his eyes. A suicide? No, the man who had survived the horrors of Auschwitz had not committed suicide. He had been murdered, and Gabriel couldn’t help but feel that he was partly to blame. He’d been a fool to leave Klein unprotected.

He started back toward his hotel. The images of the case played out in his mind like fragments of an unfinished painting: Eli Lavon in his hospital bed, Ludwig Vogel in the Café Central, the Staatspolizei man in the Salzkammergut, Max Klein lying dead with a plastic bag over his head. Each incident was like another weight being added to the pan of a scale. The balance was about to tip, and Gabriel suspected he would be the next victim. It was time to leave Austria while he still could.

He entered his hotel and asked the desk clerk to prepare his bill, then walked upstairs to his room. His door, despite the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the latch, was ajar, and he could hear voices emanating from inside. He eased it open with his fingertips. Two men in plainclothes were in the process of lifting the mattress off the box spring. A third, clearly their superior, was sitting at the desk watching the proceedings like a bored fan at a sporting contest. Seeing Gabriel standing at the door, he stood slowly and put his hands on his hips. The last weight had just been added to the pan.

“Good afternoon, Allon,” said Manfred Kruz.

11

VIENNA

“I
F YOU’RE CONSIDERING the possibility of escape, you’ll find all the exits blocked and a very large man at the bottom of the stairs who’ll relish the opportunity to subdue you.” Kruz’s body was turned slightly. He gazed at Gabriel, fencerlike, over one shoulder and held up his palm in a placatory gesture. “There’s no need for this to get out of hand. Come inside and close the door.”

His voice was the same, underpowered and unnaturally calm, an undertaker helping a grieving relative to select a casket. He had aged in thirteen years—there were a few more wrinkles around his cunning mouth and a few more pounds on his slender frame—and, based on his well-cut clothing and arrogant demeanor, he had been promoted. Gabriel kept his gaze focused on Kruz’s dark eyes. He could feel the presence of another man at his back. He stepped across the threshold and swung the door shut behind him. He heard a heavy thud, then a curse muttered in German. Kruz held up a palm again. This time it was a command for Gabriel to stop.

“Are you armed?”

Gabriel shook his head wearily.

“Do you mind if I put my mind at ease?” Kruz asked. “You do have something of a reputation.”

Gabriel raised his hands above his shoulders. The officer who’d been behind him in the hall entered the room and conducted the search. It was professional and very thorough, starting with the neck and ending with the ankles. Kruz seemed disappointed by the results.

“Remove your coat and empty your pockets.”

Gabriel hesitated and was spurred on with a painful jab to the kidney. He unzipped his coat and handed it to Kruz, who searched the pockets and felt the lining for a false compartment.

“Turn out the pockets of your trousers.”

Gabriel complied. The result was a few coins and the stub of a streetcar ticket. Kruz looked at the two officers holding the mattress and ordered them to reassemble the bed. “Mr. Allon is a professional,” he said. “We’re not going to find anything.”

The officers plopped the mattress back onto the box spring. Kruz, with a wave of his hand, told them to leave the room. He sat down again at the desk and pointed toward the bed.

“Make yourself comfortable.”

Gabriel remained standing.

“How long have you been in Vienna?”

“You tell me.”

Kruz acknowledged the professional compliment with a terse smile. “You arrived on a flight from Ben-Gurion Airport the night before last. After checking into this hotel, you proceeded to Vienna General Hospital, where you spent several hours with your friend Eli Lavon.”

Kruz fell silent. Gabriel wondered how much else Kruz knew about his activities in Vienna. Did he know about the meetings with Max Klein and Renate Hoffmann? His encounter with Ludwig Vogel at the Café Central and his excursion to Salzkammergut? Kruz, if he did know more, was unlikely to say. He was not the kind to tip his hand for no reason. Gabriel imagined him a cold and emotionless gambler.

“Why didn’t you arrest me earlier?”

“I haven’t arrested you now.” Kruz lit a cigarette. “We were prepared to overlook your violation of our agreement because we assumed you’d come to Vienna to be at the side of your injured friend. But it quickly became apparent that you intended to conduct a private investigation of the bombing. For obvious reasons, I cannot allow that.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed, “for obvious reasons.”

Kruz spent a moment contemplating the smoke rising from the ember of his cigarette. “We had an agreement, Mr. Allon. Under no circumstances were you to return to this country. You’re not welcome here. You’re not supposed to be here. I don’t care if you’re upset about your friend Eli Lavon. This is our investigation, and we don’t need any help from you or your service.”

Kruz looked at his watch. “There’s an El Al flight leaving in three hours. You’re going to be on it. I’ll keep you company while you pack your bags.”

Gabriel looked around at his clothing strewn across the floor. He lifted the lid of his suitcase and saw that the lining had been cut away. Kruz shrugged his shoulders—
What did you expect?
Gabriel bent down and started picking up his belongings. Kruz looked out the French doors and smoked.

After a moment, Kruz asked, “Is she still alive?”

Gabriel turned slowly around and fixed his gaze on Kruz’s small, dark eyes. “Are you referring to my wife?”

“Yes.”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Don’t speak about my wife, Kruz.”

Kruz smiled humorlessly. “You’re not going to start making threats again, are you, Allon? I might be tempted to take you into custody for a more thorough questioning about your activities here.”

Gabriel said nothing.

Kruz crushed out his cigarette. “Pack your bags, Allon. You don’t want to miss your plane.”

PART TWO

The Hall of Names

12

JERUSALEM

T
HE LIGHTS OF Ben-Gurion Airport pricked the darkness of the Coastal Plain. Gabriel leaned his head against the window and watched the runway rising slowly to meet him. The tarmac shone like glass in the night rain. As the plane slowed to a stop, Gabriel spotted the man from King Saul Boulevard, sheltering beneath an umbrella at the foot of the stairs. He made certain he was the last passenger to leave the plane.

They entered the terminal through a special doorway used by senior government officials and visiting dignitaries. The man from headquarters was a disciple of Lev, corporate and high-tech, with a boardroom bearing and a belief that men of the field were simply blunt objects to be manipulated by higher beings. Gabriel walked one step ahead of him.

“The boss wants to see you.”

“I’m sure he does, but I haven’t slept in two days, and I’m tired.”

“The boss doesn’t care if you’re tired. Who the hell do you think you are, Allon?”

Gabriel, even in the sanctuary of Ben-Gurion Airport, did not appreciate the use of his real name. He wheeled around. The headquarters man held up his palms in surrender. Gabriel turned and kept walking. The headquarters man had the good sense not to follow.

Outside, rain was hammering against the pavement. Lev’s doing, no doubt. Gabriel sought shelter beneath the taxi stand and thought about where to go. He had no residence in Israel; the Office was his only home. Usually he stayed at a safe flat or Shamron’s villa in Tiberias.

A black Peugeot turned into the traffic circle. The weight of the armor made it ride low on the heavy-duty suspension. It stopped in front of Gabriel, the bulletproof rear window slid down. Gabriel smelled the bitter, familiar scent of Turkish tobacco. Then he saw the hand, liver-spotted and blue-veined, gesturing wearily for him to come out of the rain.

THE CAR LURCHED forward even before Gabriel could close the door. Shamron was never one for standing still. He crushed out his cigarette for Gabriel’s sake and lowered the windows for a few seconds in order to clear the air. When the windows were closed again, Gabriel told him of Lev’s hostile reception. He spoke to Shamron in English at first; then, remembering where he was, he switched to Hebrew.

“Apparently, he wants to have a word with me.”

“Yes, I know,” Shamron said. “He’d like to see me as well.”

“How did he find out about Vienna?”

“It seems Manfred Kruz paid a courtesy call on the embassy after your deportation and threw something of a fit. I’m told it wasn’t pretty. The Foreign Ministry is furious, and the entire top floor of King Saul Boulevard is baying for my blood—and yours.”

“What can they do to me?”

“Nothing, which is why you’re my perfect accomplice—that and your obvious talents, of course.”

The car sped out of the airport and turned onto the highway. Gabriel wondered why they were heading toward Jerusalem, but was too exhausted to care. After a while, they began to climb into the Judean Mountains. Soon the car was filled with the scent of eucalyptus and wet pine. Gabriel looked out the rain-spattered window and tried to remember the last time he had set foot in his country. It was after he had hunted down Tariq al-Hourani. He’d spent a month in a safe flat just outside the walls of the Old City, recovering from a bullet wound in his chest. That was more than three years ago. He realized that the threads that bound him to this place were fraying. He wondered whether he, like Francesco Tiepolo, would die in Venice and suffer the indignity of a mainland burial.

“Something tells me Lev and the Foreign Ministry are going to be
slightly
less annoyed with me when they find out what’s inside this.” Shamron held up an envelope. “Looks like you were a very busy boy during your brief stay in Vienna. Who’s Ludwig Vogel?”

Gabriel, his head propped against the window, told Shamron everything, beginning with his encounter with Max Klein, and ending with his tense confrontation with Manfred Kruz in his hotel room. Shamron was soon smoking again, and though Gabriel could not see his face clearly in the back of the darkened limousine, the old man was actually smiling. Umberto Conti may have given Gabriel the tools to become a great restorer, but Shamron was responsible for his flawless memory.

“No wonder Kruz was so anxious to get you out of Austria,” Shamron said. “The Islamic Fighting Cells?” He emitted a burst of derisive laughter. “How convenient. The government accepts the claim of responsibility and sweeps the affair under the rug as an act of Islamic terror on Austrian soil. That way the trail doesn’t get too close to Austrians—or to Vogel and Metzler, especially so near to the election.”

“But what about the documents from the Staatsarchiv? According to them, Ludwig Vogel is squeaky clean.”

“So why did he plant a bomb in Eli’s office and murder Max Klein?”

“We don’t know if he did either one of those things.”