by Daniel Silva
The security man tilted his head and consented. Gabriel recognized the frisk pattern. It was by the book. The crotch search was more intrusive than necessary, but then Gabriel had it coming. When it was over, he said, “Search everyone who comes into this room.”
Zvi, the embassy man, watched the entire scene. Clearly, he no longer believed the man from Jerusalem was Gideon Argov of Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Gabriel didn’t much care. His friend was lying helpless on the other side of the door. Better to ruffle a few feathers than to let him die because of complacency.
He followed Zvi into the room. The bed was behind a glass partition. The patient didn’t look much like Eli, but then Gabriel wasn’t surprised. Like most Israelis, he had seen the toll a bomb can take on a human body. Eli’s face was concealed behind the mask of a ventilator, his eyes bound by gauze, his head heavily bandaged. The exposed portion of his cheeks and jaw showed the aftereffects of glass exploding into his face.
A nurse with short black hair and very blue eyes was checking the intravenous drip. She looked into the visitors’ room and briefly held Gabriel’s gaze before resuming her work. Her eyes betrayed nothing.
Zvi, after giving Gabriel a moment to himself, walked over to the glass and brought him up to date on his colleague’s condition. He spoke with the precision of a man who had watched too many medical dramas on television. Gabriel, his eyes fastened on Eli’s face, heard only half of what the diplomat was saying—enough to realize that his friend was near death, and that, even if he lived, he might never be the same.
“For the moment,” Zvi said in conclusion, “he’s being kept alive by the machines.”
“Why are his eyes bandaged?”
“Glass fragments. They were able to get most of them, but he still has a half dozen or so lodged in his eyes.”
“Is there a chance he’ll be blind?”
“They won’t know until he regains consciousness,” Zvi said. Then he added pessimistically, “If he regains consciousness.”
A doctor came into the room. He looked at Gabriel and Zvi and nodded once briskly, then opened the glass door and stepped into the ward. The nurse moved away from the bedside, and the doctor assumed her place. She came around the end of the bed and stood before the glass. For a second time, her eyes met Gabriel’s, then she drew the curtain closed with a sharp jerk of her wrist. Gabriel walked into the hall, followed by Zvi.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a minute to myself.”
The diplomat went back inside. Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back, like a soldier at ease, and drifted slowly along the familiar corridor. He passed the nurses’ station. The same trite Vienna streetscape hung next to the window. The smell was the same, too—the smell of disinfectant and death.
He came to a half-open door bearing the number 2602-C. He pushed it gently with his fingertips, and the door swung silently open. The room was dark and unoccupied. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. There were no nurses about. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
He left the lights off and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Soon the room came into focus: the empty bed, the bank of silent monitors, the vinyl-covered chair. The most uncomfortable chair in all of Vienna. He’d spent ten nights in that chair, most of them sleepless. Only once had Leah regained consciousness. She’d asked about Dani, and Gabriel unwisely told her the truth. Tears spilled onto her ruined cheeks. She never spoke to him again.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Gabriel, startled, turned quickly around. The voice belonged to the nurse who’d been at Eli’s side a moment earlier. She spoke to him in German. He responded in the same language.
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“I know what you’re doing.” She allowed a silence to fall between them. “I remember you.”
She leaned against the door and folded her arms. Her head fell to one side. Were it not for her baggy nurse’s uniform and the stethoscope hanging around her neck, Gabriel would have thought she was flirting with him.
“Your wife was the one who was involved in the car bombing a few years back. I was a young nurse then, just starting out. I took care of her at night. You don’t remember?”
Gabriel looked at her for a moment. Finally, he said, “I believe you’re mistaken. This is my first time in Vienna. And I’ve never been married. I’m sorry,” he added hastily, heading toward the door. “I shouldn’t have been in here. I just needed a place to gather my thoughts.”
He moved past her. She put her hand on his arm.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Is she alive?”
“Who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, “but you have me confused with someone else.”
She nodded—As you wish. Her blue eyes were damp and shining in the half-light.
“He’s a friend of yours, Eli Lavon?”
“Yes, he is. A very close friend. We work together. I live in Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem,” she repeated, as though she liked the sound of the word. “I would like to visit Jerusalem sometime. My friends think I’m crazy. You know, the suicide bombers, all the other things…” Her voice trailed off. “I still want to go.”
“You should,” Gabriel said. “It’s a wonderful place.”
She touched his arm a second time. “Your friend’s injuries are severe.” Her tone was tender, tinged with sorrow. “He’s going to have a very tough time of it.”
“Is he going to live?”
“I’m not allowed to answer questions like that. Only the doctors can offer a prognosis. But if you want my opinion, spend some time with him. Tell him things. You never know, he might be able to hear you.”
HE STAYED FOR another hour, staring at Eli’s motionless figure through the glass. The nurse returned. She spent a few minutes checking Eli’s vital signs, then motioned for Gabriel to come inside the room. “It’s against the rules,” she said conspiratorially. “I’ll stand watch at the door.”
Gabriel didn’t speak to Eli, just held his bruised and swollen hand. There were no words to convey the pain he felt at seeing another loved one lying in a Viennese hospital bed. After five minutes, the nurse came back, laid her hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and told him it was time to leave. Outside, in the corridor, she said her name was Marguerite. “I’m working tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ll see you then, I hope.”
Zvi had left; a new team of guards had come on duty. Gabriel rode the elevator down to the lobby and went outside. The night had turned even colder. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and quickened his pace. He was about to head down the escalator into the U-Bahn station when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned around, expecting to see Marguerite, but instead found himself face-to-face with the old man who’d been talking to himself in the lobby when Gabriel arrived.
“I heard you speaking Hebrew to that man from the embassy.” His Viennese German was frantically paced, his eyes wide and damp. “You’re Israeli, yes? A friend of Eli Lavon’s?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My name is Max Klein, and this is all my fault. Please, you must believe me. This is all my fault.”
5
VIENNA
MAX KLEIN LIVED a streetcar ride away, in a graceful old district just beyond the Ring strasse. His was a fine old Biedermeier apartment building with a passageway leading to a big interior courtyard. The courtyard was dark, lit only by the soft glow of lights burning in the apartments overhead. A second passageway gave onto a small, neat foyer. Gabriel glanced at the tenant list. Halfway down he saw the words: M. KLEIN—3B. There was no elevator. Klein clung to the wood banister as he climbed stubbornly upward, his feet heavy on the well-trodden runner. On the third-floor landing were two wooden doors with peepholes. Gravitating toward the one on the right, Klein removed a set of keys from his coat pocket. His hand shook so badly the keys jingled like a percussion instrument.
&nbs
p; He opened the door and went inside. Gabriel hesitated just beyond the threshold. It had occurred to him, sitting next to Klein on the streetcar, that he had no business meeting with anyone under circumstances such as these. Experience and hard lessons had taught him that even an obviously Jewish octogenarian had to be regarded as a potential threat. Any anxiety Gabriel was feeling quickly evaporated, however, as he watched Klein turn on practically every light in the apartment. It was not the action of a man laying a trap, he thought. Max Klein was frightened.
Gabriel followed him into the apartment and closed the door. In the bright light, he finally got a good look at him. Klein’s red, rheumy eyes were magnified by a pair of thick black spectacles. His beard, wispy and white, no longer concealed the dark liver spots on his cheeks. Gabriel knew, even before Klein told him, that he was a survivor. Starvation, like bullets and fire, leaves scars. Gabriel had seen different versions of the face in his farming town in the Jezreel Valley. He had seen it on his parents.
“I’ll make tea,” Klein announced before disappearing through a pair of double doors into the kitchen.
Tea at midnight, thought Gabriel. It was going to be a long night. He went to the window and parted the blinds. The snow had stopped for now, and the street was empty. He sat down. The room reminded him of Eli’s office: the high Biedermeier ceiling, the haphazard way in which the books lay on the shelves. Elegant, intellectual clutter.
Klein returned and placed a silver tea service on a low table. He sat down opposite Gabriel and regarded him silently for a moment. “You speak German very well,” he said finally. “In fact, you speak it like a Berliner.”
“My mother was from Berlin,” Gabriel said truthfully, “but I was born in Israel.”
Klein studied him carefully, as if he too were looking for the scars of survival. Then he lifted his palms quizzically, an invitation to fill in the blanks. Where was she? How did she survive? Was she in a camp or did she get out before the madness?
“They stayed in Berlin and were eventually deported to the camps,” Gabriel said. “My grandfather was a rather well-known painter. He never believed that the Germans, a people he believed were among the most civilized on earth, would go as far as they did.”
“What was your grandfather’s name?”
“Frankel,” Gabriel said, again veering toward the truth. “Viktor Frankel.”
Klein nodded slowly in recognition of the name. “I’ve seen his work. He was a disciple of Max Beckmann, was he not? Extremely talented.”
“Yes, that’s right. His work was declared degenerate by the Nazis early on and much of it was destroyed. He also lost his job at the art institute where he was teaching in Berlin.”
“But he stayed.” Klein shook his head. “No one believed it could happen.” He paused a moment, his thoughts elsewhere. “So what happened to them?”
“They were deported to Auschwitz. My mother was sent to the women’s camp at Birkenau and managed to survive for more than two years before she was liberated.”
“And your grandparents?”
“Gassed on arrival.”
“Do you remember the date?”
“I believe it was January 1943,” Gabriel said.
Klein covered his eyes.
“Is there something significant about that date, Herr Klein?”
“Yes,” Klein said absently. “I was there the night those Berlin transports arrived. I remember it very well. You see, Mr. Argov, I was a violinist in the Auschwitz camp orchestra. I played music for devils in an orchestra of the damned. I serenaded the condemned as they trudged slowly toward the gas.”
Gabriel’s face remained placid. Max Klein was clearly a man suffering from enormous guilt. He believed he bore some responsibility for the deaths of those who had filed past him on the way to the gas chambers. It was madness, of course. He was no more guilty than any of the Jews who had toiled in the slave labor factories or in the fields of Auschwitz in order to survive one more day.
“But that’s not the reason you stopped me tonight at the hospital. You wanted to tell me something about the bombing at Wartime Claims and Inquiries?”
Klein nodded. “As I said, this is all my doing. I’m the one responsible for the deaths of those two beautiful girls. I’m the reason your friend Eli Lavon is lying in that hospital bed near death.”
“Are you telling me you planted the bomb?” Gabriel’s tone was intentionally heavy with incredulity. The question was meant to sound preposterous.
“Of course not!” Klein snapped. “But I’m afraid I set in motion the events that led others to place it there.”
“Why don’t you just tell me everything you know, Herr Klein? Let me judge who’s guilty.”
“Only God can judge,” Klein said.
“Perhaps, but sometimes even God needs a little help.”
Klein smiled and poured tea. Then he told the story from the beginning. Gabriel bided his time and didn’t rush the proceedings along. Eli Lavon would have played it the same way. “For the old ones, memory is like a stack of china,” Lavon always said. “If you try to pull a plate from the middle, the whole thing comes crashing down.”
THE APARTMENT HAD belonged to his father. Before the war, Klein had lived there along with his parents and two younger sisters. His father, Solomon, was a successful textile merchant, and the Kleins lived a charmed upper-middle-class existence: afternoon strudels at the finest Vienna coffeehouses, evenings at the theater or the opera, summers at the modest family villa in the south. Young Max Klein was a promising violinist—Not quite ready for the symphony or the opera, mind you, Mr. Argov, but good enough to find work in smaller Viennese chamber orchestras.
“My father, even when he was tired from working all day, rarely missed a performance.” Klein smiled for the first time at the memory of his father watching him play. “The fact that his son was a Viennese musician made him extremely proud.”
Their idyllic world had come to an abrupt end on March 12, 1938. It was a Saturday, Klein remembered, and for the overwhelming majority of Austrians, the sight of Wehrmacht troops marching through the streets of Vienna had been a cause for celebration. For the Jews, Mr. Argov…for us, only dread. The worst fears of the community were quickly realized. In Germany, the assault on the Jews had been a gradual undertaking. In Austria, it was instantaneous and savage. Within days, all Jewish-owned businesses were marked with red paint. Any non-Jew who entered was assaulted by Brownshirts and SS. Many were forced to wear placards that declared: I, Aryan swine, have bought in a Jewish shop. Jews were forbidden to own property, to hold a job in any profession or to employ someone else, to enter a restaurant or a coffeehouse, to set foot in Vienna’s public parks. Jews were forbidden to possess typewriters or radios, because those could facilitate communication with the outside world. Jews were dragged from their homes and their synagogues and beaten on the streets.
“On March 14, the Gestapo broke down the door of this very apartment and stole our most prized possessions: our rugs, our silver, our paintings, even our Shabbat candlesticks. My father and I were taken briefly into custody and forced to scrub sidewalks with boiling water and a toothbrush. The rabbi from our synagogue was hurled into the street and his beard torn from his face while a crowd of Austrians looked on and jeered. I tried to stop them, and I was nearly beaten to death. I couldn’t be taken to a hospital, of course. That was forbidden by the new anti-Jewish laws.”
In less than a week, the Jewish community of Austria, one of the most vital and influential in all of Europe, was in tatters: community centers and Jewish societies shut down, leaders in jail, synagogues closed, prayer books burned on bonfires. On April 1, a hundred prominent public figures and businessmen were deported to Dachau. Within a month, five hundred Jews had chosen to kill themselves rather than face another day of torment, including a family of four who lived next door to the Kleins. “They shot themselves, one at a time,” Klein said. “I lay in my bed and listened to the whole thing. A shot, followed by sobs
. Another shot, more sobs. After the fourth shot, there was no one left to cry, no one but me.”
More than half the community decided to leave Austria and emigrate to other lands. Max Klein was among them. He obtained a visa to Holland and traveled there in 1939. In less than a year, he would find himself under the Nazi jackboot once more. “My father decided to remain in Vienna,” Klein said. “He believed in the law, you see. He thought that if he just adhered to the law, things would be fine, and the storm would eventually pass. It got worse, of course, and when he finally decided to leave, it was too late.”
Klein tried to pour himself another cup of tea, but his hand was shaking violently. Gabriel poured it for him and gently asked what had become of his parents and two sisters.
“In the autumn of 1941, they were deported to Poland and confined in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz. In January 1942, they were deported one final time, to the Chelmno extermination camp.”
“And you?”
Klein’s head fell to one side—And me? Same fate, different ending. Arrested in Amsterdam in June 1942, detained in the Westerbork transit camp, then sent east, to Auschwitz. On the rail platform, half-dead from thirst and hunger, a voice. A man in prison clothing is asking whether there are any musicians on the arriving train. Klein latches onto the voice, a drowning man seizing a lifeline. I’m a violinist, he tells the man in stripes. Do you have an instrument? He holds up a battered case, the only thing he had brought from Westerbork. Come with me. This is your lucky day.
“My lucky day,” Klein repeated absently. “For the next two and a half years, while more than a million go up in smoke, my colleagues and I play music. We play on the selection ramp to help the Nazis create the illusion that the new arrivals have come to a pleasant place. We play as the walking dead file into the disrobing chambers. We play in the yard during the endless roll calls. In the morning, we play as the slaves file out to work, and in the afternoon, when they stagger back to their barracks with death in their eyes, we are playing. We even play before executions. On Sundays, we play for the Kommandant and his staff. Suicide continuously thins our ranks. Soon I’m the one working the crowd on the ramp, looking for musicians to fill the empty chairs.”