The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  I walked into our office with the standard office greeting, begun by Otto, continued by me.

  "Hey, baby, how's business?"

  Hannah lit up. "I was wondering if you remembered."

  "How could I forget?" It was Otto's birthday. We always went to lunch together, and had a few drinks, and told all of the old stories, which generally meant making fun of my father and brother.

  "We going to Café Central?"

  "Reservation is made," she said. "But first we have to get a couple of things done."

  She looked down at the expenses, focusing in for a second, shaking her head. "You know, the day is coming when your brother is going to refuse to pay one of these. You should have heard him last month—"

  "Which is what you have told me every month for the past 11 years. And he has paid every time, and he will continue to pay, and the reason is simple: If he fires me, he’ll either have to start making the sales calls himself, or he’ll have to hire someone else to do it. And if you have learned anything about our family over the last few years, it is this: that the only people we trust less than each other are everyone else. To this day, I can't believe they let you handle their money."

  She snorted. "Enough. Let's get through this."

  She opened a file full of letters from various clients I hadn't seen in a while. We set the dates for my next visit, and Hannah would write them to confirm. Next was a file with letters from clients asking questions about their orders, or with specific delivery issues, or whatnot. I dictated replies as Hannah took shorthand.

  "Okay, Linz next week," she said. "You’ve been putting this off, but we need to make the arrangements today."

  The trip to Linz was going to be maybe the worst of the year. It was going to be one night in a hotel, two stops, both unpleasant. At the first stop, we were going to get fired by Ulrich Bain & Co. There was no way around it; we had messed up an order, and they were unhappy with the price accommodation we made as a result. But it wasn't just that. The guy I dealt with, Herr Ulrich Bain himself, was just about the most odious of the Nazis I was forced to deal with, and I just couldn't kiss his ass anymore, and he resented this fact. Then, after he fired us, I would have to visit a quarry for sale on the edge of town—not because we were going to buy it, but because the owner was somehow an old acquaintance of my father's, and we were just showing the old guy some respect.

  Hannah looked down at the paperwork. "Why is this guy firing us again? We could give him more of a discount. Isn't it worth a try?"

  "You want the real reason or the one we're telling my loving father?"

  "The real reason."

  I told her about the Nazi flag in his office, and the picture of Hitler on the sideboard next to the tray of schnapps, and the map on the wall with the red pushpin stuck in at Braunau am Inn. The anger in her eyes was apparent by the time I was finished.

  "So what do we tell your father?"

  "Blame the bad shipment from the mine that started it all. Make it his fault."

  She reached into her desk drawer for the train timetable. It wasn't necessary. Before she got it open, I just started dictating: three o'clock train to Linz on Thursday, six o'clock return on Friday night. One night in the Hotel Wolfinger. No need for a lunch reservation on Friday; the Nazi is firing us, so the Nazi is picking up the tab.

  That was enough. We went to lunch, got drunk, told all of the old stories and cried a little.

  10

  "A schnitzel for two marks. Two! And it's good!" Leon dug in.

  "A two-mark schnitzel and a room full of reporter assholes. Who could beat it?"

  Leon looked at me with faux disapproval. "Now, now. You like reporter assholes. You like all kinds of assholes. You like me, after all. And do you own a mirror, by the way?"

  It was like this most nights at Café Louvre. The big fat American from United Press had his own table in the far corner, his stammtisch. Michael Stern. In the unofficial foreign correspondents' clubhouse, Stern was their unofficial ringleader. He had a typewriter at the table and used the café as his office many days. The others either worked from home or in their cubbyholes in the telegraph office across the street, from which their copy was sent. Well, not all of it. The really urgent breaking news could be dictated over the phone to London and passed on from there. Routine breaking news, with a short shelf life, went by cable. The stories without any urgency were typed up and dropped in the mail because it was so much cheaper. Or, as one of the correspondents told me, "As long as this whining, broke former Habsburg count doesn't die between now and publication, what's the difference? His whining will be just as whiny two weeks from now."

  Besides Stern, at the table tonight were Rand from Chicago, Hillary from Philadelphia, and Watson from the Manchester Guardian. I never asked for the first names. Watson was the guy they seemed to respect the most. You could tell because they all listened to him when he talked, rather than just showing off with some worthless nugget they said they heard from Schuschnigg's cook's husband in a café in Floridsdorf. As if any of them would set foot in Floridsdorf.

  Heading to and from the lavatory, they would pass our table and offer Leon a nod or a wave. When it was her turn to parade by, the woman from Chicago leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and he seemed on the verge of blushing. This was borderline historic, because Leon didn't blush.

  "Was that as dirty as it looked?"

  Then Leon did blush, a little. "She said, and I quote, 'What wouldn't I give right now for a brief encounter with a man of the circumcised persuasion. If you can think of anybody, let me know.'"

  "Jesus, she's pushing 50."

  "Jesus has nothing to do with it."

  "You mean you're thinking about it?"

  "A source is a source. And the night is young."

  Behind Leon, Vivian Montreaux and her husband, the French ambassador to Rome, walked in and were escorted to a booth on the other side of the café. She was unmistakable, even with her back to us, even from 50 feet away, because of her long red hair. She never saw Leon, and neither did her husband. This was all probably for the best.

  "What are they doing back in town?"

  Leon, his mouth full, answered anyway. "Not sure. But the French chef de mission dropped dead the other day. He's been here forever, and the funeral's tomorrow."

  "You seen her since?"

  "First time."

  Until about two years ago, Leon worked for Der Abend. In a city with 22 newspapers, from serious to scandal sheet, Der Abend leaned heavily toward the latter. They had an editor there named Jurgen R. Jager, and Leon used to tell stories about him that had me pissing myself. Like this: Jager had a rule that every photo that accompanied every story about a car accident had one requirement—a young woman with big breasts standing there and solemnly surveying the wreckage. One photographer, Dieter, had a sister who qualified and was always on call, in case he couldn't round up somebody appropriate from the immediate neighborhood. When he used his sister for the third time in three months, Jager caught him. "Dieter, from now on, fresh tits," he bellowed, but then he giggled. "Although I have to admit that I will miss what has been on offer."

  Then there was the time Jager insisted on calling a murder victim an "Innere Stadt matron" even though she didn't live anywhere near the tony mansions of Innere Stadt. One of the reporters even pulled out a map and showed him. "It isn't close, boss."

  Jager thundered, "It's close enough." And then he walked away, giggling. And, yes, he got his "Innere Stadt matron" headline.

  This is the stuff Leon did, and he did it well. But he always wanted more: politics instead of society fluff, a serious paper, a nod from the Manchester Guardian at Café Louvre. And Mme. Montreaux was how he got it.

  It was simple enough, really. Working the society beat one night—Der Abend was equal parts breasts, sports, and boldfaced names of the wealthy and privileged—Leon was leaning against one of the bars at a charity function of some sort in the Palais Auersperg. He ended up chatting
with a young guy who was also hugging the bar, as bored as Leon was. It turned out his name was Herman Lutz, and he was the nephew of the German ambassador. He was 24, learning the diplomatic business—shuffling meaningless paper during the day, drinking free drinks after work at the stultifying reception du jour, the usual stuff. It was nothing—one drink, 10 or 15 minutes, a couple of stories, trading experiences about favored dance clubs, with Leon currently preferring Koenigen and Herr Lutz enjoying Mariposa. That was it. Leon wrote 400 words, including 28 names, and his work was done.

  Until two weeks later, on a lazy Thursday afternoon, when the entire diplomatic corps was in the parliament listening to Schuschnigg prattle on about something or other and then cabling their advice to their governments. Leon just happened to be about 300 feet from the French ambassador's residence, when the door opened, and none other than Herr Lutz walked out, stopped, leaned back in, and embraced a woman whose face Leon could not see but who had a head of splendidly long red hair.

  With that, the rest of it worked pretty simply. First Leon confronted Lutz at Mariposa. He thought the kid, who was a little bit drunk and who had a tiny brunette waiting for him at a small table, was going to cry. The next morning, he confronted the good mademoiselle at Demel, her regular café. She did cry. The deal was pretty plain. Leon didn't want state secrets, but he wanted political gossip from both of them, or else. Herr Lutz's services lasted three months until he abandoned the idea of a career in the diplomatic service and left town, returning to Heidelberg to obtain an advanced degree in biology. Mme. Montreaux lasted six months before she managed to get her husband transferred to Rome. But in that time, Leon broke a ton of political news and developed a variety of new sources—because that's how it works: When you start to know stuff, all kinds of people become attracted to you and begin to whisper into your ear. That success enabled him to get a job writing politics at Die Neue Freie Presse, which was probably No. 1 in seriousness.

  Leon was good, and the other journalists all knew it, and these nights at Café Louvre were now ventures into a world that Leon used to covet, but in which he now clearly belonged.

  He surveyed the place as we got another drink after dinner. And then he hit me.

  "So, are you going to do it?"

  "Do what? I'm not circumcised."

  "Are you going to spy or not?"

  I had not told anyone. Not Johanna, not Henry, no one. I could barely admit it to myself. I generally did about 75 percent of my yearly drinking in the 33 percent of the year I spent on the road, but I had been drinking every night since the meeting in Stephansdom. I was honestly frightened and just didn't know what to do.

  When I asked him how he knew, Leon said, "I'm insulted you'd ask. I mean, I do this for a living. And they should never have used that chinless weasel from Prague to approach you—and to do it twice. He was embarrassingly easy to crack. As soon as I saw him approach you the second time, I knew it would be a cinch. So you are going to do it?"

  "First off, fuck you. You didn't tell anybody, did you?"

  "Our secret."

  "Then I'll tell you the truth: I don't know what to do."

  "You know what the right thing to do is, though. And that's all that matters."

  "I don't know what's right."

  "Yes, you do."

  "It's more complicated than you think."

  "Why, is Daddy going to be mad?"

  "I repeat: fuck you."

  "So what do they want you to do?"

  I explained what the guy in Stephansdom said. We talked a little about the risk. He pushed. I pushed back.

  "If they asked me, I would do it without thinking," he said.

  "I have a lot more to lose than you do."

  He got quiet. I got quiet. We drank some more. I left. The woman from Chicago was still at the correspondents' table in the corner.

  11

  I had been to the restaurant in the Hotel Weinzinger in Linz a half-dozen times. The food was okay but only okay. The decor dark and formal. The waiters old and decrepit. Nothing about the place was memorable, but I did enjoy the walk down to the Danube, which the hotel overlooked. Of course, this would be my last visit. I wasn't going back to a place where I got fired.

  I was playing it out in my head during the train ride, how it was going to happen. I was about 98 percent sure, partly because of the botched order, partly because I could no longer hide my disgust from Herr Ulrich Bain.

  Don't get me wrong—I kissed plenty of Nazi ass in the course of doing business. I would do the salute when I was in Germany and got cornered into it, mainly when there were military people in the room. Of course, I always made it quick and weak, convincing myself that it wasn't the same as the heel-clicking, stiff-armed assholes. I drew the line at laughing at Jewish jokes; I’d perfected a kind of eye roll/change the subject combination that got me out of those situations every time. I also would go out of my way to avoid the public displays of Nazi affection that seemed to pop up all the time; you couldn't take a walk after lunch in Munich without running into a parade where, if you didn't salute, you got slugged by a Brownshirt, or worse. I always managed to duck into a shop or an alley to avoid those things. But business was, well, business.

  Except for Herr Ulrich Bain. He was worse than the Germans. A lot of people in Linz were. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, but he spent some of his youth in Linz, and the citizens seemed to be quite proud of their favorite son. I was actually in a bar once with a client where one guy said Hitler once slept in his house, another guy said Hitler once kissed his aunt when they were kids, and the owner of the bar said that Hitler used his bathroom. So proud, they were.

  Anyway, the last time I was in Herr Bain's office, he was complaining about the messed-up delivery, and accepting a discount on the next delivery, but refusing to be placated, refusing to let it go. He was over at the sideboard, fixing us a drink and preparing to complain some more. I was fine enough with that. It was the job, after all. But then he did what he always did. He picked up the photo he had on the sideboard—which was in a much more expensive frame than the picture of his wife—and sat down with it in his lap. Then he looked down at it, and then he looked at me, and then he pointed at the photo and said, "The day will come, and it will come soon, when Austria knows the greatness of his leadership—"

  I had heard the speech about six times before. It never varied. So this time I interrupted, picking up the speech mid-sentence, even adopting Bain's pinched accent. "—And the genius of his vision, and the purity of the Aryan race."

  Bain was stunned; his mouth opened, then closed, then his whole face twisted in fury. You could disagree with a Nazi— sometimes they even kind of enjoyed the argument—but you could never mock them. Suffice it to say, I drank up. I'm not sure either of us said anything after I shrugged and said, "Well, it is a memorable sentiment."

  So now he was going to fire us. Lunch was set for noon. There was a particular protocol to this sort of thing. You ordered a drink and talked about the weather. You ordered the meal and talked about your families. You spent the better part of an hour avoiding the obvious subject until the waiter brought the coffee. It was an agonizing dance, especially when you knew all along that you were going to be on the receiving end of the bad news, but it's what you did. He wanted to make this as civil as possible in case he ever needed us again. We wanted the same thing. Business is business, after all, and that was the ritual.

  Walking the several blocks to the Weinzinger, I was determined to just shut my mouth and endure the lunch. Then I got about a block away and witnessed Bain, across the street and with his back to me, screaming at an older man in a white apron standing outside of Goldberg's Delicatessen. Goldberg, probably. Another man was yelling, too. A policeman watched from about 50 feet away.

  All I could hear was garbled anger, except for the, "Fucking kike!" that shot clearly out of Bain's mouth as he turned halfway toward me. More yelling followed. Goldberg raised the broom he was holding and menaced it in Bai
n's direction. The policeman bellowed, "Goldberg!" and that was enough for the old man to holster his weapon. He turned and went back into the deli. Bain and the other man laughed, shook hands, gave each other the Hitler salute and walked away in different directions, another job well done by the master race.

  It is difficult to describe what I felt as I watched: anger, sorrow, helplessness, inevitability. It is hard to love such a shitty country, but I did, even if it was my adopted home. And I couldn't stand the idea of Hitler officially sanctioning every lousy impulse in the Austrian character, and making life impossible for people like Leon and Hannah.

  At that moment, the only thing keeping the Germans on the other side of the border was Mussolini, who would likely object to Hitler swallowing us whole when he was still hoping to take a nibble out of us himself. But who knew how long that would last? Il Duce could get distracted, or bought off by Hitler—at which point, Austria would become a delicious lunch. Our army wouldn't last 24 hours against Germany's, if for no other reason than the fact that they wouldn't have the nerve to shoot all of their cheering brothers and cousins waving the Nazi flag.

  So what were you supposed to do? I could ask a hundred people not to tell me any Jewish jokes, and it wouldn't matter. Leon could get in a street fight every night of the week if he wanted and it wouldn't matter. Hitler was too big for any of us to stop—and he was coming, and everybody knew it. We just didn't know when. A country might have been able to stop him. An individual, though? Leon talked all the time about "the human imperative to resist." But all it got you was brained by a paving stone and a half-dozen stitches, and that's if you were lucky.

  Anyway, Bain went into the hotel. I waited two or three minutes and then followed him. He checked his coat and hat. I decided not to check mine at the last second, brushing past the man at the reservation stand and approaching his table.