Thomas Ochiltree

by Death Waltz in Vienna

  Finally, she came back in from the balcony. But she did not close the window herself.

  “Alphonse, the window. And the curtains,” she said with the aloofness of an empress. Von Falkenburg knew that it was only when she was tense and unhappy that she acted like that.

  “It’s being outwitted that’s so painful,” von Falkenburg said. She did not reply. So he went on, “obviously, the police are more intelligent than elderly Croatian majors.”

  “But I thought you were sure you gave him the slip, Ernst.”

  “I did give him the slip! I know he didn’t follow me down the passage or through the alley.”

  “Then how…?”

  “Luck. And skill. And intelligence,” he replied with exasperation.

  “I still don’t see,” Helena said.

  “It’s simple enough. The man had been following me for some time. That told him the general direction I was going in until I gave him the slip. He assumed that after I got good and clear of him, I’d head back towards my original goal. And he was right.”

  “That’s luck,” she put in quietly.

  “It’s also intelligence. The man had to realize that for me to bother shaking him off, I must have wanted very badly to get to where I was going.”

  “Otherwise, on noticing that you were followed, you would have simply gone to a café and played tarock all evening,” she suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  “But I still don’t see how he picked up your trail again,” she went on. “The Inner City is like a maze.”

  “Exactly. That’s just it. As with a maze, there are only a very few right choices. If you know which general direction someone is headed, and you assume he wants to continue in that direction, you know which streets he eventually has to get back to. Our friend in the derby hat probably took one look at that courtyard I had plunged into and figured out what I was up to. So he just continued on his way, knowing I would be going roughly parallel after getting out the back he must have assumed existed. Then he either worked his way over, or waited for me to cross his path again, and hung back farther than he had before.”

  There was a long silence while they both thought what he next put into words.

  “Helena, my enemies are very cunning, very determined, very dangerous.”

  Her reply was to place her hand – it was deliciously cool and soothing – on top of his. Love and desire surged within him, but he knew he must master both, for her sake. And yet a lifetime of practice in the arts of self-control and self-denial, going all the way back to his boyhood at Falkenburg, did not make the words any easier to say.

  “Helena, I mustn’t drag you down with me. If I hadn’t already mortgaged it, I’d give my life to spend the next three days with you. But every moment I spend with you endangers your reputation….”

  “My reputation!” she interrupted in a tone that implied that there was quite literally nothing in the world less important to her.

  “Your life, perhaps,” he went on.

  “And so you don’t think we should see each other anymore, correct?” her eyes were blazing.

  “Correct.”

  “You men…honestly!”

  “It’s you I’m thinking of…” he said, abashed at her vehemence.

  “For heaven’s sake, Ernst, try to understand me, although I’ve never yet met a man who could understand a woman! What on earth do you think a woman’s love is all about?”

  It was an unanswerable question.

  “When I say I’m in love with you, Ernst, does that mean that I’m in love with my reputation? Or with my life? It means I’m in love with you, that you’re what I want, and that I couldn’t care less about anything else in the whole world! I’d give everything…this mansion, my millions, that silly title of princess that I got by marriage…everything, just to be with you!”

  Both the admission and the furious intensity with which it was made left von Falkenburg quite literally speechless.

  “Ah, but you want to apply male logic and be reasonable! You men blow your brains out or let someone else put a bullet through your ribs for ‘honor,’ but when it comes to love, you find you can’t use too much reason, because you never, never, never understand what love is about!”

  The fire in her eyes, the way her bosom heaved as she spoke, her anger and her passion…everything about her filled von Falkenburg with a desire that mastered him utterly. Her mouth was already open to continue the tirade, but the words were never spoken, for the next instant his lips were crushing hers, just as his body crushed her breasts. He swept her into his arms as she clutched his neck and trembled with her own desire. Von Falkenburg carried her to the double doors which Alphonse, as ridiculously impassive as he doubtless would be if the end of the world were being announced, opened silently before him.

  The downstairs maid did not have quite the butler’s training, and let out a little gasp. To hell with her, von Falkenburg thought, as he carried his burden triumphantly up the stairs.

  The upstairs maid was busy in Helena’s bedroom laying out her mistress’s nightgown.

  “Get out,” von Falkenburg said to her, and as soon as she did so, he tossed Helena onto the bed.

  “You’re heavy, Princess,” he said with a grin. “Perhaps I should have taken you on the dining room table in front of Alphonse. It would have been a good test of his impassivity.”

  Helena threw back her head and laughed.

  “You beast! I would have loved it!”

  And when frenzy was stilled, and desire slaked, and he lay next to her kissing her fingers one by one, Helena said, “no man will ever really understand a woman. But you do better than most, Ernst.”

  “I understand that a woman in love is apparently willing to be spied on by the police.”

  “Mm hmm.” She had reached one hand out from the bed and picked up his sword, which had fallen nearby when he had hastily unbuckled it. She pressed the cool brass-trimmed hilt against her lips as she thought for a moment. Then she added, “if that man who followed you really was a policeman….”

  Chapter Ten

  “Ernst, don’t go, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I must.”

  Helena gave her most seductive pout, and shifted languorously in the perfumed bed where the two of them had been lying since he carried her up the stairs. She was very nearly irresistible, but von Falkenburg pulled on his pants anyway.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Helena, I was given seven days. It is now almost one in the morning of the fifth day. Much though I’d like to spend all the remaining time in your arms, I think that it is best that I try to follow up on some of the information you gave me earlier.”

  “But what on earth can you do at this time of night?”

  “Helena, you would be surprised at the kind of people who can only be reached at this time of night,” he said, hooking shut his collar.

  Helena got out of bed, shameless and glorious in her nakedness.

  “Do you really think what the Duchess von Stobbe told me will help us?” Her use of “us” rather than “you” indicated clearly to von Falkenburg that there was no point in trying to decide what was best for her. She would stay by his side, come what might.

  He took her perfect face between his hands and kissed her soft lips.

  “I hope so,” he answered.

  She picked up his sword and fastened it to his side, expertly enough to make him wonder if she had had practice arming other men, or if she was simply making use of her talent for doing everything well. His wondering was simply curiosity unalloyed with jealousy. He knew that she was totally his.

  “Your symbol of your honor is buckled on,” she said, “So you can go out and face the world.” There was a surprising undertone of bitterness in her voice, and von Falkenburg realized that never, neither now, nor at his funeral in a few days, would she understand why he did not simply flee with her. A woman, he realized, could never understand what a man’s honor was, any more than a man c
ould understand a woman’s love.

  “My one unbeatable rival,” she said, fingering the gold tassels of the sword knot. He did not answer. What was there to say?

  Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  “I didn’t mean to be bitchy or difficult, Ernst. Go on, and good luck.” She bit her lower lip, and seemed by an act of will to keep the tears in her eyes from flowing down her cheeks, for as von Falkenburg knew, in her own way she was very proud.

  “Helena, I’m sorry the world makes no sense,” he said, putting on his képi.

  “Take care, Ernst.”

  “I promise.”

  As he stepped from the front door into the street, he noticed a shadowy figure in the darkness some forty yards away. Von Falkenburg could not make out who it was, but he knew perfectly well who it had to be.

  He could imagine the detective noting in his notebook, “subject left house at one-fifteen A.M.”

  The street was quite deserted, and von Falkenburg’s footsteps echoed on the pavement. He suddenly realized that his were the only footsteps he could hear. He was not being followed. Presumably, the plainclothesman had found out what he wanted, and gone home, or to the police station, or to wherever it was that detectives went after they finished tailing someone.

  It was only a few blocks from Helena’s mansion to the Schubert-Ring and the Stadtpark, and von Falkenburg headed there. He had told her he needed to see someone. But in reality he just wanted to be alone so that he could think. Soon he found himself walking along one side of the little lake in the center of the park. He sat on a bench and watched one of the swans paddle sleepily on the black water, making golden ripples as it went, for the wavelets reflected the light of the gas lamp that stood nearby.

  The sight was a peaceful one, and he longed for peace, but he knew he must give his mind no rest.

  What was it Helena had told him? She had spent the day gossiping with old female friends from her society days when he late husband was still alive. To each of them, she had made a casual reference to Robert von Lipprecht, von Lauderstein’s highly-placed friend who liked to call himself Putzi.

  Most of what she had heard in return had been ordinary gossip, but there were two themes that kept recurring: Putzi was a firm friend of the young Archduke Karl-Maria, and both of them had a vaguely sinister reputation.

  It was hard to pin down, but the old Duchess von Stobbe had probably come closer than anyone else when she said to Helena, “you know, dear, I realize one should not criticize members of the Imperial Family, even rather distant ones like the Archduke Karl-Maria, but he’s such an intriguer.”

  “A ladies’ man?” Helena had asked.

  “Oh no,” the Duchess von Stobbe had replied. “That’s not what I mean. Who can hold romantic intrigue against anyone? What I think is wrong is for a member of the Imperial Family to get mixed up in politics. It’s such a dirty business, you know.”

  As for the kind of politics the young Archduke Karl-Maria was mixed up in, the Duchess von Stobbe had no clear idea. “Heavens, dear,” she had said to Helena, “I know this is supposed to be an age of female emancipation, but I try to keep as clear of politics as ever I can! And you will too if you’re sensible enough to follow the advice of an old lady who still knows what kind of women men are attracted to!”

  In spite of everything, von Falkenburg smiled. The thought of someone giving Helena advice on how to be attractive to men was not without its amusing side.

  The Archduke Karl-Maria. If he was mixed up in this plot, the conspiracy could hardly go much higher. What had Helena told him of the young archduke’s relationship to the Emperor was? Cousin three times removed? Von Falkenburg had never been able to keep the distinction between, say, a second cousin and a first cousin once removed very clear in his head. But even if the relationship between Karl-Maria and his Imperial and Royal Majesty was not all that close, von Falkenburg knew that as far as the face they presented to the world was concerned, the members of the Imperial Family were as thick as thieves. Never, ever, ever, would he be able successfully to accuse an archduke of treason, no matter how many times removed he was.

  Would Lasky have understood that? von Falkenburg wondered.

  He got up from the bench and walked through the park.

  What the devil would the archduke want to sell secrets to the Russians for, he asked himself. God only knew, the Imperial Family was wealthy enough. What could the Russians give to the Archduke Karl-Maria?

  Treason in the Imperial Family itself? The family that the Barons von Falkenburg had served since the days of the knights in armor? To their own loss, for the most part, but without ever complaining.

  The Imperial Family…headed by the elderly man with white side whiskers whose portrait hung in every officers’ mess: the Supreme War Lord, the ultimate officer, the man whom von Falkenburg had sworn his most sacred oath to serve and defend with his life, if need be.

  Certainly von Falkenburg had never sworn any oath to serve and defend the young Archduke Karl-Maria. And yet, that he, a von Falkenburg, could be working to the discredit of any member of the Imperial Family was profoundly disquieting.

  Suddenly, von Falkenburg felt the fantastic, the outrageous, and yet simultaneously the irresistible, desire to visit the Kapuzinergruft, the crypt of the Church of the Capucines, where the Emperors were buried. He remember the time his father had taken him there when he was a little boy, and pointed out to him the great bronze sarcophagi which held the imperial remains.

  “Here they are,” his father had said, “the generations that our own family has served from one generation to the next. In every generation a good master and a faithful servant, and the latter role no less honorable that the former.”

  He had never quite managed to feel his father’s simple, personally loyalty to the

  Imperial Family. His own loyalty was mixed up with a more general loyalty to Austria-Hungary, the great, rambling, ramshackle “land of many people” that was his land too.

  But perhaps tonight, if he visited the crypt, he would understand better what his father had felt and where his own duty lay.

  He had to knock long and loud on the door of the church until a Capucine monk finally opened it and told him, in response to his request to visit the crypt, that he should come back the next day. The visiting hours, the monk said, were from one-thirty in the afternoon until five.

  But von Falkenburg was not to be put off.

  “Father,” he said, “it is most important to me. If you could make an exception I would be most grateful, and would express my gratitude to the church in an appropriate manner.”

  After a moment’s reflection, the monk motioned for him to follow, and led him down the stone steps that led to the crypt. Von Falkenburg suddenly thought of the family vault at Falkenburg, where he would be lying in a few days, and felt very uncomfortable.

  “Would the captain like me to point out which sarcophagi contain the earthly remains of which Majesties?”

  “Thank you, but that is not necessary.”

  In fact, the only sarcophagus he could identify by the yellow glow of the monk’s lamp was that of Maria Theresa, and that only because of its odd dimensions, twice as wide as the others, for it was a double bed, so to speak. In it the great Empress and her consort husband lay side by side.

  To his disappointment, von Falkenburg felt no exaltation, no surge of loyalty, no rekindling of his family’s faith. Just a vague horror at being in such a place at such an hour.

  Sarcophagus after sarcophagus, in lines which vanished in the gloom beyond the flickering light of the monk’s lamp, each sarcophagus a massive bronze reliquary for moldering imperial bones. Each a riot of baroque ornamentation, with curlicues, friezes, and of course the four crowns, one at each corner. That was a detail that von Falkenburg remembered from his childhood. And that memory called forth another, of something that had made a strong impression on him as a boy.

  Where was that tomb now? He glanced around in the half
darkness and then saw what he was looking for. On this sarcophagus there were not merely the four crowns. On this, and this alone, each crown rested on a bronze skull. And each skull was cast with the most loathsome attention to accuracy: teeth intentionally left out, a few strands of hair shown stuck to the forehead. His father had pointed out to him the High Baroque symbolism to him: the Four Crowns of Empire resting on skulls that symbolized the vanity of earthly might.

  The Four Crowns of Empire: the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire. And the Crown of Austria. The third was the Crown of Bohemia, and of course the fourth was the Crown of St. Stephan, symbolizing Hungary.

  And suddenly, in a flash of intuition, von Falkenburg guessed what it might be that the Archduke Karl-Maria might want and what the Russians might help him get…on their terms of course. It was the sight of those four crowns together, and curiously, of the skulls on which they rested, that had suggested the answer to his questions.

  “Surely no,” he thought, “surely not….”

  And yet, somehow, von Falkenburg was certain that he had the truth, and a truth that made his own survival insignificant compared to the duty he had to perform. Now, now he felt it, that surge of loyalty he had come to the crypt in search of. Not loyalty to those bronze boxes and the bones they contained, but loyalty to what those four crowns symbolized. He had sworn an oath to the Emperor, and now was the time to live up to it, although whether the Emperor would ever forgive him if he succeed in his task was more than doubtful.

  Chapter Eleven

  The regiment had exercises that morning, and there was no way von Falkenburg could avoid attendance. On getting back from them to his quarters he bathed and changed clothes, with the intention of calling on Helena. He had just finished putting on his shirt and trousers when there was a knock at the door. Somehow, von Falkenburg knew instinctively that it meant trouble.