[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

  Ahead of them, Franz Ferdinand, dressed in a light blue cavalry tunic and red breeches, was busily deadheading flowers in one of the rose gardens of the palace. As they approached, Werthen could see that the man wore a chestful of military medals. He also realized that the archduke was much smaller than he had thought, for he had only seen him on an upraised platform at celebrations, or in the back of his speeding motorcar. The future emperor finally saw them approaching and put down his secateurs.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I see you are none the worse for wear.”

  Werthen was about to explode in anger, but Gross headed him off.

  “The accommodations were acceptable, yes. Not that either of us were aware of them.”

  Franz Ferdinand looked from one to the other, a slight smile on his lips. Werthen had never assumed the man had a sense of humor.

  “I must apologize for Duncan’s zeal,” he said.

  Suddenly the tall, scar-faced man appeared from behind a rosebush. Werthen automatically gripped his walking stick, but the release was jammed. He could not pull his sword.

  “I am afraid we have disabled your weapon, Herr Advokat. I feared that your blood might be high, and I want no further complications. As I was saying, Duncan took my orders to bring you here immediately rather too much to heart. It is the Scots in him, you see.” Then to scar-face, in schoolroom English: “Right, Duncan?”

  “If Your Highness says so,” the man replied, also in English, but of a glottal nature that tested Werthen’s linguistic skills.

  Franz Ferdinand turned again to Werthen and Gross. “He has been with me for years, ever since my visit to Scotland in 1892. He was a mountain guide on a shoot. Saved my life when a Highland pony slipped on scree. I would have toppled to my death had it not been for Duncan. But he does go in for drama. A simple invitation would have done, I should imagine. When I learned that Duncan had bribed your coachman to take his place and of your chloroformed kidnapping, I was sorely put out, I assure you. However, according to Duncan, such measures were necessary, as assassins were waiting for your carriage just a kilometer down the road.”

  Neither Gross nor Werthen responded to this.

  “Duncan, in fact, has been a watchdog for you for several weeks.”

  “Are you telling us that he was the one who pulled us out of Lake Geneva?” Gross asked.

  “The very one,” Franz Ferdinand said with pride. “Actually, Duncan is hardly as ferocious as he looks. The scar is a result of a terrier bite and an incompetent surgeon when he was a mere boy. It lends a certain cachet, don’t you think? And it makes him stand out in a crowd. I wanted you chaps to know you were being followed, to be on guard. You two have made yourselves some very powerful enemies. That happens when one wants to shine light in the darkness. When one wants to bring reform to a benighted empire.”

  “Why are we here, Your Highness?” Gross finally asked.

  “I like directness, Professor Gross. I am pleased that you asked.” The archduke now waved away the two other guards, leaving just Duncan and three of them. “Have you ever heard of the Rollo Commandos?”

  Werthen and Gross exchanged questioning glances.

  “No, I thought not. It is not one of those secrets a government likes to get about. The Rollo Commandos are an elite squad. They are at the beck and call of the highest powers. Their mission is to eliminate the enemies of the empire.”

  “Assassins,” Werthen said.

  “If you like,” the archduke replied. He picked up his secateurs again and began cleaning out the spent roses, leaving Gross and Werthen to mull his revelation.

  “I have followed your investigation from afar, as it were,” Franz Ferdinand said, carefully inching down the stalk of a tea rose to find a five-leafed junction where he could snip. “From what has been reported to me, it is clear that you are on the right path. That you have linked the Prater atrocities with the deaths of both Crown Prince Rudolf and the Empress Elisabeth. And if I know that, surely they know it, as well.”

  “They?” Gross said.

  “Your nemesis.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Oh, I can give you the name of the man who pulled the trigger or struck the knife. He is Sergeant Manfred Tod. An ironic name, no?” Then to Duncan: “Tod means ‘death.’”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Tod is a longtime member of the Rollo Commandos. He, like Duncan, bears a menacing scar, though slightly less visible, on his neck. The result, they say, of a fight to the death with his training instructor. The infamous Tod was, as a matter of fact, freshly recruited in January of 1889.”

  The date was not lost on Gross. “The month of Rudolf’s death at Mayerling. Are you saying Sergeant Tod was the assassin?

  “Among them. There were three, according to my sources.” The archduke looked hard at Werthen. “I know, I make a much better suspect in the killing, right? So much to gain. And everyone knows how much I disliked my cousin. It was all the gossip.” He breathed deeply. “Of course the truth is far different than the gossip. In fact, I admired and looked up to Rudolf. He was my mentor in many ways, and my protector from his father and my uncle, Franz Josef. He guided me through youthful indiscretions,showed me what my true responsibilities were as third in line to the throne. I may not have agreed with him on his Hungarian adventure, but I loved him like a brother nonetheless.”

  “What Hungarian adventure are you referring to, Your Highness?” Werthen asked.

  “Come now, gentlemen.” The archduke sounded disappointed. “If you have come this far in your investigations, I am sure you have also uncovered the source of all this misery.” He waited a moment for a reply, but when none was offered, he plunged on. “Rudolf was to be made king of an independent Hungary. Poor Rudolf, he had grown so frustrated with being kept in the wings by his father that he allowed himself to be manipulated by the Magyars into accepting such a fanciful proposition. He died for it.”

  “You mean-,” Werthen began.

  “Yes, I mean he was assassinated for treason. But not by me, gentlemen. That is why I brought you here. To tell you that. And that I did not kill Frosch or my aunt or any of those unfortunate victims found in the Prater. Again, I may not have agreed with her close relations to the Hungarians, but I admired her courage. She would not allow herself to be controlled by the emperor as the rest of the court does. She built a life on her own terms. I can appreciate that, especially now.”

  Werthen knew that the archduke was referring to his own love for Sophie Chotek, who, though of noble birth, was deemed below the standard for Habsburgs.

  Looking at him and listening to him in person, Werthen was almost convinced of his innocence.

  “Who is the real nemesis, then?” Gross persisted. “This Sergeant Tod is only the instrument of death. A puppet. Who is pulling the strings?”

  “That, gentlemen, is for you to discover. I must warn you, however, you have entered dangerous waters. Your quarry is among the most powerful men in the land. Duncan will no longer be able to protect you, nor will that painter chap and his band of ruffians. You must strike and strike quickly or all is lost.”

  “An interesting personality,” Werthen said as they left the palace and headed for the Ringstrasse. It was midmorning now and the Schwarzenbergplatz was filled with carriage traffic and several noisy automobiles that frightened horses. Pedestrians were bustling on the streets, as well, and such a flurry of activity gave Werthen a sense of safety. Tod could hardly strike in such circumstances. If there really was a Sergeant Manfred Tod. At least they were armed now. The archduke had had their pistols returned to them before they left the Lower Belvedere, and the pistols were loaded. However, Werthen’s cane-sword was still jammed.

  “I found him a very forthright individual,” Gross pronounced after a short hesitation. “He also serves a fine cup of coffee.”

  “But what of his revelations?”

  “Plausible.”

  Werthen stopped in the middle of the
busy sidewalk. “Come, Gross. Not so laconic, please.”

  “I am ruminating, Werthen. You noticed the pendant of a sheep’s fleece Franz Ferdinand wears among his other medals?”

  Werthen, in fact, had not, but recalled from their earlier conversation that all Habsburg archdukes automatically became members of the order.

  “As Krafft-Ebing said,” Gross went on, “the man we are searching for may be bound by the rules of such an order.”

  “I suppose that cozying up to the Magyars could be considered treasonous behavior. But that could mean any of over fifty members of the order, not just Franz Ferdinand.”

  Gross nodded. “There of course is a further possibility,” he said, taking Werthen’s arm and urging him forward. “The crown prince, according to Krafft-Ebing, suffered from syphilis, though it appeared to have halted its deadly advance. What would happen were he to become emperor and the disease recur?”

  “A tragedy, certainly,” Werthen said. “Both for the empire and for the House of Habsburg.”

  “Exactly. It would hardly take Rudolf’s supposed treason with the Magyars for someone powerful to want to eliminate him. His death could be seen in so many ways and by so many people as a salvation to the empire.”

  “Even for Franz Ferdinand?”

  “Yes,” Gross said. “But I have a feeling about the man. We criminologists cannot proceed by objective facts alone. Sometimes we need to let our instincts speak. Mine say that he is a misunderstood individual, hardly so unsympathetic as court gossip would have him be. I believe that he knows exactly who is responsible for all these deaths, but that he cannot confront the man himself. Rather, he wants us to thrash around and solve the problem for him. Which means that this nemesis is very powerful indeed, just as Franz Ferdinand said. I take his advice to heart. We must strike now or risk all.”

  Suddenly Gross sped up his stride, pulling out his watch from his vest pocket. “Come, Werthen. We must make haste. We need to be there before eleven.”

  “Where, Gross. And why before eleven?”

  “That is the witching hour, my friend. The end of registration for royal audiences.”

  “Gross, you must be insane. Are you seriously considering what I think you are?”

  “We are loyal subjects, Werthen, you and I. Upstanding individuals. Like the rest of his fifty million subjects, we have the right to a personal audience with the emperor. We have much to tell him. Now hurry, man.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Hofburg, the city residence of the Habsburgs, was at once fortress, seat of government, and private home. A sprawling warren of tracts built higgledy-piggledy over the centuries, in a mixture of styles from Gothic to Renaissance to baroque to neo-Classicist, the Hofburg housed the apartments of the emperor, the State Chancellery, the Imperial Library, the Winter Riding School, and thousands of apartments for everyone from little-known Habsburg archdukes and archduchesses to pensioned ministers and several thousand servants, who slept in cramped quarters under the eaves and scurried about back stairs and along hidden corridors keeping the whole miniature city functioning.

  Cutting through the Inner City rather than following the Ringstrasse, Werthen and Gross entered the complex through the Michaeler Tor, leading to the oldest tract, the Schweizerhof, from the late thirteenth century. Werthen never failed to be awed by the sheer history and longevity as represented by the Hofburg, seat of the Habsburgs for six hundred years. To the left was the red-and-black gate to the Schweizerhof; the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece was displayed over this gate, for within lay the Imperial-Royal Treasury, among whose most fabulous artifacts was the treasury of the Order of the Golden Fleece, including the very lance that had pierced the side of Jesus on the cross. After the Spanish and Austrian lines of Habsburgs split in 1794, it took thirty carts and three years to move that treasury from Burgundy, thus keeping it out of the hands of the French.

  Gross said nothing as he led the way past these reminders to a wing perpendicular to the Schweizerhof, forming an inner courtyard with it. This was the Imperial Chancellery, where Franz Josef resided and worked. The Habsburgs were a superstitious lot; new rulers refused to live in a portion of the Hofburg where an earlier ruler had lived. Thus a strange game of musical chambers was played. Empress Maria Theresa had resided in rooms facing the inner court of the Leopoldine wing; her son, Josef II, lived on the opposite side of the same wing; Francis II chose the oldest tract, the Schweizerhof, while his son, Ferdinand, who had suffered from epilepsy and whom the Viennese had loved as something of a simpleton, moved the entourage back to the Leopoldine wing. Now that unfortunate Habsburg’s successor, his nephew Franz Josef, had taken up residence opposite that in the newer Reichskanzlei, the first emperor to do so.

  Werthen’s study of Vienna’s past had become an avocation for him, an enjoyable pastime, a cozy, leisurely investigation of bygone times.

  But suddenly he himself had been caught up in the maw of history, and it no longer seemed so gemütlich. The massive gray buildings all around now bore down upon him; he could feel the weight of their stones, their secrets.

  “What do you intend telling him, Gross?” Werthen asked as they took the small flight of steps up to the main entrance.

  “I haven’t quite decided, Werthen. I suppose we shall have time once we have registered for an audience to consider that.”

  Gross was right: They were the last to be registered that day, and they would thus have a long wait to speak with the emperor.A young adjutant took their name and looked rather skeptically at Gross as the criminologist described the ostensible reason for their visit: a formal thank-you for his post in Bukovina.

  They took up uncomfortable seats on a marble bench against one wall of the large and ornate waiting room. Except that no women were present, the sixty or so other prospective visitors included a complete cross-section of Viennese society, from a foppish-looking young man in a yellow waistcoat and robin’s-egg-blue coat, to a muttonchopped, heavyset burgher in a rumpled brown woolen suit and the bright red nose of a tippler.

  Werthen, like all Viennese, knew the myth of Franz Josef. The boy emperor who took the reigns of government in the difficult year of 1848, who faced the crowds demanding democratic reforms and turned them away. Concessions were made, but nothing lasting, for Franz Josef, a true Habsburg, believed fervently in the monarchy and deeply mistrusted the voice of the people. A constitution had finally been granted, and a parliament established, but both were more theoretical institutions than practical ones. Even Hungary had been granted more power in the empire via the Ausgleich, or compromise, of 1867.

  Werthen, like everyone else in the empire, also knew the real power still lay in the hands of Franz Josef and his close circle of advisers and handpicked prime ministers. The emperor continually canceled the power of parliament, ruling instead by the loophole of Paragraph 14 of the constitution, which allowed for rule by emergency decree. Universal male suffrage-let alone the vote for women-was a long way off. These twice-weekly audiences were as close to democracy as the old emperor cared to come. Such individual meetings, Angesicht zu Angesicht sehen, as they were called, or face-to-face, lasted only a few moments at best, enough time for a few practiced words, but they served as a release valve for the people. After all, what need had they of a functioning parliament when they could speak to the emperor himself whenever they pleased?

  The most famous bureaucrat in Europe, Franz Josef personally saw to the running of his vast empire. Rising at five in the morning, he worked steadily until eight, when he met with his ministers. Then came a simple lunch, and more work that often took him deep into the night. His diversions were few: a summer holiday at Bad Ischl, where he hunted in the mountains, and an occasional visit from his special friend, Die Schratt, as the Burgtheater actress was affectionately called by the Viennese.

  However, twice a week, at ten in the morning, Emperor Franz Josef set aside several hours for personal audiences with his subjects. He heard complaints, receiv
ed gifts, and kissed the occasional baby at such meetings with the common folk.

  Then back to his reading of files and signing of documents. That he maintained this arduous schedule even in face of the tragedy that had so recently befallen him was a mark of the old man’s resilience. It made Werthen almost like the man, despite his autocratic ways.

  But suddenly it struck Werthen: “You’ve come to accuse him, haven’t you?”

  Gross had been busy twiddling his thumbs, first one direction then another. The question seemed to jolt him out of his thoughts, yet he made no immediate response.

  “Franz Ferdinand said that we must strike quickly. Is that what you plan to do? If not Franz Ferdinand, then who would be powerful enough to order murders and assassinations? Who else would have the motive? But his own son and wife?”

  Werthen had grown so excited with this line of questioning that his voice rose in volume, drawing the disapproving glances of several in the room.

  “Steady, Werthen,” Gross counseled. “I do not believe we are at that extreme point as yet. I have, however, given some thought to our unexpected visit with Archduke Franz Ferdinand. His man Duncan was indeed the one we both saw from the train on the way to Geneva. His scar is, as the Archduke explained, immensely noticeable, almost defining. I wonder, perhaps, if it was not too defining for us, as well.”

  “I don’t follow you, Gross.”

  “The hotel porter in Geneva, the young Austrian …”

  “Planner,” Werthen offered.

  “Yes. He described to us the man he saw helping the empress up after her attack. Tall, as I recall. And he mentioned the possibility of a scar. I believe we both jumped to the same conclusion without further questioning Herr Planner. The mere mention of a scar conjured Duncan’s visage in both our minds. Yet Franz Ferdinand insists that the real murderer, this Sergeant Tod, also bears a scar, but on his neck, not his face.”