by Moss, John
The cashier told them the best place to rent a car was on the other side of Festungsberg mountain. They could walk through the passage carved in solid rock under the Hohensalzburg Castle in twenty minutes.
Walking through the bowels of the mountain made Harry nervous. He expected Sakarov to be waiting in any of the innumerable pockets of shadow. When they safely emerged into daylight on the far side, he sighed audibly. Joan looked at him and smiled.
Harry showed the man behind the car rental desk the slip of yellow paper from Detektiv Honsberger with the school address.
The man looked puzzled then grinned apologetically. “Mister, I understand,” he said. “You want to drive to Hinterbrühl. That is good. But first you should take the train to Vienna, yes.”
Harry was baffled. The rental agent walked him to a wall map and traced the route to Vienna, then dropped his finger slightly and tapped on the map.
“There is Hinterbrühl, yes. You must rent my car and drive here for a few days through Tirol district. It is most beautiful. Then you take a train to Vienna and rent a car from my colleague. We both make money and it is cheaper for you. You want a large American car? I have a very good Ford sedan, almost new. Also a BMW if you like German.”
Harry grabbed Joan’s hand and strode out into the sunlight.
“What’s the matter, Harry?”
He was sick to his stomach. Only a few other times in his life had he been so certain about what he was doing that it simply didn’t occur to him he could be dead wrong. When he made the choice to paddle the Anishnabe River with his family, it had not entered his mind he would not read the moving water. He and Karen were experienced canoeists. In summertime. Not during the spring run-off. Karen and Matt and Lucy died.
Hallstatt was a fixture in Harry’s mind. Even before his librarian contact in Vienna had told him about her research, he knew the area was a centre of iron-age culture. It was renowned for its prehistoric cemetery with over a thousand burial sites, one for every resident in the contemporary village. It was famous for being picturesque and it was an important part of Lena’s narrative.
When he had put together her life story from things she told him and from Simon’s research, history distorted geography. Her grandmother had died as a slave labourer in the Mauthausen concentration camp. She had mentioned relatives in the village of Hallstatt, which he knew was in the Salzkammergut region. In his mind, he had correctly situated the camp near their ancestral home in Hinterbrühl, where Lena lived at the Kinderdorf with Rachel Damboch, but he had incorrectly placed Hinterbrühl in the vicinity of Salzburg where she did her prep year before university. To find Rachel, to find Lena, he had to get to Hinterbrühl.
Like so many North Americans, Harry envisioned Europe as a network of places famous in history. The landscape between was filler. It had never occurred to him to check an actual map.
He felt like a complete and utter fool.
And with good reason. But don’t panic.
I don’t panic. I’m not. But damn it, damn, damn.
There’s still almost a day to go.
Despite the urgency, Harry walked slowly with Joan back through the passageway carved under the Festungsberg mountain. She had no idea why they were backtracking or why he seemed so despondent.
“Do you realize we’re right below that big palace?” she said, apparently trying to cheer him up.
“It’s not a palace—it’s the Hohensalzburg Castle.”
“Why isn’t it a palace?”
“I don’t know. Joan, I’ve screwed up. Let’s just walk.”
“Where?”
He didn’t answer her. At the train station he bought two tickets on the next fast train to Vienna. They had a couple of anxious hours to kill. The clock was running down. They stepped outside and sat on a bench in the open, under a spread of linden trees. Joan only spoke when she found herself irrepressibly compelled to and expected no answers. After a while she began to cry. Not sobbing, just a few tears and a suppressed sniffle.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I made a stupid mistake and brought us halfway across Europe because it didn’t occur to me I should look at a map.”
“It’s only a three hour trip. Plus waiting time. We’ll make it up.”
She was trying to comfort him. That made him feel worse.
“I got us into this, didn’t I?” she lamented.
“God no!” He reached out and put his arm around her, drawing her closer. “Joan, I’m the one who messed up.”
“No,” she said emphatically, followed by a thoughtful pause. “It is Mr. Sakarov’s fault. He used Lucy as a lure and I bit, you bit, and we’re here together. Darn it, Harry. Let’s go and rescue Lena. She’s innocent in all this.”
Harry hugged her then pushed her away so that he could peer into her eyes as he explained as much as he could about Lena. Joan seemed to accept she was in the midst of a world beyond understanding, It was her religious set of mind. But she had had no idea about Lena’s reckless immersion in goodness and evil.
“My Lord, my God,” she finally exclaimed. “She has lived a very bad life.”
“Yes she has.”
“And that has put her in danger and made her dangerous.”
“Yes it has.”
“Then we had certainly better find her. She needs our help.”
They both sat back on the bench, feet thrust in front of them, and stared at the cobblestones dappled in sunlight that filtered through the linden branches.
It felt strange to Harry to be loitering while a killer was in pursuit. When they roused themselves to re-enter the station, he couldn’t help feeling relieved that the deadly chase was about to resume.
Walking along the platform to find their car, Joan observed in an offhand way, “She was very young when she had her first lover.”
Harry mumbled. Hooking up at sixteen didn’t strike him as rare. Joan worked with street kids in social services and at the Zylberman Centre where he assumed by mid-teens sex was the norm. What was she getting at?
Maybe the comparison was personal, Harry. She was measuring against her own experience. Different as they are, she seems to identify with the woman you’re after.
“She was quite devious, wasn’t she? You told me that sometimes she would stay out all night and tell the school she was with relatives in that village called Hallstatt.”
“I think it was only the one time.”
They clambered onto the train and found their seats.
“The school authorities believed her, didn’t they?”
“Apparently they did.”
“Then doesn’t that mean Hallstatt is close to Salzburg. Otherwise, you know, it would be a pretty lame excuse.”
“It does mean that, yes. It’s in the Salzkammergut region.”
“But since she was only sixteen, whoever her relatives were, the school already knew about them. They had to be her guardians.”
“Not they,” he said. “She.” Rachel Damboch.
What purported to be Lena’s ashes were forwarded to Rachel Damboch. She was Lena’s guardian. She had retired to somewhere near Hallstatt according to Frau Honsberger. Hinterbrühl was a diversion, simply to confirm an address!
Harry jumped to his feet. It was like he heard the messenger’s approaching footsteps with a last-minute reprieve as the gallows’ trapdoor creaked before springing open.
He grabbed Joan’s hand and bolted for the door. The train lurched. The door was locked. The train was moving. He looked around frantically, saw an emergency alarm, and pulled it. The train shunted to an abrupt stop, sirens wailed, the doors clicked open. Drawing Joan with him, he leapt onto the platform and ran at breakneck speed out onto the street.
With any luck, Sakarov would still be on the train.
19 SCOTCH AND GOSSIP
As Harry and Joan made their way from the Bahnhof back to the tunnel through Festungsberg mountain, he was convinced Dimitri Sakarov was i
n hot pursuit, yet every time he glanced around he saw only sunlight glistening from immaculate windows and creamy plaster, dappled with an amiable carnival of shadows. Very Rodgers and Hammerstein. Cloying and sinister. The Nazi Anschluss derided by the sounds of music. Harry wasn’t musical.
He could hear heavy footsteps behind them. He darted into an alcove, pulling Joan along with him. The footsteps stopped, then resumed.
“Harry?”
“Shhh.”
The footsteps got closer. Then Sakarov rushed past them.
Joan whispered almost inaudibly, “Harry, I’m frightened.”
Harry nodded.
They retreated back into the sunlight on the near side of the mountain and found a different car rental agency.
As soon as they passed the edge of town, Harry pulled their sky blue Fiesta onto the narrow shoulder and they both got out.
“Check your bag,” he explained as he emptied his pockets onto the car hood. “Check your clothes, the seams, everything.”
“What are we looking for, Harry? Do you think we’re bugged with a tracking device?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe he’s just smart.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “He is.”
“No bugs,” she announced after they’d done a thorough search. “Maybe he’s preternatural.” She mouthed the word like it was a new flavour.
If you can believe in holy ghosts and that Mary conceived in her sixth month, I guess nothing seems impossible.
“Damn it,” said Harry. “How the hell does he keep track of us?”
“It’s an unholy mystery,” Joan cheerfully proclaimed.
She’s enjoying this.
What could be more exciting for a good Catholic girl than being at the centre of an unholy mystery? I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that faith causes people to be mean, selfish, and stupid.
She’s not mean. Judgement hovered in the air with her unfinished sentence.
“Most of the time, he’s invisible,” Joan said as they clambered back into the car.
“Sometimes the best way to blend in is to stand out just enough to be part of the scene,” said Harry. “The clinical term for not seeing him is ‘selective discernment.’”
“You just made that up!”
“I did, but that’s what it is. I used to be a professor. We make things up.”
Glad to see you’re chipper again, professor.
As they drove into looming shadows of landscape, Harry began to have second thoughts. He wondered if his certainty about Lena’s whereabouts was compensating for the stupidity of misplacing Hinterbrühl. He had a map now. They were on the right route, but was Hallstatt the right destination? He wondered how much of what he believed was based on fact and how much on willful desire.
Saint Augustine, Harry. Faith over reason.
He felt strangely reassured, but as they drove, the unrestrained beauty of the Alpine terrain made him uneasy. The sheer grandeur of mountains inspired awe tinged with fear—a perfect definition of the sublime. Mountains were emotionally remote. They could only be viewed from a distance. Thundering waterfalls were frightening close up, but mountains close up were nothing but rock.
And waterfalls are nothing but water, Harry.
Mountains are mass. Water is energy.
It’s all a matter of perspective, Einstein.
What is?
Everything.
Still a master of the meaningless.
I was a literature specialist, Harry. What do you expect?
You’re a cultural theorist.
He used the present tense.
He glanced over at Joan. She seemed lost in private thoughts as she gazed at the passing scene.
What if Madalena isn’t in Hallstatt? You only have fourteen hours left.
We’re almost there.
“Harry, are we looking for Lena or the woman who raised her?” Joan interrupted his reverie. Before he could respond, she shifted her query. “Are we on a quest or in flight?”
“They amount to the same thing. We’re in a race and if we don’t get to the finish on time, people die.”
“What if we don’t find her?”
“Lena? We will.”
“But if we don’t? Will he kill me?”
“He’ll try.”
“Harry.”
“Yes.”
“If we do find her, what if we were, just hypothetically, to turn her over to Sakarov?”
“He would execute her. And then he’d murder us if he could. And he might kill the kids anyway, to round out some perverted equation.”
“So when we find her, why don’t we escape together?”
“Then the children die for sure. Grim retribution.”
“Well, we have no option, do we?”
“Joan?”
“The only solution is to kill Mr. Sakarov.”
She has an interesting mind, Harry.
They drove quietly until the premature darkness of the valley closed around them. It was eerie because the sky directly overhead was shot with sunlight. Harry turned on the car lights and at the same time noticed the lights of a car behind them. He slowed, then the other car slowed.
Rounding a sharp bend, he wheeled the Fiesta down a lane cut into the brush on the uphill side and doused his lights. Twisting in his seat he watched a black BMW sedan cruise by.
“You don’t think he knows why we’re here?”
“He assumes we’re tracking down Lena.”
“But does he know we’re looking for Rachel Damboch?”
“I don’t know what he knows,” said Harry. He backed the car out onto the road and resumed driving. After a while, he noticed headlights in his rearview mirror.
“Good,” he said. “He’s behind us again.”
“Crafty bugger.”
“Uh, yeah. It confirms he doesn’t know where we’re going.”
When they arrived at the darkened village of Hallstatt along a narrow road blasted into the mountainside, Harry felt strangely relieved. Given his previous blunder with geography, he half expected the village to vanish as they approached.
It was still tourist season, but they found a single room in a rustic Gasthaus. The patron looked like a dead ringer for the most recent actor to play Inspector Poirot. He acknowledged that his guests were travelling without luggage but seemed to shrug off the implied slovenliness as foreign eccentricity. He set out a late supper of cold wienerschnitzel, chopped cabbage, and a nondescript white wine and then went to bed, leaving them by the fire he had lit to counter the evening chill.
“Do you think Mr. Sakarov knows we’re here?” Joan asked.
“I’m sure he does,” said Harry.
She drew her chair a little closer to the fire.
“Why don’t you go up?” Harry offered. “You’ll be warmer.”
“Not likely, Harry. I’m staying with you.”
“I imagine he’s sleeping in his car unless he called ahead for a reservation somewhere. He probably did, but he’ll be outside at the crack of dawn.”
“That’s comforting. Come on, then, let’s both get some rest. It’s a big bed, Harry. There’s enough room for two.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
You sure you should be sleeping, Harry?
With her?
No, just sleeping. You’re working to a deadline.
I won’t be much good if I don’t. In real life, people sleep.
Then eat your veggies, get lots of rest, and don’t forget to floss.
He smiled. This was her Sailor Duval persona.
When he got to the room, Joan was sound asleep with a grey blanket pulled up to her shoulders but folded back on his side so he could get under it too. He tucked the blanket close around her; he found another in an armoire and pulled it over himself, stretching out on his back like a corpse. He ruminated through the night while Joan slept soundly beside him.
At the first blush of morning light, Harry slipped from t
he bed and pulled back the gingham curtain. His blue Fiesta looked sullen and seemed to be cowering. As the sky grew brighter, he saw the black BMW sedan parked farther along the narrow street carved into the side of the mountain. Gradually, he could make out the entire village of one thousand souls perched precariously on ridges and in niches carved out of the rock. Below him were rooftops of buildings the colours of cream and dried blood, mostly clustered close to a small stone church with a squared tower surmounted by a slate-grey spire. On a small spit of land jutting into the deep dark waters of the Hallstätter See, a ferry terminal and a few boats hauled close to the shore were a reminder of days when access to the village was only by water.
He thought of going down and accosting Sakarov in his car, but he realized from Sakarov’s perspective everything was going as it should—Harry’s apparent abduction of Joan was a fortuitous deviation. It made it easier for Sakarov to keep track of his enemies.
So what’s your plan, Harry?
The next part’s a bit fuzzy.
Remember, once you and your copper-haired friends subdue Sakarov, you still have to deal with those files.
Depends on how permanently he is, as you call it, “subdued.”
I suspect either it will be permanent or not at all.
If it is, then, the release of the files will be up to Lena and Rachel Damboch. Joan and I will head back to Toronto.
A lot of innocent people are going to be exposed to scandal. Lives will be destroyed.
And if she doesn’t release them?
Lives will be destroyed.
He thought he saw movement in the black sedan. He drew back from the window and pulled the curtains closed. He stripped to the waist and began washing at the cold-water sink in the corner. Joan mumbled “good morning” and rummaged around behind him, digging into her bag beside the bed, then slid a disposable razor across the floor in his general direction.
“Thanks,” he said. “You sleep well?”
“Absolutely. Where’s the toilet?”
“Down the hall.”
“At least it’s not out in the yard.”