by Aaron Elkins
Pressed into this space I was able to use the mirror to see what was going on behind me. Aside from the general commotion there was nothing. I counted to five and still nothing happened. Had it worked then, had they not realized that I'd turned back into the leather stalls? I let out my breath in a whoosh and began to step out into the aisle, but jumped back just in time, when one of the gun-waving hoods shot out of the alleyway and into the aisle about twenty feet behind me. Anxiously I watched him in the mirror while he took a long look both ways, up and down the aisle. Go left! I willed him powerfully. Do not go right! Do not even look right!
He went right, of course, and I wedged myself further yet into my little coat-bordered niche. There were people right next to him who had seen me run into the space, and when he threw a curt question at them I thought: that's it, it's all over. But they only shook their heads and shrank back into the stalls, bug-eyed and mute.
Nevertheless, gun drawn and ready, he came cautiously down the aisle, a step at a time. Even in the wiggly mirror and with hanging coats and jackets blocking my view I could see him clearly, a dark, thickset young guy who moved with his arms out from his sides, like a weight-lifter. Dense, close-cropped black hair, clipped black mustache, eyes hidden behind a pair of those mirrored glasses, shirt open half-way down his chest, with a mat of curly hair showing. I realized it was Tibor, the one who'd been ready to destroy me before he'd even thought I’d done anything. Christ.
Two more steps and he must have thought he heard something because he whirled suddenly, the gun extended in front of him, left hand steadying the right wrist, and fired twice into a little dressing area exactly like mine. This time I could hear the sound of the shots over the background noise, and I could clearly see his hand jump with the recoil.
I don't know whether some poor soul was standing there innocently trying something on and took two bullets intended for me, or whether Tibor merely wound up assassinating a suspicious-looking leather coat, but I do know that perspiration popped out all over me, running into my eyes and pooling at the small of my back.
While Tibor checked to see what damage he'd done, I gave some thought to bolting, but I knew I didn’t have a chance of making it without getting shot; he was only a dozen feet from me and I had to cover thirty feet to reach the next corner. I also thought about bolting in his direction, hoping to surprise him, knock him off-balance, and keep going, but he was awfully solid-looking, and with that evil-looking black gun in his hand I didn't see how I could get away with it. If I was going to get out of this at all I was going to have to fight my way out, and to do that I was going to need a weapon.
Luck was with me. At my side there were a couple of three-foot-long wooden rods leaning against a carton—sturdy, inch-thick poles that fitted into the racks to hold the hanging coats and jackets. I closed my hand around one of them and quietly brought it to my side. My back was to Tibor, but in the mirror I could see him checking out whoever/whatever he'd shot, then continuing to advance, the gun held stiffly out in front of him. Firing it had excited him, made him more jumpy. One inching step . . . I could hear the sole of his shoe scrape softly over the pavement . . . two steps . . . He was out of the mirror's angle of vision now, but from what I'd seen already I knew that the gun was going to arrive before he did, so I fixed my eyes on the place where it was about to appear, wrapped both hands around the pole as if it were a baseball bat, and held my breath.
The gun didn't arrive. The aisle was deathly quiet. I got the horrible, tingling feeling that he knew I was here—perhaps he'd seen my feet or caught a glimpse of me in the mirror—and that in another second he would pump two, or three, or four bullets into and through the layers of coats that separated us. The muscles in my neck were about to snap with tension.
I stepped out into the aisle and Tibor jerked back. I brought the rod slashing down on the barrel of the gun, which fired—I didn't know where the bullet went—and spiraled halfway out of his hand, spinning on his trigger finger. Again I swung at it but this time I missed completely, almost losing my balance as the pole bounced off the pavement. Tibor, looking as scared as I was, was still fumbling with the gun, trying to get it into shooting position. This time I didn't bother with his hand. I whipped the rod up from the ground with both hands and caught him hard, under the jaw, uppercut-style. His teeth clicked solidly together and I saw his eyes glaze a little, but he held onto the gun, even managing to get it properly set in his hand. But he was slower now, a little dazed, and before he could rightly aim it in my direction I whacked him one more time, sideways, over the left ear and temple. He stumbled back a step, wavered, and, with a great sigh, as of air escaping from a balloon, he fell on his face.
I watch enough boxing to know that when a struck fighter falls forward onto his face he's not getting up for a while. I knelt quickly and pulled the gun from his curled fingers, looking up again just in time to see a youngster break from the knot of onlookers and run back down the aisle, yelling at the top of his lungs, toward where I assumed János still was. I didn't have to understand Hungarian to know he was shouting for help.
That meant I didn't have much time, and I didn't expect to be lucky twice in a row. I turned to the rack behind me and slipped on one of the creamy brown bomber jackets that looked like the ones the hoods were wearing, threw a wad of Hungarian money on the table, and headed up the aisle, away from where I assumed János was. On second thought I ran back, knelt again, pulled Tibor's mirrored sunglasses from his face—his eyelids were twitching but nothing else was moving—and got them over my own eyes. Then, shoulders hunched and head down, I took the next alleyway and ran two aisles over, to the rusty-automobile-engine-and-carburetor section.
Once there I straightened up, made sure the sunglasses sat straight on my nose, showed the gun, and generally did my best to look like one of the lizardy guys who were out looking for me. I prayed that I wouldn't have to use the gun. Number one, I didn't want to kill anybody. Number two, if it required anything more esoteric than pulling the trigger I wouldn't know how to do it.
As I got to the end of the aisle—the far end, near the carnival—one of the hoods saw me from a distance and called something. Keeping my head turned away I replied with an elaborate shrug and kept moving, but not too fast. He didn't come after me and he didn't shoot me. I started to think I just might make it.
Once in the carnival crowd I tossed the gun into a garbage can and just kept sauntering toward one of the exits, expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades any second and flinching every time a shooting gallery rifle went pop. At the exit I jumped into a cab at the taxi stand and said "Hotel Duna." But before it was quite out of my mouth it came to me that Szarvas's people knew that's where I was staying, so it was out of the question. They could kill me there as easily as here; probably more easily.
"No," I told the driver "Ferihegy Airport," saying it enough times and trying enough pronunciations so that he finally got it.
* * *
An hour later, with my pulse rate finally calming down, I was on my way to Vienna on Austrian Airlines Flight HO-39, trying to make sense of what had happened. Why would János have leapt to the conclusion that I had engineered Szarvas's killing? And who had engineered it? And why? In a way, I knew that he was right; that is, his boss was dead because of me. To assume that he'd been killed for some reason that had nothing to do with me, while I just happened to be around, was stretching things beyond credibility, especially considering what had been happening to just about everybody else that I'd been talking to lately. Had someone been afraid that Szarvas might tell me something they didn't want me to know? But what? Szarvas's claim to the painting was patently false, so what was there for him to tell me? Were they afraid he'd make some kind of deal with me, as Dulska had tried to do? But about what? He had nothing to offer; he was trying to get money, and get it for nothing.
And who were 'they'? Could it conceivably be Stetten?
He was the only one—well, aside from Alois Feuchtmül
ler and Alex—who knew I was going to be meeting with Szarvas. Although, come to think of it, I was sure that I'd never mentioned Szarvas's name to him, only that I was going to see a Hungarian art dealer.
No, I didn't see how, and not just because I liked him and it went against my instincts. All Stetten had to fear from Szarvas was a phony court case that might or might not cost him some money, and you didn't go around having people killed to avoid that; not at this early stage, when there was plenty of time for threats (I mean lawyer's threats) and negotiations, and you didn't know if it would ever really come to a head—as most such cases did not. Besides, Stetten had encouraged me to see Szarvas; if he'd been worried about it, why wouldn't he have tried to talk me out of it?
No, it had to be the mafia. Who else was there that would have an interest in these paintings? Who else would have the resources to follow me around from country to country, or tap my phones, or do whatever they'd been doing to know where I was going, and then, with almost no notice, have a sharpshooting assassin at the ready there at Ecseri Piac? And he was sure as hell a sharpshooter; those two closely spaced holes above Szarvas's carnation left no doubt about that.
That still left me with the "why," and I couldn't come up with even a decent guess as to that. They didn't want me to learn something about something; that was what Yuri had implied and it was the best I could do, but it sure left an awful lot of questions. For example, if I was such an irritant to them, why didn't they just bump me off, instead of going after everyone I was talking to? You'd think it would be simpler; more cost-effective too. Whatever the answer, it meant that if I didn't want to get anyone else killed, let alone me, either I was going to have to drop the whole thing and go home, or else have to be a whole lot more careful than I'd been up to now. I resolved to be a whole lot more careful.
When the flight attendant offered a glass of wine I practically snatched it out of her hand, sinking gratefully back into my seat and assessing my current situation in more immediate terms. My unplanned departure from Budapest had left me with no luggage, no toiletries, and none of the clothes I'd brought with me other than what I had on my back.
But I wasn't complaining. What I did have was the most important thing: an intact, unpunctured skin. Also my wallet with credit cards and money, and my passport (God bless those ugly little pouches you wear around your waist).
Not to mention a nifty new leather jacket that was going to bowl them over in Back Bay.
Chapter 23
Europe is a small continent. Although I felt as if I'd already lived through three days worth of excitement so far that day, it was only one-thirty in the afternoon when the plane landed in Vienna. The first thing I did was telephone Mr. Nussbaum, the hard-to-get Viennese claimant to the Boston Velazquez. Still no answer.
The second thing I did was to hop in a cab and go to the big Marks & Spencer department store on Mariahilfer Strasse, where I outfitted myself with everything from toothpaste to trousers, plus a shoulder bag to carry them in. By this time I wasn't sure what shape my Mastercard account was in, so I put it on Visa and hoped for the best. Apparently there was still some money there because they let me out of the store with $300 worth of their wares.
I tried Nussbaum one more time and again failed to get him, then called Stetten to tell him I was back from Budapest sooner than I'd expected, and perhaps I might come up to Salzburg to see him today, a day early.
"That will be a pleasure," he said warmly. "And how was Budapest? Did you have any luck?"
"No, not really." Just escaping with my life by the skin of my teeth, that was all.
"And St. Petersburg?"
"I'll tell you all about it when I see you."
"Wonderful, I'll book a room for you at the Altstadt. Or would you prefer someplace else? The Goldner Hirsch? They're both excellent."
"No, don't bother," I said, "I'm perfectly happy staying at any—" It occurred to me just in time that the last time Stetten had chosen a hotel for me it had been the Imperial in Vienna. The last time I'd picked for myself it had been the Hotel Duna.
"—Well, all right, thanks," I finished. "The Altstadt'll be fine."
"Good. Now: my address is Rainerstrasse 77. I'll see you this afternoon, then."
"I'll be on the next plane."
* * *
"Rainerstrasse siebenundziebzig," the cabbie said, pulling to the curb.
I looked dubiously out the window and asked him if he was sure. Receiving only a pained, over-the-shoulder look in reply, I handed him fifty schillings to cover the forty-schilling fare from the Altstadt and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
The thing was, the living quarters I'd dreamed up for Albrecht, Graf Stetten were on the wooded, exclusive slopes of the Kapuzinerberg, overlooking the lovely clock towers and belfries of Old Salzburg; one of those faded but enchanting châteaus with a quiet, walled garden—a sort of Austrian version of la petite grandmère's villa in An Affair to Remember, you know?
But Rainerstrasse, while no more than seven or eight blocks from the base of the Kapuzinerberg, was in a different world, a noisy commercial street full of snarling trucks and huge, jointed, hissing busses. Not rundown or poor, no, but as nondescript as could be. Never once had Julie Andrews pranced down Rainerstrasse with her brood of von Trapps. There were no quaint, hanging, wrought-iron signboards, no charming, sculptured fountains, no pretty, yellow-fronted Baroque architecture. Just anonymous, shop-fronted apartment buildings that might have been ten years old or a hundred-and-fifty; with all that pea-soup-green gunite on them, who could tell?
Number 77 was no different from the rest, a plain five-story building with a dusty cutlery shop on the ground floor. Next to the apartment entrance was a brass panel with names, buzzers, and a speaker. The top name was "Stetten." I pressed the button.
"Wer ist da?" came from the speaker. Not Stetten's voice.
"Benjamin Revere," I shouted at it.
"I will open the door for you," the voice said grudgingly in German, as if, personally, he didn't think it was such a hot idea. Ah, Stetten's snooty butler, or valet, or whatever he was. "You will please take the elevator."
"What floor?"
"This is a private floor, there is no button. I will see to it that the elevator brings you here."
A buzz, a pop, and the front door unlocked. I walked down a poorly lit, not overly clean hallway to a glass-paneled elevator about the size of a fairly roomy coffin. I might have had space for a duffel bag in there with me, but that would have been it. Another pop, a thump, a hum, and the elevator began ascending in a wire tunnel that ran up through the hollow of the stairwell. The other floors were like the entrance hall—dim, carelessly maintained, and without signs of residents. When the elevator stopped at the top, I was in the dark, staring at a black metal surface on the other side of the glass. This turned out to be a heavy door, which was opened by a sallow, balding, wide-hipped man wearing a canary-yellow smock over a suit and tie. Graying hair slicked back, close-set eyes a disapproving gray. Jeeves, I presumed.
"Bitte, kommen Sie herein, mein herr. Ich heisse Georg."
I stepped directly into a surprisingly large, high-ceilinged living room, where I was asked to make myself comfortable while den Herrn Grafen was informed of my presence. As Georg left I noticed that, although perfectly turned out otherwise, he was shuffling along in felt bedroom slippers.
The room was fitted out with worn, comfortable furniture—two big sofas upholstered in soft, cream-colored leather, several armchairs, pale tapestry carpets on a wooden floor, and a dining room table and four chairs set in an alcove under a Meissen chandelier. And lots of florid, nineteenth-century bronze statuary now doing time as bases for table lamps.
All of it handsome and good quality, but almost all of it scruffy. The couches sagged, the carpet was threadbare, and I wouldn't have tried sitting down in one of those rickety dining room chairs if you'd paid me—notwithstanding the fact that I was pretty sure that they were from the shop of Johann Valentin R
aab, the great nineteenth-century Würzburg furniture maker, and worth maybe $20,000 apiece in decent condition. But even in $20,000 chairs, if they're not taken care of, the glue eventually dries up, shrinks, and falls out of the joints.
None of this was really surprising. Stetten was old money, not new money, and I had learned during my curatorial days that old money didn't usually go in for conspicuous consumption. If anything, it was conspicuous non-consumption they liked, driving old clunkers and walking around with holes in the elbows of their coats. This had been particularly true with the Boston old-rich, where a penny-squeezing Yankee stinginess had been considered a positive virtue—that is, as long as you were rich enough not to have to be stingy, if you see what I mean. A colleague at the museum had put it perfectly: "When I walk into a house and see good paintings on the wall, I can smell money. But when I see tatty old carpets on the floor under them, I smell real money."
Whether Stetten had "real" money or not, I wasn't sure; his taste in hotels indicated that he did, while his dickering with Dulska over the relatively modest price of the Velazquez suggested that he might not. But one of the interesting things I'd learned in Boston is that old money looks like old money even when it isn't there any more.
Stetten's apartment fit the picture, except for the paintings on the wall. There weren't any, other than two or three ancestral portraits, crudely done. But there were plenty of small pairs of antlers mounted on shield-shaped wooden tablets, with plaques identifying the place, the date, and the hunters (Stettens in every case, some going back to the nineteenth century.) And there were old family photographs, dozens of them, hung in irregular tiers on the walls, set one behind the other on the lamp tables, crowded into bunches on the mantel. None of them, as far as I could tell, had been taken less than 60 years ago. There were men in spiked Prussian helmets and straw boaters, women in ankle-length crinolined dresses or neck-to-knee woolen bathing suits; pictures of laughing, long-dead people taken in Paris, in Monte Carlo, in front of snowbound Bavarian chalets, on the giant Ferris wheel in the Prater. I picked out a twelve-year-old Stetten in a short-trousered sailor suit, complete with ribboned cap, sitting erectly between a distinguished man and a beautiful, full-figured woman with upswept hair, whose hand rested lightly on young Albrecht's. They were in front of a studio backdrop of sailboats scudding over the waves under a bright sun.