“That is advisable, especially if you plan to keep those photographed documents in your possession.”
Gelev locked the door behind us. We headed back onto the street, where he turned in the opposite direction without saying good-bye, as if eager to demonstrate to any onlookers that he didn’t know us.
“Sounds like we’re not the only ones in Vienna following old trails,” Litzi said. “Maybe this Hammerhead is who Vladimir was watching for out his window.”
We continued a few more steps in silence.
“Those street names in the documents,” Litzi said. “I suppose you recognized them.”
“They’re all in Prague. I even knew one of the numbers, the address for source Fishwife. It’s an apartment building.”
“The exact number?”
“I once knew it by heart. My best friend lived there. Karel Vitova.”
“Do you think that he…?”
I shook my head.
“At least a dozen families lived there. Not that the Russians would’ve thought twice about using a thirteen- year-old informant. But Karel never gave a shit about politics, and he hated the Party youth clubs. Even when the tanks rolled in, all he cared about was girls, cigarettes, and Jimi Hendrix.”
“Do you think he’d know who it was?”
“If I could find him. He has to be in Prague. I could never imagine Karel living anywhere else.”
“Prague. Like Vladimir’s message.”
“Maybe now we know why.”
“The city where you stole my virtue.”
“In spite of our nosy innkeeper.”
“I never told you then, but she was really on our side. She confided to me one morning before you came downstairs that she was completely in favor of our trysts. It was the authorities she worried about. That’s why she kept her books so carefully, especially where Westerners were concerned.” Then, after a pause. “I could go with you again, if you wanted. If you didn’t think I’d be in the way.”
“In the way? Without you I’d still be waiting on prints from a drugstore. It’s just that, well…”
“Yes, I know. Too dangerous for a girl.”
“You know what I mean.”
“If it’s danger you’re worried about, I’d be an extra set of eyes.”
Her offer was appealing on many levels, but I could already imagine how disapproving my father would be.
“Why don’t I sleep on it? We can decide in the morning. For now, we’ve got a mail drop to take care of.”
Litzi slipped her arm through mine. We were about to set out for the Burggarten when an ambulance screamed past us up the street. Two blocks ahead a crowd was gathering, with everyone craning their necks from behind a police barricade on the corner. An officer pulled back the barricade to let the ambulance through.
“What’s going on?” Litzi said.
“That’s Kollnerhofgasse. You don’t think…?”
We hurried toward the corner, where the gawkers were staring up at the top floors of a building across the street-number 11. On the fourth floor the curtains of Vladimir’s apartment were open to a view of a uniformed policeman with his back to the window. The ambulance was parked on the street below.
“What’s happening?” Litzi asked someone up front.
“The cops came running in ten minutes ago. They pushed everyone back.”
The policeman in the window turned to gaze down at us, then closed the curtains just as Vladimir had. A few moments later a murmur went through the crowd as two orderlies burst through the front door pushing a rattling gurney with a body beneath a sheet.
“Maybe it was an overdose,” Litzi whispered.
“You think they’d call in all these cops for an overdose? And look at the sheet.”
The top was bloody, up where the head would be.
“Shot in the face, ten to one.”
“Shhh. People are listening. And look, just down the block, above the sign for the laundry.”
I immediately saw what she meant. A security camera was trained on the doorway of Vladimir’s building. If it was in working order, then our visit was on tape. As deserted as the building was, we might even be the only ones to have visited, especially if Vladimir’s killer had been savvy enough to enter from the alley in the back. Assuming the victim was Vladimir, of course.
We waited a few minutes more on the off-chance that Vladimir might appear, perhaps in handcuffs. Then the ambulance pulled away. An officer came over to move the barricade. People began spilling onto the sidewalk as the crowd broke apart.
“We’d better take care of our delivery,” I whispered. “The sooner the better under these circumstances.”
We were just getting under way when my attention was diverted by a tapping sound from behind, an insistent rhythmic beat barely audible above the buzz of the dispersing crowd. I spun around, looking for Lothar, but saw only a shopkeeper who had just finished rolling up his awning. Maybe that was the source of the noise.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did you hear it? That tapping?”
“What tapping?”
“Never mind. Let’s get this over with.”
“Then a drink, something stronger than wine. And tonight you’re coming upstairs. Being alone in the dark isn’t something I care to think about right now.”
An hour earlier, that remark would have been thrilling. Right then it sounded more like the voice of necessity, and I could only agree.
15
So, danger had entered the equation, just as my father had warned. In its presence, I was surprised to find that I was worried but unflinching. Not brave or courageous, just determined, full of resolve. What the hell else was I going to do? Give up and go home? Back to an emptiness that, with Litzi at my side, I now saw with more clarity than ever?
But I must discourage you from expecting too much of me as events turn chancy. As Marty Ealing likes to say when assessing a potentially shaky client, let’s review the particulars:
I am fifty-three, with no history of violence. My only recent acts of aggression have been verbal, usually while driving on the Capital Beltway. On the other hand, I am not a retiree with a beer gut, bad knees, and a colostomy bag. Regular running, plus a weekly game of basketball with other men past their prime, have left me in decent trim. A few years ago I even took one of those executive survival courses. Marty enrolled five of us, not out of concern for our safety but to suck up to a new client, a global security contractor that was getting bad press over its quick-triggered operatives in Iraq.
They taught us some stunt driving, various evasive techniques, a few handy physical moves like breaking a choke hold, escaping a wrist grip, disarming an attacker with a handgun-the very sort of stuff I’d probably never feel confident enough to try during an actual attack, although I guess you never know until the moment arrives. The one real fight I’ve witnessed in recent years, late one night outside a D.C. jazz club, had nothing the least bit practiced or choreographed about it. It was savage and elemental, probably the way any of us would fight if our life was on the line.
The best lesson the course taught me was that our most potent weapon is not a star knife or a Glock 19. It’s our mind, our alertness, our ability to reason out and act upon clues of danger as they assemble in our midst. The same as it always was for Folly or Smiley, in other words. And in the mental department, at least, I have stored up all sorts of lore from my years of reading.
Eric Ambler taught me that the best way to sneak up a stairway is to stay to the sides, where the treads
