Kingdom of Shadows

“I would think. Care to get out and take a look? I don’t mind.”

“No, I just wanted to see it again.”

“So, now to the Landstrasse?”

“Yes. The Imperial.”

“Come to Vienna often?”

“Now and again.”

“Different, this past year.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Quiet, thank God. Earlier we had nothing but trouble.”

8:15. He would try one last time, he decided, and made the call from a phone in the hotel lobby.

“Hotel Schoenhof.”

“Good evening. This is Doktor Heber, please connect me with Herr Kolovitzky’s room.”

“Sorry. Herr Kolovitzky is not available.”

“Not in his room?”

“No. Good night, Herr Doktor.”

“This is urgent, and you will give him a message. He took some tests, at my clinic here in Wahring, and he must return, as soon as possible.”

“All right, I’ll let him know about it.”

“Thank you. Now, would you be so kind as to call the manager to the phone?”

“I’m the manager.”

“And you are?”

“The manager. Good night, Herr Doktor.”

The next morning, Morath bought a briefcase, put the money and his passport inside, explained to the desk clerk that he would be away for a week, paid for his room until the following Thursday, and had the briefcase put in the hotel safe. From the art dealer in Paris he had a new passport-French, this time. He returned to his room, gave his valise a last and very thorough search, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Then he took a taxi to the Nordbahnhof, had a cup of coffee in the station buffet, then went outside and hailed a taxi.

“The Hotel Schoenhof,” he told the driver.

In the lobby, only men.

Something faintly awkward in the way they were dressed, he thought, as though they were used to military uniform. SS in civilian clothing. Nobody saluted or clicked his heels, but he could sense it- the way their hair was cut, the way they stood, the way they looked at him.

The man behind the desk was not one of them. The owner, Morath guessed. In his fifties, soft and frightened. He met Morath’s eyes for a moment longer than he needed to. Go away, you don’t belong here.

“A room, please,” Morath said.

One of the young men in the lobby strolled over and leaned on the desk. When Morath looked at him, he got a friendly little nod in return. Not at all unpleasant, he was just there to find out who Morath was and what he wanted. No hard feelings.

“Single or double?” the owner said.

“A single. On the square, if you have it.”

The owner made a show of looking at his registration book. “Very well. For how long, please?”

“Two nights.”

“Your name?”

“Lebrun.” Morath handed over the passport.

“Will you be taking the demi-pension?”

“Yes, please.”

“Dinner is served in the dining room. At seven promptly.”

The owner took a key from a numbered hook on a board behind him. Something odd about the board. The top row of hooks, he saw, had no keys. “403,” the owner said. “Would you like the porter to take your valise up?” His hand hovered over a bell.

“I can manage,” Morath said.

He walked up four flights of stairs, the carpet old and frayed. Just a commercial hotel, he thought. Like hundreds in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, anywhere one went. He found 403 and unlocked the door. An edelweiss pattern on the limp curtains and the coverlet on the narrow bed. Pale green walls, hushed, still air. Very quiet in this hotel.

He decided to take a walk, let them have a look at his valise. He handed the key to the owner at the desk and went out onto the Mauerplatz. At a newsstand he glanced at the headlines. POLAND THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG! Then bought a sport magazine, youths playing volleyball on the cover. A genteel neighborhood, he thought. Sturdy, brick apartments, women with baby carriages, a trolley line, a school where he could hear children singing, a smiling grocer in the doorway of his store, a little man who looked like a weasel sitting at the wheel of a battered Opel. Back at the Schoenhof, Morath retrieved his key and walked upstairs, past the fourth floor, up to the fifth. In the corridor, a heavy man with a red face sat on a chair tipped back against the wall. He stood when he saw Morath.

“What do you want up here?”

“I’m in room 403.”

“Then you’re on the wrong floor.”

“Oh. What’s up here?”

“Reserved,” the man said, “get moving.”

Morath apologized and hurried away. Very close, he thought. Ten rooms on the fifth floor, Kolovitzky was a prisoner in one of them.

Three in the morning. Morath lay on the bed in the dark room, sometimes a breeze from the Mauerplatz moved the curtains. Otherwise, silence. After dinner there’d been a street musician on the square, playing an accordion and singing. Then he’d listened to the radio on the night table, Liszt and Schubert, until midnight, when the national radio station went off the air. Not completely off the air-they played the ticking of a metronome until dawn. To reassure people, it was said.

Morath gazed at the ceiling. He’d been lying there for three hours with nothing to do but wait, had thought about almost everything he could think of. His life. Mary Day. The war. Uncle Janos. He missed Polanyi, it surprised him how much. Echezeaux and bay rum. The amiable contempt he felt for the world he had to live in. And his final trick. Here, you try it.

He wondered about the other guests in the hotel-the real ones, not the SS. They’d been easy enough to spot in the dining room, trying to eat the awful dinner. He’d mostly pushed noodles from one side of his plate to the other, kept an eye on the waiter, and figured out how the downstairs worked. As for the guests, he believed they would survive. Hoped they would.

From a church, somewhere in the neighborhood, the single chime for the half hour. Morath sighed and swung his legs off the bed. Put on his jacket, pulled his tie up. Then he took the stays from the envelope Szubl had given him. Celluloid. Made of soluble guncotton and camphor.

He took a deep breath and slowly turned the knob on his door, listened for twenty seconds, and stepped out into the hallway. He descended the staircase one slow step at a time. Somebody coughing on the third floor, a light under a door on the second.

A few steps from the bottom-the reception area-he stared out into the gloom. There had to be a guard. Where? Finally, he made out part of a silhouette above the back of a couch and heard the shallow breathing that meant light sleep. Morath moved cautiously around the newel post at the foot of the staircase, entered the dining room, then the hallway where the waiter had appeared and disappeared during dinner.

Finally, the kitchen. He lit a match, looked around, then blew it out. There was a streetlamp in the alley, not far from the windows, enough light for Morath to see what he was doing. He found the sinks-big, heavy tubs made of gray zinc-knelt on the floor below them and ran his fingertips over the cement. Found the grease trap, realized he’d have trouble prying up the lid, and abandoned the idea.