everything she knew: that by the time I arrived to try and help her I would already be exposed as the man who had dumped Heim’s body.
I remembered how Veronika had told me about her life as a Sudeten Jew during wartime. How she had hid in lavatories, dirty basements, cupboards and attics. And then a DP camp for six months. ‘A bit of hard life,’ was how Lotte Hartmann had described it. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that she’d had very little of what could properly be called life at all.
I glanced at my wristwatch and saw that it was seven o’clock. There were still three hours to go before the meeting started: longer before Belinsky could be expected with ‘the cavalry’, as he put it. And because the men who had taken Veronika were who they were, I began to think that there was a real possibility that she wouldn’t live that long. It looked as if I had no choice but to go and get her myself.
I took out my revolver, thumbed open the six-shot cylinder and checked that it was fully loaded before heading back downstairs. Outside, I hailed a taxi at the rank on Kartnerstrasse and told the driver to go to Grinzing.
‘Whereabouts in Grinzing?’ he asked, accelerating away from the kerb.
‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’
‘You’re the boss,’ he said, speeding on to the Ring. ‘Only reason I asked was that everything there will be shut at this time of the morning. And you don’t look like you’re going hill-walking. Not in that coat.’ The car shuddered as we hit a couple of enormous potholes. ‘And you’re no Austrian. I can tell that from your accent. You sound like a
‘Skip the university-of-life class, will you? I’m not in the mood.’
‘That’s all right, sir. Only reason I asked was in case you were looking for a little bit of fun. You see, sir, only a few minutes further on from Grinzing, on the road to Cobenzl, there’s this hotel – the Schloss-Hotel Cobenzl.’ He wrestled with the wheel as the car hit another pothole. ‘Right now it’s being used as a DP camp. There’s girls there you can have for just a few cigarettes. Even at this hour of the morning if you fancy it. A man wearing a good coat like yours could have two or three together maybe. Get them to put a nice show on for you between themselves if you know what I mean.’ He laughed coarsely. ‘Some of these girls, sir. They’ve grown up in DP camps. Got the morals of rabbits, so they have. They’ll do anything. Believe me, sir, I know what I’m talking about. I keep rabbits myself.’ He chuckled warmly at the thought of it all. ‘I could arrange something for you, sir. In the back of the car. For a small commission of course.’
I leaned forwards on the seat. I don’t know why I bothered with him. Maybe I just don’t like garter-handlers. Maybe I just didn’t much care for his Trotsky-lookalike face.
‘That would be just great,’ I said, very tough. ‘If it weren’t for a Russian table-trap I found in the Ukraine. Partisans put a tension-release grenade behind a drawer that they left half-open with a bottle of vodka in there, just to get your attention. I came along, pulled the drawer, the pressure was released and the grenade detonated. It took the meat and two vegetables clean off at my belly. I nearly died of shock, then I nearly died from loss of blood. And when finally I came out of the coma I nearly died of grief. I tell you if I so much as see a bit of plum I’m liable to go mad with the frustration of it. I’d probably kill the nearest man to me out of plain envy.’ The driver glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ he said nervously, ‘I didn’t mean to -’
‘Forget it,’ I said, almost smiling now.
When we came past the yellow house I told the driver to keep going to the top of the hill. I had decided to approach Nebe’s house from the back, through the vineyards.
Because the meters on Vienna’s taxis were old and out of date, it was customary to multiply the tariff shown by five to give the total sum payable. There were six schillings on the clock when I told him to stop, and this was all the driver asked me for, his hand trembling as he took the money. The car was already roaring away by the time I realized he had forgotten his arithmetic.
I stood there, on a muddy track by the side of the road, wondering why I hadn’t kept my mouth shut, having intended to tell the man to wait a while. Now if I did find Veronika, I would have the problem of how to get away. Me and my smart mouth, I thought. The poor bastard was only offering a service, I told myself. But he was wrong about one thing. There was something open, a cafe further up Cobenzlgasse: the Rudelshof. I decided that if I was going to get shot I’d prefer to collect it with something in my stomach.
The cafe was a cosy little place if you didn’t mind taxidermy. I sat down under the beady eye of an anthraxic- looking weasel and waited for the badly stuffed proprietor to shamble up to my table.
‘God’s greeting to you, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a lovely morning.’
I reeled away from his distilled breath. ‘I can tell you’re already enjoying it,’ I said, using my smart mouth yet again. He shrugged, uncomprehending, and took my order.
The five-schilling Viennese breakfast I gobbled tasted like the taxidermist had cooked it during his time off between jobs: the coffee had grounds in it, the roll was about as fresh as a piece of scrimshaw and the egg was so hard it might have come from a quarry. But I ate it. I had so much on my mind I’d probably have eaten the weasel if only they’d sat it on a slice of toast.
Outside the cafe I walked down the road awhile and then climbed over a wall into what I thought must be Arthur Nebe’s vineyard.
There wasn’t much to see. The vines themselves, planted in neat rows, were still only young shoots, hardly higher than my knee. Here and there on high trolleys were what looked like abandoned jet engines but were in fact the rapid burners they used at night to heat the atmosphere around the shoots and protect them from late frost. They were still warm to the touch. The field itself was perhaps a hundred metres square and offered little in the way of cover. I wondered exactly how Belinsky would manage to deploy his men. Apart from crawling the length of the field on your belly, you could only stay close to the wall while you worked your way down to the trees immediately behind the yellow house and its outbuildings.
When I got as far as the trees I looked for some sign of life, and seeing none I edged my way forwards until I heard voices. Next to the largest of the outbuildings, a long half-timbered affair that resembled a barn, two men, neither of whom I recognized, were standing talking. Each man wore a metal drum on his back, and this was connected by a rubber hose to a long thin tube of metal he held in his hand which I presumed to be some kind of crop-spraying contraption.
At last they finished their conversation and walked towards the opposite side of the vineyard, as if to start their attack on the bacteria, fungi and insects which plagued their lives. I waited until they were well across the field before leaving the cover of the trees and entering the building.
A musty fruit smell hit my nostrils. Large oak vats and storage tanks were ranged under the open rafters of the ceiling like enormous cheeses. I walked the length of the stone floor and emerged at the other end of this first building to be faced with the door to another, built at right angles to the house.
This second outhouse contained hundreds of oak barrels, which lay on their sides as if awaiting the giant St Bernard dogs to come and collect them. Stairs led down into the darkness. It seemed like a good place to imprison someone, so I switched on the light and went downstairs to take a look. But there were only thousands of bottles of wine, each rack marked by a small blackboard on which were chalked a few numbers that must have meant something to somebody. I came back upstairs, switched off the light and stood by the barrel-room window. It was beginning to look as if Veronika might be in the house after all.
From where I was standing I had a clear view across a short cobbled yard, to the west side of the house. In front of an open door a big black cat sat staring at me. Beside the door was the window of what looked like the kitchen. There was a large, shiny shape on the kitchen ledge which I thought was probably a pot or a kettle. After a while the cat walked slowly up to the outbuilding where I was hiding and mewed loudly at something beside the window where I was standing. For a second or two it fixed me with its green eyes, and then for no apparent reason ran off. I looked back towards the house and continued to watch the kitchen door and window. After a few more minutes I judged it safe to leave the barrel room, and started across the yard.
I had not gone three paces when I heard the ratchet sound of an automatic-slide and almost simultaneously felt the cold steel of a gun muzzle pressed hard against my neck.
‘Clasp your hands behind your head,’ said a voice, none too distinctly.
I did as I was told. The gun pressed under my ear felt heavy enough to be a.45. Enough to dispose of a large part of my skull. I winced as he screwed the gun between my jaw and my jugular vein.
‘Twitch and you’re tomorrow morning’s pig swill,’ he said, smacking my pockets, and relieving me of my revolver.
‘You’ll find that Herr Nebe is expecting me,’ I said.
