I wasn’t sure. Did I want her to run down the bus with this little car? No. “South train station,” I said, remembering the sign at the bus stop. “Drive normally.”
She let off the gas and switched gears again as a taxi pulled in front of us.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“You can put away the gun,” she said. Though she was calm, there was fear in her voice. I felt ashamed.
“But you are taking me, right?”
“If the police don’t stop us first.”
At the time, I couldn’t see just how cool Frau Shappelhorn was. Now I can. I slipped the pistol into my coat pocket and rubbed my face, trying to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t take much more of this. I said, “There’s going to be a ticket gate when we leave the airport.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You have a ticket?”
“Of course.” She pointed at the dashboard, where a single orange stub lay.
“Go through like normal.”
“Okay.”
I’ll never understand why she didn’t try something. We rolled up to the ticket booth, the man inside said, “GruB Gott,” and she said it back, handing over her ticket, and then the mechanical arm rose, and she drove through. When we reached the A4 heading into town, she admitted something: “I thought they’d stop us back there. They should’ve radioed ahead to stop us.”
“Oh,” I said, because that hadn’t occurred to me.
I learned the answer later, also from Der Standard. The ticket booths were connected to the terminals by an underground communications system. That day, the system was being tested because of problems, and it failed when they tried to make contact. Because of the embarrassment over my escape, from the following day all the booths were equipped with wireless radios.
It takes twenty minutes to drive from the Vienna airport to the Sudbahnhof, and in that time Frau Shappelhorn began to ask questions. “What’s going on?” was her first.
I thought about telling her. I wanted to say, I’m tracking the man who killed my wife, who’s taking over my country. Even then, overcome with so much physical pain and confusion, I knew it would sound paranoid. It would frighten her more. So I said, “I need to catch someone.”
“You need a gun for that?”
“I think so.”
“So you need to kill this person.”
“No,” I lied. “I just need to catch him.”
The bus was nowhere in sight, and I wondered if we’d passed it. That would be a good thing. I could reach the bus stop at the Sudbahnhof and wait for him to exit, or go into the bus myself. If we weren’t stopped beforehand.
Had I done the right thing? I didn’t know. I knew how Brano felt-he must have hated me.
Anyway, it was done. I’d begun the chase because I felt I had no other option. I didn’t want Jerzy Michalec enjoying the comforts of an Austrian jail cell and eventual extradition back home, or to France. Because revenge has nothing to do with due process-revenge wants to be sharp, and final.
Frau Shappelhorn drove steadily along the A4. She said, “You don’t want to tell me more?”
“There’s no point.”
“Sure there is. Maybe I can help.”
“No,” I said. “The last person who helped me ended up dead.”
It was the wrong thing to say, but I wasn’t thinking straight. The car swerved briefly, and I reached over to steady the wheel; someone blew his horn and passed us. “So you’re in trouble,” she said.
I even grinned. “Can’t you tell?”
That didn’t make her feel any better.
I said, “Just drop me off near the Sudbahnhof. A block away. Police will probably be waiting for me, and I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
That seemed to help a little, but I regretting having said it. I wasn’t really sure what I’d do when I reached the train station, and it would have been smarter to keep the car. But I wasn’t smart. I’ve never been smart.
I tried to imagine that I was Jerzy Michalec, a criminal who knew he’d been doubly conned. First, by the Austrians-surely he watched Brano and Ludwig follow his double’s car. Second, by the person who had warned him. In the bus, he had no way of contacting the embassy, which would start looking for him at the airport. Brano and his Austrian friends would soon do the same, also posting men outside our embassy.
Michalec could get out at the Sudbahnhof or go on to the final stop at the Westbahnhof and then try to contact the embassy. But if he believed the Austrian government was out to get him, that it was also watching his embassy, then he wouldn’t feel safe here.
There was only one thing a man like Jerzy Michalec would do. He would flee Vienna on the first train leaving.
“Have you accepted Jesus?” said Frau Shappelhorn.
I blinked, unsure if I’d heard her right. “What?”
“Jesus Christ. Have you accepted him as your personal savior?”
“Please,” I said. “I don’t want to hear about that.”
She nodded at the road. “Sure. But you’d be surprised. No matter how terrible your situation seems, Jesus Christ can help. He helps millions every day.”
I looked out at the road, then at her. She was as serious about this as I was about Michalec. She took the exit for the Sudbahnhof.
She said, “You have to pray. That’s the first step. You have to ask Him to come to you, but you have to be ready to accept His Glory.”
“Take this left,” I said, but she was already taking it, and up ahead I saw a police car with blinking lights but no sirens. The station was a block ahead. “Let me out here.”
She pulled to the curb along Wiener Gurtel, and I opened the door. Then, as an afterthought, I reached over to cover her hand on the gearshift. “I’m sorry about this. But thank you. I’ll consider giving Jesus Christ a try.”
I think that’s what she wanted to hear. It meant that her day hadn’t been an entire waste.
THIRTY-SIX
From the opposite side of Wiener Gurtel, peering through the busy traffic, I spotted the airport bus in front of the ugly Sudbahnhof. It was parked along the road, empty, and outside its door stood four policemen talking with the bewildered driver. I didn’t see Michalec among the small crowd of passengers who’d been taken off. He’d gotten away before the police arrived.
When the light changed, I crossed behind three teenagers cursing in German. They looked very strange-they wore leather jackets, and their long hair was shaved into Mohawks, like American Indians, but dyed bright green and purple. It was unnerving.
The car ride had given me back my breath, but not my strength. I worked hard to keep up with the teenagers, terrified that a policeman would recognize my face. No one stopped me. I crossed the sidewalk to the entrance, the pistol in my coat pocket feeling very bulky and conspicuous, and waved off a hustler trying to sell me a watch.
The station was airy and cavernous and full of travelers, just as when I’d arrived hours before. An escalator to my left led down, but I continued to the rear wall, where a vast board of departures and arrivals was being updated to the clicking noise of revolving numbers and city names.
I was looking for the next train leaving. There it was, at the top of the departures pane. In two minutes-at three thirty-the train on track 7 would depart for Trieste, Italy.
I hurried through travelers to the escalator. It was difficult getting past them, muttering Entschuldigung
