I spotted him. The same gray suit I’d seen at the Vienna airport. Walking easily toward the exit. He had no idea he was being followed.
I kept my hand on the pistol in my coat, walking about five people behind. My heart made noises again. We descended the steps to the underground tunnel connecting the platforms.
I wanted to take care of it there. A public assassination was what I’d tried in Vienna. But over the last seven and a half hours on the train, it had occurred to me that that kind of impulsive behavior wasn’t truly what I wanted. I didn’t want the shock of terrified Italians around me, or the sudden arrest to stop me before I could finish the job.
Admittedly, I also wanted what I’d wanted from his son-some kind of explanation or understanding. I wanted what Gavra would later tell me he’d wanted from the Pankovs-some measure of apology.
So I shadowed him into the Stazione Centrale and out to the cool eleven-thirty gloom of Viale Miramare. He wasn’t hesitating over anything-I noticed that. His tall form moved directly to the taxi stand as if, unlike me, he was familiar with this town. In fact it was true, though he hadn’t been to Trieste since Europe’s last big war, when he was working for the Gestapo.
I took the next taxi. Instead of telling the driver to follow Michalec’s taxi, I gave him unsure directions from the passenger seat, in German, watching the other car make turns. The driver was tired from a long night’s shift and became annoyed. “Where but you are going?” he asked in labored German.
“I’ll know when I get there.”
He grunted to make his frustration clear but didn’t put up a fight. He’d dealt with plenty of strange Germans in his life.
Michalec’s taxi stopped in front of the eroded luxury of the Grand Hotel Duchi D’Aosta. By then, the taxi driver had figured out what we were doing and said, “I am bet you want stop there at end of the street so he don’t see.”
I tipped the driver well, but he frowned at the Austrian schillings.
“Is that all right?” I said.
“You have none lire?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it must to be.”
I thought a moment before getting out, then counted the last of my schillings. Thirty-two-about three U.S. dollars, or 9,000 ko-rona. “Can you change these?”
The man just wanted to go home; maybe that’s why he went ahead and bought them from me. With four thousand lire in my pocket, I got out.
I spent half the money on a pack of cheap cigarettes from an all-night kiosk and smoked one on the street. It was warmer here, the temperate Adriatic wind full of salt. I walked to a street called Riva Caduti per I’Italianita di Trieste, where, on the other side, a concrete boardwalk ran alongside the black Adriatic. There were no stars out, but I spotted occasional pairs of lovers wandering by. They were pleasant to look at; they helped calm my flailing heart. But over the sound of waves lapping the ramparts, my ears started acting up again, humming. By then, I was sure he’d made it to his room. I returned to the hotel.
The Duchi D’Aosta’s lobby was spare and dimly lit. The rates were listed behind a wood-paneled desk in Italian, English, German, and Russian. The clerk, with his thin black mustache and oiled hair, looked like a cartoon Italian. He turned morosely from a small television, the screen the size of a hand, showing a muted soccer game. “Mi dica.”
“I’d like a room,” I answered in German.
He seemed as irritated as the taxi driver had been, but he passed over a form for me to fill out. I used the information in my Austrian papers. He gave me a key to the third floor, and I said, “My friend arrived just a few minutes before me. Jerzy Michalec. What room’s he in?”
The clerk seemed to wake up a little. “You two travel light.”
“We’re funny that way.”
“I can call up to his room for you.”
I shook my head. “He’ll be asleep. I won’t knock on his door until he’s rested.”
“It’s against the rules to give out room numbers,” said the clerk, shrugging.
He was waiting for a bribe, but two thousand lire wouldn’t get me anything. I couldn’t even pay for the room. I leaned against the counter. “Can you at least tell me the floor?”
He sagged a little, realizing he wasn’t going to get anything out of me. He glanced at the game on the television and said, “Same as yours.”
I wasn’t rested enough; I knew this. And despite the shower at Brano’s house, I stank, and wanted another one. In the stairwell I prepared myself anyway. I took out the Walther.
After my fiasco at the Vienna airport, I was left with three rounds in the magazine, one in the breech. I paused at my door, number 312, checked to be sure the corridor was empty, and walked slowly past the other rooms, listening. Halfway down, on the left, at room 305, I heard it. My language, spoken softly into a telephone. It was loud enough for me to recognize the rhythm and inflection but too quiet to make out the words.
For a moment I stood there, inches from the door, staring. There was a small, bright spy hole in the middle of it. I wondered if he would check it before opening the door. Of course he would. I couldn’t just knock and wait for him to let me in.
I looked at the handle-a simple but effective lock. In movies, you always see men enter a locked room by firing a bullet into the lock. I’ve never seen it work in real life.
I heard him hang up the telephone, and then there was silence.
I returned to 312 at the end of the corridor and washed my face and hands and stripped off my dirty coat, leaving on my wrinkled blazer. My pulse raced, bringing on another headache, so I took my last two Captopril and tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket. More than the money, this was the one sure sign I couldn’t go back.
The bed was alluring, but if I sat on it, I wouldn’t get up again. So I paced, walking to the high window that looked out on the narrow, dark Via Mercato Vecchio, trying to figure this out.
Then it occurred to me.
It was one in the morning when I called down to the lobby. The grumpy clerk said, “Grand Hotel Duchi D’Aosta.”
“Sorry to bother you,” I said in German. “I was just down there. Can you connect me to my friend’s room?”
The clerk didn’t bother replying. I just heard the brr brr of the phone ringing. “Da?” Michalec said abruptly.
I couldn’t find any air. It was the first time in forty years that I’d heard his voice, but there was something to that single syllable that reminded me of all the empty words he’d spoken to me in 1948.
“Yes?” he repeated, in English.
“Jerzy,” I said, and there was silence on his end. Perhaps he recognized my voice as well. I said, “Jerzy, you’re finished. I’m on the train behind you. We just stopped at Udine. I thought I’d give you fair warning. The kind of warning you never gave my wife.”
Though the words came out well enough, my tongue felt bloated and my cheeks were hot. But I knew he’d believe it. He would believe that I, like most everyone in our country, wanted to show how morally superior I was.
“Mr. Brod,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think you had it in you. How did you find me?”
“I’m clever.”
So you are.
“The conductor’s calling,” I said. “See you soon.” I hung up.
He didn’t come out immediately. Jerzy believed he had about two hours until my arrival, so he would use that time wisely. I stood to the left of his door, where it was hinged to the frame, and listened to him making telephone calls. He was louder now, but that wasn’t panic; he only needed to make himself heard and understood. “How fast can you get a plane to Trieste? Okay. Direct to the Capital. I have to leave this phone within the hour. Right… right.”
I wondered whom he was talking to. Perhaps his son, or some Italian collaborator, or a Parisian friend. It
