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A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva Rating: ••• (Recommended)
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Thrillogy In his new novel, A Death in Vienna, Daniel Silva completes the trilogy he began with The English Assassin and continued with The Confessor. Readers need not have read the earlier books to thoroughly enjoy A Death in Vienna. Silva presents vivid characters and a fast-moving plot, combining to provide good entertainment. Here’s an excerpt, all of Chapter 6, pp. 56-66: The Coalition for a Better Austria had all the trappings of a noble yet ultimately hopeless cause. It was located on the second floor of a dilapidated old warehouse in the Twentieth District, with sooty windows overlooking a railyard. The workspace was open and communal and impossible to heat properly. Gabriel, arriving the following morning, found most of the youthful staff wearing thick sweaters and woolen caps. Renate Hoffmann was the group’s legal director. Gabriel had telephoned her earlier that morning, posing as Gideon Argov from Jerusalem, and told her about his encounter the previous evening with Max Klein. Renate Hoffmann had hastily agreed to a meeting with him, then broken the connection, as if she were reticent to discuss the matter on the telephone. She had a cubicle for an office. When Gabriel was shown inside, she was on the telephone. She pointed toward an empty chair with the tip of a chewed pen. A moment later, she concluded the conversation and stood to greet him. She was tall and better dressed than the rest of the staff: black sweater and skirt, black stockings, flat-soled black shoes. Her hair was flaxen and did not reach her square, athletic shoulders. Parted on the side, it fell naturally toward her face, and she was holding back a troublesome forelock with her left hand as she shook hands firmly with Gabriel with her right. She wore no rings on her fingers, no makeup on her attractive face, and no scent other than tobacco. Gabriel guessed that she was not yet thirty-five. They sat down again, and she asked a series of curt, lawyerly questions. How long have you known Eli Lavon? How did you find Max Klein? How much did he tell you? When did you arrive in Vienna? With whom have you met? Have you discussed the matter with the Austrian authorities? With officials from the Israeli embassy? Gabriel felt a bit like a defendant in the dock, yet his responses were as polite and accurate as possible. Renate Hoffmann, her cross-examination complete, regarded him skeptically for a moment. Then she stood suddenly and pulled on a long, gray overcoat with very square shoulders. “Let’s take a walk.” Gabriel looked out the soot-smudged windows and saw that it was sleeting. Renate Hoffman shoved some files into a leather bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Trust me,” she said, sensing his apprehension. “It’s better if we walk.” Renate Hoffman , on the icy footpaths of the Augarten, explained to Gabriel how she had become Eli Lavon’s most important asset in Vienna. After graduating at the top of her class from Vienna University she had gone to work for the Austrian state prosecutor’s office, where she had served exceptionally for seven years. Then, five years ago, she’d resigned, telling friends and colleagues that she longed for the freedom of private practice. In truth, Renate Hoffman had decided she could no longer work for a government that showed less concern about justice than about protecting the interests of the state and its most powerful citizens. It was the Weller case that forced her hand. Weller was a Staatspolizei detective with a fondness for torturing confessions out of prisoners and administering justice personally when a proper trial was deemed too inconvenient. Renate Hoffmann tried to bring charges against him after a Nigerian asylum-seeker died in his custody. The Nigerian had been bound and gagged and there was evidence he had been struck repeatedly and choked. Her superiors had sided with Weller and dropped the case. Weary of fighting the establishment from the inside, Renate Hoffman had concluded that the battle was better waged from without. She’d started a small law firm in order to pay the bills but devoted most of her time and energy to the Coalition for a Better Austria, a reformist group dedicated to shaking the country out of its collective amnesia about its Nazi past. Simultaneously she also formed a quiet alliance with Eli Lavon’s Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Renate Hoffmann still had friends inside the bureaucracy, friends who were willing to do favors for her. These friends gave her access to vital government records and archives that were closed to Lavon. “Why the secrecy?” Gabriel asked. “The reluctance to talk on the telephone? The long walks in the park when the weather is perfectly dreadful?” “Because this is Austria, Mr. Argov. Needless to say, the work we do is not popular in many quarters of Austrian society, just as Eli’s wasn’t.” She caught herself using the past tense and quickly apologized. “The extreme right in this country doesn’t like us, and they’re well represented in the police and security services.” She brushed some sleet pellets from a park bench and they both sat down. “Eli came to me about two months ago. He told me about Max Klein and the man he’d seen at Café Central: Herr Vogel. I was skeptical, to say the least, but I decided to check it out, as a favor to Eli.” “What did you find?” “His name is Ludwig Vogel. He’s the chairman of something called Danube Valley Trade and Investment Corporation. The firm was founded in the early sixties, a few years after Austria emerged from the postwar occupation. He imported foreign products into Austria and served as an Austrian front man and facilitator for companies wishing to do business here, especially German and American companies. When the Austrian economy took off in the 1970s, Vogel was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the situation. His firm provided venture capital for hundreds of projects. He now owns a substantial stake in many of Austria’s most profitable corporations.” “How old is he?” “He was born in a small village in Upper Austria in 1925 and baptized in the local Catholic church. His father was an ordinary laborer. Apparently, the family was quite poor. A younger brother died of pneumonia when Ludwig was twelve. His mother died two years later of scarlet fever.” “Nineteen twenty-five? That would make him only seventeen years old in 1942, far too young to be a Sturmbannführer in the SS.” “That’s right. And according to the information I uncovered about his wartime past, he wasn’t in the SS.” “What sort of information?” She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him. Gabriel smelled morning coffee on her breath. “In my previous life, I sometimes found it necessary to consult files stored in the Austrian Staatsarchiv. I still have contacts there, the kind of people who are willing to help me under the right circumstances. I called on one of those contacts, and this person was kind enough to photocopy Ludwig Vogel’s Wehrmacht service file.” “Wehrmacht?” She nodded. “According to the Staatsarchiv documents, Vogel was conscripted in late 1944, when he was nineteen, and sent to Germany to serve in defense of the Reich. He fought the Russians in the battle of Berlin and managed to survive. During the final hours of the war, he fled west and surrendered to the Americans. He was interned at a U.S. Army detention facility south of Berlin, but managed to escape and make his way back to Austria. The fact that he escaped from the Americans didn’t seem to count against him, because from 1946 until the State Treaty of 1955, Vogel was a civilian employee of the American occupation authority.” Gabriel looked over at her sharply. “The Americans? What kind of work did he do?” “He started as a clerk at headquarters and eventually worked as a liaison officer between the Americans and the fledgling Austrian government.” “Married? Children?” She shook her head. “A lifelong bachelor.” “Has he ever been in trouble? Financial irregularities of any kind? Civil suits? Anything?” “His record is remarkably clean. I have another friend at the Staatspolizei. I had him run a check on Vogel. He came up with nothing, which in a way is quite remarkable. You see, almost every prominent citizen in Austria has a Staatspolizei file. But not Ludwig Vogel.” “What do you know about his politics?” Renate Hoffmann spent a long moment surveying her surroundings before answering. “I asked that same question to some contacts I have on some of the more courageous Viennese newspapers and magazines, the ones that refuse to toe the government line. It turns out Ludwig Vogel is a major financial supporter of the Austrian National Party. In fact, he’s practically bankrolled the campaign of Peter Metzler himself.” She paused for a moment to light a cigarette. Her hand was shaking with cold. “I don’t know if you’ve been following our campaign here, but unless things change dramatically in the next three weeks, Peter Metzler is going to be the next chancellor of Austria.” Gabriel sat silently, absorbing the information he had just been told. Renate Hoffmann took a single puff of her cigarette and tossed it into a mound of dirty snow. “You asked me why we were going out in weather like this, Mr. Argov. Now you know.” She stood without warning and started walking. Gabriel got to his feet and followed after her. Steady yourself he thought. An interesting theory, a tantalizing set of circumstances, but there was no proof and one enormous piece of exculpatory evidence. According to the files in the Staatsarchiv, Ludwig Vogel couldn’t possibly be the man Max Klein had accused him of being. “Is it possible Vogel knew Eli was investigating his past?” “I’ve considered that,” Renate Hoffman said. “I suppose someone at the Staatsarchiv or the Staatspolizei might have tipped him off about my search.” “Even if Ludwig Vogel really was the man Max Klein saw at Auschwitz, what’s the worst that could happen to him now, sixty years after the crime?” “In Austria? Precious little. When it comes to prosecuting war criminals, Austria’s record is shameful. In my opinion, it was practically a safe haven for Nazi war criminals. Have you ever heard of Doctor Heinrich Gross?” Gabriel shook his head. Heinrich Gross, she said, was a doctor at the Spiegelgrund clinic for handicapped children. During the war, the clinic served as a euthanasia center where the Nazi doctrine of eradicating the “pathological genotype” was put into practice. Nearly eight hundred children were murdered there. After the war, Gross went on to a distinguished career as a pediatric neurologist. Much of his research was carried out on brain tissue he had taken from victims of Spiegeigrund, which he kept stored in an elaborate “brain library” In 2000, the Austrian federal prosecutor finally decided it was time to bring Gross to justice. He was charged with complicity in nine of the murders carried out at Spiegeigrund and brought to trial. “One hour into the proceedings, the judge ruled that Gross was suffering from the early stages of dementia and was in no condition to defend himself in a court of law,” Renate Hoffman said. “He suspended the case indefinitely. Doctor Gross stood, smiled at his lawyer, and walked out of the courtroom. On the courthouse steps, he spoke to reporters about his case. It was quite clear that Doctor Gross was in complete control of his mental faculties.” “Your point?” “The Germans are fond of saying that only Austria could convince the world that Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler was a German. We like to pretend that we were Hitler’s first victim instead of his willing accomplice. We choose not to remember that Austrians joined the Nazi party at the same rate as our German cousins, or that Austria’s representation in the SS was disproportionately high. We choose not to remember that Adolf Eichmann was an Austrian, or that eighty percent of his staff was Austrian, or that seventy-five percent of his death camp commandants were Austrian.” She lowered her voice. “Doctor Gross was protected by Austria’s political elite and judicial system for decades. He was a member in good standing of the Social Democratic party, and he even served as a court forensic psychiatrist. Everyone in the Viennese medical community knew the source of the good doctor’s so-called brain library, and everyone knew what he had done during the war. A man like Ludwig Vogel, even if he were exposed as a liar, could expect the same treatment. The chances of him ever facing trial in Austria for his crimes would he zero.” “Suppose he knew about Eli’s investigation? What would he have to fear?” “Nothing, other than the embarrassment of exposure.’ “Do you know where he lives?” Renate Hoffmann pushed a few stray hairs beneath the band of her beret and looked at him carefully “You’re not thinking about trying to meet with him, are you, Mr. Argov? Under the circumstances, that would be an incredibly foolish idea.” “I just want to know where he lives.” “He has a house in the First District, and another in the Vienna woods. According to real estate records, he also owns several hundred acres and a chalet in Upper Austria.” Gabriel, after taking a glance over his shoulder, asked Renate Hoffmann if he could have a copy of all the documents she’d collected. She looked down at her feet, as if she’d been expecting the question. “Tell me something, Mr. Argov. In all the years I worked with Eli, he never once mentioned the fact that Wartime Claims and Inquiries had a Jerusalem branch.” “It was opened recently” “How convenient.” Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “I’m in possession of those documents illegally.If I give them to an agent of a foreign government, my position will be even more precarious. If I give them to you, am I giving them to an agent of a foreign government?” Renate Hoffmann, Gabriel decided, was a highly intelligent and street-smart woman. “You’re giving them to a friend, Miss Hoffmann, a friend who will do absolutely nothing to compromise your position.” “Do you know what will happen if you’re arrested by the Staatspolizei while in possession of confidential Staatsarchiv files? You’ll spend a long time behind bars.” She looked directly into his eyes. “And so will I, if they find out where you got them.” “I don’t intend to be arrested by the Staatspolizei.” “No one ever does, but this is Austria, Mr. Argov. Our police don’t play by the same rules as their European counterparts.” She reached into her handbag, withdrew a manila envelope, and handed it to Gabriel. It disappeared into the opening of his jacket and they kept walking. “I don’t believe you’re Gideon Argov from Jerusalem. That’s why I gave you the file. There’s nothing more I can do with it, not in this climate. Promise me you’ll tread carefully though. I don’t want the Coalition and its staff to suffer the same fate as Wartime Claims.” She stopped walking and turned briefly to face him. “And one more thing, Mr. Argov. Please don’t call me again.” The surveillance van was parked on the edge of the Augarten, on the Wasnergasse. The photographer sat in the back, concealed behind one-way glass. He snapped one final shot as the subjects separated, then downloaded the pictures to a laptop computer and reviewed the images. The one that showed the envelope changing hands had been shot from behind. Nicely framed, well lit, a thing of beauty. Fans of Silva will rush to read A Death in Vienna. New readers can start here, or with his earlier novels, and come away from each well-entertained. Steve Hopkins, March 23, 2004
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