A Death in Vienna (2 page)

T
HE OFFICE IS
hard to find, and intentionally so. Located near the end of a narrow, curving lane, in a quarter of Vienna more renowned for its nightlife than its tragic past, the entrance is marked only by a small brass plaque bearing the inscription W
ARTIME
C
LAIMS AND
I
NQUIRIES
. The security system, installed by an obscure firm based in Tel Aviv, is formidable and highly visible. A camera glowers menacingly from above the door. No one is admitted without an appointment and a letter of introduction. Visitors must pass through a finely tuned magnetometer. Purses and briefcases are inspected with unsmiling efficiency by one of two disarmingly pretty girls. One is called Reveka, the other Sarah.

Once inside, the visitor is escorted along a claustrophobic corridor lined with gunmetal gray filing cabinets, then into a large typically Viennese chamber with pale floors, a high ceiling, and bookshelves bowed beneath the weight of countless volumes and file folders. The donnish clutter is appealing, though some are unnerved by the green-tinted bulletproof windows overlooking the melancholy courtyard.

The man who works there is untidy and easily missed. It is his special talent. Sometimes, as you enter, he is standing atop a library ladder rummaging for a book. Usually he is seated at his desk, wreathed in cigarette smoke, peering at the stack of paperwork and files that never seems to diminish. He takes a moment to finish a sentence or jot a loose minute in the margin of a document, then he rises and extends his tiny hand, his quick brown eyes flickering over you. “Eli Lavon,” he says modestly as he shakes your hand, though everyone in Vienna knows who runs Wartime Claims and Inquiries.

Were it not for Lavon’s well-established reputation, his appearance—a shirtfront chronically smeared with ash, a shabby burgundy-colored cardigan with patches on the elbows and a tattered hem—might prove disturbing. Some suspect he is without sufficient means; others imagine he is an ascetic or even slightly mad. One woman who wanted help winning restitution from a Swiss bank concluded he was suffering from a permanently broken heart. How else to explain that he had never been married? The air of bereavement that is sometimes visible when he thinks no one is looking? Whatever the visitor’s suspicions, the result is usually the same. Most cling to him for fear he might float away.

He points you toward the comfortable couch. He asks the girls to hold his calls, then places his thumb and forefinger together and tips them toward his mouth.
Coffee, please.
Out of earshot the girls quarrel about whose turn it is. Reveka is an Israeli from Haifa, olive-skinned and black-eyed, stubborn and fiery. Sarah is a well-heeled American Jew from the Holocaust studies program at Boston University, more cerebral than Reveka and therefore more patient. She is not above resorting to deception or even outright lies to avoid a chore she believes is beneath her. Reveka, honest and temperamental, is easily outmaneuvered, and so it is usually Reveka who joylessly plunks a silver tray on the coffee table and retreats in a sulk.

Lavon has no set formula for how to conduct his meetings. He permits the visitor to determine the course. He is not averse to answering questions about himself and, if pressed, explains how it came to be that one of Israel’s most talented young archaeologists chose to sift through the unfinished business of the Holocaust rather than the troubled soil of his homeland. His willingness to discuss his past, however, goes only so far. He does not tell visitors that, for a brief period in the early 1970s, he worked for Israel’s notorious secret service. Or that he is still regarded as the finest street surveillance artist the service has ever produced. Or that twice a year, when he returns to Israel to see his aged mother, he visits a highly secure facility north of Tel Aviv to share some of his secrets with the next generation. Inside the service he is still referred to as “the Ghost.” His mentor, a man called Ari Shamron, always said that Eli Lavon could disappear while shaking your hand. It was not far from the truth.

He is quiet around his guests, just as he was quiet around the men he stalked for Shamron. He is a chain smoker, but if it bothers the guest he will refrain. A polyglot, he listens to you in whatever language you prefer. His gaze is sympathetic and steady, though behind his eyes it is sometimes possible to detect puzzle pieces sliding into place. He prefers to hold all questions until the visitor has completed his case. His time is precious, and he makes decisions quickly. He knows when he can help. He knows when it is better to leave the past undisturbed.

Should he accept your case, he asks for a small sum of money to finance the opening stages of his investigation. He does so with noticeable embarrassment, and if you cannot pay he will waive the fee entirely. He receives most of his operating funds from donors, but Wartime Claims is hardly a profitable enterprise and Lavon is chronically strapped for cash. The source of his funding has been a contentious issue in certain circles of Vienna, where he is reviled as a troublesome outsider financed by international Jewry, always sticking his nose into places it doesn’t belong. There are many in Austria who would like Wartime Claims to close its doors for good. It is because of them that Eli Lavon spends his days behind green bulletproof glass.

On a snow-swept evening in early January, Lavon was alone in his office, hunched over a stack of files. There were no visitors that day. In fact it had been many days since Lavon had accepted appointments, the bulk of his time being consumed by a single case. At seven o’clock, Reveka poked her head through the door. “We’re hungry,” she said with typical Israeli bluntness. “Get us something to eat.” Lavon’s memory, while impressive, did not extend to food orders. Without looking up from his work, he waved his pen in the air as though he were writing—
Make me a list, Reveka.

A moment later, he closed the file and stood up. He looked out his window and watched the snow settling gently onto the black bricks of the courtyard. Then he pulled on his overcoat, wrapped a scarf twice around his neck, and placed a cap atop his thinning hair. He walked down the hall to the room where the girls worked. Reveka’s desk was a skyline of German military files; Sarah, the eternal graduate student, was concealed behind a stack of books. As usual, they were quarreling. Reveka wanted Indian from a take-away just on the other side of the Danube Canal; Sarah craved pasta from an Italian café on the Kärntnerstrasse. Lavon, oblivious, studied the new computer on Sarah’s desk.

“When did that arrive?” he asked, interrupting their debate.

“This morning.”

“Why do we have a new computer?”

“Because you bought the old one when the Hapsburgs still ruled Austria.”

“Did I authorize the purchase of a new computer?”

The question was not threatening. The girls managed the office. Papers were placed beneath his nose, and usually he signed them without looking.

“No, Eli, you didn’t approve the purchase. My father paid for the computer.”

Lavon smiled. “Your father is a generous man. Please thank him on my behalf.”

The girls resumed their debate. As usual it resolved in Sarah’s favor. Reveka wrote out the list and threatened to pin it to Lavon’s sleeve. Instead, she stuffed it into his coat pocket for safekeeping and gave him a little shove to send him on his way. “And don’t stop for a coffee,” she said. “We’re starving.”

It was almost as difficult to leave Wartime Claims and Inquiries as it was to enter. Lavon punched a series of numbers into a keypad on the wall next to the entrance. When the buzzer sounded, he pulled open the interior door and stepped into the security chamber. The outer door would not open until the inner door had been closed for ten seconds. Lavon put his face to the bulletproof glass and peered out.

On the opposite side of the street, concealed in the shadows at the entrance of a narrow alleyway, stood a heavy-shouldered figure with a fedora hat and mackintosh raincoat. Eli Lavon could not walk the streets of Vienna, or any other city for that matter, without ritualistically checking his tail and recording faces that appeared too many times in too many disparate situations. It was a professional affliction. Even from a distance, and even in the poor light, he knew that he had seen the figure across the street several times during the last few days.

He sorted through his memory, almost as a librarian would sort through a card index, until he found references to previous sightings.
Yes, here it is. The Judenplatz, two days ago. It was you who was following me after I had coffee with that reporter from the States.
He returned to the index and found a second reference. The window of a bar along the Sterngasse. Same man, without the fedora hat, gazing casually over his pilsner as Lavon hurried through a biblical deluge after a perfectly wretched day at the office. The third reference took him a bit longer to locate, but he found it nonetheless. The Number Two streetcar, evening rush. Lavon is pinned against the doors by a florid-faced Viennese who smells of bratwurst and apricot schnapps. Fedora has somehow managed to find a seat and is calmly cleaning his nails with his ticket stub. He is a man who enjoys cleaning things, Lavon had thought at the time. Perhaps he cleans things for a living.

Lavon turned round and pressed the intercom. No response.
Come on, girls.
He pressed it again, then looked over his shoulder. The man in the fedora and mackintosh coat was gone.

A voice came over the speaker.
Reveka.

“Did you lose the list already, Eli?”

Lavon pressed his thumb against the button.

“Get out!
Now!
”

A few seconds later, Lavon could hear the trample of footfalls in the corridor. The girls appeared before him, separated by a wall of glass. Reveka coolly punched in the code. Sarah stood by silently, her eyes locked on Lavon’s, her hand on the glass.

He never remembered hearing the explosion. Reveka and Sarah were engulfed in a ball of fire, then were swept away by the blast wave. The door blew outward. Lavon was lifted like a child’s toy, arms spread wide, back arched like a gymnast. His flight was dreamlike. He felt himself turning over and over again. He had no memory of impact. He knew only that he was lying on his back in snow, in a hailstorm of broken glass. “My girls,” he whispered as he slid slowly into blackness. “My beautiful girls.”

I
T WAS A
small terra-cotta chu
rch, built for a poor parish in the
sestière
of Cannaregio. The restorer paused at the side portal beneath a beautifully proportioned lunette and fished a set of keys from the pocket of his oilskin coat. He unlocked the studded oaken door and slipped inside. A breath of cold air, heavy with damp and old candle wax, caressed his cheek. He stood motionless in the half-light for a moment, then headed across the intimate Greek Cross nave, toward the small Chapel of Saint Jerome on the right side of the church.

The restorer’s gait was smooth and seemingly without effort. The slight outward bend to his legs suggested speed and surefootedness. The face was long and narrow at the chin, with a slender nose that looked as if it had been carved from wood. The cheekbones were wide, and there was a hint of the Russian steppes in the restless green eyes. The black hair was cropped short and shot with gray at the temples. It was a face of many possible national origins, and the restorer possessed the linguistic gifts to put it to good use. In Venice, he was known as Mario Delvecchio. It was not his real name.

The altarpiece was concealed behind a tarpaulin-draped scaffold. The restorer took hold of the aluminum tubing and climbed silently upward. His work platform was as he had left it the previous afternoon: his brushes and his palette, his pigments and his medium. He switched on a bank of fluorescent lamps. The painting, the last of Giovanni Bellini’s great altarpieces, glowed under the intense lighting. At the left side of the image stood Saint Christopher, the Christ Child straddling his shoulders. Opposite stood Saint Louis of Toulouse, a crosier in hand, a bishop’s miter atop his head, his shoulders draped in a cape of red and gold brocade. Above it all, on a second parallel plane, Saint Jerome sat before an open Book of Psalms, framed by a vibrant blue sky streaked with gray-brown clouds. Each saint was separated from the other, alone before God, the isolation so complete it was almost painful to observe. It was an astonishing piece of work for a man in his eighties.

The restorer stood motionless before the towering panel, like a fourth figure rendered by Bellini’s skilled hand, and allowed his mind to float away into the landscape. After a moment he poured a puddle of Mowolith 20 medium onto his palette, added pigment, then thinned the mixture with Arcosolve until the consistency and intensity felt right.

He looked up again at the painting. The warmth and richness of the colors had led the art historian Raimond Van Marle to conclude the hand of Titian was clearly in evidence. The restorer believed Van Marle, with all due respect, was sadly mistaken. He had retouched works by both artists and knew their brushwork like the sun lines around his own eyes. The altarpiece in the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo was Bellini’s and Bellini’s alone. Besides, at the time of its production, Titian was desperately attempting to replace Bellini as Venice’s most important painter. The restorer sincerely doubted Giovanni would have invited the young headstrong Titian to assist in so important a commission. Van Marle, had he done his homework, would have saved himself the embarrassment of so ludicrous an opinion.

The restorer slipped on a pair of Binomags and focused on the rose-colored tunic of Saint Christopher. The painting had suffered from decades of neglect, wild temperature swings, and the continuous onslaught of incense and candle smoke. Christopher’s garments had lost much of their original luster and were scarred by the islands of
pentimenti
that had pushed their way to the surface. The restorer had been granted authority to carry out an aggressive repair. His mission was to restore the painting to its original glory. His challenge was to do so without making it look as though it had been churned out by a counterfeiter. In short, he wished to come and go leaving no trace of his presence, to make it appear as if the retouching had been performed by Bellini himself.

For two hours, the restorer worked alone, the silence broken only by the shuffle of feet outside in the street and the rattle of rising aluminum storefronts. The interruptions began at ten o’clock with the arrival of the renowned Venetian altar cleaner, Adrianna Zinetti. She poked her head around the restorer’s shroud and wished him a pleasant morning. Annoyed, he raised his magnifying visor and peered down over the edge of his platform. Adrianna had positioned herself in such a way that it was impossible to avoid gazing down the front of her blouse at her extraordinary breasts. The restorer nodded solemnly, then watched her slither up her scaffolding with feline assurance. Adrianna knew he was living with another woman, a Jewess from the old ghetto, yet she still flirted with him at every opportunity, as if one more suggestive glance, or one more “accidental” touch, would be the one to topple his defenses. Still, he envied the simplicity with which she viewed the world. Adrianna loved art and Venetian food and being adored by men. Little else mattered to her.

A young restorer called Antonio Politi came next, wearing sunglasses and looking hung over, a rock star arriving for yet another interview he wished to cancel. Antonio did not bother to wish the restorer good morning. Their dislike was mutual. For the Crisostomo project, Antonio had been assigned Sebastiano del Piombo’s main altarpiece. The restorer believed the boy was not ready for the piece, and each evening, before leaving the church, he secretly scaled Antonio’s platform to inspect his work.

Francesco Tiepolo, the chief of the San Giovanni Crisostomo project, was the last to arrive, a shambling, bearded figure, dressed in a flowing white shirt and silk scarf round his thick neck. On the streets of Venice, tourists mistook him for Luciano Pavarotti. Venetians rarely made such a mistake, for Francesco Tiepolo ran the most successful restoration company in the entire Veneto region. Among the Venetian art set, he was an institution.

“Buongiorno,”
Tiepolo sang, his cavernous voice echoing high in the central dome. He seized the restorer’s platform with his large hand and gave it one violent shake. The restorer peered over the side like a gargoyle.

“You almost ruined an entire morning’s work, Francesco.”

“That’s why we use isolating varnish.” Tiepolo held up a white paper sack.
“Cornetto?”

“Come on up.”

Tiepolo put a foot on the first rung of the scaffolding and pulled himself up. The restorer could hear the aluminum tubing straining under Tiepolo’s enormous weight. Tiepolo opened the sack, handed the restorer an almond
cornetto,
and took one for himself. Half of it disappeared in one bite. The restorer sat on the edge of the platform with his feet dangling over the side. Tiepolo stood before the altarpiece and examined his work.

“If I didn’t know better, I would have thought old Giovanni slipped in here last night and did the inpainting himself.”

“That’s the idea, Francesco.”

“Yes, but few people have the gifts to actually pull it off.” The rest of the
cornetto
disappeared into his mouth. He brushed powdered sugar from his beard. “When will it be finished?”

“Three months, maybe four.”

“From my vantage point, three months would be better than four. But heaven forbid I should rush the great Mario Del vecchio. Any travel plans?”

The restorer glared at Tiepolo over the
cornetto
and slowly shook his head. A year earlier, he had been forced to confess his true name and occupation to Tiepolo. The Italian had preserved that trust by never revealing the information to another soul, though from time to time, when they were alone, he still asked the restorer to speak a few words of Hebrew, just to remind himself that the legendary Mario Delvecchio truly was an Israeli from the Valley of Jezreel named Gabriel Allon.

A sudden downpour hammered on the roof of the church. From atop the platform, high in the apse of the chapel, it sounded like a drum roll. Tiepolo raised his hands toward the heavens in supplication.

“Another storm. God help us. They say the
acqua alta
could reach five feet. I still haven’t dried out from the last one. I love this place, but even I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

It had been a particularly difficult season for high water. Venice had flooded more than fifty times, and three months of winter still remained. Gabriel’s house had been inundated so many times that he’d moved everything off the ground floor and was installing a waterproof barrier around his doors and windows.

“You’ll die in Venice, just like Bellini,” Gabriel said. “And I’ll bury you beneath a cypress tree on San Michele, in an enormous crypt befitting a man of your achievements.”

Tiepolo seemed pleased with this image, even though he knew that, like most modern Venetians, he would have to suffer the indignity of a mainland burial.

“And what about you, Mario? Where will you die?”

“With a bit of luck, it will be at the time and place of my own choosing. That’s about the best a man like me can hope for.”

“Just do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

Tiepolo gazed at the scarred painting. “Finish the altarpiece before you die. You owe it to Giovanni.”

T
HE FLOOD SIRENS
atop the Basilica San Marco cried out a few minutes after four o’clock. Gabriel hurriedly cleaned his brushes and his palette, but by the time he’d descended his scaffolding and crossed the nave to the front portal, the street was already running with several inches of floodwater.

He went back inside. Like most Venetians, he owned several pairs of rubber Wellington boots, which he stored at strategic points in his life, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. The pair he kept in the church were his first. They’d been lent to him by Umberto Conti, the master Venetian restorer with whom Gabriel had served his apprenticeship. Gabriel had tried countless times to return them, but Umberto would never take them back.
Keep them, Mario, along with the skills I’ve given you. They will serve you well, I promise.

He pulled on Umberto’s faded old boots and cloaked himself in a green waterproof poncho. A moment later he was wading through the shin-deep waters of the Salizzada San Giovanni Crisostomo like an olive-drab ghost. In the Strada Nova, the wooden gangplanks known as
passerelle
had yet to be laid down by the city’s sanitation workers—a bad sign, Gabriel knew, for it meant the flooding was forecast to be so severe the
passerelle
would float away.

By the time he reached the Rio Terrà San Leonardo, the water was nearing his boot tops. He turned into an alley, quiet except for the sloshing of the waters, and followed it to a temporary wooden footbridge spanning the Rio di Ghetto Nuovo. A ring of unlit apartment houses loomed before him, notable because they were taller than any others in Venice. He waded through a swamped passageway and emerged into a large square. A pair of bearded yeshiva students crossed his path, tiptoeing across the flooded square toward the synagogue, the fringes of their
tallit katan
dangling against their trouser legs. He turned to his left and walked to the doorway at No. 2899. A small brass plaque read
C
OMUNITÀ
E
BRÀICA DI
V
ENEZIA
: J
EWISH
C
OMMUNITY OF
V
ENICE
. He pressed the bell and was greeted by an old woman’s voice over the intercom.

“It’s Mario.”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“Helping out at the bookstore. One of the girls was sick.”

He entered a glass doorway a few paces away and lowered his hood. To his left was the entrance of the ghetto’s modest museum; to the right an inviting little bookstore, warm and brightly lit. A girl with short blond hair was perched on a stool behind the counter, hurriedly cashing out the register before the setting of the sun made it impossible for her to handle money. Her name was Valentina. She smiled at Gabriel and pointed the tip of her pencil toward the large floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the canal. A woman was on her hands and knees, soaking up water that had seeped through the allegedly watertight seals around the glass. She was strikingly beautiful.

“I told them those seals would never hold,” Gabriel said. “It was a waste of money.”

Chiara looked up sharply. Her hair was dark and curly and shimmering with highlights of auburn and chestnut. Barely constrained by a clasp at the nape of her neck, it spilled riotously about her shoulders. Her eyes were caramel and flecked with gold. They tended to change color with her mood.

“Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Get down here and help me.”

“Surely you don’t expect a man of my talent—”

The soaking white towel, thrown with surprising force and accuracy, struck him in the center of the chest. Gabriel wrung it out into a bucket and knelt next to her. “There’s been a bombing in Vienna,” Chiara whispered, her lips pressed to Gabriel’s neck. “He’s here. He wants to see you.”

T
HE FLOODWATERS LAPPED
against the street entrance of the canal house. When Gabriel opened the door, water rippled across the marble hall. He surveyed the damage, then wearily followed Chiara up the stairs. The living room was in heavy shadow. An old man stood in the rain-spattered window overlooking the canal, as motionless as a figure in the Bellini. He wore a dark business suit and silver necktie. His bald head was shaped like a bullet; his face, deeply tanned and full of cracks and fissures, seemed to be fashioned of desert rock. Gabriel went to his side. The old man did not acknowledge him. Instead, he contemplated the rising waters of the canal, his face set in a fatalistic frown, as though he were witnessing the onset of the Great Flood come to destroy the wickedness of man. Gabriel knew that Ari Shamron was about to inform him of death. Death had joined them in the beginning, and death remained the foundation of their bond.