The Silence (3 page)

Werthen, accustomed to the painter’s extreme egoism and narcissism, was not caught amiss by this seeming non sequitur.

‘That’s not really my line,’ he said.

‘Nonsense, Werthen,’ Klimt spluttered. ‘Anything is
your line
as long as it has to do with private inquiries. And this is very private, I assure you. My patron, Karl Wittgenstein—’

‘He’s gone missing?’

‘His oldest son and heir.’

Werthen nodded judiciously at this information. Karl Wittgenstein, the powerful industrialist, dubbed the Carnegie of Austria, was indeed a commission of worth. The man was one of the wealthiest in the empire if not in all of Europe, and had recently retired, turning his interests to art. Among his other projects, he had helped fund Klimt’s exhibition hall, the Secession.

‘I thought you might be interested,’ Klimt went on. ‘The young man’s name is Hans. Just turned twenty-three. He’s been missing for the better part of a week.’

‘What do the police say?’

Klimt leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t suppose that wonderful young woman out there might find a cup of coffee for me?’

‘No, I don’t suppose she will. I can offer you a slivowitz, though.’

Klimt grinned like a fellow conspirator. ‘The cold, you know. One could do with a bit of lubrication.’

Werthen kept a bottle of ten-year-old plum brandy in a massive sideboard that took up one wall of his office. Moving to the sideboard, he secured the bottle and two glasses. To be polite, he poured himself one, too, though it was far too early for such indulgences.

‘Your good health,’ he said, handing one of the shot-size crystal glasses to Klimt, who did not bother with preliminary sniffs or appreciation. Remaining seated, he downed the fiery liquor in one swift gulp.

Klimt handed back the empty glass. ‘No police involved. Herr Wittgenstein is rather prickly about publicity, you see. He has had a bellyful of it lately regarding his monopolies in steel and iron. Besides, he tells me he believes the boy is simply off on a lark. It’s the wife, you see, who is worried.’

‘A week is a longish lark,’ Werthen said, resuming his seat. ‘I assume there has been no note, no communication asking for ransom.’

‘None.’

‘A family of such wealth, kidnapping cannot be ruled out.’

‘But a week and no note . . .’

‘Yes, to be sure.’ Werthen did not mention other possibilities swirling in his mind. Not only were the Wittgensteins one of the wealthiest in the empire, but they were also the most prominent Jewish family, assimilated or not. Perhaps some anti-Semite had a hand in the disappearance. There was any number of possibilities. Interesting, however, that the father should think the son had simply run off for a final fling.

‘Has the son gone missing before?’

‘That, my friend,’ said Klimt as he rose from the chair, ‘is something you must ask Herr Wittgenstein. He has reserved a ten o’clock appointment for you. Meanwhile, I have a lady waiting for me at my studio.’

Werthen raised an eyebrow.

Klimt shook his head at this. ‘She’s fat and fifty, but the family is well endowed.’ Klimt laughed. ‘I shall make her look like a sylph. No one will recognize her. And please don’t be late. Herr Wittgenstein keeps the wurst on my table. The Alleegasse, just behind Karlskirche.’

Redundant information, as everyone in Vienna knew the location of the Palais Wittgenstein.

Three

W
erthen let Fräulein Metzinger know he would be out most of the morning and perhaps the rest of the day. He had no scheduled appointments at the office today; Klimt’s timing could not have been more perfect.

The snow had let up now, but the world was muffled in its whiteness. Soon enough it would melt and be a filthy nuisance, but for now Vienna was transformed into a winter wonderland. A number of truant children were out in the Volksgarten, sledding along the pathways on discarded planks of wood to the great disapproval of older pedestrians. Werthen did not bother trying to find a
Fiaker
, but instead cut through the park on foot on his way around the Ringstrasse to the Alleegasse. As he walked, he tried to sort out his questions for Herr Wittgenstein. He knew the importance of confronting a man of such power with his own assured plan of attack.

Along with most other Viennese, Werthen was well aware of the importance of Karl Wittgenstein. Born in 1847, the industrialist was, like Werthen, just two generations removed from the land and from his Jewish roots. His father had run a successful dry goods business and converted to Protestantism. Instead of following the family route into business, Karl Wittgenstein became a draughtsman and an engineer and went to work for the Teplitz steel-rolling mill in Bohemia. By a mixture of hard work, overweening ambition, and a willingness to take huge risks, Wittgenstein built an empire from this humble beginning. Five years after starting work as a lowly draughtsman for the Teplitz Rolling Mill, Wittgenstein was running that business. He sold train rails to the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, making a huge war profit for his company, and staged another coup by gaining sole European rights to a revolutionary steel manufacturing process. With these rights in hand, he leveraged other businesses, acquiring the Bohemian Mining Company and then the Prague Iron Company, creating a vertical monopoly in steel production in the Czech regions of the Austrian Empire. He repeated this success in the German regions with purchase of the Alpine Mining Company, and at the same time established the first rail cartel in Austria. It seemed to many that Wittgenstein had a finger in every economic pie in the empire, with seats on the boards of powerful corporations, including the Creditanstalt, the most powerful bank in the monarchy.

Then, in 1898, amid a firestorm of criticism over his shoddy treatment of workers, his monopolistic practices, and his attempts to artificially drive up the price of his steel stocks, Wittgenstein stepped down from the directorship. He became a patron of the arts, but knowledgeable observers knew that he still had a strong hand in the day-to-day operations of his far-flung industrial empire. His home at Alleegasse 16 had become one of the foremost salons in Vienna. Johannes Brahms premiered his late clarinet quintets here; Klimt and other members of the Secession first presented their work to the public in the immense rooms of that city palace. Through marriage, the Wittgensteins were connected with lawyers, doctors, industrialists, and ministers. Herr Wittgenstein could obtain a visa, an introduction to a general, medical advice, or an inside tip on investments with a simple telephone call.

At the same time, because of his cut-throat business practices, there were plenty of people who might want to harm Wittgenstein in some way. There were other businessmen whom he had driven into bankruptcy; angry shareholders of those competing businesses; workers seeking redress for long hours, low wages, and dangerous working conditions; socialist-anarchists who wanted to make an example of this ruthless American-style capitalist; consumers incensed at his monopoly pricing. All these in addition to a garden-variety kidnapper after money or a crazed anti-Semite. The list was long, Werthen knew.

By the time he reached the Karlsplatz, the sun had come out and the temperature had suddenly risen at least five degrees. Werthen was almost too warm in his heavy coat as he made his way to the back of the immense Karlskirche and on to the Alleegasse, home to many of the nouveaux riches of the empire. The last generation had seen construction of immense and ponderous city mansions throughout this neighborhood, not just in the Alleegasse, but in the intersecting Schwindgasse, all in the various historicist styles of the Ringstrasse. Here was an aggregation of wealth eager to show itself off. Neo-baroque mingled with neo-classic and renaissance styles. Amidst this milieu of ennobled industrialists was a smattering of town houses belonging to lower princes and even an archduke – though it was said the archduke in question was in attendance there far less frequently than was his mistress.

As Werthen turned into the Alleegasse he could see, beneath the now melting snow on the cobblestone street, that straw had earlier been spread. As he progressed up the street, he saw that the dried stalks extended for several blocks. It was a Viennese custom to spread straw to muffle the traffic noise for those of wealth, power, and/or prominence who had been taken ill.

The Palais Wittgenstein was an impressive, if dour town house of two floors, its banks of second-story windows seeming to frown down on the Alleegasse while the bottom floor presented a fortress-like appearance. The façade was at least fifty paces in length. Werthen entered through a pair of heavy oak doors, behind which a
Portier
was stationed and directed him via a forecourt with an impressive fountain and ample grillwork to an entrance hall huge and imposing. The floor was done in mosaic, the walls in carved paneling. Frescoes also adorned the space as did a statue, which Werthen thought might be the work of the French sculptor August Rodin. He passed through stone arches and went up six marble stairs to glass double doors. There he was met by a liveried servant who led him up the central red-carpeted marble stairway to the second floor and ultimately into Karl Wittgenstein’s study, appointed in the most opulent gilt furnishing Werthen had seen outside a museum. Incongruously, modern paintings hung on the red plush walls, artists from Vienna and Munich, with Klimt prominent among them. On an immense carved walnut desk in the middle of the room were several small sculptures, obviously the work of Rodin. A fire pulsed in an open porcelain fireplace.

Wittgenstein sat at the desk, a bear of a man, who seemed even larger once he stood to greet Werthen, offering a crushing handshake. The man’s dark hair was cut short (and perhaps dyed at the temples) and he wore a thick black moustache. He appeared much younger than his fifty-two years, wearing a frock coat, striped silk vest, maroon paisley bow tie under a fresh collar, and sporting spats – the newest fad from America. Werthen could not stop his eyes from traveling to these white canvas shoe coverings; for him they were too similar to the splatterdashes he had worn as a youth to protect his riding boots from mud to be considered high fashion. But fancy young men from Manhattan to Paris were wearing them this season, and it seemed Karl Wittgenstein or his tailor had decided to join the throng. It was hardly a fashion statement Werthen would have credited the man of business with.

‘Your good friend Klimt sings your praises,’ Wittgenstein said as he finally released Werthen’s pummeled hand. The man’s voice was deep and booming.

‘He is too kind,’ Werthen said, sitting in the pale-blue Louis Quinze chair Wittgenstein waved him toward. The industrialist sat in a matching chair, facing him, and crossed his legs by placing his right ankle over his left knee, American style.

‘I suppose he’s filled you in on the commission?’

‘He mentioned a missing son.’

‘
Mein Gott.
Hardly missing in the strictest sense. But he hasn’t shown up for work in a week. He’s the manager of mining interests at my Vienna offices on Kolowatring. Lord knows what the boy’s thinking of. Always did have his head in the clouds. Wanted to be a musician of all things.’

Werthen registered this, but was not yet ready to follow the path of inquiry that comment might lead to.

Instead, he said, ‘Perhaps we could review the facts. When was it first noticed that your son was missing?’

‘Well,’ the big man re-crossed his legs, ‘Poldi, my wife, remarked last Tuesday, I believe it was, that Hans had not taken his dinner with us as is our custom. He is single, you see, and has a suite of rooms here. Then I found out from Prohaska, the second in command at the mining division, that Hans was not there on the Monday, either. No message. Nothing.’ Wittgenstein shook his head. ‘No sense of responsibility.’

The age-old complaint, Werthen thought: The younger generation is going to the dogs. Parents had been complaining of it since ancient Greece.

‘Perhaps I might speak with your wife after we are finished here?’

Wittgenstein shook his head so violently that jowls, until now undetectable, shook.

‘Afraid she is indisposed. Worry over her son has brought on migraine.’

Which, Werthen now understood, explains the straw in the street outside.

‘I must be blunt, Advokat Werthen. It is because of Poldi that I have summoned you. She needs the reassurance.’

‘And you, sir?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? The boy’s taken himself off for a fling. I did the same thing myself when my father insisted I go into his property management. Ran off to New York and played guitar in a saloon for a year before I came back home, tail partly between my legs. I hardly credit Hans with the temerity to run off to the New World, though. He’s probably holed up with some sweet young thing in the Inner City. Just trying to show his independence. But he’ll be back. In the end, he’s a Wittgenstein. We know our duty.’

Werthen marveled at the man’s self-assurance. He could only imagine his own emotions were a child of his to go missing for a week.

‘Has your son been missing before?’

‘Skipped the odd lesson, I should say. My children are educated at home. The best instructors. Hans would hide out from Latin lessons to play his piano. Poldi, you see. She is a great one for the music. All the children play instruments. Other than that, no . . .’

The statement had the tone of uncertainty.

‘Nothing?’ Werthen pursued.

‘The blasted Theresianum. I blame that school.’

The Theresianum was the most prestigious
Gymnasium
or preparatory school in Vienna. It was called the ‘knights’ academy,’ for Empress Maria Theresa had established it in the eighteenth century to educate the young aristocrats of the realm to become administrators and political leaders. The nobles were still the only ones admitted as boarding students; the bourgeoisie had been permitted admittance as day students for the last half-century. Jews, assimilated or not, rarely gained entrance. Werthen knew this only too well; he himself had been denied admission. In any case it had not been
his
wish to attend the snobbish Theresianum, but rather his parents’. He had felt great relief being forced to attend the more liberal and secularized Akademische Gymnasium leading up to his entrance to the University of Vienna.