Wolf Hunt (14 page)

Relmyer thought about this new approach, weighing up the pros and cons.

‘It will take a long time, several days probably, but not as long as my approach, I concede. Unfortunately, it won’t work. We would have to find an Austrian sympathiser, persuade him of our sincerity, hope that he accepts and that he has enough credibility to

be able to convince the combatants he has to ask. We’ll never find such a man.’

Margont smiled.

‘And what about Luise?’ 

AT first Relmyer had rejected Margont’s suggestion in order to protect Luise, but then he decided to trust the Frenchman’s instinct.

Margont and Lefine waited in the Mitterburgs’ sitting room while Relmyer talked to Luise. A servant in bluish-black livery surveyed them suspiciously, which annoyed Lefine, who sank down on a sofa, crossed his legs and began to hum, 
‘Oh, it'll be all right, be all right, be all right. Hang the aristocrats from on high! Oh, it'll be all right, be all right, be all right. The aristocrats, we'll hang 'em all.' 
The servant responded with an Austrian goose step. This archetypal scene made Margont despair. It summed up the paradox of the Empire. The French, hundreds of thousands of them, were starting wars to take the principles of the Revolution to the peoples of Europe, but instead of fanning the waves of republicanism, all it did was incite nationalism in its most aggressive manifestation. It had started with Prussia, then Spain, now the Tyrol and

Austria ... Where was it going wrong? Whose fault was it? How could it be put right before the Empire was crushed by a generalised European uprising against it?

Lefine noticed that the more at ease he appeared, the more irritated the servant became. He threw his head back and sighed nonchalantly.

‘Why didn’t Relmyer think of asking Luise?’

‘I think he wanted to keep her as far away as possible from the investigation.’

‘Possibly, but she’s well and truly involved in it. Relmyer succeeded in dragging us into his struggle. Now, Luise is joining in as

well. He’s leading us one after the other to the edge of the abyss >

Margont felt oppressed by the room although there was nothing exceptional about it, quite the opposite. A portrait of Mozart, comfortable armchairs with restrained floral embroidery, vases, a fireplace whose mantelpiece was covered with knick-knacks: statuettes, lacquer boxes, fans ... Everything was in the classical style, even the antique paintings and the piano with a score open on it -
The Magic Flute,
naturally. The only original note was sounded by the collection of seven lead or tin soldiers displayed on a small round table. Two knights sculpted in exquisite detail dated from the eighteenth century. Their lead was worth its weight in gold. What was original was that all the figurines were representations from the Middle Ages. One of them was attacking with a lance, the other with a sword while sheltering behind a shield, a third brandished a mace ... A handful of soldiers were launched into who knows what crusade. Margont realised that what irritated him about the room was its sterile conformism. Paintings of scenes from antiquity are in vogue? Quick! Over the sofa hang one depicting two columns and another of a temple at Delphi. Suddenly it is discovered that Mozart is a genius - what’s more, an Austrian genius! True, he’s dead and buried in a pauper’s grave with three shovelfuls of quicklime, but let’s not go on about the errors of the past. Instead, let’s get hold of a copy of his portrait. That was all right. People led their lives in their own way, and so what if they

decided to let others dictate their tastes? No, what bothered Mar-gont was that it was this same attitude that encouraged the halfsilence that cloaked Franz’s death. The obsession to conform contributed to the rule of silence. Because if people submitted even in their own homes, it was unlikely that they would dare speak out and take a stand in public. Suddenly all these commonplace, predictable objects in the home of these well-off people appeared stifling and a little sinister.

Relmyer came in with Luise and the old woman who had been with her when she had been searching amongst the wounded men of Essling. The young Austrian contrasted sharply with the dowdy creature dressed in grey. Margont greeted Luise courteously under the inquisitive eye of her chaperone. Luise introduced her, speaking in French.

‘Madame Hilde. I would have preferred a puppy, but instead I have this chaperone. Puppies yap, but they’re affectionate and stop barking when you give them a sugar lump. Chaperones tittle-tattle, witter on and even bite sometimes. And you can’t shut them

in the salon when you want to go for a walk without them. Don’t worry, Madame Hilde and my servant don’t understand French.’ Madame Hilde intervened in an unexpectedly melodious voice: ‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg, it would be more suitable if you spoke in German.’

‘Yes, indeed. Alas, Captain Margont and his friend Lefine don’t understand our language. It’s very unfortunate.’

While Madame Hilde searched for a solution - should they use Spanish? Or would she appear ridiculous? Would she be able to tell just by looking that no impropriety was being committed? -Luise declared: ‘I agree to help you. But I can’t guarantee that I’ll get an answer. And even if I do it’s not likely to be the whole answer. Hundreds of people are involved in the updating of the military registers so it’s possible that some names are missed.’

‘We’ll use whatever they are prepared to give us.’

‘And it will take days and days ...’

‘Is there anything we can do instead?’

Relmyer thought not. ‘No, we have to search the Austrian archives

from top to bottom! That’s what we have to do! I’ll begin immediately.’

Luise vainly tried to get him to sit down.

‘But ... you have to rest a little ... this is wearing you out, Lukas. At least sit down for a few minutes ... just to drink a cup of coffee or chocolate ...’

Relmyer shook his head. Stubborn. Intractable. Margont felt obliged to go with him. His friend would not find it easy to get authorisation to consult the archives because of his Austrian origins. Relmyer was about to go out when he noticed the collection of figurines. He froze, stupefied. He looked over at Luise again and wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t come, so he just touched her arm lightly under the scandalised gaze of Madame Hilde. Then the young hussar plunged outside onto the street as if he were diving into the sea.

Margont, although he himself walked fast, had trouble keeping up with him. Lefine followed at normal pace, far behind, shaking his head. Margont was annoyed at having had to leave Luise, but he understood Relmyer’s reaction. Relmyer was hurrying towards what he thought would be his salvation, much as he, Margont, had leapt at any possibility when he was trying to escape the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. There was more at stake than arresting a killer and breaking the silence surrounding the affair. Relmyer also needed to liberate himself from the stranglehold of memories that kept coming back to haunt him, especially in periods of inactivity and in dreams. Yes, that was what this was - a war of liberation. 

THE Kriegsministerium displayed all the cold, oppressive grandeur of administrative buildings imbued with their own importance. The two sentries standing either side of the entrance presented arms to Margont and Relmyer. Their martial rigidity perfectly matched the facade.

Six other soldiers, grouped together in front of the marble columns, guarded the monumental vestibule. The duty officer had laid out his office so that he could keep an eye on the great staircase to his right and on the double doors opening on his left. Aided by two corporals acting as secretaries, he was applying himself to drawing up inventories; there was a strong odour, a mixture of wax, old papers, dust and leather. The officer had meticulously buttoned up his collar as protocol demanded, practically strangling himself to satisfy regulations. His red face, bloated by lack of circulation, turned towards one of the corporals.

‘You’ve missed a line, Carrefond! A little mistake can lead to a great catastrophe! Another error and I’ll transfer you to the 
voltigeurs
.’ He tore up the paper and flung it into the overflowing waste-paper basket.

Finally addressing the newcomers, he demanded: ‘What do these officers want?’

Relmyer saluted him and explained what he was after, referring to but not explaining ‘an extremely grave personal matter’. The captain proved to be astonishingly friendly. He confirmed that they had not been able to seize the registers containing all the details of the Austrian army. He announced that, on principle, he was reluctant to let just anyone shuffle through what documents there were without official authorisation. Then he added that the French had taken over Vienna three weeks ago now. The archives that had remained in the capital had therefore already been partly examined. He made it clear that they were beginning to despair of finding anything at all of interest concerning the enemy army. So the Emperor preferred to rely only on his spies and on the reconnaissance carried out by them and their Russian, Polish and

Bavarian allies ... The duty officer concluded his discourse by saying that he did not agree to Relmyer ferreting about in the Kriegsministerium.

The refusal did not tally with the view expressed that the documents were effectively useless. Relmyer realised that there might be a way of changing his mind and laid out some twenty-and forty-franc pieces on the officer’s desk. The gold coins shone in the sun like a constellation in an ebony sky. Lefine was astounded. What a madman, to carry around that amount of money just to bribe an official! Relmyer brandished a second handful that he began to spill noisily onto the desk coin by coin. The captain immediately picked each one up with the alacrity of a hen pecking grains. Now he was turning from red to purple. There in front of him was months’ worth of a soldier’s pay, a large chunk of Relmyer’s life as a soldier.

‘Come whenever you like,’ said the officer obsequiously. ‘I’ll warn you if you ever have to hide yourself because of an unexpected inspection. The archives are stored on this floor and the one above. There are also several in the basement and in the attic, but they are the oldest ones.’

At that moment Relmyer felt a resurgence of hope, a resurgence that crumbled as soon as he had passed through the double doors.

The room, high-ceilinged and deep, was no more than a giant rubbish dump. Trampled papers and heaps of registers were strewn across the parquet. Interminable shelves blanketed the walls from floor to ceiling, some groaning with documents, others empty, having spewed their contents onto the floor. Lefine looked up, certain that the roof must be falling in. It appeared to him as if a deluge of shells had ruined everything in here, when Vienna had been bombarded. But no, the Austrians had pillaged their own archives and the French had exacerbated the disaster; it was chaos added to chaos.

Margont knelt down and picked up a ruined report written in a language he could not even identify.

‘We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, nor even if it’s here,

and everything is in such a muddle.’

Relmyer stood in front of one of the shelves and started to read the titles of the documents. Ten feet above his head, about halfway to the ceiling, a long wooden walkway was also weighed down with paper. Lefine joined Margont.

‘Let’s go. We’ll come back and fetch him in ten years,’ he proposed amiably.

In spite of everything Margont decided to help Relmyer. He tried to put some order into the madness, by proposing all sorts of ideas. He proposed using chalk to tick off the documents examined, paying more attention to the ravaged shelves and the torn reports as perhaps they had been sabotaged because they were the most important. He also proposed asking one of Relmyer’s friends, who would understand what he was doing, to help. ‘On condition that he doesn’t run us through,’ Lefine had murmured. And finally he proposed trying to find and question the men who had been through the papers before them ...

However, little by little, Margont’s determination wilted under the weight of the tons of written notes. He excused himself and left, accompanied by Lefine, abandoning Relmyer, perched on a ladder, a skiff adrift on an ocean of paper. 

TIME seemed to have frozen in an interlude before an inevitable acceleration would re-establish the normal course of things. The days slipped by, all spent in the same way: preparing for battle or relaxing. Nevertheless, a slight excitement gradually took hold of everyone. The whole of Europe was avidly watching this section of the Danube, this little blue ribbon that separated two armies drunk on their own invincibility.

Margont had been immobilised on the Isle of Lobau, fulfilling his military obligations. Today he was finally enjoying a day of liberty. At least he felt he was at liberty, a view that did not quite correspond to what the army felt. He was not supposed to move around without authorisation but he did it all the time. The French army had many soldiers who did not possess the proper disciplined spirit of the professional soldier. During an inspection, Margont had overheard a soldier addressing the Emperor informally. And, what’s more, it was to complain about not having

received the Legion d’honneur! Not only did Napoleon not bat an eyelid at this insolence, he effectively granted the decoration, having had the soldier’s exploits confirmed.

A host of volunteers had enrolled to defend their country against invasion, to protect their newly acquired liberty or because they had been seduced by the glamour of victorious servicemen (and these volunteers received a rude shock when they discovered the true face of war). The conscripts, who were more numerous, had not asked to be soldiers. Having plunged their hands into a bag in front of their mayor and the police, they had drawn the short straw, the one that sent them to the front unless they had the money to pay for a replacement. All these people detested the over-rigid regulations, which they flouted whenever they could. Margont, who had volunteered in order to defend his revolutionary ideals, was in that category too. He often consigned his company to the care of Saber before disappearing. This time Saber was absent, so he left his men in the charge of Piquebois, who was gradually recovering from his wound. For some unknown