A Death in Vienna

war’s end, the government agreed to pay surviving Austrian Jews approximately six thousand dollars each. Klein showed Gabriel the check. It had never been cashed.
    “I didn’t want their money,” he said. “Six thousand dollars? For what? My mother and father? My two sisters? My home? My possessions?”
    He tossed the check onto the table. Gabriel sneaked a glance at his wristwatch and saw it was two-thirty in the morning. Klein was closing in, circling his target. Gabriel resisted the impulse to give him a nudge, fearing that the old man, in his precarious state, might stumble and never regain his footing.
    “Two months ago, I stop for coffee at the Café Central. I’m given a lovely table next to a pillar. I order a Pharisäer.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “Do you know a Pharisäer, Mr. Argov? Coffee with whipped cream, served with a small glass of rum.” He apologized for the liquor. “It was the late afternoon, you see, and cold.”
    A man enters the café, tall, well-dressed, a few years older than Klein.An Austrian of the old school, if you know what I mean, Mr. Argov. There’s an arrogance in his walk that causes Klein to lower his newspaper. The waiter rushes across the floor to greet him. The waiter is wringing his hands, hopping from foot to foot like a schoolboy who needs to piss.Good evening, Herr Vogel. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t see you today. Your usual table? Let me guess: an Einspänner? And how about a sweet? I’m told the Sachertorte is lovely today, Herr Vogel . . .
    And then the old man speaks a few words, and Max Klein feels his spine turn to ice. It is the same voice that ordered him to play Brahms at Auschwitz, the same voice that calmly asked Klein’s fellow inmates to identify the piece or face the consequences. And here was the murderer, prosperous and healthy, ordering an Einspänner and a Sachertorte at the Central.
    “I felt as though I was going to be sick,” Klein said. “I threw money on the table and stumbled into the street. I looked once through the window and saw the monster named Herr Vogel reading his newspaper. It was as if the encounter never happened at all.”
    Gabriel resisted the impulse to ask how, after so long, Klein could be so certain that the man from Café Central was the same man who’d been at Auschwitz sixty years earlier. Whether Klein was right or not was not as important as what happened next.
    “What did you do about it, Herr Klein?”
    “I became quite the regular customer at the Café Central. Soon, I too was greeted by name. Soon, I too had a regular table, right next to the honorable Herr Vogel. We began to wish each other good afternoon. Sometimes, while we read our newspapers, we would chat about politics or world events. Despite his age, his mind was very sharp. He told me he was a businessman, an investor of some sort.”
    “And when you’d learned as much as you could by having coffee next to him, you went to see Eli Lavon at Wartime Claims and Inquiries?”
    Klein nodded slowly. “He listened to my story and promised to look into it. In the meantime, he asked me to stop going to the Central for coffee. I was reluctant. I was afraid he was going to slip away again. But I did as your friend asked.”
    “And then?”
    “A few weeks went by. Finally I received a call. It was one of the girls from the office, the American one named Sarah. She informed me that Eli Lavon had some news to report to me. She asked me to come to the office the next morning at ten o’clock. I told her I would be there, and I hung up the telephone.”
    “When was that?”
    “The same day of the bombing.”
    “Have you told any of this to the police?”
    Klein shook his head. “As you might expect, Mr. Argov, I’m not fond of Austrian men in uniform. I am also well aware of my country’s rather shoddy record when it comes to the prosecution of war criminals. I kept silent. I went to the Vienna General Hospital and watched the Israeli officials coming and going. When the ambassador came, I tried to approach him but I was pushed away by his security men. So I waited until the right person came along. You seemed like him. Are you the right person, Mr. Argov?”
    THE APARTMENT HOUSEacross the street was nearly identical to the one where Max Klein lived. On the second floor a man stood in the darkened window with a camera pressed to his eye. He focused the telephoto lens on the figure striding through the passageway of Klein’s