A Death in Vienna

him come here.”
    She carried the clip over to a photocopier and made three duplicates. Then she returned the original to its file and the file to its proper box. She gave the copies to Gabriel. He read while they walked.
    “According to the obituary, he was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Puerto Blest.”
    The receptionist nodded. “It’s just on the other side of the lake, a few miles from the Chilean border. He managed a largeestancia up there. That’s in the obituary, too.”
    “How do I get there?”
    “Follow the highway west out of Bariloche. It won’t stay a highway for long. I hope you have a good car. Follow the road along the lakeshore, then head north. You’ll go straight into Puerto Blest. If you leave now, you can get there before dark.”
    They shook hands in the lobby. She wished him luck.
    “I hope he’s the man you’re looking for,” she said. “Or maybe not. I suppose one never knows in situations like these.”
    AFTER THE VISITORwas gone, the receptionist picked up her telephone and dialed.
    “He just left.”
    “How did you handle it?”
    “I did what you told me to do. I was very friendly. I showed him what he wanted to see.”
    “And what was that?”
    She told him.
    “How did he react?”
    “He asked for directions to Puerto Blest.”
    The line went dead. The receptionist slowly replaced the receiver. She felt a sudden hollowness in her stomach. She had no doubt what awaited the man in Puerto Blest. It was the same fate that had befallen others who had come to this corner of northern Patagonia in search of men who did not want to be found. She did not feel sorry for him; indeed, she thought him something of a fool. Did he really think he would fool anyone with that clumsy story about genealogical research? Who did he think he was? It was his own fault. But then, it was always that way with the Jews. Always bringing trouble down on their own heads.
    Just then the front door opened and a woman in a sundress entered the lobby. The receptionist looked up and smiled.
    “May I help you?”
    THEY WALKED BACKto the hotel beneath a razor-edged sun. Gabriel translated the obituary for Chiara.
    “It says he was born in Upper Austria in 1913, that he was a police officer, and that he enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1938 and took part in the campaigns against Poland and the Soviet Union. It also says he was decorated twice for bravery, once by the Führer himself. I guess that’s something to brag about in Bariloche.”
    “And after the war?”
    “Nothing until his arrival in Argentina in 1963. He worked for two years at a hotel in Bariloche, then took a job on anestancia near Puerto Blest. In 1972, he purchased the property from the owners and ran it until his death.”
    “Any family left in the area?”
    “According to this, he was never married and had no surviving relatives.”
    They arrived back at the Hotel Edelweiss. It was a Swiss-style chalet with a sloping roof, located two streets up from the lakeshore on the Avenida San Martín. Gabriel had rented a car at the airport earlier that morning, a Toyota four-wheel drive. He asked the parking attendant to bring it up from the garage, then ducked into the lobby to find a road map of the surrounding countryside. Puerto Blest was exactly where the woman from the newspaper had said, on the opposite side of the lake, near the Chilean border.
    They set out along the lakeshore. The road deteriorated by degrees as they moved farther from Bariloche. Much of the time, the water was hidden by dense forest. Then Gabriel would round a bend, or the trees would suddenly thin, and the lake would appear briefly below them, a flash of blue, only to disappear behind a wall of timber once more.
    Gabriel rounded the southernmost tip of the lake and slowed briefly to watch a squadron of giant condors circling the looming peak of the Cerro López. Then he followed a one-lane dirt track across an exposed plateau covered with gray-green thorn scrub and stands ofarrayán trees. On the high meadows, flocks of hardy Patagonian sheep grazed on the summer grasses. In the distance, toward the Chilean border, lightning flickered over the Andean peaks.
    By the time they arrived in Puerto Blest, the sun was gone and the village was shadowed and quiet. Gabriel went into a café to ask directions. The bartender, a short man with a florid face, stepped into the street and, with a series of points and gestures, showed him the way.
    JUST INSIDE THE CAFÉ, at a