A Death in Vienna

staff.
    “Konrad Becker, meet Oskar Lange.”
    The banker sat motionless for a long moment, as though he had been suddenly bronzed. Then his clever little eyes settled on Shamron, and he raised his hands in an inquiring gesture.
    “What am I supposed to do with him?”
    “You tell us. He’s very good, our Oskar.”
    “Can he impersonate a lawyer?”
    “With the right preparation, he could impersonate your mother.”
    “How long does this charade have to last?”
    “Five minutes, maybe less.”
    “When you’re with Ludwig Vogel, five minutes can seem like an eternity.”
    “So I’ve heard,” Shamron said.
    “What about Klaus?”
    “Klaus?”
    “Vogel’s bodyguard.”
    Shamron smiled. Resistance had ended. The Swiss banker had joined the team. He now swore allegiance to the flag of Herr Heller and his noble endeavor.
    “He’s very professional,” Becker said. “I’ve been to the house a half-dozen times, but he always gives me a thorough search and asks me to open my briefcase. So, if you’re thinking about trying to get a weapon into the house—”
    Shamron cut him off. “We have no intention of bringing weapons in the house.”
    “Klaus is always armed.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “A Glock, I’d say.” The banker patted the left side of his chest. “Wears it right there. Doesn’t make much of an effort to hide it.”
    “A lovely piece of detail, Herr Becker.”
    The banker accepted the compliment with a tilt of his head—Details are my business, Herr Heller.
    “Forgive my insolence, Herr Heller, but how does one actually kidnap someone who’s protected by a bodyguard if the bodyguard is armed and the kidnapper isn’t?”
    “Herr Vogel is going to leave his house voluntarily.”
    “A voluntary kidnapping?” Becker’s tone was incredulous. “How unique. And how does one convince a man to allow himself to be kidnappedvoluntarily ?”
    Shamron folded his arms. “Just get Oskar inside the house and leave the rest to us.”
    32
    MUNICH
    IT WAS AN OLDapartment house in the pretty little Munich district of Lehel, with a gate on the street and the main entrance off a tidy courtyard. The lift was fickle and indecisive, and more often than not, they simply climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor. The furnishings had a hotel room anonymity. There were two beds in the bedroom, and the sitting room couch was a davenport. In the storage closet were four extra cots. The pantry was stocked with nonperishable goods, and the cabinets contained place settings for eight. The sitting-room windows overlooked the street, but the blackout shades remained drawn at all times, so that inside the flat it seemed a perpetual evening. The telephones had no ringers. Instead, they were fitted with red lights that flashed to indicate incoming calls.
    The walls of the sitting room were hung with maps: central Vienna, metropolitan Vienna, eastern Austria, Poland. On the wall opposite the windows hung a very large map of central Europe, which showed the entire escape route, stretching from Vienna to the Baltic coast. Shamron and Gabriel had quarreled briefly over the color before settling on red. From a distance it seemed a river of blood, which is precisely how Shamron wanted it to appear, the river of blood that had flowed through the hands of Erich Radek.
    They spoke only German in the flat. Shamron had decreed it. Radek was referred to as Radek and only Radek; Shamron would not call him by the name he’d bought from the Americans. Shamron laid down other edicts as well. It was Gabriel’s operation, and therefore it was Gabriel’s show to run. It was Gabriel, in the Berlin accent of his mother, who briefed the teams, Gabriel who reviewed the watch reports from Vienna, and Gabriel who made all final operational decisions.
    For the first few days, Shamron struggled to fit into his supporting role, but as his confidence in Gabriel grew, he found it easier to slide into the background. Still, every agent who passed through the safe flat took note of the dark pall that had settled over him. He seemed never to sleep. He would stand before the maps at all hours, or sit at the kitchen table in the dark, chain-smoking like a man wrestling with a guilty conscience. “He’s like a terminal patient who’s planning his own funeral,” remarked Oded, a veteran German-speaking agent whom Gabriel had chosen to drive the escape car. “And if it goes to hell, they’ll chisel it on his tombstone, right below the