at his torte impatiently. "But unlike many children of the famous Nazis, he does something about it. The Lenz Foundation is Austria's leading supporter of Holocaust studies, historical scholarship, libraries in Israel... they fund anything that seeks to fight hate crimes, racism, that sort of thing." He returned to his pastry, wolfing it down as if fearing it would be snatched away.
Lenz's son was a leading anti-Nazi? Perhaps they had more in common than he had supposed. "All right," Ben said, gesturing to the waitress for the check with the universal air-scrawl. "Thank you."
"Anything else I can do for you?" the detective asked, brushing crumbs off the lapels of his jacket.
Trevor Griffiths left his hotel, the Imperial, on the Ka'rntner Ring a few blocks from the Opera. Not only was the Imperial the finest hotel in Vienna, Trevor reflected, but it was famous as the headquarters of the Nazis during the war, the location from which they governed the city. He liked the hotel anyway.
It was a short stroll down Mariahilfer Strasse to a small bar on Neubaugasse. The garish red neon sign flashed the bar's name: broadway CLUB. He sat in a booth at the back of the ill-lit basement room and waited. In his bespoke gray worsted double-breasted suit, he looked somewhat "out of place here, like a businessman, a high-level executive perhaps, or a prosperous attorney.
The bar was choked with foul cigarette smoke. Trevor could not tolerate it, hated the way his hair and clothes would stink afterward. He glanced at his watch, an Audemars Piguet, top of the line, one of the few indulgences he allowed himself. Expensive suits and watches and good rough sex. What else was there, really, if you had no interest in food, art, or music?
He was impatient. The Austrian contact was late, and Trevor could not abide tardiness.
Finally, after almost half an hour, the Austrian showed up, a square, hulking troglodyte named Otto. Otto slid into the booth and placed a worn red felt bag in front of Trevor.
"You're English, yes?"
Trevor nodded, zipped open the bag. It contained two large metal pieces, a 9 mm Makarov, the barrel threaded for a silencer, and the long, perforated sound-suppressor itself. "Ammo?" Trevor asked.
"Is in there," Otto said. "Nine by eighteen. Lots."
The Makarov was a good choice. Unlike the 9 mm Parabellum, it was subsonic. "What's the make?" Trevor asked. "Hungarian? Chinese?"
"Russian. But it's good one."
"How much?"
"Three thousand shillings."
Trevor grimaced. He didn't mind spending money, but he resented highway robbery. He switched to German, so Otto, whose English was poor, would miss nothing. "Der Markt 1st mit Makarovs iiberschwemmt." The market's flooded with Makarovs.
Otto became suddenly alert.
"These things are a dime a dozen," Trevor continued in German. "Everyone makes them, they're all over the place. I'll give you a thousand shillings, and you should count yourself lucky to get that."
Respect entered Otto's expression. "You're German?" he asked, amazed. Actually, if Otto were a perceptive listener, he'd have placed Trevor's German as coming from the Dresden region.
Trevor had not spoken German in quite a while; he'd had no opportunity to do so. But it came back easily.
It was, after all, his native tongue.
Anna had dinner alone at a Mdvenpick restaurant a few blocks from her hotel. There was nothing on the menu that interested her, and she decided she was no connoisseur of Swiss cuisine.
Normally, she found dining alone in a foreign city depressing, but tonight she was too absorbed in her thoughts to feel lonely. She was seated by the window, in a long row of lone diners, most of them reading newspapers or books.
At the American consulate, she used a secure fax line to transmit everything she had on Hartman, including his credit cards, to the I.C.U and had asked that the ID unit contact each of the credit-card companies and activate an instant trace, so that they would be informed within minutes whenever he used one of the cards.
She had also asked them to dig up whatever they could on Hartman himself, and someone had called her back on the encrypted cell phone less than an hour later.
They had struck gold.
According to Hartman's office, he was on vacation in Switzerland, but hadn't checked in with the office in several days. They didn't have his travel itinerary; he hadn't provided one. They had no way to contact him.
But then the ID tech had learned something interesting; Hartman's only sibling, a twin brother, had died in a plane crash in Switzerland four years earlier.