The Memorist

Chapter 14

Vienna, Austria

Saturday, April 26^th-10:45 a.m.

The black sedan came careening toward him, and for an instant David contemplated taking a step forward instead of back and putting himself in its path. But instinct took over and he jumped back. He watched the car as it disappeared and memorized the license plate number. Had he just avoided an accident? Or a hit? How far had Wassong gone in selling him out? Dying didn’t scare him but being locked away in a prison remembering for the rest of his life did. He’d been a journalist for twenty years and had seen enough men in prison to know that just breathing and eating and shitting and sleeping wasn’t living. When he got back to his hotel he’d e-mail his Interpol contact and have the number checked. If the car was owned or rented by one of Abdul’s men it would be unlikely David could track it back to the PPLP. He could, however, eliminate certain other possibilities.

Crossing the street, David had just entered the museum grounds at Maria Theresien-Platz where formal gardens were laid out in geometric certainty when his cell phone vibrated. He checked the number and answered. It was Tom Paxton’s assistant, confirming the interview with the head of Global Security Inc. for the next afternoon. David assured her he’d be there.

Continuing on as a journalist after the tragedy made it easy to obtain all the information he needed without raising suspicion. Terrifyingly easy, really. Once the posthumous story he was writing revealed his duplicity in compromising his position and his sources, other reporters would likely suffer, but for the first time in his life something was more important than the ramifications to the fourth estate. Missing family occasions, working on holidays, putting everyone second while he chased the lead, he’d given his job everything it had demanded of him-for what in return?

As years of reporting on terrorism and global security had taught him: no new and improved mousetrap would ever solve the problems facing the world and men like Paxton had to stop pretending they would.

And that was why he worried about who’d been driving the car. David wasn’t only hiding from Abdul and his thugs but from the police and the security firms like Global who were attending and protecting the ISTA conference. Even if they didn’t know it, they were searching for him-not for David Yalom-but for the nameless, faceless threat lurking in the shadows, intent on disrupting the conference. He knew how men like Paxton ran their firms: they didn’t wait for danger to show itself, they invented hundreds of hypothetical attacks and planned how to circumvent them all. Frequently over the next five days, people would be looking for him even if they didn’t know his name or have his picture, and he had to be more prepared than they were. And that was why he was at the museum.

Walking toward the grand staircase, he fought his inclination to turn and see if he was being followed. If he was, the last thing he should do was let on that he was aware of the surveillance. Looking down instead, he noticed the slightly depressed center of each marble step, worn by the millions of visitors who’d passed this way.

At the landing, David followed the museum’s map to the library where he had an appointment and presented his credentials to the younger of the two librarians sitting at the front desk. After studying his papers for a few moments she looked up and smiled. “So you are working on an article about the author Hermann Broch,” she said, and the research facility opened to him like Ali Baba’s cave.

“Yes,” he said, lying. “In his correspondence he mentioned using this library to do some of his research and I’d like to see the material he refers to…here’s the list…mostly historical prints, books and maps.”

There was no such correspondence but the fabrication passed muster and within fifteen minutes all the materials David requested were brought up from the stacks. For the next hour he sat at the end of a long wooden table working his way through each item, taking notes in a spiral-bound notebook. Finally he reached the one piece of ephemera he’d come to inspect: an antique map of the city of Vienna, circa 1750, detailing excavations of Roman ruins. Wassong had insisted no drawings or diagrams of the underground crypt existed, but with sick satisfaction David had tracked this one down from an obscure reference in the Vienna City Cartography Archives.

The drawing was faded, worn down the crease line, frayed at the edges, but definitely problematic since it showed chambers under the exact area where the Musikverein concert hall was now located at Bösendorferstraβe 12. If anyone at Global had already found this map, the existence of the labyrinth David had turned into his personal ground zero would be exposed and he would fail.

Getting up, he walked through the narrow aisles between tables and chairs to reach the front desk. “Excuse me,” he said to the librarian who’d helped him when he first came in. She was by herself at the desk now.

“Yes, Herr Yalom? How may I assist you?”

“Do you have records that would show me how often these papers and books have been requested? It would be helpful for me to see their popularity.”

It turned out to be exactly the sort of literary treasure hunt that appealed to her but instead of just looking them up on the computer and giving him the most recent dates, she invited David into a dusty, windowless storage room, filled with dozens of wooden file cabinets.

“We can start here.” She pointed to a section on the back wall. “And work from the past forward. What year would you like to start? Our records go back more than two centuries.”

“1930. Right around the time Broch looked at them.”

It was certainly further back than necessary. David only cared about anyone asking to see the map in the last couple of years but that request wouldn’t have jibed with his research.

As it turned out, the map had not been requested since 1939. And from 1930 to 1939 it had been examined only once. So it really was relatively unknown.

Now David had twenty-five minutes before the library’s early Saturday closing time to figure out how to ensure no one else found this map if they came looking for it. Stealing it, he knew, was out of the question. The library was too well-guarded; everyone’s bags were inspected when they left.

Sitting at his table again, making a show of searching through the books spread out before him, David took more notes he didn’t need until the librarian announced closing time in ten minutes. He didn’t get up during the ensuing flurry of activity at the front desk as scholars returned their materials. Instead, he picked up the map that showed the area under the concert hall. He checked its call number, then checked the call number on the archival box closest to him. He put the map in the box. Then he put away the next map and picked up the third-

“Was tun Sie?”

David didn’t understand the words but the tone was sharp and accusatory. Looking up, he found the middle-aged librarian he hadn’t interacted with pointing to the map he was about to return to its case. He also noticed that the guard by the front door had come to attention.

“I don’t speak German,” David offered diffidently.

“You are not supposed to be putting away those maps. We are supposed to do that.”

The guard took a step closer and David’s adrenaline surged. The librarian held out her hand and David gave her the last map. She picked up the last archival box, checked the number to make sure it corresponded and slipped the map inside.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“I’ll take care of the rest of your materials,” she interrupted. “The library is closing now.”

The guard waited for him at the door. “I will need to look through your papers, please. Just a precaution.”

David nodded, handed over the spiral-bound book and watched as the man inspected it. Nodding, he offered it back. “We have to be careful, you understand. There are many valuable papers here.”

“Yes. Of course.” David took his notebook and left without glancing back.

Descending the marble steps, he again focused on the slight depressions and wondered if his efforts would prove successful. First, it depended on whether or not the librarian checked to see if he’d correctly put those first two maps away in their corresponding cases. He was counting on the fact that it was a lovely Saturday afternoon and the end of the workweek and she’d be in a hurry. If he’d passed that hurdle, his plan required that no one request either of the two maps for the next five days since the box supposedly containing the map of the cave under the concert hall now held a map of the Lurgrotte cave beneath a pine forest near Graz, two hours from Vienna. And the box that should have contained the 1894 Lurgrotte cave map now held the map of the area under the Musikverein at Bösendorferstraβe 12.

Crossing the lobby again, he glanced at the extravagant murals, taking mental notes of the splendor for the last set of articles he’d be doing, unassigned but certain to be published.

Outside he caught a whiff of flowers in the air and knew instantly there were lilacs blooming nearby. Spying the thick bushes he walked the other way, avoiding the flowers his wife used to put in their bedroom. He thought about what he’d accomplished in the last few hours, wondering if it had just been a lot of extra work for nothing. Global Inc. had a state-of-the-art GPR system so would they even need to search out old maps? Well, if they did, it was unlikely they’d be able to find the one he’d just hidden by Thursday when he planned on turning Beethoven’s Third Symphony into a referendum, a warning call and his own requiem.

There was a better chance they’d find him first.