The Memorist

Chapter 21

Saturday, April 26^th-3:36 p.m.

David Yalom walked into the big, splashy, modern hotel where, along with many ISTA members and the press corps, he was registered. Since it was one of the conference hotels he recognized several people as he walked through the bustling lobby toward the elevator bank. He nodded to them but didn’t slow down to invite unwanted conversation. Entering the first empty elevator, he quickly pressed the button to shut the doors so there’d be less of a chance that anyone would get in with him.

Getting off on the fifteenth floor, he checked that the hallway was empty, walked to the staircase, opened the door and listened. When he didn’t hear the sound of footsteps he hurried down to the fourteenth floor where he repeated the exercise of checking the hallway before proceeding to his room. Once more he glanced over his shoulder to check that no one was in the hall, slipped his key into the lock, opened the door and entered his room, pulling out a small gun from his shoulder harness and holding it in front of him as he did a quick inspection of the room.

It was a lucky thing-no, a smart thing since the last thing he had in his life was luck-that he’d arranged to buy the gun from someone other than Hans Wassong. Otherwise it might have been defective. But David had thought through every step of this mission, separating each from the other. This ensured no one had any more information than was absolutely necessary. He’d made a mistake with Wassong-trusting someone who was untrustworthy-but there was no more reason to dwell on that than anything else in his life. Thinking about the past was futile. Memories instigated pain, that was all.

The drapes were half drawn and the light that came through the gauzy under-curtain was enough for what he needed to do but he turned on the bedside lamp anyway. And even though he wasn’t interested in watching it, he clicked the television on and found the all-news channel. Standing by the desk, he called room service, ordered and asked that his meal be rushed. He wasn’t hungry. Didn’t much care about eating anymore. But a car needs gas even if it can’t taste it.

With a yank, David pulled the bedcovers down and roughed up the pillows. He sat down on the edge of the bed but not for long. Opening the minibar he grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap and carefully placed it on the bedside table. After swallowing half the water in one long gulp, he put the bottle beside the cap. Next, he picked up the British thriller novel by David Hewson he’d bought in the airport but not yet read a word of. It had been facedown and open to page 120. Now he turned to page 144 and replaced it, facedown once again.

He made sure that the bathroom was in some semblance of disarray, as if he’d spent time there, and then David sat down on the edge of the bed to wait for the food to arrive.

Fifteen minutes later, he heard the knock, checked through the peephole, put his gun in his waistband, pulled his shirt out to hide it and met the waiter at the door. He signed for the sandwich and soda, added a healthy tip and watched the man leave. David put the tray on the bureau, picked up the ham-and-cheese sandwich and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper. He popped the tab on the soda, poured half of that into a glass, took one gulp, and then another, and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

Next, David called a random number and while it rang said: “This is David Yalom. I’ll be in my room for the next hour and a half if you want to come up. I’ve got some work to do. I won’t leave before hearing from you.”

Finally he changed from his navy sports jacket into a tan windbreaker, making sure to move all the hangers around in the closet, stuffed his green backpack into a red-and-black gym bag, threw the sandwich in, zipped it up and looked around the room, surveying it carefully, before opening the door very slowly and checking the hallway. It was empty.

Instead of the elevator he took the stairs but this time down to the tenth floor. There, he used the elevator to go to the hotel’s lower level, which opened to a busy subway stop. You couldn’t get up to a room floor without using your key from inside the elevator, but you could get down and out into the train station. It was a convenience for the businesspeople who frequented the hotel.

The station was busy as usual and David hurried out into the crowd. Chances were if Abdul’s men were watching they were also listening, and the phone call he’d made and the food he’d ordered had bought him enough time to get out of the hotel undetected.

The subway ride involved changing trains at the art deco Karlsplatz station and then taking a second train to the Schwedenplatz station on the other side of town, an area filled with small jazz clubs, inexpensive boutiques and restaurants that nestled up to the river and were always crowded with teenagers and tourists.

Twenty minutes after David left the large first-class hotel where he’d never spent more than two hours at a time since arriving in Vienna, he walked into a rundown one-star pensione. The manager behind the desk, who wore ripped jeans and a dirty white sweater, didn’t look up as the man who was registered as Michael Bergmann walked in, head down and shoulders slumped, and took the small elevator that stank of body odor and garlic up to his room where he would spend another sleepless night.