Schmidt was all too familiar with the motivations for his agents. There were those who offered their services out of patriotic zeal. Usually their perceptions were so tainted that one could view their information only with great skepticism. Then there were those in it for a profit, whose reports were generally inflated as a result. And there were the reluctant agents, like Forstl, coerced into service through blackmail. They found a thousand reasons to drag their heels, resentful of their new masters and conflicted about their allegiances.
And me? Schmidt thought. The agent with something to prove, with a need for revenge. Was that Schnitzler’s motivation, too?
Schmidt would find out.
He waited in place for two hours before contact was made. A fresh-faced young recruit, by the look of him, though dressed in civilian clothes. Looked barely old enough to put a razor to those apple cheeks. He walked by the glove twice before stopping on the third pass, looking over his shoulder but failing to notice Schmidt, now busily reading a newspaper on a nearby park bench. Schmidt kept watch through a small hole he had cut in the centerfold.
The youth quickly took the glove, tucked it into a pocket, and headed out of the park towards the Hofburg.
Schmidt followed him through interior courtyards to the main door of the War Ministry. With another quick glance over his shoulder, the agent entered.
More and more interesting, thought Schmidt.
TWENTY-NINE
It was the solstice, and for Werthen the longest day of the year was dragging out interminably. Schnitzler had explained that someone checked the fence daily, late in the afternoon. If the glove was in place, then the meet would automatically be set for the next day, at two in the afternoon at the Grillparzer monument.
It was now ten past two. The glove was no longer in place, but that could mean anything, Werthen assumed. Some pedestrian might have taken it, or the controller. But if the latter, then why did no one appear? They should have had Schnitzler make the meeting. Was the controller one of the idle strollers in the park, waiting for Schnitzler to appear before he did so himself?
Werthen was about to suggest the same to Gross, when a man approached the monument. Clean-shaven, he carried himself like a soldier, though he was dressed in a linen suit and straw boater.
Werthen nodded at Berthe, who had taken up position under a nearby tree. She had the Brownie camera in her hands but she was not operating it, too busy staring at the man with a startled expression on her face. Werthen nodded at her to take the photo; they would not have another chance, for the man was beginning to look nervous.
Just as he thought this, the man abruptly turned and made his way out of the park. As planned, Werthen followed him, but professional training ultimately won out and Werthen lost him in the welter of interior courtyards at the Hofburg.
Gross and Berthe were waiting for him at the park.
‘Did you get the photo?’ Werthen asked.
Gross answered the question with another. ‘You lost him?’
Werthen nodded, then looked at his wife.
‘Oh, I took the photo. But there was no need.’
Werthen looked from Berthe to Gross, puzzled.
‘It was the watcher from the Hotel Metropole,’ Berthe said. ‘And we know who he works for. His name is Captain Forstl and he is on the staff of the Bureau.’
Schmidt watched the farce with some amusement. He assumed that the lawyer had lost the agent. Schmidt would not have lost him. But there was no need to follow; he already knew where the agent was headed.
And by the look of the animated discussion, it appeared that the lawyer’s wife and the criminologist had recognized the agent while the lawyer was fruitlessly tailing the man.
It was also apparent from the slight bulge in the criminologist’s right jacket pocket that he expected trouble, for he was armed and ready to defend himself.
Schmidt shook his head. This was not right. None of it. He had had enough of clearing up Forstl’s messes. If this blew up now, it could easily be traced back to St Petersburg; Forstl would surely say anything, sell anyone, to save his own skin.
His masters had made it clear to Schmidt that they were not ready yet for an altercation with the Habsburgs. Not until they had built enough railway lines to mobilize their army — and that could take another decade. Russia possessed the largest army in Europe, but this would be no use unless they could deploy the troops in a timely manner.
Another disgusted shake of the head. Schmidt rose and turned his back to the lawyer and his wife and Gross before closing his newspaper. He headed for the nearest tram stop to travel to the telegraph office at the South Railway Station. He would need to send a coded message to St Petersburg. He did not want to make this decision on his own.
Later that evening, after Frieda had been put to bed, Berthe, Werthen and Gross gathered in the sitting room, husband and wife shoulder to shoulder on the leather couch, and Gross occupying one of the Biedermeier chairs. They had brandies in their hands, but no one had taken a sip.
‘For me it is only too clear,’ Berthe insisted. ‘All the roads lead to this Captain Forstl.’
Gross blew air in derision. ‘Bosh! We have merely accomplished a certain degree of triangulation. But detection is not trigonometry.’
‘And there is nothing clearly linking Forstl to the Bower operation,’ Werthen agreed. ‘Schnitzler’s suggestions may well have fallen on deaf ears at the Bureau after the scandal of Lieutenant Gustl.’
Berthe took a sip of her brandy. ‘You say it yourself all the time, Gross. Too many coincidences. Sometimes you men cannot see the woods for the trees.’
Gross suddenly sat bolt upright in his chair, looking for all the world as if he had swallowed a partridge.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! That’s it. I think you may have something there, Frau Meisner.’
‘How do you mean, Gross?’ Werthen said, setting down his glass on a side table, as if ready to apply a life-saving slap to the man’s back.
‘The letter,’ he said, twirling his right forefinger through the air like a conductor. ‘The one to the girl’s father that includes the word “copse”. That one, fetch it.’
Werthen was too tired to respond with irony to this impolite demand, but simply got up and went to his office, riffled through the drawers until he found the relevant documents, and returned to the sitting room. He could hear Frieda’s regular breathing from her room as he passed it.
Gross was pacing about the room. He tore the papers out of Werthen’s hands and placed them side by side: the one in the original Volapük, and the other Frau von Suttner’s translation.
‘It’s this section,’ Gross said, stabbing the paper with a forefinger. ‘The well-tended Copse says I am a clever girl! I love my patriotic work. That section is the key to it.’
‘And it still makes no sense,’ Werthen said.
‘Assuming that it has been translated correctly,’ Gross added.
‘But how can we check-’ Werthen stopped in mid-sentence, seeing what Gross was getting at.
Berthe, too, understood. ‘Herr Moos!’
‘Quite right,’ Gross said. ‘I would assume the man would be more than happy to aid us in our inquiries. I propose a visit to the Landesgericht prison tomorrow.’
‘I’m afraid it will have to wait,’ Werthen said.
‘Why the devil should it?’ Gross boomed.
‘Because tomorrow is Saturday, and there are no visiting times on Saturday or Sunday.’
Gross merely harrumphed, as if Werthen himself had set the visiting hours at the prison.
On Monday morning Jakob Moos sat slump-shouldered on his bunk in the cell at the Liesel, the Landesgericht prison. Moos was being held in B block, for murder suspects.
The sallow-faced guard did not want to allow them into the cell at first, warning them that Moos had murdered a man with his bare hands.