48
Present Day
Vienna
“ELEANOR, LISTEN TO ME. You have to stop this research business before you get yourself killed.”
“Come on now, Ty,” I say into my phone to my brother Tyson. “Nobody cares that much about a fifty-eight-year-old history professor on sabbatical.” Almost by instinct, by self-deprecation if not outright denial, I brush aside Ty’s concerns, though I can’t deny having the same thoughts.
“Your purse was stolen,” Tyson says. “Your hotel room was ransacked, and your computer was swiped. Not to mention that awful white supremacist Heil Hitler graffiti was spray-painted on your wall. Who’s to say you won’t be hurt next?”
“I’m being careful,” I say, which is true—if by careful I meant following the instructions given to me in Munich.
I’d been told to take a certain route to the train station; to purchase a ticket to Vienna on my credit card but actually travel via an earlier Railjet train ticket bought in cash; to not communicate with anyone via email or text about my comings and goings.
Oh, and to purchase a burner phone, which is what I’m using to talk to my brother right now.
All the cloak-and-dagger is exhausting. But it will all be worth it if the man I’m going to meet here in Vienna, Francis Linderman’s grandfather, can deliver to me the contents of Adolf Hitler’s safe.
“Are you trying to prove something, El? It seems like you are.”
You have no idea, I think. Maybe this search is what I needed after an uneventful life in academia. Maybe I’d like to make some history instead of just teaching it.
I check the burner phone for the time. I’m due at the meeting point soon. I’m staying on the main strip in the center of Vienna, K?rntner Stra?e, not far from the Casino Wien and a number of glitzy shops that remind me of the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
My instructions were to wear a brown coat and orange hat. The latter I purchased from a souvenir shop, a silly Euro Disney cap that looks ridiculous on a woman my age, but I already had a beige corduroy jacket. I’ve had it for seven years. It was a gift from my daughter Annabelle.
She’d bought it for me while shopping for antiques in the Netherlands.
Thrifting was one of her favorite hobbies.
The seller claimed that the jacket had once belonged to Johanna Naber, a Dutch feminist historian.
I laughed when Annabelle related that to me, for who could verify such an assertion?
But then again, who would lie about it? Johanna Naber was a personal hero of mine but hardly a household name.
I’ve worn it ever since.
The meeting point is a fifteen-minute walk, so I leave the hotel twenty-five minutes before three, the appointed hour, to give myself some cushion.
A pedestrian avenue of stone, closed to vehicles, K?rntner Stra?e is a touristy walk to be sure, with plenty of chain stores and restaurants familiar to Americans, but the overall vibe is swanky and high-end, the avenue dotted generously with outdoor cafés.
It’s not lost on me that this is the perfect avenue from which to surveil me.
I quickly give up any pretense of trying to detect, much less avoid, a tail.
I soon reach Stephansplatz, the plaza featuring the Stephansdom—St. Stephen’s Cathedral, an immense Gothic limestone structure with Roman towers of notably different heights, including one of the largest in the world, a roof of hundreds of thousands of colorful glazed tiles, and over a dozen altars and nearly as many chapels.
The seat of the Archbishop of Vienna, the site of the marriages of both Haydn and Mozart, and during the 1600 Turkish wars a de facto military command center, the cathedral is one of the top tourist attractions in Vienna.
Near the Giant’s Gate where tourists enter is a small engraving—OS, a symbol of the Austrian resistance to the Nazis after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938.
(Austria, in its native language, is ?sterreich, but in most other languages the ? is written as Oe, with the letter E being the fifth letter of the alphabet. Thus, O5.)
I could spend all day inside this massive cathedral but was directed to one place among many: the high altar, built in the 1640s and one of the few altars that survived the Allies’ shelling in World War II.
As instructed, I sit in the penultimate pew on the far right side, leaving space for a visitor.
I am six minutes early, but I sit alone for the next thirty, occupying myself by counting all the figurines of local saints around the altar (Leopold, Florian, Sebastian, and Rochus), imagining how painful it must have been to be stoned (very), and wondering how long I’ll wait before giving up (not much longer).
I spend some time admiring an oil painting above the altar featuring Saint Stephen being stoned to death, while he looks up to Heaven and beseeches Jesus and God the Father, the dramatic lighting on Stephen’s face meant to look angelic.
Then I move my attention to the elaborate stained-glass windows that bookend Pock’s masterpiece.
Then to a sculpture of the immaculate conception.
But by 3:45 p.m., my appreciation for the altar is overcome by the growing ache in my lower back, and I am ready to leave.
“My personal favorite is Saint Florian.”
I turn to see a man roughly my age, dressed in a long wool coat, scarf neatly tied around his neck, and a gray fedora. “May I sit?” he asks.
This is not who I was expecting, or at least not what my contact was supposed to be wearing.
I slide over, but when he sits he leaves no space between us, our shoulders touching. For one panicky moment I expect to feel a sharp object sliding between my ribs, something stealthy, allowing him to slip away while I slowly bleed out.
“Saint Florian.” He gestures toward the altar, one of the figurines. “Do you know what he is best known for?”
I try to calm myself and find my voice. “Putting out fires.”
“Just so. He was part of an elite firefighting brigade for the Roman army. Who later refused to persecute Christians and sacrifice them to the Roman gods. A true and honorable man.” He smiles.
“You know your history, Professor. You wrote your doctoral thesis on the fissures and distrust between Hitler and Mussolini during World War II. And you’ve taught courses. ” He nudges me with his elbow.
“You want me to know how carefully you’ve researched me,” I say.
He chuckles, an admission, and puts out his hand. “I am obviously not who you were expecting. And that man is obviously not coming. He is more competent than I would have thought at spotting surveillance. And here I thought we were being discreet.”
“And who are you?”
“I think of myself as a firefighter as well. I come for a preventative purpose.”
“Preventative,” I repeat. “As in preventing me from obtaining certain items?”
“Just so. But only for your safety.” He clears his throat. “We are not so naive as to think that stealing your computer will erase the knowledge in your head. I daresay you could rewrite what you’ve already completed in a week’s time from memory.”
“But it could be dismissed as speculation unless I have corroboration.”
“I could not have said it better, Professor. What you have learned from the notes and those journals you obtained from Francis Linderman is not proof. It was enough to get you started on this journey. Even enough to write an engaging book proposal, however inconclusive it may be. But not enough for a historian, at least not one with any integrity, to print as fact. You want facts. You want proof. That is why you’re here. ”
“Fair enough,” I say. “But why do I need you to tell me what I already know?”
“Because I don’t want to see you killed, Professor.” He raises a hand. “Your death would only call attention to your research. It would lend credibility to it. Others would take up your cause.”
“Then you shouldn’t kill me.”
“I might agree, but this is not my decision alone. Do you think there is but one leader of our movement? There are many factions that are autonomous. And all are aware of what you’re trying to obtain, Professor.
Any one of them could act against you at any time.
The harder you try to obtain this information, the greater your risk. ”
“But as you noted,” I begin, trying to still my nerves, “it will backfire. Give credibility to my cause.”
“Unless they do it properly, make it look like a suicide,” he says. “As they did with Mr. Linderman.”
My head whips in his direction. What was he telling me about Francis Linderman’s death?
“He… didn’t commit suicide?”
The man makes a guttural noise but remains motionless, eyes forward, looking at the altar. “For the first time you surprise me, Professor. Surely you’re not that naive.”
It feels like someone flipped the thermostat inside me, my blood going cold. Francis, the man who sent me the Nazi-era information, who started me on this journey… was murdered?
“Perhaps now you will take my admonishment more seriously,” he says. “Do I have your attention now, Professor Robbins?”