Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“Dr. Eric Gruen,” I said. Whatever the crime Eric Gruen had committed, with only Eric Gruen’s passport in my pocket I had no other choice but to say I was him. Besides, from what Medgyessy had told me, it was the Allied police who were after Gruen, not the Austrian police. And these were Austrian policemen, I was certain of that. They were both carrying the same gun—a shiny new Mauser automatic, the kind they gave to all the cops on Vienna’s denazified police force.
“Papers,” said the second cop.
Slowly, I put my hand in my pocket. The two cops didn’t look like they had much more policing experience between them than a scoutmaster. And I didn’t want to get shot because some new bug cop was nervous. I handed over Gruen’s passport carefully, and put my hands up again.
“I’m a friend of Frau Warzok’s,” I said, and sniffed the air. It wasn’t just the room that smelled. It was the whole situation. If the cops were there then something bad had happened. “Look here, is she all right? Where is she?”
The second cop was still looking at the passport. I wasn’t worried that he would think it wasn’t me so much as that he would be abreast of whatever it was that Gruen was supposed to have done.
“It says here that you’re from Vienna,” he said. “You don’t sound like you’re from Vienna.” He was wearing the same outfit as his colleague, only without the baker’s hat. A smile was stapled to the opposite cheek from the way his nose was angled. He probably thought it made him look wry or even skeptical, but it just came off oblique and distorted. All of his recessive genes seemed to have concentrated where his chin ought to have been. And the hairline on his high forehead matched the line of a long S-shaped scar. He handed the passport back to me as he spoke.
“Before the war, I lived in Berlin for ten years,” I said.
“A doctor, huh?”
They were starting to relax.
“Yes.”
“Her doctor?”
“No. Look here, who are you? And where’s Frau Warzok?”
“Police,” said the one with the hat, flashing a warrant disk at me. “Deutschmeister Platz.”
This seemed reasonable enough. The Kommissariat on Deutschmeister Platz was less than a hundred yards away from where we were standing.
“She’s in there,” said the cop with the scar.