She pointed down the hall again.
“Toilet.”
Then, she walked to the door directly across from the elevator, opened it and moved aside so he could enter.
“Breakfast six to ten. Check out 11:00 in the morning,” she said.
He nodded that he understood.
“Are you travelling alone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I can have friend for you tonight. You like?” she asked with a smile.
He didn’t return it.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, and closed the door.
He looked at his accommodations. It was worse than he had feared. It was little more than an oversized closet. There was a single bed, no TV, a sink, and a tiny dresser that doubled as a table and looked so rickety that he would be afraid to set his laptop on it. The only other piece of furniture was a cheap press-board wardrobe so thin he knew without looking that the bars would run perpendicular to the door so that a suit could hang parallel to the wall. Otherwise, the door would not close. He wondered for a moment if maybe the building was an old monastery and this was a monk’s cell. There was a shared toilet down the hall and a bath on a different floor. Thirty-two Euro had seemed cheap, but after seeing the room, he felt like he had been mugged.
He set the bag on the bed, pulled out his phone and a small notebook and punched in a telephone number.
“Good morning. I’m here. Is everything ready?”
“Just waiting for a photograph of the cover.”
“I will have that for you in about an hour. Are you sure about the dimensions and the content?”
“I found the dimensions in the description by Ragg. For content, I took what few facsimile images are available on the internet and simply made enough copies to fill the book. Obviously, this would not stand two minutes of serious scrutiny by a G.O.B. expert, but the receptionists are not experts. They probably don’t know Italian and will take only a cursory glance, if they even crack the cover,when you return it.”
“Is Josef providing the schematics?” asked Zeki.
“He sends his greetings, but is not happy that this is going to involve every major museum in Vienna.”
“It’s only ten minutes.”
“He’s nervous. There are priceless pieces of art being protected by electronic security in that district.”
“Yeah, well most of it, including Augustinerlesesaal, is on a back-up generator that will take over in less than sixty seconds. Just remind him that he owes me and tell him to pray I don’t need more time than that.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at the statue in front of Hofburg Palace.”
“I’ll be there.”
Zeki terminated the call and looked at himself in the mirror. The mask Baba and his team had worked almost all night to make was truly a masterpiece. The silicone was far thinner than he had thought possible. Fatih Gülben was a balding man in his sixties. He wore a short mustache that was mostly grey. His face was fuller than Zeki’s, and the silicone mask had been made thicker in the cheeks to achieve the same effect. It was the hair that had taken the longest for Baba’s team to get right, but in the morning light Zeki could see it was as close to perfect as could be hoped for. Baba had earned his five thousand dollars. It had taken a team of three more than four hours to fit the mask and seal the eyes, nose and mouth so that speaking and blinking were natural. Baba had also warned Zeki to avoid laughing or any sign of extreme emotion because the mask simply could not convey the necessary facial expressions. He zipped the bag. It was time to go.
Five minutes later, Zeki was in a taxi on his way to Augustinerlesesaal. He had gone over every detail of the mission in his mind. He knew that if he gave his mind a break, it would improve his mental acuity when the pressure began to build. So, he allowed himself a few minutes to enjoy the magnificent museums they were driving past.
The architecture and grandeur of the capital of the Hapsburgs had always impressed him. Empire was etched into every stone, every building exuded the hubris of the ruling class, an elegant, refined arrogance reflected in the European gods and goddess that graced almost every corner of the capital. It had been built of course, not by its owners, but by the serfs and slaves who served them under pain of death. It was a cruel reality that the most extraordinary structures in the world were built with slave labor: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Parthenon and the Great Wall of China, aptly called the longest cemetery in the world. He wondered how many of the gawking tourists that flocked to these sights ever reflected on the misery endured by those who labored to erect them.
In spite of its grandeur, Vienna was in decline, the rollercoaster ride of Empire. What went up inevitably came down. Riches provoke jealousy, which creates challengers. Power leads to pride, pride to pomp and pomp to decay. Sooner or later, new challengers displace those in power. Yet, somehow they never fail to perpetuate the same cycle of exploitation. There was nothing new under the sun. The rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is never full.
These thoughts were a pattern and an unpleasant one, so he turned his mind instead to his recently deceased friend. Great cultural distance had separated them. Ian was a child of the West, shaped by a fusion of Greek and Roman philosophy, the teachings of Christ, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, religious war and colonization. It was so different from what had shaped his own life. He was a product of Islam and the Middle East, with cultural values stretching back three millennia, encompassing the Hittites, the Persians, the Assyrians, the Arabs and the Turks. Anatolia was the melting pot of the Middle East where the terror of Nebuchadnezzar, the pride of Xerxes, the cruelty of Kublai Khan and the faith of Abraham, Moses and Mohammed had been the furnace that forged the nomadic Turk into the ruler of the world. That empire had also come to an end.
Somehow, the two of them had still found common ground in their humanity and in their ability to circumvent the narrow cultural confines imposed on them by the circumstances of their birth. They discovered their visceral connection one day when Zeki told Ian stories of the Anatolian rebellions, when common men proclaimed equality before the Creator and freedom of conscience. Ian reciprocated with stories of the tumultuous Irish and Scottish struggle to rid themselves of English shackles. This was where they had connected, in the belief that man was created by God in His image, that every person could become a bearer of the divine spark. They had differed on the details for sure, but their dialogue had opened new horizons for Zeki.
“That is the imperial palace ahead on the right. Now, it serves as the National Library,” said the taxi driver as he drove under the arches that had been the gates in the wall that protected the castle.
Zeki gazed upon the expansive royal grounds known as the
Volksgarten
. It was filled with residents walking dogs, flying kites and enjoying the summer sun. The walls of the castle had been torn down, but the towering arches with the massive, wooden gates had been preserved and now functioned as separate lanes in the road.
Zeki looked to his right to see the massive bronze sculpture of Prince Eugene of Savoy on a rearing charger. A smile teased his lips.
How appropriate.
It was fitting that Eugene of Savoy should be honored in front of the Austrian palace instead of an Emperor. After all, it was the general who had protected the Empire from its enemies. And, the most dangerous of these enemies might not have been an army but the devious deception housed just a stone’s throw from this monument to the man who had been entrusted with keeping the book safe. Time had bestowed a turquoise hue to the bronze masterpiece, giving it an otherworldly feeling.
“Yes, but I am going to the reading room. You can drop me off at Michael Plaza,” Zeki replied.
He thought of the Ottoman army that had laid siege to the city in 1683 and how they might have marched through those same gates had they been victorious. Now, Turks moved freely throughout Europe as one of the largest sources of immigrant labor. Some people said time healed all wounds. He wasn’t so sure that this one wasn’t still festering.
On the other side of the
Volksgarten,
they passed a row of horse-drawn carriages waiting for tourists who wanted to visit the grandiose palace complex in royal style. Then the taxi passed through another set of arches into Michael Plaza and pulled over in front of an ornate fountain of Neptune to let him out. Zeki handed the man a ten-Euro note, stepped out of the taxi and shouldered his bag. He looked around the square and shook his head in wonder at the magnificent statues. Above the entrance to St. Michael’s Church was an enormous stone rendering of Raphael’s famous painting where the archangel Michael is depicted vanquishing Satan.
He turned around and looked at the passageway the taxi had just driven under. On either side of the arches were colossal depictions of Hercules slaying Cerberus and lifting Antaeus off the ground to deprive him of contact with his mother the earth, the source of his power. They were awe-inspiring. Islam had deprived its people of such fantastic visual arts, works he was sure had inspired many. It was the blindness so peculiar to religion.
Zeki completed his 360-degree visual tour of the square, allowing himself to bask in the artistic and architectural grandeur for just a moment. Then he took off his jacket, stuffed it inside his bag and refocused his mind on the job ahead. He started down Herrengasse, a narrow street that led past the Spanish Riding School. Fifty paces further on, he walked past the Stables of the Lipizzaners on his left. Several beautiful white mares were being groomed in the courtyard. He wanted to stop. He wanted to spend a month drinking in the sights and sounds of these streets, but the reading room had already been open for thirty minutes. His deadline was unforgiving. He quickened his steps and walked under another arch and into the open cobblestone square of Josefsplatz.
The square was surrounded on three sides by a three-storey complex of white buildings executed in quintessential baroque with black iron bars across the windows. In the middle of the square was another equestrian bronze of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. On his left was the Augustiner Church. The entrance to Augustinerlesesaal was in the far left corner of the square. At one time, it had been part of the monastery for the imperial house of worship. He walked diagonally across the square, past the bronze sculpture, staring at the artwork on the parapet. There was statue of Atlas straining to lift a globe covered with gold leaf and behind him rose a red-tile roof steep enough to shed the heavy winter snowfall.
At the corner of the square, he found himself standing in front of two massive doors that were easily twelve feet tall. The doors were open and an attendant stood at the entrance.
“Good morning,” said Zeki
“
Guten Morgen
,” answered the attendant, but looked flustered at himself for answering in German instead of English.
“Do you have an appointment in ze reading room?” he continued.
“Yes, I do,” answered Zeki.
“Zen you vill turn left, tru zose doors,” he said, pointing to another set of doors inside, “ant it iz on ze first landing.”
“Thank you,” said Zeki.
He had spent the four hours on the plane reading about the palace library. He entered the building, and walked through a door under the words Bibliotheca Palatine. He found himself looking at a staircase so broad he was sure five men could have walked side by side without difficulty. At the base of the stairs was a statue of a woman holding a wreath aloft in one hand while the other hand rested on a long rectangular shield.
Athena? No, the shield would have been round, and she would be wearing a helmet.
He looked up. The walls and ceilings were painted snow-white and high above him were ten busts protruding from the walls all around the U-shaped stairwell, four on each of the side walls and two on the narrow wall opposite him. A gigantic wrought-iron street lamp hung from the ceiling, no doubt dating back to a time when candles lit the staircase instead of electricity.
He rehearsed the whole plan as he ascended the stairs, but he was not prepared for what he saw at the top. On the second-floor landing, there stood a
museum attendant beside beautiful wooden doors made of rich reddish-brown oak and beyond that was a lavishly furnished halls. He recognized the room from pictures he had seen. None of them did it justice. This was
Prunksaal
, literally the “Hall of Pomp”. Designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, one of the most prolific Baroque architects of the day, it was intended to be a reflection of the Empire’s glory.