Requiem in Vienna (35 page)

Werthen’s failure to add the “Herr” to the name of the stage manager only confirmed in this man’s mind that this interloper belonged.

“Herr Blauer is below stage,” the worker glumly told him.

“Yes, I know. If you’ll allow me.” Werthen made for the trapdoor, but the stagehand stopped him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said.

“I need to speak with him urgently.”

“No one is allowed down there but the stage manager during performances. The revolving stage is too dangerous.”

One dog, its tail docked and ears long and silken, managed to escape its lead and started dashing about the stage.

“Get that dog,” shouted the handler.

The stagehand averted his attention from Werthen for a moment to make a lunge for the hunting dog, and Werthen made a dash for the trapdoor.

In the under-stage, Blauer heard the trapdoor open overhead and to his rear before he could reexamine the charge he had earlier set. The delay in the start of the opera had made him skittish; he had to once again assure himself that all was in order. Now, however, he instinctively moved out of the dim light,
partly concealing himself behind the massive iron support used to help revolve the stage from one scene to another. The barking of the hunting dogs grew louder as the door opened, and then a tall, slender man began descending the stairs, poorly backlit by the light coming from above.

That meddlesome lawyer again, Blauer thought, for Werthen and his friend Gross were much on his mind. He should be celebrating, Blauer told himself. But if the lawyer had come to the opera, it could mean only one thing. His intricate ruse had failed.

Blauer was suddenly disgusted with himself. He should have killed Werthen that day at the law office. Caved his head in for him properly, not just given him a warning tap. But Blauer had planned it to look like a break-in gone wrong, not a homicide. One further bit of diversion. After all, how could the guilty party be the humble and bumbling Herr Tor if he was in Altaussee when the attack happened?

But then later, when it was discovered that Tor was not in fact in Altaussee on the Wednesday, suspicion would be thrown on him all the more heavily.

Blauer would like to have gloated more over his many intricate maneuvers. Now, however, was not the time. Mahler would die tonight. And this idiotic lawyer was not going to stop him. He leaned over, plucking a razor-sharp dagger out of the sheath in his boot just as the new arrival reached the bottom step and ventured toward the stage-revolving machinery.

Berthe lost her way as she mounted the stairs toward the balcony boxes. By the time she had reorientated herself and found Mahler’s box, it was empty.

So Blauer had not returned. Had he left the Hofoper altogether? She doubted it. After all, a stage manager’s place was behind the curtains. It was what he did. It had to be where she
would find him. She recalled the secret door Leitner had showed her and Karl, and leaving Mahler’s box, she headed for the wall at the far end of the corridor.

They had wasted enough time with the dogs. Now it was time to begin.

Mahler pushed his shoulders back and strode through the side door into the auditorium. The lights began to dim as he marched solemnly to the orchestra pit and took his position at the podium, tapping his baton on the top of the music stand.

This would be a performance to be remembered, he told himself.

“Marvelous, isn’t he,” Alma Schindler whispered in Herr Meisner’s ear as Mahler raised his arms, ready to commence the first notes of Wagner’s overture.

“He does have the proper bearing,” Herr Meisner returned in a whisper. “But poor Berthe. No getting back in now until the second act.”

From behind, a florid woman in a sequined gown shushed them.

Blauer let the man pass the iron support behind which he was hiding before he made his move.

“Herr Blauer,” the man called out.

Blauer cupped his left hand around the man’s mouth and drove the blade upward into his back. There was a satisfying crunching sound as the blade went home. Air escaped the man’s mouth and onto Blauer’s cupped hand. He withdrew the knife and struck three more times, finally allowing the corpse to collapse to the ground.

There was no stopping him tonight.

______

Werthen paced nervously by the trapdoor, waiting for the stagehand to return. The fellow had released the loose dog and gripped Werthen’s arm just as he was about to lift the trapdoor. He’d refused to let Werthen pass, and was about to raise a stink about it, perhaps drawing Blauer’s attention.

Instead, Werthen had requested the stagehand to go below and fetch Blauer. He told the astonished worker that Herr Regierungsrath Leitner himself needed to see him urgently about the closing scene. There was to be a last-minute change.

“Isn’t that just like them,” the stagehand muttered. “Throw a wrench into things at the last minute and expect us to fix things.”

Werthen commiserated with the stagehand, but was firm about him fetching Blauer.

But the worker had been gone too long now. Werthen was suspicious. This was not a good sign.

He heard the first notes of the overture coming from the orchestra and at the same time he inched the trapdoor open again.

Berthe opened the secret door to the backstage just as Werthen began descending the stairs under a trapdoor. She paid no attention to the admonitions of a stagehand that admission was restricted. Neither did she pay heed to her own body’s warnings, the nausea returning that was a constant reminder of her pregnancy.

Karl might be in danger. That was the only thought on her mind.

Wagner’s music filled the under-stage so that Blauer did not hear the trapdoor lifting again. Neither had he bothered to turn the dead man over and discover his mistake.

He saw that his deadly charge was still in place, and smiled. Just one more of those things, like wielding a knife lethally, that one learned from a life on the streets.

Again the white heat of anger rushed through him, thinking how his life had been formed—and ruined—by Mahler. If not for him, then Hans would have been a great musician, perhaps himself the director of the Hofoper, and he, Wilhelm Karl, could have also become a musician of note. Hadn’t he shown his composition abilities with his coded note to Werthen and Gross? All these years of work and planning to get even with the man—assuming the persona of Siegfried Blauer and becoming a stage manager, just so he could get close to his quarry—and now he was within minutes of success. Now he must leave this dungeon-like under-stage before the first scene change.

As the music swept around him, Blauer turned to go.

“What are you up to, Blauer?”

Werthen stood facing him and Blauer gave a jump as if seeing a ghost.

Then Werthen glanced down at the still body of the stagehand, sudden rage filling him. “You animal.”

Blauer did not say a word, but uttered a snarl, leaping onto Werthen and tumbling them both to the ground.

Werthen tried to roll away from the man, but Blauer had him in a bear hug, squeezing the life out of him. This was no time for gentlemanly behavior: Werthen brought a knee up into the man’s testicles and heard him groan in pain. Blauer relaxed his grip for an instant and Werthen moved out of reach, but Blauer kicked his legs out of under him as he was rising. Pain seared through his right knee, but Werthen still tried to stumble to his feet.

In the dim light he caught the flash of a steel blade as Blauer swept his hand up from his boots. Sparks flew as the stage manager swept the knife at him, missed, and struck the iron stage support instead. Werthen quickly took his jacket off and wrapped it around his left arm as the other rose and circled toward him.
Blauer feinted to the left and then struck to the right, but Werthen leapt back, out of reach.

Suddenly his backward progress was blocked by the iron support, and Blauer smiled like an insane person.

“That’s it for you, Herr Advokat.”

He lunged for Werthen, but his head suddenly jerked, and he gaped out of startled eyes. Then he crumpled to the ground.

In the space vacated by Blauer, Werthen now saw Berthe, one of her evening shoes gripped tightly in her right hand, its sharp heel broken from the impact.

“Berthe . . .” He held her in his arms for a moment.

“There’s no time for that now,” she protested, wriggling from his embrace.

“But how did you know about Blauer?” he asked.

“Nor for that,” she said. “Explanations come later. What was he planning?”

Werthen lost no time in securing the unconscious Blauer with the laces from his own boots, hog-tying him securely with the leather laces. Then he made sure the man had no further weapons on him.

Only then did he notice wires leading from a leather bag, one attached with a brad to the underside of the revolving stage, and a second to the immovable stage flooring. The ends of these two wires were joined by a third scrap piece of wiring.

Werthen opened the satchel and discovered ten sticks of dynamite deftly and securely tied around a large dry-cell battery. The battery was connected by two wires to a thin pencil detonator. Wires led from this detonator to one side of a small black box that Werthen immediately recognized from his studies of electricity as a relay. On the other side of the relay the two overhead wires were connected.

Berthe, leaning over him, let out a low sigh.

“Get out of here,” he said, rising and turning to her. “Tell someone above stage that there is a bomb set to go off.”

The overture gave way to singing overhead, and suddenly the
gears of the revolving stage churned into action. Both Werthen and Berthe quickly saw what was about to happen, for the piece of scrap wire connecting the two terminals overhead would stretch and ultimately break as the stage began to slowly move. Werthen realized that Blauer had rigged the primitive bomb to be set off by the very movement of the revolving stage, employing the same kind of technology that a burglar alarm used. Once the overhead circuit or loop was broken, the relay would switch on to complete the circuit to the detonator, sending electric current into it and triggering a miniature explosion. This would, in turn, set off the sticks of dynamite. Chillingly, frighteningly logical. And very effective, Werthen knew.

“Run,” he told her. “Now.”

“There’s no time,” she said.

Indeed, there was no longer even time to get to the lever above to shut off the revolving stage. And Blauer was still unconscious, so he could give no assistance.

Werthen saw that he could not simply pull the overhead wires loose, for that would set off the bomb. Nor could he separate the detonator and battery from the dynamite, for they were strapped too tightly together for quick removal. Instead he would have to disarm the bomb at the load, at the charge itself. He had only seconds to act.

From his youthful days on the Werthen estate and helping the gardener, Stein, to dynamite beaver dams on the streams that flowed through their property, Werthen understood that this was a tricky maneuver. Cut the wrong wire first, and there would be the same result as with breaking the overhead loop: the detonator would go off.

Two wires led from the battery to the detonator. Which one was it? He needed to cut the positive feed first, for that would stop the flow of electrical current. But it was too dark in the under-stage to make out any signs of positive or negative poles on the battery.

He searched the ground quickly for the knife Blauer had been wielding, found it, and held it to the wires. Sweat broke out on his forehead, dripped from the back of his hairline into his shirt collar. Which was the positive wire?

The stage moved slowly now, tugging at the overhead connection.

Which wire first?

The left one. It had to be blue. He closed his eyes trying to see the gardener Stein’s gnarled hands as he worked such detonators.

“Hurry,” Berthe urged, glancing upward as the wire connection between the revolving and fixed stage was about to rip apart.

No more time for thought. Werthen crimped a length of the wire and slid the sharp knife up and sliced quickly through it.

My God, what had he done? He had cut the wire on the right. A sudden and instinctual change of mind. No. It was more than that. A rhyme from his boyhood had come back to him: “
Links ist nichts, rechts ist am besten.”
A jingle taught to him by Stein to recognize negative and positive wires: “The left is nothing, the right is the best.”

He let out his breath in one long, slow exhalation, feeling Berthe’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Gross was still talking with the usher when Werthen returned, the leather pouch containing the dynamite in his hand.

The usher now was more solicitous than before, having finally been shown Prince Montenuovo’s letter.

“Is everything in order, sir?” he said to Werthen as he and Berthe came down the stairs.

Werthen handed the pouch to the bewildered man.

“I believe all is in order, yes,” he said.

The usher opened the bag and gasped.

“Don’t want to go dropping that,” Werthen said. “Nasty stuff, dynamite.”

Gross showed no surprise that Werthen should return with not only high explosives in hand, but also his wife.

“Looks as though you two had a near miss,” Gross said, peering into the bag too.

“We all did,” Werthen said. “But let the music play on.”

This time when he embraced Berthe, she made no attempt to resist.

S
everal days later they were seated around the Biedermeier dining table in Werthen and Berthe’s flat. Their afternoon tea consisted of a rather impressive
guglhupf
and a superbly flaky strudel. Frau Blatschky had outdone herself today, Werthen thought. Gross was regaling them with his interview with Siegfried Blauer earlier in the day at police headquarters.

“The man is clearly delusional,” he said. “Blames Mahler for everything that ever went wrong in his life, starting with the death of his older brother Hans. But, as with many twisted personalities, he also possesses genius. And now that the game is up, he has been most cooperative. In fact, he takes great relish in sharing his devious plans.”