'Very interesting,' he said, sitting down at my table. 'Assuming for a moment that they're genuine '
'Oh, they're genuine all right,' I said quickly.
He smiled patiently, as if I could have had no idea of the lengthy process whereby such information was properly verified. 'Assuming they're genuine,' he repeated firmly, 'how exactly did you come by them?'
A couple of men came over to the billiard table and started a game. K/nig drew his chair away and jerked his head at me to follow him. 'It's all right,' said one of the players. 'There's plenty of room to get by.' But we moved our chairs anyway. And when we were at a more discreet distance from the table I started to give him the story I had rehearsed with Belinsky.
Only now K/nig shook his head firmly and picked up his dog, which licked his ear playfully.
'This isn't the right time or place,' he said. 'But I'm impressed at how busy you have been.' He raised his eyebrows and watched the two men at the billiard table with an air of distraction. 'I learned this morning that you had been successful in procuring some petrol coupons for that medical friend of mine. The one at the General Hospital.' I realized that he was talking about Traudl's murder. 'And so soon after we had discussed the matter too. It really was most efficient of you, I'm sure.' He puffed smoke at the dog on his lap which sniffed and then sneezed. 'It's so difficult to obtain reliable supplies of anything in Vienna these days.'
I shrugged. 'You just have to know the right people, that's all.'
'As you clearly do, my friend.' He patted the breast pocket of his green tweed suit, where he had put Belinsky's documents. 'In these special circumstances I feel I ought to introduce you to someone in the company who will be better able than I to judge the quality of your source. Someone who, as it happens, is keen to meet you, and decide how best a man of your skills and resourcefulness may be used. We had thought to wait a few weeks before making the introduction, but this new information changes everything. However, first I must make a telephone call. I shall be a few minutes.' He looked down the сafé and pointed to one of the other free billiard tables. 'Why don't you try a few shots while I'm away?'
'I've not much use for games of skill,' I said. 'I distrust a game that relies on anything but luck. That way I needn't blame myself if I lose. I have a tremendous capacity for self-recrimination.'
A twinkle came into K/nig's eye. 'My dear fellow,' he said standing up from the table, 'that seems hardly German.'
I watched him as he walked into the back of the сafé to use the phone, the terrier trotting faithfully after him. I wondered who it was that he was calling: the one who was better able to judge the quality of my source might even be Mnller. It seemed too much to hope for so soon.
When K/nig returned a few minutes later, he seemed excited. 'As I thought,' he said, nodding enthusiastically, 'there is someone who is keen to have immediate sight of this material, and to meet you. I have a car outside. Shall we go?'
K/nig's car was a black Mercedes, like Belinsky's. And like Belinsky he drove too fast for safety on a road that had seen a heavy morning rain. I said that it would be better to arrive late than not to arrive at all, but he paid no attention. My feeling of discomfort was made worse by K/nig's dog, which sat on his master's lap and barked excitedly at the road ahead for the whole of the journey, as if the brute had been giving directions on where we were going. I recognized the road as the one which led to Sievering Studios, but at that same moment the road forked and we turned north again on to Grinzinger Allee.
'Do you know Grinzing?' K/nig shouted over the dog's incessant barking. I said that I did not. 'Then you really don't know the Viennese,' he opined. 'Grinzing is famous for its wine production. In the summer everyone comes up here in the evening to go to one of the taverns selling the new vintage. They drink too much, listen to a Schrammel quartet and sing old songs.'
'It sounds very cosy,' I said, without much enthusiasm.
'Yes, it is. I own a couple of vineyards up here myself. Just two small fields you understand. But it's a start. A man must have some land, don't you think?
We'll come back here in the summer and then you can taste the new wine yourself.
The lifeblood of Vienna.'
Grinzing seemed hardly a suburb of Vienna at all, more a charming little village. But because of its proximity to the capital, its cosy country charm somehow appeared as false as one of the film sets they built over at Sievering.
We drove up a hill on a narrow winding lane which led between old Heurige Inns and cottage gardens, with K/nig declaring how pretty he thought it all was now that spring was here. But the sight of so much storybook provinciality merely served to stimulate my city-bred parts to contempt, and I restricted myself to a sullen grunt and a muttered sentence about tourists. To one more used to the perennial sight of rubble, Grinzing with its many trees and vineyards looked very green. However I made no mention of this impression for fear that it might set K/nig off on one of his queer little monologues about that sickly colour.
He stopped the car in front of a high yellow-brick wall which enclosed a large, yellow-painted house and a garden that looked as if it had spent all day in the beauty parlour. The house itself was a tall, three-storey building with a high-dormered roof. Apart from its bright colour, there was a certain austerity of detail about the facade which lent the house an institutional appearance. It looked like a rather opulent son of town hall.
I followed K/nig through the gates and up an immaculately bordered path to a heavy studded oak door of the kind that expected you to be holding a battle-axe when you knocked. We walked straight into the house and on to a creaking wooden floor that would have given a librarian a heart attack.
K/nig led me into a small sitting-room, told me to wait there and then left, closing the door behind him. I took a good look round, but there wasn't much to see beyond the fact of the owner's bucolic taste in furniture. A rough-hewn table blocked the French window, and a couple of cartwheel farmhouse chairs were ranged in front of an empty fireplace that was as big as a mineshaft. I sat down on a slightly more comfortable-looking ottoman and re-tied my shoelaces. Then I polished my toes with the edge of the threadbare rug. I must have waited there for an indifferent half-hour before K/nig came back to fetch me. He led me through a maze of rooms and corridors and up a flight of stairs to the back of the house, with the manner of a man whose jacket is lined with oak panelling.
Hardly caring if I insulted him or not now that I was about to meet someone more important, I said, 'If you changed that suit you'd make someone a wonderful butler.'
K/nig did not turn around, but I heard him bare his dentures and utter a short, dry laugh. 'I'm glad you think so. You know, although I like a sense of humour I would not advise you to exercise it with the general. Frankly, his character is most severe.' He opened a door and we came into a bright, airy room with a fire in the grate and hectares of empty bookshelves. Against the broad window, behind a long library table, stood a grey-suited figure with a closely-cropped head I half recognized. The man turned and smiled, his hooked nose unmistakably belonging to a face from my past.
'Hello, Gunther,' said the man.
K/nig looked quizzically at me as I blinked speechlessly at the grinning figure.
'Do you believe in ghosts, Herr K/nig?' I said.
'No. Do you?'
'I do now. If I'm not mistaken, the gentleman by the window was hanged in 1945 for his part in the plot to kill the Fnhrer.'
'You can leave us, Helmut,' said the man at the window. K/nig nodded curtly, turned on his heel and left.
Arthur Nebe pointed at a chair in front of the table on which Belinsky's documents lay spread out beside a pair of spectacles and a fountain pen. 'Sit down,' he said. 'Drink?' He laughed. 'You look as though you need one.'