Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [117]
“French?” asked the agent.
“Yes.”
“Very beautiful?”
“That’s her.”
“Nein.”
Younger waited; no further information came. “What do you mean, nein?” he asked.
“I wasn’t here when the Vienna train arrived, Mein Herr,” said the man. “But your fräulein must have been on it. I sold her a ticket.”
“A ticket where?”
“She bought a one-way on the night train to Prague. No baggage. You only just missed her; the train left less than an hour ago. Most unusual. Imagine, a girl like that traveling at night by herself.”
Younger ran his hands through his hair. “I’m looking for a Hans Gruber. Do you know where he lives? Or his family?”
Younger found the house the ticket agent had described to him—a small, fenced, rustic affair, clean but dilapidated. The roof looked like it might collapse at any moment. A thick-set, hard-eyed old woman answered the door.
“Frau Gruber?” asked Younger.
“Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I’m a friend of Hans’s.”
“Liar.” The old woman’s voice was both shrewish and shrewd. The sight of the blanket-wrapped boy at Younger’s side did nothing to soften her. “Go away. He’s not here. He’s in Vienna.”
She tried to shut the door, but Younger stopped her. “That’s not what you told the girl,” he said. “You told her Prague.”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. The old yellow teeth broke into a nasty laugh. “You think I don’t know what he’ll do with her? I know his tricks. He’ll take the shirt from her back. He’ll make her whore for him and throw her in the rubbish bin when she’s used up. Just like all the others.”
Younger’s reaction to these predictions was surprisingly ambivalent. On the one hand, he felt Colette might actually be in danger if she married Gruber. On the other, he felt the odds of her marrying Gruber had distinctly decreased. “Tell me where in Prague I can find him.”
“I know why you’re here,” said the old woman. “He owes you money. I see it in your eyes. Well, he owes me first.” She shook her head bitterly. “Taking the family stipend all these years, just because the government addresses the envelopes to him. Then he dares come back here and sleep under my roof. Get out of my doorway or I’ll call the police. You expect me to help you get money from Hans? Anything he has belongs to me.”
“How much?” asked Younger.
“What’s that?”
“How much does he owe you?”
The old woman was only too happy to work out the sum; it was a large one. Younger took from his wallet, in crowns, a significantly larger amount. Her eyes twinkled.
Younger left the woman’s house with an address in Prague and with Luc clad in a dry and clean, if ancient, brown wool suit of boy’s clothing. From the ticket agent, he had a good idea how to get to Prague. “You get some sleep in there,” he said to Luc as the latter climbed into the sidecar. “We have a long road ahead.”
Luc fastened his eyes searchingly on Younger.
“All right, there’s no mystery to it,” said Younger. “Your sister is looking for a man she met during the war. They were supposed to be married. We’re following her.”
Luc still looked at Younger.
“No, I don’t know what I’m going to do if we find her,” said Younger. “It’s probably pointless anyway. By the time we get to Prague, they’re likely to be in a church with the wedding bells already pealing. At which point I’ll look pretty foolish.”
The boy tapped Younger’s arm. He fished around inside the compartment for something to write on and found some of Oktavian’s engraved cards. On the back of one, he wrote a message and handed it to Younger. The card said, “My sister wants to marry you.”
“That is demonstrably false,” answered Younger, mounting the motorcycle and kick-starting it.
Luc tapped at his sleeve and handed him another card. This one said, “I don’t like my sister.”
“Yes, you do,” said Younger.
It was nine in the morning when, in a light rain, they rattled over the cobblestone streets of Prague’s Nové Město, or New Town, where “new” refers to the green days of the mid-fourteenth century. The jumbling of epochs throughout