The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [108]
‘Afraid so. I might pop back later. Make sure you save me a dance.’
Gaddis turned and walked away into the park. In doing so he bumped into a tourist carrying a 35mm camera around his neck. Gaddis’s arm knocked against the telephoto lens and he felt obliged to apologize.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, then, in German: ‘Entschuldigung.’
Karl Stieleke did not respond.
Chapter 41
Gaddis had chosen the Kleines Café from a photograph in a Phaidon guidebook to Vienna which had been left by a guest in the dining area of the Goldene Spinne. The photograph suggested that the café was the sort of low-key, inconspicuous place that Gaddis was looking for, and so it proved. Visiting Franziskanerplatz early on Saturday morning, he had discovered a small, pedestrianized square, about half a mile west of the Radisson, with a fountain at its centre, birds hopping in and out of the water and local residents reading newspapers over cups of coffee in the sunshine. The Kleines Café occupied the corner of the ground floor of a recently renovated building just a few metres from the fountain. There were two entrances: one leading into the square itself, where half a dozen tables were set out in neat rows; and a side exit, in the lower section of the café, which led out on to a cobbled street running downhill into Singerstrasse.
Just inside this back entrance was a single, mirrored booth. It was here that Gaddis established himself at nine o’clock on Saturday evening. He felt that it would be the perfect place to talk to Wilkinson: there were no other seats or tables close by, only some cardboard boxes and empty kegs of beer. In a re-run of his convoluted journey to the Estacio Sants in Barcelona, he had taken a circuitous route to the café, trying to shake off any potential surveillance by using three different modes of transportation – foot, taxi, train – in a journey which had lasted almost an hour. He was certain that he was not being followed.
He ordered a beer from the manager and waited. He had a new Yeltsin biography to read, cigarettes to smoke, and felt quietly confident that Wilkinson would appear as soon as he was no longer required at the wedding. But Gaddis had not counted on the sheer volume of customers who began pouring through the back door at around half-past nine. It turned out that the Kleines Café was one of the most popular bars in Vienna: by ten, it was impossible to see the exit from Gaddis’s seat at the booth, despite the fact that he was only a few feet from the street. He counted at least thirty people crushed into the tiny lower section around him and assumed that there were at least twice as many in the main body of the café. If Wilkinson walked in, there was a real possibility that he would fail to spot Gaddis.
He need not have worried. At twenty-past ten, Gaddis looked up to see Wilkinson peering over the head of a plump Viennese banker who was wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He nodded at him, to establish his identity, and Wilkinson pushed his way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd before settling on the opposite side of the booth in a seat which Gaddis had been jealously guarding since nine o’clock.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, his weight jogging the small circular table as he sat down. ‘You didn’t think I would come.’
‘I’m certainly glad to see you,’ Gaddis replied.
It was hard to read Wilkinson’s mood. His normally impassive face was touched by an odd sense of mischief. Wilkinson had changed out of his morning suit into a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a shirt, and a dark V-neck jumper. He removed the same tattered Barbour that had witnessed the unsolicited visit of Christopher Brooke and set it on the bench beside him.
‘You have quite a nerve, Doctor Gaddis. I was warned about you.’
‘You were?’
‘Certain people are reluctant for us to speak. Certain people are concerned that we might cause trouble. How do you get a whisky around here?’
He wondered if Wilkinson was a little drunk from the festivities. He had been expecting criticism for making the phone call to his