Tours of the Black Clock

59

YESTERDAY I WENT TO meet Petyr at our designated rendezvous point and he wasn’t there. I sent Kronehelm a message that I would be at the same place in the Karlsplatz the same hour today, but no one was there either. We’re left to our own devices, you and I, emancipated and gateless.

Tonight I sit down to my desk in the gray light of the moon; a car turns the corner of Dog Storm Street and pulls to the door downstairs. I can hear the bell ring several times and, peering over the sill, I see a box of long yellow light that appears in the road when the door opens. There’s some discussion, and the door closes; there are steps on the stairs. I turn in my chair just as the shadow of someone’s feet obstructs the glint beneath my own door; I wait for the knock. It’s one of the few occasions when I expect nothing.

The knock comes again and I get up and open the door, standing in the dark of my room. “Mr. Jainlight?” a man says. I hold my hand to my eyes to block the light, so as to make him out. I notice immediately the “mister” rather than the usual “herr.” He says, “My name is Holtz. May I speak with you a moment?” and only then do I detect the German accent. He doesn’t barge in like most of the Germans in Vienna these days, he actually waits for an invitation. I back away and hold open the door.

He doesn’t ask me to turn on a light, and I’d as soon proceed on my terms; my terms include sitting in the dark. He doesn’t take a chair until I push one toward him. Then he takes off his long coat and I see the uniform. I assume he’s a big shot. Not a field marshal but something fairly impressive. “Colonel,” he smiles in the dark, to the question I haven’t asked. I peer over the windowsill, the car’s still there and I assume someone’s in it. I assume someone’s standing at the door, too, though I can’t see. “However,” he says, “plain Holtz will do.” This is the most cordial damned German I’ve ever met. So far I haven’t said a word to him.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve come from Berlin,” he says, “I’ve come from Berlin to see you.”

“Hardly worth the fuss,” I tell him.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” he answers, “you underestimate yourself. You’re an author of real note in my country, sir,” he says, “your work has a significant following. I think you’re aware of that. Do you want me to come right to the point?”

“It’s of no concern to me one way or the other. Will it shorten the conversation?”

“I’ll come right to the point,” he says. He’s in his late thirties, early forties, but he speaks to me without condescension. I keep looking at the car outside. “Please don’t be concerned about the soldiers outside,” he says, “no one’s here to arrest you.”

“Why should I be concerned? This isn’t Germany.”

“Well, that’s certainly true for the moment,” he answers, and he finally sounds like a German. On the other hand, he sounds like a lot of Austrians these days too. He’s blank-looking, handsome in a way that has no distinction; his hair’s thinning a little in front. He lights a cigarette. Maybe as much for the light in the dark as for the cigarette. “For some months you’ve been doing work for an individual by the name of Kronehelm,” he says now, “who’s been placing the work with someone very, very powerful in the Chancellery. I believe you know this person as X, or Client X.” He waits for me to say something and when I don’t he continues. “The situation’s changed a bit on our end, though not on your end in any way except for the better, as you’ll see. To put it directly, Herr Kronehelm is no longer the intermediary in these transactions. Do you follow?”

“What’s to follow? You’ve eliminated the middleman.”

“What do you think of that?”

“I’m not happy about it.”

“Are you close to Kronehelm?”

“He’s a slug, actually, but that has nothing to do with it.”

“What bothers you about it?”

“Who knows? Who knows what bothers me these days and why? I’ve eliminated middlemen before, Kronehelm and I eliminated our own middleman as a matter of fact. But cutting out Kronehelm, well, it isn’t square, he had the contacts, he created the market and brought me to Vienna.”

“You just keep underestimating yourself, Mr. Jainlight,” Holtz answers. He’s looking for an ashtray so as not to drop the ash of his cigarette on the floor; I push a coffee cup toward him. “Thank you. You see, we’ll pay you what we were paying Herr Kronehelm. If it will mitigate your sense of loyalty let me just say that from our standpoint it was you who created the market, and that what Kronehelm was paying you was a fraction of what he was making off you.”

“Well, I guess the market developed … a more impressive clientele.”

Holtz just sits in the dark. He finally says, “You can’t even begin to know, sir.”

I say, “Maybe and maybe not.”

“Did Herr Kronehelm ever explain to you exactly who Client X was?”

“Has Client X died? It’s not on the radio if he did.”

“No, he hasn’t died,” Holtz says, lighting another cigarette. I get up from my chair and open the window for some air. Leaning out I can see there’s someone by the door downstairs as I figured. When I sit back down the colonel says, “But you’re not working for Client X now.”

I laugh, “I never figured I was. I figured he was working for me.”

After a moment Holtz laughs too. “Let’s say,” he continues, “you have a new client. All right? Let’s call him Client Z.”

“Z? Maybe you ought to discuss this with X. Before the secret police show up and discuss it with you. Are you trying to cut yourself in on some action, is that it? Maybe X doesn’t like this new arrangement. Maybe X doesn’t like Client Z so much either.”

“Client X,” Holtz answers calmly, “understands the arrangement perfectly. Client X,” he adds, “serves at the pleasure of Client Z.”

In this first moment, when he says it, I’m not sure I understand. Something in the back of my mind must understand, I guess, because for the first moment, and then the second, and then the third, I don’t say anything at all. And then I can only repeat it: “Client X,” as much to myself as to him, “serves at the pleasure of Client Z?”

“That’s right,” Holtz answers, in the same calm way he first said it. He reaches over and takes the coffee cup and puts out the second cigarette. He’ll sit and wait all night for me to say something, before he says another word.

“And Client Z,” I finally ask him, “at whose pleasure does he serve?”

Holtz hands me back the coffee cup, full of ashes. “Client Z,” he answers, rising from his chair, “serves at the pleasure of history.”