CHAPTER SEVEN, VIENNA, LATE SPRING 1994: JAY LYONS
Vienna. Capital of Austria, of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire before that, and of much before that. Home of the Hofburg Palace, the State Opera, Sachertorte, the Spanish Riding School, maybe even the Vienna Boys’ Choir. One of the few cities that still had a ball season. Home for many years to Karl Lueger, the mayor who discovered how politically useful a certain exuberant anti-Semitism could be. Home also, for a while before Europe tore itself apart in 1914, to a not-so-young, not-so-destitute, vaguely ambitious painter, Adolph Hitler, who would follow Mayor Lueger’s example in certain aspects of his own career.
Vienna. Spared the experience of destruction during World War I, as befits a city and a people given to proclaiming, “Germans say the situation is serious but not desperate. Austrians says the situation is desperate but not serious”—a cosmopolitan insouciance that Adolph Hitler never quite shared. Hitler, an Austrian by birth, would join the German Army in 1914. He would visit Vienna once more in 1938, for a parade after annexing Austria to Germany. As the story goes, when Hitler achieved the Anschluss, he rushed out of his office and proclaimed to his secretaries, “Kiss me, girls. I’m the greatest German in history.”
An insouciance he may have learned in Vienna, and was capable of indulging on occasion.
It is reported, no doubt incorrectly, that when the Germans entered Austria, Hitler emptied out the small town of his birth and turned it over to the Wehrmacht for artillery practice. Less open to dispute is the effect of Soviet artillery on Vienna. Taken by the Red Army after a two-week siege in April 1945, governed for ten years by a four-power occupation commission of the British, French, Americans, and Soviets, they left the city a hot-bed of intrigue. That went on as Vienna became home to a host of international organizations and regained at least part of its old insouciance. On most any street on most any day, it was possible to see or imagine most anything.
The last time I was in Vienna was in ‘46. You could still smell the bodies in the rubble.
So had said her father.
Olivia got off a nine-hour flight, overnight, in manageable pain—thank you, morphine—and checked into the Grand Hotel Wien, a majestic artifact of the Belle-Époque era whose ocher and cream façade belied the wars it had survived and the carnage it had witnessed. After securing her jewelry in the hotel safe and learning how to make that final withdrawal—not for everything, that would arouse suspicion; tend to it tomorrow—she ordered a bottle of Riesling sent up to her room. The room itself was inoffensively elegant and pleasant, done in soothing pale yellows and greens, vaguely claustrophobic and definitely overheated. But after the airplane, flying in a business-class section where the only business seemed to be drunk American males engaging each other in ludicrous dominance posturing and occasional contemptuous glances toward her knitting, no problem.
Carefully, deliberately, Olivia ensconced herself in a tub of very hot scented bath water. She held a glass of chilled wine in one hand, the bottle in a sweating ice bucket on the floor beside her. Once or twice she pressed the glass to her forehead and rolled it about, then thought to do the same with the bottle. But she hadn’t the energy to do so or even the mental acuity to devise such a procedure. Just filling her glass was difficult enough.
As the ligaments in her back relaxed in the heat, they popped, releasing energy stored as compression. She did not intend to drink the full bottle but was not surprised when she did, and resigned herself to the inevitable self-hatred in the morning: a dim loathing that, she knew, would be compounded by other items and by other affairs, by the morphine she’d taken and by a plan vaguely forming in her mind, forming against her wishes and her rationality, to do one final thing; to give her country one final chance to…
Vienna bothered her. The hedonism concealed the barbarism. She cared for neither. And when the two became indistinguishable, she felt a faint desire to retch.
Olivia sipped her wine, briefly appreciating its floral and mineral beauty, then pursued the appalling thought. Who was she, what was she, what was she really, now that she’d come this far and was about to go much farther? Her mind demanded clarification. Clearly, she was no spy. She would neither have spied for the old Soviet Union nor given them anything. But was she a traitor? She knew that, once in Russia, she would be pressed to reveal details of her previous work and had already decided to refuse and had mentally rehearsed how she would do so. Still…
Before leaving Los Alamos, she’d reread the Constitution. In the Founders’ world, treason was such a vague concept, so amenable to oppressive distortion and abuse, that they’d chosen to define it very carefully. It was the only crime enumerated in the Constitution. Now she recited it from memory, taking in the words of strict limitation that, for that very reason, made the crime more heinous.
“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
Legally, that definition did not apply to her. But deep down in her spirit, she knew that it did. Or could be made to apply by a country more and more given to criminalizing differences of opinion. True, the Constitution delimited the legal aspects, but it could not constrain her mind or her heart. She was being—damn you, she suddenly said aloud to herself, say the word.
Unfaithful.
America may have strangled her, but it had never persecuted her and had taken in her father and had given her a life that few of the planet’s inhabitants, male or female, would ever experience or enjoy. And now here she was, in this decadent and elegant and barbaric city, waiting to offer herself to the legal and diplomatic heir of the nation that had, for decades, willed America’s destruction and meant it. She was going because the heirs of the country that had been America’s enemy now offered her a chance to use her brain against their common enemies. But it did not ease the anguish. Perhaps that was the problem. Anguish looking for reasons to call itself guilt.
No, not guilt. Not legal guilt. Infidelity. And even if no legal guilt ever attached, infidelity would be forever, what it was.
She poured herself a final glass of wine, drained the tub partially and refilled it with hot water. Thinking nothing specific, just contemplating that last idea, vaguely marveling at how close it was coming to something like a final, premeditated break with a lover.
Can this relationship be saved?
A lover. An inattentive, passively abusive lover who’d never laid a hand upon her in violence or oppression, only stifled her spirit and her mind, as it was stifling the minds and spirits of millions like her who would never consider leaving.
When her glass was empty, she rose dripping from the tub, wrapped a towel around herself, and went to the desk where she found a notepad, pen and telephone book, as well as the telephone itself. She didn’t know her blood alcohol level. She didn’t want to know her blood alcohol level, or the precise level of morphine. It had all segued into a wonderful hazy drug interaction that she knew was dangerous, just as she knew what she was about to do was dangerous. But it was also necessary for the cleanliness of her own soul, and that was quite sufficient.
Can this relationship be saved?
I cannot do this just for me. Or for Russia. There must be something for America, too.
She knew that she was very drunk, and that greater sobriety would be needed to do what had occurred to her. So she left the phone book open before taking advantage of the alcohol to enjoy a pain-free nap. When she woke, a glance at the clock showed her that it was past 5:00 PM, which meant after duty hours, so she peeled a sheet of paper off the pad, placed it on the hard desk surface in order to avoid leaving an impression and wrote down the duty officer’s number b
efore putting the book away.
Still foggy, yet beginning to clear with a sense of purpose, she dried herself off, dressed, and crossed the sky bridge from the Grand Hotel to the Ringstrassen Galerien. After half an hour’s worth of aimless roaming and window shopping, she left the mall and strolled along the Schellinggasse until she found a telephone booth.
“Duty officer, US Embassy, Vienna.” A male voice, crisp, authoritative. “This is a non-secure line. May I help you?”
She took in a deep breath, reminded herself not to speak with the peculiar over-articulation of the drunk and drugged, and began.
“Good evening, sir. My name is Doctor Olivia Lathrop Tolchin. I am an American in Vienna. Until recently, I was an employee of our government. I have a matter of some urgency to discuss and don’t know who to ask to speak to. Perhaps the press attaché, perhaps the visa attaché or perhaps someone in agriculture, specializing in the importation of wine and horses to the United States. Perhaps one of those who have additional duties. Or perhaps someone else entirely.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Briefly, she wondered if she should have identified herself more explicitly, should have mentioned her former employer, mentioned her clearances by name. Then she decided against it. Revealing too much too soon could easily get her abducted by whomever the embassy might send after her, thrown onto the next plane back to America, then into jail.
Then the male voice came back on, not quite so authoritative, a little surprised, a little excited. “I believe that the person you want to speak to is gone for the evening. However, I’ll make sure that this person gets your message. If you would care to call back in the morning, this person will be expecting your call.”
Olivia exhaled. She doubted very seriously that “the importation of wine and horses” was a code phrase for “CIA” but it was the best she could think of and the duty officer seemed to know what she wanted.
“I could do that, but an alternative might be simpler, since my time here is short. Perhaps the person I’m calling for should meet me for lunch at 1300 hours at the Café Landtmann.”
“That could be arranged. Perhaps. Ma’am, how did you say you spelled your name?”
“T-o-l-c-h-i-n, O-l-i-v-i-a.”
“Might I ask where you’re staying?”
Olivia paused. An image of very bad things happening in a hotel room flitted through her imagination. “I’m at the Grand Wien. I may be phoned there but I would prefer not to meet with anyone at that place.”
“Understood. One question more.”
“Yes?”
“What is your business in Vienna?”
“I…I’m attending a scientific conference. I’m…” she trembled at the hint she was about to drop, fearful that more questions would follow. “My former employer has cleared me to be here.”
“Please expect to be met as you’ve requested,” the male voice said without any trace of curiosity. “Please tell me how this person might recognize you.”
“I’m tall, blonde, with very blue eyes and will be wearing pearls. Good evening, sir.”
As she hung up, she glimpsed another image—of a young State Department functionary thinking lewd thoughts. Telepathy, she decided. Or else they really had developed that machine that sticks thoughts in your brain.
On the way back to the hotel, she threw the paper with the phone number away in a waste can. She did not bother to shred it. That would have been truly paranoid.