Read Online Return to Vienna by Nancy Buckingham - Free Book Online

knew very well it was raining.
    “Nein, danke. . . .” ‘Again I shook my head, and began to walk on briskly, though I still wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go.
    He kept abreast of me, leaning across and speaking confidentially. “Herr Wilson sent me.”
    I stopped again, my heart pounding. It was what I’d been waiting for, but somehow I hadn’t expected anything quite like this.
    I asked eagerly, “Are you to take me to him?”
    “Westbahnhof?” he said loudly, as if answering me. “Ja, ja!”
    I got into his cab and settled back in the seat. The Westbahnhof, he’d said. Well, probably a mainline station was as good a place as anywhere for us to meet. An inconspicuous sort of rendezvous, where everyone would be too intent on their own business to worry about a man and a woman talking together.
    But I soon realized that we weren’t heading for the station. In fact, I got hopelessly confused by the route we took, which seemed to wind around in a crazy fashion. Once we swung into an underground car park, racing down the ramp and zigzagging through lines of cars and out through another exit. We turned into a narrow cul-de-sac and waited there a minute or so; when the driver reversed out, he took the opposite direction. Obviously, he was shaking off any possible pursuit.
    I got back my bearings as we crossed one of the bridges high over the Danube—the very unblue Danube, even grayer than usual on this wet morning— and then we plunged straight on through a district I didn’t know at all.
    Without any warning the taxi stopped outside a very ordinary cafe in a very ordinary street. It was called Mirabel, I remember. The driver, who hadn’t said another word since I’d got into the cab, jerked his thumb as a signal for me to get out.
    “In the cafe?” I asked.
    “Ja!” he said, with distaste.
    I got out and asked what the fare was. Still presenting the back of his head to me, he mumbled that there was nothing to pay. It was as if he wanted to avoid me seeing his face too clearly, and I recalled that when he’d first approached me his cap had been pulled down to one side and his profile half-hidden by a shielding hand.
    Even if I’d wanted to get a better look at the man, it was by now too late. The taxi swerved out from the curb and streaked off, disappearing around the first corner.
    I was alone on the pavement. It had begun to rain more heavily, and there were few people in sight. The area was only partly residential. Opposite was a building like a warehouse, and next to it a used-car lot. There was a dreariness about it all that wasn’t the Vienna I used to know.
    The windows of the cafe were steamed up so that I couldn’t see through them. It took quite an effort to muster courage enough to enter the place.
    The door was stuck, swollen by the humid atmosphere. I had to push it hard, and then it suddenly gave way, nearly throwing me inside. I scanned the place quickly. The counter was mounted with a huge espresso contraption, watched over by a fat and dark-haired woman. There were perhaps ten tables, only two of them occupied. One man alone, and a group of three. Not a sign of Richard Wilson.
    I dared not ask for him; that might be quite the wrong thing to do. Should I order coffee and wait? The cafe wasn’t exactly sleazy, but neither was it quite the place for a girl on her own.
    “Jessica!”
    I spun around, and there he was, rising from a small table tucked away behind the door. He wore the same belted trench coat, the fawn gabardine stained darker on the shoulders by the rain, his brushed-back hair looking even sleeker now that it was wet. His long lean face split into a happy smile of greeting.
    “Darling! I thought you’d never get here!” He spoke in English, loud enough for everyone to hear. Then, reaching out his arms to me, he muttered quickly under his breath, “I’ve got to kiss you, to make it look right.”
    It all happened too quickly for me to act up to Richard’s lead, but