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CHAPTER 1
The gray light made everything flat and lifeless. Dawn was on pause.
It was chilly in Allmen's glasshouse library. Perhaps he should light a fire. But the previous attempt, last winter, had failed so miserably that he dropped the idea. He sat in his reading chair, without a book, and shivered. It didn't matter.
The legs of his grand piano had left three deep imprints in the floor. Even this sight left him unmoved. Nothing but crushing indifference.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he'd seen Carlos approaching the house in his coat and woolly hat. He'd heard him rush up the stairs then come down shortly after. Carlos had not come by the room. Having seen no light, he would have assumed Allmen was in the Viennois. Like every morning at this time.
Now he saw Carlos was busy outside. He was wearing his work clothes, an older woolly hat, and a work jacket with a thick lining.
Allmen would just sit here and wait till he came in to make lunch. He would go into the kitchen and say, "Carlos?"
And Carlos would reply, "Qué manda?"
And then he would say, "The time has come. I need las libélulas."
And if he handed them over, Allmen would put the plan into action. And if not? That didn't matter either.
He must have dozed off. But finally he heard sounds from the kitchen. It had gotten darker. It would start snowing at any moment.
Allmen eased himself out of the armchair. As he passed the spot where the rear of the greenhouse faced a tall thicket of trees, he sensed something move there.
The trees grew dense and dark there, the stems of tall pines and spruce rising through an impenetrable undergrowth of yew and bracken. Sometimes Allmen saw an urban fox emerge or vanish at this spot, searching for something to eat in the gardens and forecourts of the villa district.
He stepped back, stood in front of the glass panel and stared at the undergrowth.
He felt a hard blow to his chest. As he fell, he heard a muffled thud, and sensed pain at the back of his head.
CHAPTER 2
Half past ten in the morning was a nice time to be in Café Viennois, perhaps the nicest.
The dregs of the previous night were gone, and the staleness of the day had not yet set in. It smelled of the hissing Lavazza at which Gianfranco was now frothing the milk for a cappuccino, of the croissants on the bar and on the tables, of perfumes and eaux de toilettes from the handful of idlers and flâneurs to whom the Viennois belonged at this time.
One of them was reading a book, an English paperback with the spine broken so he could read it with one hand like an airport novel, the other hand free for his late breakfast and the cold cigarette butt he had held for years to help him quit smoking.
Over the arm of his two-seater plush wingback lay a beige raincoat. The man wore a mouse-gray suit, sitting well on him even as he slouched, a thin, fine-patterned tie, and an eggshell shirt with a soft, narrow collar. He was probably a little over forty. His nicely chiseled face did not deserve such a flat nose.
On the white tablecloth was a solid china saucer, empty except for the remains of a croissant, and a large cup, almost empty, coated inside with milk froth. The man was one of the last guests at the Viennois to order "a bowl," as a café au lait was once known.
Gianfranco brought over a fresh cup on an oval chrome tray, and removed the empty. "Signor Conte," he murmured.
"Grazie," Allmen replied, without looking up.
His full name was von Allmen, with the stress on von. It was a very common family name, one thousand, seven hundred and thirty eight of them in the phone book, and despite the aristocratic heritage implied by the preposition "von," the name "von Allmen" originally meant nothing more than "from the Alps." As a young man, however, Allmen began to omit the "von" in a spirit of republicanism, lending it a significance it never had.
He did the opposite with his two forenames, Hans and Fritz, taken from his two grandfathers according to the family tradition. He soon cleansed them of their bucolic stench, going to some bureaucratic effort to ennoble them to Johann and Friedrich. His friends called him John, and he introduced himself to new people simply and modestly as Allmen. But on official documents he was called Johann Friedrich von Allmen. And the envelopes he fetched from his post office box on the way to a late breakfast at the Viennois and then placed carelessly next to his coffee cup, were addressed to a Herr Johann Friedrich v. Allmen, as was written on his personalized stationery. This abbreviation not only saved space, it automatically shifted the stress from the "o" of von onto the "A" of Allmen. It had also elevated him to the title of "Conte," which Gianfranco had bestowed on him, only half in jest.
Most of the post-ten o'clock guests at the Viennois knew one another. However they still adhered strictly to the unwritten seating plan, some of them alone at their tables, a variety of jackets, bags, briefcases and reading material distributed around them so no one would consider joining them, others in pairs, always with the same partner, and others in small groups, also identical each day. Some of the post-ten guests greeted one another audibly, some nodded in silence, some had ignored one another for years.
One of the regular groups was seated two tables away from Allmen. Four shop owners, all around sixty, met there every day except Sunday from a quarter past ten to a quarter to eleven. Theirs and Allmen's times thus overlapped by fifteen minutes.
One of the four knew Allmen a little better. He owned an upmarket antiques business nearby. His name was Jack Tanner, an elegant man in his late fifties, who sauntered through his antiques as if they were there not to be sold but solely to satisfy his aesthetic demands. He justified the exorbitant prices of his wares simply due to his appearance. He exercised the discretion crucial to the trade, toward those buying and also those selling. This had encouraged Allmen to choose Tanner when forced occasionally to sell one of the more choice items in his collection. Neither gave the slightest indication, during their fleeting encounters at the Viennois, that they also had professional dealings.
Outside the window next to Allmen's table, the passersby began putting up their umbrellas. The gray soup which had hung over the roofs was now drizzling down on the city, like cold, wet dust. Allmen put off leaving and ordered another cup of coffee.
It was shortly after eleven thirty when he got ready to leave, although the weather had still not improved. He gave Gianfranco the signal for the check, signed it, and pressed a ten franc note into the waiter's hand. Allmen had learned to invest the little money he had in his creditworthiness, not in subsistence.
Gianfranco brought his coat, accompanied Allmen to the door and, lost in thought, watched the figure in the raincoat, collar turned up, as he disappeared between the umbrellas, murmuring, "Un cavaliere."
CHAPTER 3
The Intercity, with tilt technology, shot through the mistshrouded vineyards around Lake Neuchâtel, of which not even the shores were visible. Allmen had a compartment to himself. On the blue seat next to him lay a capacious pilot's case in brown pigskin. He continued to read his thriller.
As the gentle microphone voice announced Yverdonles-Bains, he broke off reading. The name awoke memories from his childhood. He had often heard it at the dinner table in the early eighties. His father had invested a lot of money in agricultural land in the area, hoping that when that section of the A5 highway was finished it would be rezoned for construction. The strategy failed, and instead of blaming his poor French, Allmen's father put it down to the "Gallic incompetence" of the Yverdon local politicians.
This was one of his father's few business errors. He had left Allmen a fortune of millions. Its foundation was a single land-use decision in which, as people noted in the village at the time, he was not uninvolved. The Schwarzacker, the largest field on his farm, was incorporated into a construction zone. And thanks to the opening of a new highway section, it was soon part of the city's commuter belt. Which boosted the real estate value considerably. Allmen's father acquired a taste for this process and began systematically investing in agricultural land in potential commuter belts. The strategy paid off frequently enough that after his untimely death — regularly and generously entertaining local politicians with influence over land-use decisions took its toll — he was able to leave his only son enough money to ensure that if he was prudent and economical, he would never have to work again.
Prudence and economy were among the few qualities which Fritz, as his father still called him after he changed his name, lacked. He was not a numbers person. His field was languages. He found them easy and enjoyable to learn, and for years had spent his time studying them in the capital cities of this world. Alongside Swiss German, his first language, he spoke fluent, accent-free French, Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish. He could converse in Russian and Swedish, and could produce flawless broadcaster's German if needed, but had discovered that his Swiss accent made a better impression.
And so he led the life of a carefree international student till his father's trustees informed him of his sudden death.
Kurt Fritz von Allmen was only sixty-two and had assumed he still had plenty of time to put his affairs in order. A widower, he had not made a will. His current partner received nothing, and although he was aware of his sole heir's extravagant lifestyle, he had not left any instructions for managing his wealth.
During his life he had kept Fritz on a long leash. He had trained in agriculture and had no idea what the maintenance costs of an international student might be. He was also proud of his educated son and proud that he could enable him to have it better than he had. Allmen's father had not travelled much. Earlier, as a farmer, the cows had kept him at home. Later it was business. He had no idea what hotels in Paris and New York cost, what you had to pay for shoes and clothes in London, and how great the price difference between economy and first class was. If Allmen's father lacked urbaneness, his son had too much of it.
Allmen returned to his book. Morges had just been announced.
CHAPTER 4
Allmen put on his most affected British accent as he informed the shopkeeper he wished only to look around. The woman was around fifty and had emerged from the back room as soon as Allmen entered. She switched straight to English. If he had any questions, he shouldn't hesitate to ask.
The antiques shop was lined with shelves and vitrines. It specialized in china, selling everything from cheap bric-abrac to costly Meissen statuettes and priceless Chinese vases and figurines.
Allmen took his time, went from object to object, pausing at the pieces which seized his attention, examining them, leaning forward, as closely as he could without using his hands.
He skimmed over a square vase labeled "Période Kangxi, famille verte, CHF 8300" and focused on four bright yellow teacups. Both cups and saucers were edged in gold, and each cup bore the emblem of the Hamburg America Line. The set was priced at three hundred francs.
"I'll take these," he said to the shopkeeper in smug Oxford English. She had been following him at a discreet distance throughout his tour. "Would you mind wrapping them individually as a present, if it's not too much trouble."
And then she did what he had hoped she would. She carried the cups and saucers, two at a time, into the back room.
As soon as he heard her busy with paper and scissors, he checked once again that there wasn't a security camera lurking anywhere, went to the shelf with the Kangxi vase, and slid it into the large inside pocket of his overcoat.
Then he stood at the door to the back room and chatted with the shopkeeper while she finished gift-wrapping the cups.
"For my wife," he explained. "Today is our anniversary. I do hope the plane to London isn't canceled with all this fog."
CHAPTER 5
When Jack Tanner entered the Viennois the next morning, Allmen was already there, and gave him a nod, pointing discreetly to the pilot's case on the chair next to him. Tanner nodded back. An hour later Allmen was standing outside his shop.
It was among the last unrenovated buildings in the center of the banking district. It had already been an antiques shop when Tanner took it over nearly thirty years ago. He had adopted the name, Les Trouvailles, from his predecessor. Not because he particularly liked it, but because the old-fashioned sign had appealed to him, with polished brass letters against a dark green panel.
The shop had three modest windows made of security glass, with old- fashioned sensors which would sound an alarm in the case of burglary. Or perhaps not. The system had never been put to the test.
One of the other security measures at Les Trouvailles was that the door was always locked. Customers had to ring the bell, which Allmen now did.
After a while Jack Tanner came to the door in person. Since his longtime assistant Frau Freitag had retired, he ran the business alone. There was little passing trade, and most customers wanted to talk directly with the proprietor. When he was with his breakfast club at the Viennois the "Back Soon" sign hung on the door.
The display and sales area of the shop was walled with built-in vitrines, part of the original fittings. The objects within were lit with adjustable spotlights attached to an electrified track on the ceiling. In the middle stood a range of tabletop vitrines for jewelry, silver and smaller china pieces. The room exuded a dusty elegance and smelled of the wax used to polish the creaking parquet floor.
A sliding door led to a side room, half of which was used to display furniture, the other half as a storeroom. From there a door led to Tanner's tiny office, the sacristy as he called it. Allmen followed him in. The room was dominated by a Biedermeier desk with an upholstered swiveling chair from the same period. Both had stood in General Guisan's office at his World War Two command center, Tanner claimed, so were not for sale. For visitors there was just a two-seater, Louis Philippe sofa.
Tanner did not invite Allmen to sit on it. He pointed to his desk and said, "Show me what you've got."
The discreet commercial relationship between the two went back years. At the beginning Allmen had been a good customer, mainly buying American silver and Art Deco. Later, when Allmen's financial difficulties forced him to act, he turned from customer to supplier. He regularly sold Tanner items from his collection. Tanner was stingy, but what he lacked in generosity, he made up for in discretion.
Over the years Allmen's stock of superfluous pieces had shrunk so low he began to search flea markets and provincial shops for saleable items. The prices Jack offered left Allmen with such narrow margins, he was forced to look for another solution. He found it by chance in an antiques shop in Alsace. He was buying a small statue of the Madonna, and while the shop assistant was busy packing it up, he thought: I could swipe that set of Rosenthal figures if I wanted. No one would notice. And he found he did want to.
Over time he perfected the technique of distracting the sales staff with a purchase so he could liberate something unnoticed. His clothes, his manner, and the fact he was buying something, made him seem trustworthy, remembered as someone above suspicion.
Although he parted with money readily, Allmen guarded his modest working capital fiercely. It financed his decoy purchases and the train journeys. He worked strictly at a certain distance from the city where he lived.
Allmen unpacked the vase and placed it on the desk.
Jack Tanner picked it up, examined it, and said, "two thousand."
Tanner's offers were always final. Only very rarely did he provoke Allmen to put up a little resistance. Allmen knew it would earn him nothing but a shrug.
He had no option but to accept Tanner's offers. He was his only buyer. He must have realized that Allmen's goods were no longer coming from his own collection. But he never asked about their provenance. And Allmen had never seen one of his items in the storeroom or display area of Les Trouvailles.
Tanner must have had customers he could call who were equally discreet and did not ask questions about provenance.
Allmen nodded, took the money and said goodbye. Till next time.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Allmen and the Dragonflies"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Diogenes Verlag AG Zürich.
Excerpted by permission of New Vessel Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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