Pandora's Curse - v4 Read Free Page B

defined by the Eiffel Tower.
    Before reaching Johannesgasse, the old man guided his dog to the right, waiting at the curb for several red trams and a string of cars and trucks to thunder past. The exhaust of so many vehicles had darkened the lower floors of many of the buildings so that architectural details were lost under countless years of grime. In the warren of small streets near St. Anne’s Church, Handel began to get excited. She knew they were approaching their destination.
    The house, like all the others on the narrow lane, was two stories tall and fronted with white stucco. There was a tiny courtyard garden behind it and decorative wrought ironwork over the windows and at the eave of the steep roof. Affixed next to the heavy door was a discreet bronze plaque that read INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED RESEARCH.
    The men who ran the Institute allowed their care-taker, Frau Goetz, to live in the two-room apartment tucked into the back corner of the house. Though it was only nine, she already had the front door unlocked, and when the Doktor stepped into the entry, he could smell coffee and a freshly made torte. He reached down to unclip Handel’s leash, and she ran off to her favorite spot in the back of the house, where the morning sun had warmed her blankets.
    “Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor,”
Frau Goetz said, coming out of the kitchen to help the elderly history professor off with his jacket.
    “Guten Morgen, Frau Goetz,”
replied Doktor Jacob Eisenstadt.
    The two had known each other for forty years, and yet they had never uttered the other’s given name. Only a few years junior to her employer, Frau Goetz shared his deep respect for the more formal traditions from before the war. He was no more likely to call her Ingrid than she was to wear slacks. This in no way diminished the care she showed Eisenstadt and his partner in the Institute, Professor Theodor Weitzmann. Both men had been widowers for so long that without her influence they would have reverted to a bachelor’s slovenliness. She made sure the clothes they wore had the proper number of buttons and the lunch she prepared for them would be at least one wholesome meal they ate each day.
    “Professor Weitzmann is already upstairs,” Frau Goetz informed him. “He beat you here by an hour.”
    “We agreed not to come in before ten. The old fool couldn’t wait, eh?”
    “Apparently not, Herr Doktor.” The housekeeper knew what these men did and believed strongly in their cause, but she just couldn’t get caught up in one more batch of musty papers the way they did. At times they were like young boys. “I will bring aspirin for his eyestrain when I bring up your lunch.”
    “Danke,”
Eisenstadt said absently. He had already turned toward the stairs.
    The Institute was cluttered beyond reason, and no amount of straightening by Frau Goetz could help. She dusted regularly but so many old books and papers arrived at the quiet house that she could never seem to keep up. Bookcases lined every wall in the front rooms, stacked floor to ceiling and interrupted only by the small windows that overlooked the street. There were even shelves above the doors for little-used manuscripts and documents. There were books in the bathroom, piles of loose papers atop the toilet tank, and since Frau Goetz had her own shower in the apartment, the claw-footed tub was also mounded with binders of material. The stairs to the second floor were narrow and made more so by piles of books on one side of each tread.
    Every book and binder and loose file of documents ran to a single theme and Doktor Eisenstadt had read all of it. This had been his life for forty years: accumulating information, sifting through it carefully to find the one thread he could pull to get answers and retribution.
    On the wall at the top of the stairs was a narrow space between two more bookcases. In a simple frame was a picture of Eisenstadt’s inspiration, Simon Weisenthal, and below it was a epitaph etched in a