A DEATH IN VIENNA
Written By Daniel Silva & Reviewed by Detective Dru
Big swing to start things off by predicting this is Shamon being referred to in the title. It’s finally time for the loss of the mentor in our hero’s journey. But in true Ari form, he’s going to leave things behind for Gabe to discover. Perhaps it will be a la Da Vinci Code, and he’ll be counseling Gabe on his own murder investigation from beyond the grave. Over the course of the book, Ari will be mentioned at first in the most negative context, but as Gabe becomes more entrenched in his discoveries, he’ll not only learn more about Ari that will change his opinions about his tough love mentor, but he’ll also learn something about himself.
Prediction update: Three chapters and couldn’t be farther off. Although to be fair, these three chapters so far have been darn near word for word the first three chapters of the last book. Didn’t see that coming either…
Part 1 - The Man From Cafe Central
Eli Lavon is some honcho at the Vienna wartime claims office, apparently a controversial department. He was mentored by Ari Shamron in his former Mossad life. He and his two female assistants are killed in a giant explosion at their office. Isn’t this how the last book started?? Meanwhile in Venice, our veritable hero Gabriel Allon is still posing as Mario the art restorer. He’s onto another Bellini when flooding begins anew. He goes to some Jewish building where he’s met by Ari Shamron for the briefing.
Turns out Eli Lavon isn’t dead, just in a coma. Islamic Fighting Cells have taken credit for the bomb. Ari wants Gabe to go investigate, even though he’s persona non grata because of his last trip there and the ensuing carnage. He’s given the name Gideon and a passport claiming he works for the Jerusalem office of Vienna Wartime Claims & Inquiries. His fake wife Chiara is not happy. Chiara confirms she doesn’t want him going to Vienna because they hate him there. But then he says he must tell Leah, his ex-wife, about his love for Chiara? She and his son Dani were in a car bomb thirteen years ago.
Gabe arrives as Gideon, he meets with Zvi, some Jew that escorts him to Eli in the hospital. It’s the same hospital where Gabe’s real wife Leah was in her coma and Dani died. Somehow, despite six years passing, (wasn’t it thirteen according to Chiara?) some nurse Marguerite recognizes him from last time. Please Mr. Silva. Then Max Klein, some guy that clocked him in the waiting room, tells Gabe that Eli’s injury was all his fault. Max tells Gabe his family history while someone spies on them from across the street. His mother and sisters were deported and his father to concentration camp. Max was made to play violin for all entering Jews at his camp. One SS in particular, Herr Vogel, tormented him and Max later saw him at his local coffee shop nearly 50 years after the war. He contacted Eli about it at wartime claims since his father’s biz had been destroyed by Nazis. Eli set up a meeting to discuss his findings but then the bomb. Some woman named Renate Hoffman tried to contact him in the meantime.
Gabe finds Renate. She tells him that Herr Vogel is not who Eli claimed. He’s too young. This is where the novel first splits off of its prime timeline and creates this second legend that ends up being a 300 page red herring. Not cool Mr. Silva. However this Vogel served in SS and was captured and escaped and eventually became wealthy as a liaison. He’s now the main financier for the far-right campaign currently winning Austrian election season. She then tells Gabe about Dr Gross, some pediatrician that killed Jewish children for “research” for his brain library. He was tried and immediately dismissed because Austria is pitiful re war crimes. She hands Gabe an envelope of the info she has. Some dude snaps the exchange from his creepy van. This is another troubling development in the Allon epic. Far too often every scene gets buttoned up with either someone surveiling him (despite SDR) or someone calling some villain as soon as their conversation with Gabe concludes.
Manfred Kruz, temporary villain and just another forgettable unremarkable underutilized antagonist in this story, receives the photo and immediately recognizes Gabriel from a 1991 interrogation where he told Gabe his son was dead and his wife would only get treatment if he admitted who he was. A Jewish Israeli spy despite his Italian passport? Kruz is not happy. Herr Gruber aka the Clockmaker receives the Gabe contract (ostensibly) while working in his shop. Spoiler alert this character is the single most disappointing character I’ve encountered in Silva’s work thus far.
Gabe scouts at a coffee shop and in walks Herr Vogel. They size each other up, then Vogel calls out how familiar he looks then leaves. An American spy surveils all of this. Gabe and Vogel appear to recognize each other from their SS days? But shouldn’t Kruz be the one he recognizes? A bit too many familiar face scenes so far. In hindsight, apparently the reason Vogel thinks he recognizes him is because he escorted Gabe’s mother on her death march in Birkenau in 1945. This guy ends up bragging about murdering north of 800k Jews, but he remembers this little girl’s features so clearly that he recognizes them on her son fifty years later? Mr. Silva, me thinks you should have stopped at two straight Nazi books, not three.
Gabe forwards all intel for Shamron’s eyes only, skirting Israeli protocol. Max Klein is suspiciously dead via some contrived suicide looking scene. Kruz is waiting for Gabe at his temp housing. He scolds him for returning to Vienna despite their agreement years ago. He was willing to allow the grieving for Eli Lavon but once it was clear Gabe was poking around, Kruz took action. He asks if his wife is still alive and Gabe rebuffs.
Part Two: The Hall of Names
Gabe returns to Jerusalem and Ari picks him up at the airport. After hearing of Gabe’s time in Vienna, they’re convinced Ludwig Vogel is behind the Eli bombing and Max Klein’s death, but since his record is squeaky clean (perfect for financing Metzler’s campaign) Ari and Gabe think he’s not who he says he is, lending further credence to Max’s accusations re SS Nazi. Ari sends Gabe to Moshe Rivlin. He’s a holocaust expert regarding the German perps. Gabe gives him what he can, then Moshe deduces that Vogel may be the villainous Erich Radek. So. Many. Jew and German names to keep straight.
Christ Chapter thirteen doubles down on the name bukkake. Herr Becker, a Swiss banker traveling as Herr Bauer arrives in Vienna to meet Klaus Halder. Halder’s client is Herr Vogel. They discuss the funding of Metzler’s campaign and the pending disbursements once he’s sworn in. Then the banker Becker makes a quick stop at some American’s hotel and provides audio of the meeting he just had. The American thanks him but then implies that the campaign account money is now his?? Seems like we’re setting up USA to be a rather eye roll worthy deus ex machina at some point.
Rivlin gives Gabe the history of Radek. Sounds like his primary job was extinguishing of corpses once the mass graves started appearing after the WWII winter melt in Poland and USSR. Gabe then reads his mother’s documentation of her death march housed in Rivlin’s archives. A brutal and visceral recap that ends with her near death as American and Russian soldiers arrive. Radek in particular threatened her if she didn’t lie about what happened to the encroaching allies. Two of her friends are shot to convince her, but she insists that all she will speak is the truth.
Gabe speaks to Ari about his mother’s past and their strategy for Radek. Ari wants him to visit Rome and Bishop Hudal, a man Radek claimed to work for after the war, but likely used for escaping justice. In Rome, Gabe meets with Luigi Donati, 2nd in command to the Pope. (From last book) They discuss Gabe’s theory about Hudal helping Radek. Luigi does not deny it, but states getting proof is near impossible because they helped refugees just like they helped war criminals. Gabe wants to pose as a Jew theologian Schmuel Rubinstein, then request Hudal’s papers from the current bishop of Anina, Theodore Drexler. Hopefully this allows Gabe to ID Radek officially.
The two meet Drexler and they find the Radek paperwork. Bishop Hudal gave him money and safe passage from Genoa to Syria under the alias Otto Krebs. Oh goody, more aliases. It had been nearly ten or fifteen pages without one. And more ugh. After they leave Drexler, he calls someone in Vienna about his visitors. Someone contacts the Clockmaker and assigns him Gabe. Totally forgot about Clockmaker. This book is a major step down from the last one in terms of structure. Far too many unremarkable characters and far too many phone calls placed by doubles after they see Gabe. Plot armor disguised as artificial momentum really…
More meh. Gabe learns that Krebs went to Argentina in the 60s. But this doesn’t add up with prior intel that Radek/Vogel/Krebs was in Austria well before then and gainfully employed. So now Gabe must go to Buenos Aries. Act Two side quests are never ever worth the time. Eye roll. Then Clockmaker tries to kill him, but Chiara appears magically out of nowhere to save him. They go to a safe house to hump, then agree to go to Argentina together. Uncharacteristically convenient chapter from Mr. Silva.
In Buenos Aires, Gabe meets with Alfonso Ramirez, a maligned journalist. He helps him track down a note card that was filled out upon Kreb’s entry into Argentina in 1963. They also learn his passport was rescinded twenty years later because of death. Gabe wants to see the grave in a small town Bariloche, Argentina.
Huge twist to kick off chapter twenty five! (sarcasm) Surprise surprise, someone was tailing Gabe and Chiara even though she was looking out for it. They give Clockmaker Gabe’s itinerary and he is now en route to Argentina. Metzler the candidate arrives at some hotel for a speech.
Another disappointing chapter. Chiara and Gabe visit some welcome office thing to get Kreb’s location. She of course alerts someone mysterious as soon as they leave. Then they drive to the little town and talk to a bartender at a cafe for directions to the cemetery. And of course Clockmaker was already waiting for them in the cafe. Sigh. Then they get to the cemetery, the tour guide priest is suspicious, and as they get to the grave, Clockmaker appears to kill then. But lo and behold, two people with machine guns magically appear out of thin air to save Gabe and Chiara, scaring off Clockmaker! These small towns that notice everything and keep each other informed somehow didn’t notice two burly americans with machine guns? Oh, and the photo on Kreb’s gravestone def isn’t Vogel aka Radek. This book is becoming a real bummer.
Part Three: The River of Ashes
The USA rescue team takes Gabe & Chiara to a CIA safe house where Ari and Adrian Carter of CIA are at. Carter tells Gabe the story of Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s chief spy on Russia. He later hired Radek after the CIA poached him for USSR intel. He became a US asset because of how much he knew, so they began protecting him. USA created the false trail to Argentina to throw snoopers off in case Radek’s identity became public. Radek had a daughter Monica and she married Peter Metzler the political candidate. Now Ari and Gabe want justice and CIA wants it to go away and wait out the guy to die since he’s old. Massive expo dump for underwhelming melodrama. CIA knows about Radek meeting with the Swiss bankers regarding Metzler’s campaign. They think all they can do is somehow convince Radek to come to Israel. Killing him in Vienna is bad optics and trial would only reveal his connection to the CIA. Gabe has a plan to convince him.
Herr Heller is one of the Swiss bankers from earlier in the book. Ari and Gabe find him with CIA help and convince him to contact Vogel under pretense of account urgency. Then one of Ari’s team, posing as Oskar Lange, apparently will escort Heller to the meeting with Vogel to confront him to agree to his voluntary kidnapping.
The appointment is made. Vogel requests background on Oskar Lange. All the meeting stuff starts happening. Someone named Uzi is playing as Oskar. They fly to Vienna and arrive at Radek’s place and get by security. The ruse goes sideways but they force Radek into their car. 50 miles to Czech border…Chiara assists in smuggling an uncooperative Radek over the border with the help of sedatives. They meet Gabe and travel to Treblinka, Poland.
They walk Radek thru the camp he once worked at and he details the layout, atrocities, etc. He expects to be killed but Gabe offers not to publicize Peter Metzler’s parentage (the election is days away) in exchange for Radek’s truthful testimony.
Part Four: the Prisoner of Abu Kabir
Radek is held prisoner in Jaffa, Israel. In lieu of a trial, because death is the only sentencing allowed in Israeli court, he will provide intel to the archives, specifically regarding Aktion 1005. He is cooperative until the day before testimony when he demands to speak with Gabe. Eli Lavon has also awakened from his coma.
Radek asks how they impersonated Kruz over the phone to convince him to leave his home. (Plot hole repair!) then he somehow knows it was Gabe’s mother that he let live during the Birkenau death march. Very far-fetched. Peter won the election. Chiara mails a clock to the Clockmaker that detonates. What an absolute waste of a disappointing do nothing character he turned out to be.
Far and away the least favorite Gabriel Allon novel by a long shot. A Death in Vienna? More like the death of a Silva fan.
