by Robert Sutherland

Created on: January 20, 2008

A solid bank of low grey cloud scudded sullenly over Vienna, drenching everything with cold, damp drizzle. In the streets, people hurried along under umbrellas and although it was early morning, traffic was moving with headlights on. In a poorer part of the city a black Fiat stood alongside the kerb. Across the street on the ground floor of a decrepit building was a shop stacked with an untidy assortment of old furniture and the faded sign above the door proclaimed:

"ABEL WEISMANN"
"SECOND HAND FURNITURE DEALER"

Two men sat inside the car huddled against the cold, casting furtive glances at the shop from time to time. Lying on the back seat were two radio receivers, one of which was filling the interior with the sounds of Abel Weismann shuffling around the shop.

Two nights previous, the Mossad agents had picked the lock and after a fruitless search for the diamonds, had planted one bug under the old man's grimy desk and another in the handset of his phone.

Since then the agents had spent an uneventful time watching and listening to a person conducting normal trade in second hand furniture. This, combined with the cold cramped conditions, was making them irritable.

"Shit, nobody told Hollywood about this side of James Bond's life." Yoni shifted his weight and tried to stretch his legs. His companion grunted, continuing to stare at the shop with a bored expression. "We should just go in and take the little bastard apart. He'll talk and we can get the hell out this place."

"My backside" Ehud stopped abruptly. Across the road a man was hurrying toward the shop hunched under an umbrella. He was carrying a brown suitcase and something in his manner told the Mossad agents he wasn't here to buy or sell second hand furniture.

"Show time," Yoni straightened in the seat.

*

Zaid Rahmin slanted his umbrella against the rain and hurried toward the shop. Pushing the door open, he entered the warm interior and propped the umbrella against a dishevelled wardrobe near the entrance. He looked round the dim interior, searching over the haphazard jumble of furniture for the proprietor and was about to call when an old man shuffled out the back.

"Mr. Weismann?" Zaid asked, summing him up. He was a stooped, diminutive man with bald head, three-day pelt of grey stubble and bright, shifty eyes. Abel wore an assortment of ill fitting clothes and woollen gloves cut off at the knuckles.

"Who wants to know?" Abel studied the man suspiciously.

"Mr. Wilson says to tell you his racing pigeon is fine."

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