But by train, nearly three hours. Because via the Semmering pass—that’s the famous mountain railway—well, the architect of it used to be on the old twenty-schilling bill: Freiherr Ritter von Ghegha. Make a note of it, never hurts. A hundred years ago, of course, technical tour de force—don’t even ask. But nowadays, the one thing you notice above all else is how slow the train is. And Brenner was already feeling impatient because he’d gotten held up by the never-ending Horvath business. The time had come for him to find out: what’s with the girlfriend of the beheaded Ortovic? In his impatience, he’d set a pace for himself that he could scarcely keep up with anymore. BAM! find a conductor on the train who would sell him a prepaid phone card. BAM! find the onboard phone and look up the number for the Vienna PD’s Vice Squad. BAM! request to be connected with Squad Head Winkler. And didn’t lose his cool about that thing with Winkler’s wife—but I’m not going to go into that just now.
