The Secret of Salzburg

The last light was draining off the Untersberg, a massive limestone mountain, when the man stopped dead on the path and stared up at the mountain across the valley as though it had spoken to him. He had crossed the border into the Bavarian Alps and climbed a ways up the Obersalzberg, a scenic retreat above Berchtesgaden, opposite the Untersberg Mountain. He was on his way to find out a secret that would change his life.

"Be honest with me Weber, do you know this secret that he wants to tell me?" he asked.

"No, but it must be important if he didn't trust the normal lines of communication and ordered you to see him in person," Weber said.

They continued their hike.

"Do you think I will climb the Himalayas?" he asked after the two had hiked quite a while. "Have I turned into a mountain goat?" Their boots had been breaking through the crust for the better part of an hour, the dry snow squeaking underfoot, and his breath came in vapor bursts. He stopped and gazed back over his shoulder at the Untersberg again, its long white flank catching the last of the light while the valley below had already gone blue with dusk. Beyond it, somewhere, lay the Austrian city of Salzburg.

"We are not far now," Weber said, pulling his collar up against the wind that came knifing down the slope. Weber was one of his favorite cohorts. He had been at his side when they attacked a meeting of the Bavarian League. He thought Weber a crude man, but he needed such men.

"I'm going to live here one day," he shouted to Weber, who was a few meters ahead. "There's something about that mountain."

Weber glanced to his right at the multi-peaked Watzmann, which dominated the ring of mountains surrounding the Berchtesgaden valley from which they had come. "The Watzmann is impressive, sir."

"No, not the Watzmann," he said.

Weber turned around to determine what he meant.

"I mean the Untersberg, man!" he said, his gaze still fixed on the mountain. "Inside that mountain is Nibelheim, the home of the dwarves." He put his head down and pushed on up the grade, where the path steepened and the snow lay deeper, dragging at his boots with every step.

"Ah, Wagner's Ring, sir? You have mentioned him before on this trip."

"Yes, this whole region, Weber, it embodies the spirit of Wagner's opera. The Salzburg Fortress is Valhalla, the Salzach river is the Rhine, and the Untersberg is Nibelheim. Salzburg may be the birthplace of Mozart but it is the land of Wagner!"

"Makes sense, sir. The marble dwarves we saw, they came from Untersberg marble." Weber had little interest in such things, but he watched his superior linger at the dwarf statues in the Mirabell Gardens on their stop in Salzburg, studying each one.

"Very good Weber, I was not aware of that."

The two finally slogged their way up to the pension. Woodsmoke reached them before the building did, and then the converted farm rose out of the dusk, a hotel and guest house, their steep V-shaped roofs bowed under a layer of snow, the eaves hung with icicles, almost every shutter latched tight against the wind off the peaks. A single lit window glowed yellow through the blue dark. Weber knew the proprietors, the Büchners, which explained why they were visiting this particular pension. An important man was hiding out there. He went by the alias "Dr. Hoffmann" and was a wanted man.