Snow covered the ground. It had been snowing on and off all day, and it was gently falling now.
The stained-glass windows of the ancient Church of St. Elisabeth glowed faintly from the forest of candles burning inside, and the church itself seemed to glow from the light of the candles in the hands of the faithful who had arrived to worship too late to find room inside and now stood outside.
A black Mercedes-Benz 600SL was stopped in traffic by the crowds on Elisabethstrasse, its wipers throwing snow off its windshield.
The front passenger door opened and a tall, heavyset, ruddy-faced man in his sixties got out. He looked at the crowds of the faithful, then up at the twin steeples of the church, then shook his head in disgust and impatience, and got back in the car.
“Seven hundred and sixty-nine fucking years, and they‟re still waiting for a fucking virgin,” Otto Görner said, as much in disgust as awe.
“Excuse me, Herr Görner?” the driver asked, more than a little nervously.
Johan Schmidt, the large forty-year-old behind the wheel, was wearing a police-type uniform; he was a supervisor in the security firm that protected the personnel and property of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. Otto Görner was managing director of the holding company, among whose many corporate assets was the security firm.
