'Will I be seeing you again?'

'I don't think so,' he said. He waved a spoon at me.

'Is there anything else you are going to tell me?'

'No,' he said. 'From this point onwards Baron Staiger runs the show.' He used his fork to scoop up the huge dollop of cream and put it in his mouth. There was a look of pure bliss on his face as he held it on his tongue and then swallowed it. 'You haven't drunk your tea,' he said.

'No,' I said.

He got up and clicked his heels as he said goodbye. I sat there for a few minutes more sipping my tea and looking round the room. I noticed he'd left me with the bill.

I took the catalogue Hoffmann had left for me and strolled out on to the terrace that overlooked the River Salzach. It was too chilly for anyone else to be seated there but I relished the idea of being alone.

I looked up Lot Number 584. It came in the section of the auction designated 'Deutsches Reich Flugpost – Zeppelinbelege' and was written in that unrestrained prose style used by men selling time-share apartments on the Costa Brava.

Lot 584. Sieger Katalog 62B. Brief. Bunttafel IV. öS 1,000, – 1930 Südamerikafahrt, Paraguaypost. Schmuckbrief mit Flugpost-marken, entwertet mit violettem Paraguay-Zeppelin-Sonderstempel 'Por Zeppelin' dazu violetter Paraguay-Flugpoststempel 16.5. Brief nach Deutschland, in dieser Erh. ungewohnl. schöner und extrem seltener Beleg, Spitzenbeleg für den grossen Sammler.

From which I gathered that in 1930 the cover illustrated in colour on Plate 4 was expected to fetch one thousand Austrian schillings. It had been sent from Paraguay on the Graf Zeppelin airship with all the necessary postal formalities, and having become a great philatelic rarity it was available as centrepiece for some 'big collector'.

The colour photo showed a well preserved light blue envelope with several different rubber stamps and adhesives, addressed to a Herr Davis in Bremen. It didn't look like anything worth a thousand schillings.

As I was sitting there by the river and staring up at the Hohensalzburg fortress that blocked off half the skyline, the glass doors swung open and a man joined me on the terrace. At first he seemed unaware of my presence. He walked across to the metal balcony and checked how far there was to fall, the way most people do.

As the man turned to obtain a better view of the castle across the river I had a chance to study him. It was one of the Americans I'd seen earlier. He was dressed in a short forest-green hunter's coat, fashionably equipped with big pockets, straps and loops. His hair was streaked with grey and neatly trimmed and on his head he wore a smart loden cap. He spoke without preamble. 'When I visited Mozart's birthplace yesterday it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.' He had a rich cowboy voice that belied his declared emotion. 'Number nine Getreidegasse: ever been there?'

'Once… a long time back,' I said.

'You need to go real early,' he went on. 'It soon gets to be full of these pimple-faced backpackers drinking Coke out of cans.'

'I'll watch out for that,' I said and opened my catalogue hoping he'd go away.

'Mozart gets himself born on the third floor, and that's inconvenient, so they only let you look at the museum downstairs. It's kind of dumb, isn't it?'

'I suppose so.'

'I really go for Mozart,' he said. 'Così fan tutte has got to be the ultimate musical experience. Sure, critics go for Don Giovanni, and Mozart's wife Constanze said the maestro rated Idomeneo number one, but Idomeneo was his first smash hit. The sort of box office receipts Idomeneo rang up in Munich made young Wolfgang a star. But Così has real class. Consider the psychological insight, the dramatic integrity and the musical elegance. Yes, sir, and it is sweet, sweet all the way through. I play Così in the car: I know every note, every word. My theory is that those two girls weren't fooled by the disguises: they wanted to have fun swapping partners. That's what it's really about: swapping. Mozart couldn't make that clear because it would have been too shocking. But think about it.'

'I will,' I promised.

'And shall I tell you something about that great little guy? He could compose in his head: reams of music. Then he'd sit down and write it all out. And do you know, he'd let his wife prattle on about her tea parties and be saying "So what did you say?" and "What did she tell you?" And all the time he'd be writing out the score of a Requiem or an opera or a string quartet, keeping up a conversation at the same time. How do you like that?'

'It's not easy to do,' I said feelingly.

'I can see you want to get back to your catalogue. I know there's some kind of big-deal stamp collectors' shindig in the hotel. But I never reckoned you as a stamp collector, Bernie.'

I tried not to react suddenly. I slowly raised my eyes to his and said, 'I collect airmail covers.'

He smiled. 'You don't recognize me, do you, Bernie?'

I tried to put his face into a context but I couldn't recognize him. 'No,' I said.

'Well, no reason you should. But I remember seeing you when I used to share an office with Peter Underlet and then Underlet went to Jakarta and I went to Bonn and worked for Joe Brody. Jesus, Bernie. Have you forgotten?'

'No,' I said, although I had forgotten. This man was a stranger to me.

'On vacation huh?'

'I had a few days' leave due.'

'And you came to Salzburg. Sure, screw the sunshine. This is the spot to be if you are looking for a chance to get away from it all. Are you…'he paused and delicately added '… with anyone?'

'All alone,' I said.

'I wish we could have had dinner together,' said the man regretfully. 'But I have to be back in Vienna tonight. Tomorrow I'm on the flight to Washington DC.'

'Too bad,' I said.

'I just had to make this pilgrimage,' he said. 'Sometimes there are things you just have to do. Know what I mean?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Well, good luck with the stamp collecting. What did you say it was… Zeppelinpost?'

'Yes,' I said, but of course I hadn't told him that. I'd just said airmail.

He waved and went back through the doors to the lounge. If he'd been sent by Joe Brody with the task of making me squirm, he'd done rather well. I closed the catalogue and resumed my contemplation of the grim grey walls of Festung Hohensalzburg on the far side of the river. I needed a belly laugh. Perhaps after I'd had a stiff drink, I'd stroll across town, catch the funicular up to the fortress and take a look round the torture chamber.

8

I didn't eat dinner in the hotel. I found a charming little place near the Mozart statue, or it might have been near the Papageno fountain or the Mozart footbridge. I heard the music of an accordion playing a spirited version of 'The Lonely Goatherd' and went in. The interior was done in dark wood panelling with red check tablecloths. It was almost empty. On the walls there were shiny copper pans together with the actual marionettes that had been used to perform the Mozart operas in the world-famous Marionettentheater. Or maybe they were plastic replicas. The waiter strongly recommended the breaded pork schnitzel, but as my mother told me, you should never trust a man in lederhosen. It took several glasses of the local Weizengold wheat beer to help me recover. The accordion music was on tape.

I got back to the hotel late. There were men everywhere: standing about in the lobby, others drinking solemnly in the bar and all of them eyeing each other warily. I knew they were stamp dealers, for I could detect the ponderous gravity that so often attends the first evening when men are gathered together for business purposes.