A Death in Vienna
A Death in Vienna
A Death in Vienna is a 2004 spy thriller by Daniel Silva, the fourth book in the Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel Allon is a former Israeli assassin who now works as an art restorer in Venice. He is asked by his old boss, Ari Shamron, to go to Vienna after a bombing at an Israeli Holocaust research office there kills two female staff and badly injures the director.
Allon follows a lead from Max Klein, a Holocaust survivor who claims to know a man named Ludwig Vogel. Klein is murdered, and Allon is briefly detained and expelled from Austria. At Yad Vashem, it’s revealed that Vogel is likely Erich Radek, a Nazi war criminal and SD officer connected to Aktion 1005, the Nazi program to erase evidence of the Holocaust by exhuming and burning bodies. Radek’s appearance also reminds Allon of a painting his mother made of one of her tormentors.
The investigation leads Allon to the Vatican, which sheltered Radek, and then to Argentina, where Radek is believed buried. He is almost killed by a mysterious assassin called “the Clockmaker,” but is saved by the CIA. In Washington, the CIA explains Radek helped build a spy network to mislead the Soviets and controls a vast fortune hidden by a Swiss banker.
Radek is kidnapped with help from Swiss contacts and taken toward Treblinka, a site he visited during Aktion 1005. Allon uses the fact that Radek has a son, Peter Metzler, who is poised to become Austrian Chancellor, to force Radek to surrender. Radek is brought to Israel for interrogation in exchange for not being tried, and to provide a full history of Aktion 1005.
In Vienna, Metzler is elected Chancellor, a secret kept by the CIA and The Office. Allon returns to his restoration work in Venice. The assassin known as the Clockmaker is killed by a parcel bomb.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:57 (CET).