The Vienna Connection

by Dick Rosano

  “Why did your computer not require a sign-in procedure to open?”

  It did, and I knew Weber well enough already to know that she expected that to be the case. The fact that password protection had been removed was an indication that it had already been tampered with. I thought about remarking on this and scoring a point in my favor. Judging any unsolicited information to be risky, though, I remained silent.

  “It had two copies of articles with your name as the byline,” she said. “You’re a very good writer, Mr. Priest.”

  “Thanks.”

  Staring back at me, Weber continued.

  “There were also some photos. Disturbing photos.”

  She let the words hang for a moment.

  “And they seem to suggest criminal activity.”

  My stare hardened a bit. I knew that I had not put disturbing photos on my computer. And although I didn’t mind having my Darren Priest identification on the device, I didn’t keep copies of my articles on there either. Whoever tampered with the laptop had the sense to insert my articles and byline, gambling that such an egocentric signature would confirm that the materials contained there were, in fact, mine.

  With her detailed description of the contents, I wondered whether she was making this up to draw me out or if she, too, considered whether someone had gotten possession of my laptop and loaded these files onto it. Its sudden appearance at the police station argued for the latter and I wanted to point this out. But I decided it was too soon to play that card. I would save it for later when I had more evidence to support my position.

  “We haven’t quite made out the details, and we haven’t opened all the files yet,” she said, pausing. “Some are password protected.

  “Drug use is not unheard of here, Mr. Priest, but some types are still illegal.” Another pause. She stared intently at a photograph on the computer that I could not see from my angle.

  “Have you visited the Dormandstrasse on this trip?”

  “No. I’m sorry, where is that? Is it a street, or a neighborhood? What goes on there?”

  This time Weber smiled. The multi-question thing was a tell, a practice among professionals but not commonly used outside the investigations community.

  “It’s a street. A place where too many of our young Austrians experiment with too many new confections, new pharma, we call it. Pharma that is chemically modified for effect, and to escape the strict wording of the prohibiting laws.”

  “No.”

  “No, what, Mr. Priest? Were you…”

  “No, I have not gone to this street, this Dormandstrasse.”

  The officer sitting in the chair in the corner shifted his body and leaned forward. When Weber turned and looked over her shoulder, he rose and, in a stoop, pointed to a place on the unfolded paper that he had given her.

  “What do you know about diamonds, Mr. Priest?”

  I had to laugh. The girlfriend who had burst into my life suddenly about eight years ago was going to be my fiancé, but when she saw the diamond ring I chose for my proposal, she hesitated. A week later, she began expressing doubts to her friend, who reported these doubts to me, and who said Charisse was likely to spend a lot more on things than I would be.

  At that time, Paulette had said, “Perhaps it’s not a good match.” She knew Charisse better than I did, I guessed.

  Not a very propitious beginning to a lifelong commitment, I thought. She left just as suddenly as she had come. I thought I was a better judge of people; must have missed something.

  So, no, I didn’t know very much about diamonds and I told Weber so.

  “But the one point seven-five carat Marquise-cut diamond you selected is quite a piece.”

  I knew nothing about a Marquise diamond and wondered where all this was coming from.

  “The picture on your computer – I have to say, Mr. Priest, it is a poor photo of this exquisite diamond – but it looks just like the one recently reported missing from the Bering Brothers shop.”

  It was obvious to me, though not necessarily to the Austrian police, that I was being framed. Unless I saw my computer, though, I would not be able to prove that.

  “It sounds like you have some indication, based on photographs on a computer that you think is mine, that I have been involved in some illegal activity. I can categorically say that I have not. Are you sure that the computer is mine?”

  “Of course, we already checked that,” Weber said stonily. “We ran the fingerprints on the outside of the case against the Interpol database. They are yours, Mr. Priest.”

  This was getting very interesting. If Weber had connected prints on the computer with some found in Interpol, and if the Interpol file connected them to my cover identity, Darren Priest, there must be a complicated plot here to catch me in a web.

  The truth is, I have no fingerprints. Years ago, while serving in my Army unit, my fingerprints had been removed, so I knew that what she found could not have been mine. But if I explained this to Weber, she would insist on taking prints right then, and I might end up having to give up my true identity and this job I was on would be jeopardized.

  I had to play this delicately, not arguing that these were not my fingerprints, but also not arguing that this ‘Darren Priest’ guy didn’t really exist.

  “Do you have a contact name at Interpol?”

  “Yes, of course,” Weber said, “but you wouldn’t expect me to give you access to that. Would you?”

  Our eyes remained locked in combat for a few more seconds, until Weber broke the silence.

  “There are other files on your laptop that we haven’t studied yet.”

  I knew that was a diversion, both from her body language and from her shutting the folder in front of her.

  “They’re encrypted, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied smoothly, then she looked at me.

  “Would you like to unlock the files and prove your innocence?”

  I couldn’t do that for so many reasons. The files she had described already were not mine which meant that the encrypted files on the computer weren’t either. And if I was being framed so conspicuously with files that were easy to open, what terrible things must lurk in the encrypted files?

  But her question offered me an opening.

  “You didn’t bring the computer with you,” I said. “Perhaps you would let me see it.”

  She signaled to the officer still sitting in the chair behind her and he left the room, returning a moment later with a silver-hooded laptop that looked just like mine. He placed it on the table in front of Weber and she slid it across to me.

  I wasn’t going to open it but I wanted to see the computer to confirm that the instrument that they had in their custody, the laptop that they believed was mine, was in fact the computer that I had carried in my backpack and which had become lost in Stadtpark.

  I ran the palm of my hand across the surface of the cover, lightly and without giving away my intention. In my work, it is commonplace to cut a pattern of scratches in the edge of these instruments so that we could easily identify them as our own. When I first bought this computer, I chose a pattern of three short parallel lines and a single scratch that cut across them at a right angle, forming a unique symbol that I would recognize by touch. This I scratched into the right edge of the cover of the laptop. The scratches were so subtle as to be essentially invisible but could be felt with the soft pads of a fingertip.

  As I swept my palm across the surface, I ran my index finger down the edge and felt the familiar three-plus-one pattern that I had put on the lid of the computer. It was mine; that I was sure of.

  “Well?” Weber said, growing impatient. “Is it yours?”

  “Yes, well, no,” I said, without opening the lid.

  “No, what?” asked Weber. “I don’t have time for pranks, Mr. Priest.”

  “No, of course not. I don’t know that this computer is mine, and so I wouldn’t know how to open the files that are on it.”

  “But how do
you know? You haven’t tried.”

  “I don’t keep encrypted files in my work. And those that you found are not mine.”

  Weber sat back in her chair and tapped the point of the black pen on the desk.

  “What is your work, Mr. Priest?”

  “I am a wine and food writer, I told you.”

  “And I know that writers don’t make a lot of money. You’re a young man,” she continued moving her eyes from my hair to my face and back again. “Writers don’t make much usually, and many of them supplement their writing with other careers.”

  Weber stared at me without asking a question. But then she picked up another piece of paper and eyed me again.

  “You didn’t claim much income last year. How did you survive on this?” she asked, wagging the paper in front of me.

  Her comments about drug use on Dormandstrasse and the stolen Marquise diamond came back to me, and I realized that her interrogation was heading in a dangerous direction for me. I decided it was time to come clean. Or, more specifically, to share an alternative identity with her.

  “I am a bank examiner. From the States. I am here…”

  “We know you are from the States. To speed this up, Mr. Priest, please skip the obvious commentary and answer my question.”

  A bit testy, maybe? It was becoming important for me to put on a show of cooperation, feigned or not.

  “I am here to look into some matters involving Americans who might be disguising investments, perhaps from ill-gotten winnings, and securing them in banks in Austria.”

  “What Americans?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you their names, but…”

  “Why not? You are conducting an unwarranted investigation on Austrian soil, into an Austrian bank, for which you have just delivered accusations of illegal activity.” Leaning forward toward me, she added, “If I ask you for their names, Mr. Priest, you will give them to me.”

  If the Austrian polizei got wind of the person I was looking for, especially since I had figured out that he or she is prominent in American government or business, I could be igniting a diplomatic crisis. If they knew the bank I was looking into, they would probably begin their own investigation and blow the lid off, causing the bank to bury the records that I hoped to recover. And if I told them who I was, a “renegade” American special agent with a military past in interrogation and ties to the U.S. President, I would be placed in custody and lose my bid to secure the files for Pendleton.

  So, no, I couldn’t tell Weber anything.

  On the other hand, I was going to have to give her something or I could end up spending my visit to Vienna as a guest of the Austrian Bundespolizei.

  “I’m guessing that you want to find out who is responsible for the apparent crimes for which photographs exist on this computer.”

  “But we already have you, Mr. Priest.”

  “I said the person ‘who is responsible,’ so obviously, I don’t mean me.”

  She nodded but didn’t erase the confident smile on her face.

  “I want the same thing,” I continued, “to clear my name and to continue with my work. I know that if you release me, I will be followed as long as I am in Austria…”

  “And then some,” she said with a steady stare.

  “Yes, well, anyway…I can continue my work and help you uncover the author of these photographs, but not from here.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Priest, I don’t care whether you continue with your work. In fact, I will have to discuss this with my superior, Gruppeninspektor Tomlin, to decide how to address your investigation. And, for the moment, I only care about the files that we have found on your computer. Are you saying someone else put them there? And what are you really doing in Vienna, Mr. Priest? And who is it you think who might want to prevent you from continuing with your work?”

  “Perhaps this is all linked,” I suggested. “My investigation might have sparked retaliation, resulting in this attempt to smear me and have me jailed. It could be that allowing me to continue with my work might smoke out the perpetrator, and we will both win.”

  I liked this solution. My right index finger tapped the cover of the computer as I spun the idea.

  Weber looked at my hand and smiled, then she reached out with both her hands and slid the computer gently out from under mine.

  “I see,” she said, “but if you leave, you will not leave with this computer.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I offered. “In fact, it would be best to be seen leaving without the computer. If I’m being watched, it would be best for you to show me out of the station without the laptop…in fact, perhaps, you should be seen still holding it by your side, so the person who is stalking me will assume that the polizei are continuing to decrypt the incriminating files that he placed there.”

  “And if there is no such person?” Weber pointed out, “and if you are in fact the one responsible for the crimes that we seek to solve?”

  “Like I said, I have no illusions about operating incognito anymore. You can round me up later.” I looked behind Weber at the silent guard sitting behind her. “Your officers seem to get around the city quite easily.”

  Furthering the charade I was concocting, I made a mental note to go back to the computer store and switch the laptop that I had already ordered. At first, I had fallen into the routine of ordering the same model I was used to, but I wanted the techies at the store to remove the silver cover and replace it with a blue cover, so that any surveillance of me would clearly register that I was using a different laptop and reinforcing the idea that the police still had mine.

  “Alright, Mr. Priest. You may go, for now; but as you said, we will keep an eye on you.”

  I stood to leave and so did the armed officer. As I stepped toward the door, Weber rose also, cradling my laptop under her left arm. She walked me out of the interrogation room and to the exterior door of the precinct, still carrying the laptop. At the top step, she paused as I descended toward the car.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell us who you are investigating, Mr. Priest?”

  I noticed that her voice was clear and loud enough to carry beyond me, as if she imagined that someone else might be listening.

  Instead of answering her question, I had one of my own.

  “By the way, Inspector, since you have so much information, I’m sure you have my cell phone number. When I was at the Marriott earlier, why didn’t you just call it?”

  “You were in the Cascade Bar,” she replied. “Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Near the back of the lobby.”

  I nodded again.

  “It seemed better to bring you up to the front desk where these officers could get an eye on you,” she said, hooking her thumb back to where the other police officers were standing. “So that you wouldn’t exit through the back door of the hotel.” She paused, then added, “Just as you had planned to do, right?”

  I couldn’t help but admire her intuition.

  Chapter Seven

  Four Weeks Earlier

  The White House

  Winston Ebert was the most powerful man in Washington. As the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate in a divided government, “Willy” Ebert held only half the cards in the Capitol Hill’s deck, since Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. But the authors of the Constitution made sure to give more power to the Senate than the House. Creating a bicameral legislature required a distribution of powers so that one chamber could frustrate the dictatorial aims of the other. The House maintained certain powers while the Senate was given control of presidential appointments.

  Ebert knew this as well as anyone, and he knew that his chamber controlled who served in the President’s Cabinet and which jurists rose to the bench of the Supreme Court. So, he gave up his chance to be Mike Pendleton’s vice president, preferring instead to keep his senior position in the Senate and prepare himself to be elected the GOP’s Majority Leader. It was only a matter of time, he long believe
d.

  His lifelong association with Pendleton would have argued for the other choice. The two had been friends since childhood. They both went to Yale – Ebert remaining in New Haven after graduation to attend law school and Pendleton moving on to Princeton for an M.B.A. Both entered politics and rose through the ranks as political appointees, using their pedigree and position to advance their careers. Pendleton was chosen to be the Secretary of the Army; Ebert acquired years and experience in the Senate, serving as the chair of Judiciary Committee, then quitting that position to become Majority Leader when his friend Pendleton was elected to the White House.

  Now, as long-respected pillars of the society, they shared the halls of power in America. The only one great difference between them was that Mike Pendleton accepted the limits of what society would tolerate from its leaders while Willy Ebert pushed to see how far he could go without sanction or retribution.

  “Leave it open,” Pendleton said to the Secret Service agent standing by the door in the Oval Office. The square-shouldered man with the earwig dangling from his collar stopped in mid-motion and turned his head toward the President.

  “The Majority Leader is on his way and we want to have a private conversation out there,” Pendleton added, pointing to the door that led out onto the West Colonnade and the Rose Garden that was nestled into the bend of the paved walkway.

  “Yes, sir,” the agent replied, before crossing the room and exiting through another door leading to the outer office of the President’s secretary.

  As the agent pulled on the doorknob to leave, Willy Ebert walked in. Life had been good to the Senator, at least if it was measured by his waistline. Shorter than his boyhood friend, the President, Ebert’s weight gathered around his torso, held in check by a long belt but unable to be contained within a suit jacket that always appeared to be two sizes too small. But physical appearance was not Ebert’s main focus in life.

  Power was.

  “Hello, Mr. President,” he began, maintaining formalities only until he heard the door click behind him. When they were alone, the Senator relaxed into a more informal session with Pendleton.