The Vienna Connection

by Dick Rosano

  “Hello, Mr. Priest,” he said as he walked up beside me. “I hope you got what you were looking for at the bank yesterday.”

  “Yes. Thank you, I did,” I responded.

  “You’re a popular man,” he added, without looking at me.

  “How’s that?”

  “Mr. Eichner doesn’t usually take appointments off the street.”

  “Well, I believe we have a mutual interest that he didn’t realize at first.”

  “And what about the other week?”

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I let Chinh continue.

  “You visited DFR-Wien two weeks ago, right?”

  Caught. I wondered where this would go.

  “Yeah, sure, I thought I’d visit and see if I could open an account.”

  “Mr. Priest, that is not why you were in our bank.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Banks accept new customers, right?”

  “Why is Mr. Dryden so interested in you?”

  “I don’t know any Dryden. Who’s that?”

  “The director of security for DFR. He was asking about you last week. It seems that you had gotten the attention of our bank even before you met with Mr. Eichner. Dryden wants to know why, Mr. Eichner seems not to mind, and I want to know what your purpose is.”

  The players were multiplying, and I had to make sure I played each one correctly. I had already bought Eichner and I hoped to get into the vault with him to study the safe deposit boxes. This Dryden guy was a new player so I would have to find out more. As for Chinh, I couldn’t tell his motives, at least not without having a more private conversation with him.

  “It’s a beautiful day outside,” I said. “Can I buy you lunch?” There were tables in the plaza left over from a recent event. I figured we could retreat to that public space and continue our talk.

  “Sure,” was all he said.

  We chose our lunch and went down the stairs to check out. I paid as promised, and we went outside to choose an empty table.

  “How long have you worked at DFR?” I asked, but Chinh ignored my question.

  “Eichner is running his own business on the side,” he said, dropping the ‘Mr.’ in a show of his changing intent.

  “Dryden’s a throwback. I think he actually still believes all that Aryan stuff. Even has tattoos to showcase it.”

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “The same one that you’re asking about.”

  I studied Chinh for a moment, trying to peel back his words and assess where he was coming from. Sitting side-by-side on the bench meant I couldn’t easily interpret his facial expressions. He seemed to know what I discussed with Eichner, but I wasn’t sure how that had happened. Eichner could have briefed him, but that didn’t seem likely. If the bank manager was running his own side business, as Chinh suggested, he would only tell people who were instruments of that business. That would be inconsistent with Chinh’s expressed dislike for Eichner.

  Instead, I wondered whether the bank manager’s office was bugged. That also seemed unlikely, since any reputable bank would conduct weekly security sweeps. Any “reputable bank” that is.

  Maybe Chinh was just very smart and could connect the dots.

  “Mr. Chinh…” I began.

  “People call me Chi-Chi.”

  That was a good sign.

  “Okay, Chi-Chi, what kind of business do you think I discussed with Mr. Eichner?”

  He regarded me for a moment, smiled once, then returned to his sandwich. As he chewed on the morsel he had bitten off, he looked across the wide pedestrian plaza.

  “My mother was Vietnamese,” he said. “Her name was Le Do. She fell in love with a G.I. and planned to go to America with him.”

  He paused again to bite off some of the sandwich, then continued.

  “He didn’t come back to the hooch one day. My mother went looking for him. All they told her was that he went back to the States. He was gone.”

  I stopped eating, listening to Chi-Chi’s story. During the Vietnam War, many American G.I.s set up house with the girls there, fathering babies and living a domestic lifestyle in the midst of war and bloodshed. Some brought their girls back home; many did not.

  “This G.I. Was he your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever find him?”

  “Didn’t look. Didn’t try. My mother said not to. Her heart was broken, she had me to deal with, and the people in our village never forgave her. She didn’t marry, had no more kids, and died when she was only forty years old.”

  I was a soldier in modern times and knew the pain of multiple tours of duty in the Middle East, but I had also heard stories of the time when our armed forces fought in Vietnam. And I knew of the children fathered by G.I.s, children who were then abandoned by their American fathers when the war ended. Bui doi, they were called, “dust of life,” as if these kids’ lives were nothing but the detritus of war. For Chi-Chi, the disappointment was personal and easy to read on his face, but he also seemed to have risen above it.

  “Why did you tell me this?” I asked.

  He stopped chewing and looked at me, peering intently into my eyes.

  “Americans are not easy for me to trust.”

  “But that means me. Eichner and Dryden are Austrians.”

  “Not so. Eichner is German and Dryden is American.”

  “What of the Aryan business you mentioned, with Dryden?”

  “I think it’s more an American problem now than a German one. The young punks from Munich and Berlin who carry signs and set flags on fire, they’re just aliens in that society, a small sub-culture that most polite German people despise. Americans, well that’s a different story. Neo-Nazis are too powerful in the States, and your politicians refuse to bring them to heel.”

  “Maybe it’s not the politicians. Maybe it’s just our laws,” I said, but I had to doubt my own words. “Freedom of expression is very important to us.”

  “It is also important to Austrians and Germans. But we have lived through the most horrific period of barbarity in history, so we know the importance of checking freedoms that can resurrect those times.”

  I thought about the bui doi, how American interference in Vietnamese culture had corrupted and destroyed their world, and I was impressed that Chi-Chi would still think the Nazi regime was even worse.

  “And what of me?” I asked. “I’m American.”

  Chi-Chi looked at me with an earnestness that I could feel but, once again, ignored my question.

  “You’re not really looking to open an account at DFR.”

  I didn’t nod or give any indication that he was right or wrong.

  “And you’re not really going to deposit fifty million Euros there, either. Are you?”

  I had to smile. I was taken aback that Chinh knew the details of my conversation with Eichner, but somehow pleased at the same time, since he seemed to be on the same wavelength with me. I didn’t feel threatened, but I wanted to know how he knew this.

  Chi-Chi paused for a moment, deep in thought as he reconstructed his past.

  “After your mom died,” I began, “did you try to find your dad?

  He lowered his chin and stared at the ground before replying.

  “It was in 1975. April. I was only a few months old at the time and couldn’t have known what was going on. The Americans had already failed in their campaign of war in our country and they were holding on in Saigon, but not well. Near the end of the month, the order was given to quickly evacuate all remaining Americans. My mom and I lived outside the city and although we knew there was a lot of activity, she wasn’t close enough to witness it happening. It wasn’t until the next day when she went looking for him that she was told by the Vietnamese guards posted at the old American compound that they were all gone.

  “Later, when I was older, I asked her for his name, but she wouldn’t give it to me. By then, I was probably thirteen and she had spent the previous dozen years trying to forget him. ‘
He doesn’t exist,’ she told me. So, I quit trying.”

  I thought back to the time I discussed the financial plan with a friend. We talked about how I might transfer enough money to convince Eichner that I was serious and to gain access to the off-ledger safe deposit boxes. I was no expert in international finance, but I knew people who were. She suggested using “the float,” an arcane financial feature that referred to the time between when money was sent and when it was received. With electronic transfers now common throughout the world, I couldn’t just float millions of Euros. So, she suggested tying it to another accounting feature of investing – selling short.

  “Sell notes from a portfolio to build up some revenue,” she explained, “at least enough to serve as a deposit. How much did you say you needed?”

  I stammered a bit before telling her.

  “Two hundred forty.”

  “Million?” she said with a mocking smile.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Oh, come on, Darren. Not million!”

  I said yes.

  “Okay, we can short sell maybe 5 million, keep it fluid for about forty-eight hours, then we’ll have to pay it back. Or pay it off.”

  It seemed like my friend was getting excited with the scheme.

  “You see, if you short sell, you have to drive the market price down low enough to gobble up all the shares that you owe, at a discount. Then turn them over to the buyers you suckered in the first place, skimming the difference for yourself.”

  “I’m not trying to make money,” I reminded.

  “Pity,” she said with a ring of disappointment in her tone.

  “I just need some money for a little time to convince this bank to treat me as an insider.”

  “Why not just borrow it?” she asked.

  “Do you have fifty million Euros around that I could borrow?”

  “I see your point. Anyway, short sell to build up the revenues and use the international float to buy time. Will that work?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “How long do you need the money?” she asked.

  “Three days, maybe four.”

  “You can get it for two days. Time it so that you get a weekend to stretch it out a bit, and it might work.”

  My thoughts returned to Chi-Chi as he munched thoughtfully on his sandwich.

  “I am, actually, going to invest money in DFR,” I told him.

  He looked at me and smiled.

  “The bank has been good to me, even with Eichner’s shit,” he replied. “I could probably help you if you do nothing to hurt DFR-Wien.”

  “What about Eichner?”

  Chi-Chi crumbled up the paper that had wrapped his sandwich, and then stood.

  “I don’t care about him.”

  I finished my sandwich, too, but since my new friend didn’t seem anxious to get away, I walked alongside him back toward the bank. Thinking twice about that, I stopped, realizing that it wouldn’t be good to be seen too close to the bank too many times, especially in the company of one of its junior managers. We were just passing one of the many kiosks that dotted the streets of Vienna, boxy little stands that sell sausages, beer, and more, when I saw the man with the salt-and-pepper hair that I recalled from my breakfast at Marriott. He was just paying for a käsekrainer – a cheese sausage popular at these Wurstelstand kiosks. A tattoo appeared on his wrist as his shirt sleeve pulled back while he handed over the few Euros to pay for his food.

  My sudden halt drew Chi-Chi’s attention.

  “Who’s that?” I asked automatically, although there was no reason to think that Chi-Chi would know that man.

  “Who? Oh, that’s Chuck Dryden,” Chi-Chi replied. “The director of security for DFR. Starchy, strait-laced, real jarhead. Reminds me of the kind my mother told me served in Vietnam. Why do you ask?”

  I didn’t respond, just shrugged my shoulders in reply.

  Dryden didn’t see Chinh and me together, and I turned quickly away to avoid that possibility. Chi-Chi promised to get back to me later, and I headed back toward the Marriott to mull over what I knew so far.

  Eichner was on the take, but probably not so much that he endangered the bank. Dryden was a security guy who probably doubled as a goon. Chinh seemed to be the most honest one of the crowd at DFR.

  Then there’s Frontiere, whose career put her in the high society circles and whose absentee husband allowed her to entertain liaisons in Vienna. It wasn’t hard for me to discern duplicity on her part, to the point of possible criminal behavior. Weber was a tough one. She was a seasoned cop, with great instincts and street smarts, and impossible to shake. I was sure that she knew more about me than I knew about her, and I was intrigued.

  I went to the concierge lounge in the hotel and collected a couple bottles of sparkling water, then returned to my room to write some notes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  April 17

  The White House

  Ebert was in the Oval Office, hovering over the President’s desk, with his fingertips on the edge of a folder. Pendleton came through the side door and, noticing Ebert’s presence and his position over the desk, made a beeline for him.

  “Put that down,” ordered Pendleton. “Willy, I’ve allowed you frequent and, at times, unaccompanied access to my office…”

  “The people’s office, Mike.”

  “My office,” Pendleton stressed. “But that doesn’t mean I will tolerate you looking through the files on my desk.

  “The people’s desk,” Ebert said, tapping his finger on the surface of the Resolute Desk.

  “What do you have here?” he asked Pendleton.

  “None of your damn business.” Then thinking better of himself, he allowed, “It’s just another angry letter. I get lots of them, as you know.”

  “Sure, you get lots of hate mail, too,” Ebert said, but then he paused and lifted the cover of the folder. “But that sort of stuff never makes it into the Oval Office. How did this one?”

  Pendleton didn’t have a ready answer, so he remained silent.

  “I’m no handwriting expert,” Ebert said, “but this note looks like it was written by a woman.”

  “Like you said, Willy,” Pendleton barked, “you’re no handwriting expert,” then slammed the folder shut with the palm of his hand. He shifted his suit jacket, trying to compose himself, and decided to change the subject.

  The Majority Leader was the only person allowed entrance to the inner sanctum without the President being in the room. The opposing party’s Speaker of the House would not be tolerated in there alone; even the Vice President was viewed with some skepticism. The Veep’s thirst for power belied his motives, and his attempts to sabotage Pendleton’s initiatives convinced the President’s allies to keep him on the outside of sensitive conversations. And far from the Oval Office.

  “You know I’ve always supported your plans for funding CHIP,” Ebert said, picking up on the new atmosphere.

  “Codswallop,” said the President.

  “What?”

  “That’s what a proper Britisher would say,” Pendleton replied. “Codswallop.”

  “Well, Mike, I don’t know what the hell that means.”

  “Bollocks or, in American, bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my ideas for funding the child health insurance program. In fact, you have openly opposed them.”

  “So does most of the Congress,” Ebert added.

  “Your Congress.”

  “Mike, we have only one Congress.”

  “If so, why do you try to pass everything with only the votes on your side of the aisle?”

  “If the Democrats can’t see how important these initiatives are, we must do what we can for the good of the country.”

  Pendleton waved his hand impatiently at Ebert, as if to say “‘whatever,” then settled into his chair behind the Resolute Desk.

  “What about CHIP?” he asked the Majority Leader.

  “The states are not paying enough of the total and we can’t keep
throwing money their way. They…”

  “Who?” asked Pendleton.

  “They,” said Ebert impatiently. “The states.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean the families. Because you know that’s precisely the point. Many American families can’t afford good health care. The kids are not responsible for their situation, so they shouldn’t be penalized.”

  Ebert plopped down onto the chair in front the President.

  “But maybe if we showed more restraint the families that have so many kids would wise up.”

  Pendleton had heard this before and couldn’t bring himself to Ebert’s way of thinking. In a perfect world, families would plan their child-bearing mindful of their financial status. But sex and pregnancy didn’t lend itself to that kind of planning.

  “So, what do you want to do?” he asked Ebert.

  “I would create targets for spending that allow us to phase in the reductions. Over five, maybe ten years, we could get out of the business altogether and let the states decide how to handle it.”

  “That sounds good on paper, but what if one state abandons the program and the next state keeps it?”

  “That’s their choice,” protested Ebert.

  “But it’s not the kid’s choice. So, zip code becomes destiny, right?”

  “Shit, Mike. We’ve got to do something. The only way we’re going to balance the budget and pay down the deficit is to stop throwing money at useless programs for…” and he broke off his sentence.

  “You were going to say ‘useless programs for useless people,’ right?”