by Dick Rosano
With the window open and the soft roar of Mason’s car approaching, Willy lifted the bundle and lowered it out of the window, and Mason quickly folded and stuffed the roll into the trunk.
“Psst, Mason,” Willy called from the window. “Pull around the corner. I’ll be right down.”
He left the room and walked down the stairs, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy as he exited the house, and walked down the street. Once there, he joined Mason and they drove away to their school, driving carefully between the trees of the sparse forest that ringed the campus. Lifting the girl’s body out of the trunk, they carried her farther into the trees. Mason retrieved the shovel that he kept in the trunk and the boys took turns digging a hole to bury the girl.
“It’s got to be deep,” warned Willy. “The cops always catch the killer if the body’s buried in a shallow grave.”
So, they continued into the night, digging a grave that was nearly six feet deep before lowering the bundled body of the girl and shoveling dirt over her to conceal their crime.
“What did Mike do?” Mason asked as they worked to cover up the body.
“Mike? He was passed out,” Willy laughed. “Couldn’t even get a hard-on before the beer took over.”
“Why were you taking pictures?”
“Hey, you know, she looked good with her dress pulled up to her waist and her panties down around her ankles. Besides, you never know what you can do with some photographs of your friend sprawled out on a naked girl. Right?”
Mason paused with the shovel in midstride. He knew by now that it was Willy who had raped the girl and, by Willy’s own telling, Mike was passed out. Maybe he tried to get a little, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. So, Willy raped the girl, and killed her, but he had pictures of Mike in the bed.
“You can’t do anything with those pictures,” Mason complained. “You’ve got to destroy them.”
“Oh, yeah,” Willy said with derision. “Are you kidding? I’m gonna enjoy looking at them for a long time.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
April 21
White House
It was Sunday, so I expected to find it relatively quiet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Pendleton would be there; he usually was. He believed that the voters elected him to stay and work, not golf every weekend. So, I thought I had a good chance of catching him at the helm, even though I didn’t give any notice.
When he assigned me to look into this matter, the President gave me a code to give the Secret Service at the White House gate. He assured me that it would provide immediate access in case I found anything that he would want to see right away. The same code could be used, along with a certain phone number, to be patched in to Pendleton if I was to call in. I thought about using that first, but I was on a pretty short schedule. I had to get back to Vienna to unwind the bogus transfer of funds, and I needed to do that by tomorrow, or the shit would hit the fan.
I thought about that while sitting in the back of the Uber as it sped down 16th Street toward the White House. My friend had coached me in selling short, then floating the money – just the portion needed to convince Eichner that I was the real deal. And she reminded me that I would have to end the sham by Monday. That’s tomorrow. If I got what I needed from DFR by then and unwound everything, the investment money would be turned off and the transfer would not be made.
Eichner had led me into the vault with the safe deposit boxes, but it was actually Chi-Chi who had completed the theft of materials. The copies of the photos he provided had matched the faces and personalities of the guys described in the journal unearthed at the construction site. And I second-checked them against the student photos in the yearbook. By now, I was convinced that Axle was Pendleton and Miller was Ebert. Based on that, and the journal confession, I was also convinced that Pendleton had passed out next to the girl before she died. He had meant to seduce her, clearly inappropriate behavior, but he fell asleep before he could carry it out.
But Ebert had raped and killed her. A court would have to decide whether his actions were pre-meditated, but it was certainly murder.
Whoever wrote the journal was also in the room at that time, and while I wanted to track him down too, that would have to wait. I needed to talk to the President immediately.
The Uber driver let me out on the curb a few blocks from the White House since the vehicle barriers prevented a closer approach. I had the journal in my backpack and walked the remaining distance to the guard booth at the northwest corner of the compound.
The guard opened the window and asked who I was and what business I had. I avoided telling my name, as Pendleton had instructed me to do, but only provided the code name. The guard turned around to consult another guard behind him, nodded, and then turned back to me.
“Push the gate,” he said, as I heard a click and the lock on the inner gate opened.
The guard stepped out of the booth and escorted me up the driveway to the entrance of the White House. I was still in awe of the building as we approached, even though I had been here before. It loomed over me with its tall columns and glistening white façade, and I thought about all the presidents from John Adams on down who had resided here and the great – and small – events that had happened here. I thought of the brilliant minds who had lived and worked in the building, and the oafish misfits who managed to slip into the role as president by the quirks of the democratic voting system.
We entered the main door on the north side of the building and went directly to the East Wing where the private residence was. After walking up some stairs and down some hallways, the guard paused to speak to another officer standing at a door in the hallway. When they both seemed to reach an agreement, the second guard opened the door and stepped inside, then closed the door behind him.
“Please remain here with me,” said my escort as we stood in the hallway.
After a moment, the door guard returned and signaled for us to enter. He guided me to an inner room where I saw the President standing in front of a fireplace that crackled on this April morning.
The guard retreated from the room, closing the door behind him. After another moment, I heard the outer door close. Then Pendleton relaxed a bit, with the formalities behind us.
“Armando…uh, sorry, Darren. What do we have? It sounded urgent.”
The guards had taken my backpack but allowed me to keep the journal. I lifted it up to show the President but didn’t give it to him right away. I felt that I needed to explain the journal first, and then let him read it.
“Your name in high school was Axle, sir. Is that correct?”
Pendleton laughed.
“Yeah, they said I could motor over the hurdles, so they called me Axle. Why?”
“Was Senator Ebert a friend in high school?”
“Yes,” he replied warily. “Why?”
“Was he known as Miller, by any chance?”
“No. What’s this about?”
“Did Ebert, sorry, Senator Ebert like to take a lot of pictures?”
At this Pendleton blanched and looked at the notebook in my hand. He didn’t answer right away.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ sir. In fact, I found a picture of him in the yearbook proudly displaying a little camera hung around his neck.”
“So, what do we have here, Darren?”
I moved a little closer to the President, not to intimidate him but to lower my voice and describe the remainder of my story.
“I assume we are alone, sir. That no one might enter without notice. Is that right?”
“Yes, of course. But my wife lives here, too, you know.”
“Yes, sir. Actually, that is whom I meant. And I don’t think you want her to hear what I am about to say.”
“She’s reading. She said it’s a very good book. Something called Sapiens. God knows I can’t get her to break from it. So, no, I doubt that she will surprise us here.”
“Okay.”
I told Pendleton what I had found in Vienna, including
the safe deposit box at DFR-Wien, incriminating photographs of a young man passed out on a bed next to a girl who also seemed to be passed out.
“There’s also a picture of something wrapped in a blanket at the bottom of a hole.”
Pendleton was not present when they buried her, but he knew it had happened. I suspected that the blackmailer had shown the pictures to him to prove that he had the evidence. Evidence that would prove that Pendleton had raped and killed the girl. He and the other boy had simply covered for Pendleton by burying her. Or so the story would unfold.
And I knew, too, that Pendleton would be aware of the recently exhumed skeleton, the location of the grave, and what that discovery might mean for him. If Ebert was the one blackmailing him, the girl’s recovered remains would give the senator even more power over the President and could make his life and career a literal hell.
“This journal tells a story that is different from the photographs, sir, and different from what Ebert has been telling you.” By then, I had concluded that Ebert had saddled his friend, Pendleton, with this fictitious story for many years.
This piqued the President’s interest and he looked at me, then at the journal.
“Someone wrote this and tossed it into a shallow hole near where the girl was buried,” I began. “It is a lengthy description of what happened the night that you passed out on the bed next to the girl. It describes how Ebert had raped and choked her, and how he and the journal writer had buried the girl.”
I handed the journal to Pendleton and waited while he read a few pages.
“Mason,” he said.
“Who, sir?”
“Mason Terrell. I knew him. He was there that night. In the room. He admitted to me later that he helped Ebert take care of things.”
“Where is Terrell now?”
“Dead. He killed himself not long after the night of the party.”
“Jesus,” was all I could mutter. Then added, “Sir, all respect, you were drunk that night and probably messed with the girl. I don’t know if you were trying to get in her pants or were willing to rape her.”
“No. I wouldn’t have done that.”
“I didn’t think so. But feeling her up is not a crime. Well, maybe it is, but not on the order of rape and murder. This journal is the evidence that you need to clear your name.”
“Legally, or politically?”
“I’m not a politician, sir.”
“I may not be much longer, either. I need some time to think about this. Can I keep this journal?”
“Yes, sir.”
At that, I turned and left. The guard in the hallway entered as I exited, I assume to check on the President’s welfare. He was probably instructed to do this every time someone visited Pendleton in his private quarters.
Chapter Thirty-Four
April 22
DFR-Wien
I took the evening plane back to Vienna, arriving the next day after telling my financial friend at the CIA in Langley to unwind the transfer. I was now certain that I didn’t need any more access to the safe deposit boxes at DFR, so I didn’t care what Eichner thought. But I did want to have a word with him, which I planned to do as soon as I landed.
The plane touched down on schedule at eight in the morning and I took a cab to the Marriott. My room was still there since I hadn’t checked out, so I walked through the lobby toward the elevator at the edge of the restaurant. I swiped my room key to activate the elevator and went to my room to shower and dress for the day.
By ten o’clock, I was ready for Eichner. I walked the several blocks to DFR and entered through the massive bank doors. In the lobby, I saw Chi-Chi and noticed Eichner and Dryden standing off to the side. I was briefly surprised when I saw Alana, too, but realized that her surveillance of me would have already alerted her to my return, and my approach to the bank.
When I walked up to Eichner, Dryden stared menacingly at me, but stepped away.
“I checked the accounts, this morning,” Eichner began, anger clear in his voice. “There was no deposit.”
“And I’m afraid there won’t be,” I responded.
“I want you to know that I have already cleared your safe deposit box. And I checked both of those flash drives with my own computer,” he continued, pointing to his office that glowed in the dim blue light of a computer screen. “There’s nothing on them.”
“Well, not exactly nothing.”
His brows furrowed at that.
“There were some files that are not visible from the drive,” I explained, “that do two things. The first is they scan the operating system they’re plugged into for authorization.”
Eichner couldn’t tell where I was going, but we both knew that his computer didn’t have any authorization codes to match my flash drives.
“If the files don’t find those authorization codes, they scramble all the files and documents on the computer.”
Eichner’s alarm was explosive. He ran to his office while Dryden kept watch over me. I could see Eichner punching the keys on his computer as the blood rushed to his face. He punched the keyboard harder and even banged the desk. His keyboard didn’t have its own computer; it was directly linked to the bank’s mainframe. Eichner’s primal scream convinced me that his files and even those of the entire bank were now infected. Quizzical looks from the tellers lined up along the wall to the left were further proof of this. The bank’s systems were completely scrambled.
I turned and walked out of the bank. I expected to be followed by Dryden, but also expected – or hoped – that Alana would be close behind.
Two blocks down and Dryden was still several feet behind me. As I turned the corner, I shot a glance back, caught sight of his sadistic grin, but also of Alana in close pursuit. I was wary of being followed but Dryden, as the predator, didn’t think that someone might also be behind him.
As I watched, I saw Alana bend down in mid-stride and scoop something up. It couldn’t have been anything much, and I assumed it was road trash.
Turning another corner, I heard Dryden call out to me. We were now in a quiet alley with no traffic and nobody walking by. Not sure why I chose this street, but I instinctively knew that we needed some privacy if Alana was going to help me in any way.
As I turned toward Dryden’s voice, he raised his right arm and pointed a handgun at me. At the same moment, I saw Alana raise both her hands. One hand clutched the Glock that she carried; the other hand held a bunch of pebbles that she had scooped up moments before. She unfurled her fist and dropped the pebbles, which made a loud sound as they struck the sidewalk on this quiet street.
Dryden swung around at the sound and was rewarded with a clear shot into his chest. The impact of the round from the Alana’s shot pushed him backward and onto the sidewalk. I had no doubt he was dead before he hit the concrete. I turned to walk away, knowing that this would be my best strategy.
While I was still in earshot, I heard Alana radioing in to the police station.
“Mugging in progress on Leopold Figl Gasse. Victim ran but mugger was isolated and taken down.”
I paused for a moment around the corner, with no visual of Alana but I could still hear her voice.
“Mugger drew a weapon, I neutralized him. Send an ambulance.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
April 22
Zwölf Apostelkeller
“See you at Zwölf Apostelkeller,” the note said. “Seven o’clock. You owe me dinner.”
I was in my room at the Marriott and watched as the shadow of someone’s shoes passed by the lower edge of my door. The note was unsigned, but I was sure that it was from Alana.
It was now about five, so I had some time to relax, shower, and have a glass of wine before walking to that cavernous underground restaurant on Sonnenfelsgasse. I was introduced to the establishment by a friend on my first trip and was so intrigued that I returned on each of my visits. It’s a 14th Century tavern beneath a hotel, with huge stone arches spanning the rooms on three levels
below ground. It is both beer hall and restaurant, and its selection of wines is quite good. The atmosphere creates a feeling of ancient catacombs, except that visitors dine much better at Apostelkeller than the early Christians did in their subterranean warrens.
I entered through a slightly hidden door set back in a courtyard off the street. Turn right and you end up in the hotel reception area; turn left and you begin a steady climb down stone steps into the cellar where the restaurant begins.
As I stepped off the last of the stairs, I saw Alana sitting at a booth to my left. I smiled, relieved that, in fact, the invitation was from her. As she drew me nearer with a friendly smile, I slid onto the bench of the booth that she had secured for our dinner.
“Hello, Darren.”
Throughout all this, and her investigation of me through Interpol, I still wondered whether she knew my true identity. It had been well concealed through years and layers of working my alternative profile, and I had to trust that Interpol’s data would not reveal it either.
“What is your real name?” she asked, turning to face me full on with a broad, knowing smile.
Okay, so that direct approach put me on guard. Maybe she was just making logical leaps but seemed to be fishing for info.
“Sorry,” I countered, returning her stare. “No intrigue there. My paternal grandfather’s name was Darrel, but Dad thought that sounded a bit too Appalachian, so he changed the last letter and I became Darren.”
“Why is it ‘Appalachian’ as you call it, and what is Appalachian for that matter? Didn’t your mother have a say in it?”
Multiple questions again. We may have solved a murder, uncovered some questionable practices at a bank in Vienna, and exposed the President of the United States to grave personal and political harm. But she couldn’t shake her training.
