“Kroslak went on the run. There was no time left for him to investigate those murders. My name isn’t on the list, but they’re after me as well.”
More paper rattled as the colonel read through the last of the pages.
“Titans of business, political leaders. Paymasters for the killings.” Jana leaned back in her seat. “Who better to hire to do your dirty work than the police who either will be called on to investigate the crime or have access to the information about the progress of the investigation of the crime? If the investigators are the killers, that’s the end of the investigation.” Jana sipped her wine. “They didn’t count on Kroslak and his computer.”
“How did he learn about them?”
“I think they tried to recruit him. They revealed information to bring him on board. He would have gone along with them, all the while looking for the evidence that could hang them. The information they gave him led to other information, other killings, other paymasters, until he put the package together for us.”
The colonel leafed back to one of the prior pages he’d read.
“There is no paymaster listed for my killing.”
“Kroslak ran out of time. He was still searching, which is why he went to Prague. They got him before he could come up with all the answers.”
“He was a good cop.”
“And a good man,” Jana added.
“Can you pick up the investigation?” he asked.
Jana thought about her answer. “In Slovakia, you said I wasn’t the appropriate person for the job.”
“I also said that if we didn’t get anywhere, I’d come back to you.”
“I take it that Elias hasn’t come up with anything?”
“Nothing.”
“I can pick up the investigation,” she assured him. “Actually, I never stopped.”
“I assumed you wouldn’t.” He riffled through the papers. “I’d like your promise not to get killed.”
“My promise won’t be worth much if I’m dead.”
“Take Elias with you. Brief him. The insurance man, Fico, is in Vienna. Elias was going to interview him. I’ve already told Elias you’re back on the case.”
“Good.”
The colonel looked at the papers remaining in his hand.
“I don’t understand this document.”
“It’s in Romanian. Peter had it.”
“From Kroslak as well?”
“Kroslak had a copy.”
“Get it translated.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“Try harder. I don’t want to give them too much time to come after me again.”
“Or me.”
“Naturally.”
He got up, scooping up most of the papers, leaving just the Romanian report, dropping money on the table for the drinks.
“My treat.”
“This must be an unusual occasion.”
He grimaced, then walked over to Elias, said a few words to him, and walked out. Benco gulped down the rest of his beer and trailed after him.
Chapter 39
They went to the address that Elias had for Fico, Suite 2 in a corner building on Gumpendorferstrasse. It took up the entire floor, a crisp, modern office that projected efficiency and prosperity. Except, surprisingly, at ten in the morning the office was absolutely empty of people, apart from a sallow young man with a thin moustache and a very small chin sitting at a front desk. A family photo on the edge of the desk indicated that he was at least temporarily trying to make himself at home. Reluctantly, he put down the book he’d been reading.
“What can I do for you?” The young man smiled halfheartedly. “No one else is in the office.”
“I had an appointment with Mr. Fico,” Elias told him as he handed him his card. “I made it two days ago.”
The young man examined the card for a long moment, then handed it back to Elias. “We were bought out. There’s no one else here,” he repeated.
“Bought out by whom?” Jana asked.
“Another insurance-investigation group. I think they’re Swiss. All I know is that they gave everyone five days off until the new management team arrives, except for me and my relief. We’re supposed to look after the place, kind of. The phones have been rerouted, so they’re dead, and I don’t even have to answer them. I just sit.”
“Fico?” Jana reminded him.
“He was a vice president of the old company. I’m not sure he’ll be back. I heard the executives received bonuses to ensure their cooperation. None of the rest of us were given any extra pay. Which, I guess, is what happens in these things. The word is that there are going to be staff layoffs. So who knows who’ll be back?”
“Mr. Fico was supposed to leave some material for us.” Jana showed him her police badge. “We need it for an investigation we’re conducting. It’s imperative that we get it.”
“I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”
“He does keep an office here, right?”
“Right.” He pointed to the rear. “Back there. It has his name and title on the door. He got the office with the big window.” He snickered. “He used to be an important man.”
Jana began walking; Elias followed her.
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to let you go into his office,” the young man called after them. He watched them continue toward the rear, shrugged, then went back to his reading.
Jana and Elias easily found Fico’s office. It was locked. Jana nodded to Elias, who put his shoulder to the door and snapped the lock. They walked inside. A large picture window faced the street. A big wooden desk, plush executive chair, leather visitors’ chairs in front of the desk, a hand-woven rug on the floor, and two very large oil paintings on the wall depicting famous Austrian battle scenes proclaimed executive importance. There were no papers on the desk or in the matching credenza and its wastebasket. The floor not covered by the rug had been recently waxed. The office and furniture were so clean, it looked as if it had been wiped down with an antiseptic. It was all ready for its new occupant.
“I talked to Fico yesterday,” Elias confirmed. “He said nothing about the sale of the business, and confirmed our appointment to meet here.”
“My thought is that the gentleman had no intention of keeping his appointment with you.” Jana finished examining the desk, checking the computer as the last item on her list, turning it over, opening the bottom and looking inside. “No hard drive. It’s been taken. They wanted to make sure there were no stray pieces of information left. Just like The Hague.” She looked over the office. “I smell fear. The place is too well scrubbed. They even cleaned the walls.”
“Your friends from The Hague?”
“It has to be. They came here and took the hard drive, and maybe Fico.”
“They have him?”
“Perhaps,” Jana said. “Or he’s afraid of them and went on the run.” She thought about what had happened to Kroslak when he was on the run, silently hoping the same thing hadn’t happened to Fico. “You checked on the firm before you called Fico?”
“Of course. It’s an independent insurance-investigation firm specializing in major cases on an international level, working for major insurers. They’ve been around for about ten years. From what I’ve been able to find out, they had a good reputation. In the comments I read, there were no rumors about the firm being up for sale.”
“Our focus has to be Fico right now.” She thought for a second. “There’s another source of information. Firms keep a record of business trips executives take, with explanations of their expenses so they can bill for them. Fico will have left a paper trail in the accounting section. They’ll also have a home address and phone number for him.”
The two found the accounting section, then began going through the paperwork referring to Fico, finding his home address and phone number in Vienna. Then they began the much longer search for his caseload, his business trips and expenses. After a half-hour, the young man from the front desk appeared.
“I’ll have to ask you to stop. I don’t believe you’re authorized to do this.”
The two continued without pausing.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll have to call the police.”
“Call Johann Swartzkopf at the polizeiwache. Ask for a direct line to him. He’ll verify who we are,” Jana told him. “Tell him it’s Commander Jana Matinova.” She continued with her search.
“I really think you have to stop until I get authorization.” Jana’s voice became sharper. “You’re interfering with a police investigation. Unless you want to be arrested, leave. Schnell!”
The young man ran out of the area.
“Who is Swartzkopf?” asked Elias.
“I’ve never heard of him,” Jana admitted. “By the time the Austrian police give up on their search for a policeman named Swartzkopf, and by the time the young man comes back in here to face us with the fearsome fact that the police can’t find a Johann Swartzkopf and he asks us to spell the name to make sure he got it right, we’ll be through. So search.”
They finished their search of the records and walked out, carrying several manila folders. The young man was on the phone. He set it down on its cradle as if afraid they might snatch if from his hands as they walked by. He glanced at the folders they were taking, but was too fearful to say anything about them.
Jana thanked him. “We appreciate your assistance.”
“Have a good day,” said Elias.
When they left the building, they walked several blocks, then stepped into a small Imbiss-Stube outside the Ring, ordered plates of rustic-style pumpkin soup and a glass of cheap Austrian white wine, then ate as they went over the papers they’d acquired.
Jana found ten locations in Fico’s expense accounts that corresponded to sites where killings had taken place as indicated in the microfilmed Kroslak papers. The trips Fico had taken occurred at about the time of the killings. On a number of occasions, there had been multiple visits for “investigative purposes.” On seven of those occasions, at different locations, the names of the victims listed on the Kroslak papers were mentioned. It was enough of a correlation for them to be certain that there was a connection between the killings and the insurance investigations. There was also a reference to Slovakia and to the approval of an insurance investigation, but there was no mention of the people who had been killed in Bratislava, or of the attempted murder of Colonel Trokan.
Perhaps Fico had not yet submitted his latest expense reimbursement request along with reasons for the expenses.
They took a taxi to Fico’s home. If they were lucky, and Fico was cooperative, they might be able to put the whole scheme together, utilizing his information in conjunction with theirs.
They arrived just as the fire department finished putting out a blaze that had gutted Fico’s apartment, but before the coroner’s office carted off Fico’s badly burned body.
The murderers were still one step ahead of them.
Chapter 40
Jana and Elias went to the hospital in a privately hired ambulance so they could get inside without being noticed if the public entrances were being watched. At the emergency area, the two of them hopped out, then slipped into a staff elevator, which took them up to the observation ward where the professor was being kept. The ward nurse informed them that the professor was in the children’s ward. Jana guessed what he was doing.
There was the professor, powdered, charcoaled, and lipsticked in a makeshift clown’s face, tripping himself up, accidentally getting stuck to the floor, doing pratfalls, juggling glasses, trays, and everything else that was handy, and, of course, doing magic tricks for the kids. Much to the dismay of the children and the professor, Jana and Elias dragged the reluctant man away from the performance and down the elevator back to the emergency area and out to the waiting ambulance. They didn’t even give him time to remove his makeup.
The ambulance let them off at the Sudbahnhof station, where they caught the train for the sixty-kilometer trip across the Austrian border to Bratislava. There were a few stops in between the two cities for the hour-long run to Slovakia, but, at least for the moment, they could relax. The other passengers stared at the professor, still wearing his clown face, his arms folded in disapproval, sulkily refusing to talk to either police officer because they had interrupted his performance. Jana used the time to catch up on the information Elias had acquired with respect to the murders of Peter and the professor’s nephew in Bratislava.
“Did you review of all of Peter Saris’s …?” Jana stopped herself. She felt a surge of depression when she mentioned Peter’s name. Be professional, she reminded herself. “You reviewed the cases the prosecutor was investigating when he was murdered?”
“All the cases we knew about. There was one missing, the one he’d informed the attorney general was ‘hot.’There was nothing left with respect to it, not a scrap, not even a case file name.”
“He must have told the attorney general something about it.”
“Just enough to get permission to open a John Doe file. He told him that the case might involve high members of the government and that he wanted to keep it all quiet. He said they needed to be assured that there would be no leaks until he was far enough along to brief the attorney general without compromising the case. They’d become aware that their office had a leak, either the police or their own people. That’s the reason the attorney general gave me for agreeing to follow the prosecutor’s suggestion.”
“It sounds like the attorney general didn’t want to know anything until he could be sure he’d be able to cover himself if anything went wrong with the inquiry. He wanted to ‘Hear no evil’ until Peter was absolutely sure.”
Elias shrugged. “I think so. All politicians are alike. Nobody takes chances.”
“It was likely to be connected to one of the other cases that the prosecutor was investigating. How else would he have come upon it? You’re sure you checked through all of them, to see if a government minister or anyone else high up in the government was involved?”
“The only one that came close was the oil-equipment matter.”
“What about it?”
“The oil company that was developing the new oil field complained that they were being taxed at the price of new equipment by Customs and Excise for used equipment they were importing. The oil company appealed and won. One of the customs officials disputed the ruling and sent a letter to the Anti-Corruption Section. So the prosecutor opened a file. From what I could determine, the company’s appeal was correct. In any case, the original contract the government made with the oil company said that any equipment they brought in for the purpose of developing the field would be free of import duties, so I was surprised that the oil company agreed to pay any taxes at all. But they did, so what’s the harm?”
“They paid the lesser amount?”
“Yup. I didn’t see corruption there. If anything, they paid more than they had to. And they’ve taken an even bigger loss, now that the oil field has been nationalized.”
“And no other case he was handling came close to involving major government officials?”
“The case files for his other assignments were all there. I didn’t see anything suspicious.”
Jana was beginning to seethe. One case or another of Peter’s had to have led to his death. As yet, they were all isolated instances that did not cohere. Her frustration was beginning to choke her. She turned to Elias. “Did you get the chance to talk to Fico about his work in Slovakia?”
“He left Bratislava and was on the move until I reached him by phone and arranged the meeting in Austria. You know what happened then.”
“Did you find out what type of investigations he specialized in?”
“From what I learned, he focused on large-scale investigations, all insurance-related, everything from heavy construction overruns to oil spills to bankruptcy frauds. Nothing small. Almost all of them involved millions of rupees, dollars, pounds, or euros. The man was supposed to be very good
at what he did.”
“He was killed because he was on to something in Slovakia.”
“Maybe they just caught up with him in Slovakia about a case from another country? So they tried to kill him at the hotel and got the kid instead?”
“You’re convinced they tried to kill him and killed the student by mistake?”
The professor began focusing on the conversation when he heard his nephew mentioned.
“Fico was supposed to be sitting there,” Jana said.
“But it wasn’t Fico. Maybe they didn’t know what he looked like?”
“Even odder, how would they know Fico was supposed to be sitting there? Could the killer have heard the student tell the maitre d’ he was Fico? Perhaps somebody inside the restaurant signaled to the murderer? Seats for breakfast are not preassigned. Someone had to point him out when he sat down.”
She pondered the issue. “It had to be the maitre d’. He checked the boy in. All he knew was that he was given the name Fico by the student. He would have been told by the killer to signal when and where Fico sat. We need to re-interview him.”
Elias nodded.
The professor finally spoke up.
“I think they wanted to kill both this man Fico and my nephew.” His words were forced out from deep inside. “And it’s my fault.”
“Professor, why is it your fault?” Jana kept her voice gentle. “Tell us about it. I know that whatever you did was not done with the intent to injure your nephew.”
“I told him to do it!”
“To do what, Professor?”
“He brought it to me.”
“What did he bring you, Professor?” Jana made sure her voice remained soft and nonjudgmental.
“The papers you showed me.”
“The Romanian report?”
“Yes.” His eyes had filled with tears, his voice husky with pain. “He showed it to me.”
“Why did he show it to you, Professor?”
“He told me that in the course of his research he’d discovered this report. He said he thought it showed some kind of corruption. He wanted to know who he should send it to. I encouraged him. I told him that he was a good man, and good men have to act or bad ones will prevail. I saw the swastika on the report. They were bad men. We had to stamp them out.” He stopped, the tears streaming down his face, streaking his clown make-up.
The Magician's Accomplice Page 23
