by Rick Blechta
“He recorded himself humping women?”
She made a wry expression. “I love the way you Americans talk! I do have to go there soon. Yes, he made videos of all his ‘humping’ women. They did not know, of course.”
I felt a little sick. “And he made one of my wife with him?”
“Of course. He made two that night. One in the Lustgarten, and one in your wife’s room by means of video cameras which he had hidden in those places. It was all automatic. I have those videotapes in my possession.”
“What do they show?”
“You do not want to see the first one, Herr Lukesh.” An expression of distaste flitted across the girl’s face. “It is the second one you will want. And that will cost you one million American dollars.”
“One thing that has left the media gasping is the speed at which the ‘Tory Phenomenon’ has spread, due mainly to the Internet. At last count, there were over thirty sites on the Web in eleven different languages dedicated not only to reporting the latest news and rumors, but also endlessly discussing the woman herself. As might be expected, the opinions are polarized and provocative.”
—From the editorial page of The National Post
Chapter 14
TORY
Fräulein Tory,
I hope that I am doing this everything right because I never use a computer to send an electronic mail before. For reasons that are obvious I am not able to ask from anyones help and I hope that I remember all that you showed me that night.
As I already have promised to you, I am here in Vienna and I have with me the baron’s precious music. Do you still have interest in it? (ha-ha) If so, I have it in my hands. Even though I told to you that I would not take any money for it, I have considered again what I am thinking on this subject. I am afraid that I now have to ask for some amount of money extra for the risk that I am taking for you.
I ask for $250,000 US dollars for it, which is not so very much for someone like you and a very small amount for what the papers are worth.
Please do not think bad of me for this, but first, I really need finances for what I am wanting to do and I also have performed most valuably on your behalf.
It would be the best thing to meet in person. If you want the concerto, you must come to Storkgasse 503/6 tomorrow at 23:30 Uhr. At that late time it should be safer for you to travel around. Tell absolute no one of our meeting and you must come by yourself. I will give you instructions then how we are to proceed. You can trust me and I hope I am being able to trust you.
Thekla
“What does all that mean?” Elen asked, reading over my shoulder. “Isn’t she the person who helped you—”
“Yes! The goddamn maid who I thought had my best interests at heart!” I answered angrily. “No wonder she wanted me out of the way so bad! I even shared some of the baron’s money we found. I’ll bet the little operator even has a Swiss bank account. God! Did she ever sucker me!”
“She’s referring to the original score for your concerto?”
“You bet. She must have known where it was all the time!”
“She did get you out of the castle,” Elen pointed out, “and you did tell me that you would have offered the baron even more money for the same thing.”
“Whose side are you on?” I snapped and regretted it immediately when Elen pulled back as if slapped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but this has really taken me by surprise.”
“It’s all right.” She walked over to the sofa and sat down. “What are you going to do now?”
“I guess I’m going to have to go meet her,” I answered, putting my chin in my hands and staring at nothing.
Elen looked skyward. “Tory, that’s absolutely crazy! Don’t you have any sense?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Damned right I don’t! Do you have any concept of how risky something like that is? Of all the dimwitted—”
“No! Just listen to me, okay? That score must be protected at all costs. Do you honestly think that Thekla knows what she’s doing with it? The paper it’s written on is almost two hundred years old. Anything could happen!”
“I’m sure this Baron von What’s-his-name made copies of it.”
“A copy doesn’t mean a damn thing without the original. Only that will establish the work’s authenticity. If I can get it back, make sure it’s really safe, then they can cart me off to prison if that’s the way it’s got to be. I will have done a good day’s work.”
Only the fact that I could barely sit down and had to keep myself fully dosed with painkillers kept Elen from throwing me out on my butt that evening. We had a major fight about pigheadedness (mine) and ungratefulness (mine) and stupidity (mine, again). I couldn’t disagree with my friend since everything she said was true. Going to meet Thekla was about the dumbest thing I could do.
And yet, I had to do it. I simply couldn’t give up with so much at stake. I’d done nothing but screw up ever since I’d arrived in Austria, and this was my one chance to put at least part of it right.
It also didn’t take much digging into the jumble of my emotions to discover that deep down I was hoping beyond hope that it would still be me who would get to premiere the work.
***
The next morning, our argument picked up right where it had left off. Afraid of the effect of the tranqs on my system and of allowing myself to doze off for fear of having those awful nightmares again, I’d kept myself awake the whole night, so I was pretty strung out, which didn’t help my temper.
“And how are you supposed to play your bloody concerto if you’re locked up in a prison?” Elen pointed out for the twelfth time.
The early morning sun had given way to thick clouds and intermittent rain. I stood looking forlornly out the window.“At least I’d know it was safe, that it wasn’t lost again—or worse. Don’t you understand? This is beyond price. Do you think undiscovered Beethoven manuscripts come along every day? I have to go. I have to pay—and Thekla is clever enough to know it.”
“And it’s also a great way to set you up. What if she’s after the reward they’ve been talking about on the telly?”
I finally turned to look at Elen. “Then I guess you’ll have to visit me in jail. Besides, she’s asking me for a lot more money than the von Heislinger family is offering as their reward.”
“Look, Tory,” Elen said exasperatedly, “you can’t just walk into this with no plan. You’ll get caught for certain!”
“What do you suggest, then?”
Elen looked down at the floor for a second and then shrugged. “All right. I give up. I’ll have to help you, that’s all. Now here’s how we might proceed—”
“Now you’re going to help me?”
She smiled. “I might as well, otherwise you’ll go off and do it by yourself. At least this way, there will be someone along with a modicum of sense.”
ROCKY
The magnitude of von Heislinger’s maid’s demand totally stunned me. “Where do you think I’m going to get that kind of money?” I asked her.
Her expression was not unkind, but her words were merciless. “I think that you possess it, and if you do not, you can be making arrangements to get it. What is it worth to you to save your wife?”
My brain churned dizzyingly. This woman had me, and she knew it. I had no idea what our various bank accounts held at the moment, but they were probably healthy enough to pay what the maid was demanding. Still, the sheer amount of money overwhelmed me. I remembered how uncomfortable it had made me feel when Tory and I had signed the bank loan to finance her previous violin, all two hundred thousand dollars of it.
“This, um, puts me in a very awkward position,” I finally said, understating the obvious. “How do I know you’re not trying to shake me down?”
The girl looked puzzled. “What does this mean?”
“To be blunt, that you’re lying about this video to extort money from me...to cheat me.”
“It is real! I would
not lie to you about that! Your wife was very kind to me, not like some of the baron’s other guests. I would like to help her.”
“You would like us to part with one million dollars!”
“You will please not shout at me. It is stupid. People are looking at you. If you do not calm down, I will walk away, and you will never see or hear from me again.”
That momentarily silenced me, toot sweet. I looked at the sharktoothed country mouse. “You must give me a few minutes to think. This has been quite a shock.”
She smiled for the first time. “I am sure that it has.” She again consulted her watch. “Five minutes is all that I can give. Is that enough?”
“It has to be, I guess.”
“Please stay within my sight.”
Walking around to the far side of the fountain, I took all of the allotted time going over my options. Of course, I had no alternative but to pay—if what Thekla (I finally remembered her name) had told me was the truth. But for that amount of money, I wanted to be damn sure I was getting exactly what I was shelling out for. How could I accomplish that? The girl stood regarding me across the intervening expanse of water, her face an unreadable blank. I finished circling the fountain, returning to my starting point.
“So? You have reached a decision?”
I sighed deeply. “I will pay what you ask for the tape, but I must be sure that it contains something that will absolutely save Tory. You’ve obviously seen it. Does it contain that?”
She looked at me for a long minute. “If they see it, the police will not send your wife to prison.”
Her words had been carefully chosen, and so were my next ones. “Did Tory kill von Heislinger?”
“No, Herr Lukesh. You will have to view the tape yourself, but I give you my word that it will save your wife.”
I felt like tearing my hair out. “How can you do this to me? Why can’t you just tell me outright what’s on the goddamn video? I’d still need to buy it from you!”
“This is true, but what you ask is very hard to say. You will understand when you see the tape.”
“Okay, okay. Where do we go from here?”
“I am warning you that not much time do I have. You must arrange quickly to get the money.”
I shook my head. “I have no idea how long it will take. I’ve never done this kind of thing before. You can hardly go up to a bank machine and withdraw a million bucks!”
Thekla looked around somewhat nervously. “I have been here too long. Listen to me most carefully. You will be waiting this afternoon at exactly five thirty at the telephone nearest the offices of Austrobus in the Opernpassage. Do you understand? I will call and give you further instruction about where you will meet me tonight and you will tell me that you have arranged the money. You will see the telephone near the stairway to the street. It is in a small, um, alcove, I think you would call it, ja?”
As I wrote the required information on a corner of my tourist brochure, I asked another question, “I’m sure I won’t be able to get my hands on the kind of cash you’re asking for that quickly.”
“You will not have to get the real money. It will be done in a transfer of banks.”
“You’re not giving me much time. Why the big rush?”
For the first time Thekla looked edgy. “Because there is danger.”
“What kind of danger? Are the police after you?”
“It is not the police.” As she started to move off, she said over her shoulder, “Wait for my call this afternoon, and please do not tell your wife we have spoken or the deal is withdrawn. Wiedersehen.”
***
“So what do you mean to do?” Roderick asked, after carefully wiping crumbs from his mouth.
“I have to pay her the money. What choice do I have?” I looked at my watch. “Damn! It’s still not even five a.m. back in Montreal. This time difference is so goddamn frustrating! She’s already forcing me to cut this unbelievably close, considering how much money I’ve got to pull together.”
I had hot-footed it back to the hotel, although it had taken me more time than I would have expected to find a cab.
Mercifully, the media hawks were no closer than their vans and cars parked on the opposite side the street as I stepped out of the cab in front of the hotel. I wasted no time scurrying through the revolving doors. As I got my bearings, I noticed Roderick seated at one of the small collection of tables to the left of the entrance, comfortably enjoying a leisurely breakfast.
Without a word, I walked over and flopped down on the stuffed chair opposite him. Satisfyingly, the pianist jumped a mile.
“Good lord! You scared the dickens out of me!”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t look it. Where in heaven’s name did you get to this morning? I called for you at ten, and there was no answer. No one in the hotel knew where you’d gone, either. I’ve been rather worried, to be quite frank.”
“It didn’t seem to affect your appetite,” I pointed out, looking down at the remains of Roderick’s meal and suddenly feeling rather hungry.
With the lobby seemingly deserted of roaming sharks, I decided to venture a meal away from the solitary splendour of my room and motioned for the nearby waitress. With my companion’s help, I ordered a duplicate of his meal. While I awaited its arrival, I filled Roderick in on where I had been.
“This Thekla has you over the proverbial barrel,” Roderick said as I finished talking. “Clever girl.”
“Of course, and she damn well knows it!” I agreed explosively, every bit of my frustration showing. “The worst part is that I can’t trust her. What if she’s lying about the whole thing? I guess I don’t mind having to spend a million bucks to bail Tory out of this, but how could I face her if I lost the money, had nothing to show for it, and she’s still on the hook?”
“I think you have to be very careful. Have you considered the fact that she can’t just use any account for the transfer of an amount that large? The only people I know who will do it with no questions asked are the Swiss, and I’d be willing to bet that she didn’t set up something like that herself. She’s getting help from someone who knows how to work the windy side of the law, and that could spell trouble for you, my friend. Those people can play rough when a million dollars is involved.” Roderick stared pensively into his empty coffee cup. “This makes my news from yesterday’s excursion seem rather more important than I thought, then.”
“Right! I’d forgotten about that. How did things go?”
“We—I got my old friend Hugo to drive down with me—arrived in Friesach, which is the town nearest to the von Heislinger estates, shortly after midday. It didn’t take much digging to find out that the von Heislinger family pretty well owns the place. My idea was first to find out what the buzz was with the locals. That seemed to be the best place to find information.”
“And?”
“Here’s your food,” he answered as the waitress approached. “Why don’t you eat, and we’ll talk upstairs? I don’t think the lobby of a hotel is the place to discuss something like this. Besides, it’s bad for the digestion.”
I stopped in mid-butter of a croissant. “It’s that bad?”
“No, especially in light of what happened to you this morning.”
A short time later in the elevator, Roderick said to my reflection on the polished brass door in front of us, “I’ll get a few notes I wrote up and meet you in your room in a few minutes.”
I shrugged. “Why don’t we just do it in your room? To be honest, I’m getting pretty tired of looking at my four walls.”
“You’d get tired pretty quickly of mine then, too: different four walls, same bloody decor.”
We were both smiling as we exited at our floor. That smile lasted all the way back to my room and through Roderick’s opening phrase of, “I think our best option for finding out anything concrete about what happened three nights ago—assuming we can’t talk directly to Tory—lies with this maid, Thekla.”
Swiping my r
oom card I swung the door open as I looked back at Roderick. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we should make further info part of the deal for the million bucks she’s—”
That’s as far as I got.
“My God...” Roderick hissed through clenched teeth as he stared past me into the room.
I turned back and stopped cold. My room had been tastefully redecorated in Neo-Tornado.
Somebody had wanted something awful badly.
***
“The security in our establishment is first-rate, the best, meine Herren. The locks on the doors cannot be opened without a swipe card. You must not have shut your door tightly, Herr Lukesh.”
The hotel manager was engaged in some major butt-covering as Roderick and I sat in his office waiting for the cops to show.
“I beg to differ,” I replied more mildly than I felt. “The spring that shuts the door is quite strong. The other day it slammed behind me, and I had to get a porter up to open it, since my card was in the room.”
The manager threw up his hands. “Then how did someone gain access?”
Roderick pointed out that access could be gained by borrowing or stealing an employee’s pass card. “A chambermaid, for instance. It has been known to happen.”
The manager would have none of it. “Then your card must have been stolen. I trust my staff implicitly. They are all hand-picked.”
By way of answering, I held up my card for him to see. The intercom’s buzzing spared the manager, whose bald head was now covered with fine beads of sweat, from having to respond. “Ja?...Bestimmt, sie sollen sofort heraufkommen!” He looked up at us. “The police have arrived.”
“It’s about bloody time,” Roderick mumbled so that only I could hear.
A tall man strutted into the room as if to the sound of his own inner fanfare, a peacock oozing self-importance if I’d ever seen one. With a tightly-clipped moustache and a uniform which looked as if it had been pressed right on his body, all he needed was a monocle and cigarette holder to audition for the role of an SS officer for the Third Reich. Brush-cut gray hair completed his quasi-martial ensemble. His hard blue eyes gazed down impassively as he towered over me. “It is quite interesting that I find you here in this situation, Herr Lukesh.”
