“Are you ready, Petra?”
“Ja” was her terse, tense reply. It had been years since either had ran an operation, and the immediate reality of it was different from the planning they’d spent a week to accomplish, going over charts and diagrams. There were things they did not yet know for certain, like the exact number of servants in the building. They started walking to the front door when a delivery truck came up, arriving there just as they did. The truck doors opened, and two men got out, both carrying large boxes in their arms. One waved to Hans and Petra to go up the stone steps, which they did. Hans hit the button, and a moment later the door opened. “Tauten Tag,” Hans said. “We have an appointment with Herr Ostermann.”
“Your name?”
“Bauer,” Furchtner said. “Hans Bauer.”
“Flower delivery,” one of the other two men said.
“Please come in. I will. call Herr Ostermann,” the butler whatever he was-said.
“Danke, ” Furchtner replied, waving for Petra to precede him through the ornate door. The deliverymen came in behind, carrying their boxes. The butler closed the door, then turned to walk left toward a phone. He lifted it and started to punch a button. Then he stopped.
“Why don’t you take us upstairs?” Petra asked. There was a pistol in her hand aimed right into his face.
“What is this?”
“This,” Petra Dortmund replied with a warm smile, “is my appointment.” It was a Walther P-38 automatic pistol.
The butler swallowed hard as he saw-the deliverymen open their boxes and reveal light submachine guns, which they loaded in front of him. Then one of them opened the front door and waved. In seconds, two more young men entered, both similarly armed.
Furchtner ignored the new at-rivals, and took a few steps to look around. They were in the large entrance foyer, its high, four-meter walls covered with artwork. Late Renaissance, he thought, noteworthy artists, but not true masters, large paintings of domestic scenes in gilt frames, which were in their way more impressive than the paintings themselves. The floor was white marble with black-diamond inserts at the joins, the furniture also largely gilt and French=looking. More to the point, there were no other servants in view, though he could hear a distant vacuum cleaner working. Mirchtner pointed to the two most recent arrivals and pointed them west on the first floor. The kitchen was that way, and there would, doubtless be people there to control.
“Where is Herr Ostermann?” Petra asked next.
“He is not here, he-”
This occasioned a movement of her pistol, right against his mouth. “His automobiles and helicopter are here: Now, tell us where he is.”
“In the library, upstairs.” .
“Gut. Take us there,” she ordered. The butler looked into her eyes for the first time and found them far more intimidating than the pistol in her hand. He nodded and turned toward the main staircase.
This, too, was gift, with a rich red carpet held in place with brass bars, sweeping on an elegant curve to the right as they climbed to the second floor. Ostermann was a wealthy man, a quintessential capitalist who’d made his fortune trading shares in various industrial concerns, never taking ownership in one, a string-puller, Petra Dortmund thought, a Spinne, a spider, and this was the center of his web, and they’d entered it of their own accord, and, here the spider would learn a few things about webs and traps.
More paintings on the staircase, she saw, far larger than anything she’d ever done, paintings of men, probably the men who’d built and lived in this massive edifice, this monument to greed. and exploitation : . . she already hated its owner who lived so well, so opulently, so publicly proclaiming that he was better than everyone else while he built up his wealth and exploited the ordinary workers. At the top of the staircase was a huge oil portrait of the Emperor Franz Josef himself, the last of his. .wretched fine, who’d died just a few years before the even more hated Romanovs. The butler, this worker for the evil one, turned right, leading them down a wide hall into a doorless room. Three people were there, a man and two. women, better dressed than the butler, all working away at computers.
“This is Herr Bauer,” the butler said in a shaky voice. “He wishes to see Herr Ostermann.”
“You have an appointment?” the senior secretary asked.
“You will take us in now, ” Petra announced. Then the gun came into view, and the three people in the anteroom stopped what they were doing and looked at the intruders with open mouths and pale faces.
Ostermann’s home was several hundred years old, but not entirely a thing of the past. The male secretary – in America he would have been called an executive assistant – was named Gerhardt Dengler. Under the edge of his desk was an alarm button. He thumbed this hard and long while he stared at the visitors: The wire led to the schloss’s central alarm panel, and from there to the alarm company.
Twenty kilometers away, the employees at the central station responded to the buzzer and flashing light by immediately calling the office of the Staatspolizei. Then one of them called the schloss for confirmation. “May I answer it?” Gerhardt asked Petra, who seemed to him to be in charge. He got a nod and lifted the receiver.
“Herr Ostermann’s office.”
“Hier ist Traudl, ” the alarm company’s secretary said.
“Tauten Tag, Traudl. Hier ist Gerhardt,” the executive assistant said. “Have you called about the horse?” That was the phrase for serious trouble, called a duress code.
“Yes, when is the foal due?” she asked, carrying on to protect the man on the other end, should someone be listening in on the line. .
“A few more weeks, still. We will tell you when the time comes,” he told her brusquely, staring at Petra and her pistol.
“Danke, Gerhardt. Auf Wiederhoren.” With that, she hung up and waved to her watch supervisor.
“It is about the horses,” he explained to Petra, “We have a mare in foal and-”
“Silence,” Petra said quietly, waving for Hans to approach the double doors into Ostermann’s office. So far, she thought, so good. There was even some cause for amusement. Ostermann was right through those double doors, doing the work he did as though things were entirely normal; when they decidedly were not. Well,-now it was time for him to find out. She pointed to the executive assistant. “Your name is?…” “Dengler,” the man replied.
“Gerhardt Dengler”
“Take us in, Herr Dengler,” she– suggested, in a strangely childlike voice.
Gerhardt rose from his desk. and walked slowly to the double doors, head down., his movements wooden, as though his knees were artificial. Guns did that to people, Dortmund and Furchtner knew. The secretary turned the knobs and pushed, revealing Ostermann’s office.
The desk was huge, gilt like everything else in the building, and sat on a huge red wool rug. Erwin Ostermann had his back to them, head down examining some computer display or other.
“Herr Ostermann?” Dengler said.
“Yes, Gerhardt?” was the reply, delivered in an even voice, and when there was no response, the man turned in his swivel chair
-“What is this?” he asked, his blue eyes going very. wide when he saw the visitors, and then wider still when he saw the guns. “Who-”
“We are commanders of the Red Workers’ Faction,” Furchtner informed the trader. “And you are our prisoner.” .
“But what is this?”
“You and we will be taking a trip. If you behave yourself, you will come to no harm. If you do not, you and others will be killed. Is that clear?” Petra asked. To make sure it was, she again aimed her pistol at Dengler’s head.’
What followed then could have been scripted in a movie. Ostermann’s head snapped left and right, looking for something, probably help of some sort, which was not to be seen. Then he looked back at Hans and Petra and his face contorted itself into shock and disbelief. This could not be happening to him. Not here, not in his own office. Next came the outraged denial of the facts he could see before him… and then, finally, came fear. The process lasted five or six seconds. It was always the same. She’d seen it before, and realized that she’d forgotten how pleasurable it was to behold. Ostermann’s hands balled into fists on the leather surface of his desk, then relaxed as his body realized how powerless it was. Trembling would start soon, depending on how much courage he might have. Petra didn’t anticipate a great deal of that: He looked tall, even sitting down, thin-regal, even, in his white shirt with the starched collar and striped tie. The suit was clearly expensive, Italian silk, probably, finely tailored just for him. Under the desk would be custom-made shoes, polished by a servant. Behind him she could see lines of data marching upward. on the computer screens. Here Ostermann was, in the center of his web, and scarcely a. minute before he’d been totally at ease, feeling himself invincible, master of his fate, moving money around the world, adding to his fortune. Well, no more of that for a while-probably forever, though Petra had no intention of telling him that until the last possible second, the better to see the shock and terror on his regal face just before the eyes went blank and empty.