She had forgotten how it was, Petra realized, the sheer joy of the power she held in her hands. How had she ever gone so long without exercising it?
The first police car to arrive on the scene had been only five kilometers away on getting the radio call. Reversing direction and racing to the schloss had only taken three minutes, and now it parked behind a tree, almost totally concealed from the house.
“I see a car and a delivery truck;” the officer told his. station chief, a captain. “No movement. Nothing else to be seen at the moment.”
“Very well,” the captain replied. “Take no action of any kind, and report any new developments to me at once. I will be there in a few minutes.”
“Understood. Ende. ”
The captain replaced the microphone. He was driving to the scene himself, alone in his Audi radio car. He’d met Ostermann once, at some official function in Vienna. Just a shake of the hand and a few cursory words, but he knew what the man looked like, and knew his reputation as a wealthy, civic-minded individual who was an especially faithful supporter of the opera . . . and the children’s hospital, wasn’t he? . . . Yes, that had been the reason for the reception at the city hall. Ostermann was a widower; had lost his first wife to ovarian cancer five years earlier. Now, it was said, he had a new interest in his life named Ursel von Prime, a lovely dark-haired woman from an old family. That was the odd thing about Ostermann. He lived like a member of the nobility, but he’d come from humble roots. His father had been . . . an engineer, engine-driver actually, in the state railway, wasn’t it? Yes, that was right. And so some of the old noble families had looked down on him, and to take care of that he’d bought social respectability with his charity work and his attendance at the opera. Despite the grandeur of his home, he lived fairly modestly. Little in the way of lavish entertaining. A quiet, modestly dignified man, and a very intelligent one, so they said of him. But now, his alarm company said, he had intruders in the house, Captain Willi Altmark told himself, taking the last turn and seeing the schloss. As often as he’d noticed lit in passing, he had to remind himself now of the physical circumstances. A huge structure . . . perhaps four hundred meters of clear grass lawn between it and the nearest trees. Not good. Approaching the house covertly would be extremely difficult. He pulled his Audi close to the marked police car on the scene, and got out carrying a pair of binoculars.
“Captain,” the first officer said by way of greeting.
“Have you seen anything?”
“No movement of any kind. Not even a curtain.”
Altmark took a minute to sweep his binoculars over the building, then lifted the radio mike to tell all units en route to come quietly and slowly so as not to alert the criminals inside. Then he got a radio call from his superior, asking for his assessment of the situation.
“This may be a job for the military,” Captain Altmark responded. “We know nothing at the moment. I can see an automobile and a truck. Nothing else. No gardeners out. Nothing. But I can only see two walls, and nothing behind the main house. I will get a perimeter set up as soon as additional units arrive.”
“Ja. Make certain that no one can see us,” the commissioner told the captain, quite unnecessarily.
“Yes, of course.”
Inside, Ostermann had yet to rise from his chair. He took a moment to close his eyes, thanking God that Ursel was in London at, the moment, having flown there in the private jet to do some shopping and meet with English friends. He’d hoped to join her there the following day, and now he wondered if he’d ever see his fiancée again. Twice he’d been approached by security consultants, an Austrian and a Brit. Both had lectured him on the implicit dangers of being so publicly rich, and told him how for a modest sum, less than £500,W0 per year, he could greatly improve his personal security. The Britisher had explained that his people were all veterans of the SAS; the Austrian had employed Germans formerly of GSG-9. But he hadn’t seen the need for employing gun-carrying commandos who would hover over him everywhere he went as though he were a -chief of state, taking up space and just sitting there like-like bodyguards, Ostermann told himself. As a trader in stocks, commodities, and international currencies he’d had his share of missed opportunities, but this one . . .
“What do you want of me?”
“We want your personal access codes to the international trading network,” Furchtner told him. Hans was surprised to see the look of puzzlement on Ostermann’s face.
“What do you mean?”
“The computer-access codes which tell you what is going on.”
“But those are public already. Anyone can have them,” Ostermann objected.
“Yes, certainly they are. That is why everyone has a house like this one.” Petra managed an amused sneer.
“Herr Ostermann,” Ffrchtner said patiently. “We know there is a special network for people such as you, so that you can take advantage of special market conditions and profit by them. You think us fools?”
The fear that transformed the trader’s face amused his two office guests: Yes, they knew what they weren’t supposed to know, and they knew they could force him to give over the information. His thoughts were plain on his face.
Oh, my God, they think I have access to something that does not exist, and I will never be able to persuade them otherwise.
“We know how people like you operate,” Petra assured him, immediately confirming his fear. “How you capitalists share information and manipulate your ‘free’ markets for your own greedy ends. Well, you will share that with us-or you will die, along with your lackeys.” She waved, her pistol at the outer office.
“I see.” Ostermann’s face was now as pale as his white Turnbull and Asser shirt. He looked out to the anteroom. He could see Gerhardt Dengler there, his hands on the top of his desk. Wasn’t there an alarm system there? Ostermann couldn’t remember now, so rapidly was his mind running through the data-avalanche that had so brutally interrupted his day.
The first order of police business was to check the license= plate numbers of the vehicles parked close to the house. The automobile, they learned at once, was a rental. The truck tags had been stolen two days before. A detective team would go to the car-rental agency immediately to see what they might learn there. The next call was made to one of Herr Ostermann’s .business associates. The police needed to know how many domestic and clerical employees might be in the building along with the owner. That, Captain Altmark imagined, would take about an hour. He now had three additional police cars under his command. One of these looped around the property so that the two officers could park and approach from the rear on foot. Twenty minutes after arriving on the scene, he had a perimeter forming. The first thing he learned was that Ostermann owned a helicopter, sitting there behind the house. It was an American-made Sikorsky S-76B, capable of carrying a crew of two and a maximum of thirteen passengers that information gave him the maximum number of hostages to be moved and criminals to move them. The helicopter landing pad was two hundred meters from the house. Altmark fixed on that. The criminals would almost certainly want to use the helicopter as their getaway vehicle. Unfortunately, the landing pad was a good three hundred meters from the treeline. This meant that some really good riflemen were needed, but his preset response team had them.
Soon after getting the information on the helicopter, one of his people turned up the flight crew, one at home, one at Schwechat International Airport doing some-paperwork with the manufacturer’s representative for an aircraft modification. Good, Willi Altmark thought, the helicopter wasn’t going anywhere just yet. But by then the fact that Erwin Ostermann’s house had been attacked had perked up to the senior levels of government, and then he received a very surprising radio call from the head of the Stawspolizei.They barely made the flight – more precisely, the flight hadn’t been delayed on their account: Chavez tightened his seat belt as the 737 pulled back from the jetway, and went over the preliminary briefing documents with Eddie Price. They’d just rolled off the tarmac when Price mated his portable computer with the aircraft’s phone system. That brought up a diagram on his screen, with the caption “Schloss Ostermann.”
“So, who is this guy?” Chavez asked.
“Coming in now, sir,” Price replied. “A money-lender, it would-appear, rather a wealthy one, friend of the prime minister of his country. I guess that explains matters so far as we are concerned.”