forties or fifties, whether it was the black rotary-dial phone or the
oak card-catalog drawers or the Royal manual typewriter (he had no use
for computers). He liked it that way, liked the way the old things
looked, the solidity of objects from the time they made things out of
Bakelite and wood and steel and not plastic, plastic, and plastic.
He was not, however, one of those old men who lived in the past. He
loved the world today. Often he wished his darling Sarah, his wife of
fifty-seven years, were here to share it with him. They had always
planned to do a lot of traveling when he retired.
Godwin was a historian of twentieth-century Europe, a winner of the
Pulitzer Prize whose lectures had always been immensely popular on the
Princeton campus. Many of his former students now occupied positions of
great prominence in their fields. The chairman of the Federal Reserve
had been one of his brightest, as were the chairman of World Com both
the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the United
States ambassador to the UN, countless members of the Council on
Economic Advisers, even the current chairman of the Republican National
Committee.
Professor Godwin cleared his throat before answering the phone. “Hello.”
The voice was immediately familiar.
“Oh yes, Mr. Holland, good to hear your voice. We’re still on, I
hope?”
He listened for a moment. “Of course I know him, he was a student of
mine … Well, if you’re asking for my opinion, I remember him as
charming if a bit strong-headed, very bright though not really an
intellectual, or at least not interested in ideas for their own sake. A
very strong sense of moral purpose, I always thought. But Ben Hartman
always struck me as quite reasonable and levelheaded.”
He listened again. “No, he’s not a crusader. He just doesn’t have that
temperament. And he’s certainly no martyr. I think he can be reasoned
with.”
Another pause.
“Well, none of us wants the project disrupted. But I do wish you’d give
the fellow a chance. I’d really hate to see anything happen to him.”
Vienna
The interrogation room was cold and bare, with the standard furnishings
of police interrogation rooms everywhere. I’m becoming an expert, Ben
thought grimly. The one-way observation mirror, unsubtle, and as big as
a bedroom window in a suburban house. The wire mesh over the window
overlooking a bleak inner courtyard.
The American woman sat across the small room, in a gray suit, coiled on
the metal folding chair like a clock spring. She had identified herself
as Special Agent Anna Navarro of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office
of Special Investigations, and flashed an ID card to prove it. She was
also a serious beauty, a real stunner: wavy dark brown hair, eyes the
color of caramel, olive skin; tall and slim and long-legged. Nicely
dressed, too–a sense of style, which had to be rare in the Department
of Justice. Yet she was all business, not a hint of a smile. No ring,
which probably meant divorced, because women this gorgeous were usually
snatched up early, no doubt by some gallant fellow government
investigator with a square chin who’d wooed her with tales of his
bravery in apprehending miscreants until the stress of two high-powered
government careers had taken its toll on the marriage … In the folding
chair next to her sat a bruiser of a cop, a beefy guy who sat silent and
brooding and chain-smoking Casablanca cigarettes. Ben had no idea
whether the cop understood English. He’d only said his name: Sergeant
Walter Heisler of the Sicherheitsburo, the major-crimes squad of the
Viennese police.
Half an hour into the questioning, Ben became impatient. He’d tried
being reasonable, tried to talk sense, but his interrogators were
implacable. “Am I under arrest?” he asked finally.
“Do you want to be?” Agent Navarro snapped back.
Oh, good God, not this again.
“Does she have the right to do this?” Ben asked of the hulking Viennese
cop, who just smoked and stared at him bovinely.
Silence.
“Well?” Ben demanded. “Who’s in charge here?”
“As long as you answer my questions, there’s no reason to arrest you,”
Agent Navarro said. “Yet.”
“So I’m free to go.”
“You’re being held for questioning. Why were you visiting Jorgen Lenz?
You still haven’t explained properly.”
“As I said, it was a social visit. Ask Lenz.”
“Are you in Vienna for business or pleasure?”
“Both.”
“You don’t have any business meetings lined up. Is that the way you
normally travel on business?”
“I like to be spontaneous.”
“You were booked for five days at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, but
you never showed up there.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Why do I doubt that?”
“I have no idea. I felt like seeing Vienna.”
“So you just showed up in Vienna with no hotel reservations.”
“As I said, I like to be spontaneous.”
“I see,” said Agent Navarro, clearly frustrated. “And your visit to
Gaston Rossignol, in Zurich was that business as well?”
My God, so they knew about that, too! But how? He felt a wave of
panic.
“He was a friend of a friend.”
“And that’s how you treat a friend of a friend you kill him?”
Oh, Christ. “He was dead when I got there!”
“Really,” Navarro said, clearly unconvinced. “Was he expecting you?”
“No. I just showed up.”
“Because you like to be spontaneous.”
“I wanted to surprise him.”
“Instead he surprised you, huh?”
“It was a shock, yes.”
“How did you get to Rossignol? Who put you in touch with him?”
Ben hesitated, a beat too long. “I’d rather not say.”
She picked up on it. “Because he was no mutual acquaintance or anything
like that, was he? What was Rossignol’s connection to your father?”
What the hell did that mean? How much did she know? Ben looked at her
sharply.
“Let me tell you something,” Anna Navarro said dryly. “I know your
type. Rich boy, always gets whatever he wants. Whenever you get
yourself in deep doodoo, your daddy saves you, or maybe the family
lawyer bails you out. You’re used to doing whatever the hell you want
and you think you’ll never have to pay the bill. Well, not this time,
my friend.”
Ben smiled involuntarily, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of
putting up an argument.
“Your father is a Holocaust survivor, is that right?” she persisted.
So she doesn’t know everything.
Ben shrugged. “That’s what I’m told.” She certainly wasn’t entitled to
the truth.
“And Rossignol was a big-deal Swiss banker, right?” She was watching
him closely now.
What was she driving at? “That’s why you and all those Austrian cops
were staked out in front of Lenz’s house,” he said. “You were there to
arrest me.”
“No, actually,” the American woman said coolly. “To talk to you.”
“You could have just asked to talk to me. You didn’t need half the
Vienna police force. I’ll bet you’d love to pin the Rossignol murder on
me. Gets the CIA off the hook, right? Or do you Justice Department
guys hate the CIA? I get confused.”
Agent Navarro leaned forward, her soft brown eyes gone hard. “Why were
you carrying a gun?”
Ben hesitated, but just for a second or two. “For protection.”
“Is that right.” A statement of skepticism, not a question. “Are you
registered to carry a gun in Austria?”
“I believe that’s a matter between me and the Austrian authorities.”
“The Austrian authorities are sitting in this chair next to me. If he
decides to prosecute you for illegally carrying a gun, I won’t stand in
his way. The Austrians strongly disapprove of foreign visitors carrying
unregistered weapons.”
Ben shrugged. She had a point, of course. Though it seemed the least
of his worries right now.
“So let me tell you this, Mr. Hartman,” Agent Navarro said. “I find it
a little hard to believe that you carried a gun to visit a ‘friend of a
friend.” Particularly when your fingerprints were found all over
Rossignol’s house. Understand?”
“No, not really. Are you accusing me of murdering him? If so, why
don’t you come right out and say it?” He was finding it hard to
breathe, his tension steadily rising.
“The Swiss think your brother had a vendetta against the banking
establishment. Maybe something in you got twisted when he died,
something that made you take his pursuit of them to a more lethal level.
It wouldn’t be hard to show motive. And then there are your
fingerprints. I think a Swiss court would have no problem convicting
you.”
Did she genuinely believe he’d murdered Rossignol and if so, why was
this special investigator from the Department of Justice so interested?
He had no idea how much power she really had here, what kind of trouble
he was really in, and the uncertainty alone made him anxious. Don’t be
defensive, he thought. Fight back.