The home of Erwin Ostermann was magnificent, Hans Fürchtner thought for the tenth time, just the sort of thing for an arrogant class-enemy. Their research into the target hadn’t revealed any aristocratic lineage for the current owner of this schloss, but he doubtless thought of himself in those terms. For now, Hans thought, as he turned onto the two-kilometer driveway of brown gravel and drove past the manicured gardens and bushes arranged with geometric precision by workers who were at the moment nowhere to be seen. Pulling up close to the palace, he stopped the rented Mercedes and turned right, as though looking for a parking place. Coming around the rear of the building, he saw the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter they’d be using later, sitting on the usual asphalt pad with a yellow circle painted on it. Good. Fürchtner continued the circuit around the schloss and parked in front, about fifty meters from the main entrance.
“Are you ready, Petra?”
“Ja” was her terse, tense reply. It had been years since either had run 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.
“Guten Tag,” Hans said. “We have an appointment with Herr Ostermann.”
“Your name?”
“Bauer,” Fürchtner 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,” Fürchtner 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.
Fürchtner ignored the new arrivals, 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. Fürchtner 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 gilt, 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 line, 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.
“Guten 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 Wiederhören.” 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 Fürchtner 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 i
s 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,” Fürchtner 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.
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 Prinze, 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 it 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 £500,000 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,” Fürchtner 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,” Fürchtner 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.