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 Sicherheitsbüro, 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 Jürgen 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.
Ben sat back. “You have no authority here.”
“Absolutely right. But I don’t need authority.”
What the hell did she mean? “So what do you want from me?”
“I want information. I want to know why you were really visiting Rossignol. Why you were really visiting Jürgen Lenz. What you’re really up to, Mr. Hartman.”
“And if I don’t care to share?” He tried to project an image of confidence.
She cocked her head. “Would you like to find out what’ll happen? Why don’t you spin the wheel and take a chance?”
Jesus, she was good, Ben thought. He breathed deeply. The room’s walls seemed to be closing in. He kept his face blank, unreadable.
She continued: “Do you know that there’s a warrant for your arrest in Zurich?”
Ben shrugged. “That’s a laugh.” He decided that it was time for him to be aggressive, aggrieved, undefensive—as a wrongfully arrested American would be. “Maybe I know the ways of the Swiss a little better than you do. For one thing, they’ll swear out a warrant if you spit out your gum on the sidewalk. For another, there’s no goddamn possibility of extradition.” He’d established this much from his conversations with Howie. “The canton of Zurich has a hard enough time getting cooperation from the Polizei of the other Swiss cantons. And the fact that the Swiss have made a name for themselves in harboring tax fugitives means that other countries ignore Swiss extradition requests as a matter of policy.” These were Howie’s words, and he recited them stolidly, facing her down. She might as well know that she couldn’t game him. “The Zurich bulls claim they want me for ‘questioning.’ They don’t even pretend to have a case. So why don’t we cut the crap here?”
She leaned closer. “It’s a matter of public record that your brother had been trying to build a case against the Swiss banking establishment. Gaston Rossignol was a preeminent Swiss banker. You visit him, and he turns up dead. Let’s get back to that. Then suddenly you’re in Vienna meeting with the son of an infamous Nazi. And your father was in a concentration camp. It looks an awful lot like some kind of vengeance trip you’re on.”
So that was it. Maybe it would look like that to someone who didn’t know the truth. But I can’t tell her the truth!
“That’s preposterous,” Ben snapped. “I don’t even want to dignify your fantasies about vendettas and violence. You talk about Swiss bankers. I do deals with these people, Agent Navarro. It’s my job. International finance doesn’t really lend itself to murderous rampages, O.K.? In my world, the main injuries you inflict are paper cuts.”
“Then explain what happened on the Bahnhofplatz.”
“I can’t. I’ve been through that with the Swiss bulls over and over again.”
“And explain how you tracked down Rossignol.”
Ben shook his head.
“And the others. Come on. I want to know where you got their names and their whereabouts.”
Ben just looked at her.
“Where were you on Wednesday?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Nova Scotia, by any chance?”
“Come to think of it, I was being arrested in Zurich,” he shot back. “You can check with your friends at the Zurich police. See, I like to get arrested in every country I visit. It’s really the best way to appreciate the local customs.”
She ignored his barb. “Tell me what got you arrested.”
“You know as well as I do.”
Navarro turned to her brooding sidekick, who exhaled a plume of smoke, then looked back at Ben. “Several times in the last couple of days you yourself were almost killed. Including today—”
In his dull, dazed anxiety, he was surprised to feel a warm rush of gratitude. “You saved my life. I guess I should thank you.”
“Damn right you should,” she replied. “Now tell me, why do you think someone was trying to kill you? Who might have known what you were up to?”
Nice try, lady. “I have no idea.”
“I’ll bet you have some idea.”
“Sorry. Maybe you can ask your friends over at the CIA what they’re trying to cover up. Or is your office involved in the cover-up, too?”
“Mr. Hartman, your twin brother was killed in Switzerland, in a suspicious plane crash. More recently, you’ve had some unexplained connection
to shootings in that country. Death seems to follow you around like a cheap cologne. What am I supposed to think?”
“Think whatever you like. I didn’t commit any crime.”
“I’m going to ask you this one more time: Where did you get their names and addresses?”
“Whose?”
“Rossignol and Lenz.”
“I told you, mutual acquaintances.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you like.”
“What are you hiding? Why don’t you level with me, Mr. Hartman?”
“Sorry. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Agent Navarro folded, then unfolded, her long shapely legs. “Mr. Hartman,” she said with utmost exasperation. “I’m going to offer you a deal. You cooperate with me, and I’ll do my best to get the Swiss and the Austrians to back off.”
Was she sincere? His distrust had become almost a reflex. “Given that you seem to be the one pushing them to come after me, that strikes me as a hollow promise. I don’t have to stay here any longer, do I?”
She watched him silently, nibbling at the inside of a cheek. “No.” She took out a business card and jotted something down on the back of it, then handed it to him. “If you change your mind, here’s my hotel in Vienna.”
It was over. Thank God. He inhaled, felt the air reach the very bottom of his lungs, the anxiety suddenly lift.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Navarro,” Ben said, rising. “And thanks again for saving my life.”