Darren Priest Mysteries Collection

Chapter 10

April 15

Police Inspectorate

Fortunately, my escorts didn’t put on the siren or lights as they drove through the streets of Vienna. True, my face was probably obscured by the tinted windows in the back of their sedan, but anonymity suited me best.

This was my third trip to Vienna, the first one three years ago on another assignment; the second and most recent visit just three weeks back to prep for my current work. Neither trip was for idle tourism and my penchant for organization had already mapped out a clear understanding of Vienna’s roads and neighborhoods. The historic center of the city included most of what people come to Vienna to see, including historic sites, museums, churches, and palaces. The Marriott Parkring that I chose for each visit is situated on the edge of this area and is a favorite of tourists whose plans included visiting the Mozart house, the remains of the apartment where Antonio Vivaldi died, the famous Plague Monument, and some of Austria’s best restaurants all clustered into a very walkable area. Not to slight the Hofberg and Schönbrunn palaces and the Staatsoper opera house, but this was the center of the city’s nightlife.

I saw only a little of this central part of Vienna as I was driven along Johannesgasse, across the bridge and onto Obere Donaustraße, then right onto Hollandstraße. Even without a siren, the driver sped through the streets, pausing only slightly before crossing intersections, and onto Leopoldsgasse before twisting the Passat suddenly to the right, into an empty parking space in front of the police station.

Both men exited their doors from the front seat. The officer on the passenger side stepped back to my door, opened it, and signaled for me to step out of the car.

“This way, Mr. Priest,” he said kindly, although I could easily detect an icy veneer in his voice.

The officer who had been driving the car made his way around the vehicle, bounded up the few steps in front of the station, and held open the door to the building. I followed him up the steps as his partner took up a position behind me. They escorted me past a uniformed officer at the front desk – not having to check in I suppose meant that my appointment had already been arranged – and into a small room beyond. I had to smile at the windowless room and its bare walls, just like in the movies. I reflexively looked up to see if there was a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling but saw instead that the light in the room was supplied by a simple floor lamp in the corner.

I was told to sit in the chair by the table, and that Inspector Weber would be with me in a few moments.

It was more like a half hour. My escorts didn’t search me or ask any questions, but they did confiscate my cell phone.

“It will be returned to you when you leave,” I was told. “It’s just protocol. We don’t allow personal phones in the station,” he explained, although I could see the bulge of a cell phone in his uniform shirt pocket.

The door opened quietly, and Inspector Weber appeared. She walked through the opening while staring at a piece of paper in her hand, navigating the room with a familiarity that comes only with frequent visits to such a setting. I was called to the precinct because they had found a computer believed to be mine, but she didn’t have one with her.

“Why are you in Vienna, Mr. Priest?” she asked without looking at me. She was still studying the paper as she reached out to pull back the chair she would sit in.

“I am here for a wine tasting. You see, I am a…”

“Wine writer,” Weber said, studying the paper.

“Yes, of course,” I admitted, and I relaxed a bit knowing that she was referring to my cover name, not my actual identity. I knew that my computer would not give away anything about Armando Listrani. But the Austrian polizei and Interpol are very adept at connecting the dots. I also knew that the U.S. government had not been flawless about protecting my birth name and identity since I surrendered my security clearance a few years ago.

polizei“What are the wines that you are tasting? Austrian? And what will you do with the results of your…let’s say, research?”

Again, the multiple questions. I fought back the urge to smile back at her. The misdirection she used was very skilled, but common in interrogations. Trying to formulate answers to more than a single question often caused unprepared witnesses to admit the truth without realizing it.

“It’s a dinner, hosted by Ristorante Firenze…”

Ristorante Firenze“On Singerstraße,” Weber said.

“Exactly. Plus, the restaurant includes Italian wines that appear in many Austrian markets.”

“Why Italian? Is there something wrong with Austrian wines? And why not at the Cantinetta Antinori?”

Cantinetta AntinoriI paused, taking her measure, and carefully considered the answer to each of the questions before replying.

“Why not Italian?” I repeated. “They are certainly enjoyed by the Austrians, too. And no, there’s nothing wrong with Austrian wines; they’re very good, in fact. I like to eat at Cantinetta Antinori, but Ristorante Firenze is known for its wine list.”

Cantinetta AntinoriRistorante FirenzeWeber put down her pen and stared at me.

“Why are you in Vienna?”

“Like I said, for a…”

“Wine tasting. Right.”

“Tonight, in fact,” I added. “Perhaps you should…”

Just then the door opened, and an officer entered with a slip of paper that he passed to Weber. Then he took up a seat in the corner of the room. Weber unfolded the paper and read it quickly, then folded it back again and set it down on the table.

She looked at me with a show of impatience.

“I wasn’t invited, Mr. Priest, as you should know, since this is a tasting reserved for wine and food writers. Not for servants of the Austrian government, such as myself.”

“Still,” I began, “it will be…”

“Are you staying longer? Beyond the tasting?”

“Why should I leave? I like Vienna and always try to avail myself of the opera, restaurants, and bars of the city when I am here.”

“You have been here three times, Mr. Priest.” She picked up her stack of papers and began reading from them.

“You do seem to like the restaurants, particularly the ones with long wine lists, and you have been to the opera once, three years ago, to see Falstaff. What did you think, Mr. Priest?”

Falstaff“Of what?”

“Falstaff. It was December…”

Falstaff“Seventh,” I filled in. “In Two Thousand Sixteen, yes. It was quite good.”

She regarded me carefully and checked the notes on the page in her hand, nodding ever so slightly to concur in the date I have provided. I could tell that she was trying to decide whether my exact recall of the date three years past indicated a good memory or an orchestrated attempt to sound convincing.

She flipped several pages back and continued.

“But you don’t shop,” she added. “There’s no record of purchases on your credit card. No souvenirs, no artwork, no t-shirts.” Dropping the pages back on the table, she added, “No jewelry. Do you not have a wife or girlfriend, Mr. Priest? Vienna is known for its fine jewelry.”

“I just window shop.”

Weber stared at me for a long beat. And another. Then she picked up the slip of paper brought in by the other officer.

“We have your computer. It showed up here without notice. It was left on top of the garbage can outside the station’s entrance. Of course, we wanted to know whose it was, and what was on it.”

She glanced at the paper again.

“So, we opened the laptop and then began opening files on it.”

I was suspicious already, since my computer was password protected and the police could not have opened it without breaking the code. Not that they lacked the skill to do this, but oftentimes, when illicit activity is suspected, the police would follow strict protocol to protect the legitimacy of evidence as well as its chain of custody. So, they would ask for permission from the owner before opening the files. Weber and her colleagues skipped this part of police procedure, although maybe the events thus far convinced them that protocol could be dispensed with this time.

“Why did your computer not require a sign-in procedure to open?”

It did, and I knew Weber well enough already to know that she expected that to be the case. The fact that password protection had been removed was an indication that it had already been tampered with. I thought about remarking on this and scoring a point in my favor. Judging any unsolicited information to be risky, though, I remained silent.

“It had two copies of articles with your name as the byline,” she said. “You’re a very good writer, Mr. Priest.”

“Thanks.”

Staring back at me, Weber continued.

“There were also some photos. Disturbing photos.”

She let the words hang for a moment.

“And they seem to suggest criminal activity.”

My stare hardened a bit. I knew that I had not put disturbing photos on my computer. And although I didn’t mind having my Darren Priest identification on the device, I didn’t keep copies of my articles on there either. Whoever tampered with the laptop had the sense to insert my articles and byline, gambling that such an egocentric signature would confirm that the materials contained there were, in fact, mine.

With her detailed description of the contents, I wondered whether she was making this up to draw me out or if she, too, considered whether someone had gotten possession of my laptop and loaded these files onto it. Its sudden appearance at the police station argued for the latter and I wanted to point this out. But I decided it was too soon to play that card. I would save it for later when I had more evidence to support my position.

“We haven’t quite made out the details, and we haven’t opened all the files yet,” she said, pausing. “Some are password protected.

“d**g use is not unheard of here, Mr. Priest, but some types are still illegal.” Another pause. She stared intently at a photograph on the computer that I could not see from my angle.

“Have you visited the Dormandstrasse on this trip?”

“No. I’m sorry, where is that? Is it a street, or a neighborhood? What goes on there?”

This time Weber smiled. The multi-question thing was a tell, a practice among professionals but not commonly used outside the investigations community.

“It’s a street. A place where too many of our young Austrians experiment with too many new confections, new pharma, we call it. Pharma that is chemically modified for effect, and to escape the strict wording of the prohibiting laws.”

“No.”

“No, what, Mr. Priest? Were you…”

“No, I have not gone to this street, this Dormandstrasse.”

The officer sitting in the chair in the corner shifted his body and leaned forward. When Weber turned and looked over her shoulder, he rose and, in a stoop, pointed to a place on the unfolded paper that he had given her.

“What do you know about diamonds, Mr. Priest?”

I had to laugh. The girlfriend who had burst into my life suddenly about eight years ago was going to be my fiancé, but when she saw the diamond ring I chose for my proposal, she hesitated. A week later, she began expressing doubts to her friend, who reported these doubts to me, and who said Charisse was likely to spend a lot more on things than I would be.

At that time, Paulette had said, “Perhaps it’s not a good match.” She knew Charisse better than I did, I guessed.

Not a very propitious beginning to a lifelong commitment, I thought. She left just as suddenly as she had come. I thought I was a better judge of people; must have missed something.

So, no, I didn’t know very much about diamonds and I told Weber so.

“But the one point seven-five carat Marquise-cut diamond you selected is quite a piece.”

I knew nothing about a Marquise diamond and wondered where all this was coming from.

“The picture on your computer – I have to say, Mr. Priest, it is a poor photo of this exquisite diamond – but it looks just like the one recently reported missing from the Bering Brothers shop.”

It was obvious to me, though not necessarily to the Austrian police, that I was being framed. Unless I saw my computer, though, I would not be able to prove that.

“It sounds like you have some indication, based on photographs on a computer that you think is mine, that I have been involved in some illegal activity. I can categorically say that I have not. Are you sure that the computer is mine?”

“Of course, we already checked that,” Weber said stonily. “We ran the fingerprints on the outside of the case against the Interpol database. They are yours, Mr. Priest.”

This was getting very interesting. If Weber had connected prints on the computer with some found in Interpol, and if the Interpol file connected them to my cover identity, Darren Priest, there must be a complicated plot here to catch me in a web.

The truth is, I have no fingerprints. Years ago, while serving in my Army unit, my fingerprints had been removed, so I knew that what she found could not have been mine. But if I explained this to Weber, she would insist on taking prints right then, and I might end up having to give up my true identity and this job I was on would be jeopardized.

I had to play this delicately, not arguing that these were not my fingerprints, but also not arguing that this ‘Darren Priest’ guy didn’t really exist.

“Do you have a contact name at Interpol?”

“Yes, of course,” Weber said, “but you wouldn’t expect me to give you access to that. Would you?”

Our eyes remained locked in combat for a few more seconds, until Weber broke the silence.

“There are other files on your laptop that we haven’t studied yet.”

I knew that was a diversion, both from her body language and from her shutting the folder in front of her.

“They’re encrypted, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied smoothly, then she looked at me.

“Would you like to unlock the files and prove your innocence?”

I couldn’t do that for so many reasons. The files she had described already were not mine which meant that the encrypted files on the computer weren’t either. And if I was being framed so conspicuously with files that were easy to open, what terrible things must lurk in the encrypted files?

But her question offered me an opening.

“You didn’t bring the computer with you,” I said. “Perhaps you would let me see it.”

She signaled to the officer still sitting in the chair behind her and he left the room, returning a moment later with a silver-hooded laptop that looked just like mine. He placed it on the table in front of Weber and she slid it across to me.

I wasn’t going to open it but I wanted to see the computer to confirm that the instrument that they had in their custody, the laptop that they believed was mine, was in fact the computer that I had carried in my backpack and which had become lost in Stadtpark.

I ran the palm of my hand across the surface of the cover, lightly and without giving away my intention. In my work, it is commonplace to cut a pattern of scratches in the edge of these instruments so that we could easily identify them as our own. When I first bought this computer, I chose a pattern of three short parallel lines and a single scratch that cut across them at a right angle, forming a unique symbol that I would recognize by touch. This I scratched into the right edge of the cover of the laptop. The scratches were so subtle as to be essentially invisible but could be felt with the soft pads of a fingertip.

As I swept my palm across the surface, I ran my index finger down the edge and felt the familiar three-plus-one pattern that I had put on the lid of the computer. It was mine; that I was sure of.

“Well?” Weber said, growing impatient. “Is it yours?”

“Yes, well, no,” I said, without opening the lid.

“No, what?” asked Weber. “I don’t have time for pranks, Mr. Priest.”

“No, of course not. I don’t know that this computer is mine, and so I wouldn’t know how to open the files that are on it.”

“But how do you know? You haven’t tried.”

“I don’t keep encrypted files in my work. And those that you found are not mine.”

Weber sat back in her chair and tapped the point of the black pen on the desk.

“What is your work, Mr. Priest?”

“I am a wine and food writer, I told you.”

“And I know that writers don’t make a lot of money. You’re a young man,” she continued moving her eyes from my hair to my face and back again. “Writers don’t make much usually, and many of them supplement their writing with other careers.”

Weber stared at me without asking a question. But then she picked up another piece of paper and eyed me again.

“You didn’t claim much income last year. How did you survive on this?” she asked, wagging the paper in front of me.

Her comments about d**g use on Dormandstrasse and the stolen Marquise diamond came back to me, and I realized that her interrogation was heading in a dangerous direction for me. I decided it was time to come clean. Or, more specifically, to share an alternative identity with her.

“I am a bank examiner. From the States. I am here…”

“We know you are from the States. To speed this up, Mr. Priest, please skip the obvious commentary and answer my question.”

A bit testy, maybe? It was becoming important for me to put on a show of cooperation, feigned or not.

“I am here to look into some matters involving Americans who might be disguising investments, perhaps from ill-gotten winnings, and securing them in banks in Austria.”

“What Americans?”

“Well, I can’t tell you their names, but…”

“Why not? You are conducting an unwarranted investigation on Austrian soil, into an Austrian bank, for which you have just delivered accusations of illegal activity.” Leaning forward toward me, she added, “If I ask you for their names, Mr. Priest, you will give them to me.”

If the Austrian polizei got wind of the person I was looking for, especially since I had figured out that he or she is prominent in American government or business, I could be igniting a diplomatic crisis. If they knew the bank I was looking into, they would probably begin their own investigation and blow the lid off, causing the bank to bury the records that I hoped to recover. And if I told them who I was, a “renegade” American special agent with a military past in interrogation and ties to the U.S. President, I would be placed in custody and lose my bid to secure the files for Pendleton.

polizeiSo, no, I couldn’t tell Weber anything.

On the other hand, I was going to have to give her something or I could end up spending my visit to Vienna as a guest of the Austrian Bundespolizei.

Bundespolizei“I’m guessing that you want to find out who is responsible for the apparent crimes for which photographs exist on this computer.”

“But we already have you, Mr. Priest.”

“I said the person ‘who is responsible,’ so obviously, I don’t mean me.”

She nodded but didn’t erase the confident smile on her face.

“I want the same thing,” I continued, “to clear my name and to continue with my work. I know that if you release me, I will be followed as long as I am in Austria…”

“And then some,” she said with a steady stare.

“Yes, well, anyway…I can continue my work and help you uncover the author of these photographs, but not from here.”

“Frankly, Mr. Priest, I don’t care whether you continue with your work. In fact, I will have to discuss this with my superior, Gruppeninspektor Tomlin, to decide how to address your investigation. And, for the moment, I only care about the files that we have found on your computer. Are you saying someone else put them there? And what are you really doing in Vienna, Mr. Priest? And who is it you think who might want to prevent you from continuing with your work?”

“Perhaps this is all linked,” I suggested. “My investigation might have sparked retaliation, resulting in this attempt to smear me and have me jailed. It could be that allowing me to continue with my work might smoke out the perpetrator, and we will both win.”

I liked this solution. My right index finger tapped the cover of the computer as I spun the idea.

Weber looked at my hand and smiled, then she reached out with both her hands and slid the computer gently out from under mine.

“I see,” she said, “but if you leave, you will not leave with this computer.”

“That’s all well and good,” I offered. “In fact, it would be best to be seen leaving without the computer. If I’m being watched, it would be best for you to show me out of the station without the laptop…in fact, perhaps, you should be seen still holding it by your side, so the person who is stalking me will assume that the polizei are continuing to decrypt the incriminating files that he placed there.”

polizei“And if there is no such person?” Weber pointed out, “and if you are in fact the one responsible for the crimes that we seek to solve?”

“Like I said, I have no illusions about operating incognito anymore. You can round me up later.” I looked behind Weber at the silent guard sitting behind her. “Your officers seem to get around the city quite easily.”

incognitoFurthering the charade I was concocting, I made a mental note to go back to the computer store and switch the laptop that I had already ordered. At first, I had fallen into the routine of ordering the same model I was used to, but I wanted the techies at the store to remove the silver cover and replace it with a blue cover, so that any surveillance of me would clearly register that I was using a different laptop and reinforcing the idea that the police still had mine.

“Alright, Mr. Priest. You may go, for now; but as you said, we will keep an eye on you.”

I stood to leave and so did the armed officer. As I stepped toward the door, Weber rose also, cradling my laptop under her left arm. She walked me out of the interrogation room and to the exterior door of the precinct, still carrying the laptop. At the top step, she paused as I descended toward the car.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell us who you are investigating, Mr. Priest?”

I noticed that her voice was clear and loud enough to carry beyond me, as if she imagined that someone else might be listening.

Instead of answering her question, I had one of my own.

“By the way, Inspector, since you have so much information, I’m sure you have my cell phone number. When I was at the Marriott earlier, why didn’t you just call it?”

“You were in the Cascade Bar,” she replied. “Right?”

I nodded.

“Near the back of the lobby.”

I nodded again.

“It seemed better to bring you up to the front desk where these officers could get an eye on you,” she said, hooking her thumb back to where the other police officers were standing. “So that you wouldn’t exit through the back door of the hotel.” She paused, then added, “Just as you had planned to do, right?”

I couldn’t help but admire her intuition.