by Gavin Reese
That’s what led Alfred to seek out partners in the drug trafficking underworld. He refused to swallow his pride and face public criticism for ignoring the basic forces of a market economy. Few corporations of his annual revenue could operate from a single office with a shared receptionist, but Alfred didn’t want to surround himself with subordinate sycophants. He wanted the esteem and admiration of Austria’s old money, the families his father had driven to performances at the lavish Royal Opera House while he grew up. Alfred hadn’t gone inside the historic building until he was fourteen, and didn’t take in a performance until he started university. The standing-room ticket was all he could afford, but the brief glimpse into the lives of Austria’s elite had been all he needed to chart the course for his own.
The expansive wall-height clock opposite Alfred chimed once to denote the quarter-hour, and he glanced up to confirm the time. 9:45. Should get the package together.
After using a remote to draw the curtains nearly closed, Alfred stepped over to the hidden bookcase-door. He swiped his RFID key tag across the concealed sensor and pushed his way into his private storage room. Today’s parcel exchange with Altüss was a small, half-kilo cocaine purchase that Alfred pulled from his own stores. A recent uptick in recreational use among Vienna’s college students was moving more product than usual, and Altüss wished to be ahead of the weekend’s anticipated demand from his street-level dealers.
Alfred retrieved protective gear from a drawer below his center countertop. He donned a plastic, single-use apron and blue veterinary exam gloves that also covered his forearms, and then cut and weighed 500 grams from his cocaine duffel bag. Careful not to disturb the light, high-profit powder, Alfred sealed it in a one-gallon Ziploc bag, taped over the seal, and placed it inside a second Ziploc. He stuffed the bag in a manila envelope, sealed that with packing tape, and concealed it inside a white 10x13 Koenig International shipping envelope. The final step was to retrieve and attach a pre-filled shipping label from another drawer. There. Looks like a legitimate shipment, just with two fake addresses and fake names for both the shipper and recipient. If the cops stop Altüss and find the cocaine, everyone has plausible deniability. As long as the police can’t prove he knew what was inside, all they can do is steal our commodity and follow him around for a while. They’ll eventually lose interest in him and move on to another target, but I’m above questioning in such a petty thing.
After replacing his counterfeit shipping supplies in their rightful places, Alfred grabbed his parcel, stepped back into his office, and secured the storage room. The clock chimed again and he looked up. 10:00. Altüss refuses to be on time for anything. The man might someday be late for his own funeral.
Alfred set the parcel on his desk and sat back down to await their exchange.
bing
His email notification showed the receptionist downstairs, Hannah, had sent him a message. Unusual, Alfred thought as he opened it.
“Your daily package delivery headed upstairs. Hoped you might still be interested in discussing another kind of delivery this evening. Perhaps over drinks and dinner at Steirereck?”
Alfred smiled at her obvious implication. She has expensive taste. Not many in Vienna get to dine in the Michelin-rated restaurant, so I’d wager this is a familiar position she’s trying to get in to. Having emotionally divorced his wife in the last fourteen hours, he no longer held any reservations about taking the young temptress up on her offer. He typed his short and understated response. “I’ll make the arrangements, for both dinner and the delivery afterward.”
He clicked “send” just as his buzzer announced Altüss had arrived. Alfred checked his camera monitors before allowing his distributor to enter and accept the latest shipment in their illicit commodity trade.
February 16, 10:01am
Hotel Sacher. Vienna, Austria.
Michael had re-entered König’s hotel suite soon after leaving his own room. He might have changed the electronic keys, but that won’t stop me until the hotel upgrades his deadbolt. While conducting a much more extensive search of the suite and its contents, he’d begun to believe König had no evidence hidden there. Michael had even gone through the few documents in König’s desk, which required him to read them with the help of a visual translation app on his smartphone. I assume it offers only classroom-approved translations. It would help if I spoke fluent Austrian-German, or at least if the phone did. Saying the Austrians and Germans speak the same language, while technically true, is a little like saying Americans speak the King’s English.
bing
The soft electronic notification called to Michael from somewhere across the room. He set down the shipping contract he’d been reviewing and stepped closer to identify its origin.
bing
By the second alert, he realized the sound came from a tablet on König’s nightstand. He opened the black leather cover, and the device’s home screen lit up as soon as he touched it. The notifications showed the device was synced with König’s mobile phone and email accounts. “Bad move, Alfred,” he offered. “You spend way too much time alone if you don’t even have a passcode on this.” Michael set the tablet back on the nightstand and opened its apps based on their familiar icons. He started with email, which seemed to have been the source of the alerts. Holding his phone up over the device to allow his visual translator app to work, he read König’s recent communications. “I might be taking this out of context, but it sounds like Al’s got a dinner date tonight and has an actual delivery right now.”
Michael brought the tablet out of the bedroom, set it on the desk, and moved closer to the window to look across the street to König’s office. Seeing that his target had nearly closed his blinds, Michael retrieved the thermal binos from his messenger bag near the door and returned to the window. “Yep, two people,” he uttered to himself, “and that’s an exchange. No small talk, delivery man’s already leaving.”
Once he lost sight of the man’s heat signature, Michael put down the binos and scanned Operngasse below him. There, the delivery van. ‘Austria Beschleunigt.’ Have to write that down and get it translated. Maybe it’s just a regional service, like a local messenger and document company. Good cover for running dope, though. Lots of short stops, hand-to-hand exchanges, and an all-cash business. Makes sense to me.
Michael watched a tall African emerge from the Tourist Information Center in a brown delivery uniform and climb up into the waiting van. “That adds a whole new dimension to it. Would König inherently distrust the immigrant population, or would he prey on their desperation?” Michael knew he’d have to call John and ask for some additional intel work-up to further this investigation.
He stepped back to the desk and returned his focus to the tablet. Even without the visual translator, Michael recognized one of the unfamiliar icons by its name: Die Festung. He opened the app and König’s account credentials auto-populated. After confirming it translated to “Submit,” Michael clicked on the Einreichen icon. König’s blind to his vulnerabilities. The fact that the app’s displayed in German is its greatest security feature right now. Michael again used his smartphone translator to read König’s motion sensor app. The security system’s simple user interface allowed him to review König’s account settings. He spent thirty seconds examining the page to ensure the translation app provided consistent information before he changed anything. Then, with the quick slide of a single icon, Michael deactivated König’s motion sensor notifications. He’ll no longer be alerted to intrusions at his office. A broad smile broke across Michael’s face. I didn’t need to come back into the suite for evidence, but I damned sure needed to give myself a chance at recovering evidence from across the street tonight.
Michael copied about two dozen emails with his visual translator before closing the apps he opened. He returned the tablet to König’s nightstand and spent fifteen minutes ensuring König would find the suite just as he’d left it that morning. A place for everything, and everything in its place
. Tonight, my place will be across the street in König’s office.
February 16, 12:03PM
Hotel Sacher. Vienna, Austria.
Michael sat in the back corner of his luxurious hotel room, near the doorway, and watched König’s office across the street. Both of his binoculars sat on the adjacent coffee table. The midday winter sun had shifted enough that the regular lenses wouldn’t allow him to see very far into the relatively dark room. His thermals allowed Michael to watch König, but without much context about what he was doing. With nothing else to accomplish, Michael sat and waited for two important events to occur.
König seems busy enough, but he doesn’t take many calls or receive many visitors. No one’s come up since the delivery driver this morning. Most of his business must be conducted online, legitimate and otherwise.
knockknockknock
Michael smiled at the light rapping on his door. He stayed in his chair, closed his eyes, and listened. The historic hotel’s building blocked almost all outside noise, despite the constant traffic streaming just below his windows. Nope, nothing. Michael rose from the chair, stepped back to the door, and looked out the peephole. Seeing an empty hallway with no movement, he removed the security latch, opened the door, and poked his head out just enough to see the silver-covered room service dishes waiting for him.
Michael retrieved the tray and its contents, retreated back into his room, and set his lunch down on the coffee table. Huge benefit of high-end hotels. They’re willing to accommodate almost any request, even the ones that seem obtuse, like ‘knock three times, set the tray down, and leave.’ The room charge and thirty-percent tip helped, I’m sure. Cash greases every squeaky wheel the world over.
Michael sat down, brought up the video recording from his incursion into König’s office, and again reviewed the critical portion. He watched as the thermal image of his target waved his left arm inside the bookcase, swung a concealed door inward, and walked through the back wall into some kind of hidden room. Michael struggled to identify his own path into the same area. There’s always brute force, but we’re not there yet. I still need to get in and out without König knowing about it. Now that I know it’s there and it’s important, that’s gotta be my focus. König doesn’t go home often enough for much evidence to be there, and anything else inside his hotel suite is too well concealed. Even though he has a long-term lease on the place, it’s unlikely König would have risked damaging the room or its furnishings to install hidden compartments. There’s no indication or intel that he uses any of his products, and he’s too smart to keep anything where he lays his head down at night.
bing
His smartphone alerted him to a text message, which he saw had come from John. Instead of replying, Michael confirmed his VPN was turned on and called his boss directly.
“What’s wrong, shithead?” The gruff baritone greeted him with its usual enthusiasm.
“Need some help, hoped you might come through for me.”
“Whaddaya got?”
Michael uncovered his food as he spoke. “I think my guy’s carrying around an R-F-I-D chip I need to copy. You got anything that’ll do that?”
“Sure. You got some idea where he keeps the damned thing?”
“Nope. I’m hoping it’s on a keychain, maybe in his wallet, but I don’t know for sure.”
“It’s gotta be within about three feet from the reader, and his chip’ll have to be outside of any protective sleeves, but, yeah, I can getcha something. It’s basically the same thing that identity thieves use to grab credit card info while they walk through crowds. When you need it?”
“Yesterday’s my first choice, but right now is a close second.”
“I’ll just beam it right-the-hell up, Scotty. Anything else? Pot of gold? Trained dragons? Divine intervention?”
“If you have some to spare, send them on over.” Michael munched on a fry and squirted sweet mustard onto his chicken schnitzel.
“You done?”
“Not yet. I also need help from your analysts. König gets one package delivered every day, at least every day that I’ve been here, and it’s from a local company, Austria Beschleunigt, translates to Austria Expedited. I’ll text you the spelling. I think it’s strange that he runs a shipping company and he’s outsourcing to a local competitor.”
John took on an accusatory tone. “You ever think that someone else is using that service to send him packages?”
Michael took a breath and explained himself rather than confront the man’s impatience. “He always trades parcels with the driver. He takes one, he gives one, just like a dope exchange, a hand-to-hand like you see on the streets. Just, like, maybe kilo-quantities. It’d be a good cover business if you wanted to move a lot of dope in small amounts and at a pretty consistent schedule without raising suspicion.”
“Anything else seem weird about it?” John’s tone had softened, at least as much as it ever did.
“Maybe. The driver looks African, and in my experience, drug dealers and traffickers are the most racist people around. Makes me wonder if König sought out the driver because he’s an immigrant and that community would trust him. Most of the street-level dealers arrested in Vienna are foreign-nationals, so it makes good business sense for my guy to find someone already in with that crowd. A white guy trying to sell them anything would be considered a cop, especially with how hard the undercover cops here in Vienna have been hitting the dealers on the U-line and the train stations.”
“Send me the info and I’ll look into it,” John replied. “Might take a day or two. If your target is movin’ serious weight into the region, then men with access to the immigrant and refugee communities might get rid of it faster than he could on his own. Good thinkin’.”
Michael stopped chewing and looked at the phone to make sure he was still talking to his boss. He shrugged at the rare compliment and put the phone back to his ear. “Thanks.”
“Clock’s tickin’ on this one, just like they always do, so don’t lollygag, but, at the same time, remember that we’re not snakes, we’re snake hunters. A snake that’ll strike at anything’s no good to me, or the Church. Act fast but make good decisions out there. There’s lots-a lives ridin’ on this one. Keep yourself safe.”
“As long as I’m locked up in the hotel room, my biggest threats are heart attacks and blood clots. Deep vein thrombosis is no joke.”
“I’ll pray for you, son,” John dryly replied.
Michael hung up the call and watched König’s office building while he ate. How the hell am I gonna make progress on this if I can’t get past that bookcase?
February 16, 1:13PM
König’s Office. Vienna, Austria.
Seated behind his desk, Alfred looked over changes to the present, legitimate shipping contracts his attorneys had suggested. Commas and precise wording have more power than the average man appreciates. The desk phone rang and demanded his immediate attention. Very few people had that number.
“Hallo?”
“It’s me.” The hunter’s voice blended with a substantial amount of background noise.
It sounds like he’s at a train station, Alfred thought. He has to know his clients devote time to guessing his location and movements, no matter how hard he works to deprive us of such knowledge. “What news do you have for me?”
“She’s missing. Her staff haven’t seen her since an evening cocktail party the night of the 11th. She’s not been to her office, not checked her email, and hasn’t called anyone. Her personal assistants told me her schedule is so soft that they didn’t think much of it. They just went on with the business of keeping her social media accounts and website updated and waiting for her to show back up.”
“How do you know all the online updates are from them? Did you confirm that?”
“The language is different,” the hunter explained. “Your wife is an exceptionally intelligent and educated woman. She pays her staff in bananas and peanuts, so she can only hire sub-human monkeys fa
scinated with shiny things. There’s a very clear difference in what she writes and what her staff of Neanderthal Millennials attributes to her name.”
The possibility that his fashion designer wife could hide from him annoyed Alfred. She is intellectually inferior, after all. “What about the car? She can’t drive across the city without getting a ticket of some kind.”
“Her vehicle’s not reported stolen, found, or impounded by police anywhere in the E-U. Her phone was last active outside Saint Franziskus Seraphicus on the 12th.”
“It’s not unusual for her to stop into her church after a night out and pointlessly reconcile her alcohol-inspired actions.”
“I stopped in and checked the church, anyway, and found no sign of her or the car. Her phone rings straight to voicemail and gives no updated location information.”
Genuinely impressed with the man’s information, Alfred leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I would love to know your sources.”
“I’m sure you would,” the hunter countered. “She’s your wife. Where would she have gone?”
“Excellent question. She has family in Munich, that’s where she runs when she’s angry, but I always hear from her with a list of demands for her conditional return home. She should have called by now with her extortion list.”
“Perhaps your problem has solved itself and she’s still inside the car in the bottom of a ravine somewhere. It is winter, after all. Even if she doesn’t live in the Alps, icy roads are just as dangerous here in Lower Austria.”
“Perhaps, but I cannot leave this to luck and chance. I need you to continue on. Start with her family in Munich. I’ll forward you all the contact information and addresses I have for them. What of the addendum here in the city?”