"What do you want of me?"
"We want your personal access codes to the international trading network," Furchtner 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," Ffrchtner 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.
Soon after getting the information on the helicopter, one of his people turned up the flight crew, one at home, one at Schwechat International Airport doing some-paperwork with the manufacturer's representative for an aircraft modification. Good, Willi Altmark thought, the helicopter wasn't going anywhere just yet. But by then the fact that Erwin Ostermann's house had been attacked had perked up to the senior levels of government, and then he received a very surprising radio call from the head of the Stawspolizei.They barely made the flight - more precisely, the flight hadn't been delayed on their account: Chavez tightened his seat belt as the 737 pulled back from the jetway, and went over the preliminary briefing documents with Eddie Price. They'd just rolled off the tarmac when Price mated his portable computer with the aircraft's phone system. That brought up a diagram on his screen, with the caption "Schloss Ostermann."
"So, who is this guy?" Chavez asked.
"Coming in now, sir," Price replied. "A money-lender, it would-appear, rather a wealthy one, friend of the prime minister of his country. I guess that explains matters so far as we are concerned."
"Yeah," Chavez agreed. Two in a row for Team-2 was what he thought. A little over an hour's flight time to Vienna, he thought next, checking his watch. One such incident was happenstance, Chavez told himself, but terrorist incidents weren't supposed to happen so closely together, were they? Not that there was a rulebook out there, of course, and even if there were such a thing, these people would have violated it. Still… but there was no time for such thoughts. Instead, Chavez examined the information coming into Price's laptop and started wondering how he'd deal with this new situation. Farther aft, his team occupied a block of economy seats and spent their time reading paperback books, hardly talking at all about the upcoming job, since they knew nothing to talk about except where they were going.
"Bloody large perimeter for us to cover," Price observed, after a few minutes.
"Any information on the opposition?" Ding asked, then wondered how it was that he was adopting Britspeak. Opposition? He should have said bad guys.
"None," Eddie replied. "No identification; no word on their numbers."
"Great," the leader of Team-2 observed, still staring sideways at the screen.
The phones were trapped. Altmark had seen to that early on. Incoming calls were given busy signals, and outgoing calls would be recorded at the central telephone exchange-but there had been none, which suggested to Captain Altmark that the criminals were all inside; since they were not seeking external help. That could have meant they were using cellular phones, of course, and he didn't have the equipment to intercept those, though he did have similar traps on Ostermann's three known cellular accounts.
The Staatspolizei now had thirty officers on the scene and a tight perimeter fully formed and punctuated by a four wheel armored vehicle,.hidden in the trees. They'd stopped one delivery truck from coming ire with -some overnight express mail, but no other vehicles had attempted to enter the properly. For one so wealthy, Ostermann did indeed lead a quiet and unassuming life, the captain thought. He'd expected a constant parade of vehicles.
"Hans?"
"Yes, Petra?"
"The phones have not rung. We've been here for some time, but the phones have not rung."
"Most of my work is on computer," Ostermann said, having noted the same discrepancy himself. Had Gerhardt gotten the word out? If he had done so, was that good? He had no way of knowing. Ostermann had long joked about how cutthroat his profession was, how every step he took had danger, because others out there would try to rob him blind if they ever got the chance… but not one of them had ever threatened his life, nor had any ever pointed a loaded gun at him or a member of his staff: Ostermann used his remaining capacity for objectivity to realize that this was a new and dangerous aspect to the world that he'd never seriously considered, about which he knew very little, and against which he had nothing in the way of defenses. His only useful talent at the moment was his ability to read faces and the minds behind them, and though he'd never encountered anyone even vaguely close to the man and woman in his office now, he saw enough to be more afraid than he'd ever been before. The man, and even more the woman, were willing to kill him without any pangs of conscience whatsoever, no more emotion than he showed when picking up a million dollars of American T-bills. Didn't they know. that his life had worth? Didn't they know that