Greg Rucka - Critical Space

I stayed in that night, dining in the room and watching Austrian television, which I found bewildering and vaguely disturbing for no reason that I could articulate. I fell asleep early, but woke once during the night, in the darkness, certain I wasn't alone in my room. I lay on my back, motionless, trying to control my breathing, to sound like I was still nursing my dreams, listening for any sound, any indication of where the intruder might be. The noise of the hotel was a muted rustle, and from the corner, by the window, I was sure I heard carpet crushing under someone's feet as they pitched their balance, trying to stay steady and still.

There was nothing more, no other noise, and the fear slipped over my skin until I was fighting to stay calm, and when I couldn't take it any longer I pushed into motion with a frantic rush, tumbling out of the bed and putting it between myself and the intruder. I yanked the clock radio from the nightstand and threw it at the intruder, ducking low, coming up again, finally getting a good look.

I was alone.

I turned on the light, saw the clock, broken, resting between the television cabinet and the window. I looked at the curtain, checked behind it, found the window closed and locked, and I was up too high for anyone to have come in that way, anyway. I picked up the clock and tried to plug it back in, found that I'd snapped the cord, too. I dropped it in the trash, feeling foolish and embarrassed and deeply frightened.

I filled a glass of water at the bathroom sink, drained it, filled another, drained that, and climbed back into bed, feeling my heart racing.

No wonder Alena had nightmares.

The Onyx was an American bar, meaning it was an Austrian version of what an American bar should be, which I suppose explained why it opened at nine in the morning. It was on the sixth floor of the Haas Haus, one level below Do Co., which turned out to be a sushi restaurant, so I figured the whole building was basically a cross-culture experiment gone terribly, horribly awry. Out the windows was a nice view of St. Stephen's Cathedral, and when I arrived at twenty to ten, I was surprised to see a number of very well-dressed men and women already enjoying their first martinis and Bloody Marys of the day.

I got myself an orange juice from the bartender and took a seat at a table, and hadn't been there for more than a minute when a woman took the chair opposite me, and the moment she sat I knew why Moore had told me not to worry. She was in her mid- to late thirties, skin as dark as Moore's, and lovely. She wore black leather pants, the kind that, whenever I see women in them, I wonder how they pull them on and never doubt that they have to peel them off. Her turtleneck was the color of dried blood, and she wore a man's tweed jacket.

"Mr. Klein?" she asked as she sat, the Austrian accent tripping over an upper-class English one.

"Ms. Koller," I said. "Nice to meet you."

"Robert says that you want to pay me a lot of money to do something very small."

"I need to do some banking."

"Perhaps you'd rather be in Switzerland, then?"

"I've been there, they don't have what I need. I want to open a Sparbuch account."

"Passbook, you mean."

"This is a very specific kind of account."

Sigrid Koller reached across the table and took my untouched orange juice, sipping it. Her eyes ran over me, then to the bar, then to the view. She set the orange juice back down.

"I know the account you mean," she replied. "It won't take long."

"I'm glad to hear it."

She rose, adjusting her tweed jacket, and smiled at me, so I got up too, and we left the bar together. A couple of the Bloody Mary pioneers watched us go. When we got to the elevator, I took two envelopes from my coat and handed them to her. She put them in the pockets of her jacket, one on either side.

"Each has ten thousand dollars in it," I said. "One is for the account. The other one is yours."

"You're paying me all up front?" Koller asked.

"Robert's word carries a lot of weight."

"It does for me, as well. Give me until noon. Where shall I meet you?"

"I'll be in the lobby of the Hilton across from the train station."

The elevator stopped, the doors sliding apart.

"Noon," she repeated, and we each went our separate ways.

I made reservations for a five o'clock flight to Heathrow, and then a connection from there back to JFK. Then I checked out of the room and left my bag with the bell captain and went for a short walk around Vienna. It was colder here than it had been in Geneva, and almost as clean. I did some window-shopping, and at an antique store picked up a fountain pen that I thought Erika might like as a present. I was back in the lobby of the Hilton by five of twelve, and Sigrid Koller was there waiting, reading what I assumed was a local newspaper at one of the chairs in the lobby. I went to the bell captain and got my bag, then headed out again, and she followed me onto the street and into the train station.

As I came through the doors she caught up with me, pressing the newspaper into my free hand and saying, "Sir? You dropped this."

"Thank you," I said.

She nodded and murmured, "It was nothing," and then she turned and went back out to the street. When I stepped out a minute later, there was no sign of her.

In the fold of the newspaper was an envelope, and in the envelope was a slip of paper and a plastic credit card. The paper had the name of a bank and a four-digit number, presumably the PIN code for the card. I dumped the newspaper in the trash, put the card in my wallet, told the first cabdriver I found that I wanted to go to the bank named on the slip of paper.

The beauty of a Sparbuck account, as Alena had explained it, was this: While Switzerland allowed for anonymous banking, it was a relatively simple task to force someone to access an account – just as I had forced Junot to do. This account was far more secure, because while it remained anonymous, it required three separate checks before funds could be accessed. Not only did the account have to be identified and the proper PIN code provided, but the right card had to be used – and the card was virtually impossible to forge. Created by Motorola, the card contained a transmitter that, when in range of the bank, would broadcast and receive a specific, encrypted clearance code. One could have the account number and the PIN, but if one didn't have the right card, the bank's computers would shut down the transaction instantly.

In essence, the card became the money in the account. Without the card, the money was untouchable.

After I deposited the draft, I withdrew another check, this for half a million dollars. If nothing else, Oxford could finance my little operation against him.

Then I caught another cab to the airport.

Twenty-nine hours later, Scott Fowler and I went to meet two men from the CIA in a hotel room at the Holiday Inn overlooking Times Square.

I'd reached Mahwah just past two that morning, exhausted physically and emotionally, the strain of the last several days finally catching up with me. One of the Russians who let me through the gate used a radio to contact the guards inside the house, and by the time I reached the front door, Natalie was there, clearly having just woken up. She gave me a hug once I'd gotten inside, and before I could even ask, she told me.

"No signs of him. Dan says that someone's been asking a lot of questions in Brooklyn, especially in Brighton Beach, and everyone is assuming it's Oxford. But no one has seen him, and there's been no contact, to anyone's knowledge."

"If he's working Brighton Beach, he's not far from finding us here."

"Not the way Dan talks," Natalie said. "The way he talks, his people will kill or die to keep their secrets secret."