W. Griffin - The Hostage

"He looked up at the mansion and saw the beautiful princess. She saw him. Their eyes locked. There was the sound of violins. The earth shook. Fireworks filled the sky. A choir of angels sang Ich liebe dich and other such tunes. And about nine months later they had a beautiful boy child who stands here before you."

"Oh, Karlchen!" Frau Gertrud said, emotionally.

"Your father was an Army aviator?" Kranz asked. "Where is he now?"

"He didn't make it back from Vietnam," Castillo said, evenly.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me, too," Castillo said. "Lecture over. I hope you took notes, as there will be a written exam."

"Why don't we sit down?" Helena said.

"Is that a true story, Onkel Karl?" a very young voice inquired.

It showed on Helena Goerner's face that she had not been aware her children had been standing in the door and really didn't like it that they had.

"Ah, my favorite godchildren," Castillo said. "Yeah, Willi, that's a true story."

Castillo walked to the door and embraced, one at a time, two boys, one ten and the other twelve.

The twelve-year-old asked, "What's Vietnam?"

"A terrible place a long way from here," Castillo said. "Changing the subject, Seymour, what time is it in Washington?"

"About half past six," Kranz replied.

"And how long is it going to take you to set up?"

"That depends on where you want it."

"How about next to the stable? Where the knight in shining armor once touched down?"

"Ten minutes. You planning to leave it there?"

"Not for long," Castillo said. "So why don't we have lunch, then while I have a little talk with Otto, you have it up and running by oh-eight-hundred Washington time?"

"Can do." [FIVE] "A marvelous lunch, Helena. Thank you," Castillo said.

"I'm glad you liked it, Karl," she said.

Castillo motioned to one of the maids for more coffee. When she had poured it, he said, "Danke schon," and turned to Goerner. "So tell us, Otto, what you heard at the fund-raiser in Marburg about the boys moving money to Argentina," Castillo said.

Goerner didn't reply.

"You said two things, Otto, that caught my attention. You said what caught your attention was they said something about, 'Ha, ha, Der Fuhrer was the first to come up with that idea…'"

Helena flashed him a cold look. "I don't think the children should hear this," she said.

"Your call, of course, Helena," Castillo said. "But when I was even younger than the boys, my grandfather, at this very table, told me all about the evils the National Socialist German Workers Party-more popularly known as the Nazis-had brought to our fair land. He thought it was important that I knew about it as early as possible."

Her face tightened and grew white.

"You remember, Otto, don't you?" Castillo went on. "The Old Man, sitting where you are now sitting; you and Onkel Willi and my mother sitting over there, and me sitting where Willi is…"

"I remember, Karl," Goerner said.

Helena stood up and threw her napkin on the table.

"Come on, boys," she said.

"You don't have to stay, Liebchen," Otto said. "But the boys will."

She locked eyes with him, and then walked out of the room.

Goerner looked at Castillo.

"Your mother used to say, you know, that the one thing you really inherited from the Old Man was his complete lack of tact," he said.

Castillo nodded, and then said, "You said you thought the money they were moving was from Oil for Food."

Goerner nodded.

"Let me tell you where I'm coming from, Karl," he said. "When you were being a smart-ass before, with 'the legend of the castle,' it started me thinking. You were right. Your grandfather didn't like Americans, and if the Old Man were alive today, he probably would like them even less. But then I realized that if he were still here, and knew what's going on, and an American intelligence officer-not you, not his grandson, any American intelligenceofficer he thought he could trust-came to him and asked about this, he would have told him everything he knew.

"And you're right, Karl, I am sitting in the Old Man's chair. And in this chair, I have always tried to do what the Old Man would do. You understand me? That's why we're talking about what we never said out loud before, what you really are; that's why I'm going to tell you what I know, and that's why I wanted the boys to hear this. The Old Man was right about that, too. You're never too young to learn what a lousy world we're living in."

"I understand, Otto," Castillo said.

"Some of this I know myself," Goerner began, "but most of it comes from Eric Kocian-"

"Who?"

"He's the editor of the Budapester Neue Zeitung," Goerner said. He looked at Torine. "That's one of ours, which is to say, one of Charley's. Charley did tell you, didn't he, that he's the owner of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.? That's the holding company for everything."

"No, he didn't," Torine said. He looked at Castillo and added, "It probably just slipped his mind."

"Okay, Eric is an old man. Well into his seventies. He's half Hungarian and half Viennese. He was an eighteen-year-old Gefreite-corporal-in the Old Man's regiment in Stalingrad. They were really seriously wounded, which turned out to be a good thing for them. They were evacuated on the same plane; they didn't wind up in Siberia for a decade or so after the surrender at Stalingrad.

"After the war, Eric came here-Vienna was nothing but rubble; what was left of his family had been killed the day the Americans tried to bomb the Hauptbahnhof and missed and destroyed Saint Stephen's Cathedral-and he really didn't have anyplace else to go. The Old Man put him to work on the farm, and then on the Tages Zeitung when he could start that up again. And then when the Old Man got the Wiener Tages Zeitung up and running, Eric went to Vienna. He was managing editor, about to retire, when we got the Budapester Zeitung presses back from the communists. Eric came to me when he heard I was thinking of selling the plant, and asked that he be allowed to try to get the Zeitung up and running again.

"I didn't think that would work, but I knew the Old Man wouldn't have told him no, so I agreed. We renamed it the Budapester Neue Zeitung and he started it up. It worked. It's the largest German-language newspaper in Hungary, and is actually a competitor of the Wiener Tages Zeitung in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Eastern Austria."

"He's the guy who did the story on the Lebanese, what's his name, Douchon, who was murdered in Vienna?" Castillo asked.

"The first story was written by one of our men on the Wiener Tages Zeitung. When Eric saw it on our wire, he had serious doubts about it. So he went to Vienna himself, where of course he knew everybody, especially the senior police, and they told him that it wasn't a…" Goerner stopped and looked uncomfortably at his sons for a moment and then went on: "… a case of one more Middle Eastern homosexual being murdered by his blond Viennese boyfriend, as our man had hinted, but most likely by people who wanted to shut Douchon's mouth so that he wouldn't be talking about Oil for Food.

"Eric had already been looking into the oil-for-food story, and it fit what he'd dug up himself. So he came to me-came here; he didn't trust the telephone-and told me about it, and said he really wanted to go into it.

"I told him he was liable to get himself killed, and he responded, 'At my age, what a good way to go out, on a big story.' So I told him no, I'd assign people to the story, and then he said, 'Okay, then I retire. I'm going to do this story.'"

"Did he retire?"

"Of course not," Goerner said.

"I want to talk to him. Tomorrow."

"I'll have to go with you," Goerner said. "Like most people around here, Kocian thinks you're squandering the Old Man's money while pretending to be our Washington correspondent. He actually pointed out to me the striking similarities between a story we published under your byline and a piece that appeared in the American Conservative magazine. I forget what it was, but you certainly didn't spend a lot of time paraphrasing that story."