Cutting Edge

64

The United States Ambassador to Austria, Charles Emerson, arrived at his destination by limousine, and at the curb he instructed his security detail to wait — an escort for the remaining hundred feet, he explained, wouldn’t be necessary. Grudgingly, the two burly State Department men in front complied.

Emerson set out at a businesslike pace across the gray-stone commons. He looked down to check his watch only to realize he hadn’t put it on. The call had come very early, waking him more than an hour before his alarm was set to go off. Not the kind of thing he’d envisioned when he’d accepted the chief diplomatic post to Vienna.

It had seemed a good idea at the time. His father-in-law was the newly elected president’s onetime Yale roommate, and over the years a steadfast contributor to his campaigns. That being the case, the ambassadorship to Austria had been Emerson’s for the taking. He’d been tempted right off, given the uninspiring course of recent years. Emerson had long endured tiresome stints on corporate boards, and he served as director for a number of charitable organizations, but those affiliations were largely coming to a sunset. Not surprisingly, his wife, whose family pedigree went back to the days of Newport and railroads, was effervescent at the prospect of hostessing state dinners in the heart of old Europe. So take the posting Emerson had.

The job of ambassador was rather different from what he’d expected, more work and less play. He could not deny that, over the course of the last year, he and Marylyn had shared some prize moments. On the other hand, when the phone call had come two hours ago, well before dawn, his wife had barely stirred.

The wind caught Emerson’s hair, and he looked up at a foreboding sky — the Viennese weather had proven an unforeseen irritant. As he reached the head of the terrace, Emerson found himself wondering what other storm might be brewing at this hour. Looming before him was an oft-visited destination, Minoritenplatz 8, or more formally, the Austrian Ministry for Europe, Integration, and Foreign Affairs. The “Integration” part was a recent addition to the letterhead, a feeble response, Emerson knew, to the intractable immigration crisis.

He was met at the entrance by a familiar face, the foreign minister’s personal secretary, a statuesque blonde who was as professional as she was attractive, and who unfailingly slayed any attempt at small talk with her blue Teutonic gaze. In faultless English she offered a crisp, “Good morning,” and Emerson muttered something in reply about the lovely weather. Minutes later he was being ushered into the top-floor office of the Austrian foreign minister.

Sebastian Landau stood and walked briskly around his desk.

“Good morning, Charles. Thank you for coming.”

Emerson took a professional handshake, and was guided to a pair of settees where coffee was waiting. Landau was an exceptionally young man, Emerson had always thought, for such a vital government post. Before arriving in Austria, Emerson had envisioned himself dealing with old-school Prussian types with broad mustaches, boorish and predictable men who would carry on for hours about riding and hunting fowl, and who capped every meeting with a splash of good port. Seb Landau — that was what he went by, Seb — trained for bicycle races, knew a lot about sushi, and was prone to wearing colorful scarves. Emerson had a loose suspicion he might be homosexual, not that he cared about that sort of thing. Landau seemed competent, intelligent, and was generally chipper. That last trait, however, had gone missing this morning.

The two men seated themselves to be separated by the coffee tray, and Landau took the initiative to pour two steaming cups. Emerson had taken up the Vienna post one year ago, and in that time the two had crossed paths regularly, although more often than not on the diplomatic cocktail circuit. Regardless of venue, they’d both kept largely to business, and no personal relationship had yet evolved between them. In the haze of the early hour, Emerson actually considered whether today’s summons might be a bit of social rapprochement. Then reason prevailed — message traffic had been flying between their respective camps in recent days.

“I know it’s early,” said Landau, “but something has come up we must address immediately.”

“Does this involve Captain Morales?” Emerson asked cautiously. This had been their most pressing recent business — the U.S. Marine who’d been found, three days earlier, murdered in the trunk of an embassy car in a Bundespolizei parking garage. One casualty of a madman’s rampage.

“Indirectly, yes.” Landau steepled his hands under his chin thoughtfully, as if lining up what to say. “As you know,” he began, “this shooting incident a few days ago … it remains very much at the forefront for us.”

“A terrible tragedy. I haven’t heard anything new on our end, but I did pass along your request for assistance to the State Department. I can tell you it’s been given highest priority. The last update I saw arrived yesterday afternoon — we still haven’t found anything to help identify this man you dredged out of the Danube.”

“Nor have we, and I imagine we’re hitting the same roadblocks. We took pictures and fingerprints, but there are no matches in any of our databases. A number of people saw this attacker, but no one remembered hearing him speak, which means we can’t even narrow things down using language or accents. We know he entered Austria last week using a false identity, but our efforts to source his U.S. passport have gone nowhere.”

“I fear we’ve come to the same conclusion,” said Emerson. “It was an elegant forgery.”

Landau sipped his coffee, then said, “We have no idea where he stayed while he was in Vienna, who he saw, or what his motive was for going on such a tear.”

Emerson had in fact gotten two classified briefings from Foggy Bottom on the affair, but they’d offered no more than what was in the local newspapers. The day after the attack on the police station, the killer had murdered a scientist, then drowned as he struggled with another man after the two fell from a bridge into the Danube. Police divers had quickly found the suspect’s body right where he’d gone in — well anchored by the armored vest he was wearing.

“Has there been any progress on finding the second man who fell off the bridge?” Emerson asked.

A somber Landau shook his head. “No. At least twelve people saw it happen, but there’s no trace of him. The police are still dragging the river, but at this point it seems a pointless exercise.”

“I understand your frustration. I’ve been told the currents are strong in certain areas.”

Landau frowned, his youthful face adding ten years. “I’m no detective,” he argued, “but I think it defies logic that his body hasn’t been found. One witness claims to have seen him swimming away, but then he disappeared under the span. Another attested to some splashing under the bridge’s southern bastion shortly after the incident.”

“So whoever he was … you’re suggesting he might have pulled himself out?”

“It’s possible, although the climb up the embankment is quite steep. I suppose if he’d had some help…” The foreign minister let that thought drift, then said, “About this woman who was involved, Miss Lund. She also remains unaccounted for, and we’d very much like to talk to her. Have you come up with any information on her whereabouts?”

Lund’s identity had never been in question, but no one could say why she’d come to Austria. The Bundespolizei thought it highly suspicious that the attack on the station had occurred as she was being released from detention, and that the Marine guard sent to retrieve her had been targeted by the killer.

Emerson kept to the facts as he knew them. “We haven’t been able to locate her, but I can confirm that a murder took place in her apartment in Alaska. Lund was proven to be elsewhere when the crime occurred — a rock-solid alibi. By all accounts, until a week ago she was a Coast Guard investigator with a spotless record. I agree that we should talk to her, but her association in all of this seems quite tangential. The prevailing thought is that she was pursuing an investigation of her own, perhaps even tracking this man who did so much damage. Our first concern is for her well-being, given that she’s disappeared under such grim circumstances.”

“Yes, we did place her at the Hofburg that morning. The very gallery where Dr. Patel was scheduled to speak.”

“Yes, Dr. Patel,” said Emerson, “the professor from California. Does the Bundespolizei still consider him a bystander who got caught up in all this?”

Landau didn’t respond right away. With a pensive look he stood and walked toward his window, which Emerson knew from previous visits presented Minoritenplatz — a scene today held hostage by the profound morning gloom. “A bystander,” he finally said. “Yes, that was our original thinking. Unfortunately, certain curiosities have arisen regarding Dr. Patel.”

To this point, Emerson had heard nothing that wasn’t in yesterday’s briefing. He now sensed a shift in Landau’s course, and correspondingly, he suspected, the reason he’d been summoned at such an unseemly hour. “What kind of curiosities?”

“We studied the phone Patel was carrying when he was killed. There was also a laptop computer in a suitcase he’d sent to the airport. Oddly, both had been scrubbed.”

“Scrubbed?” Emerson repeated.

“Cleansed. Erased. Somehow all information on both devices has been very professionally wiped clean.”

“How could that be?”

Instead of answering, Landau turned back to face him and shifted course yet again. “With so little evidence to go on, the Bundespolizei were relying heavily on what the postmortem on our assassin would tell us.”

“I see,” said an increasingly cautious Emerson. “Was there something in particular they were looking for?”

“The body was taken to the morgue at our main hospital, and during the preliminary examination the medical examiner noted some highly unusual scarring on the killer’s scalp — indicative, perhaps, of recent cranial surgery. The work was quite extensive — in fact, no one in our medical examiner’s office had ever seen anything like it. They were convinced that a thorough postmortem would determine what kind of operation had been performed. In fact, due to the unique nature of the work, they thought they might even find indicators of where it had been done. A comprehensive autopsy was scheduled to have taken place yesterday. Our investigators saw it as the best hope for obtaining an identification.”

Emerson was lost. “Are you saying the postmortem didn’t take place?”

“That’s correct.”

“Why not?”

“Because the body has gone missing.”

Emerson sat stunned. He realized Landau was watching him closely, gauging his reaction. “How on earth did that happen?”

A reticent foreign minister diverted from the sullen panorama of his window to a bookcase that ran the length of one wall. “I’d like to show you something.”

Emerson stood and went closer as Landau used a remote control to activate a video monitor that was built into the bookcase. A video began to play, and the foreign minister provided commentary. “This is closed-circuit footage of the morgue where the body was kept. It’s a very secure facility, and due to heightened interest in this case, the Bundespolizei took the added precaution of placing a guard at the entrance. The video we’re watching is from two nights ago.”

Emerson watched the video run, and saw a morgue like any other — not that he was an expert. Large drawers lined one wall, and there were a few stainless-steel examination tables, all of it cast in severe industrial lighting. He saw the occasional technician come and go, but for the most part the scene was one of stillness, the only evidence of time’s progression being a clock in one corner of the screen. Then, quite abruptly, the video went to snow.

“What happened?” he asked.

Landau ran back to one of the last useful frames. “At 2:31 A.M. the video signal is lost. Our technicians have gone over the system and determined there was an interruption in the camera feed. In other words, it’s not a problem on the data storage end — the camera simply stopped sending images for thirty minutes. We can’t recover the information because there’s nothing to recover.” Landau kept working the remote, and said, “The video is reinstated at 3:02. Notice anything different?”

Emerson saw a scene much like the first video, but with one glaring exception — one of the big steel drawers was partially open. “You’re saying someone stole the body — and manipulated this security system to cover their tracks?”

“Without a doubt.”

“But you said there was a guard.”

“Yes, at the main entrance. There is, however, a service entrance. It is almost never used — only to transfer heavy equipment in and out — and is secured by a very capable cipher lock. At 2:34 that morning someone breached the system, inputting an access code to the door. This is a ten-digit code that changes every week, and is known to only two administrators. Both have been put in the clear.”

“So … how then?”

Landau stopped the video. “The service entrance I mentioned connects to a receiving dock where the hospital’s supplies are brought in. It wasn’t in use, of course, at that time of night, and the door was locked securely. Interestingly, there’s a camera outside this entrance as well, part of a completely different network. That system also malfunctioned at precisely the same time.”

The foreign minister retreated to his desk and took a seat.

Emerson said, “You’re suggesting that someone hacked into two separate security systems in order to remove the suspect’s body?”

“Three, actually. There is also a bank directly across the street from the hospital’s service entrance, and we thought it was worth checking. Same result. Then there is the matter of the defeated cipher lock at the morgue, and a second on the receiving dock. And of course Dr. Patel’s phone and laptop. I’ve been told by our cyber technicians that permanently erasing data from such devices is tricky — very hard to do without having them physically in hand.”

Landau reached into his top drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope. He pushed it across the desk toward a sinking Emerson, who asked, “What’s this?”

“Ambassador Emerson, the Republic of Austria hereby lodges a formal complaint against the United States of America. Serious crimes have been committed on Austrian soil, and a number of American citizens are involved, both as victims and, perhaps, as perpetrators. More damningly, the investigation of these crimes has been impeded and evidence destroyed by electronic means, the likes of which are available to only a few countries on earth. I dare say that neither China nor Russia would have any interest in disrupting our investigation. That being the case, the Republic of Austria hereby makes the following demands. First, all intrusions are to halt immediately. Second, the United States government will give every assistance to get to the bottom of this matter, including the return of any appropriated evidence to the Federal Police Forces of Austria.”

Emerson stood rigid in front of Landau’s desk. He looked at the foreign minister, then took the envelope, and said, “You have my word, sir. I will look into this immediately.”

Emerson did precisely that.

The formal complaint was routed directly to State Department headquarters, and within the hour it arrived squarely on the desk of a flummoxed secretary of state. There was no getting around it — the facts were damning. Someone was interfering with a police investigation in Austria, and there seemed only one nation with both the necessary technical prowess and a motive. That being the case, the secretary of state, a seasoned and long-tenured veteran, saw things in much the same light as the government of Austria. Someone was culpable, and he would do his damnedest to find out who.

He envisioned three primary suspects: CIA, NSA, and NRO. Even so, he decided a comprehensive inquest would be best, and so he included on his list the FBI, U.S. Cyber Command, all military intelligence agencies, and a little-known and near-black cyber initiative that fell under Homeland Security’s purview.

A clipped message was sent to each agency asking for information regarding American involvement in the goings-on in Austria. The secretary of state made a point of putting his name at the bottom, leaving no doubt as to the seriousness of the inquiry. The results arrived sporadically over the next forty-eight hours and, while essentially the same, were best encapsulated by the curt reply from the director of the CIA: We know nothing about this.