The Blackmail Caper, Ch. 8

Three weeks later, I was pulled over by a uniformed cop driving a marked car. It was two in the morning; I was five blocks from Haupmann’s home. He came up alongside my car and asked for my license, registration and proof of insurance. I gave them to him. He went back to his car and pulled out the microphone for the radio. He had turned his roof-mounted light bar off after he stopped me. Only the standard emergency flashing lights were on. I guess he didn’t want to upset the residents.

Ten minutes later, he came back to my car. He didn’t hand back the papers.

“Is there a problem, Officer,” I asked.

“What do you have in the trunk?

“Spare tire, jack, first aid kit, some bags of trash, a change of clothes.”

“Lemme see,” he demanded.

“OK, I’m going to reach down and pull the release.”

“Go ahead.”

I popped the release, the trunk lid swung up a little. The cop went back and shined his flashlight into the trunk. I could hear him shift a few things around.

He came back up to the side of my car. “Why are you driving around with bags of garbage in the middle of the night?”

I looked up at him. It was hard to tell, since he was shining his flashlight in my face, but he appeared to be a white guy in his mid-twenties, maybe. “Why, is it illegal to have garbage in a car, now?”

“If you’re going to dump it somewhere. You don’t live around here.”

Fuck this, I thought. I asked: “Are you arresting me?”

He stepped back. “Get out of the car.”

I did.

“Turn around.”

I did.

He handcuffed me and put me in the back of his cruiser. Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a holding cell at the police station. The young cop took me out of the cell, booked me on a charge of “suspicion of illegal dumping”, and put me back in.

Two hours later, I asked one of the other cops walking by if I could see the duty sergeant. The cop was suspicious, but I told him that I only needed thirty seconds and it would be worth the sergeant’s time.

Ten minutes later, a sergeant came to the cell. He didn’t have a nametag on his uniform. He was a white guy, a bit overweight, greying hair and he had an attitude of having to bear too much of the world’s burdens. He looked at me and said: “Whaddaya want?”

I handed him my PI license.

He looked at it and gave it back. “So, what?”

“Watch,” I said. I put my hands to my left leg and pulled up the trouser leg. That exposed an ankle holster, complete with a Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver.

The sergeant’s eyes widened. “Holy fucking shit. You, don’t do nothing. I’ll be right back.” He turned and all but ran away.

I let the trouser leg slide back down.

Five minutes later, the sergeant was back with his lieutenant. The sergeant had some papers in his hand.

“Show the lieutenant what you just showed me.”

I gave the lieutenant my PI license. After he handed it back, I pulled up my trouser leg.

The lieutenant looked, then turned to the sergeant. “What was he arrested for?”

“Says here ‘suspicion of illegal dumping’. The arresting officer reported that he had four bags of trash in the trunk of his car.”

“And where’s his car now,” the lieutenant asked.

“Impound lot.”

The lieutenant thought it over. “OK, get him out of here, right now. Take him over to Impound and give him his car back, free of charge. Take care of it personally, sergeant. If those fuckers say or do anything other than giving this man back his keys, I want to know about it and you tell them that I’ll deal with them if they don’t. Make it happen. And make this arrest go away. I don’t want any record of it, anywhere. Shred the fingerprint card, the booking photos and the negatives.”

The sergeant waved over another cop and ordered him to open the cell door. That cop went to get the keys.

The lieutenant took the papers from the sergeant, glanced them over and looked at me. “I apologize for any inconvenience, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Once I’m on my way, Lieutenant, as far as I’m concerned, this never happened,” I assured him.

He nodded. “Good.” He reached into a pocket, pulled out a business card and handed it to me.

I tucked the card away without looking at it. The clear implication was that as long as I kept my mouth shut, I had a favor owed to me. I liked it when cops owed me a favor.

The one officer came back with the cell door’s keys. He let me out. The sergeant drove me to Impound and got my car back for me. He didn’t say anything, he only nodded with I thanked him.

By six that morning, I was sitting in a diner, having breakfast and coffee. I yawned and almost dislocated my jaw. I had had maybe three hours of sleep before I had driven over to Haupmann’s place to switch out the trash. And I still had to go home and sort through the bags. That was a job that didn’t get any less pungent for postponing it.

The worst thing about it was that after all of that brouhaha with the Alexandria cops, I didn’t find anything in Haupmann’s trash that even remotely resembled a clue. I rebagged his trash, then I went upstairs and took a nice hot, long shower. I’d toss Haupmann’s trash into the restaurant’s dumpster on my way into the office.

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On a side note, once I've run through the chapters that I've written of this story, then I'll be done. Writing for me was an enjoyable way to pass the time, but it's not any more. It's more like work.

The Blackmail Capter, Chapter 7

I have a friend who owns a restaurant. I gave her the boxes of garbage bags. Each Monday night, I would stop by and pick up four full bags of garbage. Then I would, anywhere between one and five in the morning, drive up the alley behind Haupmann’s house. I took his garbage and put the restaurant garbage into his cans. If there were only two bags of garbage, I’d leave two. There never were five bags. After one of them leaked and soaked the floor mat of my car’s trunk, I bought some large plastic containers to put into the trunk. The containers were originally too tall to close the trunk lid, but that was easily fixed with a power saw.

I also began following him. That was harder than one might think, for even though the alleys were barely wide enough for a single truck to drive down them, they weren’t officially one-way streets. If I got close enough to the alleyway to see his garage, I was easily within spotting distance. Fortunately, most people are creatures of habit and Haupmann was no exception. He always entered the alley from one cross-street and left it from the one on the other end of his block. After several days of watching, I saw that everyone else drove the alley the same way. Even the garbage truck did. So while the alley wasn’t a one way road, it was by custom.

Haupmann was kind of boring in his routine. He left his home at a quarter `till eight each day, varying by no more than five minutes. He took the same route to the embassy. I was able to fall back some distance and still keep a tail on him. He had enough rank to park in the embassy’s lot. Some days he had meetings or conferences at office buildings in the city center. A couple of times, he went into one of the Senate or House office buildings. When he went on those trips, he took a cab. That put me at a disadvantage, as he could just hop out while I had to find a place to park my car.

After work, he normally went home. Sometimes, he’d go to restaurants. A few times, I was able to see him and his dinner mates. A few I recognized. When I got into this case, I looked up who were the power players in the regulation of foreign capital and banking matters.

If I could have gotten closer, I might have been able to see who picked up the check. That’s a good indication of who wants what in this town, for those asking for something always pay the check. Politicians never do. It’s probably a union violation for a senator to pay for a meal at any place other than Chuck-e-Cheese’s Pizza. And it’s hard as hell to find out afterwards who paid, as the restaurants are notoriously closed-mouthed about that. If their patrons found out that the staff had been indiscreet, the restaurant’s business would have disappeared in very short order. You would have better luck finding out which politicians boarded private jets at National Airport. I sometimes wondered why reporters never thought about checking into that angle.

Haupmann’s garbage, so far, wasn’t yielding a lot of clues. From the food garbage, it seemed that somebody was a decent cook, if only because of the lack of takeout containers, pizza boxes and tin cans. He had some concern about personal security, for most of the papers in his trash had been run through a cross-cut shredder. Maybe the feds could have pieced them back together. I didn’t have the ability to do that.

What I could see is that either Haupmann was so boring that he could have been a spokesman for Wonder Bread or, if he was doing something bad, he had the skills to hide it. Or he was just lucky, for I couldn’t sit on him every damn hour of the day. If he snuck out for a few hours in the middle of the night, I was going to miss it.

I called Hauger and asked to meet him. He agreed, but he didn’t want me coming to the embassy. Fine with me, we met about 7:30 the next morning at a coffee shop near the Rosslyn Metro station. He looked indistinguishable from the rest of the businessmen who were buying their cup of morning joe. Except for his eyes, for he quickly glanced at everyone who came bear our table. He probably could have described them all to a police sketch artist. I told Hauger what I had done to try and find out what Haupmann might be up to. That took a lot longer than giving him the results.

He sipped his coffee. He didn’t say anything.

After a few minutes of silence, I said: “Any thoughts on the prospects of bringing a major-league ball club to RFK Stadium?”

Hauger said nothing.

“If they do, what do you like for a name? The old team was ‘the Senators’, but I think they should come up to the times and be called ‘the Lobbyists’.”

“All right. What do you recommend?

I spread my hands. “How far do you want to take this feeling of yours?”

Hauger looked at me. “I still think there is something wrong.”

“Yeah, but what? You’ve seen his financials, he gave you disclosure forms. Does anything show up?”

“Nothing other than what you’ve already discovered.”

“Are you satisfied that his background is good?”

Hauger nodded. “We checked him out pretty thoroughly. He’s not a plant.”

“I can’t wiretap his home. I can’t get the Post Office to monitor his mail. I might be able to get copies of his phone records from C&P Telephone, which will be illegal as all hell, if you care.” “I don’t.”

“OK. Can you at least get a log started of when he arrives at the embassy, when he leaves and if he goes out for lunch or meetings?”

“That may be possible,” Hauger allowed. “It may be time for the embassy to begin a formal check-in and out process.”

“That would help. I can continue checking his trash. As for tailing him, that’s hit or miss, unless you want me to bring in help. Do you still want me to put a priority on being covert?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So, that means I can’t go check out his house and search his home office,” I mused.

“I would prefer that you stay as discreet as possible.”

“What’s going on that bothers you? Unauthorized use of copiers? Classified documents are missing for short periods of time, only to be found again? Somebody found film boxes or canisters in the trash?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then like what, Mr. Hauger? Come on, you’re killing me, here.”

He smiled at that. “I know that this is, as you say, like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

I shook my head. “No, it isn’t. At least I’d know I was looking for a needle. This is more like a snipe hunt.”

“What is a snipe hunt?”

“Looking for something that isn’t there. You’re asking me to prove a negative, that Haupmann isn’t dirty.” I drank some of my coffee. “Hey, let me ask you this: When did you stop beating your wife?”

Hauger looked offended. “I have never hit my wife.”

“But that’s not the question and how would you prove, sitting here, that you’ve stopped beating her?”

“I take your point.”

I looked right at him. “Just to be clear, Mr. Hauger, I have no problem with taking your money and following this guy around, or using some of your money to have other people follow him around some of the time. While rummaging through other people’s garbage isn’t my idea of fun, it’s part of the job. But if there’s nothing to find, there’s nothing to find. And even if there is, I don’t have the resources to have eyes on him every minute of every day. Catching him doing something wrong’ll be a combination of luck and a misstep on his part.”

“I understand. Please keep working on this task,” Hauger said. He stood up and left the coffee shop without another word.

The Blackmail Caper, Chapter 6

I soon received the results of the criminal records and credit checks. At first blush, there wasn’t much in them. Haupmann’s criminal history was limited to parking tickets near the Embassy and the occasional traffic ticket. He had twice pled guilty to a defective muffler beef. That was probably a moving violation that a lawyer had plea-bargained down to a charge with a higher fine but no points. Which meant that the insurance companies wouldn’t raise his rates.

Haupmann married Mary Pulaski when he was working for Chemical Bank in New York in 1971. Their eldest daughter, Kimberley, was born ten months later. Brian followed in `74 and Melissa in `78. Mary had a moving violation for failure to yield the right of way in 1983, nothing else. Kim was a senior at Yale, Brian was a freshman at Tufts. Kim had more credit card debt than she should have, but nothing that could be considered to be outrageous. There was no criminal history on the children, but then again, I didn’t have access to juvie records.

Haupmann had worked for a few other banks, mostly in New York and then in D.C. Seven years ago, he went to work for the Norwegians as a financial analyst. He must have done some public relations work or something, because he had taken the time to register as a foreign agent under the Logan Act. Hardly anyone bothered to do that; so either Hauptmann or the Norwegians were sticklers when it came to following the law.

Hauptmann’s stepfather was pretty much a solid citizen. Andrew Johnson had been born in 1921; he dropped out of college after the war started to become a Marine fighter pilot. He left as a major after the war, but he stayed in the reserves as he finished getting an engineering degree from Ohio State. Johnson went to work for Ford until he was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. That second round of combat flying resulted in a medical retirement as a bird colonel. There was a note that his first wife had died of cancer in 1947 without having had a child.

He went back to work for Ford, he retired in 1986, then was elected to the school board, where he served until he died of a heart attack three years ago, still married to Solveig.

There was nothing substantive about his mother. She had been in the League of Women Voters in the ‘70s. Other than that, she was almost invisible until she died of a massive stroke a little over a year after her husband had died. Solveig never had a child after her son by the German. Whether she didn’t want any more children or if she and Andrew had tried was not of record.

There was also no mention of whether Andrew had sought to adopt Peter. Given that Peter had been about sixteen when his mother remarried, my suspicion was that Peter had probably loathed his stepfather for a very long time.

The financials showed that Hauptmann’s family was a little stretched, what with two kids in Ivy league schools, but they weren’t in trouble. The Haupmanns had re-financed their house to cash in on equity, more than likely to meet college costs. They had two cars. No surprise, the cars were Volvos. One was five years old, the other nine years old. I’d bet that he drove a sedan and she drove a station wagon. They owned some rental properties in Manhattan that made a little more than the carrying costs. Haupmann probably considered them long-term retirement investments and, given the track record of real estate in Manhattan, he was probably right.

There was nothing unusual in their tax returns. Those are normally hard to get, but he had to provide the Embassy with a copy of his return each year. Hauger had thoughtfully sent the last five years’ worth to me. Haupmann had some investment income from his previous work in banking. Mrs. Haupmann reported income, there was a W-2 form for her from a credit union. In the signature lines of their tax returns, Haupmann had listed his job as a “financial analyst, Mrs. Haupmann listed her occupation as “secretary”.

Nothing jumped out at me from the papers. I didn’t expect that anything would. Hauger didn’t strike me as being a stupid man. If whatever had tripped his warning trigger was obvious, he would have found it.

I called Hauger’s office and spoke to him. I asked him if the Embassy had security logs of when Haupmann came and went. He said only for visitors, not for staff. He seemed a little shocked that I’d even think that they’d have a need to keep close tabs on their people. I thanked him and hung up. Cripes, if I had suspicions about someone and I was him, the first thing I’d do would be to keep track of his movements. On the other hand, employees talk and the fact that he was being watched, if even a little, would get spread around.

I took out a pad of paper, one of the yellow-lined ones that lawyers love, and made some notes. Basically, I had nothing. Most of the time, there is some loose corner or a threat that can be pulled on. There were about as many loose threads in Haupmann’s life as there were on a billiard ball. Sometimes, the way to generate something to run down was to try spooking the target and seeing what he does. But that would have violated the prime directive from my client.

On a normal case, what I would have done is reported what I had to the client and then let them decide if they wanted me to continue the investigation. No point in doing that here, for I had no doubt that Hauger already knew what I had found out.

I drove over to Haupmann’s neighborhood on a scouting run. The neighborhood dated back to around to the Twenties, when appliances began replacing servants for the professional classes. The houses were smaller than those of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. There was an alley that ran down the middle of each block of houses. The street side of the houses showed only the houses and the front yards. There were no driveways; the garages were in their back yards that faced onto the alleyways. Garbage cans stood next to many of the garage doors. The garbage trucks came down the alleys to pick up the trash. Back in the day, milkmen probably delivered to boxes in the alleys.

That trip gave me a path to take. I went back to the office, called the town’s department of public works and eventually found someone who knew the trash pickup schedule. I told the lady that I was house-sitting for friends and that they hadn’t told me the trash day.

Which was why, on the following Tuesday. I was driving slowly down the alley at three in the morning. I’d be screwed if the Haupmann family was one of those which put out their trash thirty minutes before the truck came by. I stopped and looked in their cans, they had put their garbage out. I grabbed just one bag, put it in the trunk of my car, and drove off. There were three other bags in the cans. This time, I was less interested in what was in the bag than the bag itself. I later stopped by a grocery store and bought four boxes of the identical type of trash bags.

My plan was to do a switch on Haupmann’s trash each week. In the business, it’s called a “trash cover”. It’s even legal, the courts have ruled that trash set out for pickup is deemed to be abandoned property, which is why the police can search your trash without a warrant. Still, the big trick was not to get caught. Not because I was worried about getting pinched by the cops, but because the goal was not to be detected by the target.

I went home and set up a pair of sawhorses in the garage. A sheet of plywood went on top of the sawhorses, which, in turn, I covered with a sheet of plastic. I pulled on a set of coveralls, donned a pair of rubber gloves and looked through the trash. There was nothing remarkable in the trash. There were a few boxes from a Chinese takeout, lots of Kleenex, dental floss and grungy paper towers. There were six cans of Fancy Feast and a bag of grey dirt that apparently was used cat litter.

I rebagged the stuff up and wadded up the plastic sheet. I had gotten garbage juice on my coveralls. I made a mental note to get some of the disposable impermeable coveralls used by house painters and serial killers. Hell, I might as well get some goggles and a face mask, for only the Almighty knew what I’d find the next time.

My garage smelt of garbage. Ah, the glamorous life of a private detective.

The Blackmail Caper, Ch. 5

When I came to the office four days later, the receptionist, Amy Airhern, handed me an envelope that had been delivered by a messenger service. I thanked her and went into my office to see what was in the envelope. It held copies of the papers that Hauger had shown me in his office and a check for my retainer. The check was in the name of the “Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway,” it was drawn on the Bank of Boston. There were also copies of releases that had been signed a few years earlier by Haupmann, as well as a letter which authorized me to make inquiries and conduct investigations of embassy employees on behalf of the Kingdom of Norway. The letter was in both English and Norwegian. The Norwegian text had that funny letter “o” with a slash through it.

I made out a deposit slip and went to the bank. When I asked how long it would take for the check to clear, the teller looked at the check again and called over one of the cube-dwellers. They conferred and the answer was twelve business days.

I read the background materials on Haupmann before then. He had been born in a “displaced persons” camp in 1945. He and his mother, a Norwegian named Solveig Jorgensen (she was born in 1928), lived in the camp until 1949, when they were permitted to emigrate to the United States. His mother’s reason for emigrating was that she feared retribution for having borne a child of a German officer and that her family had disowned her.

In 1954, Haupmann’s mother applied for a Norwegian passport for both her son and herself. They both became naturalized Americans in 1959. His mother married Andrew Johnson, an American, in 1961. Johnson was a widower. There was no mention in the papers as to whether or not Solveig and Andrew had any children or if Andrew had children by his previous wife. Those were all things that I would have to check into.

Haupmann was one smart cookie. He graduated high school in Westlake, Ohio three years early, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree from the Wharton School of Business by the time he was 23. He married at age 26 and was still on his starter marriage. In my line of work, coming across someone who had been married for that long was like sighting a unicorn. Haupmann had two daughters and a son, all in school.

When the Embassy’s check had cleared, I ordered criminal records checks and credit checks on Haupmann’s immediate family, his mother and his stepfather. Hauger had probably done that already. He hadn’t included them in the materials that he sent to me. No matter, I’d have done the checks regardless.

I had just finished sealing up the order envelopes (with the fees) when Sarah Thorpe came into my office. “Do you have a minute,” she asked.

“Sure.” I gestured to one of the client chairs.

Sarah sat down. She’s the private detective that I rent my cubbyhole of an office from. Or, I guess, sub-let it. “You busy these days?”

I shrugged. “I make a living. You?”

She nodded. “The same. I think it’s time to start talking about formally joining forces. We help each out enough on cases. If we were to merge, then we wouldn’t have to keep billing each other out as subcontractors or consultants. We wouldn’t have to keep getting our clients’ consents for each of us to work the other’s cases. And if one of us can’t do something, the other can cover as clients would be retaining our firm, not us as individuals.”

“Like Spade & Archer?”

She smiled. “Yeah, except I’m not looking to end up being shot by Brigid O'Shaughnessy.”

I grinned.

“How do we work the money end of it,” I asked.

“The root of all evil?”

“Yeah.”

Sarah nodded. “I thought about that. We could do it much the same way as now. The company would pay the rent and pay Amy. We’d each chip in our share. Outside of that, we’d get what we earned. If I work a case you brought in, you’d be paid for your time and vice versa. And maybe we can get a small business rate for health insurance or even set up some form of pension plan.”

I leaned forward and put my elbows on my desk. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Yeah.”

“You got a name for this operation?”

“Thorpe-Hawkins Investigations, Inc.”

I thought about that. It’d probably look good for applying for government security work, what with the first name being that of a female owner. “Why that,” I asked.

“Because we could have a logo that emphasizes the initials for the words,” she said.

I frowned at that a little. “That’s read as ‘t-h-i-i-n-c’ or ‘thiins’?”

“More like ‘thiink’.”

I blew a little bit of air out my nose, it sounded like a snort. “Think IBM might complain of trademark infringement?”

She shrugged. “Probably not. I’ll get my lawyer to check to see if IBM’s trademark covers detective work.”

I stood up and held out my hand. “OK. Deal?”

Sarah stood up and shook my hand. “Deal. I’ll have my lawyer draw up what needs to be done. He’ll probably tell you that you should consult with an attorney of your choosing.”

We sat back down. “I don’t see a need for that. We’ve had each other’s backs when the guns’ve come out. If I can trust you to be behind me with a loaded gun in your hand, I can trust you not to screw me on this deal.”

“OK, but he won’t like it.”

I made a dismissive gesture. “Fuck him if he can’t take a joke. But maybe he can draw up a form of a retainer agreement that we can use.”

Sarah shook her head. “Nah, I have one. I’ll get Amy to revise it once the lawyer files the incorporation papers.”

I shrugged. “OK, but let’s not spend a friggin’ fortune on lawyering this thing.”

“Right. Well, I have paying work to do,” she said. She stood up and said: “See ya,” and left.

Yet Another Project, Ch. 4 (The Blackmail Caper)

I am quite a bit into this, so I thought it was time to start posting more chapters.

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“Would you care for an aperitif,” Hauger asked.

“Coffee with cream would be nice, thanks.”

Hauger picked up the handset of his phone and presumably placed the order. One word did sound like coffee.

“Tell me about Haupmann,” I said.

Hauger opened his desk drawer and removed a manila envelope. He handed it to me. “This is a copy of his personnel file, translated into English,” he said.

I opened up the envelope and slid the papers out. There were about thirty sheets. I slid them back in, it was more than I wanted to look at right now.

“Who typed them up,” I asked.

“I did,” Hauger said.

“Who knows about this case,” I asked.

“Here? Only the ambassador. My superior in Oslo knows,” Hauger said.

“The other day, you said that you had a bad feeling about Haupmann. Did you consider just asking him if something was wrong,” I asked.

He shook his head. “I have no indication that something is wrong. If I were to talk to him about what I suspect, that can be an adverse personnel action under our rules.”

“For just showing concern?”

“Yes.”

I was thinking of something to say when the woman who had brought the sandwiches returned with another serving tray. She set a coffee cup, carafe and a pitcher of cream on Hauger’s desk in front of me. I thanked her, she collected the detritus from dinner and left.

“You’re not having anything,” I asked.

Hauger turned around and opened a file cabinet that was a disguised mini-fridge. He put some ice into a glass, closed the fridge, and then produced a bottle. He poured some booze into the glass. Then he sipped it.

“I am going to miss American bourbon whiskey when I am transferred for my next assignment,” he said. “It costs too much in Europe.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. There was no shortage of American military PXs in Europe; surely he had some contacts who would get him some bourbon from one of them. Maybe Hauger was too straight-laced for that. I poured some coffee into the cup, added some cream and took a sip. This was the good stuff.

“So, Haupmann is pinging your spydar,” I asked.

Hauger looked confused. Then he smiled. “Ah, a contraction of ‘spy’ and ‘radar’. You are correct. There is something wrong with him or his life. Will you look into it for me?”

“If the price is right,” I said. “I’ll need a healthy retainer from your government.”

“How much is ‘healthy’,” he asked.

I named an amount. It was into the five-figure range.

Hauger sat back in his chair. “Why so much money?”

I shrugged. “You represent a sovereign nation. I’m not going to get anywhere trying to collect from you if you don’t pay. And I don’t know you. It would be too easy for you to disavow any knowledge of my actions and not pay me. So I want payment, in advance.”

Hauger sighed. “I will need to obtain approval for that. It is above my level of authority.”

“Fine with me. Also, if this case costs more than that, I’ll let you know. Same rules apply, I don’t go into the hole for governments.” I stood up. “If you get approval, you can send the materials on your guy over with the check. I’ll start on the case once the check clears. Also, if Haupmann has signed releases for his medical and financial records, please include them, along with whatever authorizations I would need.”

“What do you mean,” Hauger asked, as he stood up.

“If he’s signed releases for your staff to look through his records, then I’ll need a letter authorizing me to act on behalf of the embassy.”

“I see. I’ll show you out, then,” Hauger said. He walked me to the door. People were still coming in to the reception. The noise level spilling out of the dining room was incredibly high.

At the front door, Hauger stuck his hand out. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Hawkins.”

I shook it. “My pleasure, Mr. Hauger.”

He nodded, somewhat gravely. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Until then.” I turned and walked out the door and went back to my car.

I was a good part of the way out of the city when I realized that I was being tailed. I stopped off at a gas station and topped off my car, for all of four gallons of gas. I went inside, paid for the gas, then browsed the convenience store part for a few minutes. I bought a few things, then went back to my car. A tail picked me up about a half a mile down the road. Whoever was tailing me wasn’t being terribly overt. It wasn’t like they were trying to tell me that I was being tailed. But it wasn’t a big-budget job with several cars picking up the tail and then dropping off.

The tail disappeared when I was about ten minutes from home. I guess they assumed that I was going home for the night.

They were right.

Yet Another Project, Chapter 3

I didn’t return to the office. Rather, I drove to Georgetown University’s campus in northwest D.C. I wanted some information on the current staff of the Norwegian embassy. It might have been available at the local library, but it was an excuse to have lunch at the Au Bon Pain restaurant. It was kind of fun to see the contrast between the yuppies who went there and the panhandlers outside. And it was a change from the greasy-spoon grade diners that I tend to gravitate towards.

The school library had some reference works on the local diplomatic corps. I copied the photos of the top level players at the embassy. Hauger was listed as the Assistant Counselor for Fisheries. He evidently didn’t have enough pull to rate having his photo in the reference books, or maybe he didn’t want to.

The embassy itself was on 34th street, just off Massachusetts Avenue and pretty much across the street from the Naval Observatory. Not having a Mass. Ave. address probably meant that the embassy wasn’t officially on Embassy Row, if I cared about such things. At least the address on the invitation matched up to the embassy’s address.

I learned enough to be somewhat surprised. Norwegian Liberation Day was supposedly not that big a holiday; they folded the celebration into their Constitution Day, which was several days afterwards. But they were going to have this bash for some reason. Maybe the Ambassador was going to be out of town the following week, or there was some larger diplomatic function set for the same day. Didn’t matter to me.

When I returned to the office, I consulted my address book and then dialed a number in Kentucky.

“Special Agent in Charge’s Office,” a youngish woman’s voice announced.

“This is Sam Hawkins. Does SAC Yates have a minute to talk?”

“Hold on, sir.”

I listened to about two minutes’ worth of mindless instrumental music.

“This is Yates. Talk to me.”

“This is Hawkins. Some Norwegian spook named Jens Hauger wants me to check out some guy who works for them. Yaacov wants me to take the job. I just want to find out if that’s kosher with the Bureau.”

“How do you know Hauger’s a spy,” Yates asked.

“His business card said that he was the chief security officer, but the public profile for the embassy says that he’s a fisheries official,” I said.

“When do you need to know?’

“By the 8th. I’ve been invited to a function there that evening,” I said.

“I’ll be in touch.” Yates hung up.

* * *

Three nights later, I was sitting in my car, parked down the street from the embassy. A small but steady stream of people were going into the embassy. Yates had called me back that morning to let me know that the FBI had been aware that Hauger had been looking for a private detective and that they had no problem with my taking the case. I had mentally added “at this time” to Yates’s assurance. Things can change and when they do, the bureaucracies in this town have a memory hole that makes the one in 1984 look benign.

I started up my car and moved it to a legal parking place, then locked it up. I wasn’t terribly worried about it being stolen. First off, the car had a manual transmission. Second, this neighborhood was as well-patrolled as any in the city. You would see more cops pass by in a day her than a resident of Southeast DC. would see in a month. And let’s just say that more than the city cops kept an eye on things around and near embassies. It would not go over well if the attaché at a legation was mugged.

There were two men at the door. They smiled and were dressed well. But they were hard guys. Their suit coats were well-tailored and they did a very nice job of hiding their pistols. If I had to guess, I’d guess they were packing Glocks, which were the issue handgun of the Norwegian military. For once I had left the sidewalk, I left American soil.

One of them held a clipboard. “Good evening, sir, may I see your invitation and your photo ID,” he asked politely. I handed them to him. He checked the number of the invitation against the list and then my ID. He handed my license back to me and then nodded his head towards the door. “Enjoy the reception, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Thank you.” I went inside.

The party was inside of a room that was probably the formal dining room. It was larger than any home dining room, but probably quite a bit smaller than the State Dining Room in the White House. People were conversing in several languages, including Russian. That made sense, for the Red Army had liberated northern Norway. Even though Norway was now part of NATO, the Norwegians had never forgotten being freed from the Germans by the Russians. Most Americans didn’t know that. Hell, I didn’t until I had looked up this Norwegian holiday.

I suppose that the party was a nice one. I wasn’t there long enough to have a drink. A young woman intercepted me and showed me to a small conference room. On the table were some trays with finger foods. Next to the food were several bottles of liquor, wine, as well as ice and some bottles of water. The room itself was rather tastefully decorated. She told me to help myself and she left me alone.

I cracked open the top of one of the bottles of Poland Springs. I was pretty sure that they didn’t drink that brand in Oslo, but it’s probably a pretty stupid idea to ship bottles of water across an ocean.

I heard a door open and turned around. Two men came into the room. One was Hauger. The other man was better dressed. I recognized him.

“Mr. Hawkins, I’d like to introduce our ambassador to your fine nation,” Hauger said.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawkins,” the Ambassador said, sticking out his hand.

“The pleasure is mine, Your Excellency,” I said. The Ambassador had a good handshake. I blinked for a second as his accent registered with me. “You’re from Boston?”

The Ambassador smiled. “No. But I majored in economics at BU and then got a masters in international relations at Harvard. Which’s why my government has season tickets for the Red Sox and the Celtics.”

I grinned at that.

“Jens tells me that you may be able to help with a little problem that we might have,” he said.

“I presume that’s why I was invited,” I said.

“Good. Well, I’ll let the two of you talk for I need to get back to the reception. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I replied. We shook ands again and then the Ambassador left out the door that I had come through.

“Let’s go to my office, if you don’t mind,” Hauger said.

I made a “lead on, McDuff” gesture. Hauger took me through some hallways to an office. The office had an outer area with a secretarial desk that was not occupied. Hauger’s office was not tiny, he had a wooden desk and a small conference table. He gestured to a chair and I sat. He pulled up one on the adjacent side.

“Are you hungry,” he asked.

“I can eat,” I said.

“Do you have any preferences,” he asked.

“As long as it’s not alive,” I said.

He smiled at that. There was a multi-line telephone on the conference table. He picked up the handset and punched in a few numbers. When whoever answered, Hauger spoke rapidly in Norwegian and then hung up. Or I presumed it was Norwegian. I didn’t know.

“Before we get into it, I’m guessing that you’re the Station Chief or Resident or whatever the term is for the boss spy,” I said.

He smiled. “How do you know that I’m not the head security officer, as it said on my business card?”

I shrugged. “If you were, you’d have gotten someone from the State Department’s diplomatic protection folks, or maybe the Secret Service or the FBI to come by to visit me. But you got a CIA agent to pay me a call. I figure it was professional courtesy from one spook to another.” I paused. “Or maybe one of the game wardens, if you’re really the embassy’s fish czar.”

Hauger smiled. “Why do you wish to know?”

“I like to know whom I’m dealing with.”

Hauger was about to say something when there was a knock on the door. A young woman brought in a serving tray with two wrapped submarine sandwiches. She set a bottle of water in front of me and a bottle of beer before Hauger. She and Hauger had a brief exchange, again in Norwegian, then she left.

We each took one of the subs. I unwrapped it and then looked at Hauger.

“Philly cheese steak,” I asked.

“You expected a herring sandwich, perhaps?” He had a merry tone in his voice.

“Or lutefisk?”

Hauger shook his head. “I’d have to really dislike you to do that.” He took a bite of his sandwich and sighed. Contentment.

I took a bite from mine. It was good, the embassy cooks used good beef.

“Anyway, how about answering my question,” I asked.

Hauger had taken another mouthful. He finished chewing it and then washed it down with a sip of his beer. The beer probably was Norwegian, the writing on it was foreign and the name on the label was one that I’d never heard of.

“I can rely on your keeping this confidential,” he asked.

“You can’t make a living in my line of work by blabbing confidences, So, yes, you can,” I said.

“All right.” Hauger drank some more beer. “Without going into details that don’t matter, I work for my government’s version of MI6.”

“Not he Norwegian version of the CIA?”

“No,” he said. “Your CIA is nothing more than an oversized clone of MI6. The British refer to the CIA as their cousins.” He took a breath and then added: “And when the British refer to your CIA as ‘their cousins’, the word ‘retarded’ is implied.”

I had no answer to that. I concentrated on eating the sub.

Yet Another Project, Chapter 2

Two mornings later, a seriously unremarkable man came into my office. His last name was Yaacov. He worked for the CIA.

“Yaacov,” I said.

“Hawkins,” he said. “Buy you a cup of coffee down the street?”

“Sure.”

I stood up. In one step, Yaacov had reached my set of hangers on the wall. He pulled my suit coat off one of the hangers and handed it to me. He wasn’t being polite, he was checking the weight of it to see if I had a tape recorders in the pockets.

“You’re carrying a revolver, now? I thought you were a 1911 man,” he said, referring to the Army Colt automatic pistol.

“I was.”

“Why’d you switch,” he asked.

I pulled on my suit coat. “Too many problems.” I came out from behind my desk,

Yaacov stepped through the doorway. “There are better functioning .45s,” he said.

“What, you’re moonlighting for Shooting Times, now,” I said.

Yaacov snorted. We went down the stairs and out to the street. There was an elevator in the building, but it was so slow that you could time the intervals between floors with a calendar.

As we walked, Yaacov reached into his suit coat and extracted an envelope. I glanced at it; it had the same coat of arms embossed on the outside as Hauger’s business card. I put it in my pocket, rather than try to open it while walking down a sidewalk.

“What’s this,” I asked.

“An invitation to a reception at the Norwegian embassy three days from now. It’s to commemorate the 48th anniversary of their country’s liberation from the Germans. Attire’s business dress, so wear a nicer suit, if you have one. Leave the gun, the embassy’s their soil and they don’t take kindly to people bringing guns into their embassy.”

We went into the coffee shop, ordered our coffee, and sat at a table to drink it.

“You want me to take the job,” I asked.

“We’d like you to consider it. There’re folks in The Company who would regard it kindly if you did.” Yaakov looked bored, as though whatever answer that I might give was of no concern to him.

”And the FBI,” I asked. I didn’t have to explain to Yaakov that the FBI has been known to be displeased when the CIA runs operations on American soil,

“They know about it,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t have to tell Yaacov that I’d check that out. Yaacov was, after all, a CIA agent. When it came to lying, they made congressmen look like rank amateurs. He knew I’d make some calls.

Yaakov also didn’t ask me to let him know whether or not I decided to take the job. I took that to mean that he’d hear about it. Maybe from Hauger, maybe from another source. He just said: “See ya.” Yaakov stood up and walked out of the coffee shop, taking his coffee cup with him. He was a careful man.

I finished my coffee and then strolled back towards the office.

Yet Another Project; Ch.1

This is one that I've been working on for awhile:
____________________________________________________

Chapter 1

I was sitting at my desk in my cubbyhole of an office in Tyson’s Corner. There was a nice, hot cup of coffee on the desk. I had my feet up. I was reading the Washington Post. I try to pay attention to the local political shenanigans, not because I’m a political junkie, but out of professional interest. When there is a serious political feud going on, people get interested in digging up deeply buried scandals. They want to find the skeletons that are so far back in the closet that they’re in old garment bags. It helps if I keep abreast of who is gunning for whom.

Digging up dirt is part of what I do. I’m a private detective.

The receptionist buzzed me to let me know that I had a client. My cubbyhole is in the offices of another private detective. She, in turn, shares a receptionist with three other offices. Two of them are new lawyers who had recently hung out their shingles; the third is some guy who claims to be a “financial planner”, which is probably some new breed of confidence artist.

I swung my feet off the desk and told her to send the client in. He was tall, pale, and white, with semi-short hair that was trending from blond to grey. “Good morning, my name is Jens Hauger,” he said.

I stood up and shook his hand. Hauger was wearing what appeared to be a reasonably expensive suit which gave him a European air. If he was armed, he concealed it well and the suit would have had to have been custom-tailored for it.

“My card,” he said, and proffered it.

“Have a seat,” I said, as I did so, as well. I looked at the card. It was appropriately thick and embossed. It said that he was the Chief Security Officer for the Royal Norwegian Embassy. I guessed that was the Norwegian royal coat of arms on the card.
Hauger reached into his inside suit coat pocket. The right side top drawer of my desk was open, a Ruger Security Six .357 Magnum was in it. My hand drifted towards the drawer.

His eyes twinkled a little as his hand came out holding some folding money. He placed that on my desk and slid it over towards me.
“Consulting fee,” he said.

I picked it up, four $50 bills. I put them back down.

“How may I be of assistance,” I asked.

Hauger began to reach for his jacket pocket again. This time, he pulled out a photograph and two small sheets of paper. He handed them to me. The photograph was a copy of a consulate ID card for a Peter Haupmann, who was forty six years old. The papers had details about Haupmann.

“Who’s Haupmann,” I asked.

“He works in our financial affairs office. He’s essentially a liaison between my government, Norwegian and American banks and your banking industry regulators.

“Sounds like a German name,” I said.

Hauger nodded. “Correct, Mr. Hawkins. But to answer your unspoken question, the war was a long time ago.”

I was skeptical. The war was a long time ago for Americans, but Norway had been an occupied country. Children with bitter memories of the hard times, both during and after the war, would be Haupmann’s age, maybe a few of years older. Stories would be told and handed down from generation to generation- How the Germans Shot Uncle Jan Johansen, and so on. Europeans were far better at holding on to their history than Americans. There’d be no forgetting.

“How does a German end up working for the Norwegian Crown,” I asked.

“Because he’s not German. His mother was Norwegian. She came to the States after the war. She later married an American banker. Haupmann went to Yale University and the Harvard School of Business.”

“So he’s an American?”

“Dual citizenship,” Hauger said. “Norwegian citizenship is conveyed at birth through the mother. His mother raised him to speak Norwegian as well as English. He spent a year of high school in Norway on an exchange program.”

“If you don’t mind my getting down to it: What’s the job?”

Hauger sighed. “I fear that something is wrong in his personal life. It may be something serious, something that could pose a security threat to my embassy or my country. But I have no indication that he is corrupt or has been turned by another nation.”

“You have a feeling?”

Hauger paused for a second. “Yes, a feeling. Haupmann is a valuable staffer. If I open a formal investigation, even if nothing is found, there will be a stain on his reputation in my country’s diplomatic service. It will damage his career and we might lose him to a banking house.”

“Where he would make a lot more money?”
“Yes, very much so.”

I mulled it over. “I would have trouble getting into his finances, you know.”

Hauger shook his head slightly. “I can get you signed releases from Haupmann.”

He looked at me. I looked back at him. Hauger was patient. No surprise, for he was either a policeman or a spy. Maybe both. Those trades teach patience.

“No,” I said.

“ ‘No?’ Why not,” Hauger sat back in the chair, looking slightly puzzled.

“I don’t doubt that Haupmann’s who you say he is. But I don’t know who you are.”

“I have my passport and embassy ID,” he offered.

I shook my head. “Passports can be fixed, business cards can be made by any print shop and I wouldn’t know what a genuine Norwegian Embassy ID looked like.” I picked up the money he had dropped on my desk. I took a fifty and tossed the rest back across the desk.

Hauger looked at the bills and made no move to pick them up. “I have already accounted for the expenditure,” he said, as if to himself. He looked thoughtful, probably thinking over what he might say to persuade me to change my mind.

He stood up. “Good day, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Good day, Mr. Hauger,” I replied.

Hauger nodded his head once and left my office. He had left the rest of the money on my desk.