Captive Witness by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene [Keene, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-28T16:16:04+00:00

So Gutterman does know I’m looking for the film! Nancy said to herself.

Although she had half suspected it, this was the first time he had given any indication of such knowledge, and Nancy concluded that he must have discovered her connection with Captive Witness fairly recently. Otherwise, she was sure he would have spoken to her about it long before.

But how did he find out? If her phone call home wasn’t tapped, then, Nancy concluded, there must be a spy in the film festival’s office who overheard a conversation between Richard Ernst and her father!

The prospects of her meeting with Gutterman churned in her mind as she flopped into bed and fell asleep uneasily.

When she saw Ned the next morning, she said nothing about Gutterman’s note or about the invitation to meet him alone that night to see the documentary. It bothered her to keep it secret from Ned, but she believed that the fate of the children and the film hinged on a risk that was solely hers—finding out what Gutterman wanted!

First, she must learn all she could about the stolen film. After brunch, she telephoned the festival office and spoke to Richard Ernst, who her father had said would be her best source of information.

They found the festival offices just off the Ringstrasse, the great band of streets enclosing downtown Vienna which once marked the outer walls where the Turkish invasions had stopped in the sixteenth and again in the seventeenth century.

“Do you know,” Nancy asked Ned as their taxi made its way through the crowded streets, “that those sieges of Vienna gave us two things we now eat for breakfast?”

Ned shook his head.

“Well, it was during the first Turkish siege that the bakers of Vienna invented the Vienna roll. And it was the Turks who brought coffee to Central Europe. Can you imagine Europe today without its coffeehouses?”

“And with that colorful information,” Ned said, “we find ourselves in front of the film festival offices. ”

Richard Ernst, the festival representative, was a meticulously dressed, polite, and proper Austrian who kissed Nancy’s hand and offered coffee and delicious pastries. When Nancy asked for milk instead, he smilingly obliged.

But soon his face became serious. “Last Wednesday,” Mr. Ernst said, “a man appeared with a letter written on Kurt Kessler’s stationery and bearing Mr. Kessler’s signature. It instructed festival authorities to give the messenger the copy of Captive Witness in our possession and to accept in exchange a revised copy that the messenger handed us.”

“I’m surprised there was no more formal procedure involved,” Nancy said.

“Well, we winged it, as you Americans say, because it was the first time anything like that had ever happened to us. We’re a fairly new festival and, I suppose, a bit naive.”

“So you simply gave the man the original film?” Nancy continued.

“No, I left the room to ask my associate, Mr. Etienne, what he thought, and when I came back, I discovered that the messenger had taken our copy and left the so-called revision. It turned out to be a completely blank reel.

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