Four Hundred Names · Vienna Files

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

In Vienna, a police switchboard operator tells the detective August Brenner that her chief took a call from a Russian interpreter on a bad line and walked to Soviet headquarters on the Ring. They opened the gate for him, and he has not come out. Upstairs the word 'defected' is already typed. Did he defect, or was he sent for?

🎧 Full episode of Vienna Files: a post-war detective radio drama set in occupied Vienna, an audio mystery performed by a full cast.

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

Vienna, summer 1949. Resi Wessely, a switchboard operator of the Vienna police, climbs to the mezzanine rooms of the detective August Brenner, above a bomb-scarred courtyard off the Herrengasse, with her gloves still on. Dr. Theodor Fuchs, who writes Brenner's cases down, offers her a chair; she will not take it. Her chief, Ferdinand Stadler, runs Bureau Seven for the Minister, and nine days ago, she says, a Russian interpreter rang him: a short call on a bad line. Stadler took his hat and walked to Soviet headquarters on the Ring. They opened the gate for him, and he has not come out. Upstairs they already have the word typed, defected, and Resi, who has listened to policemen for eleven years and trusts none of them, says she put the call through herself. By noon Brenner and Fuchs are at the Bureau Seven offices at Schottenring police headquarters, where Stadler's deputy, Pokorny, is acting chief and says he spent that afternoon at his own desk. After midnight at the switchboard, where she has worked nights since the call, at her own asking, Resi tells them what her report had no box for. The Minister of the Interior, Kainz, lets them stand on his carpet some while before he looks up, and swears he sat at his desk all that afternoon waiting for Stadler's five o'clock report. Two floors below Bureau Seven, Inspector Dolezal of the patrol liaison office says he will light no candle for Stadler, answers 'On patrol' when asked about that afternoon, and orders them out. Brenner has a vanished chief, a call that one operator heard on a bad line, and three men who each have an afternoon to account for. Who was the voice on the wire?

From the series Vienna Files: a real Austrian crime reimagined as a post-war noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Austrian case of the 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the missing official and his family, the officers and staff of a police bureau and its switchboard, the minister and other government officials, the officers, interpreters and guards of the occupying forces, the patrol officers, the investigators and the police, and anyone suspected or accused of the disappearance — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the bureau, the cafés and the offices named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: Vienna — summer 1949.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 A Young Woman Comes Up With Her Gloves On
1:49 Noon at Schottenring Police Headquarters
3:55 After Midnight in the Switchboard Room
5:30 A Wait Before the Minister Looked Up
7:12 Petrol Fumes and Typing, Two Floors Down
8:43 Back Up to Her Night Board
10:20 Next Morning in the Minister's Office
11:42 Five of Us on the Minister's Carpet
13:20 Back on the Mezzanine, Drawing Up a List
14:41 On the Ministry's Back Stairs
15:54 Ten O'Clock at the Switchboard
17:11 Next Morning, Straight Off Her Shift
19:11 Up the Front Stairs at Noon
21:23 Plugs Sitting Idle at the Night Board
22:48 A Hard Chair Beside the Board
25:05 Crossing to Another Room, the Minister Behind Us
26:41 The Last Page at the Mezzanine Table

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