Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  ###

  Anton Kucera hung up the cell phone and tossed it onto the table with the others.

  “Andrei,” he shouted, “another beer!”

  “Coming, boss!”

  Kucera had been holding court in a back corner booth in this rundown tavern for weeks now. The regulars had long since accepted that the back corner was off limits, and nobody sat anywhere near him. The battered and scarred tabletop had four cheap phones and a couple notebooks spread across it, with Kucera’s empties stacked at the far side.

  This was basically his office now. He’d had Skala’s old office refinished to perfection. It was spotless. There was nothing left to show that his man Lubor had gotten his brains blown all over the carpet. But Kucera hadn’t moved into it after Skala went off to his vineyard in the country. He left it there like a tomb.

  This booth was at least closer to the street. Kucera had no interest in being a respectable businessman. He was a thug and felt no need to rise above that. He just wanted to be the top thug. Skala had gotten too far from his roots. He wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  And yet. Somehow since he’d taken over Skala’s operations, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been played. He spent all his time coordinating among everyone who now reported to him. He settled disputes. He took reports from his underlings and sent them off on errands. It felt like he’d been promoted into middle management.

  The whole thing wasn’t what Kucera had expected. He’d just been on the phone with Novotny again. Novotny had worked out some kind of special deal with Skala like twenty years ago to save face. He worked for Skala, but he didn’t admit that he worked for him. And Skala was responsible for keeping his people out of Novotny’s way, so now Novotny expected that to pass down to Kucera. And so whenever the skinheads got in Novotny’s hair, putting pressure on the little shopkeepers who paid him, it was Kucera who got the call. Whenever any petty crook in Brno got kicked in the balls over something, Kucera had to feel it too. It wasn’t what he’d imagined at all.

  The bartender brought him another Black Mountain, with no glass. It had taken him a couple days to figure out that Kucera preferred to drink it straight from the bottle, but he had it down now. Kucera nodded and waved him away.

  As soon as he put the bottle to his lips, one of the phones buzzed and rattled on the table. A text message from one of his loan sharks saying a big debt wasn’t being paid on time. What should they do?

  What the fuck did they think they should do? Go around and break some damn kneecaps. It wasn’t rocket science. But of course, it was never that simple. He texted back, fully expecting them to come back with some reason why they couldn’t or shouldn’t damage this particular mark.

  The door opened, and one of his runners came in. The scruffy-looking redhead in the dirty army jacket. Kucera couldn’t even remember his name.

  He came up to the table and nodded at Kucera. “Got something, boss. At the Palace.”

  He handed over his phone, and Kucera thumbed through the photos of new arrivals. The most recent did indeed look promising. The car was an Audi R8, some kind of special tuner version. It looked expensive as hell, like nothing he’d actually seen in Brno before. The driver was Western, English maybe, more likely American. His suit looked expensive too. Kucera wondered what he had in those suitcases.

  “Good job,” he said to the runner. He thumbed up a menu and mailed the photos to his own phone. He’d distribute them to his people and figure out whether to rob the American’s room or maybe go for the car.

  “Spread a little money around the hotel,” he said. “Find out what you can. Let’s figure on going for his room tomorrow night. Get your crew ready.”

  “Will do, boss,” said the runner. He took his phone back and hurried back out of the bar.

  Kucera sipped his beer. He needed to get out there and actually do something criminal or he was going to explode.

  Chapter 27

  The next morning dawned cold, though the sky was clear and the day promised to be more comfortable once the nighttime chill burned off. Still, it was a warning to Brno’s residents that autumn was setting in and winter not far behind it. Crane wore a light overcoat as he waited for the valet to bring the Audi around. He watched the streets, thick with traffic, bicycles, and pedestrians. An electric tram went by and stopped down the street.

  When the Audi arrived, Crane steered into the morning rush and made his way carefully across town. He quickly realized that the Audi’s ridiculous performance was wasted at the moment. Brno was an old city, built long before traffic was an issue. The streets were narrow and twisting, and Crane suspected he’d move faster on foot.

  Outside the city center, he made better time. Deštnik Biologicka a.s. was in a research campus on the outskirts of the city, along with a collection of other startups, all of them funded by South Moravian BioCapital. Crane pulled in only about five minutes late. The campus sprawled across a gently rolling piece of land that looked like it had been pasture a generation ago. The buildings were modern and low slung, with alternating bands of reddish stone and dark glass windows. Single stories around the outer band of the complex, three stories nearer the center. The place was shot through with meandering footpaths and greenery and studded with small parking lots.

  Crane found the building he needed—realizing how confusing the layout was to visitors, the designers had put enormous numbers on the buildings—and pulled into a visitor parking space near the doors.

  A small entourage was already lined up outside waiting for him. The man in the center of the line broke free as Crane approached and strode up to him with a huge smile and an extended hand.

  “Mr. Crane, how wonderful to meet you,” he said in good, if strongly accented, English. “I am Klement Novak, CEO. So happy to have you here!”

  They shook hands and traded business cards. Then Novak introduced Crane to the senior staff lined up behind him. They were all young; Novak might have been Crane’s age, but he was easily the oldest of the group. They all looked very much like struggling young doctoral students. Emil Zajic couldn’t have stood out any more here if he was a kangaroo.

  They headed inside where more staffers fawned over Crane. They took his overcoat, brought him sweetened tea, and sought desperately to gain his favor. Klement led him to a conference room, prepared as if for a state dinner, with water glasses and leather binders. The digital projector threw the company logo up onto a screen.

  “So excited to talk about what we’ve been doing,” Novak was saying. “And I have to say, it’s such a reassurance to have you take an interest, Mr. Crane. As researchers, we get so close to our project that sometimes it’s all we can see. So for us, your interest is the confirmation we need that our work has commercial potential and isn’t just interesting from a scientific standpoint. You prove we aren’t just indulging ourselves. So thank you.”

  Crane could see he was expected to say something equally complimentary.

  “Thank you, Mr. Novak,” he said. “I’m very glad to be here. At Scorix, we know that there are breakthroughs happening all the time in labs like this one all around the world. Our job is to find them and help them move beyond the lab so they can benefit the world. And we’re very excited by what you’re doing here. I look forward to learning more.”

  That part, Crane admitted to himself, was a lie. Even after reading the thin dossier Josh’s people had been able to put together on the company and its work, he still had no idea what they really did.

  Novak launched into his presentation, and it was heavy on science that was miles over Crane’s head. There were terms like “random coil” and “co-translational” and “n-terminus.” The accompanying slides were full of complicated diagrams made of dots and lines with arrows pointing from one to the next.

  As far as Crane could follow, long chains of molecules called polypeptides somehow turned themselves into complex 3-D protein structures that were vital to life and also could have a wide range of medical applica
tions. The question was, given the astronomical number of possible ways a molecule might fold, how did they consistently manage to turn into the same useful proteins instead of just useless chemical junk? Crane pictured a million monkeys with typewriters producing Hamlet. Except with molecules.

  Novak was talking about existing computer simulations and “chaperone molecules” that guided the fold along a few standard paths instead of leaving everything to chance. It sounded like this part was existing science, so a VC investor wouldn’t have been all that excited by it. Even so, Crane had seldom felt so stupid. He consoled himself with the thought that Emil Zajic would probably have lost his temper and punched somebody by now.

  Then Novak got to the payload. Deštnik was working on the principles that nudged the proteins along a particular path and learning to steer them more specifically. Once researchers had designed a desired protein on a computer, Deštnik’s methodology would let them build it out of common “starter” proteins by introducing particular chemical tools to produce the right folds in the right sequence.

  “We’ll eventually be able to practically 3D print any desired protein structure from the ground up,” Novak concluded. “We’re looking at a significant savings in time to research new molecules and bring them to trial, as well as a huge reduction in cost with the corresponding upside in gross profitability.”

  He looked very proud of himself. Crane realized it was time for tough questions. Novak knew he was no scientist. He’d be trying to gold plate everything, and Crane the venture capitalist would push back. Besides, Crane wanted him off balance.

  “That sounds great,” said Crane. “Define ‘eventually’ for me.”

  “We’re making strong progress,” said Novak. “A lot of that depends on funding, obviously. That’s why we’re so excited to get Scorix on board. As you said, it takes money to get these advances out of the lab.”

  “So not six months?”

  Novak sputtered. “I’m not sure I can be that precise,” he said. “Certainly we’re moving as fast as we can toward practical applications.”

  “It’s just—I have a confession to make,” said Crane. “I’ve heard about your work before. I was talking to Emil Zajic at a conference recently, and he was confident you’d have a tech transfer package ready by first quarter next year.”

  Novak looked blank. “I’m sorry, who were you speaking with?”

  “Emil Zajic? Your Director of Mergers and Acquisitions?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Crane, you must be mistaken. I don’t know anyone by that name, and Deštnik’s in no position to be looking at M&A right now. We’re hoping for angel funding to get our process nailed and documented. After that, our strategy is to partner with a larger firm that would acquire the intellectual property for their own R&D.”

  Crane smiled. “My apologies. I talk to so many people at these conferences. I must have confused Mr. Zajic’s company with yours. Can I see the lab? I’d like to see this process in action.”

  Novak stood up and beamed. “Of course! We’ve got a tech demo set up for you.”

  They took Crane through the labs and showed him everything. He nodded in the right places and asked the occasional obvious question. At one point, he mentioned that Scorix was investing heavily in gene sequencing and asked about their solution’s applicability to that. Novak pivoted fast and came up with something, but Crane could tell he was blindsided by the question. He was furiously bullshitting an answer as best he could. Their work had nothing at all to do with Melissa Simon’s gene bank project.

  When it was done, they ended up back in the main lobby and everyone said the polite things and there was a lot of shaking of hands all around again.

  “I’m here for a couple days,” Crane said as Novak walked him back out to his car. “I’d love to talk more outside the lab environment.”

  “I thought you might want to sample the nightlife while you’re here,” said Novak. “I reserved a table at Borgo Agnese. It’s the best restaurant in town.”

  “That sounds great,” Crane said as they shook hands one last time. “I look forward to it.”

  As he drove back into Brno, Crane considered what he’d seen. Nothing suggested that Deštnik was anything more than a struggling tech startup. They’d eagerly shown him everything, just as Josh said they would. Nothing looked out of place or suggested any criminal connection. Crane wasn’t ready to make a final call yet, but his gut feeling was that Novak didn’t know anything. He was just a guy trying to sell his company and get rich.

  But then there was Emil Zajic, with his business card for a position that didn’t exist, at a company that had never heard of him. If he didn’t work for Novak, then whom did he work for? What the hell was going on here?

  ###

  Branislav Skala paced the polished marble floor of his ballroom in a paisley-trimmed silk bathrobe and slippers. The room was something out of Versailles. There was an enormous pastoral mural on one wall, with fauns piping and half-naked nymphs dancing among the trees. The opposite wall was a row of tall, arched windows, black with the darkness outside. The place was designed for parties of a hundred or more, but tonight Skala wandered the huge space alone, except for two muscular bodyguards in suits and shoulder holsters near the door.

  Skala found the room calming. He liked to come here when he was upset, and he was very upset this evening. The blown deal with the Colombians would have ripple effects well beyond the loss of the drugs themselves. The Colombians were furious, smelling betrayal. But he’d lost as much as they had. When Emil wasn’t found among the dead on the beach, Skala entertained hopes that he’d gotten away, that he was holed up somewhere and would report when he could. But a few days later, they’d found his body in the water nearby. Apparently Emil had simply drowned. But then why was his dinghy found more than a mile away, beached on the other side of the bay?

  The authorities weren’t saying what happened to him, and Skala couldn’t push for more information without raising more questions. But he sensed the hand of Team Kilo in this. Everything had gone wrong since their man appeared in Puerto Rico. He thought he’d convinced the Colombians that they’d both been ambushed by some third party, but it would take a long time to repair the damage to their business relationship.

  The phone in his pocket chimed quietly. Skala checked the screen. It was his man at Jižni Morova BioKapital. One of the firms he had enrolled there was attracting interest from an American investment fund, and he’d asked for a report. Perhaps this would finally be some good news at last. If the Americans bought Deštnik, he could just move the parts of his operation it concealed to other startups on the campus. That was no problem. And it would bring him a great deal of money—legitimate money—and raise BioKapital’s profile in the European pharma community. A win for him all around.

  The phone chimed again, and he answered. “How did it go, Dalibor?”

  “The American was here today, sir,” said his man. “Novak said it went well. He made the presentation, showed him the lab. Right now he’s taking him to dinner.”

  Novak was smart enough, to be sure, but Skala didn’t like the idea of trusting a deal this big to his social skills. For a moment, he wondered if he should send a girl to the American’s hotel. But no, he decided. Go with the class approach.

  “I’ve sent Novak’s report to your secure account,” said Dalibor, “along with what we could find on the American and his company. It’s not much. They keep their cards close to their chest, these guys.”

  “That’s fine,” said Skala. “Let me know if you get anything else.”

  He hung up.

  Skala’s laptop was on a rococo gueridon near the doors, next to one of his bodyguards. He gestured impatiently, and the guard brought it to him, and then held it out on his outstretched forearms as Skala woke it up and swiped his fingertip across the reader.

  Dalibor’s upload was there. He opened it and skimmed through the brief report on the American company. What little there was read as thoug
h Dalibor had pulled it from their website. He scrolled through to copies of e-mail traffic, setting up an appointment with their representative, a Mr. John Crane. Again, nothing very interesting.

  There were some photos attached, taken by the security cameras at the campus. Skala opened the first and physically recoiled. The bodyguard looked with alarm over the back of the laptop.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  Him! The clothes were different, but there was no question about it. It was the same man from the airport photo in San Juan. The one who had wrecked everything there, the man who must have killed Emil. He was here!

  “Sir!” the bodyguard said more urgently. “Is something wrong?”

  “Double the perimeter guard.”

  “Sir?”

  The man stood there awkwardly, unable to act with Skala’s precious laptop perched on his forearms. Skala grabbed the computer and slammed the lid shut.

  “Do it!”

  The bodyguard hurried away. At the door, he gestured to the other one, who moved closer to Skala and hovered there nervously.

  “This way,” Skala snapped, and stormed off toward his apartments at the rear of the house. Something was very wrong, indeed. He had to deal with it quickly and decisively, because the consequences if he failed made Skala’s blood run cold.

  Chapter 28

  After an excellent ossobuco ravioli and a bottle of Gaja Barbaresco, Crane drove the Audi back to his hotel through the narrow streets of Brno’s old town and tried to size up Klement Novak.

  It was difficult to imagine the man as a gangster, someone who might send Emil Zajic and a pack of dirty cops out to destroy his enemies. That was assuming there was even a reason for him to take offense at a biological research project in the Puerto Rican rainforest—which there wasn’t. Throughout dinner, Crane had studied and picked at the persona Novak presented. He couldn’t find a hint of anything but an eager scientist and entrepreneur, someone who sensed a shot at the big time and was trying desperately to grab it. Crane actually felt bad for deceiving him. Novak would be devastated when the Scorix Group evaporated, along with their money and industry connections. Perhaps when the real biotech fair came along at the end of the month, some other investor would pick up Deštnik.