Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  He realized his train of thought implied that he’d accepted the idea that Novak simply wasn’t the enemy he was looking for. Novak truly had never heard of Zajic, or of Melissa Simon, and knew nothing about the whole affair.

  So where did that leave things? Who was behind it, and why had Zajic been provided with fake Deštnik business cards?

  He tried another angle. Why would Zajic want to pose as an Deštnik employee? He was hardly one to go to biotech conferences or take meetings with scientists. If he needed a fake cover job, why that one? Why not a private security consultant? That would be more believable. Or a music promoter or a construction engineer—pretty much anything but a biotech executive. For that matter, why use a real company at all, giving himself an identity that would fall apart the moment someone called Deštnik’s front desk?

  A thought occurred to Crane, and at the next light, he checked Zajic’s card against Novak’s. The mailing address and the e-mail domains matched, but the phone numbers didn’t. Zajic’s card gave what looked like a Brno number, but the exchange was different from the number on Novak’s card. Deštnik would have an internal PBX, or more likely a virtual one these days, with its own exchange number. All company phone numbers should have shared that exchange. But someone with Zajic’s card, someone calling to check him out, wouldn’t get to Deštnik at all. They’d go someplace else, no doubt to someone who would be all too happy to confirm Mr. Zajic’s credentials with the company.

  But the e-mail address did match Novak’s. Now that was interesting. If Zajic wasn’t really an employee, the emil.zajic@Deštnikbio.cz address wouldn’t exist. If someone tried sending a message to it, it should bounce. Were they just assuming nobody would try to e-mail Zajic? But why take that risk? Especially when it would be easy to set up their own domain that they could control?

  No, Crane’s instincts were telling him that e-mail address wouldn’t bounce at all. And that meant that whoever sent Zajic off to Puerto Rico hadn’t just gone to a print shop and run off some fake business cards. They were connected to Deštnik somehow, hiding behind it. They’d wormed their way deep enough into the company to have control of its e-mail servers and set up a hidden address for their muscle in Puerto Rico.

  Who could do that without Novak being any the wiser? Did one of Novak’s employees have something going on behind the scenes? Who handled their IT infrastructure? That was worth finding out.

  Crane pulled up in front of the hotel and gave the Audi to the valet. The Brno Palace was bathed in spotlights, its old white stone and its new glass panels gleaming in the night. A few couples out for a late night stroll wandered the plaza out front. Something in the back of Crane’s mind sent up an alert as he watched the Audi’s taillights disappear around the corner of the building.

  There. That man across the street, the redhead making a phone call. He’d seen him before. Crane had only been in Brno for a little over twenty-four hours, and that figure was starting to become familiar. It could be nothing, but Crane had been trained to notice details like that, in case they proved important. The redhead in the army jacket was appropriately filed away in Crane’s mind.

  He strolled into the hotel’s huge, glass-roofed interior and took the elevator up to his floor. The moment he opened the door to his room, he swung back against the hallway wall and his hand went to the pistol inside his jacket.

  The room had been torn apart. Crane checked the hallway; it was empty. He listened but heard nothing from the room. He swept the door back hard and fast to hit anyone hiding behind it, and went inside, crouched low, leading with the gun.

  The room was empty. He checked the bathroom, the closet, under the bed, anywhere big enough to hide a person. They were gone. But they’d cleaned the place out. His suitcases were gone, and clothes lay scattered around the room. The dresser drawers had been tossed onto the floor. There was nothing subtle about it, but they’d been thorough. Anything that Crane hadn’t stowed in the Audi was gone, and that included most of his gear.

  Presented with a situation like this, John Crane of the Scorix Group would complain to the hotel, file a police report, go through the official channels. Crane sighed and double-checked the room for anything remaining that didn’t fit his official persona. It would have to go down in the Audi, along with his pistol, before he started raising hell at the front desk. But his guests had left very little behind.

  He checked the door on the way out. There were no signs it had been forced. So they had managed to open the coded electronic lock. That wasn’t hugely surprising. Crane had done so himself on more than one occasion. But it did speak to a level of preparedness on their part. He took the elevator down, stashed his gun in the Audi, and practiced looking outraged as he walked back around to the lobby.

  The redhead in the army jacket was gone from his post across the street. He could have nothing to do with this. But Crane wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. He walked back inside and made a beeline for the front desk to ask loudly what kind of hotel this was, demand that the police be called, and remind everyone in earshot that he was a wealthy American and not to be treated this way. It was embarrassing, but it had to be done.

  It was almost 1:00 a.m. by the time Crane got back to his room, and he was tired of playing the jerk. He’d made a scene in the hotel lobby until the night manager had called the general manager out of his bed and urged him to come in. Both of them had fawned over their valued guest and expressed suitable shock that something like this could happen at the Brno Palace. Then Crane had played the aggrieved and entitled American for the police, demanding immediate action and bemoaning how this sort of thing would never have happened in the United States.

  The officers had taken a look through the room but found nothing useful to their investigation. They dutifully took Crane’s report and an almost completely false inventory of what had been taken. But they admitted they could offer little hope for the recovery of his things. Gangs of thieves targeted wealthy visitors, they told him. They would check local pawn shops, but the clear implication was that this was a pointless task meant more to get him off their backs than to actually catch the thieves. After his performance, Crane was certain they weren’t going to go very far out of their way to help the obnoxious American who—as he had helpfully pointed out—made more in a week than they made all year.

  It was what he had to do, of course. The last thing he wanted was the police actually turning up his esoteric surveillance gear and wondering what he was doing with it. But he still felt bad.

  He took a few minutes to clean up the worst of the mess. He’d deal with the rest tomorrow. He undressed and got into bed. He switched off the light and was asleep in minutes.

  ###

  Anton Kucera tossed his pen across the bar and closed his notebook. The pen ricocheted off a framed photo of some football club from the old days and fell behind the cigarette machine beside the door to the bathrooms. Someone at the bar looked over his shoulder at the sound but quickly turned back to his beer.

  That was it for tonight. The books were sorted out. Until tomorrow, of course, when the protection money would come in and the whole thing would start over again.

  Eventually, he told himself, he would be able to hire people to take care of this shit for him. God knew he had money enough. But Skala’s operations were all new to him. He had to understand how they worked, who did what, how the money moved. If he didn’t, he’d be robbed blind, and then someone would decide he was weak and could be taken down and replaced. So for now, he did it all himself.

  He sat back and drained his bottle, the beer warm and flat now. He glanced over at the bar but didn’t shout for another. No, he needed to move. A walk home and some clear air. He could call Radek and have him send a girl around to his place. But no, he didn’t even want that tonight. Christ, what was this doing to him?

  Two figures moved into his field of view. The red-headed runner whose name he still couldn’t remember and another one whose name he was pretty sure he’d
never heard. They stood there, nervously shuffling from foot to foot, until Kucera grunted, “Well?”

  “Boss, we’ve got…”

  He just trailed off and let it hang there. Kucera sighed.

  “What? A problem?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t think so. It’s just weird. We hit that guy’s room like you said. Everything went fine. It’s just, his stuff. You should come take a look.”

  Christ. Nobody could handle anything themselves. Not even something as simple as rolling a hotel room. He slid out of the bar, and they led the way through the doors to the bar’s rear storeroom. A pair of suitcases were laid out on a side table. Kucera sized them up.

  “They look worth something.”

  “Take a look inside,” said the redhead.

  Kucera did and let out a low whistle. The bags were full of…things. Kucera recognized a pair of night vision goggles, a couple small cameras with interchangeable lenses, radios, a lockpick gun, at least a dozen black boxes that looked hand built for purposes he could only guess. It all looked salable. It looked like a damn good haul, in fact. But still…

  “Who the hell is this guy?” he murmured to himself. Then something made him ask, “Any weapons?”

  “No,” said the redhead. “We looked. No cash, hardly any clothes. Just all this stuff.”

  He let out a breath and walked around the table. He checked the bags for tags, but they were blank.

  “What do you want us to do with it?” asked the redhead.

  Kucera pulled a sheaf of bills from his pocket and handed them to him. They instantly vanished into the redhead’s jacket.

  “Leave this here,” he said. “I’ll figure out what to do with it. And put some guys outside the Palace. I want to know what that guy’s up to. Keep a tail on him.”

  They nodded and started to leave.

  “Keep your distance,” he called after them. “And switch up guys. At least a couple times a day. I don’t want him making you. Anything he does, you let me know right away.”

  They left on a cloud of promises to do just as he said, and then Kucera was alone with the gear. He picked up a thin plastic box the size of a cigarette pack with a battery door on one side and a recessed slider switch. He had no idea what it did.

  Then the phone in his pocket rang, and Kucera closed his eyes. Only one person had that number.

  He pressed accept.

  “Yeah?”

  “We have a problem,” said Skala. “A big problem. I’m coming into town now. I’ll meet you at the office in half an hour.”

  “I’m not at the office.”

  “Well, get—”

  “Meet me at Rebel Bar. You know it? In your old neighborhood.”

  He could hear Skala’s irritation through the line noise, but at last, “Fine. I’ll be there.”

  “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Kucera asked.

  “Someone’s just come to town,” said Skala. “Someone very dangerous. To both our interests. We need to deal with him fast.”

  Kucera looked over the suitcases, the piles of high-tech equipment, and a cold feeling came over him.

  “This guy,” he said, “he wouldn’t be staying at the Palace, would he?”

  Chapter 29

  It was almost 1:00 a.m. when the doors at Rebel Bar flew open and two of Branislav Skala’s men quickly swept the place. Kucera had been up too long; he’d been doing what amounted to bookkeeping. He was in no mood.

  The bar was empty. They’d chased out the last of the drunks after Skala’s call. He’d sent the bartender home, and one of his own guys was quietly polishing glasses behind the bar with a weapon ready. Skala’s people would expect that. They took up their own positions flanking the door, and a moment later, Skala himself entered, looking grim. Kucera beckoned him over to his booth in the back.

  The bar was grimy and smelled of beer and cigarettes and piss. It was a world away from Skala’s gleaming corporate office with his long-legged secretary and his fancy furniture. Kucera insisted on meeting here mainly to piss Skala off. But he could see from Skala’s grim expression that it wasn’t working. Skala was too worked up about something to get the full effect.

  The old man swung into the booth across from Kucera. “Can that guy really make a drink? I need a strong one.”

  Kucera gestured to the guy at the bar.

  “What’s got you up so late?” he asked. “Away from your castle on a cold night?”

  Skala wasn’t taking the bait. “What did you mean,” he said, “when you asked ‘is he staying at the Palace?’”

  Kucera shrugged. “A rich mark showed up at the Palace yesterday. I sent some guys to hit his room. Usually that means cameras, laptops, watches, some cash. Not this time. It’s in the back room there.”

  “Show me.”

  So he took Skala into the back room and showed him the expensive suitcases full of unlabeled electronic gear. Skala picked through the stuff, trying to figure it out. He noted where something plugged into something else. He almost switched something on but stopped himself. The old man looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  “I knew it,” he said, more to himself than Kucera. “I knew it. This proves it. The son of a bitch is Team Kilo, and he’s here.”

  “What are you talking about? Come on out and have a drink.”

  Skala spent another thirty seconds sorting through the equipment as if there was some clue there that he’d find if he just looked a moment longer. Finally he nodded and followed Kucera back out to the booth. The bartender had left a couple shots of vodka on the table. Skala picked his up and knocked it back even before he sat down. Kucera didn’t know what the hell was going on, but the old man was rattled. Right to his bones, he was rattled. He tried to decide if that was a bad thing or a good one. It didn’t work. He couldn’t figure it out.

  “What the hell’s got into you?” he asked as he sat down and picked up the other shot glass. “What’s Team Kilo?”

  “They’re an enemy,” said Skala. “Not crooks like us. Something worse.”

  “So what? Cops? Government? Come on, it’s late. Make sense.”

  “It’s what I’ve been trying to make you see for a while now,” Skala said with a sigh. “When I was a poor kid on the street, I saw the gangs and I thought, that’s power. They don’t take shit from anybody. So I became a gangster. And when I made it to the top of the gangs, I saw rich men with real businesses and legitimate money, and I thought, that’s the real power. They just take what I had to fight for. They don’t have to look over their shoulder all the time. They send their kids to college, and their kids don’t have to do what I had to do to get here. So I became one of them. I didn’t run for office because look at me. But I saw government, and I got my hand in there because that was how you used power to protect yourself and get what you want.”

  Kucera let out a very conspicuous yawn, but the old man ignored him.

  “So I thought, okay, I made it. I’m at the top. But once I got there, I started to see it’s not really the top. Governments come and go. We used to be ruled by communists. We used to be Czechoslovakia. There’s another world beyond governments, Anton. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  He drew concentric circles on the tabletop with his fingertip. “There are people beyond all that. They make the world what they want it to be. Cops and governments can’t touch them. Not so different from us, really. They have their alliances and their rivalries. They spy on each other, and they have their betrayals and their wars. But they’re pure power. We can’t even see them from down in the gutter.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” said Kucera. “You sound like old Havel the Nazi. You remember him? Is it the Jews you’re talking about?”

  “This is real!” Skala slapped the table, and Kucera saw a bit of the old Skala rising in him, the man that terrorized Brno for decades. “I gave you Brno to run for me because I wanted to break into that world, Anton. And I’m doing it. I found a group with a problem I know how to solve. And
when I solve it, they’ll see they need me. And then I’ll be one of them. Before long, I’ll own them. But they have enemies.”

  “Enemies called Team Kilo?”

  “They don’t have names. They all keep their secrets. It’s hard figuring out who’s in bed with who, whose toes you’re stepping on if you make a move. I keep my eyes and ears open. There are plenty of factions out there in the shadows. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta… these are Kilo. They’re the ones to be scared of.”

  “And this man’s one of theirs.”

  “Has to be. The things he’s done… He’s got to be. And now he’s here. And you robbed his fucking room! Now he knows we’re on to him!”

  “Wait a second,” Kucera snapped. “We weren’t on to him. We robbed his room because he’s fucking rich. That’s what we do. It doesn’t tell him anything.”

  “We can’t assume that!”

  “Whatever. So what do you want to do?”

  “I want you to kill him!” Skala snapped. “You know where he is now. Kill him! Send Janda or Krall! Now, before he goes to ground.”

  “Fine. I’ll send Krall.”

  “It can’t look like we took him out. Tell him. It has to look like an accident. A suicide.”

  Kucera sighed as he took out his phone. “Of course it does.”

  ###

  After giving Krall his orders and getting Skala bundled back into his limousine, Kucera finally made his way back to his rooms. He lived in an old row house he’d gotten ownership of years ago through a combination of loan sharking and outright extortion. It was his fortress, lined with alarms and intrusion barriers. He could fight a war there if he had to, with guns and ammunition stashed in the walls. It was the one place where he truly felt safe.