by Trevor Scott
Jake sat up on the couch and the cat weaved its way between his legs. He had never owned a cat before, not having the time to train one, if that’s what one did, nor did he really know what to do with one. He simply rubbed the cat behind its ear.
“You’re going to spoil her, Jake,” Anna said, entering from her bedroom. “She’ll never leave you alone now.” She went to the kitchen and clicked on a small light. Then started to make coffee. “You like coffee?”
“I’d die without it,” he said.
She smiled and then moved about the living room opening the Rolladens and letting in more light. She was wearing a pair of Adidas workout pants and a T-shirt that read Austrian Olympic Team. Nothing else. She wore no make-up and needed none.
Coffee brewing in the background, Anna took a seat across from him. He had slept in his pants and T-shirt and felt pretty grubby.
“Would you like a shower?” she asked.
“That would be great.”
She got him a towel and showed him to the bathroom.
When he was done, Anna was at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, a plate of bread, meats and cheeses in front of her.
“Cups are there,” she said. “Self serve here.”
Great. That’s the way he liked it. He poured himself coffee and glanced to the coffee table in the living room. He had purposely left the Order day planner, without the diary, at a forty-five degree angle to the edge of the table. Now it was parallel to the edge. He took a seat across the table from her and started eating meat and cheese. Her eyes seemed a brighter blue than the night before, he thought. Buttering some bread, he kept his eyes on her. She was something.
“What time are they expecting you at the office today?” Jake asked her.
“They’re not,” she said. “I’m to be on the road all day.” When Jake didn’t say anything, she continued, “I have to speak with Gustav Albrecht in Steyr.”
He swallowed deeply and then took a sip of coffee. She had caught him off-guard, and he was afraid he had not hid his surprise.
“Yes, I know you stashed him there. You and Kurt Lamar, your Agency friend.”
“How old are you?” he asked. He knew it was stupid to ask a woman that question, but he needed to change the subject.
Finishing her coffee, she then said, “Thirty-two. Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m jealous that you’re so good at your age.”
Smiling, she said, “Are you trying to flatter me, Jake?”
“Either that or trying like hell to figure out how I could screw up so profoundly.”
“What do you Americans say? Don’t knock yourself up?”
He laughed at her. “Something like that.”
She went for more coffee and then topped off Jake’s cup before sitting down again. “Would you like to drive with me to talk with Herr Albrecht?”
“Didn’t you find what you wanted in the papers over there?” he said, shifting his head toward the living room.
Her mouth held back a smile. “You broke into the Teutonic Order warehouse and only came out with those?”
“I had a key and the security code,” Jake reminded her, if she didn’t already know.
“That’s right. But still. . . .”
“I got enough.” He left it at that. He wasn’t sure if he could trust her yet. A good judge of character normally, Jake found himself in unfamiliar territory—wondering how she knew as much as she did, and even more perplexed over her mission with Interpol.
She nibbled on a piece of cheese and then rolled a piece of salami and bit half and chewed, her eyes not leaving Jake’s. Shoving the other half into her mouth, she licked her fingers and then wiped them on a napkin.
Jake thought about the diary of the priest and all he had read the night before. Normally, he liked to have more time to build a relationship, and this was starting to seem more like an interrogation, or at least a one-way data flow. Could he trust her? “We don’t need to talk with Albrecht,” he finally said. “I know everything he knows.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She seemed to be in deep thought. “Good. I hear it might snow again today. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. So, I guess we need to find Miko Krupjak.”
“Who?”
“A man who used to be a Brother of the Order,” she said, picking up the leftover meat and cheese and putting them in the refrigerator. “We think he’s involved with the murders in Bratislava and the shooting at the Donau Bar.” She left and went to her bedroom. When she returned she had a laptop computer with a file opened showing a man in his mid forties, a scar above his eye and another on the edge of his left jaw line. “That’s Miko Krupjak.”
Jake shook his head. “That’s not the Donau Bar shooter. Nothing like him.”
Looking at the screen, she clicked a key on the keyboard and a second man’s face appeared. It was the bartender—or at least the man who had played the part before blasting the two bodyguards all to hell with the shotgun.
“That’s the guy,” Jake said.
“Rada Grago. A known associate of Krupjak. The two of them played hockey together in their youth. Krupjak went on to the old Czechoslovakian national team before he was injured. He played in the nineteen-eighty Olympics. Of course, the Americans won that year. Anyway, we understand that Krupjak tried to defect while in Lake Placid, New York. He was sent back to Prague and they broke his left knee. His dream was to play in the NHL, but at that time.” She broke off and shrugged her shoulders.
“He was no longer welcome on the national team or even in the East European leagues.”
“Right. He ended up working in a Skoda factory in his home town, Mlada Boleslav, in the Czech Republic.” She scrolled back to Krupjak’s file. “Left factory work to join the Teutonic Order as a Brother.”
“He didn’t have to be a priest?” Jake asked.
“No. Brothers come from all walks of life. They can be priests, but most are not. They must take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, though.”
Jake went for the computer and his hand touched hers. She looked at him and then slowly moved her hand aside. He scrolled back down to Grago.
“This guy also played hockey?” Jake asked her.
“Yeah, not as well as Krupjak. Grago made the junior team with Krupjak, and that’s where they met, but he never made the senior national team. They call Grago the Butcher of Prague.”
“Why?”
“He’s a butcher. . .and he’s from Prague.” She tried not to smile. “Also, he’s quite brutal. Uses knives. Intel says he was an enforcer for the old KGB in Prague. Then, there’s this guy.” She scrolled to another page on her computer, which showed a man who had been seriously hit with an ugly stick. “Jiri Sikora. He’s Slovak. From Bratislava.”
Jake said, “Let me guess. . .also played hockey.”
“Right. Czechoslovak junior national team with Miko and Grago. Like Grago, though, he didn’t make the Olympic team. I think he was the set-up man in Bratislava.”
“You mean the man who originally spilled his guts to the Order priest in confession,” Jake said.
“Ja. We think he mentioned his confession to his friends Miko and Grago and they killed the Order priest. Sikora isn’t as strong and hardened as the other two.”
“Might be a place to start.”
Anna had a confused expression on her face.
“What?”
“Why kill the second priest?”
“The two priests were best friends,” Jake said. “Had been ordained together. They had to guess the Order priest would have confided in the parish priest.” Either that, or they had an old beef with them—something from their past in the Order.
Jake got up and went to the living room window, which overlooked a forested hill, the pines and naked deciduous trees dripping with melting snow. The sun was doing its best to rise, but the swirling clouds changed the lighting from moment to moment.
Anna came to his side
. “There’s a trail that leads up into the hills,” she said. “I usually run each morning. But I’m sure the trails are all slush now.”
“That T-shirt,” Jake said. “Were you on the Austrian Olympic Team?”
She pulled on her shirt. “Biathlon.”
“Really? The Nordic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. That’s a tough sport. So, you’re also a great shot with the rifle. Anything else I should know about you?”
Gazing out to the trees across the street, she said, “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Jake.”
He waited, not saying a word. He was nothing if not patient.
“I’ve been directed to work with you,” she said.
He couldn’t keep his brows from furling. How was that? Let her explain, he thought.
She continued, “Herr Albrecht, as you might know, is related to our president by way of his sister.”
He knew that. “And?”
“It was Gustav Albrecht’s idea. He asked around for an unbiased security consultant; someone with no political ties. Your name kept coming up. I was called in to the federal president’s office and Albrecht was there.”
“Why you?”
“My Army background,” she said, “and the fact that for the past few years in Interpol I’ve worked in the Public Safety and Terrorism Sub-directorate on the Fusion Task Force.”
Jake wasn’t entirely familiar with Interpol structure. He had had a few run-ins with Interpol agents through the years, but considered them more interested in international crime than terrorism. “What does the task force have to do with this case?”
“Well, the task force deals with the possible links between organized crime and terrorist organizations.”
“Interesting.” Especially with what had happened in the past few years, Jake thought. “So the president put you on the Albrecht case. What does this have to do with terrorism?”
“Albrecht told us about the diary,” she said. “I’m guessing you read it last night and already knew about Miko and Jiri—who you’ve now seen the Interpol file on—and understand what we might be up against.”
He wasn’t sure if he should be pissed or honored that he had been chosen by the federal president of Austria and the grand master of the Teutonic Order to help them out. “I don’t like being deceived,” Jake said, a feigning angry edge to his words. Two could play this game. “I’m outta here.” He turned and headed for the door. “Tell Albrecht to send my check to my place in Innsbruck.”
As he reached the door, she said, “Wait. You can’t walk out on us.”
Jake turned and studied her body language. She was sincere, he was sure. “Watch me,” he said with subdued conviction.
“We need you. I need you.”
“Why me?”
She let out a deep breath, her arms crossed over her chest. “Your integrity is impeccable, Jake. I did a background check on you. Everyone I talked with said the same thing: you can be trusted, you’re discreet, and when you start a job you finish it.”
“But you have the Interpol behind you,” Jake reminded her. “Not to mention the entire Austrian Army and the Staatpolizei.”
She swished her head from side to side. “No. Sure, in the end that might be true. But I have been temporarily assigned to the office of the president. Interpol thinks I’m on a two-week Christmas vacation. I can still access our computer database, but I can’t make inquiries in other countries. You can.”
God. Here he went again. “You want me to track down some of the folks from the diary.”
“Together,” she said. “We’ll do it together.”
“Isn’t this exactly what Interpol was designed to do?”
She lowered her chin slightly. “We think there’s a mole somewhere. How else would they have known about your meeting at the Donau Bar?”
Jake took a few steps toward her, trying his best to read her face. “The meeting at the Donau Bar,” he said. “You set it up there for a reason.”
Her eyes shifted up and to the left.
He continued, “But something went terribly wrong, as we both know.”
“We were trying to catch the mole,” she said, her voice harsh now. More desperate.
“But you didn’t expect an attempt on Albrecht at that meeting. You were sitting back to see who else might show up there.”
“Right.” She calmed herself.
“Makes sense. So now you know you have a mole but you have no idea where.”
“Exactly. It’s one thing to know you have someone inside working for the bad guys, but it’s another thing to track down the rogue.”
He knew that all too well, based on past experience. “What now?”
“The diary,” she said, her words barely audible.
“What the hell. I read the whole thing last night.” He went to her bookshelf and retrieved the small notebook from the Order priest.
She shook her head as he handed her the book. “Super.”
“Based on what I’ve read,” Jake said. “We need to find Miko Krupjak, Jiri Sikora, and Grago.”
Paging through the diary, Anna said, “I agree.”
●
Toni Contardo and Kurt Lamar pulled into the parking ramp lot of the Vienna Airport in Kurt’s charcoal Audi. The GPS signal placed the car in the next row in a section of luxury cars for a major car rental company.
“How the hell could Jake’s car be here?” Toni asked. “The Golf is his own car.”
“I don’t know. I just got a signal that the car was on the move this morning.”
Toni thought back on her conversation with Jake at her apartment the night before. She knew she couldn’t help him; she had her own problems to deal with internally. That bothered her more than she liked to admit.
Pulling over behind a Mercedes sedan, Kurt said, “Son of a bitch. He played us.”
She fought back a smile. “Yeah, he did. Go get our tracker.”
Kurt shut down the engine and did what she said. She watched him feel around under the back bumper. Should have known, she thought. He was better than that, and she knew it. Maybe she should have called Langley and asked for approval to bring Jake into this case. Part of her wanted to work closely with him, but the other side of her, the pragmatic side, knew she had to keep her distance. He clouded her judgment, and that could be dangerous.
Getting back in the car, Kurt said, “Got it.” He buckled his seatbelt. “Now what?”
Toni shrugged. “Now we go on.”
11
One row over in the Vienna Airport parking ramp lot, Hermann Conrad was picking up a rental BMW seven series, in a dark metallic blue. He had just flown in from Berlin on the early morning flight. Clicking the automatic trunk release, he hoisted his heavy suitcase into the deep well, closed the door and got in behind the wheel.
He speed dialed a number on his cell phone as he acquainted himself with the car. He had asked for a Mercedes just like his back in Germany, but they had said their last one, a black one, had come in late and was still not serviced. Glancing over into the next row, Conrad saw the one they had mentioned. What the hell. This was a great car. It was German, and that’s what mattered.
Finally a man answered on the phone. “Ja?”
“I’m in Vienna,” Conrad said, starting the engine. It sounded as pure as Aryan blood. If that was possible.
“Sir,” the man said. “I found out who the man at the Donau Bar was.”
Conrad started to back out but was forced to slam on the brakes. “Shit!” A damn Audi nearly hit him. But the woman in the passenger seat was quite attractive, he thought. He waved the car past, and once they were by, he pulled out.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
“Never mind,” Conrad said, driving more carefully out of the parking lot. “Set up a meeting of the faithful at my country estate. Friday. Everyone must be there. No excuses. I have some good news.”
“Yes, sir. But the man at the Donau Bar. . .”
“Go ahead.”
>
“A man named Jake Adams. An American who has lived in Innsbruck for a few years. He runs a private security consulting firm, but our contacts say he was former CIA.”
Great. That’s all he needed to hear. “Thanks. I’ll take care of it. Expect a call from Miko to get all the details.”
Conrad flipped the phone shut and thought for a moment as he exited the ramp and turned onto a frontage road that led to Autobahn A4.
From memory, Conrad punched in a series of numbers and waited. After a few rings someone picked up. Neither said a word for ten seconds.
Finally, a man said, “It’s me. How can I help you?”
“Miko. You still in Prague?”
“Yes, sir. We took care of some business last night, if you know what I mean.”
Yes, he did, but he didn’t want to know any details. He had heard about a Turkish Bath in Prague getting blown all to Hell, and Miko and Grago both popped into his thoughts at the time. “I need you back in Vienna. Talk with our contact here. He’ll give you some details of a job I want you to do.”
Conrad pulled onto Autobahn A4 in the direction of Vienna and picked up speed to flow into the traffic.
“But sir, we still have some things to. . .take care of here.”
“Do what I tell you. Damn it, this is more important. And you still haven’t taken out our first problem in Vienna. How can we have a new Hochmeister with the old one still breathing?”
“But you told us to hold off on that. Someone was on to our contact there.”
He had a point, but a small one. When will Miko learn to do what he’s told? “Do what our contact in Austria says. You find one and you’re bound to find the other. He will also tell you about a meeting at the estate on Friday. Everyone must be there.”
Conrad waited for any protest, but it didn’t come. Good. Miko was finally starting to listen. He flipped off the phone and shoved it into his inner suit pocket. It was all coming together, he thought. A few details to work out, but that was always the case with any business deal. Boy that had been a rough day. So much for business. Now, on to pleasure.