Requiem for a Gypsy

by Michael Genelin

  “Only where the furniture and belongings are being stored until they take up permanent residence.”

  She rattled off an address on the outskirts of Paris. It was the same location Jana had found in the moving company’s files, a storage warehouse.

  “Do you know where they’re staying?”

  “Le Meurice on the rue de Rivoli.” She gave Jana the full address, as well as the phone number, of the hotel.

  “Wasn’t the decision to make the move very sudden?” Jana asked, watching Elke Rilke’s reaction. The woman’s face flushed slightly.

  “Yes, a surprise. Business always brings surprises. You understand,” she hastily added, “I’m not in on these decisions. The original plan was for Berlin to be the center of the company.” Her manner now seemed defensive. “Decisions have to be made and remade.”

  “Did it have anything to do with the killing of Mr. Bogan’s wife, Klara?”

  Rilke took a minute to answer the question, not liking the idea of the events surrounding the murder coming closer to her.

  “Not that I know of.” She considered the question again. “I hope not. I truly hope not.”

  Rilke’s face and posture had changed. She was now unsure about her answer. The thought had entered her mind that there was at least the possibility that the killing of Zdenko Bogan’s mother might be in some way responsible for the move to France.

  “Is Radomir Kralik involved in the transfer to Paris?” Jana continued to watch Rilke closely. “Of course, I’m assuming he’s part of the bank credit card program. Is he involved?”

  “Well, he is and isn’t.”

  “I’m not quite sure what you mean. Is he, or isn’t he?”

  “Well, when the shooting took place, not the one involving Klara Boganova but the shooting involving you, he became very frightened. With all that commotion on the street, he left the bank and then didn’t come back. So I don’t know if he’s involved now, or not involved. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Is he still living in Vienna?”

  “I’ve called his landline. No answer. He hasn’t responded to cell phone calls. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Worried?”

  “Of course. He’s a nice man.”

  “When she was alive, did you have anything to do with Klara?”

  “A little. She came to the bank, and I showed her around. Sometimes she would call Mr. Kralik.”

  “Is Mr. Kralik involved with the younger Bogan very much?”

  Elke Rilke brightened up. “Certainly. After all, he’s proud of his son.”

  “Proud of his son?”

  “Zdenko Bogan.”

  “You mean Oto Bogan’s son. Oto Bogan is Zdenko’s father. Not Kralik.”

  “Oh no, I mean Zdenko Bogan is Radomir Kralik’s son, not Oto Bogan’s. Everybody at the bank knows it. All you have to do is to look at them together, and you can see the resemblance.”

  Jana remembered the strange marital arrangements of the Bogans and Kralik. The Bogans’ marriage had completely been a marriage of convenience. But why? Why would they even have gotten married to begin with? Why the façade? Why carry on this fraudulent relationship? None of it quite made sense.

  “And you, Elke, are you going to France with them?”

  Elke Rilke’s face fell. “I have to close down here. Then I go back to the Vienna bank. I’m hoping they will call on me to go to France after that.” Her face lifted at the thought, then fell again. “Except I don’t speak French. And if I were to go to Paris, I would be handicapped by not being able to speak the language.”

  “Perhaps you can learn,” Jana suggested.

  “Perhaps.” There was a wistful sound to the word. “I would like that very much.”

  “Lots of luck with it.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  “Jana,” Matinova reminded her.

  “Yes. Jana,” Elke Rilke corrected herself. “If you need anything at the bank, please call on me.”

  “I will.”

  They both stood. Jana gave Rilke a quick hug, then walked out of the office. A second later, Jana heard the faint sounds of Carmina Burana from inside.

  Jana didn’t envy Elke Rilke. It was cold and bleak in there.

  Chapter 33

  Jana left the building, suddenly aware of the feeling that she was being watched. She decided to walk for a block or so to check out the street. She soon spotted two men doing a tag-team surveillance of her, weaving in and out of the pedestrian traffic behind her on opposite sides of the street, first one man and then the other taking the lead. They were too coordinated not to be police. She kept walking, waiting for them to make a hostile move, perhaps an attempt to take her into custody, expecting them to be joined by others ahead of her—or in vehicles, if it was a high-priority surveillance.

  After a few minutes, she was satisfied that there were just the two of them and another man who was lagging substantially behind them. He was watching them as well as her, and he was substantially better at the game than the police officers were. It also helped that the cops were so intent on watching Jana that they never saw the third man.

  He was the one who intrigued her. He could be an assassin waiting for an opportunity to kill her, except that a professional assassin wouldn’t be trailing after his intended victim in this fashion when there were police, however ineffective, standing between him and his target. The man was plainly aware of the cops, responding to their moves, consistently staying the same distance behind them. Because he was so far back and because of the intervening pedestrians and vehicles, Jana only caught glimpses of him; they were enough to tell her that she knew the man from somewhere, although she couldn’t place him. She recognized the manner in which he held himself, the sure way he walked through the occasional cluster of people, the tilt of his head. The man’s identity nagged at her.

  Who are you? And what do you want from me? she thought. Considering the events she had recently gone through, the man’s presence was much more worrisome than that of the police. A name popped up, sending a trickle of fear through her. Makine, also called Koba. Yes or no? She couldn’t quite be sure; he was too elusive, too far back. She would just have to wait to get a closer view of him. At the same time, she hoped he’d keep some distance between them.

  She checked her watch. It was getting late in the day, and it was more important for her to pay a visit to Albrecht Konrad at the hospital than to obsess about either her police tail or the man behind them. She caught a taxi to the Universitätsklinikum, the medical complex near the Tiergarten, the huge cultural area and park that is so central to Berlin. She checked behind the cab, wondering if the two police officers had managed to follow her and whether the other shadow man was still tailing all of them. The police had made no move to pick her up. Unfortunately, if they were following her for her protection, they were staying too far behind to offer any real help if a threat emerged. As for the shadow taking up the rear of this ensemble, following all of them made no sense whatsoever. There had to be a reason, but it was eluding her.

  The taxi deposited Jana at the hospital complex, and she hurried into the main building, not wanting to remain exposed in the open area fronting the hospital where she could present a clear target for passing cars. She quickly determined which room Albrecht Konrad was in from a desk clerk, then took an elevator up to his floor. She was encouraged that he was already out of intensive care and in a private room despite the fact that he’d just had major surgery.

  When she got to the room, there was no guard posted. The German police hadn’t followed sound practices. One of their own men had been shot; given the circumstances surrounding the shooting, whoever had shot him might come after him again.

  Jana stepped into the room. It was empty, the bed unoccupied, with no sign that anyone had recently been in it. As soon as she realized there was no patient in the room, she knew what to expect next. She reacted quickly. She snatched the German police identification she’d taken fro
m Konrad as well as the pistol Jakus and Truchanova had given her from her purse, dropped them on the floor, and kicked them under the bed. A second later, the door to the room was thrown open and police charged inside, weapons out. One of them put a gun to her head, threw her against the wall, and patted her down. They spilled the contents of her purse onto the bed and checked her identification.

  Anyone asking for Konrad was going to get a rather rough welcoming committee. The Berlin police had been taking care of their man after all.

  They cleared Jana through their back office, apologizing for treating her so roughly. They were pleased when she complimented them on their protection of one of their own. She gathered her possessions from the bed, placing them beside her purse. Then, laughing and feigning embarrassment, she told the officers that she’d had a slight accident because of the shock of the gun being put to her head, and she needed to use the room’s lavatory. The police officers, a little chagrined themselves at her confession, rapidly retreated from the room. Once they were outside, she heard them laughing loudly.

  She recovered the gun and Konrad’s police ID from under the bed, flushed the toilet several times with the bathroom door open so the police would hear it, then walked out of the room to the waiting officers. One of them escorted her up to Konrad’s true hospital room, this one guarded by an officer who opened the door for her when he saw her police escort. Konrad was in bed, attached to a number of monitors, with an IV drip in his arm. His eyes were closed and he was softly snoring.

  Jana decided she could no longer indulge herself with wanting to personally present Konrad with his ID since it had now become a liability rather than an aid, so she took it from her purse and slipped it under his pillow. As she straightened, she became aware that his eyes were now open and he was watching her.

  “Was it any use?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “It wasn’t in my things. I wasn’t worried,” he assured her. “You were the only one who could have it.”

  “A German police officer can open more doors in Berlin than a Slovak. I thought I needed it to become a little German.” She sat in a chair near his head, noticing that he was running his tongue over his lips. “Water?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a glass of water with a flexible straw on the small table next to the bed. Jana held it near his mouth for him. He took a few sips, and then she eased the straw out of his mouth and took a very loud, exaggerated sip herself. Konrad smiled at her attempt at humor.

  Jana set the glass down. “You’re lucky to be alive, my friend.”

  “Both of us had the right shoes on.” Konrad’s speech still had an anesthetic slur. “Less than an inch more leather and you would be visiting my grave instead of my hospital bed, Slovak.”

  “Commander Slovak to you, Konrad!”

  He managed a smile. “Are you a crap-head with your people too, Matinova?”

  “Everyone is a crap-head on occasion, Albrecht.”

  “So my wife says.” He shifted to a more comfortable position on the bed, grunting slightly with the effort and the pain. “It was Ayden Yunis who did us in.”

  “On the face of it. On the other hand, he could have had us killed, if he’d wanted, in a less conspicuous way. Yunis told us to go there to meet Balder and Akso. If he were the one who set this up, he would know it would be very evident, if we survived, that he was involved. I don’t think he would take that risk. I think there might have been another scenario in play, one that Yunis didn’t know about.”

  “What?” Konrad croaked.

  “Maybe it was the two of them who wanted me dead? Maybe they were the ones who shot me in Austria? Maybe they wanted you dead because of what I’d brought to you: the killing in Bratislava and whatever evidence I’d found relating to it. Maybe they didn’t want to answer any of our questions. So, bang-bang, and Herr Yunis and his orders be damned.” She sat watching Konrad, not wanting to tire him out.

  “I heard you got Mister No-Testicles.”

  “I had a clean shot.”

  “One man of theirs down won’t stop them. They’ll keep coming after you.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Optimism is nice, but misplaced in Berlin.”

  “On occasion, even in Berlin.” She remembered the tails that she’d picked up. “Your guys have put a pair of watchers on me, maybe to look out for my safety. With some good Berlin police at my back, maybe I have nothing to worry about?”

  He glanced at her, puzzled. “Tails?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hadn’t heard that they’d put anyone on you.” His eyes started to close, but he forced them open. “I heard they took away your gun. You need one. I still don’t like the feel out there on the street.”

  “You’re living in a hospital room. You can’t feel anything except strong anesthetic.”

  “I’ve got a great sense when it comes to smelling scheisse. You want my gun?”

  “I have one.”

  “Good.” Konrad’s eyelids were getting heavier with the need to sleep. He was fighting to keep them open. “Slovakia, Austria, Germany, whatever it is, that’s a big pile of scheisse you’re in.” He was almost asleep, making a last effort to stay awake. “The men who are following you— they’re not my people. Maybe they’re BKA. If they are, they’re not as interested in protecting you as in finding out who’s going to kill you, but not necessarily before you’ve been taken down. If they don’t manage to save you, then they’re rid of Jana Matinova, and maybe the bad guys fall into their lap for killing you. So, careful, Matinova.”

  Konrad’s eyes closed and he began snoring.

  Jana tiptoed out of the room.

  It was dark outside. The wind had picked up. Hurrying, hoping she wouldn’t run into any problems, Jana walked to a nearby taxi stand. There was no sign of any of the people who had been following her. Jana gave the taxi driver the name of her hotel, feeling as tired as Albrecht Konrad, wishing she was already in bed. She decided to make an early night of it.

  The taxi got her back to her hotel quickly. She took the stairs just to get some exercise. She reached her floor and was ready to unlock her door when she noticed a thin line of light coming out from under the door.

  Unless the cleaning personnel had left the light on, someone unwelcome was waiting for her in the room. Jana pulled out her gun, chambered a shell, and, as silently as possible, keyed herself into the room.

  Em was sitting in a chair, waiting, a big smile on her face.

  “Hello, Jana.” She pointed at the gun. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  Chapter 34

  Jana put her gun away, sat on the bed, and stared at the girl, more than a little astonished. Em was pleased with Jana’s surprise. She jumped up from the chair and gave Jana a welcome hug and kiss on the cheek.

  “I expected you earlier.” Em walked back to the chair and held up the murder book, which she’d had in her lap. “I finished reading the book. There are all kinds of things in there which I’d never imagined. I didn’t know they cut up the bodies of the victims afterward to find out things. Ugh! I wouldn’t want to do that.” She sat back down and opened the book to its index. “I looked through all the reports, and there’s no mention of me. How come?”

  “Did you want to be mentioned in the book?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged as if everyone would want their names mentioned in a murder book. “One day I might be famous, and then you’ll regret that you didn’t even put a single comment about me in the reports.”

  “Why do you think you should be mentioned in the reports, Em?”

  “Sipo, for one. I took you to him. And the meeting with the Turk and the other men that were there. I was the reason you found the Turk’s body. So list me.” She tapped the book for emphasis. “It’s only fair.”

  “Are those the only reasons?”

  “For now. I’ll think on it. Maybe I can come up with more things. If I come up with more things, what do I get?”

&n
bsp; “You’ve already named your price: your name in the murder book.”

  “Who reads the book?”

  “The police investigators, the judges, the defense counsel. Maybe others.”

  “That’s good, except I think I want other stuff, more than just my name in the book, if I come up with information. How about cash?”

  “You put a lot of trust in money.”

  “You can’t eat money, but you can eat what it gets you.”

  “We’ll talk about money if and when you have more information to give me.”

  Jana studied Em, still stunned by the girl’s appearance in her hotel room. What part of the sky had Em dropped from and, even more puzzling, how had she gotten here? “You left the Seges family after you had agreed to stay until I came back from Germany. Why?”

  “I had to. The man who came for me is my best customer. He had work. You can’t turn down a job. You do, and your customer goes to somebody else. That means no money coming in. That happens, you have to sell cheap earrings in a snowstorm and freeze to death. You have to wear someone else’s clothes.” She gave Jana another one of her big smiles. “You like the outfit I have on? Mrs. Seges bought it for me.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Your ‘customer’ is the fifth man at the meeting with the Turk, Sipo, Balder, and Akso?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m asking you,” Jana growled, irritated at Em’s evasiveness.

  “Yeah. Except I don’t want to get him in trouble. He pays well.”

  “How did you come to Germany? Airplane?”

  “Can’t use airplanes any more. They make a big thing out of everyone who gets on a plane. I used the train. It was quick. No waiting at the stations. No searches.”

  “Why did you come to Berlin, Em? What did the man want you to do? Did you deliver a package? A message? What?”

  “I told you, I can’t say. It’s against the rules.”

  “Em, I want you to tell me what he has you doing in Berlin.”