“Oh, wonderful. A woman after my own heart.”
“What I’m wondering is, whose is it and where did it come from?”
“It’s mine, and it’s very dependable. I brought it with me.” I snapped an ammunition clip into the handle. Unlike the .45, which requires you to first slide a round into the chamber, the Beretta is ready to fire when you release the safety. That’s a small wrinkle but, for some situations, a critical one.
“No problems at the airport?”
I’d placed the pistol in a glassine bag, then packed the bag in a mixture of epoxy and graphite. There are numerous ways to circumvent the most thorough baggage checks, and Sylvia knew them as well as I did.
I said, “As you know, I’d rather leave home without my credit card than a weapon of some kind.”
Although Jerry Shenlee had kept a straight face when he warned me against having a weapon in Germany, I figured he didn’t mean for me to take the advice too literally. What he’d meant was, just be careful and don’t let the authorities know you’re carting around artillery.
Sylvia frowned. “I’m assuming you think this might come in handy.” When I nodded, she looked at me skeptically. “Are you sure we want to go out to this place?”
“I intend to be very careful.”
Sylvia watched as I sat down and strapped a holster to my left ankle. After slipping the weapon into the holster, I pulled my trouser leg back down and stood up. I pulled up my shirt and showed her the KA-BAR knife I had at my waist.
When her expression darkened, I said, “Don’t worry. I don’t expect to have to use any of this stuff.”
On the drive through Munich, I told Sylvia for the final time what I had in mind. Although Max had warned me about the Kalashni Klub, I thought the risk was worth taking. If this Quemal was Quemal the Assassin, I could pick him up, and we’d get him to confess to the murder of Ursula Vogt. And we’d force the authorities to drop the charges against Doug Brinkman. The fact that he’d been in Afghanistan and had a connection with Ursula Vogt led me to think it could be the same guy.
If it wasn’t, we were back at square one.
When we were within a half mile of the place and waiting at a traffic signal near the Münchner Freiheit, I removed a bottle of brandy from the glove compartment, and figuring I didn’t fit the profile of the average K Klub customer, I’d splashed some of the liquor on my jacket, and rolled some around in my mouth.
A questioning look on her face, Sylvia shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
It was after ten when we turned off the Ingolstädterstrasse and drove past the lighted Kalashni sign. Cars were scattered around, parked haphazardly on both sides of the road. Two hundred feet farther on I made a U-turn, then halted on the shoulder.
As Sylvia climbed out, she said, “How long will you need?”
“Are you nervous?”
“Of course not. Are you?”
“Yes, actually.” It was true. I didn’t exactly have cold feet, but I was wondering if this was a wise undertaking.
Sylvia all at once looked troubled. “Maybe we should abort this mission, Alex. It’s not too late.”
Although I had the feeling she wasn’t as concerned for my safety as she was for the success of the operation, I was curious about this place. I shook my head. “I only want to have a look around, and maybe ask some questions. It’s probably all a false alarm anyway. I’ll try not to be obvious about it. If I’m not out in ninety minutes, call Max. Don’t come looking on your own.”
I eased the car into gear, then drove slowly up the road. When I reached the lighted sign with the picture of the assault weapon, I made a right turn. Although it called itself a club, the German word Poof, or brothel, would be more accurate. For some reason, Albanian gangsters have an international stranglehold on this business. They have strong stomachs.
It was a two-story building located thirty yards down a narrow street in an area of warehouses, factories, and old buildings, some with broken windows and an abandoned look. The K Klub’s two front windows were covered by thick drapes. I found the sight depressing, maybe because during my two tours in Bosnia I’d been inside places like the Kalashni Klub, in Tuzla and Banja Luka, and hadn’t liked what I found. I’d had a few encounters with some of the gangster types operating these businesses, from the Mafia chiefs to the pimps—and learned how quickly they like to reach for their knives. In fact, as a souvenir of a disagreement in Tuzla with one of those characters—a guy whose specialty was turning young girls into drug addicts—I have a small scar above my right hip.
Some steps led me up to a small concrete porch on which were a couple of chairs and a table. A guy seated on one of the chairs was bent over and smoking a joint and didn’t bother to look up as I went by. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and closed it behind me.
I was inside the K Klub, the place Max told me I should stay out of.
Inside, it looked unruly, but I’d been in my share of unruly places before. It didn’t look dangerous—at least not if you didn’t antagonize the wrong person. From the ceiling hung a bunch of red fixtures through which shone the light, and in between two of the fixtures was an opening in the ceiling, which might have housed a security camera. The red light mixed with the clouds of blue cigarette smoke hanging over everything and caused the room to be bathed in a weird pink-blue glow. A girl with a great rack and wearing a tiny halter was on a small stage doing some bumping and grinding to the accompaniment of music blaring from a loudspeaker. Although it was amateurish, it was amusing to watch—which might have been why most of the males on hand were paying close attention.
The tables were round, made of wood, had cigarette burns all over them, and were pretty well banged up. They were squashed so close together I had to step around them as I crossed the room. Some were occupied by women in groups of two or three, the others by men—from unpleasant looking Slavic types to unpleasant-looking European types, most of them talking to one another and sizing things up. At one table four heavily made-up women showed off generous amounts of thigh. Maybe I ogled. As I went by, one made a comment.
I said, “Mirëmbrë’ma!” Albanian for “Good evening,” one of the greetings I recalled from the course I took in Bosnia. When I smiled and blew her a kiss, she looked away.
All the women seemed to be smoking and staring at nothing in particular, almost as if they were all stoned. Despite their empty expressions, I thought a few of them looked kind of nice. They were probably new to the business—and might have been wondering how they’d landed in this place.
Who could blame them? I’d only been here a couple of minutes and was already wondering how I’d landed in this place.
At the bar, the bartender, who had a chrome dome and probably did double-duty as a bouncer, looked me over, perhaps sizing me up, wondering if I fit the profile of a K Klub customer. If I didn’t, I’d take that as a compliment.
“’nen Korn!” I slurred the whiskey order, staggered against the bar, ran my fingers through my hair, fumbled a roll of euros from my jacket, and tossed down a couple of tens. After pouring me a clear whiskey and removing one of the bills, the bartender, seemingly satisfied that I was just another male desperate for female company, moved off and began talking with two women seated a couple of bar stools away. Next to me two men were speaking quietly in Dutch and eyeing the women at the tables.
When I turned around, I saw him, and when I recognized him, my heart went into double time. My hunch had been on the money, but I hadn’t expected it to pan out so quickly.
At the far end of the room and standing with his back partially toward me was Quemal the Assassin himself, my friend from Kosovo, the star performer in my worst nightmares.
He was talking with half a dozen guys seated at one of the corner tables.
There was no question it was Quemal. He had the same hawk nose, hooded eyes, stringy black hair hanging over his ears, and for anyone close enough to notice, probably the same garlicky breath. I hadn’t seen him right away because
he’d been smart enough to shuck the white do-rag he’d had on his head in Kosovo. And he’d replaced the green jacket and brown pants with a formless gray jacket over a red shirt. In place of the beard, he was sporting a large, slightly droopy mustache.
Although I wasn’t close enough to see, I assumed he had the same glint in his eye. Once a psychopath, always a psychopath. I wondered whether I might have made a mistake coming to this place alone. Too late for that now.
The Assassin seemed to be in the middle of some kind of argument. He was exchanging comments with a woman at the next table. When she replied, the men all stopped talking.
I’d found out that this Quemal and Quemal the Assassin were one and the same—which was all I wanted to know. Now I was going to have to get out of this place. But how? If I turned around now and headed for the door, I might be calling unwelcome attention to myself.
I’d definitely walked right into it.
The Assassin stepped forward, reached over and slapped the woman.
There was a low rumble among his buddies. I assumed she’d insulted him, maybe questioned his manhood. Or told him the name Quemal the Assassin sounded more dumb than dangerous. Something else I’d learned during my tours in the Balkans was that people take offense very easily. In Kosovo, when I’d once made the mistake of addressing an Albanian Muslim in Serbo-Croatian, a couple of our GIs had to hold him down to prevent him from carving me into tiny pieces with his pigsticker.
After that altercation, I was known as “the guy who nearly started a third world war.”
Even from across the room I could smell the wariness. The way I figured, he’d murdered at least two people within the last couple of months—and most of the people around here would know that.
With The Assassin and me now within spitting distance of each other, I was reminded that Sylvia, at the airport in Brooklyn, had promised me an opportunity to retaliate for the shellacking in Kosovo. Well, she’d been right. I might get that opportunity. But now all I was thinking about was Max’s warning to stay out of this place—and how I could get away in one piece. But as long as Quemal remained occupied with his friends and I kept my back to him, the chances were good he wouldn’t make me.
I’d stay cool, and when the opportunity presented itself, I’d quietly head for the door. No heroic stuff—like strolling over to Quemal and saying, “Remember me?” Or asking for my Leatherman back.
A minute later, the dancer ended her performance, removed her halter, jiggled two very nice tits at the audience, and flashed a smile. As the men yelled and pounded the tables, I wondered whether this might be the right moment to leave.
But the place suddenly went silent.
Someone had kicked open the door and, now, two men were clumping in. One of the newcomers stood at least six five, weighed three hundred pounds, had an enormous head of dark curly hair, was sporting a large gold earring, and wearing a knee-length white coat—and for obvious reasons was immediately the center of attention. He shouted something in Albanian. Then he picked up a chair and tossed it across one of the tables. After some more shouting, he grabbed a table and upended that.
This was definitely an individual who liked being in the spotlight—and who was unhappy about something.
One of the Dutch guys next to me uttered the Dutch equivalent of “What the fuck!”
The bartender headed out from behind the bar in the direction of the hubbub.
As the newcomer weaved through the big room toward the stage, he shoved aside some men who’d made the mistake of sitting at tables that were in his way. When one of them said something, the big guy turned around, pulled him up by his collar, then with his hand against the guy’s face, shoved him into a tableful of women.
After that, everyone kept their distance.
A tall, skinny individual with blond curly hair, clearly the boss pimp, materialized from somewhere, and he and the newcomer began arguing. A minute later, the pimp was joined by Quemal and the bartender, and they began arguing with the big guy’s partner. It was a real donnybrook. Everybody was shouting at everybody else.
When the newcomer kept pointing at the table with the four women at it, the boss would become even more excited. It didn’t take a genius to know they were arguing about possession of one of the women, seemingly the same one Quemal had slapped around a moment before. She had brown hair to her shoulders, was wearing a low-cut dress, had a round face, and smooth olive skin. She had an innocent attractiveness that the other women in the place lacked. I had a feeling she wouldn’t have it very long.
The first person to reach for a weapon was Quemal, who all of a sudden had a knife in his hand. He grabbed the arm of the woman and ripped her dress. A second later, he had her by her hair and was holding the blade to her throat.
The disagreement had escalated very quickly—and Quemal was behaving true to form.
The big man stopped talking in mid-sentence, believing like everyone else in the place that the woman’s throat was about to be slit. He hadn’t expected that, and suddenly, he and his buddy appeared to be outgunned by Quemal, the boss pimp, and the bartender. Then the pimp gave the word, and Quemal cut through the woman’s bra, exposing her breasts. When the newcomer stepped forward and threw a punch at Quemal, he responded by slashing him with a rapid movement of his blade.
Suddenly, there was blood all over, and the big guy was holding his blood-soaked right arm and screaming in pain. I doubted he’d be wearing the white coat again.
When the bartender pushed the woman to the floor and held her down, she didn’t try to get up.
For a long minute, the big man stood holding his arm, making threats and pointing toward the woman. Although he wanted her to come with him, it was clear that with the bartender holding her down she wasn’t moving.
Then with Quemal’s knife only inches from his face, he took a couple of steps backward—you could sense it was all over. Although the newcomer kept talking, blood was dripping from his arm, and it was obvious he’d be wiser going to see a doctor than mixing it up any further—at least not at this moment.
At the door, when he shouted something, I had an idea this battle was going to be continued at some future time, and that’s what he was telling Quemal.
With the big guy and his buddy gone, the bartender hauled the woman to her feet and, as she tried to keep her breasts covered with what was left of her dress, he dragged her behind him toward the rear. I had an idea she’d made the mistake of expressing a preference for working somewhere else and was in for a beating, very likely from Quemal.
I assumed that would keep him busy for a while.
Chapter 18
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Within minutes, the place was humming again, and something approximating music was blaring from the loudspeaker. A blonde in a bikini took her place on the stage and was bending over and displaying her very round rear end. It was as if nothing had happened.
With Quemal the Assassin occupied with other matters, I decided this might be a good moment to have a quick look around. I drifted over to the table occupied by the four women. I’d become curious, wondering what the argument was about.
“Guten Abend.”
The only one to respond was a tall brunette. In a Slavic accent, she asked me how I was feeling. I told her “amorous,” and she said that was how she was feeling too. When I suggested we spend some time together, she pointed toward a hard-looking individual two tables away who’d been watching us out of the corner of his eye while pretending to talk with his friends.
Since the brunette spoke reasonably good German, I’d be able to pump her. When I asked her name, she said, “I’m Tania.”
Her boss said “bëj dashuri,” which I recalled as Albanian for “make love,” and he said it was going to cost me 250 euros for a half hour of Tania’s time. After forking over the money, I walked upstairs with Tania to a room that was furnished with a chest of drawers, a night table, a chair, and a bed. Although the bed was made, the bedclot
hes didn’t appear to have been recently laundered.
After drawing the curtain across the room’s one window, Tania immediately began unbuttoning her blouse. In her business, time is money. As she unself-consciously peeled off her clothes, I asked where she was from.
“From Kosovo.” When I asked which city, she said, “Dakovica.” I nodded, recalling a small, impoverished place with muddy streets that I’d once driven through and was glad to leave.
Tania had jet-black, shoulder-length hair, smooth white skin, a narrow face, and high forehead. As she removed her brassiere, I saw her tits were on the small side, but round and firm—and I couldn’t help wondering how long she’d been in this business. Under other circumstances, I might have become interested.
As she stepped out of her skirt and I slowly undid a couple of my own buttons, I asked casually, “Who was the man who caused all the fuss?”
“Oh, that’s Sedfrit. He says that Adem owes him money. He was here yesterday too.” She shrugged, continued to undress.
When I said “Sedfrit?” she nodded. “Sedfrit Sulja.”
I assumed Sedfrit Sulja ran his own brothel. “Sedfrit sold the girl to Adem? Is that it? The nice-looking girl? And now he wants his money for her?”
When Tania nodded to me to remove some clothes, I slowly began unlacing my shoes. Still trying to be casual, I asked about the men who chased Sedfrit out of the club.
“Adem is in charge. The man with the bleached hair. He comes from Pristina.”
That figured. Pristina is the capital of Kosovo. Adem would be connected to the trafficking ring. It was likely that money from an operation like this would find its way back to Kosovo, first to one of the front organizations, and then to the KLA. Max had said the Munich police had wanted to close this place, but couldn’t. The K Klub was being protected by someone in the German government. Interesting.
Tania frowned. I’d only unbuttoned my shirt. “Why are you not undressing?”
“And the others?”
I watched as, wearing only her panties, she carefully folded her skirt over the back of the room’s one chair. She had long athletic legs, the kind of legs I always find sexy. “Quemal and Iaon. Iaon is the bartender.”
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