Rise of the Order (9 page)

“Looks like a couple of bad guys,” Jake said. “Ripped off a polizei car. Must have been crazy drug dealers.”

She snatched the paper from Jake's hand, peered at it a moment, and shoved it into her pocket. “It's you and Albrecht,” she said confidently.

“I'm nowhere near two hundred centimeters,” Jake said. “Not even a hundred eighty.”

“As I'm sure you know, even polizei officers are poor witnesses. And you did embarrass him, from what I understand.”

“I've been in Vienna all day.”

“And Albrecht?”

“What about him?”

She explained what she knew about both the Donau Bar shooting and the murder of two priests in Bratislava. She had Jake and Albrecht at the scene of the parish priest's murder also, but Jake could tell she had no hard evidence. Maybe he had made a few tactical mistakes at both places, but he knew there was no way they could trace the shell casings at the Donau Bar back to him, or the slugs, without taking his gun and testing it. He loaded his CZ-75 with latex gloves and used over-the-counter bullets purchased at various locations around Europe. Never the same store. Also, he had five different CZ-75s with similar spring tensions on the firing pin, adjusted that way personally. Sure he had the gun under his arm now, but he would soon swap it out for another stashed at his car and get rid of the one he carried now. It was time to buy a new gun anyway.

It was obvious to Jake that she knew almost as much as him. And he knew he would probably know more once he got a chance to read the papers from Albrecht's warehouse.

“So, Martini sent you my way,” he said again.

Anna turned onto Mariahilfer Strasse. The narrow lane with trendy shops was lit up for the Christmas season, highlighted by the constant flow of fluffy snow.

“I don't work for Martini,” she said, somewhat disturbed. “As I'm sure you know, Interpol works independently of Austrian State Police. We do coordinate our efforts with them, but they don't know all we know until we want them to know it.”

“Sounds like our law enforcement agencies in America,” Jake said. He couldn't keep his eyes off of her. There was something about a beautiful woman with an accent. Glancing toward the road ahead for a moment, he realized Anna had driven to an area familiar to Jake.

She pulled into an open spot on the curb. There were many free spots. During business hours Mariahilfer Strasse was almost impossible to traverse, with no parking at all. After hours, and probably because of the weather, there were almost no cars on the streets. She kept the car running and the wipers cleared the windshield.

Her eyes drifted toward his midsection. She said, “Are you going to tell me what you found at the Teutonic Order warehouse?”

“That's what this is about?” Jake asked.

“What else could there be?”

A true professional. He liked that. What he didn't like was the fact that she had parked across the street from the ramp where he had left his car earlier in the day. How in the hell had she known that? He was really slipping. “Right,” he said, his right hand on the door handle. “Everyone seems to want something, yet I have no idea what that might be.” Glancing outside, he remembered the hotel on the corner less than a block away. As good a place as any to stay the night.

“You're thinking of staying at the Requiem Hotel,” she said. “I wouldn't recommend it. Bugs, from what I hear. Do you have friends in Vienna? Perhaps you could stay with them.”

He laughed. “You just picked me up at an old friend's house.”

“Toni Contardo? You were lovers once, yes?”

He was feeling at a distinct disadvantage, and he hated when that happened. “Anything you don't know?”

“There are lots of things I don't know,” Anna said. “But not for long. My apartment is three kilometers away. You could stay on the sofa. You like cats? I have just one.”

He thought for a long while, not really wanting to find a hotel, lumpy bed, or bugs. Yet, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to go with this woman. What kind of woman offered her couch to a complete stranger? What the hell. He liked a good mystery. Besides, he needed to find out how much more this woman might know.

“I have a gun,” she said, a broad smile. “I'm sure you will be a gentleman.”

How could he refuse? “Let's go.”

“Super,” she said, the S sounding like a Z.

Anna Schult lived in a one bedroom apartment on the western outskirts of Vienna, where the forest met the town, a little more than a kilometer from the Ottaring U-Bahn stop.

Jake took off his leather coat and sat on her sofa, his bed for the night. He set the day planner he had gotten from Albrecht's warehouse under his coat.

Anna came back from the kitchen, a bottle of schnapps and two small glasses in her hands. Once she had taken off her bulky wool coat, he could see she was well proportioned, a sinewy physique like that of a long distance runner, or, more likely, a cross country skier. Her breasts were not large, but her tight cotton shirt highlighted them and he saw her 9mm automatic prominently displayed on her right hip.

Once she poured both glasses of schnapps, she set the bottle on the coffee table, handed one to Jake, and took the other for herself. “Prosit!” she said, taping the glass against Jake's.

He said the same and then downed his glass, the schnapps warming him from head to toe. “Wow,” he said. “Haven't had this in a while.”

She took a seat across from him and Jake couldn't help think about doing the same thing in Toni's apartment about an hour ago.

“You like the Glock,” Jake said.

Touching her hand on her gun, she said, “A good Austrian gun. I hear you like the Czech CZ-75.”

His over-the-shoulder holster was visible, but only the butt of the black handle in view. She had some good sources. “Yeah, I started using it when I worked in Germany years ago. As you know, once you get used to a weapon it's hard to change.”

“You want everything to be second nature,” Anna said. “I understand. They all put their clip releases and safeties in different places.” She ran her hand through her blonde hair.

She was quite striking, Jake thought. “You have a partner?”

“A lover?”

Jake laughed. “No, I meant in Interpol. You have a partner there?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, I do. But he broke his leg skiing in Kitzbuhel last week. They brought him to a hospital in Salzburg. He'll be there in traction for a while.”

“So, you're on your own. Have you visited him?”

“I couldn't get away,” she said. “Besides, he has his wife there with him.”

“Have you always lived in Vienna?”

She poured two more glasses of schnapps. “No.”

“Would you like to elaborate? You seem to know everything about me,” he reminded her.

“All right. I grew up in Zell am See. Spent most of my youth skiing Kaprun. My father was a concierge at a hotel there and my mother was a school teacher. When I was in high school I decided I liked cross country skiing, the serenity of it and the pure beauty of gliding across fresh snow in the mountains and forests of Austria. I chose tranquility over speed. College in Salzburg and then the Army.”

“Austrian Army Intelligence Service?” Jake asked.

“Good guess?”

“Well, you did attend my lecture in Garmisch. We didn't let just any army officer in for that.”

“Good point.” She raised her glass of schnapps toward him.

Jake picked his glass up and together they threw down another shot.

Anna got up from her chair and adjusted her gun on her narrow hip.

“Do you have to be anywhere in the morning?” Jake asked her.

“Why?”

“I've had a long day,” he said. “Just want to know if I can sleep in.”

Without answering, she crossed the room and turned on the light to her bedroom. “I don't have to punch a clock,” she said. “Sleep as long as you want. There's a pillow and blankets in that cabinet.” With that she went into her room and closed the door, a lock clicking.

When she was gone, Jake prepared the sofa for his bed. Shifting his coat to the coffee table, he saw the day planner with Albrecht's information. He couldn't wait any longer. Had to see what was so important. So important that his old friend Toni Contardo would act the way she had. He knew that most of her reaction was personal, but something had changed in her, he was sure of that. Shuffling through the papers, he was glad and surprised to see they were all in German. Czech or Slovak and he would have been lost.

Most of the loose papers seemed to be simple documents dealing with the Teutonic Order. Purchase orders, shipments of goods from Austria and Germany to Poland and the Slovak Republic. Speculation on starting a kindergarten in Budapest. Under all the papers was a small notebook with handwritten entries. Each entry was dated. Jake flipped to the last entry, which was less than a week ago. The priest was concerned about a confession he had heard from a man named Miko. He felt somewhat guilty reading these private entries, but knew there had to be something here that got the priest killed. Maybe something else that had gotten the parish priest killed less than twenty-four hours ago.

Jake spent the next hour reading the entries. When he was done, his brain was fried from translating the German to his English thoughts, and his stomach was aching. He had not eaten all day. Not since he grabbed a bite on the train to Bratislava. More than that, though, he had a feeling his gut was rumbling more from what he had read in the Order priest's diary. Now he had a direction to travel. He looked around the room trying to find just the right place. There. A bookshelf stacked from top to bottom. He slid out a row of books and placed the thin diary behind them. Then he shifted the other books so they all lined up. Satisfied, he clicked off the light and lay down.

●

Miko and Jiri got to Prague less than an hour before midnight. They would have to hurry. On the radio of Miko's Skoda, the hockey game between Prague and Dresden had just finished—a huge double overtime win for the home team. Miko wished they had been able to leave Bratislava earlier to catch the game in person. He had played in his youth with the oldest defenseman on the team, and had a standing offer for free tickets.

“You hear that, Jiri. My friend Peter shut down their offense tonight.”

Jiri nodded his head. “That man is a beast. One hundred and ten kilos. He shouldn't be allowed on the ice at that weight.”

Miko laughed under his breath. “We could use a man like that. Break some legs.”

“Absolutely. I hear he will retire next year. Maybe.”

Shaking his head, Miko said, “He can retire for life with all the money he's made. He made enough in the American NHL in ten years to live in Mlada Boleslav like a king. And now ten more years in Prague.” Miko shrugged his shoulders. “He probably has more money than Hermann Conrad.”

“No way,” Jiri said. “Conrad owns Marienburg Biotechnik, houses in Berlin and Magdeburg, the huge wind farm with that farm house, and I heard he is part owner of the Berlin hockey team. Not to mention that castle in Austria.”

The autobahn from Brno ended and funneled them into the edge of Nove Mesto, the New Town. Traffic was light and the roads were clear. Luckily the snow had ended some sixty kilometers outside of Prague, and the city was only shrouded in darkness from swirling clouds overhead. No stars. No moon. That's what Miko had hoped.

“It's not a castle,” Miko said.

“You've been there?”

“A few months back,” Miko said. Although it wasn't officially a castle, it sure as hell looked like one, sitting at the edge of the mountains by St. Johann in Tirol, a splendid view of the Alps. “Sure it's built of stone. But I understand it was built by the Order as a monastery a couple hundred years ago.”

They had reached Stare Mesto now, the Old Town, and Miko got off Wilsonova before they crossed over the Vltava River. He wound his way into Josefov, the Jewish Quarter. He pulled over and parked a block from the Old Jewish Cemetery, the front of their car pointed at the oldest synagogue in Europe.

Jiri's eyes got wide when he saw where Miko had parked. “We're not going to take out that,” Jiri protested. “We'll have every Jew in the world after us.”

Miko let out a deep breath and said, “No, Jiri. But if we did strike it, we could blame it on the fucking ragheads. The enemy of our enemy could be our friend.”

Without warning, the rear door opened and Rada Grago climbed in. Jiri nearly jumped from his pants. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said.

Grago started to light a cigarette, but then saw Miko's glare in the rearview mirror, so he shoved the unlit cigarette back in the pack. “Jiri, what the hell happened to your face?” Grago asked.

Miko started laughing. When he told Grago the story, the Butcher of Prague joined in the laugh. Jiri slumped down in his seat.

“Don't worry,” Grago said. “We'll get the bitch. Let you fuck her first before you kill her.”

Jiri smiled with that thought.

Putting the car in gear, Miko cruised slowly by the synagogue. He blew a kiss at the structure and then picked up speed.

Fifteen minutes later, they had crossed the river and were now in a western section of town, a place where Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and Africans had moved in the past decade or so in increasing numbers. Miko drove slowly now, taking in the scene.

“Look at this,” Miko growled. “A damn Kabob stand on every block. Smoke houses and fucking Moroccan restaurants. God damn Sand Niggers have taken over your city, Grago.” His friend had heard it all before, Miko knew. For the past few years that's all Miko could talk about. “Is that the place?” Miko asked Grago, his eyes on the man in the mirror.

“That's it.”

They were cruising past a Turkish Bath, a more upscale place that had opened recently, and where Grago had heard all the big players in the Turkish community frequented.