by Harlan Wolff
“They killed a Serbian friend of mine, and I’m sending them to hell for it,” Carl told him.
“Was it a good friend?”
“Yes, she was.” Carl said. “We were going to have a baby together.”
“I understand why you’re doing this now, but why didn’t you just ask us to kill them in Belgrade? It would have been easier, and you would have saved yourself a lot of money,” the man said.
“I need them to lead me to the person that hired them,” Carl told him.
“I see,” the man said nodding, “and you’re sure they will lead you to this person?”
“Oh yes,” Carl said. “I’m certain of it.”
What now?” the driver asked.
“If you’d be kind enough to drive me over the border into Hungary, I can take a train from there.”
“It will be my pleasure,” the driver told him.
“My name’s Carl, by the way.” And he stuck his hand out.
“I know,” the man said as he shook Carl’s hand, “and my name is Borislav.”
“That would make you the big man around here. Gregor’s mentioned you,” Carl said, smiling.
“Gregor told me so many improbable things about you, I thought I’d come and take a look.”
“How about breakfast in Budapest?” Carl asked him.
“At the Hilton, in the nice part of the city,” Borislav said as the car moved off.
CHAPTER 45
“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.”
– Louis L’Amour
Carl Engel made his way to Vienna without incident and checked-in to the Hotel de France. He hadn’t turned his phone on since Serbia and reckoned by now Maria would be having kittens. When the phone connected with the hotel Wi-Fi, Carl went straight to his Telegram app intentionally not opening his WhatsApp so Maria wouldn’t see her messages had been read. He wasn’t ready to see her just yet.
The Telegram message from George was short. It just said: Call me. That meant everything went according to plan because if there had been a hiccup, George wouldn’t leave Carl dangling; if there were a problem, the message would have been clear about it. Carl pressed the call button, feeling relieved and pleased.
“Hi, George, so it went well, I take it.”
“It was hilarious. More like a Fellini movie than real life. Once we’d landed, the colonel’s people were waiting at the bottom of the steps. They led the Serbians out to a VIP bus and drove them to the terminal.”
“They were awake?” Carl asked.
“Awake would be an exaggeration. They could put one foot in front of the other, but that was about it. They had no idea where they were, or what was going on around them,” George said.
“What happened next?”
“They were set free in airport arrivals, where they wandered around like zombies for a while. Eventually, they were both stopped and taken away by some men wearing uniforms. I watched it happen while I queued at immigration. The colonel must have had somebody well briefed because they knew exactly what to do. They went through their pockets, put their names in the computers, and then all hell broke loose.”
“So they’re under arrest?’
“Very much so,” George said.
“And nobody knows they came off the same plane as you?” Carl asked.
“No chance,” George told him. “By the time we were collected, the Serbians were long gone.”
“It will turn into one of the world’s great mysteries. How two wanted men were found in Bangkok airport without passports, insisting they were still in a Belgrade cocktail bar. Conspiracy theorists will have a field day,” Carl said.
“We’ll be reading about it on the Internet till the day we die,” George said, and there was happiness in his voice.
“Thanks, George, I think I might just start chomping on that cigar now.”
“You and the colonel,” George said, “you’ve always been a good team. Funny, you’re always bickering like husband and wife.”
“It’s because like a marriage that’s gone on too long, the only thing we have in common is money,” Carl said, “and what binds us together, also keeps us apart.”
“Yeah, but it’s fun to watch,” George said.
“Hey, George, I need you to do one more thing for me.”
“What’s that?” George asked.
“I need you to sell the old Porsche for me. I’m broke, and I’m going to need some cash.”
“Damn, all that money you had is gone?”
“Pretty much,” Carl said. “Gregor’s been paid, and I’ve got enough to settle up with the colonel, so I won’t owe anybody any money, but yeah, it’s all spent.”
“Shit, that was a lot of money.”
“It is what it is,” Carl said.
“What are you going to do?” George asked.
“What I’ve always done,” Carl told him, “I’ll just start again.”
Before Carl hung up, he promised to mail a power of attorney so George could sell the Porsche for him. The car had seen better days, but it would still fetch fifty thousand euros. Cars in Thailand were expensive, especially the nice ones. Fifty thousand euros was a hell of a lot better than nothing, Carl thought to himself, and he’d had to start with nothing more than once. Yes, he could start a new life in Vienna with fifty thousand. He figured all in all he’d been in worse shape.
The next call was to the colonel.
“All went well, I hear,” Carl said.
“It’s completely nuts at the airport right now,” the colonel told him. “Nobody can work out what those two men were doing wandering around the arrivals hall. The funniest thing is, they don’t know either. What did you do to them?”
“Rohypnol. They’ll never know how they got there.”
“You are a funny guy, and I’m going to miss you. You’re not coming back, are you?”
“Not for a while, but I will be back, I promise.”
“I’ll make these two confess, then I’ll get your name removed from the investigation so you can come home.”
“I imagine the government will be pleased, now that they’ll be able to get the foreign journalists off their back,” Carl said.
“Yes, and I’ll make sure they know it was my department that did it. Maybe I’ll be a general by the time you get back.”
“I would like to see that, and you deserve it,” Carl told him. “I’m transferring some money to our moneychanger, you should be able to pick it up tomorrow. That’s it. I’m afraid there isn’t any more.”
“How much are you sending?” the colonel asked.
“A million baht. That should cover everything,” Carl said.
“If that’s all you’ve got, then it will have to do.”
“There will be one more thing you’ll have to do for me, but it’s police work and legal,” Carl told him.
“What is it?”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Carl said.
“Alright, but you should get back here as soon as you can. We need to get the business up and running again.”
“How long will it take before it’s safe for me there?”
“A month or two would be my guess.”
“Alright, old friend, then I’ll see you soon.”
The colonel hung up, and Carl needed a drink, badly, but he had a couple of things still to do. The first thing Carl did was flush the remaining coke down the toilet, then he opened his laptop and sent his last million baht to the colonel. Once the transfer was confirmed he took the Serbian dinars from the two confiscated rolls and laid them out on the bed. When all the notes had been counted, according to the Austrian bank’s currency page online, it came to about ten thousand euros. It was much more than he’d expected, and it was going to be useful if he was going to be stuck in Europe for a while.
He still needed that drink, and he needed time to think before he went to see Maria tomorrow, so he took a shower, got dresse
d, and headed to Loosbar. A night out would clear the cobwebs, and, if he was going to be living in Vienna for a while, he might as well make Loosbar his local. The plan wasn’t to get very drunk, just enough to take the edge off the coke and help him sleep. He needed a good night’s sleep because he had some people to see in the morning, and then he would go and see Maria in the evening when she got home from work.
CHAPTER 46
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
– Arthur Conan Doyle
Carl, wearing a Borsalino hat, and with the collar of his overcoat pulled up against the cold, walked up Lerchenfelder Strasse to Maria’s apartment building. He pressed the button with Maria Bajic’s name underneath it, and when the door buzzed open, he stuck some folded paper in the hole so the door wouldn’t lock when it closed. Carl took the stone stairs beside the lift and heard his footsteps echo through the building as he ascended. He knocked on the door of Maria’s apartment at precisely seven o’clock in the evening.
When she saw him, she threw herself in his arms and kissed him with her tongue. She dragged Carl inside the apartment and started berating him.
“What do you mean by disappearing for so many days? I thought something terrible had happened to you.”
“It did Maria because sometimes there’s nothing more terrible than the truth. I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise, but I’m here now, back in the real world.”
“I don’t care what you’ve done, as long as you’re here now.”
“I won’t be staying,” Carl said.
“What do you mean? You won’t be staying?”
“If you can calm down and sit in your armchair, I’ll tell you everything.”
“I am ready to forgive you; I don’t care what you’ve done,” Maria said.
“Sit down anyway,” Carl told her.
“Alright,” she said and flopped into the armchair by the window.
“First, I want to talk about money,” he told her.
“That’s alright, go ahead,” she told him. “There don’t need to be any secrets between us now.”
Carl hadn’t wanted to pace, but that’s what he was doing, walking up and down the room as he talked.
“I believe you have a healthy savings account,” he told her.
“I save money if that’s what you mean,” she said with a concerned look on her face.
“You also help yourself to other people’s money,” he told her.
“Whatever do you mean?” Maria said.
“It was the one thing that bothered me, and I didn’t know why. The killers took Nadia’s passport and mobile phone. That was the first thing I noticed.”
“I don’t understand,” Maria said.
“I didn’t understand either until my man in Bratislava told me Nadia’s account had been cleaned out. Then I began to piece it together.”
“And what was it that you pieced together?” Maria asked.
“My man in Bratislava contacted his people in Vienna. He has friends here, it seems. That’s no surprise; he has friends everywhere. And when they started sniffing around, guess what they found?”
“No idea,” Maria growled.
“A bank security video of you with a wig and makeup, dressed up to look like Nadia, with her mobile phone and passport in your hand, cleaning out her bank account. You used them to transfer everything to your account.”
“So what, that doesn’t prove anything. I’m her next of kin, and I didn’t want to wait for the lawyers to sort out the paperwork. I was just in a hurry to get the money I was entitled to, what was already rightfully mine.”
“And her passport and mobile phone? How do you explain those?”
“I’m not sure I want to talk to you anymore,” she told him.
“Tell me how you happened to be in possession of her mobile phone and her passport?”
“It’s simple; you were wrong about that. She didn’t have them with her! Even the great Carl Engel can make a mistake,” she said.
“Indeed,” he replied, still pacing, “and I have certainly made a few recently. But there’s no mistake on the passport and the phone. They were definitely taken by the men that killed her.”
“So what?” Maria screamed at him.
“And there’s another thing I need to tell you.”
“What’s that?” she asked in a more controlled voice.
“The killers’ names are Stanislaus and Jovan.”
“Are they really?” she said. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Well, yes, because maybe you know them?”
“They are not unusual names, to a Serbian. You’ll need to be more specific,” she told him.
“I believe Nadia was expecting them. She spoke to them on the phone, and she even paid for the boat they used. I believe you told her they were coming and bringing her something important, something from you, her sister.”
“And what would that be?”
“Money Maria. Nadia had been unable to open a Thai bank account and paid for everything in cash. She must have been running low on funds because she made an Internet banking transfer to you of twenty thousand euros about a week before she was killed. She was expecting a delivery of twenty thousand euros in cash, and that’s why she gave them directions to her hut.”
“Bullshit!” Maria said.
“The transfer from her to you is a matter of record. Nadia’s big mistake was making that transfer because it gave you her bank account details, and somehow you were able to find out how much money was in there. It’s not so hard to do; I imagine you hired a private detective. Then all you had to do was send Stanislaus and Jovan to Thailand to kill her and bring you back her passport and mobile phone, and you were a million euros richer. You had to have the phone to receive the security code from the bank so you could confirm the transaction to move the money. That’s why she was beaten; your thugs wanted to know where her phone and passport were hidden.”
“You are a fantasist,” she told him. “So, my sister lent me twenty thousand euros. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“There’s one more thing,” Carl told her, “your friends Stanislaus and Jovan; the only way they won’t spend the rest of their lives in a Thai prison is if they sell you down the river. If they give you up and plead guilty, they could be back home in ten or twelve years.”
“Ha,” she sneered, “nobody will ever be extradited from Serbia to Thailand.”
“But they already have been,” Carl told her. “It cost me every penny I had, and now I’m broke, but some things just need doing, regardless of the cost. They flew out on a private jet two days ago, and they are now under arrest in Thailand. They’ll soon sing like canaries. You should have told your friends not to speak to strange women in bars.”
Maria got up from the armchair and put her arms around Carl to stop him pacing. She was crying and pleading with him through the tears. “Please don’t do this. Please! What we had was real, and I know you won’t deny that. So why are you doing this to me? You know Nadia was a bitch and a whore. She was a horrible person, but somehow she always got the good life while I got to sit in my armchair every night, looking out of the window wondering why the world was so unfair. It doesn’t matter if you’re broke; I’ve got lots of money; let’s go away somewhere and live happily ever after.”
There was a knock on the door, and Carl took Maria’s arms from around his neck and pushed them down by her sides.
“That will be the Austrian police.” Carl told her, “I went to see them this morning, and they know everything already. They can hold you for the bank stuff until your friends start confessing.”
Carl opened the door, and two detectives came into the room. They said something to Maria in Austrian German, and then they thanked Carl in English. As he was leaving, Maria looked at him, thoughtfully. She was cold and calculating now, back in control. “Just tell me one thing,” she said, “why would you spend all your money to ruin m
e? Within days of her death, you found out what she was: a blackmailer, a whore, and a liar. So why did you do it?”
“You forget something,” Carl said. “She was pregnant. Nadia was carrying my child. I know I was only a father for a moment, but it got to me anyway. I never expected it, and I hadn’t seen it coming; frankly, I thought I was too old. I certainly never knew it would hit me like a freight train. What kind of a man wouldn’t spend everything he had on bringing the person who murdered his child to justice?”
Then Carl turned to the police detectives and said, “There’s a police colonel in Bangkok who will give you anything you need. I will let him know he will hear from you soon.”
“How do we contact you?” one of the detectives asked.
“I’ll be staying in Vienna for a while,” Carl said, “and you can always leave a message for me at Loosbar.” Then Carl walked out the door and left Maria to her fate.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
