Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller

by Stephen Templin

  He sat at the middle of the bar and ordered a martini. An attractive brunette was on a stool at the lounge end of the bar, and Max was about to chat her up when a familiar voice whispered in his ear, “You snooze, you lose.” It was Hank, who had beat him to it.

  “May I sit here?” Hank asked the woman.

  She was closer to Hank’s age than Max’s and soft-spoken. “I wait for someone,” she said with a German accent.

  “Right now?” he asked.

  She didn’t seem irritated, but she did seem a little defensive. “No, but soon.”

  “What’re you doing while you’re sitting there?” he asked kindly.

  “Waiting. Soon, he will come.”

  Hank was cool, calm, and collected. “Can I wait with you? So none of the wolves bother you while you’re waiting.”

  Her defenses seemed to lower, and she smiled. “Yes.”

  He sat next to her. “Danke schoen.” Thank you.

  Now she seemed curious. “You speak German?”

  “No, I only know a few words. That’s a pretty blue necklace.”

  “Danke.”

  “Blue topaz in sterling silver,” he said.

  “You know jewelry.”

  “I know a little. I should know more.”

  “I treated myself.”

  “I’m Hank,” he said.

  “Helene.”

  He pointed to the gaming area. “Helene, do you gamble?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever wanted to try?”

  “Once. But Leon not like gamble.”

  “Leon—the guy you’re waiting for.”

  “Leon says risk taking ist dumm.”

  “I think Leon ist dumm.”

  Helene’s blue eyes sparkled.

  “You have pretty eyes—like topaz,” Hank said. He paused for a moment. “Would you like to play roulette?”

  “This moment?”

  “I’m an expert, and I’m paying.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know?” he asked gently.

  “I don’t want to look silly.”

  Hank’s overflowing confidence more than made up for her lack of it. “You won’t look silly with me, Helene. Even when I look silly, I don’t look silly. Roulette is one of the least risky gambles there is. All that can be lost is a little money—my money. I promise you’ll look impressive.”

  The smile on her face suggested she was on the edge of saying yes.

  Hank persisted in a cheerful manner. “I think you’ll have fun.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He put her arm in his and escorted her across the floor to the roulette table, and she took a seat while he stood behind her.

  Max admired his old man and grinned. Max’s martini arrived, and he thanked the bartender before picking it up and moseying over to the roulette table. In his side vision he scanned the room, but there was still no sign of anyone suspicious. A loud, young guy talked incessantly to Tom at the bar. Max felt sorry that his little brother had to listen to the man, but Blabber Mouth was good for Tom’s cover.

  The computerized roulette table was like a giant iPad, except for an actual roulette wheel and a female croupier. Hank reached into his pocket, pulled out some casino chips, and asked the croupier, “Could you exchange these for roulette credits?”

  The croupier took the chips, touched her pad, and motioned toward Helene’s seat, where the credits would appear on Helene’s monitor.

  Hank looked at Helene’s monitor, then looked at the croupier. “Danke.”

  “Place your bets,” the croupier said.

  Hank told Helene, “We’ll bet the minimum so we can stretch out the fun—five euros on red, same as the color of your dress. Just touch one of those chips on the screen and slide it over to the red color there.”

  Helene slid her sensuous finger across the multi-touch screen.

  Hank nodded approvingly.

  The croupier spun the wheel and released the white ball. Round and round the ball rolled. “No more bets,” the croupier said. The ivory ball dropped and settled into a slot. Before Max saw which color the ball landed on, Hank and Helene cheered. They’d struck red.

  Helene stopped bouncing. “How do we know how much to bet?”

  “Depends on how much we’re willing to lose,” Hank said. “We’ll go five euros each time, stay on red for a while, and when we spend a hundred euros, we’ll stop. If we have any extra, great. If not, we can enjoy having played the game.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Because it was a computerized touch table, the croupier’s placing of the marker on the winning number, clearing of the losing bets, and payout to the winners was swift. The rapid pace of the game was good for the winners, bad for the losers, and great for the casino.

  “Place your bets,” the croupier said.

  Helene looked at Hank, and he nodded. She slid her finger across the table to red again. The croupier spun the wheel, the ball dropped, and Hank and Helene won once more.

  Helene jumped. “Ja!” Yes!

  Hank grinned. “Ja!”

  They lost some games, but they won more than they lost. Soon other players moved their bets to red, but Hank switched to the odd numbers and continued his winning streak with Helene.

  “Why you change to odd?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just to keep it interesting.”

  Other players switched their bets to odd, also.

  Hank and Helene looked good together—the way he stood close behind her, and she seemed enchanted. They laughed. Again and again they beat the odds more than the odds beat them.

  “Let’s do something different,” Hank said.

  “Okay.”

  “Put thirty euros on the high numbers, twenty-five euros on the second twelve numbers, and five euros on the number zero.”

  Helene appeared confused. “Isn’t that too much?”

  “Just one more spin.”

  “Why?”

  “This will be fun. If we hit a number nineteen through thirty-six, we’ll make a profit, if we hit thirteen through eighteen, we’ll make more of a profit, and if we hit zero, we’ll make a killer profit.” It was the James Bond strategy.

  “What if we hit one through twelve?” she asked.

  “Then we lose, but we’ve had fun playing the game.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “Okay, but win or lose, this is the last game.”

  “Last game. Promise.”

  Now Tom and Blabber Mouth were watching, too.

  Some of the roulette players copied Hank’s bet exactly, while others covered the same numbers with less money, and others covered the same numbers with more money. A wisp of a man bet against Hank.

  Hank gestured to the croupier and asked, “Can Helene here spin the wheel?”

  “I can’t,” Helene said.

  Players at the table encouraged her to spin.

  “Ja,” the croupier said.

  Helene hesitated.

  “Spin the wheel,” Hank said softly.

  Helene reached down and gave the wheel a spin. The croupier released the ball and it rolled. Now it was all left to chance, fate, or whatever one wanted to call it. The roll seemed longer this time. Round and round the ball travelled. When it dropped, the ball seemed to take its sweet time. Then it landed. Zero.

  Hank, Helene, and the other players erupted in cheers. Max chuckled, and Tom grinned. Wisp-of-a-Man slapped the table in disgust.

  Although Hank had broken his original promise not to bet beyond his original one hundred euros, he kept his promise to Helene that this was his last game. “I’d like to cash out, please,” he said to the croupier.

  The croupier paid him in casino chips, more than double the hundred dollars he started with. As Hank and Helene left the table, he offered her some chips, but she refused.

  “This isn’t my money,” he said. “Just half of the winnings.”

  “I didn’t play for winnings
,” she said. “I played for fun.”

  He smiled.

  “If I had only met you when I was young—you could push the wool over my eyes,” she said with a sweet longing in her voice.

  A sharply dressed man their age approached, and he greeted her in German and with a kiss. She spoke to him in German, and it sounded like she said Hank’s name. The sharp-dressed man turned to Hank and said, “Hello, Hank.” Then he turned to her and spoke German again.

  “Hank showed me how to play roulette,” she said in English.

  He smiled and said, “Wunderbar,” and something else. Then he turned to Hank and told him in English, “Thank you.”

  Hank was polite: “You’re a lucky man.”

  The man spoke to her again in German while pulling her with him to the exit. She glanced over her shoulder and waved to Hank. Then she was gone.

  Hank’s magnum shoulders seemed smaller now, and he said softly, “I would’ve bought her the necklace.”

  29

  Two men walked into the Grace Club—one looked like a mass murderer, with his icy eyes and a clammy white face that made his lips look blood red. The other had short, wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and pouty duck lips that opened to show his teeth. He wore a mauve suit jacket and looked as if he’d just finished a photo shoot for GQ magazine. Their appearance seemed to suck the light and life out of the air in the club. Ice and Duck surveyed their surroundings and seemed unimpressed, and the clubbers gave them space. There was a slight bulge under Ice’s arm—probably a pistol in a shoulder holster. Duck was likely armed, too. They sat at a table. A waitress greeted them, but they stared through her and said nothing as if she didn’t exist.

  Minutes later, a tan bearded man bounced as he walked on the balls of his feet through the club doors and carried a magazine under his left arm. The cover was the same as the ADAC Motorwelt magazine in Max’s pocket.

  Max’s heart jumped. His watch read 1931 hours. The contact was early. He walked across the floor and sat on the stool next to Max. Did he already make me? Or did he sit here by coincidence—one out of the three empty stools. The stool on the opposite side of the man was empty.

  The man fidgeted and leaned back, as if looking to see if Max held a magazine under his left arm, but Max wasn’t prepared to out himself yet. He wanted to give Ice and Duck time to dismiss him and focus their attention elsewhere.

  Max’s drink was empty, and he ordered another martini. He waited patiently until the bartender served his drink. Then he took a sip and waited several more minutes. He glanced at his watch: 1946 hours. Now the bearded man next to him and Ice and Duck were more focused on the door than Max, so he discreetly put his magazine under his left arm, faced the man so he could see it, and nudged his arm.

  The man didn’t react, so Max nudged him again. Then the man turned and looked at him, perturbed. When he spotted the magazine, he jolted, like he’d sat on an electric eel. But he didn’t say the recognition phrase. He froze.

  Max tried to coax it out of him, loud enough so the man could hear but too quiet for Ice and Duck to hear above the noise of the music and chatter of the clubbers. “This is my first time here,” Max said, giving the man’s first sentence. He still didn’t reply. Is this the right guy? Could it be a coincidence: the same bar, same magazine, anxiousness, and two goons? Max thought not, so he prompted him with the other sentence the man was supposed to initiate: “Is this your first time?”

  “No,” the man said before clamming up again. He said the first word of Max’s verbal signal, but he didn’t say the rest—I’ve been here before.

  After the visual recognition of the magazines and the verbal recognition phrases, they were supposed to lay their magazines on the bar counter—Max did but the man didn’t. Max swiftly ran out of patience. He wanted to exchange the magazines before Ice and Duck noticed him, but the exchange wasn’t happening.

  Max put some euros on the counter to pay for his drink and placed his magazine in front of the man. Then he reached around and grabbed the magazine from under the man’s arm. The man resisted, but Max snatched it away from him.

  Max rifled through it. There was a large envelope inside. “I’m going to play roulette,” Max lied. Hopefully his words would buy him some time as he made for the exit. Max wanted to run, but he kept his emotions in check and walked through the lounge, not drawing undue attention to himself.

  Max slipped out of the club and entered the red hotel lobby, which now was bustling with people. If he wanted to stay safe, he’d stick around the crowded lobby where Ice and Duck would be less likely to make a public scene, but if he wanted to get away, he’d have to keep moving. He picked up his pace. In the reflections of the glass windows he could see people behind him, but he couldn’t make out whether any of them were Ice and Duck.

  “Two dudes following you, one looks like a serial killer,” Tom’s voice said in Max’s earbud receiver.

  “Ice is the pale-faced serial killer and Duck has duck lips,” Max said. “Saw them in the club.”

  Max passed through the hotel doors and out into the cold night air.

  “We’ve got your six,” Hank said.

  With his brother and father protecting his flank, Max focused on possible dangers ahead. He zeroed in on faces and hands—cheerful faces, lost faces, cold faces, empty hands, hands with luggage, hands with shopping bags, and more faces and hands. So far there were no angry faces or hands with weapons, but that could change at any moment. Max entered the front entrance of the Hotel Dormero and went out the back.

  He circled around to the rear of a theater and walked in through the employee doors as if he was one of the employees. The hall was warm, and there were German signs on the walls that he couldn’t read and didn’t have time to decipher. German words seemed so long. He marched purposefully past a pair of husky security guards who stood with bored faces and folded arms. They didn’t seem to acknowledge Max’s presence. From behind the walls came the music of a symphony playing a waltz from The Nutcracker. Applause followed. Further into the building a flurry of costumed dancers and others flowed in opposite directions. He got in behind ballerinas striped like candy canes, who seemed to be leaving the stage. From the opposite way approached a ballerina with her silky tutu and exquisitely fine legs down to her ballet shoes. She floated ahead of her posse like the Sugar Plum Fairy. Max preferred pro wrestling to ballet, but the Sugar Plum Fairy’s legs were to die for.

  He burst through the side exit, and his breath blew white into the chilled air. He blazed a shortcut across the snow and listened for anyone following. No one was.

  “Ice and Duck looking for you in the Hotel Dormero,” Tom said. “They’ve got some guys with them.”

  “Let them keep looking,” Max said. “You know where I’m heading, so if you can meet me there, I could use your help.”

  “Roger,” Tom said.

  “Okay,” Hank said.

  Max reached the sidewalk and briskly descended the stairs into the Salzäcker subway station. He pulled out one of the train passes Willy had purchased for them the day before, hoping anyone who might follow him was less prepared. Max put his pass in the automatic reader, and the gate opened to let him through.

  He looked at the time schedule, and he had several minutes before the train came. He hoped Tom and Hank caught up to him before Ice, Duck, and friends did. He was vulnerable standing there in line. Like a deer stopping for a drink of water during deer hunting season. He looked at every face and hand on the platform, and he heard each sniffle and rustle of clothing.

  Tom came down the steps and stood in another line to wait for the train. Max was happy to see him, but he worried about his father. Where are you, Dad?

  The train arrived and hissed to a stop. Max, Tom, and the other passengers loaded onto it. Max checked the stairs again, and Hank bounded down them. He wasn’t going to make it. The doors began to close, but Max stuck his arm out of the train. The doors touched his arms and popped open again. Hank hopped aboard. Max re
moved his arm, and the doors closed all the way this time.

  The three of them sat in the same car in different seats. Visions of sugarplums danced through Max’s head. The train pulled forward and lumbered through the blackness of the underground. Max smiled. Tom did, too. Even Hank cracked a grin. They’d spun the roulette wheel and beaten the odds—again.

  That same evening, in the living room of their safe house in Munich, Max removed the large envelope from inside the pages of the auto magazine. He opened the envelope, and inside was a photo of a man with a scar on his face.

  “That’s him,” Max said.

  “Really?” Tom asked.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this,” Hank said.

  The man with the scar was about Hank’s age. Max read the handwriting on the back of the photo: “Tomorrow night, this man, Mr. Düster, the head of Ringvereine and the Alabama killer, will be at the Casino Sultan on Goethe Street in Little Istanbul, Munich. He will be visiting his girlfriend.”

  Willy joined them. “How can you be sure it’s him?”

  “I remember,” Hank said.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” Willy said, “but that was a long time ago. Like I said before, Düster is a common name in Germany, and we don’t have a first name for him. And this information only comes from one source—we don’t even know how reliable or valid this is.”

  Hank’s eyes became scalpel-sharp. “It’s him. I gave him that scar when he killed my wife …”

  Willy’s voice became weary. “I’m sorry about what happened to Autumn—I really am. But do you think your eagerness to find her killer might cloud your judgment?”

  “What is the problem, Willy?” Hank asked heatedly.

  “The problem is that this feels like an ambush,” Willy said. “You may have a death wish for yourself, but do you want to risk your boys on this one? You’ve got them to live for, and they need their father.”

  Hank stared at the photo. “My boys want to wrap up Autumn’s killer as much as I do. If he’s the head of Ringvereine, that means he killed Tommy’s girl, too. And he’s the whole reason we’re doing this mission.”