by Alex Archer
"Oh, dear," Stanley Younts said.
"Do you have that attorney of yours on speed dial?" Annja asked.
"Yes."
"Good. We may need him just to get out of town." Annja gathered the straps of her backpack and stepped from the limousine.
"You're here." Annja stopped in front of Bart.
Bart shrugged. "I'm a detective, and this was easy. You disappeared. Stanley Younts disappeared. You wanted to go to Venice. Younts is a big-deal author and has a private jet. When I talked to Morrell, he told me that Younts had scheduled a meeting that day to get an interview with you. When I found out you weren't at the hotel, I came here."
"You got here fast," Stanley commented.
"It helps if you have the siren and lights," Bart said.
Tension filled the space between Annja and Bart as the snow continued to fall.
"Uh," Stanley said, "why don't I go wait in the jet?" He looked at Bart. "I can still get on my jet, right?"
"Yes." Bart didn't look at the writer.
Hesitating, Stanley pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at Annja. "Are you going to be all right?"
"I'm going to be fine," Annja replied.
"I thought so." Stanley shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat and walked up the steps into the jet.
Annja stayed just out of Bart's reach. Only a few feet away, the private jet's engines roared. The door was open and lighted stairs led to the aircraft's interior. All around her, the biting wind hammered her and stung her exposed flesh. She'd gotten so cold even in just the short walk that she no longer felt the snow hitting her.
"I'm getting on the jet," Annja said.
Bart sighed. His breath came out in a long gray stream that was torn to pieces in the wind. "I know. I can't stop you. I would if I could. I think you're making a mistake."
Annja didn't say anything. There was no need to. She was leaving in a few minutes and that was all that mattered.
"While you're looking for whatever Mario Fellini thought he found, other people are going to be looking for it, too," Bart said.
"I know."
"Whoever had him killed isn't going to pull any punches."
"I know that, too," Annja said.
Bart made no move to step away from the unmarked car. "I wish you wouldn't do this."
"Bart, I – "
He held a forefinger up to his lips. "I know. I had a partner a few years ago who was ambushed on a follow-up interview. He ended up in a coma for two weeks, then got pensioned off the force with a permanent disability."
Annja didn't know what to say. That was a story Bart had never told her. It surprised her that there were still any of those left.
"I moved heaven and earth trying to find out who did it," Bart went on. "I spent most of my time trying to pin the murder attempt on the guy Ross went to interview that day. Long story short, that guy didn't do it. Ross got popped by a jealous husband whose wife Ross was seeing."
Annja waited.
"I got put on suspension for a month for getting too physical with the guy I thought did it," Bart said. "Then, while I was in the hospital sitting with Ross, his wife came in. She told me she'd thought Ross was having an affair. I could see that she was hurt. I didn't believe it, but she helped me put it together. I went and talked to the husband. He was relieved he was finally caught. Sometimes it works out like that."
A jet took off, screaming overhead and putting an end to the conversation for a time.
"The guy shot Ross because he was scared of him," Bart said. "Ross's wife got hurt because he cheated on her. I got suspended and hurt because I believed Ross couldn't do any wrong." He took a breath. "What I'm trying to say is – "
"Sometimes people you think you know disappoint you," Annja said. "I get that." Then she smiled at Bart. "But sometimes the people you know are everything you think they are. You're here now."
Bart looked a little embarrassed. "Maybe. I came here to give you a heads-up." He reached into the car and took out a packet, then handed it to Annja.
"What's this?"
"Background stuff you shouldn't have," Bart answered. "Stuff you wouldn't have if you didn't have a friend with connections. It's interesting reading material."
"Something that's going to disappoint me?"
"Something that's going to open your eyes. Mario Fellini's girlfriend – "
"Erene Skujans."
Bart nodded. "She's got a record. She was an antiquities dealer in Romania. She got busted for misappropriation of assets. I figured that was fancy museum talk for – "
"Theft," Annja said.
"Exactly. Since then, she's been independently employed, but she's wanted for questioning by several international law-enforcement agencies regarding a lot – and I do mean a lot – of burglaries. Does that sound like the kind of woman your friend would have taken up with?"
"No," Annja said.
Bart heaved a sigh. "He met her over there, right?"
"Yes. I confirmed that through the family."
"Then the possibility exists that he didn't know what she was all about."
"He told his family she was a hedge witch at the local village where he was staying."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a big fan of witches, either."
"Witches aren't always bad," Annja said. "It carries a negative connotation here, but there are still women in the Appalachian Mountains who tend to the medical needs of the community. And the role is reprised in several other cultures where medical help isn't available. They're given several titles."
"Maybe so," Bart said, "but this is one witch my spider senses are warning me about. I just want you to know that."
"Okay."
Bart nodded toward the jet. "I'm holding you up. You've got an important discovery to find."
"If it exists."
"Other people believe it does." Bart looked at her. "You believe it does."
"I," Annja said, "believe in my friends."
"So do I. Just make sure you take care of yourself so you can come back and tell me the whole story."
"I will." Annja headed for the jet, then stopped and went back to give him a hug. He held her fiercely for a moment, then let go when she did. "Thanks," she said.
Turning, Annja walked through the snow and boarded the jet. Buckled into her seat, she gazed through the window and waved a final goodbye to Bart as the jet taxied away.
But her thoughts were on Mario and the woman, Erene Skujans. Annja opened the file folder and began to read.
Chapter 27
The village was not far removed from what it had been when Erene Skujans lived there as a little girl. Stone buildings and houses sat too close together to allow more than a single line of cars. Few visitors came through. Mostly they were black marketers who wanted to increase their earnings or off-load items they hadn't been able to sell in Riga.
Dressed for the freezing wind that whipped through the village, Erene walked down the hill to the center of the village. Her grandmother had always lived away from the villagers. Outside of the village, she had more room for her gardens, and it was cleaner.
No one cared about the village. It was an eyesore. Frozen horse and dog dung littered the narrow, snow-covered streets that wound around the small stone houses.
The downtown area consisted of five two-story buildings. A hundred years earlier, merchants had conducted business there. Now they were just squats for those too poor or too lazy to seek out better shelter.
However, there was a bar in the bottom of one of them. Fermented goat's milk was the drink of choice, but there was also black market vodka for those who could afford it. The owner maintained a kitchen there, as well, but the cook was his wife and her efforts weren't much appreciated until the men had started drinking.
Women didn't go there except to sell themselves or steal husbands. When they did and they were found out, the other women of the village ran them out of town. The only thing those who sold themselves hoped for was to get enough money bef
ore being ostracized to get a start in Riga.
Erene's grandmother had never gone there. Erene had never gone there, either, until Mario took her there. They'd shared his rented cottage or her grandmother's house.
Thinking about Mario upset Erene again. She felt the ball of pain in her stomach like a heavy stone. She knew it would never leave. She hoped that killing Wolfram Schluter would help. She believed it would.
Despite the man's departure from the area, Erene knew he would return. The lure of treasure was too irresistible. After all, it had kept her there all this time.
She had visited her grandmother on occasion, but those times usually ended in arguments and guilt. The strained silence between them, the annual birthday card, those things had seemed more comfortable.
Of course, that meant she hadn't known of her grandmother's death until eight months after the fact. Erene had stood at the overgrown grave where the villagers had interred the remains of Misha Skujans. Erene, who thought she'd known everything there was to know about her grandmother, hadn't even known her age until she'd read it on the crudely carved headstone.
A group of squatters had taken over her grandmother's house. Erene had come back and let them know the house would remain as it was until she decided what to do with it.
Then she'd found Mario in town. For a week she'd watched him as he'd talked to the villagers and went trekking around through the ruins outside the village. She'd heard about what he'd been looking for, but all of her life she'd never believed it existed.
The tavern was a rectangular room with a low ceiling. Timbers covered the bare stone walls, holding a mix of mud and straw that served as insulation. In many places, scars from bullets – from Russians, as well as Nazis – showed on the timbers.
A hodgepodge of chairs and tables occupied the room. Only three lanterns, one of them on the bar, lit the space. The others had been dimmed and the surviving lanterns had pulled the final few men together near the wood-burning stove against the back wall.
"The witch!" someone growled.
"What's she doing here?"
The bartender, an old man with gray hair and gold-capped teeth, leaned toward Erene. "Can I help you?"
"No," Erene replied.
The six men seated at the two back tables looked away from her.
Erene walked toward the tables and stopped a few feet away. "Viktor Ivanov," she said.
Five men got up from the tables to join the bartender at the bar.
The remaining man looked at her and grinned insolently. He was at least eight inches taller than Erene. At one time his body had been lean and muscular; his wife had a picture of them together in those happier times. But now he'd gone soft and paunchy. He outweighed Erene by at least one hundred pounds. His brown beard and hair were long and shaggy. He wore tattered clothing and a large parka.
Calmly, he took a drag off his cigarette. "I am Viktor Ivanov," he said.
"Your daughter's arm was broken," Erene said.
Ivanov shrugged. "She is careless." He smiled a little. "Like her mother. Both of them are careless."
"I had to rebreak your daughter's arm tonight to reset it," Erene said. It was cold enough in the room that she could see her breath. "I've never had to do it to a child before."
Ivanov grinned. "Breaking a child's arm is very easy. Now, a man? That is much more difficult." He sneered. "Perhaps you're better at curses. They say your grandmother was."
Without a word, Erene planted one of her boots in his face. The impact jarred along her leg. His head snapped back and rebounded from the wall behind him. Before he could move, Erene grabbed a fistful of his hair, turned and slid a hip into him, then yanked him from the chair and flipped him to the ground.
Ivanov landed hard on the floor. The wind whooshed out of him. He flailed at her weakly, still stunned. He tried to catch his breath. His nose, flattened across his face, bled profusely.
Shoving her hand into her pocket, Erene slid out the switchblade knife she carried there and flicked the blade out. Avoiding his attempted blows, she sank to one knee beside his head. When she laid the keen knife edge against his neck, he ceased his struggles.
She leaned close to his ear and whispered, "I curse you, Viktor Ivanov. With your own blood." She nicked the flesh of his neck, and crimson mixed with his beard. "If you are not gone by tomorrow morning, if I find you here, I will bury you and cover your body in lye so that your bones will burn forever."
There, that sounds positively witchy, doesn't it? she asked herself.
He shuddered. Part of her gloried in Ivanov's fear. That was the part of her that was savage, the part that always lurked just below the surface and that her grandmother had never understood. She couldn't bring Mario back, but striking out – even against someone else's monster – made her feel better.
Ivanov said nothing.
"Do you understand?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," he said quietly.
"Good." Erene stood and closed the knife.
Ivanov tried to get up.
Erene placed a boot on his head. "Don't get up," she said. "Not until after I'm gone."
He nodded and snuffled blood.
Erene went to the bar and reached into her pocket for money. "A bottle of vodka."
The bartender reached behind the bar and brought up a stoppered bottle. There was no label.
"It's black market vodka. Locally made. I've nothing better at the moment," he said.
"How much?"
"For you? Nothing. On the house."
Erene left too much money on the bar. If this had been another town, she would have taken the bottle for nothing. But she didn't want to owe anyone in the village.
She took the bottle and left, hoping the vodka was strong enough to kill the pain she felt over knowing Mario was dead somewhere in New York City.
Outside, she unstoppered the bottle and took a deep swig. The liquid burned the back of her throat and brought tears to her eyes that trickled down her face and felt like icicles. After another drink, she turned and headed back to her grandmother's house.
****
The grave was in a small cemetery behind the house. Erene's grandmother was the last to have her bones laid there. Few spaces remained. Moonlight shone through the wispy clouds. A crooked picket fence missing a few slats surrounded the graveyard and set it apart from the forest that threatened to encroach and devour it.
Numb from the cold, the adrenaline and the vodka, Erene walked to her grandmother's grave and knelt there. She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her arm, but it was wasted effort because the nylon material slid smoothly across her face.
Lifting the bottle to her lips, she tried to take another drink but discovered it was empty. She'd consumed all of it on her way up the hill. It was the most she'd drunk in years. Angrily, she flung the bottle away.
She was confused. She didn't know if she was crying for Mario, her grandmother, the little girl whose arm she'd had to rebreak –
Or herself.
The last thought was the most upsetting. Erene couldn't remember a time when she'd cried for herself. And she'd rarely cried for others.
"Oh, Misha," she whispered, reaching out to touch the carved headstone, "I wish you were here."
Only silence answered her at first.
Then a deep voice said, "I've always been told that it's all right to talk to the dead, but when you start waiting for them to answer, you've gone too far."
Erene spun around, reaching for the pistol that she'd habitually carried for the past few years before realizing it was still packed away with the other personal belongings she'd kept from Mario's sight.
A tall, thick man stood at the graveyard's entrance. He had a broad face and his skin was ruddy.
"Dalton," Erene whispered.
"Erene," the big man greeted. His name was Dalton Hyde. For years they'd been sometime business associates and lovers, dropping into and out of deals that had benefited both of them.
"Wher
e did you come from?" Erene asked.
Hyde hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I was down to the tavern when you went in there looking for trouble." His big face split wide in a white grin. His accent was Hungarian, but he'd lived all over Eastern Europe while he plied his trade.
He was one of the most gifted artists Erene had ever seen, but he didn't have an honest bone in his body and had an attraction to easy money. Usually someone else's. Normally he was a confidence man, arranging for investors to buy fake art or antiquities he'd crafted himself or had others create.
But he was also a thief. He knew electronics, hardware and systems, and he was a sophisticated hacker. He'd taught Erene everything she knew about breaking and entering.
"I wasn't looking for trouble," Erene said. She knew she slurred her words but didn't care.
"I guess not," Hyde said. "From where I sat, you delivered more than you got."
"He broke his daughter's arm."
"I gathered that."
Erene frowned. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you."
"You're not exactly the type for a casual hello."
Hyde shrugged. "I came to talk to you about a possible job – "
"I'm not interested."
"I don't think this is the appropriate time to talk about it," Hyde said.
"Why?"
"Because, dear girl, you're plotzed."
"I won't be interested later, either."
"You won't be drunk later," Hyde said.
"Go away." Erene walked toward the house.
"Is that how you're going to treat an old friend?"
"I've got an excuse. I'm drunk."
"You're not that drunk."
Erene slipped and nearly fell. Head spinning and feeling sick, she grabbed hold of the picket fence and threw up. She purged so hard and so long she had a headache. She was barely aware of Hyde picking her up in his massive arms and carrying her into the house. Sleep came almost the moment he placed her on the bed.
Chapter 28
Garin watched as the men carried their squirming package through the club's doors, across the dance floor, then up the staircase to the offices.
As he watched, the cameras changed smoothly, rolling through the views until he could see inside the office where Schluter sat looking as if nothing was out of place. The men spoke briefly.
