The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  “Aren’t the railcars full of rubles garnered through corruption and blackmail enough for you and the Falcon? Need you also stoop to currency counterfeiting as well?” Davies asked.

  “Ah, Mr. Davies, how naïve you are. After a point, Sergei and I care little for money. However, destabilizing our enemies’ currencies is much more interesting.” Nin walked to the window, while the man positioned himself opposite the sofa, with his CZ 100 ranging back and forth between the American foreheads.

  The brocade drapes parted. A view of Prague Castle filled the window.

  “You chose wisely, Dr. Quick. The uninformed always ask for a room on the hotel’s front side, while I always prefer the side suites facing the Castle. As you may know, the Castle is a monument to Prague’s endurance—some parts are more than one thousand years old.”

  Nin turned from the window. “Are either of you perhaps familiar with the Defenestrations of Prague?”

  “You refer to the medieval uprisings during which political officials were thrown to their deaths from high windows,” Davies answered.

  “Bravo, Mr. Davies. Yes, The First Defenestration of Prague occurred in 1419, when a Hussite priest led his congregation to Town Hall to petition for the release of some prisoners. But when they failed securing their associates’ liberation, being simpler times, the crowd threw the recalcitrant council members from a high window onto some upturned spears handily waiting below.

  “The Second Defenestration of Prague came in 1618.” A red nail tapped the window glass. “Right there at Prague Castle. A group of Protestants was upset about some land deals, so they decided to throw two imperial governors and their scribe, all of who happened to be Catholic, from a window high on the Castle’s Bohemian Chancellery.”

  “And today’s Wall Street bankers think they have it bad.”

  “Well put, Dr. Quick.”

  Nin turned a brass knob and pushed the window frame. A yeasty breath billowed the drapes, and sounds of traffic rose from the boulevard below.

  “Interestingly, during the latter defenestration, the trio of grandees survived the fall—thanks to a fortuitously placed pile of manure—and the Catholics claimed angels had cushioned their landing.”

  Holding the window with one hand, Nin leaned out and looked downward. After a moment, she turned back to the room.

  “Unfortunately for you, I have just confirmed that, six stories down at the foot of this hotel, no cherubs pose as excrement.”

  Nin’s arm shot toward the open window. “Now, which of you would care to go first?”

  – 39 –

  Saturday, 14 July

  Prague

  The woman frowned. She looked from the T-shirt that read, “Cyber: Not Even Virtually a Good Time,” to the overhead red bulb. Her head shook and a finger stabbed a button on the handheld reel. The retracting leash jerked the poodle away from Eric Hunt’s leg. And the woman hastened her step, dragging the little dog with its manicured nails scraping against the pavement in protest.

  Hunt shrugged and pressed a button beside the door. After a moment, a red LED light blinked above a plastic half-sphere affixed at head height in the doorframe. He smiled at the orb, as its lens rotated and focused on his face. After a few seconds, the door buzzed; he grabbed the handle and pulled.

  Stepping inside, Hunt was hit by a fast one-two: the bass beat of hard music was immediately followed by an overpowering mix of long-trapped cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, and alcohol-infused perspiration.

  His eyes fought to compensate for the near absence of light inside the entryway. Before he could back out, fingers encircled his wrist and firmly pulled him in.

  “Good evening,” a voice purred in good English, as the fingers dug deeper and pulled harder. The door clicked shut behind him. Hunt’s eyes were still adjusting, as someone grabbed his other wrist and pressed a sweaty glass into his hand.

  “Welcome to our fair city of Prague. From where are you visiting? America, no?”

  “Uh … yes, from the U.S.”

  “Excellent. Lots of American college boys visit us. We like American college boys very much, don’t we, girls?”

  A chorus of lackluster, heavily accented “yesssses” responded from, Hunt could now finally make out, a semi-circular banquette wedged into one corner of a good-sized room. Hunt saw women of various ages, shapes, and sizes lining the bench. And all dressed and posed as if they were models in a lingerie catalog.

  Hunt looked around the chamber. An array of monitors, all playing different erotic videos, filled one wall. Opposite the banquette, two burly men who looked more like prison guards than bartenders staffed a small bar. But the grad student saw no sign of what he really wanted to find—a computer.

  He looked closely for the first time at the woman gripping his wrist and nearly jumped. The same black hair, round face, and almond-shaped eyes as the Zanin sisters. And she was wearing that same tight, red outfit. Some relative?

  The nails dug insistently into Hunt’s wrist. “Drink up—it’ll help you relax, college boy.”

  Hunt feigned a shy smile, shrugged, and sipped from the glass. His eyes widened. The oily fluid smelled like rubbing alcohol.

  The woman smiled at him. “Now, you brought cash money with you, I hope? Euros or dollars are fine: sixty euros or eighty dollars.”

  Hunt nodded and reached for his pocket, while the woman’s hand remained locked on his wrist, even as his fingers fished for the bills.

  As the American twenties emerged, the woman nodded. “Very good. Now, you choose your hostess for the evening, and she will show you upstairs.”

  She pointed at the bench, at an emaciated young woman with eyes undergirded by heavy black circles and a head framed by curly blond hair. “Svetlana likes American college boys very much. Or”—she pointed at a large-bosomed woman with a red silk garment straining around her middle—“perhaps you prefer someone more motherly, such as Helga?”

  Hunt inspected the lineup for a moment. Then he pointed at a nondescript, brown-haired woman who looked like she might normally teach grade school. “She looks nice.”

  “Helena, a very good selection.” The woman held out her hand. Hunt’s bills landed in her palm. Her fingers snapped, and Helena stood up, looked Hunt up and down, and shrugged.

  The woman grabbed the glass from Hunt’s hand. “Two rules: One, be dressed and downstairs in one hour. And two, if Helena calls for help, my friends crush college boy’s legs.”

  The bartenders waved at him.

  “Now go have fun, American college boy.”

  A thin rectangular box—with two antennae sticking out, affixed to the ceiling in a corner above a plastic palm—caught Hunt’s eye.

  Eric Hunt turned and grinned at the woman. “Oh, I think I will, ma’am.”

  – 40 –

  Saturday, 14 July

  Prague

  The thug’s eyes mowed the patch of tanned V exposed by her robe. And Sam Quick recalled a fact that she frequently exploited in her Florida lab: A strand of DNA is only as strong as its weakest hydrogen bond.

  “I see we have no takers,” Nin Zanin said, still holding her arm toward the open window. “Perhaps a bullet in Mr. Davies’s kneecap would facilitate a decision?”

  Quick rubbed her leg against Davies. He glanced at Quick and then followed her line of sight, as it subtly triangulated between the gunman, the coffee table, and his own face.

  Then Quick stood. “As the hostess, I guess I should go first.”

  Davies shrugged at Nin. “You heard the lady.”

  “So much for chivalry. But not to worry, Mr. Davies,” Nin purred, “your turn will come soon enough.” She crossed the room and joined her gunman. “My helper will escort Dr. Quick to the window and, being a proper gentleman, he will help the her out. Then will come Mr. Davies’s turn. Although this may provide little solace, but for reasons that you will never have a chance to understand, tonight’s events will undoubtedly earn the definitive title of The Third Defenestration
of Prague—your places in the history of not only this fine city, but of the world are assured.”

  Nin aimed her Bobcat at Davies’s head and nodded at her man, who tucked the CZ 100 into his belt and looked to Quick.

  The scientist bowed her head as if she were accepting an invitation to dance. She and the man moved to the window and stopped. Quick glanced out at Prague Castle.

  Then she turned and faced the man, looking into his eyes. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Nin’s brow furrowed, while the man smiled and reached for Quick.

  Continuing to stare into his eyes, Quick relaxed her grip on the robe’s front. The thick cloth sagged like a sail losing wind. With the man laser-tracking its collapse and the spreading exposure of Quick’s nude torso.

  Nin shouted, “You fool!”

  Quick rammed her knee into the man’s groin. The ashtray from the coffee table smashed into Nin’s arm, with Davies following right behind it.

  The man jackknifed.

  Quick grabbed his belt as if grasping a hay bale on her family’s ranch. Using all her might, she threw him at the open window, grabbing the CZ 100 from his belt.

  She whipped around and aimed; the lamp exploded. The darkness silhouetted Quick diving away from the window, as a shot exploded from the dark. Shattering glass punctuated the thuds of diving bodies and overturning furniture.

  Another explosion.

  Quick blasted two shots.

  Someone screamed in the room next door. Light from the hallway spilled into the room.

  Blood, like water, flows downhill. Outside, the man’s ran off the sidewalk, into the gutter, pooling behind a parked car’s worn tire. Screams and then shouts in Czech, English, and German climbed from the street.

  In Quick’s room, Davies’s blood soaked into the powder-blue carpet, turning the rich wool a sickly purple. Quick clamped his brachial artery shut with one hand. The other locked the CZ 100 on the open doorway to the corridor.

  She eyed the gun and the doorway, desperately wanting to chase after Nin Zanin. But Sam Quick kept the pressure steady on Zach Davies’s arm.

  – 41 –

  Saturday, 14 July

  Prague

  “You are very sexy man.”

  “Uh, thanks.” Hunt smiled at the young woman and then surveyed the second-floor room where Helena had led him. The space was smaller than an American walk-in closet. A narrow single bed was shoved against one wall, leaving just enough open floor space for a person to walk alongside it.

  Sketchier, Hunt thought, was the sick noise and smell. Up here, the monotonous music was both twice as loud and punctuated by occasional moans, and the terrible mélange of odors, doubled in strength.

  The young woman sighed. “Please sit down.”

  Hunt eyed the worn sheets covering the thin mattress. “Uh, thanks, but I think I’ll stand.”

  Helena looked at Hunt for a moment and then nodded. “Ah, yes, I understand.” Her negligee dropped to the floor, and she plopped on the bed and reached for Hunt’s jeans. “So you like—”

  “Whoa”—Hunt gently intercepted her hand—“that won’t be necessary.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You don’t like me?”

  “No, it’s not that”—he held up his hands and smiled at the naked woman—“you’re … very hot, I’m sure … ” Hunt shook his head. “No, what I need, Helena, is a small favor.”

  The woman looked at the door and then again at Hunt. “Don’t try anything funny, college boy, or you know what will happen to you.”

  The grad student reached for his pocket. “This is your lucky day.”

  The woman’s jaw set. “I warn you—”

  Hunt slipped out a thick wad of twenties and offered it to Helena. “All you need to do is relax for the next hour. Take a nap, if you want.”

  “But—”

  Hunt’s finger went to his lips again. Helena looked back and forth between Hunt and the money. She shrugged, grabbed the twenties, and snatched up her teddy. Then, hugging the cash and the silk against her chest, she scooted to the bed’s far end. “So, what do you want?”

  Hunt pulled out his smartphone and held it up. “I just need—”

  “No pictures or I scream!”

  “No, no—no pictures. I just need to check out something on the Internet.”

  Her head lulled back against the wall. “This place is making me old and ugly—I can’t even win against the web anymore.”

  “Not at all, Helena.” Hunt started tapping the phone’s interface. “I’m just into some strange things. And right now, I really need to concentrate on penetrating this root directory using a little technique that I developed of iterating with a nifty asynchronous, multivariate Gaussian algorithm.”

  As the phone beeped, Hunt grinned at the woman. “That, Helena, is my idea of foreplay.”

  ∞

  The coupe roared down the ramp. The steering wheel cranked hard to the right, inciting shrieks from the high-performance tires. The sleek hood nearly rammed the concrete wall. The driver’s door flew open. The smell of singed rubber and burning brake pads mingled with French perfume. Muscular calves followed a pair of red shoes out of the car. Firm thighs led to a short, red skirt. And the faint outline of a Beretta Bobcat surfaced, as the skirt’s fabric was pulled taut by the driver’s emergence. The car door slammed shut.

  Nin Zanin stalked across the garage and ripped open the door. The stairway echoed with tiny staccato explosions. At the ground-floor level, Nin charged through a jagging series of corridors until she reached a curtain, which she whipped aside.

  “Ah, there you are, dear cousin … ,” the woman said, her voice faltering as she absorbed Nin’s disheveled hair and blouse. She snapped her fingers; from the bench, the scantily dressed women scurried for the staircase; behind the bar, the tenders locked their gazes on the glassware that they were polishing.

  “The hotel visit did not proceed as planned: The American scientist defenestrated my driver. Luckily for him, because I would otherwise have castrated him with my bare teeth for his infernal weakness.”

  The woman shook her head. “The Americans are still—”

  “Yes,” Nin growled, “still breathing. I wounded one, the diplomat. Quick, the scientist, I don’t know. Sergei will not be pleased. And then the student, the blond boy with the eyebrow jewelry, was not even at the hotel, probably instead out prancing about Vinohrady—”

  “Eyebrow jewelry? University-age with a blond, military haircut and a silver ring above his eye?”

  Nin nodded. “How—”

  “He’s upstairs with one of our girls. Right this instant!”

  Nin sucked in her breath. “They somehow connected this property to Sergei.” Her head whipped around, and she pointed at the Wi-Fi access point attached to the ceiling. “The computer network—rip out the wires. Now!”

  The men scrambled from behind the bar and ran toward the back. Nin’s hand slipped under her skirt and returned with the Bobcat. She looked at her cousin. “Show us the room.”

  ∞

  The silver eyebrow ring tilted on its axis, upset by the wrinkling of Hunt’s brow. A message was flashing on his smartphone: “Access Lost.” His fingers rained on the interface. Then the concentric arcs indicating Wi-Fi signal strength disappeared.

  Hunt looked at the young woman lying curled close by on the bed, intently watching him and the phone. The silk negligee was balled forgotten in the corner, and the wad of twenties lay loose on the dingy sheet.

  “And I thought my Internet service back home was unreliable,” he said, as the phone dove into his pocket. “Helena, is there a back way out of here?”

  The woman glanced at the money and then smiled at Hunt. “Sure, college boy. Out in hall, go right, metal door at end, and then down the stairs. At bottom is garage. The big door will open automatically—unless they see you on the security camera.”

  Hunt leaned down and kissed the young woman’s cheek. “Thank you. Now, for your own good, I
suggest you hide that money and then, on my signal, scream your head off.”

  Hunt yanked open the door and looked out. To the left, an older man blocked most of the corridor, with a tiny woman clad in a black leather bustier prodding him toward the staircase. To the right, the hallway lay empty, lined by little doors, each one sealed shut. Thirty feet away, a full-sized metal door marked the corridor’s end.

  The fast, hard thuds of someone running up stairs sounded beyond the heavy man. Hunt looked back at Helena—who remained naked on the mattress, but with no cash in sight—and gave a thumbs up.

  “Good luck, college boy.” The young woman waved. Then her guttural shrieks filled the hallway.

  Hunt cut to the right at a full sprint. From behind him, mixed with Helena’s screams, Hunt heard other female voices shouting.

  The little doors began crashing open. Young women warily peered around the doorjambs. Beyond them were more narrow beds, most topped by large piles of lily-white male flesh fumbling for discarded garments.

  Hunt looked over his shoulder. The heavyset man slammed face-first into the wall, with a familiar figure in red wedging her way past him, led by a gun.

  Hunt kept running. He passed a room where the male occupant had joined the woman at the door; Hunt grabbed the naked man and jerked him into the hall, leaving him shouting Italian profanities from the floor.

  He reached the hallway’s end and the metal door. To his right, in an open restroom, a plainly clothed woman knelt beside a toilet bowl with a sponge in her hand, staring up at him. He slammed past the exit door and found the stairs leading downward. Then he turned back and dashed into the restroom.

  He grabbed the bucket of sudsy water. “Do you mind if I borrow this?”