by Trevor Scott
●
Bratislava was only sixty-five kilometers away from Vienna, but it was still light years away in standard of living. Jake had to admit he had not had a great first impression of the place the other day with Albrecht, finding the parish priest murdered and then having the cops waiting for the two of them as they ran from the cathedral. But he had now had more time to think about that situation as he drove his VW Golf along back streets of the city, Anna Schult in the passenger seat next to him. They had decided to take his car, swapping it with hers and leaving her Audi in the parking ramp, since they didn’t need her status with Interpol revealed crossing the border. She had simply flashed her Austrian passport. Jake had been somewhat concerned that the border guards would have an artist’s sketch of his face, but they had obviously not seen any resemblance to him. He couldn’t blame them. Hell, he couldn’t see any resemblance to himself.
They had just gone to the apartment rented by Jiri Sikora. The landlord on the first floor, a gray-haired man in his sixties, seemed to spit out Sikora’s name—only contempt there. He had also confirmed that Miko Krupjak—although he only knew the man by Miko—lived there from time to time. Anna had shown the old man photos of Sikora and Krupjak she had printed before leaving her apartment in Vienna. He said the cops were always showing up there looking for those two, but they never hauled them away for anything. In fact, he said a beautiful woman had been there the day before, but she wasn’t there for sex, he assured them. Sikora had a black eye after she left in her Alfa Romeo.
Jake didn’t need any more information to know that the woman had been Toni Contardo. She had mentioned on the phone that she was having a “discussion” with someone. So Toni was on the same trail. Interesting.
“What you thinking?” Anna said. She was on her laptop sifting through known associates of both Sikora and Krupjak.
Turning the car toward the old downtown of Bratislava, Jake said, “What about contacting the local Interpol office and see what they have on the men?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call them on your cell and say you think they’ve been up to no good in Vienna—which is the truth.”
She did just that. Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were at a restaurant on the Nove Mesto, the new town, of Bratislava. The local Interpol office had said that Sikora used to work at the restaurant, and he still hung out with a woman there. A waitress named Kamila.
As they went inside, they found the woman smoking a cigarette at the end of a counter. Only an older couple sat at a table against the front window. Jake could hear noise coming from the back room, the kitchen. The place could have used a make-over, and Kamila was no exception. Her fire red hair was spiked three inches. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a month, her skinny arms tattooed to the wrist. Her face was pierced through the nose, the eyebrows, and the ears. He didn’t want to guess where else.
“What you want?” she said in Slovak.
Her tongue was also pieced, Jake noticed. Maybe she couldn’t eat with that. Since Jake didn’t understand her, he switched to German. “We’re looking for Jiri Sikora.”
“Polizei.” She horfed the word like a hairball.
“No,” Jake said. “An old friend from hockey. We played against each other. I was on the Austrian team. I might add that he beat us three years in a row.” He hoped she didn’t know too much about Sikora’s old team.
She nodded her head, smoke from her cigarette rising to her squinted eyes. “He was a good player I hear. Much before I knew him, though.” Her German came out with a Slavic slur.
“We just came from his apartment,” Jake said. “His landlord said he hasn’t seen him since yesterday. He didn’t come home last night. I wanted to buy Jiri a few beers.”
“His landlord is a bastard,” she said. “He hates Jiri. But I haven’t seen Jiri in a couple of days. You talk to his brother?”
Jake glanced at Anna, who had decided to remain silent and let Jake do the talking. “No. I didn’t know he had a brother.”
Kamila was wary now, her expression skeptical. “No, he calls him his brother. He calls a lot of people his brother.”
“Oh, you mean Miko Krupjak?”
Shaking her head, Kamila said, “Not Miko. Miko was on the Olympic team. I’m talking about Viktor Kopari. He’s Hungarian. A concierge now at the Hilton in Budapest.”
“In the Castle District?” Jake asked her.
Ashes fell to the floor as Kamila said, “Yes. Have you been there?”
“I’ve seen it,” Jake said, a smile on his face. “I can’t afford to stay there.”
“No kidding,” Kamila said. “Jiri stays there, though. Kopari lets him in.”
Jake thanked her for the information, but said he was only in town for the day and would have to call Jiri next time before he showed up. No need to have her tip the guy off before they could catch up to him.
Anna was already out the door and Jake about to slip outside when Kamila said, “Do you have Jiri’s cell number?”
Why hadn’t Jake asked for that? Kamila gave him the number and then Jake met Anna on the sidewalk.
They walked a block to Jake’s Golf. He didn’t want the waitress to see his license number, so he did a U-turn and headed out of the city.
When they were on the autobahn heading toward Hungary, Anna said, “You have a way with people. They seem to want to please you—give you any information you ask for.” She shook her head. “How do you do it?”
“It’s part of my charm,” Jake said, a serious smirk on his face. “Besides, it’s not always that easy. Sometimes I have to break a few legs.”
She raised her brows with that.
●
Budapest was about 250 kilometers east of Bratislava. With the stop at the border and a brief late lunch break, it took the two of them three hours to reach Budapest. Just in time for rush hour.
Jake had been to Budapest many times, but it had been at least two years since his last visit. Still, other than the traffic, he had no problem finding the Castle District. It was off season, and not many people were braving the cold to check out the view. The Castle District was on the Buda side of the Danube, which split Buda from the city of Pest on the east side, and, along with the Old Town, was mostly a pedestrian zone. It was not a large area of the city, but it included the Royal Palace, Matyas Church and enough galleries and museums to keep most people busy for a week. It also featured the most stunning view of Budapest, the Danube River, and the Parliament building in Pest.
They parked the car and this time Anna wanted to ask the questions. On the drive to Budapest, she had accessed the Interpol database, found the man’s address three blocks off of Attila Ut, a street on the bus route just below the Castle District, and decided to call ahead to see if he was at home or at work. No answer at home, so they had driven straight to the Hilton.
The Hilton was the only major hotel in the Castle District, a posh expansive hotel with, Jake guessed, a grand view of the city below.
They found Viktor Kopari in his office around the corner from the main desk. He was forty-five and not married, his hair dark black with no hint of gray. He had a small scar below his right eye. He had also played hockey on the Hungarian junior national team against Jiri. Anna introduced herself as a friend of Jiri Sikora.
Kopari spoke perfect German. “How is Jiri?” he asked, his head tilting to one side and his eyes not on Anna but locked onto Jake—his voice more than a little effeminate.
“We’re trying to find him,” Anna said. “We’re hoping you could help us.”
The concierge put his hands on his hips and said, “I have not seen him in a couple of weeks. I drove to Bratislava for the weekend, but that other man was there. That Czech brut. I don’t know what Jiri sees in him.”
Jake stepped forward and shook hands with Kopari. “I agree,” Jake said. “You must be talking about Miko.”
Kopari tried to hold Jake’s hand longer than normal. “Right. I played against hi
m just once. Back in nineteen seventy-eight. He was all elbows to the head. Knees to the groin. Shoving us to the boards. Just brutal.” He flapped his elbows like a chicken.
“Were you part of the Teutonic Brotherhood?” Jake asked him.
Without thinking, Kopari said, “Yes. Jiri got me into it some five years ago. But that was another time. I didn’t understand the vows. Chastity? What in the hell is that? That’s no fun.” Kopari giggled like a little girl.
“He’s not still with the Order?”
“No. Not since he met Hermann over a year ago.”
“Hermann?” Jake asked.
Kopari put his finger on Jake’s chest and said, “Hermann Conrad. He’s a German. Well, he calls himself a Prussian. But he’s a German.”
Jake played it up now, his stare deep into the Hungarian’s brown eyes. “Could Jiri be with Conrad?”
“He wishes. Conrad is loaded. He owns places in Berlin and a biotech company in Magdeburg. He has a castle in Austria. I hear it’s gorgeous.”
“Is that outside Salzburg?” Jake asked him, uncertain.
“No, no. It’s further south than that. By St. Johann.”
The Bratislava priest had mentioned this in his diary, Jake remembered. Something about long training sessions. But the priest didn’t know exactly what they were up to, nor did he care to know.
Anna said, “Miko spent some time here in Budapest. Would his friends here know where he is?”
“That man is crazy,” Kopari said, wagging his finger in Anna’s face. He thought for a moment and then added, “Another friend of both men maybe. Emil.”
“Emil?” Jake said.
“That’s what I said.”
“He have a last name?”
The concierge swished his head no. “Just know Emil.”
“You know how to find him?”
Kopari explained that the man ran a kiosk with furs and knives down on Vaci Street across the river in Pest. Jake had been there before. Vaci was a pedestrian zone that ran for more about a kilometer, with high end stores making it one of the best places to be seen in Budapest. This time of the year would include Christmas markets with food vendors.
“How do we find that kind of kiosk this time of year?” Anna asked him.
“Easy. These people are very territorial. Same place every year. Emil’s kiosk is in the square just above the last stop on the Metro Line One—the start of Vaci Street.”
Anna thanked him and headed for the door.
Taking his time to depart, Jake kept thinking he should ask him something else.
Kopari stopped them. “Do you have Jiri’s cell number?”
Maybe that was it, Jake thought. He didn’t want to tell him he already had the number. Kopari gave them the number, and then Jake thanked him and left, guessing the guy was checking out his ass and not Anna’s as they departed.
●
When the man and woman had left out through the front door, Kopari making sure himself, he closed and locked his office door and sat behind his desk. Twisting his head from side to side, his neck cracked and he found his private cell phone inside his suit jacket.
He punched in a number and waited. As the phone clicked on the other end, Kopari said in Hungarian, “They’re on the way.” His voice had suddenly changed to deep and resonant.
He listened carefully, nodding his head to himself.
“Right,” he said. “I have them on digital video. I’ll make still copies and forward them to you and the others. Be careful. The man, Jake Adams, looks dangerous.”
Hanging up the phone, he thought about the other calls he would have to make in the next hour. But first the video cameras. He glanced to the corner of the room at the small camera. Nobody looks up. He smiled and laughed and then headed to the security control room.
12
The room was dark and sleet pelted the window. The naked woman on the bed shifted her thin hips up to meet the man’s thrusts, his intensity growing like the pistons in his auto building up speed as it enters the autobahn.
“My God,” the woman screamed. “You’re so big.”
He smiled, knowing she was lying, and punished her as much as he could for her guile.
When Hermann Conrad was done, he rolled over to his side on the bed and gazed at Alexandra’s perfectly round breasts. He had not had to pay for those—they had been perfect when he met her a few months back—but everything else in the apartment, including the rent, was bought and paid for by him. It was better that way. A simple business arrangement. None of the pretense of marriage. She said she loved him, but he knew that was a love of expedience and comfort. He had no illusions of anything else.
“What are you thinking?” she asked him, her fingers running through the gray and blond hair on his chest.
“I was just checking out your sweet body,” he said. “God was good to you.” He knew she liked compliments. Needed them.
“Thank you, Hermann. You are too good to me.”
True. He could have left her in that rat hole apartment in Vienna’s worst part of town, working as a “dancer” in a somewhat respectable club—if there was such a place. “You deserve it after what you went through growing up.” Alexandra had grown up in the old Soviet Union, now the Ukraine, where her parents were scientists in Chernobyl. She had survived that disaster because she was staying with an aunt in Kiev at the time. Both parents had died in the initial explosion, though. And that had been some comfort to her.
“I don’t remember much of that,” she said, pulling the feather comforter over her nakedness. “I was too young.”
He had heard that before, and then she had cried and told him what she did know. How her older brother and sister had died later from horrible fallout-radiation poisoning.
Hermann ran his hand through her strawberry blonde hair and said, “I will take care of you, Alexandra.”
“Take me with you to Germany,” she pled, her lower lip extended out in a classic pout.
“I’ll think about it.”
She rose up to her knees, her naked breasts bouncing to a halt in front of his face. He had never said that to her before. “You will?”
Raising his head, he licked her erect nipple, took it into his mouth and sucked it for a moment, and then said, “I promise. But first I have some business in St. Johann.”
She had been to his castle a few times—a wonderful place like which she had dreamed of living in her youth. “Take me with you to the castle,” she said, her hand reaching down to his flaccid penis. “I will help you decide to take me to Germany.”
Her touch was magic and he was becoming hard again. “How in the hell can I say no to you now?”
She smiled and lowered her head to his rising erection.
●
Having parked his car near a Metro Line Two stop on the west side of Budapest, Jake and Anna took the train under the Danube River, switched to Metro Line One and went to the end.
As they hiked up the stairs to the square above at the end of Vaci Street, Jake realized that darkness had set in, and the square was lit by Christmas lights strung around tree stands, kiosks, and small fires beneath chestnut roasting pans.
On the trip over, he had thought about the brief encounter with the concierge at the Hilton, and how he had freely given up so much information. The man’s eyes had given away even more, first inadvertently shifting up and to his right. Was he lying? Or was he trying not to look at the camera in the corner of his office? Jake had a feeling he was about to find out.
Anna wrapped her arm inside Jake’s left arm, as if they were a couple. “Nice place,” she said, her breath flowing out in a cloud.
True, he thought. But the chill on the back of his neck was only partially caused by the cold air. “Yeah, I was here a couple of years ago. It was a zoo then, too.”
She looked confused.
“A lot of people,” he explained.
Stopping, as if looking at Christmas ornaments in a kiosk, Anna whispered in his ear, “
The kiosk in the corner. Next to the Christmas trees.”
Jake picked up an ornament and glanced past it toward the kiosk. They had no idea what this Emil looked like. The man working the booth had hair to his shoulders, a skinny frame, and his thick gray wool coat couldn’t cover that fact. Jake set the ornament down and said, “Let’s go. Let me talk.”
The two of them strolled toward the kiosk with furs strung along two sides, and, as they got closer, Jake saw a full row of knives on a counter. Next to them was a tray of Soviet-era military pins. Hanging on the kiosk ceiling were hats—anything from ski hats to Russian military fur hats with red star and sickle in the front.
As they approached, the man’s eyes locked onto them, and he lowered himself to grab something. Jake slowed his pace and felt his gun with his arm. When the man came up with a hat from a box and hung it to a line, Jake pulled up to the counter. Anna moved to one side and looked at a hunting knife.
“Emil?” Jake said. “Kopari sent us.”
The man, perhaps mid-forties like the concierge, didn’t seem surprised. He said something in Hungarian to a younger man in the kiosk and, to Jake, he shifted his head toward the back of the booth.
Behind the booth was a narrow space, dark and almost impossible for Jake to see more than a few feet. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, but didn’t have much time.
As he made out two figures approaching him, Jake heard a step behind him and he swiveled to his right just in time. The knife missed his kidney but grazed his left arm.
Jake kicked back and heard a knee snap, a howl from the man with the knife.
The two other men were on him now, fists flying. Jake took a hit to his left temple, dazing him. He let loose with a flurry of punches and kicks at both men and then turned back toward the front of the kiosk. He needed to move to the light.
Jake ran and almost knocked Anna over. He grabbed her and pulled her toward the center of the square.
