by Trevor Scott
“Nice address.”
“Yeah, a woman named Alexandra Bykofsky.”
“Russian?”
Jake thought and then said, “No. I’d guess Ukrainian. I worked there for a while and I’ve heard the last name. Damn it. Now I wish we were still in Vienna. We could check out the woman.”
“I could have Franz Martini look into her.”
“Hate to say it, but that’s a good plan.”
She got back on the phone and called Martini, mentioning not only the woman, but Conrad and his nanotech research business. With all that had gone on recently—the Donau Bar, the two priests in Bratislava, the Budapest shooting, and now the mole getting nanoed—it was too much of a coincidence to not think that Conrad had something to do with all of this mess.
●
Back in Vienna within minutes of ten a.m., Hermann Conrad sat out front of Alexandra’s apartment in his rental BMW, the engine running and him listening to the weather report. Snow and plenty of it. Great. And so Alexandra had forgotten her favorite undergarments and had to run back up to her apartment to retrieve them. Well, it was to his advantage. He had bought the skimpy, sexy black garter belt, bra, bustier, and panties for her. She looked like the sexiest dominatrix he had ever seen wearing that outfit. God, he was getting a hard-on just thinking about her in that.
There she was now, coming out of the front door in her waist-length chinchilla coat, her black leather pants, and black high-heeled boots to just below the knees. Rounding off the combo with the matching chinchilla hat, she was something to see. In her right hand was her Gucci bag, obviously stuffed with her outfit. She smiled and got in, thanking him for allowing her to go back for the outfit.
“Anything for you, my darling,” Conrad said as he put the BMW in gear and pulled away.
●
On the sidewalk, Franz Martini and Jack Donicht walked past the BMW just as it pulled away from the curb. Martini took a long look at the woman in the passenger seat. She was stunning, he thought, as he looked over his shoulder at the car driving down the Kartner Ring.
After getting no answer on the apartment door, Martini flashed his badge and convinced the concierge of the upscale apartment to let him into Alexandra Bykofsky’s apartment. He and Donicht looked around the nice place with the splendid view of the State Opera House, being careful not to intrude too much—the concierge insisted on watching them from the door.
“I told you she was not here,” the concierge said. “I just talked with her as she left the building.”
Martini turned toward the short man with perfect hair and dressed in a fine Italian suit. “You didn’t say that before.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Moving closer to the concierge, his arm around the man and turning him toward the door, Martini whispered into the man’s ear, “Do you know where she went? I must speak with her. She could be in danger.”
The concierge’s eyes got big. “Seriously? How so?”
“I can’t explain,” Martini said, his face just inches from the other man’s. “Where did she go?”
As the concierge explained how Alexandra had talked to him just before leaving, Martini could hear Donicht in the background doing as he was told. The man’s level of detail could have made him an honorary polizei inspector.
“You say she was wearing a matching chinchilla coat and hat,” Martini asked, thinking of the woman in the car.
“Yes. As I said, she went away for the weekend with Herr Conrad. He’s filthy rich. But I already told you that.” The concierge put his hand on Martini’s jacket.
Glancing around behind him, Martini got a nod from Donicht, meaning he had gotten the information.
They both thanked the concierge and reinforced to him that he must be discreet in this matter and not mention that they had been there. Alexandra’s life could depend on it, Martini said.
Back in the unmarked polizei car, Martini pulled out a cigarette and shoved it in his mouth.
Donicht was on the phone with the office, waiting for information on the phone calls made from Alexandra’s apartment, along with information on cell phones the woman might own. In Europe now it was quite possible for people to use their cell phones exclusively, and many had more than one phone. Features were everything.
“Thought you had quit smoking for good, Franz?” Donicht said, his hand over the receiver of his cell.
Martini lit the cigarette and sucked in a good deal of smoke. “Once this case ends. I promise.” He didn’t want to worry his old friend about his prostate cancer.
“Ja,” Donicht said into the cell phone. He listened for more than a minute and then hung up.
“Well?”
“This Alexandra Bykofsky. . .up until a few months ago the woman did not exist.” Donicht went on to explain how she had started working at a club in town, getting a work permit at that time, and her old apartment was rented month by month. But she had only been in Vienna a few weeks before moving into her current apartment on Kartner Ring.
“That’s strange,” Martini admitted. “We’ll have to process the prints you got from her place. She made quick time picking up a benefactor like Hermann Conrad that fast.” Something wasn’t right about this woman. He’d find out soon enough what that was.
“Oh, yeah,” Donicht said. “Schmidt called from Linz. He found where Herr Albrecht had been staying in Steyr. A gasthaus along the river.”
“Does he have Albrecht?”
Donicht hesitated and then said, “No, sir. The gasthaus clerk was beaten by three men. The men took Albrecht.”
Great. Martini lit another cigarette from the last and leaned back in the seat. This was getting more and more complex, he thought. Maybe he should have stayed in Tirol. Get the surgery and then move back to Innsbruck. Sounded like a plan.
20
Doctor Wilhelm Altenstein’s airplane was almost diverted at the last minute because of the snow falling at the St. Johann in Tirol airport. He had flown first from Dresden to Salzburg and then, on that tiny plane, the final leg to the ski resort town. His nerves were shaken. What if his plane had crashed? Sure someone else might be able to pick up on his research, but none would do so with as much enthusiasm as him. He was on the verge of major breakthroughs and had to be careful.
Standing at the only luggage carousel at the arrivals area of the airport, Altenstein waited for his small bag to drop down. He had a metal case with padded lining in his left hand and a laptop computer slung over his shoulders—both far too valuable to let some underpaid baggage handler throw about like a sack of rags. His clothes, on the other hand, did not matter. That was evident by the worn jeans he wore, the shirt half hanging out of his pants, and the winter down jacket, unzipped and snapped closed partially out of alignment. His hair stuck up like he had been electrocuted. Finally he grabbed his bag and then a man appeared at his side.
“I can take that for you, Herr Doctor,” the man said.
Altenstein startled with one look at the man. His jaw was chiseled and unshaved, with a scar that ran up his face on one side.
“I’m Mikolas Krupjak,” he said. “But you can call me Miko.” He tried a smile. The man was missing a molar, and his breath smelled like rotten cabbage.
“Thank you. Herr Conrad said he would send someone. How far is it to his place?”
Miko shifted his head. “Not far. But we should get going. The snow is expected to get worse.”
The drive took only twenty minutes, but Altenstein guessed it would have taken much less without the slippery roads. When he saw the castle, there was no other word for it, he was speechless for a moment, thinking it must be a mistake. He knew Conrad was rich, but this was hard to believe.
“What is this place?” Altenstein asked.
Miko pulled the Skoda to a parking area where a few more cars had parked since he left for the airport, and he shut down the engine. “Used to be a monastery years ago,” Miko said. “Conrad found it after it had been sitting idle for a few years. The
last owner had tried to make it into a hotel, but they weren’t very good with management. And it was too far away from the ski slopes. So they failed. But, as I’m sure you know, Conrad has not failed at anything in his life.”
“I’m starting to understand that, Miko.”
They got out, Miko carrying his clothes bag, and they trudged through a few inches of snow toward the double wooden doors of the main entrance.
“How did you two meet?” Altenstein asked.
“See that scar,” Miko said, running his finger along his face.
Altenstein nodded.
“Conrad did that with a hockey stick.”
“My God.”
Miko shook his head. “No, it was an accident. That was before masks were worn for international competition. I checked Conrad into the boards and his stick jammed up into my face.”
“I heard Conrad was on the German national team. You played for the Czech Republic?”
“Well, it was Czechoslovakia at the time,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his words. “But I am Czech. Come on. Let’s get you to your room.”
They went through the massive front door. The ceiling in the foyer had to be ten meters high, accented by stained glass windows on two sides, and hanging from the center of the room a grand tiered crystal chandelier lit the space. The floors were white marble with swirls of gray, and a spiral marble staircase, lit by white candles in gilded holders, rose up along the left wall to an overlook. There were paintings in oil and watercolor on every wall, but the furnishings were sparse. A few chairs and plants.
Upstairs was less elaborate but more cozy. The hallway floors were the same marble, but the ceilings were lower and lit by candle-shaped lights.
Miko stopped at a door and opened it for Altenstein. “The room at the end of the hall is Herr Conrad’s.”
“Is he here yet?”
“No. He called on his cell a while ago to remind me to pick you up, and they were still about an hour out. The snow has slowed them.”
Altenstein entered the room and said, “They?”
“He has a lady with him. A friend from Vienna.”
“I see.” Altenstein looked around the room. It was like a suite in an expensive hotel, which he had only rarely seen in his less than extensive travels. The bed had a canopy held up by swirling dark wood. A gas fire burned in what had once been a real fireplace.
“Dinner is at eight,” Miko said at the door. “I’ll let you get unpacked. There is a small staff here. Cooks and putzfraus. A grounds keeper. But we’re mostly on our own here. The phones don’t work yet. We have cell service here, though.”
“Thanks,” Altenstein said, setting his laptop on the bed and his metal case gently to the floor.
Miko nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
Standing before French windows, Altenstein gazed out onto a back garden, covered now with falling snow. Two men were chasing each other, throwing snowballs at one another. Finally one man tackled the other and they both slid to the snow. Then they started making snow angels like children. He turned and looked at the room again. This was more than he expected. But maybe, just maybe, this was how he would start living. If his discoveries lived up to his hope and desires, how else could it be?
●
Three doors down the hallway, Gustav Albrecht, the grand master of the Teutonic Order, sat on his bed looking out on the garden and the forest below. Look at them, he thought, seeing those idiots Jiri and Grago making snow angels. One minute they’re punching him and taping his mouth shut, and the next they’re playing like kinder. Moments ago he had heard a door open and close down the hall, and thought maybe they were coming for him. But if they had wanted to kill him, why bring him to this grand place? Why not just shoot him in the back of the head and dump his body in that river in Steyr?
That’s what had been fumbling in his mind for the past day. The doubt and wonder. First they had tried to kill him at the Donau Bar in Vienna. Now, although not treating him like a guest, they kidnap him and bring him to this beautiful castle. What did it all mean?
He also wondered about Jake Adams. Jake had told him to stay in his room except to go down to the gasthaus bar for food. Yet, he had done something so stupid he was kicking himself for his idiocy. Using his visa. And that’s how that man Miko had said they had found him. A simple and unconscious mistake. Something he does every day. Yet this time it had been worse. They had found him, and now he could be killed. But why? What did these men really want with him? Too many questions.
He lay back on his bed, his hands behind his head, and wondered what would happen next. The door was securely locked. He had tried it many times. There was no escape. He would have to cooperate. That was the only way to survive.
●
The snow was coming down now in fluffy flakes as big as one Euro coins. Toni Contardo sat in her Alfa Romeo a kilometer down the road from the castle at the end of the long drive, a view of the place through the trees. Sitting in the passenger seat, his laptop computer on and typing away, was Kurt Lamar.
They knew Hermann Conrad owned the castle where they had followed the men in the Skoda—the men who had inexplicably kidnapped Herr Albrecht and hauled him down here. But Toni still wasn’t sure why they had done so.
“What do you think?” Kurt asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The new man they just picked up at the airport doesn’t look anything like Miko, Jiri or that Grago guy.”
“I accessed the flight records,” Kurt said. “The guy’s name is Wilhelm Altenstein from Magdeburg, Germany. Turns out he’s a professor of nanotechnology at the university there. Conrad’s company has a huge contract with the university. According to both websites, they’re trying to find nanotech cures for various diseases. Pretty vague, though.”
“Don’t want to give that away to the competition,” Toni said. She looked through a pair of binoculars at the parking lot, where six cars currently sat. “So it makes sense the lead researcher would come and hang out with Conrad at his mansion in Austria. Did you check out the licenses of those cars?”
“Hey. . .been a little busy here.” Kurt switched to the European auto database and started running numbers he had written down.
She wondered what Jake was doing right now, wishing deep within that she had not pushed him away. He had a way of turning situations like this around, coming up with intuitive reasoning that logically put all pieces of a puzzle together. She, on the other hand, saw a problem and fixed the problem. Which didn’t mean that Jake didn’t make things happen. He just seemed to understand a plot much sooner than her. Maybe she was too trusting. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Perhaps her radar for nefarious crap didn’t go off until the shit really hit the fan.
“Miko Krupjak we know,” Kurt said. “The Hungarian car is licensed to a guy named Viktor Kopari.” He went on naming folks from Poland, Slovenia, Austria and Germany.
“That covers most of Eastern Europe,” Toni said. “When you consider that Miko and Grago are Czech, and Jiri is Slovak.”
“Right. And who knows where the passengers in the cars are from.”
Toni thought about all of these players coming together here. Why? “Something’s going down here that’s bigger than we thought, Kurt.”
“I have the same idea. And I know what you’re thinking?”
“What’s that?”
“We could sure as hell use Jake right now.”
Her thought entirely. Jake needed to know what was going on here.
●
When the cell phone rang, Jake was adjusting the defrost controls on Anna’s Audi, trying like hell to keep the ice from building up on the wiper blades. Anna had enough trouble keeping the car on the road and seeing their lane. They were now only about 10 kilometers away from Zell am See, Anna’s home town. They had decided to go there first to pick up some more equipment, stay the night, and then head northwest to St. Johann in Tirol early the next morning.
“Yeah,” Jake sai
d into the cell.
“It’s Toni.”
Jake said nothing. He expected Kurt to keep on calling with updates—him relegated to messenger boy for Toni.
“What?” Jake said.
“Some weird shit’s going down here in St. Johann,” she said, her voice quiet, serene.
“We’re not even close to you. We’re closer to St. Johann im Pongau.” In fact, they had passed through that mountain town twenty minutes ago.
“Can we get over what happened the other day in Vienna,” Toni said, her tone hopeful. “Kurt and I could really use you here. They brought Albrecht to Conrad’s castle west of town. The place is a damn fortress, and so far six cars of people have shown up. With this weather, more could be on the way. And Conrad hasn’t even shown up yet. Who knows if he’ll have more folks with him.”
Jake thought it over, glancing at Anna to his left. Toni knew he was working with her, but he had not said why—nor did he need to explain it to her—especially the sexual nature of their relationship. Finally, Jake said, “That’s why we’re coming. I trust Anna with my life.” He added that last part for Anna to hear, and perhaps to give Toni some idea that there was more to the relationship than simply professional courtesy.
Anna smiled and said, “We turn right toward Zell am See just ahead.”
“How can you tell?” The damn snow was so thick and mesmerizing falling down, he couldn’t see more than twenty meters in front of the car.
“I grew up here, remember?”
On the phone, Toni said, “Did she say Zell am See?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason. It’s just a pretty place.”
“Not today. Can’t even see the damn road.” Where in the hell was Toni going with this?
The car turned right onto a northbound road, and Jake finally saw a sign that said the town was a few kilometers ahead.
“Jake, there’s something you need to know,” Toni said, and then her phone crackled.
“Yeah? You still there?”
Nothing.
