Shadow Warrior

by Scott, Trevor

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to, but I think we should split up.”

  “But I thought we were doing all right,” she mocked.

  “You know what I mean.”

  She smiled. “I know. But those two are a bit raw.”

  “I agree. We’ll have to split them up. You take one and I’ll take the other.”

  “I could take Anica,” she said. “We could head back to Innsbruck. She knows the Serbian community.”

  “That could be the problem. Last time she was there, they tried to kill her. She could be burned for undercover work there.”

  “You’re right. So, I guess I’m with Johann. He is kind of cute.”

  “Don’t get any ideas of taking on a young lover.”

  “You too.”

  “Anica? She’s like a niece to me.”

  “But she isn’t.”

  Sirena had a point, but Jake knew she was kidding. There was no way that he could ever think of making love to Anica.

  “Is this going to be a problem?” he asked.

  “No.” She moved in close and kissed him on the lips. “I’m just busting your balls.” She grabbed him there now and squeezed down on his groin, but in a delicate way. “You know the two of them probably think we’re doing it right now. That’s why we need the alone time.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t disappoint them.” He kissed her now and she embraced him tightly.

  19

  After eating and checking out of the Zurich hotel, the four of them met outside at the cars. Johann got behind the wheel of his Audi and Jake met Sirena by the passenger door.

  “Don’t move on the Serb,” Jake said. “Just gather intel. And be careful. This Jack-off fellow is dangerous.”

  “It’s Jakov,” Sirena said, smirking.

  “Jack-off Jakov. Whatever. Just surveil the guy and his organization.”

  “Got it,” Sirena said. Then she hugged Jake and kissed him passionately on the lips. “What about the Italian?”

  “We’ll let the situation dictate our response,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that before.” She opened the door and sat down.

  Jake leaned in and glared at Johann. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johann said.

  “Do what Sirena tells you to do.”

  Johann nodded and then started the engine.

  Jake closed the door and watched the Audi pull away. Then he looked back and saw Anica sitting in the passenger seat of their rental BMW. He got in and looked at her.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “By the way, you two are great together.”

  He turned over the engine. “We’re keeping it casual. Whatever the hell that means.”

  “Where first?”

  “The airport,” Jake said. “We need to trade this car out for another one.”

  “Why?”

  “The men last night, those that chased us, know this car.”

  “Good point.”

  Jake used his Austrian passport to trade out the BMW for a new Alpha Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. He couldn’t help thinking about his first real love, Toni Contardo, who used to own these hot Italian cars. In reality, though, he was impressed by more than 500 horsepower and zero to sixty in less than four seconds. The car topped out at just under 200 mph. Just in case he ran across someone who wanted to try to follow them again.

  “Is this one of those mid-life cars?” Anica asked Jake as he ran through the shift paddles.

  “Maybe. I’ll probably get speeding tickets in the parking lot.”

  The problem with going to find the Italian, Giovanni Caspari, is that he owned two houses—one in Lake Como, Italy and the other in Lucerne, Switzerland. Lucerne was less than an hour south of Zurich, so they went there first.

  “I don’t recommend a flashy red car like this for surveillance,” Jake said, as he slowed the car and exited the autobahn ramp for central Lucerne.

  “I understand,” Anica said. “But it is nice on the autobahn. Caspari’s business office is right down by the lakefront.”

  Lucerne sat on Lake Lucerne, and as far as Jake was concerned, it was one of the most beautiful places on the planet, with high mountains all around.

  “This is stunning,” Anica said.

  “It’s like a smaller Innsbruck.”

  “I could live here.”

  Jake parked in the old town area on the street adjacent to where the river Reuss drained from Lake Lucerne.

  “I need to buy a few things,” she said. “Could we just be tourists for a while.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Clothes. Shirts, underwear.”

  “I saw your underwear this morning,” Jake said. “You could carry a couple of those in your small purse.”

  She slapped him on the arm. “Jake. That’s not nice.”

  “Alright. I guess I could use a few things also.”

  “Maybe a thong?” She smiled at him.

  “In my day, Anica, thongs were worn on your feet to the beach.”

  They got out and walked down the street into the old town, like a father and a daughter, or an older gentleman and his trophy girlfriend. Let them guess, Jake thought.

  After a short shopping excursion, they ate lunch outdoors in a small square with a view of Caspari’s office on the second floor of an old building. This was prime real estate for an office that did not rely on tourists or the heavy foot traffic of this pedestrian zone. As far as Jake could tell, nobody was coming or going from the place. He guessed that Caspari owned the office for the view of the lake and the mountains.

  “Now what?” Anica asked.

  “If Caspari was here, you would see some signs of it. Like security personnel.”

  “The woman working in the office left just long enough to grab some food and bring it back upstairs,” she observed.

  “What else do you see?”

  “Is this a test, Jake?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You mean the security cameras?”

  “What about them?”

  She shrugged. “He has them. What else?”

  “When the woman passed by the cameras, she looked at them and then her watch.”

  “Okay.”

  “That tells me that she suspects her boss is always watching her. Those cameras have motion sensors linked to a smart phone. Any motion sends a notice to the owner that someone is there, which they can view in real time. There’s also two-way sound capability. And all of this loads to the cloud, so you can’t thwart it by going inside and destroying a recording device.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I’ve owned the same model as those for various properties.” He pulled out his phone and opened an app. Then he clicked a button and turned the phone for Anica to see a beautiful ocean view.

  She smiled. “What is this camera protecting?”

  “Nothing. I put in an extra one to view the ocean while away from The Azores.”

  Anica handed the phone back. “I will have to come to visit sometime. I’ve never been there.”

  “Any time.” He put his phone away and said, “But the cameras are why we haven’t gone up to the office. We’ll tip our hand to Caspari. He’ll know we’re coming for him.”

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Wait. I’m normally not an overly patient guy. But I’ve learned over the years to kick back and wait sometimes. It could save a lot of time and effort.”

  “I’m still confused,” she said.

  “Periodically, I work for a man who runs the largest communications company in Europe,” Jake said. “He has access to certain things that most law enforcement agencies don’t even have, including cloud-based storage.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  Jake smiled and waved his hand. “Not entirely. But sometimes it takes special measures to catch the bad guys.”

  “But where do we draw the line, Jake?”

  �
��Good versus evil. They’re transporting drugs into Europe, which brings with it much more crime. Plus, the human trafficking problems. We don’t know who they’re bringing in.”

  “They are people trying to escape bad situations,” she said.

  “I know. Most of them are probably just that. But I’m worried about the one or two or ten who are here to do harm. We’ve seen this across Europe. Aren’t you working at Europol for that exact reason?”

  “Yes, of course. I just feel sorry for those trying to escape war and horrible situations. I was one of those people.”

  “You were a child, Anica. You had lost your parents. You were completely dependent on the kindness of strangers.”

  “Like you.”

  “I didn’t do much,” Jake admitted.

  “You saved my life. I owe you everything.”

  “I saw a problem that I could fix and I did what I could.”

  “You have been helping me all along,” she said, a tear forming in her right eye, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. “I know you helped me become a Polizei officer.”

  “You did that on your own, Anica.” He touched her hand delicately.

  “You taught me how to save and invest for the future.”

  “Alright, I did that. But that was just logical guidance.”

  Jake’s phone suddenly buzzed, so he checked to see who had texted him. It was from his friends at the communications company with the information he needed.

  “Is that important?” she asked.

  “I think so.” He opened his app and logged in with this new information. Once he did this, he could see everything. He saw multiple locations, with many cameras at each place. Jake could now look at real time images, along with historical motion events. Finding the Lucerne office, Jake swiped the motion sensors off on four cameras. Then he turned the phone to Anica.

  She glanced across the square at the office. “Do you have access to his cameras?”

  “Let’s just say the cloud is not as secure as most would like to believe. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “I shut off the cameras to Caspari’s office. Now we can go in and ask a few questions.”

  Jake smiled at the cameras he had turned off as he passed them, and went into the second level office. It was very small and tidy, like most German, Austrian or Swiss offices. There were no loose papers anywhere, other than a few on the small desk used by the only person in the office—a woman in her mid-thirties.

  “Buona sera come stai? Sto cercando un buon amico Giovanni.”

  The young woman looked confused. “My Italian is not very good,” she said in German.

  Jake switched to that language and asked again to see his good friend Giovanni.

  The Swiss woman seemed hesitant. Finally, she said, “I’m afraid he is not in today. He should be back on Monday.”

  Jake feigned disappointment and said, “Too bad. We were to meet here today. I thought we had an appointment. Is he at his home in Lake Como?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Or, she wouldn’t say. That’s what Jake guessed she would say. He thanked her for her time and left with Anica at his side. Once they got away from the office building, along the river, Jake sat on a park bench and pulled out his phone. First, he turned the security cameras back on. Then, he called his contact as the Spanish communications company.

  “What’s going on?” Anica asked. “I thought you would press that woman a little harder for information.”

  “That wasn’t my intention,” he said, while he waited on the line for his information.

  “You are. What’s the English word for it? An enigma?”

  Jake raised a finger as he listened to his contact. Then he thanked the person and cut the call. “Got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “As soon as we left the office, as suspected, the young lady made a call to her boss, Giovanni Caspari. She called his cell phone and spoke for only three minutes. But it was long enough for our friends to track his cell phone to his location.”

  Anica was speechless.

  Jake got up. “Are you ready for a little drive?”

  “To where? Lake Como?”

  “Nope. Interlaken.”

  She got up and whispered loudly to Jake. “That’s not legal.”

  He shrugged. “Neither is what Caspari is doing. Sometimes you have to stretch the rules a little to catch the bad guys.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said.

  Turning to Anica, Jake said, “Not officially. And you didn’t do anything. I did. Now, let’s go have a talk with this Italian.”

  20

  Innsbruck, Austria

  It took Sirena and Johann a little more than four hours to travel from Zurich to Innsbruck, where they went to his apartment in the northside of the city. Johann lived in a three-hundred-year-old three-story house with a beautiful view of the Alps to the south, including the Olympic ski jump. Johann’s apartment on the top level had a small balcony, where Sirena stood now gazing at the city below.

  She wondered where Jake was now. Since they got together months ago, they had not been apart for long. Their relationship had reached a nice level, she thought. Yet, she wasn’t sure where they were going, if anywhere. And that didn’t seem to matter to either of them.

  Johann came out carrying two bottles of a local pilsner.

  She accepted a bottle and they toasted before taking a refreshing drink.

  “What’s the plan?” Johann asked.

  “I just got a text from Jake saying they found out Caspari was in Interlaken. They’re on their way there now.”

  “Nice place,” Johann said.

  “Never been there.”

  “The shops are ridiculous. Rolex and Cartier. But the city is situated beautifully in the shadow of the Jungfrau, Eiger and Mönch.”

  “Innsbruck isn’t so bad, either,” she said, pointing her beer out to the Alps.

  “I agree. I don’t think I could live anywhere else.”

  “What do you think of Anica?”

  He got a bit nervous with this question. “She is a great Polizei officer.”

  “Not bad to look at either.”

  Johann raised his brows as he delayed with a sip of beer. “She is very pretty,” he finally said.

  “How long have you been in love with her?”

  “What?”

  She smiled. “It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Is it?”

  “Have you dated?”

  He shook his head. “People don’t really date anymore. They hang out and hook up.”

  “And you and Anica?”

  Johann shrugged. “We hang out once in a while. But not to the hooking up part.”

  “But you’d like to.”

  “You’ve seen her body. She keeps herself in amazing shape.”

  “But you seem to want more than just a hook up with her.”

  “She’s not like other women in Innsbruck. She doesn’t just hook up with men. She doesn’t seem to have time.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. She’s either working out or studying. She speaks five or six languages. Anica is very dedicated to her work.”

  Sirena drank her beer and wondered if Johann could have been talking about her in her younger years, where she was too busy to establish or maintain a relationship. “Eventually we all get to a point in life where we need something more, Johann.”

  “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But we’re still young.”

  “Hey.”

  He turned bright red. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Shut up and get me another beer.”

  Johann gladly went off to the kitchen area off of the main living room.

  Sirena followed him in and took a seat in a chair with a nice view of the mountains.

  He came back with two more beers, setting both on the coffee table next to a large ma
p of the city and surrounding area. Johann sat down and pointed to an area on the map. “This is where Jakov Koprivica lives in Axams. It’s not far from here.”

  “Isn’t Axamer Lizum the ski resort that hosted the Olympics?”

  “Yes. Most of the races were there in both sixty-four and seventy-six.”

  “What have you told Sabine Bauer about Jakov Koprivica.”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You do report to her,” Sirena said.

  “She is the Tirol Polizei boss,” Johann said.

  “That’s not what I asked.” She stared at him critically.

  “What are you implying?”

  “Well, we found a possible head of a large criminal organization in Tirol, and I would expect you to inform your people of this fact.”

  “One would think so, yes.”

  “But?”

  Johann simply stared at her now.

  She finished it for him. “But you don’t trust your own Polizei.”

  “For the most part I do,” he said, taking a drink of beer but keeping his eyes penetrating her.

  “You think Jakov Koprivica has eyes in your office?”

  Johann shrugged. “Maybe. I just don’t know.”

  Perhaps that was why Sabine Bauer had come to Jake for help in the first place, she thought. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling. Only a few people on our end knew about the meeting between Anica and her Serbian contact. Of course, we know what happened there.”

  “Not to mention the drive-by shooting that could have killed us,” she provided.

  “Exactly.”

  She lifted her beer toward him and said, “Prosit.”

  They ticked their bottles together and then drank.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “I think we can trust Sabine,” she said. “But we don’t know if her communications have been compromised. So, better to keep her in the dark about Jakov Koprivica until we have something solid to give her.”

  “I agree.”

  “We’ll need to do some discreet surveillance of the man and his operation,” Sirena said. “I’m waiting to get a more detailed intelligence file on the man from another source. In the meantime, we can pull up some data on his current properties in Tirol.”