Without Options

by Trevor Scott

  This was all speculation on the part of his Austrian friend. “Don’t forget the Irish Republican Army,” Jake reminded him.

  “Or any number of private citizens you’ve angered with your more recent investigations.”

  “All right. I get it. It was only a matter of time.” In the past two months Jake had run every one of those he had worked with in the past couple decades through his mind, trying like hell to find out who had wanted to kill him. Most of his work as a private security consultant had gone under the radar, he was sure. But his work in a number of CIA operations in Europe were a concern. The Agency would be sure to look into that angle on their own. A part of him wished he had died that night with Anna. But a part deep inside him wanted to live, needed to find out who killed Anna. If he couldn’t protect her, he had to do that much for her. A reason to live.

  Silence as they drove closer to Jake’s old apartment building.

  “How was Anna’s funeral?” Jake asked his old friend.

  “Very nice.” He let out a cloud of smoke and continued, “I had Stefan Beck video the whole event. We wanted to study it to see if we could find someone who shouldn’t be there.”

  “I should’ve been there,” Jake said emphatically.

  “You were on your third surgery at the time. I made a copy of the video. Under the seat.”

  Jake found a thick folder there, which he opened and looked inside. There were stacks of papers, a DVD, and a number of photos.

  “All of those items are also scanned on the DVD,” Franz said, “but I thought you’d want to see them in hard copy first. Check to see if you recognize anyone out of the ordinary.”

  He looked at the photos first. Jake had finally convinced Anna to take vacation. He would teach her to fly fish, his only true passion. The photos were from the shooting scene at the cabin he and Anna had rented along the river fifty kilometers from Innsbruck. None showed Anna’s bullet-ridden body. Franz had been smart enough to remove those. But there were shots from nearly every angle, including those from where the men had shot outside. Franz had included a couple close up shots of the two men Jake had killed. He didn’t recognize either man. Briefly he flipped through the papers. There were polizei briefs on the dead men, autopsy reports from all those who died, including Anna, and an Interpol summary of the investigation, which seemed to be at a standstill. Jake read Anna’s autopsy report first. Jesus. He’d forgotten she had taken two bullets to the chest, one to the stomach, and a fourth to her right arm. A fifth had taken out her femoral artery. She would’ve died from those wounds if she’d been shot ten feet from a surgery suite.

  When he finally looked up, he saw that Franz had pulled over to the side of the road in front of Jake’s old apartment building. Jake still owned the apartment, but he’d been renting it out for a while.

  “What we doing here?” Jake asked, as he shoved everything back into the envelope.

  “You need a place to stay.”

  “What about my tenant?”

  Franz lit another cigarette, his eyes drifting across the road to the river. “He moved. Once he found out you were almost killed, he decided to find another place.”

  “Probably a smart idea. I’ve gotta get my stuff in Vienna, though.”

  The old polizei officer turned, his gaze solemn. “It’s already up there. Anna’s parents took her things back to Kitzbuhel and I had your items brought here. You didn’t have much, though.”

  “What about my Golf? We took Anna’s car to the mountains and left mine outside our apartment in Vienna.”

  Franz coughed and put out the last of his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “It’s gone.”

  “Someone stole it? Great.”

  “No,” Franz said, “it was blown all to hell. Along with a bomber. Not a very good one, I guess. We think he was setting the Semtex when it went off.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Jake thought about that, trying to make sense of it. “I was supposed to leave the hospital two days ago, but one of the doctors was out of town until today and wanted to see me one more time before my release.”

  “I know. Someone else didn’t, though. They expected you to go back to Vienna and fire up the car. Boom.” He hesitated and then looked sternly into Jake’s eyes. “Someone still wants you dead, my friend.”

  Great. But he didn’t plan on going gently into the night. At least not until he found out who’d hired the men to kill him and had actually killed Anna by mistake.

  “Why not just finish me off in the hospital?”

  Franz hunched his shoulders. “We had the place covered twenty-four seven,” he said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come by to see you. As you might know, my doctor is in Vienna. When I wasn’t losing my hair, I was trying to find who killed Anna. I had to stay on the job for that.”

  “I understand, Franz.” Jake put his hand on his old friend’s arm. The man’s muscles seemed to be almost gone along with his hair. He tightened his jaw and took back his hand.

  “I have to go back to Vienna for two weeks,” Franz said. “I’ll dig deeper. You take care, my friend.”

  “This is the first place they’ll look,” Jake said, his head nodding toward the apartment building.

  Franz reached over and opened the glove box, producing a .40 caliber Glock 22 automatic and handing it to Jake.

  Without thinking, Jake cleared the gun, checking the standard 15-round magazine, before shoving it back into the handle and cycling a round into the chamber.

  “Jacketed hollow points. Your personal gun?” Jake asked him.

  “One of them.” Franz smiled. “The trigger is set to two kilos. Just the way you like it.”

  “Got any extra mags?”

  Franz opened a center console, found two full magazines, and handed them to Jake. “I’m your new client, Jake. I hope you’ll take the gun as initial payment to find Anna’s killer.”

  He didn’t have to do that, and Jake knew it. “You know I’d do this without a client.”

  “I know. And I understand after your little adventure in Bulgaria you don’t need the money.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake said, a smile barely crossing his lips. “But what about Austrian justice?”

  Franz laughed so hard he started to cough. When he was back under control, he said, “We have no death penalty in Austria. I think you know this.”

  “Your prisons are nicer than American military barracks.”

  “So you understand,” Franz reiterated.

  Yeah, he understood. His good friend, a man who had dedicated his entire adult life to the Austrian Polizei, wanted more justice than his system could provide. And now he was asking Jake to hang out and wait for unknown men to come and try to kill him, so he could kill the bad guys first. Self defense. Jake could live with that. Hopefully.

  3

  Berlin, Germany

  Gustav Vogler pulled his Polizei Mercedes to the curb alongside the northern edge of the Tiergarten, the city’s largest park, where the Spree River snaked gently through plush forest on one side and an upscale residential area on the other. Gustav had been the lead Polizei homicide investigator for the city and state of Berlin for the past two years. Prior to that he’d held the same position for the state of Bavaria, with Munich his primary concern.

  In the passenger seat was Gustav’s assistant, Andreas Grosskreuz, who’d followed the inspector from Munich. The two of them had worked together for the past ten years, and could almost finish each other’s sentences. But where Andreas was still relatively young in his early thirties—a handsome man with dark hair and eyes, who still attracted the attention of pretty college-age women—Gustav was twenty years his senior with deep crow’s feet, consternation wrinkles across his forehead, and gray hair sprinkled generously across his close-cropped military haircut. Still, Gustav knew he could stick with his younger counterpart physically and mentally, with the exception of a foot race. Andreas wa
s like a damn rabbit to Gustav’s turtle.

  Gustav shoved another stick of nicotine gum into his mouth and chewed vigorously. His doctor told him a week ago to quit smoking or he’d die just like his father at age sixty. So he was weaning himself off the smokes with the gum and the patch.

  “How do you like the gum?” Andreas asked his boss.

  The gruff inspector looked down his nose as he chomped every gram of flavor from the gum. “It’s like chewing cigarette butts. I prefer my filterless cigarettes. But what can I do? The doctor reports me to my superiors and they suspend me and send me through that quit smoking program. I hear they use electrical probes—shock therapy.”

  Andreas laughed. “I don’t think so. But that gum will kill you slower. Eventually you’ll have to quit that as well.”

  He had a point. But his job was killing him fast enough. A half hour ago, while the two of them ate lunch, they’d gotten a call saying an American tourist from New York had spotted another body in the Spree. Gustav thought about the past few years in Berlin. Murders were up. Not to the level of American cities, but a concern nonetheless. He didn’t know how long before his boss would ship him off to Leipzig or Dortmund. Maybe someplace sedate to let him fade until retirement. Tightening his strong jaw against the gum, he shook his head with that thought. Not before he caught the bastard who was making him look bad in Berlin, he thought.

  “This is the fifth body in two months,” Gustav said, his eyes cast upon the scene outside, where yellow crime tape had already cordoned off the park, including the bridge from the north side. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.”

  The two of them got out, Gustav spitting his old used-up gum into the grass and replacing it with a new piece as they walked toward the scene.

  They got to the edge of the bridge and Gustav gazed down, watching a crew hoist a man’s body into a basket and then start up the embankment.

  “Just like the others?” Andreas asked his boss.

  “We’ll see.” Gustav chomped on his fresh gum, gaining no great pleasure from the act. He looked up river toward the Mitte of the city. With the current, the body could’ve come from almost anywhere upstream. But he knew from the natural flow that many things had gotten caught up along this edge of the Tiergarten. The bridges here along the park acted like a sieve, catching anything and everything that floated. During World War II he’d heard that city officials had a crew of body collectors who ran up and down the river picking up the dead. The Tiergarten had been a particularly fruitful patch of real estate.

  The emergency medical crew set the body in the basket onto the grass next to the inspector and his assistant. Gustav stooped down for a closer look. He looked up at one of the medical technicians and said, “What about the back of his head?”

  “Not pretty, Herr Inspector. A hole the size of your fist.”

  “So, the bullet entered through the eye and out the back,” Gustav said. “Just like the others. Any identification?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How long in the water? Rough estimate.”

  The medical technician studied the body. “It’s been cold. Perhaps two days.”

  That’s about what Gustav guessed. He saw all he needed for now. His crime scene investigators would comb over the area and find nothing, he knew, since the body wasn’t killed here. They’d also probably find nothing of importance on the body. Nothing out of the ordinary at least. “Have the medical examiner call me when he’s done with his exam,” he said to the technician.

  They hauled the body away and Gustav drifted over to a grassy area, his critical eyes glancing about the edge of the park at those watching the action. Only a small gaggle of perhaps twenty people.

  “Get someone to photograph the folks hanging around,” Gustav ordered.

  “Already on it, sir.”

  Although it hadn’t worked with this case, they had caught people in the past showing up to observe their work. Yet, Gustav had a feeling this killer was special. Gifted in the art of killing.

  Walking back toward their car, Andreas was right at Gustav’s side. “What do you think, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Gustav said, and he meant it.

  “You think we have a serial killer?” his assistant asked eagerly.

  “Maybe. It makes sense. This makes five. And all of the bodies have been dumped in the Spree.”

  “What do the Americans say?” Andreas asked, holding back a smile, “A killing spree?”

  Gustav glanced sideways at his assistant. “How long have you waited to say that?”

  “Since the third body.”

  “Quite the restraint on your part.”

  “I try, sir.”

  “Try harder. Now, what else do we know?”

  Andreas Grosskreuz hunched his shoulders. “Shot from the front. Looking directly at the killer. So, he either knew the killer or the killer had somehow gained the man’s trust long enough to shoot him in the face. We’ll probably find powder on his face like the others, which means close range.”

  “Good. And?”

  “Silencer perhaps?”

  “Are you asking me, Andreas?”

  “Well, sir, we have no reports of shootings in the city.”

  “How far could the body travel in two days?”

  “Depends on a lot of factors. The body might sink initially, get caught on the bottom, then it bloats and rises again. Could be a couple of kilometers or more. Of course it could have been caught on the bridge for a day without notice.”

  His assistant was good, which is why Gustav had brought him along with him from Munich. He not only trusted Andreas with his life, he knew the younger man would someday have his job. And that was just fine with Gustav. The way he felt now, that day couldn’t come soon enough. But not until they got this killer.

  “That would place the kill site somewhere in the southeast side of the city,” Gustav postulated. “What’s over there?”

  “Mostly industrial.”

  Gustav considered that carefully. “I’ll bet the man was shot at night. That area of Berlin is dead at night. Very little traffic.”

  “Of course the killer could’ve simply dumped the body there after shooting the man somewhere outside of the city. Somewhere out in the country.”

  Finally, Gustav caught his young colleague. “Ah, good point. However, why go through all the trouble? If you shoot a man in the forest, why not simply leave the body there? Let the ravens pick over it.”

  Andreas scratched his head. “I’m an idiot, sir. That’s why you bring in the gross Euros.” His young assistant thought hard now. “Definitely a silenced gun, sir. And killed near the river and dumped immediately. No doubt about it. A professional.”

  His young colleague seemed almost disappointed they didn’t have a sick serial killer to investigate. Gustav guessed he had watched too many American crime dramas.

  Gustav smiled and started walking toward the car, his associate falling in to his side. Whatever the case, he’d get to the bottom of this. But he had to admit to himself that he didn’t have a hell of a lot to go on. No identification. Not even a bullet fragment found. No motive. No real crime scene. Only bodies. Someone was killing people in his city and he didn’t like it one bit.

  ●

  Across the wide expanse of the Tiergarten, ostensibly taking photographs of the park with a telephoto lens, the man with the watch cap covering a near-bald head focused his attention on the commotion toward the Spree River. He clicked a few digital shots, and then looked at the back LCD screen to verify his work. His main subject, of course, was the two Polizei officers investigating the death of the men around Berlin. When he got the shots he desired, he moved the camera in another direction and pretended to shoot pictures of other people, those standing around watching the action. He wasn’t stupid enough to be caught by the Polizei cameras. Did they really think they could catch him that way?

  He had monitored the Polizei channels and heard of the discovery of another body floating in
the river; he knew it had to be his work. And he just had to see the reaction of this new find of theirs. Based on the radio traffic alone, he was driving the local Polizei crazy with these deaths. He only wished he could be a tiny hummingbird fluttering over the man in charge of the investigation to hear just how frustrated he’d become.

  An inadvertent smile crossed his face. He had to get closer. Get a better look at his work. No. That was crazy. They could catch him in one of their photos. And it wasn’t important. These deaths were insignificant. Covering tracks, he knew. Nothing more. But he had to make it look like it was much worse than it was, so it would keep the Polizei busy. Two birds, one stone.

  His eyes shifted back toward the water’s edge as a medical crew hoisted the bloated corpse from the Spree and set it onto the grass at the foot of the Polizei investigator. He knew everything there was to know about this chief homicide officer—from his Catholic upbringing in northern Germany, to his rise through the ranks to run a successful office in Munich, and to his proclivity for young prostitutes. Know thy enemy, he mused, and you shall know thyself. Was that from Vogler’s bible? Who knows. He even knew the great inspector was trying to quit his cigarettes, having purchased boxes of nicotine gum and enough patches for his entire Berlin Polizei force.

  Satisfied he had what he needed, confirmation of his work, he wandered back to his Audi A3, far from the view of any cameras, and got behind the wheel. Sitting there for a moment, he contemplated his next move. First, he needed to keep the pressure on that American pig. Now that he was out of the hospital, he could finish what he started. He should’ve killed him in the hospital, but that would have been poor form. A man shouldn’t die as he lay in bed half dead. What kind of pleasure could be found in that? No, he was nothing if not patient.

  He turned over the engine, glanced one more time across the park at the crime scene, and slowly pulled out toward the east side of Berlin.

  4

  Jake had been out of the hospital for two weeks now, living in his old second-floor apartment across from the Inn River with a view of the Alps to the south. He had rented the place to a man who had become somewhat of a local Innsbruck celebrity—a model whose remarkably handsome face was plastered all over Tirol on everything from billboards, which were rare in Austria, to the sides of buses—hawking products and becoming the face of the area ski scene. Every woman wanted him, but he played for the other team. With a quick phone call Jake had found out his old Polizei buddy, Franz Martini, had laid it out for the man quite clearly. He would have to move out of the apartment or something bad might happen to that pretty face of his. It wasn’t a threat, Jake had later explained to the man, simply a fact of life or death. Jake didn’t want the guy caught in any crossfire. He’d been a great tenant for over two years, and, as Jake told him, it was time for the man to buy his own place. Regardless, the tenant had made a positive impact on Jake’s old place, stereotypically transforming bland white walls to various shades of aqua marine, yellows and reds. He would come back for the dozens of plants, so Jake would have to try to keep them alive while he did the same for himself.