Without Options

by Trevor Scott

  5

  They drove through Austria to the west until they reached St. Anton, a ski resort town that Jake and Anna had frequented often during their two years together. St. Anton sat within a short drive of Germany to the north, Liechtenstein to the west, and Switzerland and Italy to the south. By car Jake could be in any of those other countries within a half hour. A little longer by bike.

  Jake had Franz pull over on the outskirts of town, and while Jake put his bike back together, the two of them stood at the back of the Mercedes. They hadn’t talked much in the hour it had taken to drive from Innsbruck.

  “Did you get a good look at the guy who got away?” Jake asked him.

  “No. He was back in the shadows at the far side of your door. One man went into your apartment. The one you shot. The other went down the hall to the back exit of your building. I think I might have hit him. Are you sure you want to do this, Jake? I can be of help to you. I’ve proved that.”

  “I think we both got lucky back there. I was a step behind my normal with this damn knee. You need to get back there and explain what happened.”

  “I should stay with you, Jake.”

  “I shot a man. He’s laying dead in my apartment. You’re part of the Polizei. They know you. You can tell them what happened.”

  Franz smiled. “I could.”

  “Hey, don’t pull that crap. You will.” Jake sat onto the curb and pulled off his cross-hiker shoes. He quickly shoved on his bike shoes and strapped them on with Velcro.

  “What about your security system? Are your videos stored?”

  “Yes, but off-site. I have them load to an internet server in Luxembourg. They hold twenty-four hours and self delete unless I save them. Which I will do right now. There’s a cybercafe a few blocks from here. I’ll take care of that and send you the digital files. You still have your Polizei e-mail?”

  “Of course. But you should also send it to Beck in Vienna, Schmidt in Steyr and to Hermann Jung in Innsbruck. Hermann is the new Kriminal Hauptkommisar in Tirol.”

  Jake slung on his backpack and got onto his bike, checking for proper alignment of the front tire. Checked the brakes. Everything looked good.

  “Will do. Why don’t you go back to my place and explain the situation.”

  Franz nodded. “What will you do? Where will you go?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.” In fact, Jake didn’t know. Not yet. He clamped his left foot into the pedal and reached out his right hand to Franz. “Thank you for all your help. Not just today.”

  Reluctantly, Franz took his hand and squeezed down with as much strength as he could muster. “You think we won’t see each other again? We’ll be drinking beer in no time. Laughing about this whole thing.”

  The words came out but Jake could tell the man didn’t believe them himself. He was a broken man without a future.

  “Sure.”

  The handshake turned into a hug.

  “Now get going,” Franz said. “Before we start crying like little girls.”

  Jake laughed and peddled off. “I wasn’t worried about me,” he said over his shoulder. As he turned back to look at the road ahead, he thought perhaps that would be the last time he saw his old friend, an image of a dying man, beaten by a disease and not some bullet from a bad guy. Jake couldn’t help wondering if a part of Franz wished he had taken a bullet back at Jake’s apartment. At least that’s how a true warrior should go. Not by cellular deformation and organ failure. Nobody but the most vile—pedophiles, rapists and murderers—should die the slow death of cancer. Not honorable men.

  The cybercafe was where Jake remembered. He paid cash to use a computer while he drank a cup of coffee. First he saved a copy of his security file, then he cut the mpeg video from one hour before the shooting, which showed Franz arriving, until all the cops showed up at his place. It was pretty dramatic footage. He considered uploading it to the net and letting others view it. Instead he sent copies to each man Franz had recommended. It wouldn’t take the Polizei long to run down the location from where he had sent the e-mails. He needed to hurry. When he was done, he got up and went out to his bike.

  It was early afternoon now and Jake had no idea where to go from here. He’d brought only essential items with him, including the two guns and extra magazines. Besides his small laptop computer, he had his cell phone, which he had cleared of any GPS tracking, and the DVD that Franz had given him two weeks ago. He had run the hardcopies through the shredder and thrown the scraps out over a week ago. Other than that, he had toiletries, extra underwear, and a couple changes of clothes. He’d buy more on the road as he needed them.

  Time to move. Time to get some untraceable cash. He only had a couple hundred Euros on him. Since they’d track his e-mail to St. Anton anyway, he decided to grab some cash from an ATM.

  Then, without much thought at all, he got on his bike and started riding. North.

  ●

  Franz Martini had driven back to Innsbruck and parked on the street a couple blocks from Jake’s apartment. His former Polizei colleagues had cordoned off the street with yellow tape and barricaded the street on both sides. He guessed the alley would have the same treatment, so he’d have to walk in from there.

  He still had his badge and ID, which seemed to impress the young officers who manned the tape and allowed him in. Innsbruck didn’t get many shootings, and none of them were random in nature. Even Austria had few shootings. Not like American cities. In fact, Franz had investigated a shooting almost two years ago, where Jake Adams had been shot by two kidnappers. Jake had recovered the fourteen-year-old daughter of a businessman, shot one of the kidnappers and the other was still doing a life term in prison. For Jake’s effort he had gotten his first stay in the Innsbruck hospital with two bullet wounds. At least his wounds had been only minor compared to this last shooting. He thought about the shooting two months ago that had killed Anna at that mountain cabin. But Anna was not just any young woman. Franz had been a family friend since she was born. He had gotten her into the Polizei, which led to her work with Interpol. From there she had met Jake Adams. A chain of events that he couldn’t take back. Part of him knew that her death was his fault. The other part knew it had to be fate.

  He stepped up to the main entrance of Jake’s apartment and flashed his badge again. This officer knew Franz, though. He’d worked for him, although many levels down, when Franz was the Kriminal Hauptkommisar for Tirol.

  Just inside, they had marked each of the shell casings from Franz’s gun. He’d have to explain the situation soon. Upstairs the forensics team still dusted and bagged items. The dead man was covered with a clear plastic sheet.

  Franz saw Hermann Jung across the living room, standing over a young woman who was trying to get into Jake’s computer system, with apparently no luck. He smiled at that. They’d never find anything on Jake’s computer, even if they could get into it.

  When Hermann saw Franz he hesitated and then turned to shake hands, reticently.

  “What are you doing in Innsbruck?” the new Tirol Kriminal Hauptkommisar asked. Hermann Jung was a short stocky man who displayed his muscles as much as his guns, the straps from the holster stretched across his massive chest looking as if they would explode at any minute and take out an eye.

  “Medical leave,” Franz said, even though he was sure Hermann Jung knew this. “As you probably know, I still have a house in Tirol.”

  Hermann nodded his thick chin. “I’m sorry to hear about. . .your illness. How are you doing?”

  How did he answer that question today? He usually said fine or that he was still fighting the bastard. But now he wasn’t sure. He felt like crap nearly every second of the day. Even his cigarettes and drinks brought him little pleasure. “I’m dying Hermann. No other way to say it. I’ve got perhaps a month if I’m lucky. Maybe less if I’m even more lucky.”

  Hermann’s jaw tightened and he changed the subject. “I understand you know the owner of this apartment.” He glanced at his litt
le notebook. “An American named Jake Adams.”

  He already knew the answer to that. Had probably read up on Jake, seeing their link over the years. “Yes, and this is not what you might think,” Franz said, spreading his hands out across the room.

  “This Jake Adams was recently involved with a triple murder near Kitzbuhel. Trouble seems to follow the man around.” Now Hermann Jung pulled out a two-page read-out from his back pocket and started reading off all of the incidents that had occurred to Jake over the past few years. What Hermann didn’t know was the full extent of Jake’s career with the CIA. Or with his work as a private security consultant. Franz didn’t even know a fraction of Jake’s background.

  “What’s your point?” Franz asked deprecatingly.

  Hermann shook his head. “My point is, this man, Jake Adams, seems to step in dog crap with each footfall.”

  “I told you, this is not as it seems. You should have found dozens of spent rounds out in that hallway.” Franz swung his left arm toward the door. “There are bullet holes all over the walls. What does this tell you?”

  Laughing, Hermann said, “Someone doesn’t like your friend very much. An attempted hit?”

  The young woman at the computer tried not to look back over her shoulder, but her head twisted to the side with that last revelation.

  “Give the man a cigar,” Franz chided. “I was here. Those are my casings on the lower level. Have you identified the dead man yet? I’m sure you will find he has a criminal background.”

  Hermann Jung considered that. “He had no identification.”

  “And who do you know that walks around with no identification?” Franz paused and pulled the Polizei man toward the dead man and away from the others in the room. Then he said softly, “I’ve heard there is a one million Euro bounty on the head of Jake Adams. That’s going to pull all the scum of Europe into Innsbruck.”

  Cringing with that thought, Hermann said, “What do we do?”

  Franz smiled. “I’m on medical leave.”

  “Come on. You must have some great wisdom in this matter.”

  Letting his replacement sweat, Franz finally said, “All right. I got Jake Adams out of town and told him not to return until things settle down.”

  “You did? But I need to question the man. He shot and killed a man in his own living room.”

  “It was self defense. I attest to that. Also, if you’ll check your e-mail, you’ll find a video from Jake’s security system that will show you the attempt on his life.” Franz turned and started to leave, but hesitated and twisted back toward Hermann Jung. “And that wasn’t a triple homicide near Kitzbuhel two months ago. Three men tried to kill Jake. Instead, they killed his girlfriend, who was an officer with Interpol. Jake killed two men and a third got away.”

  Hermann didn’t seem to appreciate being corrected, especially in front of his people. He simply tightened his jaw and flexed his muscles.

  Franz shook his head and left Hermann Jung there to get things wrong. When he left Innsbruck a few years ago to take over the Vienna office, he thought he had left the city in good hands. Now he was questioning himself on that note.

  ●

  Once the old dying former kriminal hauptkommisar of Tirol left the apartment, Hermann Jung crouched down close to the younger woman still working on Jake Adams’s computer. Hermann had elevated Sabine Bauer a couple of levels since taking over criminal investigations in Tirol. He told everyone she was a computer expert, which she was, but there were others with equal expertise. However, he wasn’t secretly sleeping with them.

  “Did you hear any of that?” Hermann asked. He wanted to touch her shoulder or run his hands through her short silky hair. Wanted even more to run his hands over her large breasts or take her from behind as she looked over the crime scene. Nothing turned that woman on more than the sight of death.

  “Yes, sir,” she said softly, her fingers still typing away at the computer. “What will you do?”

  “Put out a bulletin on Jake Adams. He’s a material witness to a murder.”

  “Self defense,” she reminded him, her eyes shifted to the side catching Hermann’s smile.

  “According to a dying man. Certainly not unbiased. Franz Martini is treating the man like a son. Either that or he has a man crush.”

  Sabine laughed internally, her chest rising. “If you name Jake Adams a suspect in the murder we might find him sooner.”

  Hermann moved in closer to Sabine, as if he was interested in something on the computer screen. He was close enough now to smell her perfume—the scent he had bought for her and insisted she wear at all times. “I like the way you think. Now, think about what we’re going to do to each other tonight at your place.”

  “What about your wife?” Sabine asked.

  He reached to the keyboard and intentionally touched her hand, but tried to make it look like he was showing her something on the screen. “With a fresh shooting, she’ll know not to expect me.”

  “Too bad there wasn’t more crime in Tirol,” she said.

  That’s what he was thinking. But with Jake Adams running around with a price on his head anything was possible.

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Sitting in his apartment gazing at multiple LCD computer screens, the sound of server fans humming in the background, Sergei Lobanov Kozerski, sucked on a straw infusing his body with Coke. The liquid kind. He didn’t take drugs. Rarely drank more than a shot or two of vodka a day. He needed his brain functioning at its peak to run all of his computer enterprises, and none were as important as his current job, he knew.

  When an alarm went off on one screen, he swiveled in his chair and opened the file that had given him the alarm. He smiled. “I’ve got you now, you American bastard,” he said in Russian aloud. The man had used his ATM card in St. Anton, Austria. But why? Crap. He didn’t get paid to ask why. It was just his job to track the man the best he could. So what if this Jake Adams guy had taken out money in a resort town. Why? He obviously needed cash.

  He picked up his cell phone from the desk and sent a text message to his contact. Then he flipped the phone shut and waited patiently for the call. He had waited only two minutes before his phone burst out with a tune from Mozart’s Requiem. Part of him was afraid to answer. The man was a beast. But at least he had good news for him.

  “Yes,” Sergei answered.

  “What do you have?” his contact asked.

  Sergei told him about the ATM use by Adams in Austria, not providing any more information than necessary. He had tried that before and nearly got his head ripped off through the phone.

  “Good work. Now, it’s getting late. He must be staying at a hotel in the area. See if Adams uses his Visa.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “Compile a list of gasthauses in the area. Use your fake Polizei credentials to ask about Adams. The American is smart. He’ll probably be staying somewhere outside town. Someplace isolated. Check on those first and then move back toward St. Anton.”

  His contact hung up and Sergei did the same, a smile on his face as he sucked down some more cola.

  Berlin, Germany

  The Russian, Anton Zukov, shoved his cell phone back into his pocket. That man in Frankfurt was worth every Euro he paid him. Sure he would have to be suppressed at some point, but hopefully not for a long time. He needed the man too much. And every bit of intel he had given him had turned out to be helpful.

  When the text message had come to him, he’d been sitting down for a beer with his boss before dinner. He’d gotten up and gone back to the bathroom to talk and now made his way back into the main dining area, sitting down across from his boss, Viktor Pushkin, a man in his mid-forties impeccably dressed in a fine Italian suit.

  “A problem, Zuk?” Viktor asked him. He stroked his thick fingers along his strong jaw-line that was accented by a one-centimeter, exactly one centimeter, black beard that ran from his close-cropped black hairline above his ears to his chin, up each side of hi
s mouth and over his thin lips, and then a tiny strip of hair shot straight down from his bottom lip to join at the end of his square chin.

  Zukov glanced about the room at all of their men stationed at various locations—some at tables, one at the bar, and others outside in the cars, which he couldn’t actually see but knew were still there. His boss went nowhere without his security detail. Although he looked like any other successful businessman in Berlin, Viktor Pushkin carried himself with more confidence than anyone he’d ever known. And why not? It was easy to be confident when backed with so many guns. Like the bully on the playground, he only picked on the weak when backed by friends too scared to stand up to him. But this Jake Adams didn’t seem to be intimidated by anyone or anything.

  Zukov repositioned his watch cap on his head, his only nervous habit. “Just the opposite.” He explained what their man in Frankfurt had just told him.

  “Have you redirected assets yet?”

  A test? Maybe. “No, sir. I’m waiting for your order.”

  Viktor Pushkin smiled with approval, a rare occasion when he actually showed his imperfect protruding canines. “Go ahead. Make the call.”

  He eagerly did just that. Figuring the time it would take from Innsbruck, he guessed they would be there within the hour. When he was done, he triumphantly slapped his phone shut.

  “Is Sergei going to keep looking?”

  “Yes, sir. I told him to check on outlying gasthauses in case Adams used the cash from the ATMs for that purpose.”

  “Good idea. Still no word on a vehicle?”

  Zukov shook his head. “Hasn’t bought a new one as far as we know.”

  “If that idiot Kurd hadn’t blown himself to pieces, we would be moving on by now. But this might actually work out much better.”

  He smiled along with his boss, knowing the personal nature of this particular aspect of their current situation. There was no better form of satisfaction than revenge and retribution. He was somewhat concerned when his boss had decided not to take out Adams while he recuperated in the Innsbruck hospital. But there was still some honor left in their community. Yet, waiting two weeks to make another attempt seemed cruel. Adams had to know it was coming. The delay had to be nerve-racking for him. His boss was like a cat playing with a mouse. Almost kill it, flip it in the air, almost kill it again, and when he no longer has a use for it, he bites down on its head and ends the game.