Hot Start

by David Freed

  No sooner had I sat down to eat when Buzz telephoned.

  “Pack your bags, cowboy,” he said, “you’re going to Prague tonight.”

  “What’s in Prague?”

  “Majestic castles, outstanding goulash, and one reclusive Czech organized crime boss named Emil Sokol. You’re gonna hunt him down and find out how closely he and this hooker operation you told me about are linked to a certain member of Congress from your district, who just happens to be friends with the most powerful human being on the planet.”

  “So your sources at the bureau talked?”

  “More or less.”

  Working closely with Interpol, FBI field agents had been actively investigating the international prostitution ring for months in what FBI officials had informally dubbed, as only those fun-minded G-men can, “Operation Johnny Cum Lately.” The plan was to flip potential informants like safari impresario Roy Hollister, granting them immunity or lighter sentences in exchange for testifying against bigger, more high-profile fish— namely, the titans of industry, politicians, and other international high rollers who paid for the hookers’ services. Agents suspected that tax dollars in some instances had been used to pay for sexual acts. They’d been focusing on that aspect of the case when Hollister was murdered.

  Was Congressman Pierce Walton among those steady customers? Had he used public money to sleep with $10,000-a-night, international call girls? The FBI, according to Buzz, didn’t know.

  “That’s why you’re going to Prague, to talk to Sokol,” he said. “The FBI thinks he was running this shebang directly and that your boy Walton’s part of it.”

  “What makes you think Sokol will talk to me, assuming I can even find him?”

  “Other than your sunny disposition and persuasive charm? I’ll tell you why: because you have the weight of the White House behind you. No president has ever been more fiercely loyal to his political allies than this one. Pierce Walton is an ally. I can tell you there’s reluctance behind the scenes to piss backward on him. But if he is dirty, that’s exactly what’ll happen, and the sooner you can nail all this down, the better.”

  I reminded him of the photo I’d seen in Kang’s bodega, of Walton and Hollister and the three women in the back of Hollister’s jet.

  “Proves nothing,” Buzz said. “Who’s to say the picture wasn’t manipulated? How’d your guy have it in his possession in the first place? Where’d he get it? Who the hell gave it to him? These are questions that need answers.”

  “I’ve asked. He won’t say.”

  “Yeah, well, hopefully this Sokol guy will know more. We’re dealing with major damage control here, Logan. I got my thumb in the dike, OK? You need to get down in the weeds on this thing pronto and get some answers.”

  I’d asked Buzz to dig up whatever information he could on “Mary,” the woman who’d called to tip me off that the Hollisters had been offed not because of Roy’s safari business, but because of his ties to international prostitution.

  “I couldn’t find squat on her,” Buzz said. “If I had more time, maybe. If you had tracking software on your phone, absolutely. Right now, though, your focus has to be on Sokol.”

  His office, Buzz said, had already made flight and hotel arrangements for me. Funds to cover my expenses had already been wired directly into my checking account. I’d be leaving late that night—a puddle jumper from Rancho Bonita to LAX, then on to Frankfurt via economy class, and Frankfurt to Prague. Once on the ground, I was to make contact with an FBI-vetted go-between who’d put me in touch with Sokol.

  “Whatever happened to flying business class?”

  “Haven’t you heard, Logan? There’s this thing now called the ‘deficit.’ Hell, we’re lucky these days the Congressional Budget Office isn’t making us reuse toilet paper.”

  “What if Sokol wants money? You know how these dick weeds operate, Buzz. They never give away information. They sell it.”

  “The White House paying a known dirtbag for intelligence on an international prostitution ring? Do you have any idea what the Sunday morning talk shows would do with that kind of information?”

  “So how do you expect me to get in there and get the straight skinny?”

  “Look, I already argued all about this with White House staff counsel. We’re not paying the guy. Period. You’re just gonna have to get in there, Logan, and sweet-talk the guy. Get him drunk or something. A shame you don’t drink anymore. Czech beer rocks.”

  “So I vaguely remember.”

  “Hey, look at it this way: you get a free trip to Europe. Only this time, you don’t have to kill anybody.”

  “You always were a glass half-full kinda guy, Buzz.”

  “Tell it to my wife,” he grunted before hanging up.

  I didn’t bother calling Gil Carlisle to update him on everything I’d learned since our last conversation. Much of it was probably classified, anyway. Besides, I had other, more pressing concerns on my mind.

  Mrs. Schmulowitz had been transferred from the recovery room to cardiac intensive care by the time I returned upstairs. She remained unconscious. That was to be expected, a nurse told me as she did paperwork at the nursing station outside the unit. I said I wanted to see her.

  “Are you her son?” the nurse wanted to know.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “No. Her real son is back east. She doesn’t see him that often.”

  “Happens a lot these days with kids and their parents,” the nurse said. “We don’t take care of our senior citizens like we once did, but I’m afraid you can’t go in. Only immediate family is allowed. Hospital rules.”

  I borrowed a piece of paper from her and wrote Mrs. Schmulowitz a note wishing her a speedy recovery, explaining that I’d be out of town a few days, and that I’d bring her flowers when I got back. Don’t worry about Kiddiot, I said. I’d find somebody to take care of him. I signed it, “Your loving tenant and fellow football fanatic, Cordell.” The nurse promised to read it to her as soon as she woke up.

  Walking out of the hospital, I thought to myself that this is what a deserter must feel like, but I knew there wasn’t much else I could do. That’s how it always works. You learn to compartmentalize. You put the civilians you love in a box, shove that box to the very back of your brain. The people in the box essentially cease to exist until you come home. To think of them and their problems while you’re on the job is to be distracted, and to be distracted can prove fatal. So you train yourself to forget them temporarily. By the time I got to my truck, I wasn’t thinking about Mrs. Schmulowitz at all.

  Stan next door agreed to feed Kiddiot in my absence. He wanted to know where I was going and my opinion of immigration reform. I handed him a case of canned cat food, told him I was late for the airport, which I was, and went to go throw a few clothes into my duffel. I thought about taking my revolver, then I thought twice. Pack heat in America and some consider you a patriot. Do the same in Europe, and suddenly you’re a card-carrying member of the Islamic State. I left the gun behind.

  THE LUFTHANSA flight over the pond was uneventful. I slept most of the way, leaning against the window back in the cheap seats of a tired old 747, awakening only long enough to eat dinner, which was really breakfast. Chicken and boiled potatoes with a stewed tomato and a sausage on the side. Wine was free, not that it mattered to me. An older Greek couple sitting next to me got tipsy and began arguing with each other in their native tongue, about what I couldn’t tell, until our very Prussian flight steward politely but firmly leaned over and told them in English to zip it. We touched down in Frankfurt at 1705 hours.

  The German passport control officer rocked a blue uniform shirt, a salt-and-pepper goatee, and a palpably hostile attitude.

  “Purpose of your visit to Germany?”

  “To use the bathroom. Then it’s on to Prague.”

  “Purpose of your visit to Prague?”

  “Goulash.”

  He flipped through the p
ages of my passport without looking up at me.

  “You think you are funny?”

  “I have my moments.”

  “This is not the place to be funny.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  He stamped my passport and handed it back with two fingers, glaring at me. “Enjoy your goulash.”

  “Auf Wiedersehen.”

  I’d been less than cordial. I admit that. He was probably a nice guy and Germans on the whole are a lovely people. But there was something about setting foot in the Fatherland that always brought out the ugly American in me. Two wars and tens of millions of lives lost can have that effect, I suppose. My attitude brightened measurably after an espresso and a plate of warm strudel in one of the airport’s many cafés. Two hours and a connecting flight later, I was in the Czech Republic.

  To say Prague is beautiful is to say water is wet. From the backseat of my taxi, splashed in moonlight, the ancient city was a masterpiece of medieval spires and graceful stone bridges. Below the bridges, diners cruised the gentle currents of the Vltava River on flat-hulled ferries, each with its own live music, while on the cobblestone streets of the old quarter, trolleys and horse-drawn carriages mixed with throngs of tourists from across the globe snapping smartphone photos and laughing.

  Commanding the heights above it all was the thousand-year-old Prague Castle, lit up like something out of Disneyland, only exquisitely real and vastly larger. The sight of it brought back mixed memories. The first time I’d been to Prague, I’d helped to terminate an al-Qaeda financier from Cairo who’d been vacationing with his mistress at a five-star hotel down the hill from the castle. Our three-man team had lured him to a dinner meeting at an Indian restaurant with false promises of man-portable, Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. The shrimp curry I ate that night was excellent, surpassed only by the lamb vindaloo. Afterward as we strolled to his hotel to close the deal and celebrate with a nightcap, I pulled security while my two teammates forced the Egyptian into an alley and slit his throat.

  I digress, however.

  A few blocks from the American embassy, my driver turned down a narrow lane, and stopped in front of an elegant boutique hotel called the Alchymist Nosticova Palace, its window boxes filled with geraniums like those Mrs. Schmulowitz grew back in Rancho Bonita. The American taxpayer may have pinched pennies flying me coach class to Prague, but my digs here were anything but cheap. Antique furnishings. Persian rugs. Fresh roses in cut crystal vases. A canopy bed. French windows that opened out onto the old city. Hell, even a bidet. Calling the place “luxurious” would’ve done the term luxurious a disservice.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?” The aging bellman propped my duffel on a folding luggage stand. His English was thickly accented and the hems of his pant legs were slightly too high, exposing a flash of white sweat socks.

  “That should do it.” I tipped him a couple of bucks. “Thanks.”

  “My name is Andrej,” he said, bowing appreciatively in that European way. “Do you wish for a night girl with good body? I know where there is all the hot ones.”

  “That’s OK, Andrej. It’s been a long day. Think I’ll try and get some shut-eye.”

  “Yes, of course. Please enjoy your stay.” He turned to go, then paused. “I wish not to alarm you, but as you should want to know: A man, he ask for your room number, before you arrived. He was aware you would be a guest of the hotel. He told me he would like to meet you. Here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a slip of paper with an address on it.

  “Why would that alarm me?”

  Andrej hesitated. “I have seen this man before,” he said, “on the television. He is very dangerous, this man. Very dangerous.”

  A few minutes later, that very dangerous man and I were sitting eye-to-eye, waiting to see who would make the first move.

  TEN

  The dangerous man’s name would not all fit in my mouth. Too many vowels, too many consonants. To make it easier for all concerned, we’ll call him Charlie Manson.

  Not that he much looked like the notorious homicidal nut job who had been sent to prison for life after terrorizing Los Angeles back in the late sixties. He was taller and considerably heavier than the real Manson. Younger, too—and he didn’t have a swastika carved into the middle of his forehead. This Charlie’s hair was neatly combed and he was wearing a well-tailored gray business suit with a burgundy silk shirt, open at the collar. But when he removed his two-toned Carrera sunglasses, what he did have was Manson’s black, lifeless eyes. The eyes of a man who killed without remorse.

  A busty blonde barmaid in a too-small New York Yankees T-shirt, her wide hips levered into tight jeans, sashayed over to our table, wiping her hands on a dish towel, looking tense. Charlie stared at her breasts without ever looking up at her face and said something to her in Czech. She set a couple of coasters down without a word and made her way back to the bar, hips swinging. He watched her go. So did the two goons in leather jackets with the Neanderthal brows occupying a nearby booth who’d accompanied Charlie. Why, I wondered, does every goon regardless the country always wear a leather jacket?

  “I ordered you a Falkon Cosa Nostra,” Charlie Manson said with a Czech accent. “Best beer in all of Prague.”

  “Much obliged, but I don’t drink.”

  “You will. This is the best. Forget about it.”

  He looked like the villain in a low-budget direct-to-video movie. “It’s one in the morning,” I said. “What’s with the shades?”

  “They make me look badass.”

  You’ve got to admire that kind of candid self-awareness. He could’ve said his eyes were sensitive to the light, something lame like that, but no. He knew the sunglasses made him look even more menacing than he already was.

  We were sitting in a seedy, all-but-deserted beer hall not far from Wenceslas Square in one of Prague’s sketchier neighborhoods. Back at the hotel, Andrej the bellman had briefed me on the guy who now sat across from me. “Charlie” ran a private security firm that recruited former cops, mostly from Russia, paying them to spy on, intimidate, and sometimes kill, the political opponents of real estate tycoon Emil Sokol, reputed godfather of the Czech Mafia. Czech authorities had repeatedly investigated both Charlie and Sokol for murder, among myriad other crimes. In each case, the charges were mysteriously dropped. I found it a little bizarre—make it plenty bizarre—that Charlie was the operative the FBI had vetted and whom Buzz had made arrangements for me to meet with, but, hey, the clandestine world is rife with strange bedfellows. You take your chances, or you opt out and go to work for Sears.

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” Charlie said, leaning back in his chair and studying his varnished, manicured nails. “In cash or wired to my personal account in Zurich.”

  “That’s a lot of lettuce.”

  “A reasonable finder’s fee. Once I have the funds, I will do my utmost to make the necessary arrangements for you to spend quality time with the gentleman you’ve come to see.”

  “That gentleman being Emil Sokol, correct?”

  He shrugged.

  “Five hundred thousand could be a problem. I don’t usually carry that kind of money.” I unfolded my wallet and checked. “Yep, looks like I’m about half-a-million short, give or take twenty bucks.”

  Charlie watched the barmaid. “Talk with your people. We can meet again in the morning.”

  “I can talk to them until pigs sprout wings. They’re not going to pay that kind of money.”

  “These are the terms. Nonnegotiable.”

  The barmaid arrived with two thick glass tankards of amber-colored beer. He waited, staring me down, until she was gone, then raised his tankard in toast.

  “Na zdraví.”

  I put the beer to my lips and pretended to sip. I could taste the hoppy goodness. I wanted to swallow in the worst way. Somehow I didn’t.

  Charlie watched me. “Good, yes?”

  “Definitely end of movie. You’re aware of who I’m workin
g for, yes?”

  “A certain chief executive officer. I hear rumors.”

  “And you work for Emil Sokol, yes?”

  He shrugged, sipping his beer.

  “I would think men like your boss would recognize the potential value of doing men like my boss a solid,” I said. “The old quid pro quo—Mr. Sokol does something for him, possibly he does something for Mr. Sokol down the road. No guarantees, certainly, but you can see the value in what I’m proposing.”

  He put his glass down and calmly folded his hands on the table. “Five hundred thousand dollars, US, or nothing.”

  “I can assure you right now, my friend, that’s not going to happen.”

  “As you wish.”

  He gulped down the rest of his drink, pushed back from the table, and stood, barking orders in Czech to the two goons. They hurried outside, presumably to fetch his car.

  “I’ll be sure and let my guy know how this went,” I said. “I have a feeling that when your guy finds out how my guy could’ve owed him one, only you were too greedy to let it happen, neither one’s going to be too happy. If you change your mind, you know where to find me for the next day or two.”

  Charlie gave me a cold smile. “A pleasure to meet you. Enjoy your evening,” he said as he left.

  The barmaid came over, visibly relieved. “He is your friend?” she asked me in passable English.

  “Not hardly.”

  “I did not think so. He leaves without paying.”

  Charlie Manson had stiffed me for the bar tab.

  THE WEATHER was cool but not unpleasantly so. I walked back to the hotel. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do unarmed in the middle of the night, on the wrong side of the tracks, in a foreign city, but I had no other option. No taxis or trolleys were running at that hour in that part of town, none that I could see anyway.

  Along Zborovska Street, a bustling boulevard in daylight, now all but deserted, a transvestite hooker was leaning in the doorway of a shop that sold antique coal-burning stoves restored to their original pot-bellied glory.

  “Got a light?” His English was nearly without accent.