“Austrian Army Intelligence Service?” Jake asked.
“Good guess?”
“Well, you did attend my lecture in Garmisch. We didn’t let just any army officer in for that.”
“Good point.” She raised her glass of schnapps toward him.
Jake picked his glass up and together they threw down another shot.
Anna got up from her chair and adjusted her gun on her narrow hip.
“Do you have to be anywhere in the morning?” Jake asked her.
“Why?”
“I’ve had a long day,” he said. “Just want to know if I can sleep in.”
Without answering, she crossed the room and turned on the light to her bedroom. “I don’t have to punch a clock,” she said. “Sleep as long as you want. There’s a pillow and blankets in that cabinet.” With that she went into her room and closed the door, a lock clicking.
When she was gone, Jake prepared the sofa for his bed. Shifting his coat to the coffee table, he saw the day planner with Albrecht’s information. He couldn’t wait any longer. Had to see what was so important. So important that his old friend Toni Contardo would act the way she had. He knew that most of her reaction was personal, but something had changed in her, he was sure of that. Shuffling through the papers, he was glad and surprised to see they were all in German. Czech or Slovak and he would have been lost.
Most of the loose papers seemed to be simple documents dealing with the Teutonic Order. Purchase orders, shipments of goods from Austria and Germany to Poland and the Slovak Republic. Speculation on starting a kindergarten in Budapest. Under all the papers was a small notebook with handwritten entries. Each entry was dated. Jake flipped to the last entry, which was less than a week ago. The priest was concerned about a confession he had heard from a man named Miko. He felt somewhat guilty reading these private entries, but knew there had to be something here that got the priest killed. Maybe something else that had gotten the parish priest killed less than twenty-four hours ago.
Jake spent the next hour reading the entries. When he was done, his brain was fried from translating the German to his English thoughts, and his stomach was aching. He had not eaten all day. Not since he grabbed a bite on the train to Bratislava. More than that, though, he had a feeling his gut was rumbling more from what he had read in the Order priest’s diary. Now he had a direction to travel. He looked around the room trying to find just the right place. There. A bookshelf stacked from top to bottom. He slid out a row of books and placed the thin diary behind them. Then he shifted the other books so they all lined up. Satisfied, he clicked off the light and lay down.
Miko and Jiri got to Prague less than an hour before midnight. They would have to hurry. On the radio of Miko’s Skoda, the hockey game between Prague and Dresden had just finished — a huge double overtime win for the home team. Miko wished they had been able to leave Bratislava earlier to catch the game in person. He had played in his youth with the oldest defenseman on the team, and had a standing offer for free tickets.
“You hear that, Jiri. My friend Peter shut down their offense tonight.”
Jiri nodded his head. “That man is a beast. One hundred and ten kilos. He shouldn’t be allowed on the ice at that weight.”
Miko laughed under his breath. “We could use a man like that. Break some legs.”
“Absolutely. I hear he will retire next year. Maybe.”
Shaking his head, Miko said, “He can retire for life with all the money he’s made. He made enough in the American NHL in ten years to live in Mlada Boleslav like a king. And now ten more years in Prague.” Miko shrugged his shoulders. “He probably has more money than Hermann Conrad.”
“No way,” Jiri said. “Conrad owns Marienburg Biotechnik, houses in Berlin and Magdeburg, the huge wind farm with that farm house, and I heard he is part owner of the Berlin hockey team. Not to mention that castle in Austria.”
The autobahn from Brno ended and funneled them into the edge of Nove Mesto, the New Town. Traffic was light and the roads were clear. Luckily the snow had ended some sixty kilometers outside of Prague, and the city was only shrouded in darkness from swirling clouds overhead. No stars. No moon. That’s what Miko had hoped.
“It’s not a castle,” Miko said.
“You’ve been there?”
“A few months back,” Miko said. Although it wasn’t officially a castle, it sure as hell looked like one, sitting at the edge of the mountains by St. Johann in Tirol, a splendid view of the Alps. “Sure it’s built of stone. But I understand it was built by the Order as a monastery a couple hundred years ago.”
They had reached Stare Mesto now, the Old Town, and Miko got off Wilsonova before they crossed over the Vltava River. He wound his way into Josefov, the Jewish Quarter. He pulled over and parked a block from the Old Jewish Cemetery, the front of their car pointed at the oldest synagogue in Europe.
Jiri’s eyes got wide when he saw where Miko had parked. “We’re not going to take out that,” Jiri protested. “We’ll have every Jew in the world after us.”
Miko let out a deep breath and said, “No, Jiri. But if we did strike it, we could blame it on the fucking ragheads. The enemy of our enemy could be our friend.”
Without warning, the rear door opened and Rada Grago climbed in. Jiri nearly jumped from his pants. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said.
Grago started to light a cigarette, but then saw Miko’s glare in the rearview mirror, so he shoved the unlit cigarette back in the pack. “Jiri, what the hell happened to your face?” Grago asked.
Miko started laughing. When he told Grago the story, the Butcher of Prague joined in the laugh. Jiri slumped down in his seat.
“Don’t worry,” Grago said. “We’ll get the bitch. Let you fuck her first before you kill her.”
Jiri smiled with that thought.
Putting the car in gear, Miko cruised slowly by the synagogue. He blew a kiss at the structure and then picked up speed.
Fifteen minutes later, they had crossed the river and were now in a western section of town, a place where Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and Africans had moved in the past decade or so in increasing numbers. Miko drove slowly now, taking in the scene.
“Look at this,” Miko growled. “A damn Kabob stand on every block. Smoke houses and fucking Moroccan restaurants. God damn Sand Niggers have taken over your city, Grago.” His friend had heard it all before, Miko knew. For the past few years that’s all Miko could talk about. “Is that the place?” Miko asked Grago, his eyes on the man in the mirror.
“That’s it.”
They were cruising past a Turkish Bath, a more upscale place that had opened recently, and where Grago had heard all the big players in the Turkish community frequented.
“When does it blow?”
Grago checked his watch. “About an hour.”
There would be no deaths, but they’d make a statement. Besides, Conrad had wanted them to keep a lower profile. Miko didn’t think a little fire bomb with no bodies would bring too much attention. And, maybe more importantly, it would divert attention from their real mission. That couldn’t hurt.
Shifting into third, Miko got the hell out of that section of town. He was feeling ill and needed a beer. In an hour they would be far away from this place — statement made and on to bigger things. They had a plan, but they were also flexible. The key was to never pattern themselves. A killing here or there, a bomb from time to time. Cumulative success. That was the name of the game — until Hermann Conrad was ready for the big strike he was always talking about. Miko couldn’t wait for that day.
He pulled out a radish from a plastic bag and bit down onto it, a spicy splash tingling his tongue. Much better than smoking, he thought.