Anna had a confused expression on her face.
“What?”
“Why kill the second priest?”
“The two priests were best friends,” Jake said. “Had been ordained together. They had to guess the Order priest would have confided in the parish priest.” Either that, or they had an old beef with them — something from their past in the Order.
Jake got up and went to the living room window, which overlooked a forested hill, the pines and naked deciduous trees dripping with melting snow. The sun was doing its best to rise, but the swirling clouds changed the lighting from moment to moment.
Anna came to his side. “There’s a trail that leads up into the hills,” she said. “I usually run each morning. But I’m sure the trails are all slush now.”
“That T-shirt,” Jake said. “Were you on the Austrian Olympic Team?”
She pulled on her shirt. “Biathlon.”
“Really? The Nordic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. That’s a tough sport. So, you’re also a great shot with the rifle. Anything else I should know about you?”
Gazing out to the trees across the street, she said, “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Jake.”
He waited, not saying a word. He was nothing if not patient.
“I’ve been directed to work with you,” she said.
He couldn’t keep his brows from furling. How was that? Let her explain, he thought.
She continued, “Herr Albrecht, as you might know, is related to our president by way of his sister.”
He knew that. “And?”
“It was Gustav Albrecht’s idea. He asked around for an unbiased security consultant; someone with no political ties. Your name kept coming up. I was called in to the federal president’s office and Albrecht was there.”
“Why you?”
“My Army background,” she said, “and the fact that for the past few years in Interpol I’ve worked in the Public Safety and Terrorism Sub-directorate on the Fusion Task Force.”
Jake wasn’t entirely familiar with Interpol structure. He had had a few run-ins with Interpol agents through the years, but considered them more interested in international crime than terrorism. “What does the task force have to do with this case?”
“Well, the task force deals with the possible links between organized crime and terrorist organizations.”
“Interesting.” Especially with what had happened in the past few years, Jake thought. “So the president put you on the Albrecht case. What does this have to do with terrorism?”
“Albrecht told us about the diary,” she said. “I’m guessing you read it last night and already knew about Miko and Jiri — who you’ve now seen the Interpol file on — and understand what we might be up against.”
He wasn’t sure if he should be pissed or honored that he had been chosen by the federal president of Austria and the grand master of the Teutonic Order to help them out. “I don’t like being deceived,” Jake said, a feigning angry edge to his words. Two could play this game. “I’m outta here.” He turned and headed for the door. “Tell Albrecht to send my check to my place in Innsbruck.”
As he reached the door, she said, “Wait. You can’t walk out on us.”
Jake turned and studied her body language. She was sincere, he was sure. “Watch me,” he said with subdued conviction.
“We need you. I need you.”
“Why me?”
She let out a deep breath, her arms crossed over her chest. “Your integrity is impeccable, Jake. I did a background check on you. Everyone I talked with said the same thing: you can be trusted, you’re discreet, and when you start a job you finish it.”
“But you have the Interpol behind you,” Jake reminded her. “Not to mention the entire Austrian Army and the Staatpolizei.”
She swished her head from side to side. “No. Sure, in the end that might be true. But I have been temporarily assigned to the office of the president. Interpol thinks I’m on a two-week Christmas vacation. I can still access our computer database, but I can’t make inquiries in other countries. You can.”
God. Here he went again. “You want me to track down some of the folks from the diary.”
“Together,” she said. “We’ll do it together.”
“Isn’t this exactly what Interpol was designed to do?”
She lowered her chin slightly. “We think there’s a mole somewhere. How else would they have known about your meeting at the Donau Bar?”
Jake took a few steps toward her, trying his best to read her face. “The meeting at the Donau Bar,” he said. “You set it up there for a reason.”
Her eyes shifted up and to the left.
He continued, “But something went terribly wrong, as we both know.”
“We were trying to catch the mole,” she said, her voice harsh now. More desperate.
“But you didn’t expect an attempt on Albrecht at that meeting. You were sitting back to see who else might show up there.”
“Right.” She calmed herself.
“Makes sense. So now you know you have a mole but you have no idea where.”
“Exactly. It’s one thing to know you have someone inside working for the bad guys, but it’s another thing to track down the rogue.”
He knew that all too well, based on past experience. “What now?”
“The diary,” she said, her words barely audible.
“What the hell. I read the whole thing last night.” He went to her bookshelf and retrieved the small notebook from the Order priest.
She shook her head as he handed her the book. “Super.”
“Based on what I’ve read,” Jake said. “We need to find Miko Krupjak, Jiri Sikora, and Grago.”
Paging through the diary, Anna said, “I agree.”
Toni Contardo and Kurt Lamar pulled into the parking ramp lot of the Vienna Airport in Kurt’s charcoal Audi. The GPS signal placed the car in the next row in a section of luxury cars for a major car rental company.
“How the hell could Jake’s car be here?” Toni asked. “The Golf is his own car.”
“I don’t know. I just got a signal that the car was on the move this morning.”
Toni thought back on her conversation with Jake at her apartment the night before. She knew she couldn’t help him; she had her own problems to deal with internally. That bothered her more than she liked to admit.
Pulling over behind a Mercedes sedan, Kurt said, “Son of a bitch. He played us.”
She fought back a smile. “Yeah, he did. Go get our tracker.”
Kurt shut down the engine and did what she said. She watched him feel around under the back bumper. Should have known, she thought. He was better than that, and she knew it. Maybe she should have called Langley and asked for approval to bring Jake into this case. Part of her wanted to work closely with him, but the other side of her, the pragmatic side, knew she had to keep her distance. He clouded her judgment, and that could be dangerous.
Getting back in the car, Kurt said, “Got it.” He buckled his seatbelt. “Now what?”
Toni shrugged. “Now we go on.”
11
One row over in the Vienna Airport parking ramp lot, Hermann Conrad was picking up a rental BMW seven series, in a dark metallic blue. He had just flown in from Berlin on the early morning flight. Clicking the automatic trunk release, he hoisted his heavy suitcase into the deep well, closed the door and got in behind the wheel.
He speed dialed a number on his cell phone as he acquainted himself with the car. He had asked for a Mercedes just like his back in Germany, but they had said their last one, a black one, had come in late and was still not serviced. Glancing over into the next row, Conrad saw the one they had mentioned. What the hell. This was a great car. It was German, and that’s what mattered.