Finally a man answered on the phone. “Ja?”
“I’m in Vienna,” Conrad said, starting the engine. It sounded as pure as Aryan blood. If that was possible.
“Sir,” the man said. “I found out who the man at the Donau Bar was.”
Conrad started to back out but was forced to slam on the brakes. “Shit!” A damn Audi nearly hit him. But the woman in the passenger seat was quite attractive, he thought. He waved the car past, and once they were by, he pulled out.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
“Never mind,” Conrad said, driving more carefully out of the parking lot. “Set up a meeting of the faithful at my country estate. Friday. Everyone must be there. No excuses. I have some good news.”
“Yes, sir. But the man at the Donau Bar…”
“Go ahead.”
“A man named Jake Adams. An American who has lived in Innsbruck for a few years. He runs a private security consulting firm, but our contacts say he was former CIA.”
Great. That’s all he needed to hear. “Thanks. I’ll take care of it. Expect a call from Miko to get all the details.”
Conrad flipped the phone shut and thought for a moment as he exited the ramp and turned onto a frontage road that led to Autobahn A4.
From memory, Conrad punched in a series of numbers and waited. After a few rings someone picked up. Neither said a word for ten seconds.
Finally, a man said, “It’s me. How can I help you?”
“Miko. You still in Prague?”
“Yes, sir. We took care of some business last night, if you know what I mean.”
Yes, he did, but he didn’t want to know any details. He had heard about a Turkish Bath in Prague getting blown all to Hell, and Miko and Grago both popped into his thoughts at the time. “I need you back in Vienna. Talk with our contact here. He’ll give you some details of a job I want you to do.”
Conrad pulled onto Autobahn A4 in the direction of Vienna and picked up speed to flow into the traffic.
“But sir, we still have some things to…take care of here.”
“Do what I tell you. Damn it, this is more important. And you still haven’t taken out our first problem in Vienna. How can we have a new Hochmeister with the old one still breathing?”
“But you told us to hold off on that. Someone was on to our contact there.”
He had a point, but a small one. When will Miko learn to do what he’s told? “Do what our contact in Austria says. You find one and you’re bound to find the other. He will also tell you about a meeting at the estate on Friday. Everyone must be there.”
Conrad waited for any protest, but it didn’t come. Good. Miko was finally starting to listen. He flipped off the phone and shoved it into his inner suit pocket. It was all coming together, he thought. A few details to work out, but that was always the case with any business deal. Boy that had been a rough day. So much for business. Now, on to pleasure.
Bratislava was only sixty-five kilometers away from Vienna, but it was still light years away in standard of living. Jake had to admit he had not had a great first impression of the place the other day with Albrecht, finding the parish priest murdered and then having the cops waiting for the two of them as they ran from the cathedral. But he had now had more time to think about that situation as he drove his VW Golf along back streets of the city, Anna Schult in the passenger seat next to him. They had decided to take his car, swapping it with hers and leaving her Audi in the parking ramp, since they didn’t need her status with Interpol revealed crossing the border. She had simply flashed her Austrian passport. Jake had been somewhat concerned that the border guards would have an artist’s sketch of his face, but they had obviously not seen any resemblance to him. He couldn’t blame them. Hell, he couldn’t see any resemblance to himself.
They had just gone to the apartment rented by Jiri Sikora. The landlord on the first floor, a gray-haired man in his sixties, seemed to spit out Sikora’s name — only contempt there. He had also confirmed that Miko Krupjak — although he only knew the man by Miko — lived there from time to time. Anna had shown the old man photos of Sikora and Krupjak she had printed before leaving her apartment in Vienna. He said the cops were always showing up there looking for those two, but they never hauled them away for anything. In fact, he said a beautiful woman had been there the day before, but she wasn’t there for sex, he assured them. Sikora had a black eye after she left in her Alfa Romeo.
Jake didn’t need any more information to know that the woman had been Toni Contardo. She had mentioned on the phone that she was having a “discussion” with someone. So Toni was on the same trail. Interesting.
“What you thinking?” Anna said. She was on her laptop sifting through known associates of both Sikora and Krupjak.
Turning the car toward the old downtown of Bratislava, Jake said, “What about contacting the local Interpol office and see what they have on the men?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call them on your cell and say you think they’ve been up to no good in Vienna — which is the truth.”
She did just that. Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were at a restaurant on the Nove Mesto, the new town, of Bratislava. The local Interpol office had said that Sikora used to work at the restaurant, and he still hung out with a woman there. A waitress named Kamila.
As they went inside, they found the woman smoking a cigarette at the end of a counter. Only an older couple sat at a table against the front window. Jake could hear noise coming from the back room, the kitchen. The place could have used a make-over, and Kamila was no exception. Her fire red hair was spiked three inches. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a month, her skinny arms tattooed to the wrist. Her face was pierced through the nose, the eyebrows, and the ears. He didn’t want to guess where else.
“What you want?” she said in Slovak.
Her tongue was also pieced, Jake noticed. Maybe she couldn’t eat with that. Since Jake didn’t understand her, he switched to German. “We’re looking for Jiri Sikora.”
“Polizei.” She horfed the word like a hairball.
“No,” Jake said. “An old friend from hockey. We played against each other. I was on the Austrian team. I might add that he beat us three years in a row.” He hoped she didn’t know too much about Sikora’s old team.
She nodded her head, smoke from her cigarette rising to her squinted eyes. “He was a good player I hear. Much before I knew him, though.” Her German came out with a Slavic slur.
“We just came from his apartment,” Jake said. “His landlord said he hasn’t seen him since yesterday. He didn’t come home last night. I wanted to buy Jiri a few beers.”
“His landlord is a bastard,” she said. “He hates Jiri. But I haven’t seen Jiri in a couple of days. You talk to his brother?”
Jake glanced at Anna, who had decided to remain silent and let Jake do the talking. “No. I didn’t know he had a brother.”
Kamila was wary now, her expression skeptical. “No, he calls him his brother. He calls a lot of people his brother.”
“Oh, you mean Miko Krupjak?”
Shaking her head, Kamila said, “Not Miko. Miko was on the Olympic team. I’m talking about Viktor Kopari. He’s Hungarian. A concierge now at the Hilton in Budapest.”
“In the Castle District?” Jake asked her.
Ashes fell to the floor as Kamila said, “Yes. Have you been there?”
“I’ve seen it,” Jake said, a smile on his face. “I can’t afford to stay there.”
“No kidding,” Kamila said. “Jiri stays there, though. Kopari lets him in.”
Jake thanked her for the information, but said he was only in town for the day and would have to call Jiri next time before he showed up. No need to have her tip the guy off before they could catch up to him.