“What are you thinking?” she asked him, her fingers running through the gray and blond hair on his chest.
“I was just checking out your sweet body,” he said. “God was good to you.” He knew she liked compliments. Needed them.
“Thank you, Hermann. You are too good to me.”
True. He could have left her in that rat hole apartment in Vienna’s worst part of town, working as a “dancer” in a somewhat respectable club — if there was such a place. “You deserve it after what you went through growing up.” Alexandra had grown up in the old Soviet Union, now the Ukraine, where her parents were scientists in Chernobyl. She had survived that disaster because she was staying with an aunt in Kiev at the time. Both parents had died in the initial explosion, though. And that had been some comfort to her.
“I don’t remember much of that,” she said, pulling the feather comforter over her nakedness. “I was too young.”
He had heard that before, and then she had cried and told him what she did know. How her older brother and sister had died later from horrible fallout-radiation poisoning.
Hermann ran his hand through her strawberry blonde hair and said, “I will take care of you, Alexandra.”
“Take me with you to Germany,” she pled, her lower lip extended out in a classic pout.
“I’ll think about it.”
She rose up to her knees, her naked breasts bouncing to a halt in front of his face. He had never said that to her before. “You will?”
Raising his head, he licked her erect nipple, took it into his mouth and sucked it for a moment, and then said, “I promise. But first I have some business in St. Johann.”
She had been to his castle a few times — a wonderful place like which she had dreamed of living in her youth. “Take me with you to the castle,” she said, her hand reaching down to his flaccid penis. “I will help you decide to take me to Germany.”
Her touch was magic and he was becoming hard again. “How in the hell can I say no to you now?”
She smiled and lowered her head to his rising erection.
Having parked his car near a Metro Line Two stop on the west side of Budapest, Jake and Anna took the train under the Danube River, switched to Metro Line One and went to the end.
As they hiked up the stairs to the square above at the end of Vaci Street, Jake realized that darkness had set in, and the square was lit by Christmas lights strung around tree stands, kiosks, and small fires beneath chestnut roasting pans.
On the trip over, he had thought about the brief encounter with the concierge at the Hilton, and how he had freely given up so much information. The man’s eyes had given away even more, first inadvertently shifting up and to his right. Was he lying? Or was he trying not to look at the camera in the corner of his office? Jake had a feeling he was about to find out.
Anna wrapped her arm inside Jake’s left arm, as if they were a couple. “Nice place,” she said, her breath flowing out in a cloud.
True, he thought. But the chill on the back of his neck was only partially caused by the cold air. “Yeah, I was here a couple of years ago. It was a zoo then, too.”
She looked confused.
“A lot of people,” he explained.
Stopping, as if looking at Christmas ornaments in a kiosk, Anna whispered in his ear, “The kiosk in the corner. Next to the Christmas trees.”
Jake picked up an ornament and glanced past it toward the kiosk. They had no idea what this Emil looked like. The man working the booth had hair to his shoulders, a skinny frame, and his thick gray wool coat couldn’t cover that fact. Jake set the ornament down and said, “Let’s go. Let me talk.”
The two of them strolled toward the kiosk with furs strung along two sides, and, as they got closer, Jake saw a full row of knives on a counter. Next to them was a tray of Soviet-era military pins. Hanging on the kiosk ceiling were hats — anything from ski hats to Russian military fur hats with red star and sickle in the front.
As they approached, the man’s eyes locked onto them, and he lowered himself to grab something. Jake slowed his pace and felt his gun with his arm. When the man came up with a hat from a box and hung it to a line, Jake pulled up to the counter. Anna moved to one side and looked at a hunting knife.
“Emil?” Jake said. “Kopari sent us.”
The man, perhaps mid-forties like the concierge, didn’t seem surprised. He said something in Hungarian to a younger man in the kiosk and, to Jake, he shifted his head toward the back of the booth.
Behind the booth was a narrow space, dark and almost impossible for Jake to see more than a few feet. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, but didn’t have much time.
As he made out two figures approaching him, Jake heard a step behind him and he swiveled to his right just in time. The knife missed his kidney but grazed his left arm.
Jake kicked back and heard a knee snap, a howl from the man with the knife.
The two other men were on him now, fists flying. Jake took a hit to his left temple, dazing him. He let loose with a flurry of punches and kicks at both men and then turned back toward the front of the kiosk. He needed to move to the light.
Jake ran and almost knocked Anna over. He grabbed her and pulled her toward the center of the square.
“What happened,” Anna said, concerned.
“It was a set-up,” he said. “Emil and two friends. That fuckin’ concierge.” Jake turned and saw the three men at the corner of Emil’s kiosk. One man now had a gun at his side. “Let’s go. We gotta move.”
Pulling her toward the Metro stop, Jake rushed to the steps, the two of them hand-in-hand, jumping down two steps at a time. Down at the bottom and into the station platform, Jake could feel a rush of air and hear a train approaching. He pulled Anna toward the end of the platform so they would be on the first car.
The train pulled in, the doors opened, and before Jake and Anna got inside, he saw the three men coming down the stairs. They would also make the train.
Moments later the train’s doors closed and it pulled away. Jake wasn’t entirely familiar with the train route, but knew when they got out the men would see them and do the same. Standing and holding onto a bar, Jake looked above the train door for a route map. Opera. Oktogon. There. It came to him. The Szechenyi Furdo stop. He had been there before. The Szechenyi Baths. But he had no intention of going to the baths. It was what was near there that made the most sense. He noticed a few people on the train had ice skates.
“Jake,” Anna said, her arm around his waist. Her eyes looked down to the train floor. Blood was dripping there from his arm.
Jake held onto the metal bar with his stabbed arm and grasped the wound on his arm with his right hand. Then he stepped onto his blood on the floor to cover it. “Damn it. That means there’s a hole in my leather jacket.”
“Very funny. It looks bad.”
“Listen, look at the map above. We’re going to the Szechenyi Furdo stop. The second to the last on this line. I’ve got an idea.”
She nodded her head.
A few minutes later they reached their stop. Jake noticed the stairs were toward the front of the train. Good. They wouldn’t have to pass the men.
Jake hurried out, Anna at his heels, and they rushed up the stairs. Behind them, Jake saw the three men shoving their way through people to take up chase. He thought about simply pulling his gun once they got to the top of the stairs. They’d have the high ground and the obvious advantage. But with all the people making their way up the stairs, someone would take a stray shot.
Instead, at the top of the stairs, Jake took off in a fast run across an open area toward a brightly lit area. The closest buildings were more than a block away. The Szechenyi Baths were to the north, Vajdahunyad Castle within that complex just to the south of the baths, and, he knew, adjacent to that at this time of year was a huge pond frozen and turned into a public skating rink.