He walked to the reception desk. The coed eyed him suspiciously.
“Were you able to send your email?”
“Yes.”
“You still have fifteen minutes left, you know.”
“I finished early,” he replied.
“You still have to pay me the full amount. A deal is a deal.”
Raimond reached out and grabbed the young woman’s hand, turned it palm up, and placed five one-hundred euro bills inside her curled fingers.
“Thank you,” she said as he turned to leave.
Raimond looked back and winked at her, but said nothing as he walked away, leading his hulk of a brother.
“Did you get it?” Udo asked.
“Ja.”
“Now what?”
“We send it to Stefan and he works his magic.”
Udo nodded. His brother’s words could not have rung more true. Computers were magic boxes beyond comprehension. He had listened to the debate between Raimond and Stefan about whether they could retrieve any useful data from the cybercafé computer, but their discussion of browser caches, temporary files, and key-logging spyware was beyond him. Even if he had spent the rest of his life in study, he would never be able to perform even the simplest of hacks. Each of the Zurn brothers had been born with a gift. Raimond was cunning. Even as a young child, he had exhibited an uncanny ability to manipulate people and circumstances to his favor. Stefan, the quiet one, possessed an intuitive understanding of machines. Raimond once said that Stefan’s mind was the perfect marriage of inventor and engineer — a place where insatiable curiosity lived in harmony with methodical precision. As for Udo, his aptitudes had always resided below the neck. In primary school, he had been a star player of both rugby and soccer. His strength and speed were one-and-a-half times that of normal men. And he had never lost a brawl — that is, until Will Foster had humiliated him in public.
Udo could not stop seething over the American. He yearned for their next encounter. He felt anxious and invigorated, the same feeling he used to get the night before a championship rugby match. Of late, Raimond’s jobs had been boring. Udo couldn’t remember the last bone he had been permitted to break, the last jaw he had been directed to smash. He clenched his fists. Breaking Foster into little pieces would be very, very pleasurable. Raimond had promised Meredith Morley that they would deliver Foster alive, but that was all he had promised. After the embarrassment Raimond had suffered in the cybercafé when Foster kneed him in the balls, Udo was certain his brother would not intervene during the pummeling session he planned to unleash.
“Where do you think the American is hiding?” Udo asked.
“Difficult to know. Without a passport and money, he cannot leave the Czech Republic without help from the outside. I’m certain he came to the Internet café to arrange his extradition. I need to see what information Stefan extracts from the hard disc before I plan our next move.”
“If we do catch him, then what?”
“Don’t you mean when we catch him, then what?”
“Ja, of course.”
“I think I’ll turn my back for twenty minutes and let you teach Mr. Foster what it feels like to be a rugby ball. Would you like that, Udo?”
Udo smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.”
Chapter Fourteen
Julie fidgeted in the driver’s seat. The border guards were talking to the driver of the car in front of her, and it had been a lengthy interrogation. She told herself to relax. Looking nervous would only create suspicion. Trained law enforcement officers would see right through her if she didn’t bring her A-game. She inhaled deeply and then exhaled with her lips pursed. She ran her fingers through her hair, tilted her head and smiled. The act of smiling seemed to take a little of the edge off. She looked down at her chest and undid the second button on her blouse. Not quite enough. She undid the next button. She folded her arms and squeezed to create some cleavage.
“Ridiculous,” she said aloud, feeling foolish. She refastened the third button, shaking her head.
The brake lights dimmed on the car in front of her, and it began to pull away. Her palms began to sweat.
“Oh, what the hell,” she mumbled and quickly unbuttoned the third button of her blouse again before putting the car into gear.
She idled the car forward to the checkpoint and then put the transmission into park.
Two young uniformed men approached her vehicle, one on the driver’s side and the other on the passenger side. The officer on the driver side rapped with gloved knuckles on the window and shined his flashlight on her face. She squinted hard and rolled down the window. The other officer used his flashlight to survey inside the passenger compartment.
“Reisepass.”
She handed her passport to him, but accidently released it before his fingers found a grip.
The passport fell onto the pavement beneath the driver side door. The young officer’s mouth twisted with annoyance as he bent down to pick up the folded booklet.
She flushed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The officer stood up, passport in hand, and shined his flashlight on her laminated picture. He stared at it for a moment and then shined his flashlight back in her face again. This time it seemed he the let the beam linger in her eyes for several extra seconds. Retribution for dropping the passport, she surmised.
“I am an Austrian resident. I live in Vienna,” she said.
“I see. What were you doing in the Czech Republic, Ms. Ponte?”
“Visiting my boyfriend.”
“How long have you been away?”
“Just one day.”
“I see. Why are you out at this late hour?”
“If you must know, we had a fight, so I left.”
“I seeeee.”
“Sie ist allein,” the other officer said from the other side of the car.
The officer on the driver side nodded, and then turned his attention back to Julie. This time, when he aimed his flashlight at her face, she shielded her eyes with her hand. She sighed with irritation and made sure it was loud enough for him to hear. He reached into his pocket, retrieved a folded piece of paper, and unfurled it by shaking the paper violently in the air with one hand.
“Do you know this man? He is an American like you.”
She looked at the paper with its black-and-white scanned photograph of Will. She felt the blood rush to her face and a strong and sudden need to use the bathroom.
“I said… Do you know this man?” the patrolman repeated.
She shook her head. Then she looked up at the officer’s face and added, “No, I don’t.”
“I see. Open the rear luggage compartment, bitte?”
Her heart pounded… he didn’t believe her.
She leaned toward the officer and squeezed her upper arms together — her breasts bulged in the open “V” of her blouse. “Officer, is it really necessary to search my vehicle? I promise you that I’m traveling alone.”
The patrolman directed his flashlight beam to her cleavage, let it linger a moment, and then let it drop to the ground. He locked eyes with her; his face morphed into his trademark sneer. “Open the rear luggage compartment, Ms. Ponte. Now.”
Chapter Fifteen
Niatross.
That was the name painted in silver script letters on the tail of Robért Nicolora’s private jet. A means of conveyance that probably should not have existed, but did nonetheless, the Cessna Citation X was a magnificent and ludicrous product of capitalism and human ingenuity. Not only was it capable of whisking its occupants across the blue at a speed of.92 Mach, but also pampering them with every conceivable luxury in the process. AJ could think of no better way to travel. Before boarding, he walked 360 degrees around the aircraft on the tarmac. He imagined its exterior lines were born first from an artist’s brush stroke, and then later honed to aerodynamic perfection by the mouse clicks of an engineer. With its backward sweeping wings, and rising throat-like fuselage, the Citation X reminded him of a bird of prey. Even the cockpit was angled, so in flight it looked like the cocked head of a falcon surveying the sky.