Without Options (2 page)

As Jake stepped to the curb, deciding where to go and how to go there, a black Mercedes pulled up and the front passenger window powered down as the car stopped next to him. He held his knee as he lowered himself for a look inside. Without trying to react, Jake simply smiled at the driver.

“Get in,” the bald man behind the wheel said. No smile. The driver turned his intense gaze ahead as he took in a deep breath on his cigarette and almost immediately blew the smoke out his nose and mouth simultaneously.

Jake sighed, unsure what to do. Did he have a better choice? He could take a bus or a taxi. But he also had no place to go. His apartment in Vienna was hundreds of kilometers away. Besides, this was one person who might have the answers he sought.

Getting in, Jake settled gently into the comfort of the plush tan leather seat.

“Buckle up,” the man said to Jake. “You’ve seen enough hospitals for a while.”

Staring at the driver for a moment, Jake did as he was told and then the car pulled away slowly into traffic.

“I thought you’d be dead by now,” Jake said, breaking a long silence.

The driver huffed a laugh and pulled another cigarette from his front pocket. “You mind?”

“It’s your car and your lungs.”

Lighting the cigarette from the last of the other one, the driver sucked in the smoke, his right eye closing. He flicked the old butt out the driver’s window.

“You still on the job?” Jake asked him.

“Officially? I’m on medical leave. Chemo’s a bitch.”

“Almost didn’t recognize you without your hair or your mustache, Franz.” Kriminal Hauptkommisar Franz Martini had been one of the toughest sons of bitches Jake had ever known. At just over six feet, the Austrian Polizei man was a couple inches taller than Jake, and had always carried more beef on his bones also. And now the man had shriveled to a fraction of his former self, with his skin wrinkled and mottled. His sunken eyes were circled by puffy black rings. An air of death seeped from the man’s pores. Franz was dead, Jake guessed, but he just didn’t know it. Like the leaves of fall that refused to drop from the branches.

Laughing, Franz said, “I’m like one of those little Mexican dogs or Chinese cats. I don’t remember now. Hairless top to bottom. If you know what I mean.”

Jake let out a heavy breath. “Sorry, man.”

“Helluva way for a cop to die, Jake. Bald as a newborn.”

Jake guessed Franz was thinking about Anna’s death. The three of them had met years ago in Oberammergau, Germany, where Jake had given a lecture at an international terrorism conference. Jake was only a few months out of the Agency at that time, spreading his new wings in the private sector. Franz was representing Austria, and the young and beautiful Anna, a fresh member of Interpol’s counter terrorism unit. The three of them had hit it off, drinking more beer than Jake would admit today, and after a short period of long-distance dating, Jake had moved in with Anna in Vienna, despite his being ten years her senior. From mid-thirties to mid-forties age didn’t seem to matter to either of them. With his private business he could live almost anywhere.

“Anna was too young,” Jake finally said, solemnly.

“You’re right,” the Polizei man said, sucking in a breath from the cigarette and blowing it out in perfect rings. “Too much life to live.”

They drove slowly along the Inn River. Jake had lived only a couple of kilometers from here before moving to Vienna to live with Anna. He noticed the Alps to the south of the city already had a nice coat of snow. The ski resorts would open early this year, but Jake wouldn’t find himself on the slopes, he was sure. Especially with the bum knee.

It was a good thing Franz Martini had shown up, because he was one of the first people Jake had planned on looking up. With his connections in the Austrian state police, and having been Anna’s Godfather, Franz would be sure to keep up with the investigation into her death. Jake’s girlfriend wouldn’t have died in vain. Not if Jake had anything to do with it. Not if Franz was still breathing either.

“They find the bastards who killed Anna?”

Franz pulled out another cigarette and lit it from the butt, bringing the end to a bright orange. “You killed two of them, Jake. But we think there was a third shooter and maybe a driver.” Again he threw the butt out the window.

“That’s not what I meant. Who hired them?”

Shaking his head emphatically, Franz said, “Don’t know. As you might guess, Interpol took the lead on the investigation, considering Anna was one of their own and might have been targeted because of her work in counter terrorism.”

“But they didn’t find crap,” Jake said, not able to hide his displeasure.

The old cop shook his head.

Jake stared straight ahead. “They weren’t after Anna,” he said. “Somebody wanted me dead.”

“But who?” Franz asked. “That could be a long list. I’m sure you’ve pissed off a lot of people in the past couple of decades in the Agency. Most Eastern Europe governments, the Turks, the old Soviets and the new Russians, not to mention many government agencies in Western Europe.”

This was all speculation on the part of his Austrian friend. “Don’t forget the Irish Republican Army,” Jake reminded him.

“Or any number of private citizens you’ve angered with your more recent investigations.”

“All right. I get it. It was only a matter of time.” In the past two months Jake had run every one of those he had worked with in the past couple decades through his mind, trying like hell to find out who had wanted to kill him. Most of his work as a private security consultant had gone under the radar, he was sure. But his work in a number of CIA operations in Europe were a concern. The Agency would be sure to look into that angle on their own. A part of him wished he had died that night with Anna. But a part deep inside him wanted to live, needed to find out who killed Anna. If he couldn’t protect her, he had to do that much for her. A reason to live.

Silence as they drove closer to Jake’s old apartment building.

“How was Anna’s funeral?” Jake asked his old friend.

“Very nice.” He let out a cloud of smoke and continued, “I had Stefan Beck video the whole event. We wanted to study it to see if we could find someone who shouldn’t be there.”

“I should’ve been there,” Jake said emphatically.

“You were on your third surgery at the time. I made a copy of the video. Under the seat.”

Jake found a thick folder there, which he opened and looked inside. There were stacks of papers, a DVD, and a number of photos.

“All of those items are also scanned on the DVD,” Franz said, “but I thought you’d want to see them in hard copy first. Check to see if you recognize anyone out of the ordinary.”

He looked at the photos first. Jake had finally convinced Anna to take vacation. He would teach her to fly fish, his only true passion. The photos were from the shooting scene at the cabin he and Anna had rented along the river fifty kilometers from Innsbruck. None showed Anna’s bullet-ridden body. Franz had been smart enough to remove those. But there were shots from nearly every angle, including those from where the men had shot outside. Franz had included a couple close up shots of the two men Jake had killed. He didn’t recognize either man. Briefly he flipped through the papers. There were polizei briefs on the dead men, autopsy reports from all those who died, including Anna, and an Interpol summary of the investigation, which seemed to be at a standstill. Jake read Anna’s autopsy report first. Jesus. He’d forgotten she had taken two bullets to the chest, one to the stomach, and a fourth to her right arm. A fifth had taken out her femoral artery. She would’ve died from those wounds if she’d been shot ten feet from a surgery suite.

When he finally looked up, he saw that Franz had pulled over to the side of the road in front of Jake’s old apartment building. Jake still owned the apartment, but he’d been renting it out for a while.

“What we doing here?” Jake asked, as he shoved everything back into the envelope.

“You need a place to stay.”

“What about my tenant?”

Franz lit another cigarette, his eyes drifting across the road to the river. “He moved. Once he found out you were almost killed, he decided to find another place.”

“Probably a smart idea. I’ve gotta get my stuff in Vienna, though.”

The old polizei officer turned, his gaze solemn. “It’s already up there. Anna’s parents took her things back to Kitzbuhel and I had your items brought here. You didn’t have much, though.”

“What about my Golf? We took Anna’s car to the mountains and left mine outside our apartment in Vienna.”

Franz coughed and put out the last of his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “It’s gone.”

“Someone stole it? Great.”

“No,” Franz said, “it was blown all to hell. Along with a bomber. Not a very good one, I guess. We think he was setting the Semtex when it went off.”

“When did this happen?”

“Two days ago.”

Jake thought about that, trying to make sense of it. “I was supposed to leave the hospital two days ago, but one of the doctors was out of town until today and wanted to see me one more time before my release.”

“I know. Someone else didn’t, though. They expected you to go back to Vienna and fire up the car. Boom.” He hesitated and then looked sternly into Jake’s eyes. “Someone still wants you dead, my friend.”

Great. But he didn’t plan on going gently into the night. At least not until he found out who’d hired the men to kill him and had actually killed Anna by mistake.

“Why not just finish me off in the hospital?”

Franz hunched his shoulders. “We had the place covered twenty-four seven,” he said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come by to see you. As you might know, my doctor is in Vienna. When I wasn’t losing my hair, I was trying to find who killed Anna. I had to stay on the job for that.”

“I understand, Franz.” Jake put his hand on his old friend’s arm. The man’s muscles seemed to be almost gone along with his hair. He tightened his jaw and took back his hand.

“I have to go back to Vienna for two weeks,” Franz said. “I’ll dig deeper. You take care, my friend.”

“This is the first place they’ll look,” Jake said, his head nodding toward the apartment building.

Franz reached over and opened the glove box, producing a .40 caliber Glock 22 automatic and handing it to Jake.

Without thinking, Jake cleared the gun, checking the standard 15-round magazine, before shoving it back into the handle and cycling a round into the chamber.

“Jacketed hollow points. Your personal gun?” Jake asked him.

“One of them.” Franz smiled. “The trigger is set to two kilos. Just the way you like it.”

“Got any extra mags?”

Franz opened a center console, found two full magazines, and handed them to Jake. “I’m your new client, Jake. I hope you’ll take the gun as initial payment to find Anna’s killer.”

He didn’t have to do that, and Jake knew it. “You know I’d do this without a client.”

“I know. And I understand after your little adventure in Bulgaria you don’t need the money.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake said, a smile barely crossing his lips. “But what about Austrian justice?”

Franz laughed so hard he started to cough. When he was back under control, he said, “We have no death penalty in Austria. I think you know this.”

“Your prisons are nicer than American military barracks.”

“So you understand,” Franz reiterated.

Yeah, he understood. His good friend, a man who had dedicated his entire adult life to the Austrian Polizei, wanted more justice than his system could provide. And now he was asking Jake to hang out and wait for unknown men to come and try to kill him, so he could kill the bad guys first. Self defense. Jake could live with that. Hopefully.

3

Berlin, Germany

Gustav Vogler pulled his Polizei Mercedes to the curb alongside the northern edge of the Tiergarten, the city’s largest park, where the Spree River snaked gently through plush forest on one side and an upscale residential area on the other. Gustav had been the lead Polizei homicide investigator for the city and state of Berlin for the past two years. Prior to that he’d held the same position for the state of Bavaria, with Munich his primary concern.

In the passenger seat was Gustav’s assistant, Andreas Grosskreuz, who’d followed the inspector from Munich. The two of them had worked together for the past ten years, and could almost finish each other’s sentences. But where Andreas was still relatively young in his early thirties—a handsome man with dark hair and eyes, who still attracted the attention of pretty college-age women—Gustav was twenty years his senior with deep crow’s feet, consternation wrinkles across his forehead, and gray hair sprinkled generously across his close-cropped military haircut. Still, Gustav knew he could stick with his younger counterpart physically and mentally, with the exception of a foot race. Andreas was like a damn rabbit to Gustav’s turtle.

Gustav shoved another stick of nicotine gum into his mouth and chewed vigorously. His doctor told him a week ago to quit smoking or he’d die just like his father at age sixty. So he was weaning himself off the smokes with the gum and the patch.

“How do you like the gum?” Andreas asked his boss.

The gruff inspector looked down his nose as he chomped every gram of flavor from the gum. “It’s like chewing cigarette butts. I prefer my filterless cigarettes. But what can I do? The doctor reports me to my superiors and they suspend me and send me through that quit smoking program. I hear they use electrical probes—shock therapy.”

Andreas laughed. “I don’t think so. But that gum will kill you slower. Eventually you’ll have to quit that as well.”

He had a point. But his job was killing him fast enough. A half hour ago, while the two of them ate lunch, they’d gotten a call saying an American tourist from New York had spotted another body in the Spree. Gustav thought about the past few years in Berlin. Murders were up. Not to the level of American cities, but a concern nonetheless. He didn’t know how long before his boss would ship him off to Leipzig or Dortmund. Maybe someplace sedate to let him fade until retirement. Tightening his strong jaw against the gum, he shook his head with that thought. Not before he caught the bastard who was making him look bad in Berlin, he thought.