It was starting to get dark in Steyr, and Miko Krupjak and his two Brothers, Jiri and Grago, still had not found the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Gustav Albrecht. They had visited six gasthauses within a short distance of the Vogl Restaurant, where Albrecht had used his visa. Miko had guessed the man would not stay in one of the larger hotels, since they would require a visa. He would be spending cash on a gasthaus. But why had he used a credit card at the restaurant? Habit, perhaps.
Miko pulled up to a small structure, a two-story gasthaus on the Enns River, two kilometers from where that river met the Steyr River in the city. He shut down the Skoda and glanced to his right at Jiri. “Well? Is this our lucky place?”
“I hope so,” Jiri said, unbuckling his belt and heading out the door. “Only one good thing comes from Steyr. . .guns.”
Grago, in the back seat, was barely awake. He yawned and said, “I got a good feeling about this place. This is where I’d stay.”
Miko agreed and the three of them went to the front desk. A man in his mid forties, overweight with floppy jowls, came from a back room to the desk.
When Miko asked about Albrecht, the man shrugged and said he had never heard of the guy. Miko pulled out a photo and showed it to the clerk. His eyes darted toward Grago and Jiri before settling on Miko.
“I’ve never seen the man,” the gasthaus clerk said.
It took Grago just two seconds to round the corner of the counter, grab the man by the back of his neck, and smash his face into the wooden desk. He followed that with a punch to the man’s kidney, dropping him to his knees. The clerk struggled to breath.
“Check his records,” Miko said to Jiri. All gasthauses in Austria kept a book with the name of guests and their cars. Just in case they tried to skip without paying. Most also kept a photo copy of passports or European international drivers’ licenses.
Jiri knew exactly what to look for, having spent so much time on the road. There were only six guests in the place. Two couples and two singles. None were Albrecht.
The clerk had recovered some and rose to his feet. “What do you want?” he said. “I don’t have much money.”
Grago pretended to punch the man and the clerk flinched, bringing a laugh from the Czech.
Miko said, “Help my man find your photocopies and you’ll be fine. If you don’t, then you could take a swim in the Enns.” He mocked a shiver. “I suspect that would be cold today.”
Grago dragged the clerk to the back room and the man found a file in his desk, handing it to Jiri.
Flipping through the file, Jiri stopped when he saw the driver’s license for Gustav Albrecht. “What’s this?”
The clerk didn’t answer.
Grago shook his head and then punched the man in the face, his nose bursting with blood instantly and knocking the man back into his desk chair, and that smashing into the back wall.
When they got to Albrecht’s room on the second floor, Miko told the other two to let him do the talking. The man would have too many questions, Miko knew that much.
They had the pass key from the desk clerk, so Miko quietly turned the key and then the three of them burst into the room.
Gustav Albrecht was laying on his bed watching a German game show on the tiny TV. To say he was surprised would have been a complete understatement. But Miko didn’t expect the man to recognize any of them.
“I know you,” Albrecht said with a soft voice and his head cocked to one side trying his best to remember how.
Miko didn’t have time for questions. He’d come prepared. He shoved one of Albrecht’s socks in the man’s mouth and then ran tape around his head a couple of times. Satisfied, Miko had his two men haul the Grand Master out of his room—Grago punching the guy in the stomach for trying to pull away.
●
Sitting down the road five hundred meters, with a nice view of the front door of the gasthaus on the Enns River, Toni Contardo tried to adjust her eyes to the complete darkness. They had followed the three men in the Skoda to nearly every gasthaus in Steyr.
“You sure Jake didn’t tell you where he dumped Albrecht?” Toni asked Kurt.
In the passenger seat, Kurt peered through a pair of night vision goggles. “Positive. He thought it would be better if only he knew.”
Made sense, Toni thought. “These guys are definitely looking for him, though.”
“What do we do?” Kurt said, glancing at Toni for a second and then back through his NVGs. “It’s not like we can haul their ass in. They’d just say they were looking for their long-lost uncle. Wait a minute. Here we go. Three in and four out. Two dragging one of them. Gotta be Albrecht.”
“Shit.” Toni started the car. “They’re gonna take him out and shoot him. Drop him off in the woods.”
“Or throw him in the river. But why bother? Why not just pop him there and run?”
That got Toni thinking. They had tried killing the guy at the Donau Bar. Now they haul him off. What’s changed? Maybe she should have let Jake in on the case. After all, he was the one hired by the Order.
“Could you try calling Jake again?” Toni asked. Then she pulled out onto the road, keeping a good distance back from the Skoda.
Kurt tried again, but got the same result as the last five times he had tried, once they were sure the men in the Skoda were heading for Steyr—no answer and no message service. He got onto his computer and pulled up a few phone numbers. They could send someone from the embassy to look for Jake. But where would they begin to look? While on his computer, he pulled up the information he had downloaded on Hermann Conrad, the person who paid for the apartment by the Bristol Hotel in Vienna. Damn it. He had missed it the first time around.
Toni turned right in the direction of the autobahn, the Skoda taking its time up in front of them.
“Crap,” Kurt said.
“What?” Toni looked concerned.
“This Conrad dude. He was a Brother in the Teutonic Order. Not ordained, though.”
“How long ago?”
“Up until the German reunification,” Kurt said, scrolling down a page. “Then he started a bunch of companies, trying his best to capitalize on capitalism. His current company is called Marienburg Biotechnik, with its headquarters in Magdeburg, Germany.”
“Bioengineering?”
“Looks like it.”
That made no sense, Toni thought. What was a businessman doing hanging around a bunch of thugs like Miko, Jiri and Grago?