Prague, Czech Republic
“YOU WANT ME to do what?” the young woman behind the reception desk exclaimed.
“I want you to close the Internet café for thirty minutes. I have a very important email to write, and I cannot be disturbed,” Raimond Zurn repeated. His brother Udo stood towering behind him, scowling at the young woman.
“But, Sir, we are full of customers.”
Raimond surveyed the Internet café. “Full of customers? I see only two. Besides, it’s very late. These people should be at home asleep. You’ll be doing them a favor.”
“We are the only twenty-four hour Internet café in Prague and we never close. That’s the owner’s policy. Besides, you’re not my boss. We don’t close the store because a customer wants to work on a computer alone,” she said with nervous conviction.
Raimond smiled. He could snap the girl’s neck so fast that her brain would not even register that she had died, but killing this young woman was entirely unnecessary for him to obtain what he wanted. It was the power to decide the fate of others that intoxicated him. He immersed himself in moments such as these and wished he could slow down time to revel in her uncertainty for hours instead of seconds. The girl’s courage was as real as it was foolish, and he admired her for it.
The smile faded from his face as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of rolled bills.
“Maybe we should start again. In my hand is five hundred euros. I would like to buy thirty minutes of time on all the computers in the café right now.”
“You’re offering me a bribe?”
“No. I’m offering to buy thirty minutes of time on ALL the computers. How you account for the time and payment is up to you.”
The clerk looked down for a moment, considering. Then she nodded and said, “Okay. Thirty minutes for five hundred euros, you have a deal.”
His lips curled into a tight smile. “See, I knew you would make the right decision.”
The young woman turned to her computer and began typing on the keyboard. Groans and expletives filled the air of the café as she systematically performed an administrator logoff of all the computers. She stood up and made an announcement in Czech followed by the same announcement in English.
“I apologize for the inconvenience, but a virus has been detected on our network. To prevent infection of all the computers, this gentleman must perform a virus scan on all workstations. I will give a re-fund to all customers for your remaining time or a voucher for a free hour to be used at another time. Once again, I apologize, and please don’t forget to take your personal items with you when you leave.”
Once the Internet café had emptied, the girl turned to Raimond and asked, “Which computer would you like to use?”
Raimond pointed to a terminal in the back corner against the wall where he had confronted Will Foster.
“That one,” he said.
The woman typed a flurry of keystrokes on the master computer and wrote down a username and password on a slip of paper and handed it to the bounty hunter. “Okay, it’s ready. Just type in this login and password and you will have thirty minutes.”
Raimond snatched the paper from her hand. Then, to his brother he said, “Go and wait by the door. No one enters until I’m finished.”
Udo nodded and took station at the entrance.
Raimond walked to the computer and sat down. He retrieved a portable hard drive from inside his overcoat pocket and then connected a USB cable to one of the open ports on the back of the computer tower. He inserted a CD-ROM into the disc tray and loaded a program designed to copy the entire contents of the computer’s hard drive onto his portable hard drive. In fifteen minutes, the computer’s hard drive was mirrored onto his drive. He disconnected the cable, ejected the CD, and tucked the hardware back inside his gray overcoat.
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.”