Without Options Read online

  Getting out of the car, she made sure she had easy access to her gun under her long leather coat. Then she stepped quietly toward Jake’s place, her eyes shifting from cars lining the street to bushes alongside buildings, her ears concentrating on any noise out of the ordinary. Having been to Jake’s apartment a number of times, she had one advantage. A key. Jake had given it to her in case of emergency years ago. She hoped he hadn’t changed the locks since then. That would take her longer to get inside.

  Moving up to the second floor, her steps as quiet as possible, she hesitated in front of his door, which was still crisscrossed with yellow Polizei crime tape.

  She considered drawing her gun but instead simply took out the key and opened the door. Lights from the street gave her an obscured view of the main room. She stepped through the tape and closed and locked the door behind her. It smelled like death. Dried blood.

  Before turning on the light, she walked to the front room and closed the Rolladens completely, darkening the room except for a few lights on the computer router and a digital clock on an end table. The only sound was from the refrigerator and the soft hum of Jake’s computer.

  She clicked on a small table lamp and sat down at the computer desk. If Jake didn’t want her to get into his computer, she wouldn’t be able to no matter how long she sat there. She turned on the monitor, lighting the room more, and clicked a few passwords. Nothing.

  Getting up, she wandered around the apartment, going down the hall to Jake’s bedroom. She’d been there before with Jake, but only a couple of times when they had been intimate. Moments of weakness after their divorce. Other times either she or he had been with someone else. Yet, she couldn’t help thinking about those times they’d been together, from the early days while working together in the CIA, hanging out in Mediterranean hotels undercover, in more ways than one. Together again in this apartment while she still worked for the Agency and Jake was a private security consultant. Then came Anna.

  In the bedroom now, she clicked on a lamp and glanced at the bed, smiling at how good they’d been together. There was no denying that. And that had never been a problem with them. Their problem had been the constant separation, their jobs. Excuses, she thought, a tear streaking her right cheek, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.

  She sat onto the bed and felt the fine cotton comforter.

  A slight creak. Toni rose, pulled her gun, and hurried behind the bedroom door.

  As the door swung in, Toni clicked back the hammer, pointed the gun at a dark figure, and said, “You move and you die.”

  The man stopped.

  “What brings the Agency to Innsbruck,” the man said, a hint of recognition in his deep voice.

  “Franz Martini?” Toni said. She lowered her gun and de-cocked it. The two of them had met many times while Toni was the station chief in Vienna, and even before that when he was still the kriminal hauptkommisar for Tirol.

  They embraced and then walked to the living room together. Toni took a seat on Jake’s bullet-ridden leather sofa, while Franz rummaged through the refrigerator.

  “A beer?” Franz asked her.

  “Sure.”

  Franz opened two beers and brought one to Toni before taking a seat on a chair across from her.

  She took down a long drink of beer, her eyes concentrating on Franz. He looked terrible. Near death. “How are you, Franz?”

  He laughed. “What you mean to say is, ‘Why aren’t you dead yet.’”

  Toni wasn’t sure what to say. “I heard you were on medical leave.” Before Franz could say anything, she added, “I just heard this morning about Anna and Jake getting shot. I’m sorry. I know how close you two were.”

  He lowered his head somewhat, as if the weight of his skull was too much for his neck to hold up any more. “It was difficult. The two of them were good together.”

  Toni nodded. Regardless of how much sleep she’d gotten on the jet, she was still feeling the effects of the flight. She said, “Any idea where to find Jake?”

  “No. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. And he wouldn’t take me with him, either. I think he thought I was losing a step or two.”

  She gazed at his sad eyes unsure again what to say to him. He was dying right there in front of her.

  When she didn’t say anything, Franz said, “I tried my best to keep Austrian Polizei from tracking down Jake, or from sending a notice to Interpol. My replacement here has a much different idea about Jake than I.”

  “Nobody can replace you, Franz,” she said emphatically, a smile formed at the side of her lips.

  He laughed from the gut and pointed at Toni. “Very smooth, young lady. Kind also.”

  Toni sipped her beer and then said, “You have a theory as to why someone put a contract out on Jake?”

  After finishing his beer, Franz went to the refrigerator and returned with two more beers, handing one to Toni. “Who knows what Jake has gotten himself into this time. He can rub some people the wrong way.” He finished with a shrug.

  She laughed. “Yeah, he can.” He’d pissed her off more than she’d like to admit. “But what do you think is the root reason? Ideology, revenge, or something else?”

  “A million Euros? That sounds personal to me. If it were a State sponsor they would have simply sent a few agents to kill him. And that list could be long. Now, they could be outsourcing the deed to make it look personal and to direct attention away from them.”

  She’d considered all of the options on the flight while she pretended to rest. “Good point. So far we have Turkish Kurds, Bulgarians and Serbs. But with the open market now. . .” She shook her head. “A million Euros will bring out all kinds of bad guys. You could even have Americans getting in on the action.”

  “Exactly. That’s why Jake decided to take off.”

  Toni scanned the room, her eyes stopping on the blood-stained spot near the front door. Well, the blood had been removed with bleach, but that had lightened the hardwood floor. Her gaze returned to Franz. “He waited here for someone to come for him,” she said. “He wanted to keep one alive to interrogate. But one got away. And the other he killed too good on the floor there.” She poked her finger into a bullet hole in the sofa.

  Franz nodded and drank some more beer.

  Toni’s mind wound around and settled on a thought. “He did the same thing at that gasthaus by St. Anton. But that time he got away with one of the men.”

  “Yes.” Franz dropped his head again and then forced it up with a drink of his beer. “We found the second man. Another Serb.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s dead.” He collected his words. “It appears that he was tortured before being shot. Well, he was shot, tortured and then shot again.”

  “Jake?”

  “We have to assume. I could have kept our Polizei under control until we found this man. Self defense is one thing, but. . .”

  “The best defense is a good offense,” she assured him. And she’d like to know what Jake found out from the Serb. “You know Jake. He did what he had to do.”

  He raised his hand in protest. “Hey, I’m on your side, Toni. You think I don’t want him finding who killed Anna? I’ve been looking for the past two months and can’t seem to get one clue. Interpol hasn’t cooperated with me either.”

  Toni wondered about that. And why had she not been notified about Jake getting shot? Something wasn’t right here and she’d find out what that was. She finished her first beer and started into the second one, sucking down half of it. Now she squared her gaze at him and said, “You don’t have a target on you and neither do I. We can work together on this. Find Jake and find out who’s trying to kill him.”

  “And Anna’s killer,” Franz added.

  “Right. Deal?”

  “Deal.” He clanked his beer against hers. “Prosit!”

  “Prosit!”

  She noticed the fly rods hanging from the wall across from her, and remembered Jake taking her to Montana
to his favorite rivers. The beauty was undeniable. Even for a city girl like her. But Jake seemed to fit that place, the sensuous motion of the fly rod drifting over his back, the line flipping out effortlessly and the fly landing in the perfect spot on the river. She, on the other hand, had been hopelessly inept with a fly rod—catching more trees and grass than fish. Yet, Jake had remained patient with her. The mountains calmed him. It was no real surprise he had moved to Innsbruck, with the gorgeous surrounding mountains and the river running through the city. If Jake had to live in Europe, there was almost no better place for him. Vienna was a surprise, though. Jake must have been in love to move there. A great city, but not for Jake.

  They decided to stay the night at Jake’s place, Toni hoping the proximity to his stuff would give her some insight as to where he’d gone. She didn’t like it when Franz insisted she sleep in Jake’s bed, while he took the sofa with a blanket and pillow, but he was persuasive, saying he’d be getting plenty of rest soon enough when he was dead.

  As she lay in Jake’s bed, her eyes on his high ceiling, she could smell him, and that nearly drove her crazy. They’d both been fools over the years, spending more time considering the fate of their country than the destiny of their relationship. A relationship that no longer existed. Jake had moved on with Anna, and Toni had gotten married. And now she saw her husband about as much as she would have seen Jake. The closet was open and she noticed Jake’s favorite leather jacket hanging there. She got up and went to it, feeling through the pockets. Nothing. She ran her hands over the soft black leather, and thought of his strong arms and chest inside. She’d bought the jacket for him in Italy years ago. With great reluctance, she crawled back into bed and pulled the covers to her neck.

  Seconds later she heard footsteps coming down the hallway and she reached for her gun under the pillow. A light knock on the door.

  “Toni. You still awake?” It was Franz.

  “Yeah.”

  The door opened slowly. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, his head around the door but not looking in at her. “But I just got a call from my friend. They found the car Jake had taken from the Serbs.”

  “Where?”

  “Garmish.”

  She mulled that for a moment. “He’s not there.”

  “No, I agree. But could it give us a direction?”

  “I don’t know. Let me sleep on it.”

  He started to pull his head back but stopped and said, “Oh. He took out a German Polizei.”

  She shifted up onto her elbows. “He didn’t kill him.”

  “No. Just embarrassed the man. Dumped coffee on his lap and then knocked him out.”

  Laughing, Toni said, “Sounds like something Jake would do. Use what you have. Had the cop stopped Jake in the Serb’s car?”

  “No. It was early this morning at a bakery. The Polizei had found the car and ran the plates. He was calling it in when Jake took him out. Turns out the guy had been to one of Jake’s counter-terrorism lectures.”

  “What took so long for you to be notified?”

  “Well, Jake took the Serb car and hid it in a residential area. They only found it a few hours ago. Are you sure we shouldn’t go there?”

  “Yeah. He’s long gone.” But she had an idea which direction he might have traveled. “Let’s get some sleep and take off early in the morning.”

  “Wunderbar.” He closed her into the room alone.

  Now she had direction. Sleep came fast.

  11

  Gustav Vogler got a call that a body had been found a few blocks from Karl-Marx-Strasse by a young woman walking her dog. That was an hour ago, when he still lay in bed with his newest girlfriend. He quickly showered, slapped a new nicotine patch onto his arm, shoved enough gum into his pants pockets to last all day, and jumped into his Polizei car. Not even time for coffee or food.

  Now he stood with his assistant, Andreas Grosskreuz, in deep thought as he gazed down at the body of the man in the center of the park. His stomach growled enough for his assistant to stare at Gustav’s gut. It didn’t take a medical genius to see that the dark-skinned man’s neck had been broken. The man’s skinny neck was bruised and swollen and skewed awkwardly like a snake that had swallowed a boomerang.

  With latex gloves on, Gustav searched the pockets of the man. This was much different from the other bodies they’d found over the last two months. Those had all been shot and dropped in the Spree River. Found sometimes a week or more later in various states of decay. This body wasn’t even close to the river or any other water. Maybe the killer wanted this man to be found sooner, Gustav pondered.

  “What do you think, sir?” his assistant asked him. “Is this one related to our case?”

  Damn good question, Gustav thought. He chewed on the large gob of nicotine gum in his mouth. “Could be. Although it doesn’t match the others.” Still stooped down, he gazed around at the scene and his eyes wandered to the edge of the small park. He’d ordered his men to cordon off the entire park and his officers were now carefully walking at arm’s length combing every meter for evidence. They would also photograph the onlookers again. Just in case. Even though they hadn’t gotten any clues like that recently.

  Gustav continued his search of the body.

  “With the others they could have been shot and simply dumped in the Spree,” Andreas said. “Perhaps the killer was interrupted before he could haul away the body.”

  “Perhaps. Ah.” Gustav produced a wallet from the man’s back pocket. In a minute he’d searched every item within the leather wallet and then dropped those into an evidence bag held open by his associate. This made no sense at all, he thought. This was the only body they’d found with identification. Some of those found in the river had eventually been identified, but three men still remained unknown. This identification was too easy.

  “A Turk,” Andreas said, viewing the man’s driver’s license through the plastic. “That’s a change.”

  “Too many changes,” Gustav said. He wasn’t completely certain this was part of their case, but he had a gut feeling it was. “What do you suppose the killer is trying to tell us?”

  Andreas crouched down lower to the level of his boss. “Well, maybe he decided it was time to make us think a little harder. Maybe he wants us to know he can strike anywhere in Berlin, and he doesn’t need to shoot them.”

  “But what’s his motive?” That had bothered Gustav from day one with this case. As far as he could tell there was no motive—other than to kill for the pleasure of killing.

  “Do sick bastards need motive, sir?”

  Gustav searched one more spot on the body, the inside pocket of the man’s jacket. There he found a train ticket from Innsbruck to Berlin. One way. “He just got to town last evening.” In deep thought now, he postulated the meaning of this find. “This makes no sense, Andreas. A man makes a straight line from Austria to Berlin and ends up dead in a small park nowhere near a hotel. A Turk.”

  “Maybe he was traveling from his home to see a relative here in the city,” Andreas said uncertainly.

  The both of them stood again. Gustav placed the ticket stub into an evidence bag and handed it to Andreas.

  “I don’t think so,” Gustav said. “The Orient Express still runs from Istanbul to Venice, and then you can catch a train north through Innsbruck, but it’s not the best route unless you have other business there. It’s better to go Istanbul to Bucharest to Budapest to Vienna and then head north to Berlin. Better yet, take a flight. Plus, he has no bags with him. Unless the shooter took his things.”

  “Maybe he got in, dropped off his bags at a relative’s house and then went for a walk.” Andreas shrugged his shoulders. “Ran into the wrong guy.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gustav said. “Do we have a missing person reported? I doubt it. No. This guy was here for a meeting. He let someone get too close and that got him killed. But he was here for a purpose. He came directly here from the Hauptbahnhof, I’m guessing. If he had a bag he probably left
it at the train station. Have our people check the cameras at the station and see if they can catch this guy on video. Maybe he actually met the killer there. Or perhaps we’ll see if he put a bag in a locker there.”

  “Sir, that could take a long time.”

  “Not really. We know the track, the train and the time he arrived.”

  “Of course. I’ll do it myself.” Andreas hurried off to a patrol car.

  Standing there alone, the medical team waiting at the periphery for his signal to take away the body, Gustav stripped off his latex gloves and shoved them in his pocket. Then he took out another piece of gum and unwrapped it, his eyes on the dead man. He thought for a second about spitting out the old piece of gum, but not at this crime scene. The others had been drop sites. This looked like the kill location. Instead, he simply shoved the new gum into his mouth and added it to the old stuff. God, he wanted a cigarette.

  He thought about the case. Did he finally have a break he could use? Maybe the killer wanted to throw some evidence his way. Wasn’t he too smart to leave all of this behind? Gustav motioned for the medical team to bag the man and then wandered around the scene deep in thought. A case like this could make or break a career. It didn’t matter much to Gustav. He could move on to retire. But he could help his young associate, Andreas. Something like this could come just once in a lifetime of Polizei work. His eyes scanned the buildings surrounding the park, checking to see who might be watching the scene. Nobody out of the ordinary. They needed a break. Maybe this guy had finally made a mistake.

  Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Headquarters

  Moscow, Russia

  A woman in a black karate uniform maneuvered around the hard cushioned floor, her eyes keeping track of three potential young male attackers as her perfectly-toned body moved smoothly and gracefully counterclockwise. Suddenly a man tried to slip in from behind her. As if she had eyes in the back of her head, she thrust her left foot back, catching the man in the stomach and knocking him to the floor. Now the other two thought they found an opening and attacked simultaneously. But the woman shifted quickly to her right, swept her leg and sent one man to the mat. With a twist of her body she snapped a kick to the second man’s groin, dropping him to the ground also. She slid back, brought her fists together at her chest, and bowed her head to the three men, who dejectedly returned the woman’s bow. The three men left the exercise room for the locker room.