“Yeah, what’s up, Kurt? Sounds like you’re driving somewhere.”
“We are. I’m with Toni.” Kurt proceeded to tell Jake about everything that had happened. Albrecht’s kidnapping and where they currently were.
Jake thought about his Austrian geography. He knew most of the major roads in Tirol. “Sounds like you’re just north of St. Johann in Tirol.”
“You’re right, Jake. About twenty kilometers away.”
Shit. Now it was all making sense. They were taking Albrecht to the St. Johann meeting. But why? Jake told Kurt that he would be heading in that direction as soon as possible, and reminded him that he had been hired to watch the man.
“How in the hell did those guys find Albrecht?”
“Don’t know. But they’ve got him.”
They agreed to keep in contact and both hung up.
Time to think, Jake thought. Take a shower.
He had just gotten soaped up when he heard a noise in the bedroom. Anna back from her run. Seconds later, naked and sweaty, she slipped into the shower with him.
He didn’t say a word, but simply ran the shower gel over her body from top to bottom, his hands lingering at her alert breasts.
19
Gustav Albrecht sat in the back seat of the Skoda, the beast Grago to his left. It was hard for Albrecht to believe that any of these men had once been associated with the Order. Perhaps that’s what the Order had used in the past during the many Crusades, but now they were a religious charitable organization. Churches and Kindergartens. Yet, he knew all too well the past of the Teutonic Order — the military aspect — hiring mercenaries to carry out the will of the church. Killing anyone who did not commit to Christ and the church. And they had done great things as well. Built cities, built churches, built civilization where there had been roaming tribes of lawless heathens. Albrecht thought about all of that as the car rolled along a narrow lane toward the mountains. A few minutes ago they had driven through St. Johann in Tirol, turned right, and drove out into the countryside a short distance away.
Now the sun glistened off the snowy peaks to the west as Miko slowed the car when he saw the castle poke out of the forest a few kilometers ahead.
“Would ya look at that,” Miko said. “I get a hard-on every time I see this view.”
To call the structure a castle would have been an overstatement, but to call it a villa would not do it justice either, Albrecht thought. The castle rose up at least four stories, was built of what looked like stone with stucco over parts of that. Two towers rose up, one on each side, the tops of those cone shaped and covered with a slate roof. In fact, the entire castle had a slate roof. On the sides of the windows were red and white striped shutters, non-functioning and decorative.
“What do you want from me?” Albrecht asked no one in particular. When nobody answered, he said, “If this is some attempt at a kidnapping with ransom, I must tell you I don’t have much money.”
Miko laughed. “Right. You make all of your Brothers and Knights vow poverty, while you have a chateau in Kaprun. Is that fair?”
Actually, he had a condo in Kitzbuhel, but that had been passed down from his father. “Well, what then?” Albrecht looked at the back of Miko and Jiri’s heads, and then to Grago. Nothing.
Finally, Miko said, “You’ll see soon enough.”
By now the car had come to a tall gate that extended out from a metal fence that looked electrified. There was no guard, but the gate was covered by two cameras that Albrecht could see.
There was a speaker but Miko didn’t have to say anything. The driver’s window down, a voice simply said, “Welcome to New Marienburg Castle.”
Albrecht’s worst fears were beginning to be realized. He had read his Bratislava priest’s diary, guessed the words had come from Jiri Sikora’s confession, but now he knew that they must be true. Somehow these men had it in their mind that they could start a New Order based on the old military ideals of the Teutonic Order. But to what end?
The gates swung in and Miko drove through, a smirk on his face that was almost giddy.
Anna drove her Audi Quattro on Autobahn A1 toward Linz, Jake in the passenger seat on his laptop computer accessing the net with his cell phone. While he was on the phone he couldn’t take incoming calls, but he needed to do some research. They had decided to take her car, since his was much smaller, and the weather report had predicted heavy snow in the next few days. So Jake had stripped everything out of his VW Golf, including his extra guns and ammo, and packed Anna’s trunk and her black roof coffin with her skis and other outdoor equipment. They would be making a stop in Zell am See before going to St. Johann in Tirol. Anna had something in mind and Jake thought it was a great idea.
“What you finding out about Hermann Conrad?”
Jake clicked at his computer keyboard. “Interesting guy. As you know, he was a Brother in the Order just after his youth, where he excelled in hockey — making it to the German national team and playing in one Olympics.”
“That was way before my time,” Anna said.
“Right. I guess he had a problem with chastity and poverty, though. He started a number of companies that made him quite rich. Even brought back windmills in his native East Germany…well, Sachsen Anhalt, now back to a united Germany. Says he still owns more than a hundred of those white beasts that spin in the countryside there. Provides enough power to run a few cities of a hundred thousand. That’s some power.”
“Wind power is good for our environment,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, but I was talking about political power. He owns a substantial chunk of the power grid now. But this is even more interesting.”
She took her eyes off the road for a second to glance at the screen, and then concentrated again on the road.
Jake continued, “Owns a company now called Marienburg Biotechnik in Magdeburg, Germany.”
“What do they do?”
“Biotech industry. Research and development of bio-tech cures for diseases. Hang on.” Jake clicked through to another site. “Interesting. They have a huge contract with Magdeburg University researching nanotechnology.”
Anna ran her right hand across her black slacks. “These are stain resistant,” she said. “With nanofibers.”
“Yeah? But I think these guys are up to more interesting developments. Looks like this Doctor Wilhelm Altenstein of Magdeburg University is on to something big. He’s working on nanoprobes, or as he calls them nanoinhibitors, to target aberrant cells and kill them.” Jake glanced at Anna, who looked confused. “Here’s an example. You’ve heard of sickle-celled anemia?”
“Yes. Blacks get it.”
“Right. Mostly blacks. Makes some of their red blood an odd crescent shape. The cells are oxygen deficient. Say you could send in nanoprobes or nanoinhibitors to find these odd-shaped blood cells and kill them?”
“They can do that?”
“I don’t know.”
Anna’s phone rang. She picked up. “Ja.” She listened carefully for more than a minute. While on the phone she had to correct her steering, saying “Oh, my God.” She thanked the caller and then clicked the phone shut.
“Who was that?”
Her face was pale. “Franz Martini. They got the toxicology results back from our Interpol liaison. His body was full of nanoprobes.”
“Holy shit! What the hell kind of coincidence is this?”
She couldn’t say a word.
“What do they call that? Nanocide?” Jake asked.
“I was just thinking about what you said. They could send the nanoprobes in to kill bad cells. But what if they simply told the nanoprobes to kill all cells?”
“My God,” Jake said. “They could attack the cells in so many different ways there would be no way to stop the attack.”