The phone clicked off and Jake shrugged. Anna locked the door and came down the path.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Who was on the phone?”
“Kurt Lamar. The boys are on the move somewhere. He’ll call us back later.”
Anna pointed the car down the mountain and used gravity to plow through the snow. When they got to the main road, they discovered the snow plows had been working all night. But the roads were still hard-packed snow, which would slow down their drive. It was only about 60 kilometers to St. Johann in Tirol, but they would have to traverse a fairly substantial mountain pass along route 161 on the way to Kitzbuhel. Yet, if Jake knew the Austrian road crews, they would have that road salted down and peppered with gravel, trying their best to let skiers reach the new powder.
Jake got his laptop out and downloaded his e-mail with his cell phone. He looked over the plans for the Conrad castle. Damn. That would be one tough place to enter. Then he saw the elevation scheme and he had his way in. Get to the high ground and work your way down to the back side. The mountains there nearly acted as a back wall.
Out on highway 168 between Kaprun and Uttendorf, Jake’s phone rang again.
“Yeah? What’s all that noise?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Kurt said. “We followed the cars into town to the local indoor skating arena.”
“Let me guess,” Jake said, “they’re all playing hockey.”
“Damn, you did guess.”
Jake mentioned he had gotten the e-mail and suggested he and Anna come in from the back. After dark, of course. They set up a time to move in, just in case they couldn’t communicate. They both hung up.
“Hockey?” Anna said.
“Yep.”
“Maybe they’ll kill each other. You’ve got to be hungry. There’s a place just up ahead in Uttendorf. A bakery. We can grab some coffee there also.”
“Outstanding.”
“Super.” She smiled at him.
In St. Johann, at the indoor hockey arena, Toni cradled a cup of hot coffee between her gloved hands, trying to get them warm. Although the ice rink was indoors, the stands were not heated. Only the concession area was, and she couldn’t watch the hockey players from there.
There were only a few people in the stands now, and Toni didn’t know how long she could stay there without drawing attention. The few people looked to be the wives of local players. Players who must have had no idea the mess they were about to get into, playing against former Olympians and national players from Germany, the Czech Republic, and who knew where else.
The locals were taking a beating, physically and on the score board. Conrad’s men seemed to take great pleasure in smashing their opponent into the boards more than scoring. Although younger, the local men were clearly no match for the older, more experienced skaters.
Suddenly, Toni heard Kurt in her earpiece. “I’m going through their bags now,” he said. “Let me know if anyone heads toward the dressing room.”
“Gotcha,” she whispered. “Remember, Miko was wearing the long leather coat. Plant one there.”
“Found it. Hang on.”
A woman in her mid twenties sat down a few feet from Toni, making it impossible to talk now.
The woman cringed when a hockey player was hit hard and fell to the ice. “That wasn’t legal,” she said to Toni in German. “Is your husband playing? I thought I knew all the wives.”
“No,” Toni said, taking a sip of coffee before it got cold. “I don’t know that much about hockey. At my hotel I heard there was a game here today, so I came over. Is your husband out there?”
“Ja. He’s on the Tirol Polizei team. There. He has the puck.”
Just then one of Conrad’s men checked her husband into the boards and she shook as she watched her husband slump to the ice.
Toni keyed her mic and said, “So that’s the Polizei team. Who are they playing?”
The woman shrugged. “I don’t know them. They’re good, but a little rough. They play like Americans and Canadians.”
“Got it,” came Kurt’s voice. “Meet you at the car.”
Toni got up.
“Leaving?” the woman said.
“Ja. I need to catch some fresh powder.”
Toni walked out and went to her car. Kurt was already there.
“Who were you talking with?” he asked her once she got in and took her seat behind the wheel.
“One of the local wives.”
“So that’s the polizei team?”
“Right. A little irony there. Looks like Conrad’s boys are taking it out on the local cops in a big way. You plant all the receivers?”
“All I had.” Kurt had a smile on his face.
“What’d you do?”
“I thought about the coat, but figured Miko would hang it up somewhere and we would only get his conversation back to the castle.”
“Good point.”
“So I put it somewhere else.” He waited for her to guess, and when she didn’t, he continued, “His shoes.”
“His shoes. Will we still pick up his conversation?”
“Should be no problem. These new ones are highly sensitive. I’ll crank up the output.”
“And the others?”
He explained how he had slit the back collar on a couple of shirts and then glued it shut with the device inside.
“You sure you didn’t bug one of the cops,” she asked.
“They were using the other locker room. Besides, I remembered what these guys were wearing.”
“Good.” Toni started her Alfa Romeo. “Then let’s get back to the gasthaus for some breakfast and wait for these Bozos to go back to Conrad’s castle.”
She pulled away, her front tires spinning on the packed snow.
Franz Martini sat at his desk in Vienna, contemplating what he should do with the information he had just received from his associate, Jack Donicht.
Cracking a window, Martini lit a cigarette and then slid his chair closer to the draft from the window. “I know I’m not supposed to smoke in the office, Jack, but I really need this one.”
“Do we tell Anna Schult?” Donicht asked. He had his third cup of morning coffee in his hands and he sipped it now.
“Just because this woman has no past beyond a few months ago…does that mean anything?”
“Sir, she has no past.”
Martini knew that all too well. He had brought up the subject himself after they had run her finger prints. “I know. But the bigger question is, what do we do with the information?”
Donicht shrugged. “It’s beyond my pay grade, Franz.”
His too, really. But he did still have the triple murders to investigate, along with the Interpol liaison now. And that man’s murder bothered him even more than the other three. What in the hell were nanoprobes? A bullet he understood. But this? Tiny objects flowing through a body having their way with his cells. How could you combat that? Maybe it was time for him to retire back to Tirol. He’d keep telling himself that until it came true.
“I think we need to play this out, Jack,” Martini said, taking another long hit on his cigarette. He let out the smoke in a stream and said, “Anna should know what we know.”
With that, Martini picked up his secure cell and punched in a number.
When Anna’s cell phone rang, she was in the bakery in Uttendorf, sitting at a window table. Jake was ordering and waiting at the counter for the coffee. He shrugged at her as she picked up the phone from inside her jacket. He guessed it was Martini in Vienna.
“Ja?”
She listened carefully for more than two minutes and then simply said, “Understood.” She flipped off her cell and took a cup of coffee from Jake. He put a plate of pastries on the table between them.