Cringing with that thought, Hermann said, “What do we do?”
Franz smiled. “I’m on medical leave.”
“Come on. You must have some great wisdom in this matter.”
Letting his replacement sweat, Franz finally said, “All right. I got Jake Adams out of town and told him not to return until things settle down.”
“You did? But I need to question the man. He shot and killed a man in his own living room.”
“It was self defense. I attest to that. Also, if you’ll check your e-mail, you’ll find a video from Jake’s security system that will show you the attempt on his life.” Franz turned and started to leave, but hesitated and twisted back toward Hermann Jung. “And that wasn’t a triple homicide near Kitzbuhel two months ago. Three men tried to kill Jake. Instead, they killed his girlfriend, who was an officer with Interpol. Jake killed two men and a third got away.”
Hermann didn’t seem to appreciate being corrected, especially in front of his people. He simply tightened his jaw and flexed his muscles.
Franz shook his head and left Hermann Jung there to get things wrong. When he left Innsbruck a few years ago to take over the Vienna office, he thought he had left the city in good hands. Now he was questioning himself on that note.
Once the old dying former kriminal hauptkommisar of Tirol left the apartment, Hermann Jung crouched down close to the younger woman still working on Jake Adams’s computer. Hermann had elevated Sabine Bauer a couple of levels since taking over criminal investigations in Tirol. He told everyone she was a computer expert, which she was, but there were others with equal expertise. However, he wasn’t secretly sleeping with them.
“Did you hear any of that?” Hermann asked. He wanted to touch her shoulder or run his hands through her short silky hair. Wanted even more to run his hands over her large breasts or take her from behind as she looked over the crime scene. Nothing turned that woman on more than the sight of death.
“Yes, sir,” she said softly, her fingers still typing away at the computer. “What will you do?”
“Put out a bulletin on Jake Adams. He’s a material witness to a murder.”
“Self defense,” she reminded him, her eyes shifted to the side catching Hermann’s smile.
“According to a dying man. Certainly not unbiased. Franz Martini is treating the man like a son. Either that or he has a man crush.”
Sabine laughed internally, her chest rising. “If you name Jake Adams a suspect in the murder we might find him sooner.”
Hermann moved in closer to Sabine, as if he was interested in something on the computer screen. He was close enough now to smell her perfume — the scent he had bought for her and insisted she wear at all times. “I like the way you think. Now, think about what we’re going to do to each other tonight at your place.”
“What about your wife?” Sabine asked.
He reached to the keyboard and intentionally touched her hand, but tried to make it look like he was showing her something on the screen. “With a fresh shooting, she’ll know not to expect me.”
“Too bad there wasn’t more crime in Tirol,” she said.
That’s what he was thinking. But with Jake Adams running around with a price on his head anything was possible.
Sitting in his apartment gazing at multiple LCD computer screens, the sound of server fans humming in the background, Sergei Lobanov Kozerski, sucked on a straw infusing his body with Coke. The liquid kind. He didn’t take drugs. Rarely drank more than a shot or two of vodka a day. He needed his brain functioning at its peak to run all of his computer enterprises, and none were as important as his current job, he knew.
When an alarm went off on one screen, he swiveled in his chair and opened the file that had given him the alarm. He smiled. “I’ve got you now, you American bastard,” he said in Russian aloud. The man had used his ATM card in St. Anton, Austria. But why? Crap. He didn’t get paid to ask why. It was just his job to track the man the best he could. So what if this Jake Adams guy had taken out money in a resort town. Why? He obviously needed cash.
He picked up his cell phone from the desk and sent a text message to his contact. Then he flipped the phone shut and waited patiently for the call. He had waited only two minutes before his phone burst out with a tune from Mozart’s Requiem. Part of him was afraid to answer. The man was a beast. But at least he had good news for him.
“Yes,” Sergei answered.
“What do you have?” his contact asked.
Sergei told him about the ATM use by Adams in Austria, not providing any more information than necessary. He had tried that before and nearly got his head ripped off through the phone.
“Good work. Now, it’s getting late. He must be staying at a hotel in the area. See if Adams uses his Visa.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“Compile a list of gasthauses in the area. Use your fake Polizei credentials to ask about Adams. The American is smart. He’ll probably be staying somewhere outside town. Someplace isolated. Check on those first and then move back toward St. Anton.”
His contact hung up and Sergei did the same, a smile on his face as he sucked down some more cola.
The Russian, Anton Zukov, shoved his cell phone back into his pocket. That man in Frankfurt was worth every Euro he paid him. Sure he would have to be suppressed at some point, but hopefully not for a long time. He needed the man too much. And every bit of intel he had given him had turned out to be helpful.
When the text message had come to him, he’d been sitting down for a beer with his boss before dinner. He’d gotten up and gone back to the bathroom to talk and now made his way back into the main dining area, sitting down across from his boss, Viktor Pushkin, a man in his mid-forties impeccably dressed in a fine Italian suit.
“A problem, Zuk?” Viktor asked him. He stroked his thick fingers along his strong jaw-line that was accented by a one-centimeter, exactly one centimeter, black beard that ran from his close-cropped black hairline above his ears to his chin, up each side of his mouth and over his thin lips, and then a tiny strip of hair shot straight down from his bottom lip to join at the end of his square chin.
Zukov glanced about the room at all of their men stationed at various locations — some at tables, one at the bar, and others outside in the cars, which he couldn’t actually see but knew were still there. His boss went nowhere without his security detail. Although he looked like any other successful businessman in Berlin, Viktor Pushkin carried himself with more confidence than anyone he’d ever known. And why not? It was easy to be confident when backed with so many guns. Like the bully on the playground, he only picked on the weak when backed by friends too scared to stand up to him. But this Jake Adams didn’t seem to be intimidated by anyone or anything.
Zukov repositioned his watch cap on his head, his only nervous habit. “Just the opposite.” He explained what their man in Frankfurt had just told him.
“Have you redirected assets yet?”
A test? Maybe. “No, sir. I’m waiting for your order.”
Viktor Pushkin smiled with approval, a rare occasion when he actually showed his imperfect protruding canines. “Go ahead. Make the call.”
He eagerly did just that. Figuring the time it would take from Innsbruck, he guessed they would be there within the hour. When he was done, he triumphantly slapped his phone shut.
“Is Sergei going to keep looking?”
“Yes, sir. I told him to check on outlying gasthauses in case Adams used the cash from the ATMs for that purpose.”
“Good idea. Still no word on a vehicle?”