Hot Start (13 page)

The German passport control officer rocked a blue uniform shirt, a salt-and-pepper goatee, and a palpably hostile attitude.

“Purpose of your visit to Germany?”

“To use the bathroom. Then it’s on to Prague.”

“Purpose of your visit to Prague?”

“Goulash.”

He flipped through the pages of my passport without looking up at me.

“You think you are funny?”

“I have my moments.”

“This is not the place to be funny.”

“Whatever you say.”

He stamped my passport and handed it back with two fingers, glaring at me. “Enjoy your goulash.”

“Auf Wiedersehen.”

I’d been less than cordial. I admit that. He was probably a nice guy and Germans on the whole are a lovely people. But there was something about setting foot in the Fatherland that always brought out the ugly American in me. Two wars and tens of millions of lives lost can have that effect, I suppose. My attitude brightened measurably after an espresso and a plate of warm strudel in one of the airport’s many cafés. Two hours and a connecting flight later, I was in the Czech Republic.

To say Prague is beautiful is to say water is wet. From the backseat of my taxi, splashed in moonlight, the ancient city was a masterpiece of medieval spires and graceful stone bridges. Below the bridges, diners cruised the gentle currents of the Vltava River on flat-hulled ferries, each with its own live music, while on the cobblestone streets of the old quarter, trolleys and horse-drawn carriages mixed with throngs of tourists from across the globe snapping smartphone photos and laughing.

Commanding the heights above it all was the thousand-year-old Prague Castle, lit up like something out of Disneyland, only exquisitely real and vastly larger. The sight of it brought back mixed memories. The first time I’d been to Prague, I’d helped to terminate an al-Qaeda financier from Cairo who’d been vacationing with his mistress at a five-star hotel down the hill from the castle. Our three-man team had lured him to a dinner meeting at an Indian restaurant with false promises of man-portable, Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. The shrimp curry I ate that night was excellent, surpassed only by the lamb vindaloo. Afterward as we strolled to his hotel to close the deal and celebrate with a nightcap, I pulled security while my two teammates forced the Egyptian into an alley and slit his throat.

I digress, however.

A few blocks from the American embassy, my driver turned down a narrow lane, and stopped in front of an elegant boutique hotel called the Alchymist Nosticova Palace, its window boxes filled with geraniums like those Mrs. Schmulowitz grew back in Rancho Bonita. The American taxpayer may have pinched pennies flying me coach class to Prague, but my digs here were anything but cheap. Antique furnishings. Persian rugs. Fresh roses in cut crystal vases. A canopy bed. French windows that opened out onto the old city. Hell, even a bidet. Calling the place “luxurious” would’ve done the term luxurious a disservice.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” The aging bellman propped my duffel on a folding luggage stand. His English was thickly accented and the hems of his pant legs were slightly too high, exposing a flash of white sweat socks.

“That should do it.” I tipped him a couple of bucks. “Thanks.”

“My name is Andrej,” he said, bowing appreciatively in that European way. “Do you wish for a night girl with good body? I know where there is all the hot ones.”

“That’s OK, Andrej. It’s been a long day. Think I’ll try and get some shut-eye.”

“Yes, of course. Please enjoy your stay.” He turned to go, then paused. “I wish not to alarm you, but as you should want to know: A man, he ask for your room number, before you arrived. He was aware you would be a guest of the hotel. He told me he would like to meet you. Here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a slip of paper with an address on it.

“Why would that alarm me?”

Andrej hesitated. “I have seen this man before,” he said, “on the television. He is very dangerous, this man.
Very
dangerous.”

A few minutes later, that very dangerous man and I were sitting eye-to-eye, waiting to see who would make the first move.

TEN

T
he dangerous man’s name would not all fit in my mouth. Too many vowels, too many consonants. To make it easier for all concerned, we’ll call him Charlie Manson.

Not that he much looked like the notorious homicidal nut job who had been sent to prison for life after terrorizing Los Angeles back in the late sixties. He was taller and considerably heavier than the real Manson. Younger, too—and he didn’t have a swastika carved into the middle of his forehead. This Charlie’s hair was neatly combed and he was wearing a well-tailored gray business suit with a burgundy silk shirt, open at the collar. But when he removed his two-toned Carrera sunglasses, what he did have was Manson’s black, lifeless eyes. The eyes of a man who killed without remorse.

A busty blonde barmaid in a too-small New York Yankees T-shirt, her wide hips levered into tight jeans, sashayed over to our table, wiping her hands on a dish towel, looking tense. Charlie stared at her breasts without ever looking up at her face and said something to her in Czech. She set a couple of coasters down without a word and made her way back to the bar, hips swinging. He watched her go. So did the two goons in leather jackets with the Neanderthal brows occupying a nearby booth who’d accompanied Charlie. Why, I wondered, does every goon regardless the country always wear a leather jacket?

“I ordered you a Falkon Cosa Nostra,” Charlie Manson said with a Czech accent. “Best beer in all of Prague.”

“Much obliged, but I don’t drink.”

“You will. This is the best. Forget about it.”

He looked like the villain in a low-budget direct-to-video movie. “It’s one in the morning,” I said. “What’s with the shades?”

“They make me look badass.”

You’ve got to admire that kind of candid self-awareness. He could’ve said his eyes were sensitive to the light, something lame like that, but no. He knew the sunglasses made him look even more menacing than he already was.

We were sitting in a seedy, all-but-deserted beer hall not far from Wenceslas Square in one of Prague’s sketchier neighborhoods. Back at the hotel, Andrej the bellman had briefed me on the guy who now sat across from me. “Charlie” ran a private security firm that recruited former cops, mostly from Russia, paying them to spy on, intimidate, and sometimes kill, the political opponents of real estate tycoon Emil Sokol, reputed godfather of the Czech Mafia. Czech authorities had repeatedly investigated both Charlie and Sokol for murder, among myriad other crimes. In each case, the charges were mysteriously dropped. I found it a little bizarre—make it
plenty
bizarre—that Charlie was the operative the FBI had vetted and whom Buzz had made arrangements for me to meet with, but, hey, the clandestine world is rife with strange bedfellows. You take your chances, or you opt out and go to work for Sears.

“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Charlie said, leaning back in his chair and studying his varnished, manicured nails. “In cash or wired to my personal account in Zurich.”

“That’s a lot of lettuce.”

“A reasonable finder’s fee. Once I have the funds, I will do my utmost to make the necessary arrangements for you to spend quality time with the gentleman you’ve come to see.”

“That gentleman being Emil Sokol, correct?”

He shrugged.

“Five hundred thousand could be a problem. I don’t usually carry that kind of money.” I unfolded my wallet and checked. “Yep, looks like I’m about half-a-million short, give or take twenty bucks.”

Charlie watched the barmaid. “Talk with your people. We can meet again in the morning.”

“I can talk to them until pigs sprout wings. They’re not going to pay that kind of money.”

“These are the terms. Nonnegotiable.”

The barmaid arrived with two thick glass tankards of amber-colored beer. He waited, staring me down, until she was gone, then raised his tankard in toast.

“Na zdraví.”

I put the beer to my lips and pretended to sip. I could taste the hoppy goodness. I wanted to swallow in the worst way. Somehow I didn’t.

Charlie watched me. “Good, yes?”

“Definitely end of movie. You’re aware of who I’m working for, yes?”

“A certain chief executive officer. I hear rumors.”

“And you work for Emil Sokol, yes?”

He shrugged, sipping his beer.

“I would think men like your boss would recognize the potential value of doing men like my boss a solid,” I said. “The old quid pro quo—Mr. Sokol does something for him, possibly he does something for Mr. Sokol down the road. No guarantees, certainly, but you can see the value in what I’m proposing.”

He put his glass down and calmly folded his hands on the table. “Five hundred thousand dollars, US, or nothing.”

“I can assure you right now, my friend, that’s not going to happen.”

“As you wish.”

He gulped down the rest of his drink, pushed back from the table, and stood, barking orders in Czech to the two goons. They hurried outside, presumably to fetch his car.

“I’ll be sure and let my guy know how this went,” I said. “I have a feeling that when your guy finds out how my guy could’ve owed him one, only you were too greedy to let it happen, neither one’s going to be too happy. If you change your mind, you know where to find me for the next day or two.”

Charlie gave me a cold smile. “A pleasure to meet you. Enjoy your evening,” he said as he left.

The barmaid came over, visibly relieved. “He is your friend?” she asked me in passable English.

“Not hardly.”

“I did not think so. He leaves without paying.”

Charlie Manson had stiffed me for the bar tab.

T
HE
WEATHER
was cool but not unpleasantly so. I walked back to the hotel. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do unarmed in the middle of the night, on the wrong side of the tracks, in a foreign city, but I had no other option. No taxis or trolleys were running at that hour in that part of town, none that I could see anyway.

Along Zborovska Street, a bustling boulevard in daylight, now all but deserted, a transvestite hooker was leaning in the doorway of a shop that sold antique coal-burning stoves restored to their original pot-bellied glory.

“Got a light?” His English was nearly without accent.

“No.”

He wore a short black leather skirt, knee-high black boots over fishnets, an orange tube top under a studded, short-waisted denim jacket, and a straight ebony hair wig with bangs, like Cher’s. Too much makeup. Way too much perfume. It was his arms that gave him away. Too much muscle definition. The arms never lie. He fired up his cigarette as he fell in beside me.

“Whatever it is you’re selling,” I said, “I’m not buying.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing, honey.”

“Such is life.”

About three blocks from my hotel, I walked past a stone church that I had noticed driving in from the airport. I turned down a narrow side street. The hooker tagged along beside me, struggling to keep up on four-inch heels.

“Slow down, honey. Where do you go?”

“Nirvana, hopefully. But first, according to the Buddha, I have to perfect a state of dispassion. Then and only then can I achieve freedom from suffering.”

He turned his head, exhaling a stream of smoke, and glanced over his shoulder. “Are all Americans this weird?”

“We prefer ‘delightfully eccentric.’ ”

His backward glance and my gut should have warned me that what was weird was him hurrying along with me the way he was. I should’ve recognized that there was something telling in the anxious manner in which he looked back, over his shoulder. In hindsight, I realized that I hadn’t felt threatened by him. That was my mistake.

He accelerated his step, turned back in my direction with his hips squared and fists balled and punched me hard in the face. I knew instantly that my nose was broken. Whoever said you see stars when your beak breaks has never suffered a true break. What you see are entire galaxies. I shrugged off the shock of the blow and ducked a millisecond before he landed a second punch, a big roundhouse right, coming up underneath him and slamming him linebacker-style into the brick wall of an apartment building. I heard something crack. I’m not sure if it was his back or his skull. Maybe both. Either way, he dropped to the cobblestone street, moaning, and didn’t try to get up. I booted him right in his panties to make sure he stayed there. Why he’d attacked me was a question I didn’t have time to explore before it was answered for me.

Sprinting like Dobermans from around the corner, angling straight at me, were the two goons I’d seen in the bar with Charlie Manson less than an hour earlier. Something told me they weren’t coming to help me with my nose.

The taller of the two led the way. The street was dark but the light from the boulevard was close enough and bright enough that I could see the full-frame semiauto he was drawing from the shoulder rig under his flapping leather jacket. The pistol had an elongated barrel, equipped with what some might call a “silencer,” even though no such thing exists, despite what Hollywood would have you believe. A silencer really is a suppressor, designed to reduce the sound of the explosion a round makes when it’s discharged. No gunshot can ever be completely silenced. But that’s not really the point. The point is, he was swinging the barrel of the pistol toward me, and then he double-tapped two rounds on the run. That was his mistake, not stopping to aim.

I juked right and the bullets went left, thudding into a blue PVC recycling bin behind me. He didn’t get off a third shot. I didn’t give him the chance. As he came on, I rolled right and he pivoted awkwardly, trying to adjust his fire. His momentum and adrenaline had carried him too close to me. I kicked his feet out from under him, then quickly reversed, bending his wrist back, the one that was attached to his gun hand, slipped my index finger through the trigger guard where his index finger already was, squeezed, and put a bullet in his forehead.

Bringing up the rear, Goon Number Two screeched to a stop like he was in a Roadrunner cartoon, turned, and ran.