Knights of the Blood (14 page)

As he tried to push past the two punkers, the skinhead started to step aside, theri lashed out with a vicious kick, his Doc Martin catching Stucke on the side of the knee and sending him crashing down onto all fours. Before the old man could even draw breath to cry out, the tattoo was on him, pinning his head back in a full—Nelson and jerking him roughly to his feet, where the skinhead slugged him in the groin before drawing a strip from a roll of duct tape and slapping it across the old man’s mouth. Stucke sobbed and struggled feebly, his rheumy eyes watering from the pain, but he subsided to a whimper as his assailants seized him roughly by both arms and hustled him down the stairs to the waiting van.

Watching from across the street, Kluge allowed himself a thin smile as his henchmen emerged from the building and bundled the weakly struggling Stucke into the Volkswagen. When they had driven off, turning the corner to vanish down a darkened alley, Kluge turned up the collar of his expensive suit and headed back up the street toward his parked Mercedes, satisfied–for now.

Kluge let himself anticipate the rest of the night’s work as he drove north along the Donaukanal. When he had crossed the river, he followed along the east bank for about twenty minutes, until he at last approached a cluster of industrial buildings on the very outskirts of Vienna.

Turning into the complex of warehouses and small factories, Kluge eased the Mercedes past the deserted buildings and pulled up in front of a moderate—sized warehouse set next to an abandoned garage. He opened the glove—box and pressed a button on a remote control box, and a steel door on the building rolled up. Kluge drove in, and the door rattled down behind him.

Inside the building, Kluge climbed out of his car and headed across a small loading bay toward a steel door marked “Private.” The door had a pushbutton combination lock instead of a conventional doorknob, and when Kluge punched in his personal code, the door swung open. An electric eye turned on lights and closed the door behind Kluge as he made his way purposefully toward a darkened video monitor with a control console below it. He flicked a master switch as he sat down, and the screen came to life, revealing a grainy black—and—white picture of the front of the building.

Running his fingers down a row of softly illuminated buttons, Kluge quickly pressed each one in turn to check the security devices that guarded the building. The system would not have been obvious to anyone casually surveying the building–which appeared to have been abandoned for some years–but it suited Kluge’s purposes quite well. No one was likely to come prowling here without invitation. The immediate area had become known as a haven for thieves, drug addicts, and worse. Some who were worse were gathering under the eye of one of Kluge’s cameras even now, quite aware of his occasional scrutiny and not caring, for they came at his behest.

Smiling, and satisfied that the area was deserted, save for those he expected, Kluge punched up camera four on the monitor. The picture on the screen showed him the narrow alleyway between his building and the deserted garage next door, which was also encompassed by his security system. By manipulating a small joystick next to the control panel, Kluge panned the camera to the left, gaining a clearer view of the alley. Then, his eyes fixed on the small screen, he settled back to wait for the arrival of the Volkswagen van.

* * *

Inside the van, Hans Stucke was now blindfolded as well as gagged, with his hands bound behind him with more of the duct tape that sealed his mouth. They had dumped him on the floor of the van and covered him with a heavy canvas tarpaulin that reeked of oil and mildew. The van lurched and swerved as his captors deliberately took a winding route around Vienna, gradually heading for their rendezvous with Kluge at the garage.

As they neared a wooded area to the west of the city, the skinhead, who was driving, pulled the van off the road and headed down a small lane, to the silent consternation of his companion. A few hundred yards on, he stopped in a lay—by underneath some trees at the side of the road and switched off the lights, though he left the engine running.

“Jesus, Jurg, what are you doing?” the tattoo asked anxiously.

“I’ve gotta piss. Jeez, Egon, fuckin’ lighten up.” The skinhead swung open the door of the van and dropped out onto the soft muIch under the trees. Unbuttoning his jeans, he pointed himself in the general direction of the woods and sprayed the surrounding ground. His scrotum still ached from where Kluge had grabbed him, and as he finished urinating, he gently touched himself to feel if any serious, damage had been done.

“Fuckin’ asshole!” he muttered again under his breath–though he knew he would never dare to do anything to Kluge, despite his anger. The man displayed almost superhuman strength at times. He scared Jurg–and Jurg was not afraid of much in this world.

But if fear made him bottle up his rage at Kluge, it also helped turn it into a desire to hurt and humiliate someone else as much as Kluge had hurt and humiliated him. As Jurg stood there in the darkness, remembering the pain and the shame, he knew who was to blame, and who had to pay. Without bothering to button his jeans, the skinhead climbed back into the van.

“You drive,” he said to the tattoo, as he squeezed between the two front seats and into the back of the van. “I’ve got some business to settle with this old fucker back here.”

“Holy shit, Jurg! Didn’t you hear the Man, back in the alley?” Panic edged the tattoo’s voice. “He said he didn’t want any marks on the guy. Shit, you beat him up, and we’re dead meat!”

The skinhead gave a snort and a sneering chuckle and pulled the tarpaulin off Stucke.

“Just drive, Egon. And don’t worry. I’m not going to leave any marks on the sonofabitch.”

As the tattoo reluctantly scrambled across into the driver’s seat, Jurg bent down and grabbed the old man by the belt, pulling him across the floor of the van and rolling him onto his back. With both hands, he grabbed the waistband of the old man’s trousers and tore them open, bursting the zipper as he yanked them down to his knees. Though still bound, blindfolded, and gagged, the old man struggled bravely against the assault, his muted groans punctuated by metallic bangs as his feet kicked the sides of the van–and occasionally Jurg.

“You sonofabitch!” Jurg roared, as one hardsoled kick connected with his shin and he cuffed the man on the side of the head.

“Goddammit, Jurg! Stop it!” the tattoo screamed. “Stop right now! You’re going to get us both killed!”

“Shut the fuck up and drive!” the skinhead ordered, slamming his fist as hard as he could between the old man’s legs.

The old man groaned and fell heavily onto his side, reflexively drawing his knees up to his chest, and Jurg reached for him, jerking him onto his knees and shoving his head into a back corner of the van. As the skinhead dropped to his knees, shoving his jeans down onto his thighs, the tattoo slammed the van into gear with a head shake of dismay and pulled the Volkswagen back onto the road.

“Hey, old man,” the skinhead said hoarsely, punctuated by a grunt, “how’s this feel?”

The old man’s moan of anguish was stifled behind his duct—tape gag, but it struck a chord of raw terror in the tattoo. Looking fearfully into the rearview mirror at the convulsive thrusting of the skinhead, the tattoo broke out in a cold sweat.

“Jesus Christ, Jurg,” he whispered into his deathgrip on the steering wheel. “If
he
finds out, we’re both dead meat ... . “

HE, MEANWHILE
, had been staring at the picture on the television monitor for more than half an hour, occasionally switching to other cameras to continue his scrutiny of the building’s security, but becoming increasingly impatient.

His mood had not been improved by the letter in his pocket bearing a Los Angeles postmark. It was. a routine communication from the German Consulate there, addressed to Kluge under one of his several aliases, informing him of an inquiry by a Los Angeles police captain concerning one of Kluge’s companies. The letter itself occasioned no cause for alarm, but if whatever was happening in Los Angeles somehow connected with events of nearly twenty years ago, the implications could be startling indeed.

Kluge’s last and only undertaking in L.A. had cost him six good men, in a manner that suggested that someone knew precisely what they were dealing with. There had been very little publicity, and no suspect had ever been named–as fortunate for Kluge as for the perpetrator.

Still, Kluge found it mildly disconcerting that any such inquiry should arise just now, just when he was having to deal with the annoyance of Stucke’s snooping. He made a mental note of the policeman’s name–a Captain John Drummond–then shifted his attention back to more immediate matters as the gray Volkswagen van finally appeared on his screen.

Kluge leaned forward and moved the little joystick. The surveillance camera panned slightly to the left, and he watched as Egon and Jurg climbed out of the van and opened a small side—door of the abandoned garage. As Egon held the door open, J urg returned to the van and dragged Stucke out into the night. The van partially blocked Kluge’s view, but he could tell by the way the old Jew moved that something wasn’t right.

Rage boiled up in Kluge like an underwater explosion, sending fury flooding through every fiber of his being. They had defied him! Despite an explicit order to the contrary, they–or more likely, Jurg–had done something to the Jew, and it could ruin Kluge’s carefully conceived plan.

Taking a deep breath, Kluge turned off the monitor and strode purposefully from the control room. Walking briskly across the loading bay past his car, he climbed a cast iron stairway set into the far wall and used a large skeleton key to open a heavy padlock securing a door at the top of the stair. Behind the door was a small locker room.

Without bothering to turn on the lights, Kluge quickly undressed and stored his expensive suit in one of the lockers that lined the walls. A new black cotton overall lay neatly folded on the top shelf in the locker, and Kluge pulled it on and zipped it up to his throat. After tugging on a pair of black canvas shoes and slipping something into his right—hand pocket, he glanced at a ladder in the corner of the room, then quickly climbed up into the attic above. He had to crouch low as he made his way expertly along rafters and catwalks to the far end of the building, where he opened a window and peered into the street below.

A light rain had started to fall, and from this vantage point, he could see that the streets around the garage were still deserted. Stepping out onto the windowsill, Kluge looked across to the roof of the deserted garage next door, some twelve feet away and slightly lower. Taking a deep breath, he crouched low and then leaped.

With less sound than a cat jumping off a bed onto the floor, he landed lightly on the opposite roof, dropping to crouch for an instant on all fours as he listened for a reaction. Then he moved quickly into the shadows and, still crouching low, made his way to a door on the opposite side of the roof. The door was unlocked, and he opened it silently and went down the stairs beyond, down to the level of the garage.

J urg and Egon were standing with their backs to Kluge, over by a workbench beside the garage’s wash racks, trying to adjust the light coming from a small, gas—powered camping lantern. For a split second, Kluge considered sending both of them to Hell right now, but instead he quietly coughed. The sound caused both punkers to nearly leap out of their skins.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Kluge’s voice was soft, almost effeminate in its tone.

Jurg was the first to recover his wits, and tried hard to be nonchalant.

“Hey, that’s okay, man. Been waiting long?” Kluge noticed that the skinhead’s jeans were only partly buttoned.

“No,” he said. “Only a few minutes.”

“We put the Jew in the box,” Egon said, nodding toward a bright red shipping container in the middle of the big garage. “Was that right?” He was sweating, his eyes darting nervously, anywhere except to connect with Kluge’s steady gaze.

“Yes. That was right.” Kluge looked at the two punkers for a long moment, then asked, “Did he give you any trouble?”

Jurg and Egon answered simultaneously. “Yes.” “No. “

“Come now, Egon. Did he give you any trouble?” Kluge’s voice was seductive in its demand for an answer.

Egon’s ears burned red, and he stared at his feet, gulping for air before answering. “Well, he sorta thrashed around in the van .... “

“He kicked me in the head,” Jurg interrupted, “and I had to hold him down so Egon could drive.”

“I see,” said Kluge. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped, could it?”

“That’s right,” said Jurg, his voice expressionless. “It couldn’t be helped. Isn’t that right, Egon?”

Egon continued to stare at his boots. “Yeah.” Kluge had already made up his mind, but decided to let them sweat a while longer.

“All right,” he said. “Come with me.”

The two punkers looked at each other before moving off with Kluge towards the box. When they reached the container, which was chocked up on blocks about two feet off the ground, Kluge turned casually to look at them. The double doors were closed, but he could see a thin edge of light along the bottom edge.

“Is he secure?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Egon. “I tied him to the wall.”

“Excellent,” Kluge said. “I want you to go in there and strip him, and then bring his clothes out here and put them on that bench.” He pointed back to the workbench with the lantern on it.

Egon nodded nervously and swung open one of the bright red doors, stepping up to disappear into the container. Smiling slightly, Kluge motioned for Jurg to move a little away from it, out of line of sight or hearing of what Egon was doing inside.

“I’m afraid that Egon lied to me about the Jew,” he said softly to the skinhead. “I’m going to have to teach him a lesson.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Jurg’s tone was flat and noncommittal, totally abandoning his partner to his fate. Kluge looked at him and was about to say more, when Egon jumped down from the container, Stucke’s clothes balled under one arm. The tattoo took one look at Kluge and Jurg, then ducked his head and hurried over to the workbench.

“Jurg, wait for me in the box,” Kluge said, then followed Egon over to the workbench, where the tattoo was neatly but nervously folding Stucke’s clothing.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t leave. Understand?” His soft voice stabbed into Egon’s guts like a bayonet, but Egon merely nodded mutely as Kluge turned and headed back across the warehouse to the container.

The inside of the box was the same bright red as the outside, lit by a single naked bulb hanging from a length of flex strung along a row of tie—down rings welded along the top of the right—hand wall. Stucke was tied spread—eagled to more of the rings on the other wall, his head sagging down on his chest. The tape was off his mouth. Naked, his skin had the pallor of a plucked chicken, and the contact of the cold metal sides of the container had made his flesh erupt with goose flesh. His right leg showed new bruising in several places, and a thin trickle of blood had run down the back of his thighs and dried.

Kluge took it all in at a glance. Very well. Jurg had not been
quite
as stupid as Kluge had feared–Kluge had already figured out how to divert attention from the damage–but the blatant disobedience required more urgent attention.

Silently Kluge stepped up into the box, laying a finger over his lips to signal silence as Jurg looked up in brief alarm. At his beckoning gesture, Jurg came quietly nearer, if a trifle warily. In an almost comradely fashion, Kluge laid one hand on the skinhead’s leather—clad shoulder, masking his disgust.

“Watch closely now,” Kluge whispered, “and I’ll show you
real
power.”

Without further preamble, Kluge walked slowly over to where Stucke was tied to the wall, slipping his right hand into his coverall pocket while his left reached out to take the old man by the chin and lift his head up off his chest. Slowly Stucke’s eyes focused on Kluge’s face, and the weight of his chin lifted from Kluge’s hand.

Disoriented, his body aching from the beating and assault, it took nearly a minute for him to recognize the man coldly gazing at him. The last person Hans Stucke had ever hoped or expected to see in this lifetime stood smiling before him.

“You!” he tried to croak. But his voice failed him, only a pitiful mewing sound escaping his lips.

Something flashed in the harsh light of the box as Kluge brought his hand out of his coverall, and the old man’s eyes darted to it, widening in horror and disbelief. Kluge raised it closer, turning the shiny object to catch the light so Stucke could see it better. Still standing against the wall behind, Jurg was barely able to breathe as he watched Kluge slowly pass the open straight razor back and forth in front of the old Jew’s eyes, like a hypnotist swinging his watch in front of his subject or a snake fascinating its prey. The old man could not seem to look away.

Smiling, Kluge gently tilted Stucke’s head back and then rolled it slightly to one side, still holding the man with his gaze. Terror filled the old man’s eyes as his captor’s intent became unmistakable, but all he could do was tremble in his bonds, the rheumy eyes pleading, knowing there was no escape.

Kluge looked over his shoulder at Jurg, now totally motionless and staring, wide eyes riveted on the razor, Kluge and his terrified victim.

So,
he thought to himself,
you questioned my power? Watch and learn, you stinking pile of excrement–for all the good it will do you!

Turning back, he brought his face close to Stucke, his long fingers caressing the handle of the razor.

“It’s time now, Jew,” he whispered. “I don’t tolerate men who betray me. I especially don’t tolerate meddlesome Jews. You should have looked away, when you saw me on the street that day ... .”

“No, please–“ Tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks as he tried to shake his head. “Please,” he gasped. “I won’t say anyth–“

Kluge’s razor flashed in the glaring light, and the old man’s desperate plea became a choking sound, and then a gurgle. Pumped by Stucke’s pounding heart, his blood spurted from his wound in a hot, foaming geyser, mostly missing Kluge, but showering Jurg and the inside of the box as he convulsed against his bonds.

Jurg felt the bile exploding in the back of his throat and flooding into his mouth. Gagging, he half—turned away and clutched at the metal wall for support. To his disbelieving dismay, Kluge seemed hardly discomfited at all, and calmly bent to press his mouth over the old man’s spurting wound like a man drinking from a water fountain–drinking his blood!

Horrified anew, and choking on another rising flood of vomit, Jurg fell retching to the floor, pressing both hands to his ears to shut out the obscene slurping sound and the weakening struggles of their victim.

After a little while, Kluge stepped back from Stucke and turned coldly to where Jurg lay heaving on the floor. Grabbing him roughly by a handful of leather collar, he jerked the skinhead to his feet and gave him a shake, shifting his other hand to clamp the back of Jurg’s neck. Jurg whimpered and tried to cringe away, his hands half—lifting in a gesture of refusal and fear, but Kluge only pulled him closer.

“Now, Jurg,” he whispered, as he looked pitilessly into the terrified eyes. “Now I will share my hunger with you.” Relentlessly he turned Jurg’s head toward Stucke’s still twitching body.

“Drink,” he said through blood—stained lips. “Drink deep–” and shoved Jurg’s face hard against the bright gash at the side of Stucke’s neck.

The hot, thick blood filled Jurg’s mouth and made him gag and then retch again, but Kluge’s grip was unyielding. Kluge held him by the scruff of his neck, his vicelike grip preventing Jurg from dropping to the floor of the box.

“Come on, Jurg, drink. You can do it,” he said, his breath purred in Jurg’s ear. “You wanted to share my power? This is how it’s done.”

Jurg froze for just an instant, then twisted around slightly to stare at Kluge, terror suddenly giving way to understanding. He had seen men kill before, but never had they fed on their victims. Now, looking at the black—clad man in front of him, he realized at last where his power came from.

“Please.” The tremble in his voice had an almost erotic quality to it. “I understand now. Make me like you.”

One corner of Kluge’s mouth turned up ever so slightly as he released his grip on Jurg’s neck and allowed the punk to sink to his knees.

“Drink his blood.”