Rise of the Order (18 page)

Rounding a corner, she slowed with a steep rise that would cross a road at the top. A skinny waterfall dropped down under the road, and she could hear it now pushing more water than normal from the recent rain and snow. Her steps were almost walking now, the hill so steep.

If she pushed herself hard, she always gave herself a break at the top to catch her breath before crossing the road and going another kilometer uphill before turning around. As she reached the top, she felt a little pain in her side. Maybe the bedroom activity had taken something out of her. She took deep breaths, crossed her legs, and stretched her hands down to the ground.

“This is how you stay in shape,” came a man's voice from the bridge.

She startled and then realized who it was. Slowly, she walked to the bridge. “You'll have to stop scaring me like this, Franz. First my apartment and now my run. What if I had been carrying my Glock?”

Franz Martini pulled out a cigarette and lit it, bringing the head to a bright red.

“I thought you gave up smoking?”

The polizei man shrugged and said, “We all have to die of something. Hate to leave a perfectly good body behind.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Martini said.

“How'd you know I'd be here this morning?”

“Good police work.”

His speech was far more clipped than normal, she thought. Something wasn't right. “What's going on?”

“This Jake Adams,” he said. “I'm not sure he's right for you.”

“Are you my father now?”

“If your father knew about Jake Adams, he would say the same thing.”

Okay, now he had gotten her attention. “What's so bad about the man?”

“When he works a case the body count always seems to rise,” Martini said. “Hell, in Tirol we had to readjust our death count statistics just after he got there. We now refer to that as the Adams Anomaly.”

She laughed. “I'm sure, Franz.”

He didn't smile. “You said yourself that he got you shot at in Budapest. And he himself was stabbed.”

“True. But they started it.”

“Listen to yourself,” Martini said. “You're already covering for him. Did you sleep with him?”

“Franz,” she said sternly. “That's none of your business.”

Martini finished his cigarette and lit another from the first. Then, smoke rising up to his eyes and making him squint, he said, “He has to have many demons. I did some research on him. Last year in China and the Russian Far East he left a trail of bodies from the Gobi to the Pacific.”

She put her hands on her hips. “You must be exaggerating.”

“I wish I was, Anna. The Agency also lost an undisclosed number of officers on that mission.”

“But he doesn't work for the Agency,” she assured him. “How could he?”

“They called him back into service. I'm telling you, you must proceed with caution. He's a dangerous man. He almost shot me last night.”

“You broke into my apartment,” she said. “And somehow he knew you were there. I don't know how. He seems to have a sense about these things.”

Martini took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Be careful. That's all I'm saying. If he gets you into something, anything, that seems a bit suspicious, get out. Call in the Staatpolizei. The army. Make the call, Anna.”

She knew there was nothing Martini could say to change her course. She had been ordered by the Federal President to work with Jake Adams and Franz knew that.

“Call me.”

“I can't, Franz. You know that. I could get fired for telling you what I have so far. From now on, I have to do this alone.” She was determined now, like she had been in her past training for the Olympics and later in the army.

Martini looked disappointed. “Please be careful. I got you into this, and I don't know what I would do if—”

“I'll be fine,” she said. “Something else is wrong, though. You're acting strange.”

Lowering his eyes to the ground, he slowly swept his head from side to side.

“I know you, Franz. What is it?”

Reluctantly, he said, “I have cancer.”

A shocked look crossed her face, and she immediately embraced him. “Your lungs?”

He laughed. “You'd think so, but no. My prostate. I'll be all right.”

She pulled back from him, her hands grasping his arms. “You'll have surgery? They found it soon enough?” She was hopeful.

“We believe so. I'll wait until I catch those responsible for the Donau Bar murders.”

“Don't wait, Franz. Jack Donicht can handle your case until you get back.”

“We'll see.” He dropped his cigarette to the pavement, twisted his foot onto it, and then turned and left toward his car parked along the side of the road a hundred meters away.

She watched him get in and drive away in the opposite direction. Anna wiped tears from the sides of her eyes. Too much was happening too fast. She wasn't sure if she should be angry or glad that he cared about her enough to tell her about his disease. Cared about her enough to worry about her relationship with Jake, while he was going through so much in his own life.

Turning around, she ran back toward her home, her pace slow yet determined. Just like her.

●

Jake Adams woke and read a note on the nightstand saying Anna had gone for a run. He looked under the covers and realized he was still naked. When his cell phone rang, he fumbled around his pile of clothes before finding it.

“Yeah,” he said into his cell.

“Jake. Kurt Lamar here.”

“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.

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.”

“There wouldn't be time,” Anna said. “Martini said the man probably died in a matter of minutes.”

“How'd he get it into his system?”

“They think he drank it. . .was slipped it in a drink.”

“I wonder if they can aerosol it like a nerve agent?”

“I hope not,” she said, her voice wavering. “That's right, I understand you used to work with the American Air Force, dealing with chemical and biological weapons. How would you use something like this?”

“Depends on what you want to do. You could contaminate a city's water supply, but that would require a large dose of nanoprobes and it would be hard to get at those systems now. Like I said, it would depend on what these folks have in mind. Do they want to target a certain group?”