Garin watched as the men carried their squirming package through the club's doors, across the dance floor, then up the staircase to the offices.
As he watched, the cameras changed smoothly, rolling through the views until he could see inside the office where Schluter sat looking as if nothing was out of place. The men spoke briefly.
"Can we get audio on this?" Garin asked.
"No," Gunther said. "We didn't have the opportunity to do that. The staff there watches the day-to-day operations pretty closely."
Garin accepted that, watching as the men unzipped the sack and emptied the contents onto the floor. A man, bound hand and foot and his mouth covered with duct tape, spilled out of the bag and onto the floor.
The man was young and wide-eyed with terror.
The computer monitor tightened up on the scared man's face, then froze. Another window opened up on the screen, and head shots started cycling through.
"Perhaps we'll find out who he is in a moment," Gunther said.
As Garin watched, two of the men in the room grabbed the helpless individual by the elbows. Schluter walked to the rear of the room and pressed a hidden switch to reveal a sliding panel in the wall.
"Hidden passageway," Gunther said. "We found it when we scoped out the blueprints on the building. There's a room under the building."
Schluter stepped into the open doorway. The men, half carrying the prisoner between them, followed.
"Do we have video down there?" Garin asked.
"Yes, but it was tricky. We couldn't go in through the office, so we ended up tapping the room through the ceiling conduits. As it turns out, the hidden room also has electricity. We tapped in through that."
Schluter led the way down to the basement and turned on the lights. Revealed in the pale white glow, the room was twenty feet square and empty.
When he'd found it, Schluter had instantly seen the dark promise of such a room. There was even a floor drain in the center of the space. He'd had the water supply line added.
Gesturing toward the center of the room, Schluter slid out of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
Two of the men put the bound man on his knees. His choking, wailing cries filled the room, cascading in the enclosed space.
Through it all, the incessant gurgling of the sewer below the drain echoed around Schluter. The original design hadn't had a trap and had allowed the stench of the foul water to fill the room. The trap in place now blocked that, but decades of reeking odor had permeated the brick.
"Shut up," Schluter commanded.
The young man tried to control himself, but the effort was doomed to failure. He knew what he'd done, and he knew what was going to happen. This wasn't his first visit to the basement. Schluter ripped the tape from the man's mouth.
"I gave you a chance," Schluter screamed, "and you betrayed me."
"Please!" the man begged. "Please, Wolfram! I needed the money! I swear to you!"
"I paid you," Schluter responded. "You had money. You just wanted more and helped yourself to it."
Tears leaked down the man's quivering cheeks. He shook his head in denial so forcefully he almost fell over. One of the men put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
Schluter fed on the rage that filled him. He lived in his grandmother's world so much of the time that it was hard to remember that he had control over parts of his world. This was one of those times when he could do anything he wanted.
"My brother is sick," the man cried. "He needed money for medical treatment."
"Liar," Schluter said. "Even if you had a brother in dire straits, you wouldn't help him."
"I can pay you back!" the man promised. "I swear, Wolfram! If you'll just give me a chance, I'll pay you back! I'll work for free!"
"You're vulnerable and weak," Schluter said. "Eventually the police will get to you. Then, instead of losing just what you've taken from me, I'll lose everything."
The man shook his head. "No! I swear!"
Schluter crossed the room to a metal toolbox. He pulled out a small ax. The man's wails and sobs grew louder and more desperate. Schluter ran his thumb along the edge, reveling in the sense of power that he had.
****
"Sir?" Gunther asked.
Garin knew the man wanted to know if he wanted the surveillance team to interfere. They had a team on-site, inside the club.
"No," Garin said, watching Schluter step forward with the ax.
"He could be a policeman."
"That's not our problem. We're not here to protect anyone. We're here to learn what we can."
Gunther looked at another screen. "He's not a policeman."
Following the man's line of sight, Garin saw that the window beside the action taking place on the central monitor had frozen on a face. It matched the one worn by the man on his knees in the basement room.
"His name is Bruno Frantz," Gunther said. "Apparently he has a long history of being on the wrong side of the law. Drug possession. Intent to distribute. Armed robbery."
"Not exactly a pillar of the community, then, is he?" Garin asked. It wouldn't have mattered if the man were a police officer, though. Garin had never seen himself as the savior of the world. Not even Roux had thought that way.
Garin watched the screen as Schluter lifted the ax high and brought it down. The men around the unfortunate on his knees quickly stepped away. Blood sprayed everywhere.
Even when he was covered in crimson gore, Schluter didn't stop raising the ax until his arms were too tired to lift the weapon anymore. The amount of energy Schluter had invested in the effort impressed Garin.
"Well," Garin said, staring at Schluter as he stood there with his chest heaving, "he doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, does he?"
"No, sir," Gunther replied in a calm voice.
Garin knew the man didn't mind the violence. While with the surveillance corporation, he'd seen worse. Garin didn't suffer enemies gladly, either.
"What do you want us to do?" Gunther asked.
"Keep him under surveillance. Let me know what he does, where he goes. Knowing that he has a taste for killing and doesn't mind doing it up close is knowledge I needed." Schluter wasn't just a jackal, then. He was more dangerous than that.
"I wouldn't just say Schluter has a taste for it, Mr. Braden. That's more of an appetite. He enjoys doing what he just did."
Studying the blood-drenched figure, Garin had to agree. But a smile pulled at his lips. "This makes it a little easier, though. I'd thought he was just a cowardly cur living off his grandmother's goodwill. Now I know he's dangerous. In some ways he'll be more predictable."
"I take it you're going to continue your business with Baroness Schluter."
"I am." Garin had made his promise sixty years earlier when he'd loved Kikka Schluter. Part of him still did because he could glimpse flashes of the woman she'd been inside that wrinkled and sagging flesh. He didn't give promises often, but he always carried through on them.
"Then you'll want to be careful, sir. Schluter is more of a threat than we'd thought."
"Perhaps," Garin said. "But he's not as dangerous as I am."
****
Freshly showered in the bathroom he kept off his office and clad in a new outfit, Schluter left the club and crossed the snow-covered lot to his car. He whistled happily to himself, thinking that maybe he should catch people stealing from him more often.
By now Bruno Frantz's bones were sluicing through the Viennese sewers, broken into slivers. The rats would eat his flesh. Only the bones would remain, and probably not enough of them to make identification an issue. Schluter had been very thorough with the ax, reducing the man to a shattered mess.
His men had dumped Frantz's remains into the sewer, then hosed the room clean. They'd sprayed bleach from a special container, sluicing the liquid over the room to break down the DNA.
Sliding into his car, Schluter keyed the ignition and heard his cell phone trill. "Yes."
"Baron Schluter," a man's calm voice replied, "the problem in New York has been dealt with."
Schluter took in a deep breath and let it out. Dieter Humbrecht and his team were dead. "That's good. I'll see that there is a bonus."
"There is, however, another problem."
Checking the sparse traffic, Schluter pulled out onto the street. "What?"
"The woman has left New York."
"How?"
"By private jet as I understand it."
Schluter grimaced. "Whose?"
"A man named Stanley Younts."
The name didn't mean anything to Schluter and he said so.
"Younts is a very popular American writer," his man said.
"How did he get involved?"
"While we were monitoring Annja Creed's producer's office, Younts showed up to have a conversation regarding a possible interview with the woman about her career."
"Why?"
"He's researching a book."
Schluter thought about that. "So he flew her out of New York?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where they're going?"
"When Dieter intercepted her, she was trying to get her producer to agree to send her to Venice."
Schluter drove through the narrow streets, but he felt the jaws of a trap closing on him. Venice was where Mario Fellini had started his investigation, and that investigation had sent Schluter's grandmother into desperation to find the treasure.
"When will you be able to confirm the destination?" Schluter asked.
"We're working on it now."
"Let me know as soon as you find out."
"Yes, sir."
Schluter punched the phone off and cursed. He drove for a moment, his mind screaming for an answer. Then he called Tomas Piccoli, one of the mercenaries whom he'd sometimes employed to arrange "accidents."
"Yes?" a thick voice answered.
"Are you working?" Schluter asked.
"I could be. I'm not involved in anything that I can't walk away from. A babysitting job that's more show than activity. Low threat level, but it keeps the money coming in."
"I have a high-priority project I need to have handled right now."
"Bonus?"
Schluter hesitated. Paying a bonus on top of Piccoli's usual rates would be expensive. "You haven't even heard about the job yet," Schluter protested.
Piccoli laughed. "If you're not having Humbrecht take care of this for you, that tells me you're either spread thin, this thing is happening faster than you can handle – which means more trouble for me – or Humbrecht's already tried and couldn't do it. If you told me what the case was, I'd better know how much to charge."
Ignoring that, Schluter said, "I want the problem isolated. Failing that, I want the problem removed."
"Only one problem?"
"Yes."
"You may be getting overcharged."
"Bring the problem in isolated and you'll get more. The details will be e-mailed to your drop."
"I'll be waiting."
Schluter punched off the phone and tossed it into the passenger seat. Adrenaline from killing Frantz still coursed through his system, but it warred with the anxiety that filled him. Things were getting more and more complicated. But he had a trump card in place in Latvia that no one knew about.
He took a deep breath and let it out. Perhaps once Piccoli had finished the task in Venice, he could turn his attentions to Garin Braden. Finally, a smile spread across Schluter's face. No one was immortal. If things went well, maybe he could even arrange for Braden to be brought to the club basement for a private session.
Schluter looked forward to that.