Chapter 21

It was nearly midnight before Wolfgang reached under his seat for the pistol he'd bought in Salzwedel. He'd met a man in a gas station men's room, trading money for hardware with barely a half-dozen words spoken between them. It had been an expensive purchase, as such things usually were, and the suppressor had doubled the price.

The money worried Wolfgang less than the time he'd spent driving halfway across Germany, but he was running very low on both. After the death of his mother, Wolfgang had sold the old house he'd grown up in and nearly everything inside it, but that had been over a year previously and he hadn't been working in the meantime. His real concern at the moment was for Eva, however. With Dubert dead it was impossible to know what would become of his sister.

Ebenstrasse was a brightly lit street running through the center of what passed for Hamburg's red-light district. It hosted decaying buildings of brick and mortar built on the ruins of World War Two, but not to last apparently. Bars, tattoo and massage parlors, seedy café's and pornographic bookstores lined both sides of the street. The place crawled with prostitutes and drunken sailors from the nearby waterfront, with bums and panhandlers sitting near steam grates in their shabby clothes. The corners and alleyways were lorded over by pimps and drug dealers, watching from against the wall while they smoked, or sitting in their large automobiles.

None of it was surprising or particularly intimidating to Wolfgang. He had enough experience with places and people like that to understand what was going on. He was also smart enough to know that he would be the outsider. No one could be trusted, no matter what they might say or do, and he would be very much alone.

The nightclub with the unlikely name of Nacht Baden Leben was something of a landmark in Hamburg with a reputation for wanton excess. In the twenties and thirties it had established itself as a cabaret catering to the risqué entertainment demanded by Hamburg's affluent minority and the tourists taking advantage of the severe German depression and subsequent recovery under the Nazis. Of course, what had been considered risqué seventy years ago would hardly raise an eyebrow now and the fashionable strippers and showgirls had given way to live sex shows featuring everything from BDSM to pissing to bestiality.

The only thing that hadn't changed, other than the name, was the fact that Hamburg's elite still enjoyed sneaking in through the back doors. For that reason, Nacht Baden Leben enjoyed a certain amount of immunity from the local police, and so it was also popular with Hamburg's most recent counter-culture youth movement, most of whom were pushing thirty and suffering a lack of direction in a reunified nation.

"Twenty-five," a large man said, jerking his head towards the sign on the wall. There was a cover charge to enter and Wolfgang dug into his trousers for the bills.

"Is Eva here tonight?" he asked, looking for a reaction more than an answer, but he got neither.

"Enjoy yourself," the man said without smiling, looking past Wolfgang towards a young couple laughing drunkenly behind him.

At least he didn't seem to be overdressed, Wolfgang realized as he made his way through the club. He wore a dark suit beneath his long wool overcoat, with a white shirt and blue tie loosely knotted. His brown hair was fashionably long, curling around his collar and combed straight back from his smooth forehead. A surprising number of people were well dressed, the woman in particular and not all of them were employees. It would be all too easy for a man to make a mistake, but then again, Wolfgang imagined that most of the female patrons would enjoy that sort of game and take it as a form of flattery.

Like the buxom brunette who stopped him with a delicate hand on his chest. She would have been ten centimeters taller than Wolfgang even without her heels, and she looked down at him with an amused smile and brown eyes so dilated that they were nearly black. She seemed to be poured into her strapless evening gown, with a long strand of pearls around her throat. She looked like she should have been visiting the opera rather than a red-light nightclub, but such was the nature of local mores.

"Do you have a light?" she asked Wolfgang, holding up a cigarette and licking her red lips.

"No. I'm sorry," he said, noting the way her full breasts rose and fell slowly. "I don't smoke."

"I do." The woman pursed her lips, looking him up and down.

"Allow me." He smiled at her, taking the cigarette from her hand. "I've just saved your life."

She smiled at that, rubbing her empty fingers together. "I haven't seen you here before."

"I've been here many times," Wolfgang lied. "I've seen you. Who is that man... ?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"The one you come here with," Wolfgang insisted, glancing around as if looking for someone.

"Oh," she said with a sigh. "My husband? You like him?"

"No."

"Dance with me." The woman reached for his arm, but Wolfgang shook his head.

"Another time," he smiled apologetically, moving around her.

"Faggot," she muttered.

The club was divided into two large sections with a long bar separating them. Half of the club, the section most immediate to the front entrance, was for dancing. A dazzling array of lights were rigged overhead, nearly blinding as they swung back and forth over the crowd. A young DJ worked the techno-club mix from a small stage, dancing around behind his equipment like a rock star, and the place was filled with younger men and women moving to the pounding bass and screaming orchestral synthesis. It was hot and loud, the air filled with smoke and the assorted stink of alcohol, sweat, and tobacco.

Wolfgang made his way through the crowd slowly, feeling the weight of the Glock 29 sheathed in a nylon holster beneath his left arm. He was careful to avoid brushing against anyone as he moved. His modest stature and natural athletic grace had always served him well and the man seemed to drift easily through the chaos. A number of patrons observed him with interest and Wolfgang didn't avoid their eyes, but offered little in response and declined politely several offers to join the revelry surrounding him.

Passing around the double sided bar the atmosphere suddenly changed, both literally and figuratively. It was noticeably cooler and smell of sweating bodies less intrusive. The club was also darker and Wolfgang paused, letting people walk around him as he gave his eyes time to adjust. There was a large central stage, just a slightly raised platform really, upon which a pair women clad entirely in red PVC seemed to be dancing almost violently with each other. It was soon revealed that one of them wore a dildo and was plunging it deeply into a smaller girl's exposed sex, unwillingly it seemed, as the girl tried to escape the penetration with gasps and muffled grunts. Around them were tables and booths lit with candles flickering yellow and red in colored glass pots.

The place wasn't quite as crowded as the other half of the club, or at least the people were sitting down and that made a significant difference. Most of the tables were occupied by one or more men and they were not alone, but sitting with wives, girlfriends, or far more likely, female employees of the club. A number of attractive women, all scantily clad in revealing and sexy attire, were ferrying drinks. One of them parked her tray at the waitress station nearest Wolfgang and gave one of the bartenders a wave.

"Hi," Wolfgang said to her with a smile, holding a fifty euro note in his fingers and tapping the edge of it against the bar.

"Hi," the girl replied absently, giving him a glance as she tallied up a bill for the drinks she was ordering.

"Busy tonight," he observed, leaning forward as if trying to catch the bartender's attention.

"Always," the blonde woman sighed and she was older than Wolfgang first thought, but very sexy in her matching black leather shorts and halter top. Her ripe breasts jiggled when she moved and the cheeks of her round ass were spilling out behind her.

"I'm looking for Eva," Wolfgang said, turning towards the girl. "Have you seen her tonight?"

"Eva?" The blonde shrugged without lifting her eyes. "I don't know. There are a lot of girls..."

"Not like her," he said, dropping the money on the tray. "Platinum blonde, blue eyes ... you wouldn't forget her eyes."

"Yeah..." the woman looked up finally and nodded her head. "Upstairs, I think. Back there, by the restrooms..."

"Are you sure?" Wolfgang asked, following the woman's eyes towards a wide opening in the wall.

"Eva went up to her room a couple hours ago," she told him, picking up the money as the bartender approached. "That's all I know."

"What's upstairs?" Wolfgang asked and the girl shrugged, turning her attention to the drinks she needed.

The stairway was some two meters wide and red carpeted with a brass chain across the entry. A sign hanging from it said, "Private" and Wolfgang ignored the notice, unclipping the chain and letting it hang from the opposite wall. There was a landing halfway up where the stairs made a ninety degree turn to the right, ascending once more before reaching a wide hallway some fifteen meters long. A number of wooden doors, four of them, lined either side of the hallway at regular intervals, but what caught Wolfgang's eye was the large man sitting on a chair at the opposite end.

He was big and blond with Slavic features, dressed in a rumpled black suit and reading a newspaper. A metal ashtray stood beside his chair, mounted atop a curving glass Art Deco stand. He narrowed his grey eyes when he looked up to see Wolfgang approaching him, lowered his newspaper with a frown and started shaking his head.

"You should go back downstairs, my friend," the man said in Russian accented German. "This floor is private."

"Private?" Wolfgang widened his soft brown eyes, glancing around as he kept walking. "I'm looking for my wife. She told me she wanted to powder her nose and..."

"The ladies room is downstairs," the man said, setting his newspaper on the carpet and standing slowly. He was very large, well over two meters tall and easily a hundred kilos. It doubtless gave him confidence facing a much smaller man like Wolfgang, who couldn't have weighed 75 kilos soaking wet.

"Ah. Shit. I must have walked right past it." Wolfgang gave him a lop-sided grin and a small shrug. He stopped and started to turn, but then thought better of it. "Say, have you got a light anyway?"

Wolfgang held up the cigarette he'd taken from the woman earlier.

"Yeah, sure," the man said with a nod, reaching into his trousers.

"Thanks." Wolfgang smiled appreciatively, stepping closer as the man produced a Zippo lighter. "My fucking wife ... she hates it when I smoke."

"Like mine. You should leave her home next time," the bigger man chuckled, snapping the lighter open and thumbing it.

"Heh! You don't know my wife," Wolfgang snorted, bringing the cigarette to his lips and leaning forward.

As the man opened his mouth to say something else, Wolfgang closed his hand into a fist and drove it into the Russian's solar plexus, the bundle of nerves controlling all the major organs in the abdomen. A solid blow could easily knock a man unconscious, but Wolfgang hadn't been able to take a full swing and the Russian was large and thick in the middle. He was staggered, however, and the air seemed to burst from his gaping mouth, but he wasn't down and Wolfgang didn't hesitate. He grabbed the much larger man by the arms, just above the Russian's elbows, pushing him backwards even as Wolfgang drove his right knee into the man's groin like a sledgehammer.