The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9) (12 page)

27

Hilton Imperial Hotel

Marijana Blazier 2

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Two Days Later

In Lang Reilly’s opinion, Dubrovnik was pretty much a bust so far. His reservation for a corner suite had somehow morphed into a room overlooking the old town, fortress, and Pile Gate. Interesting, but not what he had asked for.

The hotel’s gym, though, was a pleasant surprise. At home, Lang had a daily hour and a half routine involving a treadmill, weights, and various machines designed to keep different sets of muscles toned. Pectorals, abs, rear delts, all as tuned as modern equipment could make them. Lang was all too aware a set of machines could not defeat the aging process but he intended to put up as much of a fight as possible. Missing a workout, particularly in exchange for hours in the confines of an aircraft, made him feel cramped. It was with a sense of relief he attacked the machines. As a finale, he logged an estimated three miles on the treadmill at a fast jog.

By then, he was as sweaty as he was hungry.       

There is a degree of risk in asking hotel personnel for recommendations of eating establishments. Far too many concierges have relatives in the hospitality business or, more likely, receive kick-backs from restaurant operators for hotel guests directed to their establishments. Put most generously, there is no guarantee hotel employees and the guest share a common taste.

The restaurant recommended by the hotel’s concierge had a magnificent patio view of the harbor. The clientele seemed to consist largely of cruise-boat passengers whose boisterous conversations had the tone of being fueled by alcohol, perhaps more than a sample of
slivovica,
local gin-clear plum brandy.

One table was occupied by a sole diner. Although the light was not the best, Lang thought he might be an Asian. No matter his genealogical origins, the fact he was alone made him as obvious as a missing front tooth.

The menu featured entrees priced at four hundred
kuna
, or one hundred bucks. A pre-dinner cocktail added another fifty.

The prices didn’t seem to bother the mostly English-speaking diners who, Lang guessed, came from one of the half-dozen or so cruise boats visible from his table.

But they bothered Lang.

Rip offs always did.

Besides, this trip was at the Foundation’s expense. Although Lang answered to no one in its administration, freedom from accountability didn’t equal freedom from responsibility.

He handed the waiter a credit card. “For the drink,” he said.

The waiter’s eyebrows arched. “You are not having dinner with us?” he asked in American accented English.

“Not at those prices, no.”

The server, a slender young man in his early twenties, scurried inside where Lang could see him conferring with a bearded, burly man Lang supposed to be the owner or manager.

Moments later, the same man was standing beside Lang’s table.

“You have a problem with our menu?”

Slavic? Definitely East European
             

“I have trouble with your prices. Now, run the credit card through for my Scotch and you can turn the table.”

“You make reservation, you pay for dinner.”

Lang sighed. He had been subjected to this sort of tourist bullying before. Motivated by the uniquely American phobia of being disliked, most  meekly submit to the most outrageous demands made upon them in a foreign country. The hum of conversation died. The confrontation at Lang’s table was center stage. It was something people like the restaurant’s proprietor counted on.

Lang stood, making certain his face was only inches from the bearded one, a gesture that would have crossed any language barrier had there been one. “I’d like my credit card now.”

“You will not leave without paying for dinner.”

“Oh?” Lang stepped around him, headed for the exit. “I’ll cancel any charge you put on the card.”

The man grabbed an arm, a move Lang fully anticipated. “You . . .”

The sentence died as Lang snatched his arm backward. His assailant’s reflex was to pull back just as Lang slipped his right shoe behind the man’s left. Using his opponent’s momentum, Lang’s foot swept the other man’s from under him.

As the bearded man stumbled backward, one arm flailing, Lang grabbed the one that had been holding his. With a quick step, he was now behind the restaurateur, jamming the wrist up to the shoulder blades.

Lang whispered in the man’s ear, “My card before I rip your fucking arm off.”

The man shouted something in what Lang supposed was Croatian and Lang’s Visa card reappeared in the hand of his former waiter with a celerity unknown in most restaurants.               

Halfway up the two sloping blocks to the hotel, Lang dropped into a pizzeria and sandwich shop populated by what appeared to be young locals, one of whom, a twentyish girl with streaked hair and a plethora of tattoos, explained the menu to him.

A good sign. When the menu does not have an English translation, it is a good bet the food will be authentically local.

Lang enjoyed a toasted sweet potato-sage bread sandwich stuffed to overflowing with garlic, fava bean pate’, goat cheese and prosciutto, washed down with a Tomislav beer, named in honor, according to the young woman, of Croatia’s first king. True or not, the roasted malt gave the light brown beverage a discernable caramel flavor.

Cost: Forty-two
kuna
, including tip.

Back at the Hilton, Lang helped himself to a nightcap of a Scotch in the mini bar (hardly a bargain at one hundred
kuna),
took a seat at the small table on his balcony, screened from the neighbors. He took a cigar out of his jacket pocket, a Montecristo #2, one of three
pyramido’s
he had purchased in Zagreb. He used the small blade on the wine opener in the mini bar to cut the tip before he lit it and puffed contentedly.

He would have to finish this and the next before returning home.

Over the low railing, lights shown on the old wall and its fortresses. Tomorrow he would take the day off from seeking clinic sites and explore a city that had its origins in the fall of the Roman Empire, flourished as a port and trading center under the Ottoman Caliphate, the Venetian Empire, and the Hungaro-Croatian kings before being incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed with the loss of World War I. The victors, seeking convenience rather than practicality, had lumped Croatia, along with Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia into a new country, Yugoslavia, despite severe differences and hatreds that had existed for centuries and that erupted in religious and ethnic warfare with the fall of the communist dictatorship.

Lang got up and made an unsuccessful foray into the minibar in search of another miniature of Scotch. He returned to his cigar. Today he had driven south from Zagreb, Croatia’s capitol and largest city, stopping in Karlouag, Ogulin, Gospic, and at least two villages the names of which he was unable to pronounce. In each, he had used credentials supplied by the country’s health ministry to inspect such pediatric medical facilities as the town had. In most he had been pleasantly surprised. A couple reminded him of grainy photographs of nineteenth century institutions.

He checked the deadbolt lock and set the chain latch, a procedure as routine as brushing his teeth. Within minutes, he was asleep.

28.

The Next Morning

The hotel may have bungled his reservation and the recommended restaurant had been little more than gastro-thievery; but there was nothing wrong with the American-style breakfast buffet.

Lang chose a table on the patio with a view of the old town below. With no automotive traffic allowed, the old town was already teeming with pedestrians. The early sunlight gave the chalk white limestone streets a glow from the polishing of centuries of feet. All the roofs were Mediterranean-style red tile. Some were redder than their neighbors, having been replaced after Bosnian artillery fire some two decades hence. Behind the roofs, a wall encircled the town with Middle Age towers and forts. Outside one segment, sheer limestone cliffs rose from a base where wild lavender and Spanish broom daubed the slope gold and purple like random spots from a child’s paintbrush.

The dark of the previous evening had concealed a cable car that, according to his guide book, escalated and descended from a mediaeval fort atop Mount Srd, some four hundred meters. A restaurant had replaced the military installation.

Perhaps a scenic lunch venue.

As he got up from the table, Lang made a mental note to check the prices on the menu in advance.

Standing before the Pile Gate, he noted the thick walls, some 1940 meters surrounding the entire town, walls wide enough in most places to walk four abreast. With half the city facing the sea from a high bluff and the several towers and forts, Dubrovnik would have been a formidable city to attack or besiege.

The gate itself, a semi-circular tower, took its present shape in 1537. A statue of the town’s patron saint, St. Blasius, watched the ingress and egress of tourists from above the entrance.

Once inside, Lang stood still. There was something not quite right. Then it dawned on him like a cartoon light bulb above his head: There were none of the window boxes that adorn every European town he could remember from the English Channel to the Urals. Nor could he see any locals except a few guides leading polyglot groups. There were T-shirt and souvenir shops in abundance. Small doorway businesses sold cold beverages, ice cream, and snacks. On side streets, tables and chairs indicated the presence of the small restaurants, bistros, or trattoria locals might favor. Here, they appeared occupied exclusively by tourists: No old men playing cards or dominos, no one with a coffee cup beside them as they perused the newspaper. Further exploration revealed no outdoor market. Even if this were not a market day, one would think there would be a butcher’s shop, a green grocer, a bakery. A glance at the second and third stories showed no open windows, no laundry drying on a line. There was none of the indicia of population one would expect in a small European town.

Could Dubrovnik’s old town, like Disneyland, lack full-time residents?               

Or did its populace make do without the things most humans required?

Somehow the possible lack of occupants detracted from the historical nature of the city. It was, in essence, no longer a town thriving into the twenty-first century but little more than an open air museum. A line of couples in what Lang supposed was native costume, men and women, holding hands as they marched past singing, did little to add an air of authenticity. 

More from a sense of duty than anticipation, Lang followed the map in the guidebook. Roland’s column with an image of the legendary knight, although the guide book offered no clue as the relevance of a figure of northern European myth in the history of a southern Adriatic city.

After the Sponza Palace, a bare and not particularly interesting former government building, a cathedral indistinguishable from most of Rome’s minor churches, and the Church of St Ignatius and Jesuit college with its monumental Baroque flight of stairs leading up from one town square to another, Lang slid under an umbrella shading a quartet of plastic chairs grouped around a plastic table. Instantly, a waiter materialized. Lang looked at the menu and orders a Pan Pivo, a local beer sweating in a green bottle.

Not that he was particularly thirsty or needed to sit down. When he had spent an hour or so wandering a foreign city, he made a practice of taking regular time outs, periods where he let the local scenery come to him. The practice had been part of his long-ago Agency training and had proved its usefulness more than once.

And did again today.

As he gazed around the tables filled with what, again, appeared to be largely cruise boat passengers (white sneakers, shorts, sunburns), two Asian men did not fit. Lang had seen one or two Japanese tour groups, distinguishable not only by race but because they were possibly the only people on earth still using cameras instead of cell phones. Lang had noted one of the men at the nearby table inspecting the altar in the cathedral. Now he had been joined by another, possibly last night’s lone diner. Both wore sandals, a version of flip-flops and full-length cotton pants. And windbreakers.

Jackets. On a day when umbrellas were needed to keep the Adriatic sun at bay.

And was it his imagination that they had just diverted their eyes when he noticed them?

Perhaps cold natured Asians; perhaps something more sinister.

Lang sighed. Though Dubrovnik’s old town was relatively small, the odds of the man from the overpriced restaurant and the man from the church reappearing at this specific establishment at this specific moment were something a casino could only dream of. No one had ever died from a dose of paranoia and it had saved his ass more than once.

He motioned the waiter over and asked directions to the rest room, being sure to get him to point. It would be difficult for an observer
not
to understand what the American was asking.

Leaving about half of his beer against his return, Lang got to his feet and sauntered off in the direction the waiter had indicated. A pity to stiff the place and wait staff but paying up would destroy the illusion he wanted to create.

The single gender toilet was past the bar and through a noisy, busy kitchen smelling largely of old grease and garlic. Past the single door bearing symbols both for male and female, an alley was visible through the streaked glass panes of a door. As Lang stepped over a pile of garbage bags and into the narrow, shadowed passage, he was startled by a sound half human, half animal. A cat leapt from a second stack of garbage bags, the first animal, dog or cat, he had seen.

Another anomaly: the outdoor (and many indoor) eating establishments across Europe were replete with well-mannered dogs. He had no time to ponder the significance of the lack of them here.                  

Using only the narrow cross streets, Lang              made his way to the wall and passed through a nameless gate. It was as if he had stepped out of a time machine. Parked cars crowded each other for space at the curb. Non-descript buildings, both commercial and residential, lined the sidewalks. TV antennae sprouted from roofs. He was back in the twenty-first century.

But where to go? If the two Asians were, in fact, following him, there was a good chance someone was watching the hotel.

The answer lay perhaps a hundred yards uphill. He say a sign that read “cable car”: in English, French, and what Lang supposed was Croatian. In case there was any doubt, the sign included a white outline of a box suspended from a diagonal line against a blue background.

Lang joined the short line buying tickets. So far, his Asian followers had not appeared on the scene. He handed over his credit card, which the attendant slid through a hand-held device, pointing to the sign next to the ticket window in multiple languages. The English version warned, “Your ticket please required for return.”

Somebody was going to parachute onto that hillside just to steal a ride?
                  

The ride was short but spectacular, interrupted only by the passing of the downward bound car sliding on its cable and providing the counterweight to the one in which Lang was riding.

He followed the twenty or so fellow passengers into a modern concrete building that still had the smell of freshly poured cement although, according to the guidebook, it had reopened after post-war repairs in 2010. After climbing a flight of stairs, the cable car’s passengers stepped outside to a magnificent view of the harbor and the old town far below. A number stopped to take pictures and then selfies against the background. Others meandered over to the remains of the old fort or took the few steps down to the open-air, umbrella-bedecked restaurant that was filling rapidly. Lang chose a table with a view both of the town below and the exit from the arrival building. A waiter served him with a glass of ice water and a menu.

When dining at unfamiliar restaurants near resorts or other suspect sites, Lang was guided by what he called the “most difficult” theory. He ordered the item that would be hardest to screw up. He would, for instance, chose spaghetti and meat balls rather than, say,
ossobuco
at
one of those quick in and out places around Rome’s more famous
piazza
or Paris’s St. Germain.

It was harder to render noodles and meat in tomato sauce inedible than a veal shank stuffed with its own bone marrow.

The present candidate was a cheeseburger.

At resort prices, a real bargain at eighty kuna.             

How do you screw that up?

The chef managed.

The mouth feel of the cheeseburger reminded Lang of sawdust and the taste was . . . what? Not beef like any he had tasted. What the burger lacked in quality it made up in volume. It could have choked a horse should the animal chosen to participate in a possible act of cannibalism. To top off that epicurean disaster, the bun felt as though it had just exited the refrigerator. The insult to be added to his misery was the automatic fifteen percent gratuity along with a note that the patron was free to add on additional sums for exceptional service.

Lang didn’t mind a tip. After all, the kid serving the meal wasn’t responsible for the quality of it. He
did
mind having someone else determine the amount.

He had just signed the credit card chit when he looked up. One of the Asians was exiting the building. Lang stood so the umbrella obscured his upper torso and face while he decided what to do.

There wasn’t going to be time for extensive deliberation.

Although the umbrella masked him from one Asian, he couldn’t see the other man.

The only exit from the outdoor restaurant was by the way Lang had come: a short set of steps. It would be impossible to use them without being seen. There was also the bothersome question of where the second Asian was. Most likely positioned to intercept the conventional avenues of escape. Had it not been for the jackets the men wore on such a warm day, jackets Lang was certain concealed shoulder holsters, he would simply have waited for the pair to make whatever move they had in mind. Unarmed, though, his past training and present physical conditioning was no match for firepower. 

That left the unconventional.

Circling the restaurant, he used his iPhone to mime taking pictures of the old town below. Halfway around but well before reaching the stairs, he stepped over a low stone wall separating the dining area from the hillside into which it was built. To his surprise, no one seemed to notice. He supposed the cliff, the face of which he now had to traverse, was not the focal point of his fellow diners.

A single glance down had told him an attempt in that direction was likely to be suicidal. Although the limestone was not nearly as sheer as it appeared from below, this view of it revealed a number of concave areas, almost shallow caves, that would have him literally holding onto rock above his head.

He had a better idea.

Using small cavities and handholds along with the occasional shrub, he made his way perhaps a hundred feet or so across the rock until he was directly below the platform from which the cable car would begin its descent. The hum of an electric motor filled his ears but did not block the sudden cries from the direction of the restaurant. Someone had finally noticed Lang clinging to the rock face. He dared not turn his head to see how many people were leaning over the low stone wall, pointing.

Other than free booze and food, few things drew a crowd faster than an imminent fatality.             

With an increase in the sound above his head, perhaps imagined, the cable car shifted and began its trip downward.

Lang forced himself to wait. He would have to time this perfectly, for he would have but the single opportunity. He wouldn’t be alive for a second try.