J. Jones - The Third Place

‘Then call Franz Ferdinand and tell him. We will need his automobile. And we could use a contingent of his men. Quickly, man. There is no time to lose.’

‘I am afraid you lose once again, gentlemen,’ Klavan said, picking up the final trick with the Pagat. This was truly his day. The women were safely tied up by their hands and feet. and gagged, the child locked away in a back bedroom. She had given up long ago with her useless screaming. The two men sitting at the table with him were also tied up, hands in back and feet bound, but he had not gagged them. They needed to talk to give him instructions what to do with their cards, which he held up for them to look at. He did not peek into their hands; he played fair. This slowed the game no end, but then life was filled with all sorts of obstacles.

He was enjoying himself. He would enjoy it even more when Werthen and Gross arrived.

‘You are a despicable person,’ Herr von Werthen said. There was a strip of torn sheet wrapped around his head from where Klavan had hit him with the butt of the pistol upon his entrance.

‘I do appreciate the recognition,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall I deal another hand?’

‘He will expect us to come storming in,’ Gross said as the rode in the open car. ‘He is feeling very good about himself at this moment, I am sure. He is winning, as far as he reckons. He does not know about the inactive bacilli, however. It is our one weapon.’

‘I don’t care about any of that,’ Werthen said. ‘All I want is for my family to be safe.’

‘Oh, they’ll be safe until we get there. Klavan wants a Gotterdammerung, not a simple homicide here and there.’

Duncan, who was accompanying them, nodded in agreement.

Werthen seemed to come out his shock, Gross’s last words finally reaching him.

‘If that is the case, I think I might have a plan.’

‘Why so glum, ladies?’ Klavan said as he finished another winning hand.

The three women were lined up against the wall near the door. Berthe glared at the creature. She was also quietly working at the knots binding her wrists behind her. When her father-in-law was forced at gunpoint to tie her, Berthe did not let her arms go back as far as they could. Thus, now she could work the slack on the rope, and had managed to wriggle a fingernail into the knot. For the last several minutes she had been loosening it slowly and painfully.

‘Such a pity to have it all end this way.’ He shuffled the cards with a cascading, ratcheting sound, shoved the two blocks of cards into one deck, knocked the edges in line on the table, divided the deck again and shuffled once more.

‘And such a waste, too.’ He looked straight into the faces of each woman in turn, ignoring the men, who were now gagged. ‘Advokat Werthen and Doktor Gross let you all down, did you know that? Oh, yes. They had me in their grips and were not clever enough to tighten their fingers. Thanks go to Princess Dumbroski with her hiding compartment behind the bookcase, but credit is also due to the stupidity of those two men. Only a matter of inches from me and they let me go.’ He shook his head.

Berthe would not be baited; she continued to work on the knots. She also filed away the information about Princess Dumbroski for later.

There would be a later, she reassured herself.

They parked the automobile a quarter mile from the farm, not wanting to risk Klavan hearing them approach. The driver remained in the machine while Gross and Duncan took up position as planned and Werthen made his way on foot to the house.

He was not going to wait for the rest of the archduke’s men. What good could they do? This battle would not be about numbers but strategy.

Werthen was sure that Klavan was in the house and holding the others captive, waiting. Waiting for him and Gross to figure out the last of his puzzles and to come in a rush to save the day.

He was unarmed and defenseless as he walked down the long drive to his home.

A lone man in the flat landscape trudging to what fate held in store for him.

Klavan heard the footsteps in the courtyard and took up position behind the door, next to Berthe. She heard the footsteps as well and desperately wanted to shout out a warning. She dug her fingertip now into the knot, but could not open it. She began wriggling and Klavan put the gun to her temple.

‘Move once more and you die,’ he hissed.

Feet sounded on the steps, a key fitted in the lock and the door opened.

Werthen’s voice came from the other side. ‘I’m unarmed, Herr Klavan. I’ve come for my family.’

Berthe could see Klavan flinch at the use of his real name, like an insect exposed to the sunlight by a lifted rock.

He slammed the door into Werthen with sudden force. There was a groan and Klavan dragged him quickly inside, shutting and bolting the door behind him.

Blood streamed down Werthen’s face from where the door had struck him.

Klavan held the gun on him. ‘How nice of you to join my little party, Advokat.’

Berthe’s eyes grew wide; she wanted to somehow communicate to her husband with them.

Werthen quickly surveyed the scene: men and women tied up. He forced a smile at Berthe.

‘My daughter? Where is she?’ He tried to move closer into the room toward the windows on the exterior wall, but Klavan waved at him with his gun to stay where he was.

‘She’s safe enough, the little brat. Cried her eyes out in a back bedroom. Now where is your faithful colleague? Didn’t have the heart for the final chase?’

‘He left once we discovered the bacilli you stole were useless.’

Klavan said nothing, but the gun wavered in his hand minutely.

‘Professor Doktor Nothnagel at the General Hospital let us know himself. The whole batch had already died off by the time you stole the vials. There’s no need for a quarantine on the water from the Favoriten water tower. Gross thought it more important to get in touch with your employers in Belgrade than waste time with your juvenile games.’

‘The silver-throated Advokat. Telling lies like all of you do. Gross was too cowardly to come face-to-face with me. No matter. I’ll see to him later. For now, I guess I’ll just have to settle for you.’

He pulled out a hollow rubber ball from his pocket; Werthen could see a tube attached to it.

‘I assume you know what this is?’ Klavan said.

Werthen had read about such explosive devices; anarchists used them to self-detonate rather than be taken alive by the police. He nodded, and then grabbed his wounded head, seeming to stumble deeper into the room to his left, forcing Klavan to alter his position as well.

‘You say you want your family. Well, here they are. You can watch one of them die. Who shall it be? Try to stop me and I squeeze my magic ball. Then we all go to hell together.’

Berthe’s finger nudged deeper into the knot; it began to loosen now as Klavan approached the line of men and women.

‘Who shall I start with?’

‘Lie still, Doktor Gross,’ Duncan ordered. ‘I can’t get a clean shot if you wiggle.’

Gross was supine on the grass, hands over his ears, and a bug had decided to trek across his cheek – hence the twitch. Duncan was using him as a makeshift tripod, the rifle barrel propped over his back, perpendicular to his body so that the blast of the shot would not burst his eardrums. With his ears cupped by his hands, he could barely hear Duncan’s command.

‘There was a moment there,’ Duncan murmured. ‘I can see Advokat Werthen but not the others. I think it was Klavan, but just for an instant.’

‘Take your shot, man,’ Gross insisted.

‘But what if it is one of the others?’

‘They’ll be tied up,’ Gross said. Or dead, he thought.