Surviving Prague Excerpt 4

The Hollow Man    |     The Hollow Man Series, International Espionage​

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Sparkling streaks painted the sky most of the afternoon as the clouds threatened another storm surge. Thunder rolled around like rocks in a dryer but no more rain came. The ground quickly turned back to crust.

I lay half-awake holding hands with my demons trying to sort out where I’d been and where I was going. An undeveloped black and white movie flickered past the open boxcar door in fits and spurts. The scenes were out of sequence and without dialog it was impossible to understand. The dim light reflected only notions and half-solved truths about the prior week.

A call came in to my hotel’s front desk late last Friday. A note was taken and stuffed in the box with my key but I couldn’t pick it up until sometime Saturday. I remembered that. Everything in between then and now was more questionable.

A Munich beerhall somewhere off Goethestraße sounded good at the time. A flushed waitress had just slammed down a four-liter mug of beer and a plateful of bratwurst, knockwurst, bockwurst, something. In flooded five hundred German factory workers with a pocket full of payday with anyplace to spend it.

Within thirty minutes alcohol vapor had sucked the oxygen from the room and the fumes burst into flames. There was hardly room to raise a four-finger salute but that’s when the fight began. Lager laced courage sent fists and faces flying across tables according to Newton’s Third Law.

I’d like to think I was the only sane person in the asylum though I couldn’t testify to that. Memories became more vague as the night went on. I remember someone crawling under a table to finish his beer and dinner waiting for the tempest to blow over. I hoped that person was me.

A free dinner was the good news of the evening because the police showed up before I could ask for the bill. Unfortunately, I was not as lucky with my overnight accommodations in the drunk tank. The concrete floor of the cell made a lousy mattress and did little to ease a roomful of aching heads. Through the moans and smell of vomit I had a very personal conversation with the patron saint of the totally-screwed and he refused to take my case.

The following Monday I was supposed to face a magistrate to explain how and why a hapless tourist had been caught up in Munich’s usual Friday night fight club. I’m pretty sure I missed that appointment.

The three days after being released were more clear in my head but less understandable. After retrieving the message from the hotel I knew my immediate future had been chiseled in stone. There was no doubt and nothing else could be done. Zita was in trouble.

Current circumstance required me to break a number of laws in at least two countries to ensure her safety. Well, actually that part was not all that unusual for me. But how to actually make it happen was still the $64,000 question.

I wasn’t known for my planning abilities so I’m fairly certain any plan I might have created would not have immediately included an arrest in a bar fight, a car stolen then lost, illegal entry into restricted territory, an elite Russian platoon tracking and nearly killing me, a mountainside of mud, or ending up as a hobo with no shoes. But in the end I guess it’s the results that count. I was where I wanted to be; closer to her.