Sending a Message

The $420,000 price tag wouldn’t be a third of what the investment really consisted of – Georg knew that. Georg also knew his boss, Fritz Steiner, would lop his head off like a tree limb if he were to agree to such a proposition. The entire drive down the snow-capped mountain gave Georg two solid hours of contemplation and planning. He was comforted by the fact that, despite being as ruthless and apathetic as Hitler, Fritz Steiner wasn’t a man of foolhardiness or rash decision making. Steiner was a tactful general; an expert at assessing each piece’s position on the board, calculating every move possible and its consequence.
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         The Reinheitsgebot was founded eight years before Georg’s problematic meeting at the Never Winter Brewery. The restaurant’s premise was simple: pure, robust beer with authentic German cuisine served in the same fashion as Oktoberfest. Entering the Reinheitsgebot was like traveling to Munich in late September; large Bavarian and German banners adorned the wood scaffolding like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The expansive beer hall housed nearly fifty picnic benches, all bedecked with the traditional royal blue and white checker patterned cloth. On the average Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, it would not be unusual for each table to house eight drinkers, all with four enormous mugs of frothing Märzen, pitch-black Bock or golden Kölsch ale.
         On this frozen February Tuesday, however, Georg entered the Reinheitsgebot to see few patrons had entered the establishment. Fritz’s beautiful blonde wife, Katja, stood behind the bar, her petite face and flawless complexion honed on the computer screen in front of her.
         “Hey Kati” said Georg with a slight wave of his hand, “Is Fritz around?”
         “He’s in the office I think.”
         Georg glided through the large oak door to the brew room. The mash tun and brew kettle thumped and whistled loudly as he walked around the industrial labyrinth to the back office. Standing in front of the door, Georg cupped the brass knob and released a gentle sigh of anxiety. With his nerves suppressed, the German lawyer entered the RHG office.
         “How’s it going, mein Herr?” asked Georg upon entering. Behind the massive dark-wood desk sat Fritz Steiner, a half-empty beer stein sitting by the edge with a mass of papers in front of him. On the wall behind him hung Albrecht Dürer’s portrait of Karl der Gross, the eyes of the magnificent European leader piercing the soul of any person brave enough to enter the tank in which the sharks of Roanoak’s elite white-collar crime organization swam.
         “Fine Georg – just fine.” Fritz did not remove his gaze from the paperwork he was working on. Instead, he stared longingly at the pages before him, the dim light of the desk lamp his only luminance.
Georg sat in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk. The plush nature of the cushion made any visitor sit unusually low; Fritz’s six-foot, four-inch frame was magnified by a factor of ten when visitors were enveloped in the leather arms of the chair.
         “We’ve got a problem,” remarked Georg abruptly.
         Fritz gazed up from the paper and took a long drink from his mug. The poor lighting made his chiseled chin and cheeks look etched out of cured marble.
         “Harvey put the pressure on?”
         “Yes, mein Herr.”
         “How much is he trying to buy us out with?”
         “$450,000”
         Georg was astonished by his boss’s reaction; light-hearted, if not comical. Fritz Steiner was laughing out loud at the offer. And not just a light chuckle, but a guttural bellow from the pit of his stomach.
         “Why would we accept that?” asked Fritz between heavy breaths.
         Georg didn’t answer. After four years of being the RHG’s lawyer and personal advisor to Herr Steiner, he knew the question was rhetorical. It didn’t need an answer because Fritz’s mind was already made up on the situation in question. Not only was his mind made up, his counteraction was also already decided.
         “Don’t worry yourself about it, Georg. Harvey Dudek is a rash, illogical man; but he’s not a horrible businessman. We’ll take care of this. You just concentrate on our other transactions. Understand?”
         “Yes, mein Herr.” Georg left his boss with a calmed, settled mind.
         Exiting the restaurant, Georg felt the sweat on his neck and brow freeze with the winter chill, and he braced his woolen collar against his skin. The streets were already dark, and being a winter weekday few people were bustling about the sidewalks.
         As he approached his car, the German lawyer began fumbling for his keys buried deep in his suit pants pocket. As quickly as a flash of lightning, a blinding burst of light erupted from the windows of his Volkswagon. A force with a bull’s ferocity and an oven’s heat lifted Georg backward into the air like a doll, driving him onto the cold, hard pavement of the downtown street. Dazed and shocked, Georg lifted his head from the pavement. His gaze, transfixed on the flame-engulfed vehicle, did not allow him to even think logically. He sat in horror as shop owners ran from the entries of their establishments, staring at the smoldering vehicle.
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         The icy water lapped slowly against the bow of the metal row boat. From the over-grown dirt parking lot came Fritz and Ulrich, dressed in heavy wool jackets with clouds of breath streaming from their mouths. In the darkness, Harvey Dudek’s body looked like nothing more than a heaping sack of trash. Gagged, bound and unconscious, the hasty businessman was dragged along the rocky pathway to the water’s edge.
         The Germans wasted no time throwing the limp body into the hull of the metal boat. Fritz climbed in and sat on the bench in front, cradling a lead anchor and a bundle of rope between his feet. Ulrich shoved the boat offshore, clambering in and taking hold of the oars with dry, frozen hands.
         The water was calm as glass as the boat slowly made its way across the bay and into the shadowy silhouette of the mountain peak. The oars dipped quietly into the water, the only noise coming from Ulrich’s occasional gasp for frigid oxygen; the air stung his lungs with the ferocity of finely aged vodka. The moon’s rays glimmered lightly and delicately on the water’s surface, the boat sliding across the glare like a sleek knife. Ulrich’s rowing soon ceased, however, and the three sat over the dark lake in silence.
         “I don’t know how it got to this point, Uli – I really don’t,” began Fritz, reaching into the hull for the length of rope. “I mean, what happened to morality and decency in business transactions? Huh, Harvey? Whatever happened to ‘I’m a man of my word’ and ‘our word is our bond’? It seems to me these days like a man’s word is as frail as mankind in general.” Fritz took the rope and securely lashed it to the wrist and ankle shackles on the unconscious Harvey. “How can we ever hope to have a peaceful world when people refuse to play by the rules? Who do they think they are – God?”
         Ulrich shook his head slowly in response, knowing full-well that his boss was not to be interrupted during actions of a malicious and premeditated nature. Fritz finished the knots with a final grunt, savoring the snap of the synching rope in the frozen air.
         “Ulrich, did you know that the average human being can hold his or her breath for barely a minute? Sixty seconds – just incredible that human life is that fragile. And guess how deep the water is right here?”
         These were the moments that haunted Ulrich’s dreams – the taunting of the victim moments before their death. Nobody, not even Katja, had the horrid pleasure of witnessing Fritz in such a psychological state. Psychiatrists surely would define his behavior as psychotic – Ulrich only viewed it as genius. It was this malicious nature that made Fritz the most-feared man in the entire Rocky Mountain region, and his actions that made the RHG as ruthless as a cyclone. The actions of tonight would set the stage for the next five years, surely placing the RHG at the top crime organization hierarchy.
         “How deep is it, mein Herr?” asked Ulrich, flinching against the frozen breeze and the anticipation for his boss’s response.
“Eighty feet deep,” replied Fritz as he lifted the anchor onto the boat’s side and tied the tag end of the rope to the fifty-pound weight. “Well, Uli – shall we?”
Ulrich slid his cold hands under the arms of Harvey, cradling his mass like a mother with her sickly child. He grunted lightly under the mass of the limp weight.
         ” This is the RHG’s rejection of your offer, Herr Dudek,” said Fritz, launching the lead anchor into the blackness of the reservoir.
         Ulrich heaved the body over the boat’s side like a sack of rotten vegetables, and with a shocking splash Harvey Dudek disappeared into the crystal night. The water was quick to resettle, and in moments Fritz and Ulrich sat in silence.