13 WINDOWS

Chapter 27 Part 3: TRACKS

Rupert stared at the ceiling of the biergarten. He examined the design closely. Then he looked back down at the tourist guidebook he had purchased at the train station. He was inside the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, one of the key starting points for Hitler and the Third Reich.

He sat down with his enormous stein of cold beer. He was the only person in the large hall who seemed to be taking any interest in the fact that you could still see swastikas painted on the ceiling where the lights were hanging.

Of course, the brewery that ran the place now had attempted to paint a different design around the symbol, trying to disguise the original image. Rupert looked around him. Each table was packed, and Germans and tourists were carrying on as if this was just the most normal place in the world.

He sipped his beer and watched two German men in lederhosen. They were engaged in a staring contest and banging their steins along with the beer drinking band. And at the same time they stared unemotionally into each other's eyes.

'What is with these people and staring?' Rupert thought to himself. The band, made up of about five guys of various ages, were playing 'oom-pa-pa' beer drinking songs that all sounded the same to Rupert.

And yet, this same biergarten had been frequented by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He had lived just around the corner. Rupert stood up and walked around trying to soak in the history. The worst of Germany and the best of Germany had come from these walls. He looked around at everyone laughing and singing the almost frightening beer drinking songs, and he wondered if it could ever happen again.

He walked through the pedestrian streets of Munich. There had been so many buildings that had been bombed and destroyed in World War 2 that Rupert felt that Munich actually looked like a newer North American city, like Calgary.

He wasn't sure if he was just being paranoid but he did feel like he was being followed. Perhaps it was because of what the professor had said the other day; that if he stood still that Stefan Streicher would eventually come to him. It was his pattern.

Rupert stopped suddenly and turned around. His eyes swept the hundreds of people walking around him. It was just after lunch and it was a sunny day so the streets were quite busy. He tried to see if he could spot someone that looked like Stefan Streicher in the crowd.

He walked down a quieter back street off the beaten path. There were only a few loading docks and some workers lifting carts into the back of some vans. He hid behind a small truck and peeked around the side to see if anyone would come around the corner from the main street.

Rupert waited. Perhaps five minutes went by. Then a woman walked by talking on her phone. A younger couple giggled as they passed by. Rupert breathed a sigh of relief.

He decided there was no point in waiting for his executioner. He did not want to spend the rest of his life waiting around for this threat to come and hunt him down. Instead, he was going to find his enemy's nest and burn it down before the bastard had a chance. That was the plan.

It was going to be a long trip to Romania and he didn't want to waste anymore time. But there were a few places he wanted to see on the way. He did not know if his life would be over soon. And if Stefan Streicher found a way to murder him then Rupert was going to make this a memorable final trip - even if it was a trip to hell.

His next stop would be Salzburg, where he would stay overnight. He had always listened to a lot of Mozart when he was growing up. His Grandmother Isabelle used to play Mozart all the time. He would draw for hours listening to those symphonies.

Salzburg also reminded him a little bit of his mother. She loved The Sound of Music and he always remembered her singing those songs around the house. The real Sound of Music house was in Salzburg. These were enough reasons for him to spend a night there.