Prague, in an alternate 1937

It felt like a scene from a movie. And for half a moment, Perun thought it might have been. Or something he'd dreamt, grainy, fuzzed out at the edges, and now only half-remembered, . 

Still, movie or dream, it was clearly business and business always came first. 

Perun, known far and wide as "The Hammerfist",  took a half step backwards and leaned against his massive oak desk. The lamp directly behind him cast a soft halo around his muscular form. His facial features were largely obscured to the visitors standing just inside the firmly-closed office door. 

Blue neon shadows from the electric dusk falling outside spread like luminescent ink from the high windows towards the protagonists in the scene, turning what was a comfortable office into something increasingly dramatic. 

Cinematic. 

The visitors, two men in identical pinstripe suits, fedoras held close to their sides, stared at Perun out of flat, lifeless eyes. 

Perun stared back. 

"Why?" he asked, breaking the silence that he'd allowed to continue long enough. "Old Veleček has his side of the river, I have mine. There's no reason for a meeting between us." 

"He says enough's enough," replied one of the men. "It's time to bury the past."

"Bury the past? I've got no past with Veleček." 

"He said you might say that." The two men looked at each other, as if silently deliberating how much to reveal.

Perun waited, reigning in his impatience . Why didn't they just spit it out and leave?  

The two had appeared unannounced in the illegal bar on the ground floor, asking for three minutes of his time to deliver a message from the old gangster who ran the other side of Prague. Out of idle curiosity, he'd allowed them to be led up the service stairs and into the private warren of offices from where he ran a good amount of his activities. 

Now, he wondered if he'd made a mistake.

"Veleček says, if you come to him, he'll explain everything."

Perun snorted.

The man on the left half-turned to his partner. It was like watching a corpse move; Perun almost expected to hear the cracking of death-stiffened muscles. A slight tremor of revulsion ran through him that luckily didn't reach his face, even if it was in the half-light. Corpses shouldn't bother a man with his reputation. And Perun Hammerfist had one hell of a reputation.

"You won't regret it. He will make sure it's very much worth your while."

"How kind of him. Being shot and dumped in the river is certainly what I'd call worth my while." Perun looked first at one, then the other of Veleček's bizarre messengers. "He's going to have to try much harder than that if he's after taking my turf."

The messengers shook their heads in unison, like mechanical droids in the science fiction films that were so popular in Perun's three downtown cinemas. "It's not a trick. Veleček needs to talk to you. Urgently. He's not after your-"

"Of course he isn't. And I'm a goose-stepping National Axis goon with a fondness for women's underthings." Perun stood up again, uncrossing his arms. "Your three minutes are up. You've delivered your message. The door's right behind you."

He turned away, rounding the curved edge of the desk and heading for the stylish liquor cabinet in the corner of the room. Opening the teak and ebony doors, he pulled out a cut-glass decanter, poured a finger and a half of brandy into a waiting glass, swirled it around a few times, and drank.

"Oh, and tell Ve-" he said as he turned, but stopped mid-phrase.

The men were gone.

He was alone in the office; the door closed.

Perun frowned. He hadn't heard it close. Or more properly, he hadn't heard the click of the handle and the tell-tale scrape as the bottom of the door passed over the slightly-elevated floorboards. Those little sounds were his best, and most reliable, safety precautions should anyone be able to get past the guards on duty in the corridor and at the bottom of the stairs.

He knew it was impossible to enter his office without making a sound. 

Or leave it.

Perun set the brandy glass down, crossed the room and opened the door.

The handle gave its sharp, expected click and wood scraped wood. 

The corridor outside was empty. Perun stood staring at the floor, his square jaw working as he thought through possible explanations.

His office had been completely silent, except for the sound of drizzle and the occasional lazy hum of a passing car. He would have heard. 

From a few paces down the corridor, one of Perun's bodyguards appeared, eyebrows raised. "Need something, boss?"

"Did you . . . Nothing. I changed my mind." Perun closed the door. 

It clicked and scraped.

A vague memory rose and tugged at Perun's consciousness. A fleeting image of something he'd seen years ago, just skirting the edge of his mind. But it slipped away and dissolved into the wallpaper as quickly as it had come. 

Old Veleček wanted to organise a meeting, did he? A meeting based on some gibberish about a past that needed put to rest.  What was it they'd said? Enough was enough? What was that supposed to mean? 

Perun shook his head and walked back to his desk, sitting down in the padded chair and gazing over the reports he'd been studying before the messengers had appeared. He genuinely had no idea what they'd really been after. Or rather, what Veleček was after. 

After a few moments, it occurred to him that his bodyguard wouldn't have closed the office door behind Veleček's men when they'd been shown in, but have left it open just a crack, should he be needed. 

Perun looked up and stared at the wood-inlay of a lighting bolt that jagged all the way from the top to bottom of the door. It had made a sound then, hadn't it? When it'd been opened to let them in. And yet he couldn't remember hearing the click and scrape then either. 

Impossible. Or was it?

Again a memory tugged at him, but stayed under the surface, sinking out of sight only to leave a feeling of unease tinged with anger behind, like a stain on a new, expensive shirt.

Perun leaned back and steepled his fingers. 

Wasn't it enough that the river divided their areas of operation as cleanly as any political border, making territorial conflicts not only unnecessary, but impractical? Veleček kept to Small Side and the ancient hills beyond. Perun had the new town and the heights. Both ran their bars, gambling dens, cigarette and liquor smuggling operations far away from the reach, and influence, of the other.

Old Veleček. He was just that, old. Out-of-date. Still living in the days of horse carriages and gas lamps. He'd had hardly any operations in the New Town, leaving it wide open for the likes of Perun to waltz in and take over. 

Perun considered for a moment how easy it might be to muscle Veleček out entirely. Veleček had no sons, no family waiting in the wings to take over his rudderless operations. If that old bastard was out to bump him off and take what he'd built up, who was to say he shouldn't bump Veleček off first? Or chase him out of town and claim the old man's business for himself. That might be even better. 

Perun rubbed his chin.

As far as he could remember, he'd never actually met Veleček. He had no idea what the man even looked like, aside from what was commonly known. He dressed well. Was a heavy smoker. It had never interested Perun much. He had his own business to attend to. 

He had closed down some of the old man's small operations on the New Town side of the river : a sour-smelling opium den with a few determined addicts dreaming in the shadows, two hole-in-the-wall underground taverns and a ratty musical theatre.

Small fry. That couldn't be what this had to do with.

What did it have to do with?

Perun rubbed a hand over his face, and then through the short hair he kept in a fashionable style, one that flopped down onto his forehead, making him even more attractive than he normally was. Or so he'd been told.

The day's business was far from over and he was already tired. He'd not be seeing his bed until well after the government enforced curfew, and that soured his mood even more.  Perun looked up at the door again.

No click, no scrape.

Vampires? 

Now he was imagining things. Vampires were fairy tales, like ghosts and. . .domovoj. Perun shook himself in an attempt to banish the image of the corpse-like messengers in their identical suits and fedoras. They were strange and the message utter gibberish, but he had other, more pressing matters, to get back to. 

Like the man locked up in his cellar. 

Perun picked up a sheet of yellow paper with neat rows of numbers running down the left side of it, and frowned in concentration.

A particular patron of one of his casinos in the backrooms of a fancy hotel had overstepped the "tidal mark". His credit had been cut and he'd been given a week to pay off what he owed. He hadn't. The manager of the casino had sent over a typed report that included the patron's name, address, profession and everything the casino knew about him, along with the list of debts incurred.

A handwritten message at the bottom of the report indicated the manager's informants were not optimistic that kidnapping or destruction of property would work as an incentive. The patron owned hardly anything of value.

That meant only one thing. A few hours previously, right before dusk had started to settle, Perun's men had gone to collect the idiot and Perun himself had reached for the black, toad-like telephone on his desk, pressed the receiver cradle down a few times and asked to be connected to the Sudetenje Ballroom.

"Speak," a deep, raspy female voice had answered after the clicks and thumps of the connection being established had ceased.

"It's Perun. I'm going to need a judgement from you. A debtor," he'd said.

"When?"

The defaulter was safe in Perun's cellar, but hopefully not bleeding onto the stonework. His men had had their orders, but situations could always get out of hand when front doors were kicked in, snarling dogs shot down and men dragged out to waiting cars in their undershirts and suspenders. 

"Tonight, if possible."

There had been a pause, and Perun could clearly hear the woman taking a drag off her cigarette through the dark Bakelite. The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile as he visualised the white cigarette paper being sucked on by the woman's ruby red lips.

"I'll have to ask," she said. 

"Please do."

A few minutes later, she was back. "At eleven thirty. Use the service entrance."

"No earlier? The curfew."

"Eleven thirty. Or next Thursday."

It couldn't wait until Thursday. These things had to go quickly. Even if most of his profitable establishments were illegal, police inspectors did know where they were. The ones who had half a brain did, anyway, and most of those were solidly in the pocket of the Axis. No evidence was no evidence. And blood, even old blood, was plenty of evidence. 

Perun sighed.

"Eleven-thirty it is."

"Till then, sugarplum," the woman on the other end of the line had said, and hung up.

Perun ran a finger down the line of negative numbers on the yellow casino paper. Impressive. And utterly foolish. He could already guess what the three women would decide and how the night would end. But, there were no certainties in life. As he well knew. And there was little Perun had learned to dislike more than surprises.

Prague's most dreaded gangster stared at the closed door in front of him, tonguing the bottom row of his teeth as he thought. Then he sat up, pulled open a drawer and took out a long, razor-sharp blade that he carefully slid into a hidden holster in his right boot.

He'd had his share of surprises for one day.

The next one that appeared was going to get a surprise of its own. 

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Pronunciation note: š = sh, č = ch

Veleček = Vel-e-check

Vyšehrad = Vish-e-hrad