Free Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation, Vol. 2 by Michael Genelin Page A

additional fifty meters, running. Finally, they all stopped, panting. Jana and Grisko looked up and down the street, then back to the club. They saw no one.
    “Nothing,” Grisko said between gasps.
    Jana stepped into the middle of the street, trying to find an angle that would allow her to observe a larger arc of space. “Where did the people go? Your waiters, cooks?” She turned back to Mikhail. “Why did you go outside?”
    Adriana responded for him. “There was no music. Why stay there?”
    “Adriana wanted to leave, so we left. She didn’t like it there.”
    The fear had begun to ebb from Grisko. He looked at Jana accusingly. “You spooked me! I should not have left my own club like that. Undignified. There was nothing wrong.”
    “There is still something wrong. I know it; you know it.”
    “I don’t know any such thing.” Grisko’s ego started to reassert itself, puffing him up into his pouter pigeon stance. He started back toward the club.
    “Grisko, where did everyone go? Why did they go?” She took a step after him. “Wait a little longer. Let’s make sure.”
    “It’s my club. I am going back!” he called over his shoulder. He began to walk faster, swinging his arms, more and more the little Napoleon.
    He had gotten half the distance back to the club when the place erupted in a huge ball of fire that curved up and around the whole structure which, for a moment, seemed to continue to exist, stable on its frame, until it erupted, in an eyeblink, into a shredding of plaster, brick, wood, tile, becoming part of a huge, shattering, burning tornado, the blast tossing cars parked by the club onto their sides, debris raining down like hot pieces of magma rejected by Hades, too hot even for Hell.
    Mikhail covered Adriana with his body, fiery pieces bounding off him. Jana was thrown to the ground, the heap that was Mikhail and Adriana between her and the fiery debris of the explosion, saving her from its direct assault. She waited until the primary momentum of the blast was past, then picked herself up to stagger through the still-falling shards of wreckage toward Grisko.
    The Ukrainian was sitting up, alive, soot-covered, his face blackened, clothes torn. He was no longer a pouter pigeon. His chest appeared to have sunk. Through the grime on his face, his skin had gone pale and a small trickle of blood descended from a bloody eyebrow. Grisko finally focused on Jana. “My club,” he got out, teeth chattering from fear. “Gone.”
    “Gone,” she agreed.
    Grisko wiped his eyes, thinking. Finally he said, “They were right. He is indestructible.” It took him a while to get his lips and tongue wet enough to spit his conclusion into the inhospitable air. “Koba is alive.”
    They continued to crouch, watching the fire, as people began emerging from the surrounding buildings, awed by the blaze, coming closer and closer to the magnetic pull of the flames, staring wide-eyed at the conflagration.
    Grisko eyed the bystanders, trying to satisfy himself that the bomber was not one of them, all the while checking his arms, his face, his legs, surprised that he was still a living creature, still whole. He muttered, repeating to himself: “They were right. The man is indestructible. Koba lives.”

Chapter 11
    T he fear that comes from being watched is contagious. It spreads like a virus whose symptoms are paranoia and anger, eventually becoming an epidemic that kills the spirit of everyone it contacts. Relationships disintegrate, nations break up, civilizations shake, all because of this contagion of human emotion. With Jana and Dano it was no different. They were not superhuman.
    It began and ended with their friends.
    Dano would come to her, smiling, saying he had met so-and-so, a budding playwright, a dramaturge who had a wonderful concept for a Schnitzler play. Or he had met an actress who was a leading lady in a film being produced in Prague, and she wanted them to meet the director. Or they were invited