[2017] The Hungarian

by Victoria Dougherty

  Waving her hand, Lily motioned for the Persian to hurry. He ambled toward her with a slight limp, ignoring her sense of urgency either out of mulishness or genuine pain. As he came close, she lifted the lantern, casting a glow over his muslin-wrapped face. Only a small slit was left open for his eyes, and Lily glanced over them. Even through her soot-covered goggles their color was unmistakable. A brilliant green—gem-like in their luster—the eyes narrowed instantly as recognition set in.

  Chapter 61

  Lily threw down her lantern and pulled Barnaby Pearce’s gun out from the waist of her trousers. A strong gust of wind, carrying soot and pebbles from the street, blew a plume of kerosene fumes and fire between Lily and the Hungarian. Her vision of Gulyas was obscured, but she shot—three times—until the surge of flames died down, confined once again to a ring around the broken lantern. Beryx Gulyas, by then, was gone. The air was too gritty and dark to allow Lily a quick search for some sign that she’d wounded him—a smear of blood, perhaps, giving her an idea of which way he could have gone.

  Lily stomped out the fire at her feet, crunching over the broken glass from her lantern. There were two doorways—one on either side of her—that led to two different dwellings. Gulyas could have entered either one of them, but the one to her left was closer. Slowly, Lily stepped forward, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.

  “Did you hear that?” the Great Detective queried. “Sounded like gunfire.”

  “Could’ve been anything,” Pasha said. “These storms make all sorts of trouble.” Lily was capable of making all sorts of trouble, too.

  “Bom, bom, bom! Just like that. Rapid fire.” The Great Detective opened the shutters again and strained to look out the window. He watched a slender young man put out a small fire with his boot. Otherwise, there was nothing.

  The Great Detective started to turn away from the window but then looked back again. Something about the young man wasn’t right. The way he used his toe instead of his heel to put out the fire; the way his hips moved under his bulky clothing.

  “A girl,” the Great Detective said.

  “I’m sure you can get one of those here, too,” Pasha offered. “It’s a small village, but they seem accommodating to tourists.”

  The Great Detective ignored his comment, watching the girl in man’s clothing move toward their system of dwellings. Although it was dark and he could barely make out her silhouette, one thing was clear: this girl had a gun. A very big gun.

  “Trouble never comes alone,” the Great Detective whispered. He stooped down, pulled a coil of rope from a curtained cabinet and tied Pasha’s wrists to the bedpost.

  “You’re being a great sport, as the English would say.”

  Pasha Tarkhan made no acknowledgement of the compliment, and the Great Detective could feel his prisoner’s eyes on him as he slipped out the door and into the unlit hallway. The walls were rough—carved and sanded down from a grainy rock—and the Great Detective listened for movement as he felt his way deeper into the dwelling. The dust storm outside provided a constant melody of ambient noise that played with a certain degree of tone-deaf belligerence, like a marching band. It was a strangely comforting sound, unlike silence. Yet even through the din of the storm outside—the pitter of gravel, sticks and broken glass—the Great Detective could hear—no, perhaps sense—the creeping step of a man in thickly soled shoes on the floor above him.

  Chapter 62

  Lily’s father had once told her that in youth, instincts are one’s only reliable beacons.

  “Good judgment comes much later,” he’d said. “After years of experience.”

  He’d told her this around the time she’d accepted Richard Putnam’s proposal of marriage—an offer her untrained judgment told her to accept and her instincts rejected violently—punishing her with a relentless case of insomnia coupled with a nightly craving for three-quarters of a bottle of red wine.

  Unlike the case of her malaka ex-fiancé, Lily couldn’t tell right then if it had been her instincts or her judgment that had goaded her into going after Beryx Gulyas. She might have continued her search for Pasha, hoping to keep hidden from the Hungarian assassin—at least until she had some back-up. But she instead found herself tiptoeing through a dwelling with a floor plan like a labyrinth and gripping Barnaby Pearce’s gun so tightly that her right hand felt as if it were in a state of rigor mortis.

  And this old structure was not at all as settled as the other ones she’d crept through. There were no lights in the passageways; in the place of stairs, Lily encountered a rickety wooden ladder that led from the first floor to the second. Lily ascended that ladder—her judgment telling her not to—and arrived at an unfinished foyer with pitted walls and a single beeswax candle dangling from a string. It was as if seven hundred years had not been enough time to make basic home improvements.

  A hushed, almost imperceptible waft of stale air made the hair on the back of Lily’s neck stand up. She could detect no sounds apart from the muffled clatter of the storm, yet she felt distinctly not alone. Instinct—and it was instinct this time—told her that while she could not see anything or anyone from her vantage point, she was without question being seen. She cocked Pearce’s gun, readied her finger on the trigger, and slowly turned around.

  “Miss Tassos,” the voice whispered.

  Lily froze.

  “Miss Tassos, a shot from a gun like that in an ancient place on its last legs could be a catastrophe.”

  Lily looked in the direction of the voice—thickly Russian accented, but correct in its English grammar; even in its choice of idiom. “Is Pasha Tarkhan with you?” she asked.

  But the Russian was done talking. She heard his footstep—light as a dancer despite the heavy frame she’d sensed from the caliber of his voice. “Don’t come any closer,” she said, holding Pearce’s gun out in front of her.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t much choice in the matter,” he said.

  A face emerged into the dim light of the lone candle—fully healed, but once badly broken. It was the man she’d seen at the Hotel Rude. The one who’d followed her, staring blatantly at her as she left for the Lavra with Fedot and a near-dead Pasha. It was that stare she remembered most—even more than his damaged facial bones. A gaze that betrayed nothing—neither intention, nor emotion, nor aptitude. The face of a card player—no, a detective. Behind him, Beryx Gulyas came forward. He was holding something at the detective’s back. Perhaps a gun, but Lily couldn’t be sure.

  Unlike the Russian detective, Gulyas made no effort to disguise his objectives. His raw, singed face was a contortion of hostile emotions.

  “You fickle bitch,” he rasped, pushing his weapon into the detective’s back. He inhaled deeply, flaring his nostrils.

  “Do you expect me to drop my gun?” Lily said. “I don’t even know this man.” Lily did know, of course, that the broken-faced detective was less the Hungarian’s hostage than his human shield. Still, making small talk in this instance was calming somehow.

  “We’re going to leave here together,” Gulyas asserted.

  “For another capsaicin cocktail party?”

  “Now, now,” Gulyas coaxed, curling his fingers.

  Despite Lily’s second betrayal at the Imam’s cemetery, Gulyas, in his heart, felt he could forgive her over time. She was, after all, responding to the death of her father—and what kind of woman wouldn’t feel loyalty to the master of her household? Certainly a Hungarian woman would have done the same. Gulyas clung to the belief that one day Lily could see him as her master again. That she would bite a chunk out of a man’s calf in order to avenge him. It was an enormously pleasant thought, and Beryx Gulyas did not have pleasant thoughts very often. Unconsciously, he bared his teeth, his lips turning upward into a smile.

  Lily inched backward, side-stepping the gaping hole that led to the preceding floor. She wondered if she could jump down and roll out of view before the Hungarian had a chance to pull the trigger, but Gulyas seemed to know what sh
e was thinking. He pushed the Russian detective forward, putting Lily off balance and forcing her to lurch farther away from the hole.

  As Lily caught her footing, her eyes darted quickly at the detective. His lopsided face wore an expression of cool surveillance—as if he was not a part of whatever was going on between Lily Tassos and the Hungarian assassin, and he knew exactly how things were going to turn out anyway. Lily took another step backward and felt the heat of the beeswax candle at the back of her head.

  “Lily,” Beryx Gulyas whispered. He was looking at her, his gun aimed at the detective. Spinning quickly around, Lily blew out the single candle, sheathing them all in the pitch-dark. She crouched low to the ground, anticipating a shot, but none came. Although Lily could still feel the presence of the detective and the Hungarian, neither of them had shifted. It was as if each of them was waiting for someone else to make the first move.

  “Gruh!”

  The low grunt ended their standoff, and Lily could hear hobbling, then a hard step. It was Gulyas; she was sure of it. Days of being his captive had illuminated her to his mannerisms—to the distinct sound of his every movement—if not so much to the sound of his voice. He’d rarely spoken.

  Somehow the Russian detective had wounded Gulyas, or at least stunned him, causing him to stumble. Lily rose up and took a crouched step in what she thought was Beryx Gulyas’s direction. The detective’s hand—a wide and muscular paw—grabbed her wrist and dug his fingers between her tendons. Lily’s grip on Barnaby Pearce’s gun began to slacken, and she clutched the barrel of the .44 with her left hand, reinforcing her hold. She didn’t mean to pull the trigger, but she did, sending a powerful shot into the wall just below the ceiling. The primitive structure trembled audibly—like a minor earthquake—and then settled.

  In that instant, Lily’s legs flew out from under her, sending her to the sandy floor. Pearce’s gun was plucked from her grip like a twig from a child.

  “Stay where you are,” the detective said. His presence faded away into the dark, leaving Lily alone and vulnerable. She pressed her cheek, then her palms to the floor, feeling for the vibration of footsteps—the Hungarian’s—but the cold, grainy clay felt as inert as a tombstone.

  Slowly, Lily began to slide along on her belly. She timed her movements with the swells from the storm, making her way in what she hoped was the direction of the hole and ladder that would lead her back to the ground level. Lily’s fingers explored all around her, coming upon granules, a candy wrapper, a few small shards of glass, but nothing that would indicate the passage out. Finally, her left hand felt a current of air. The hole had to be close. Lily lifted her head, breathing in and trying to catch a whiff of the dank air she’d noticed on the preceding floor of the old dwelling. At first, she could only smell the foyer—earthen minerals and old urine. Straining, she arched her neck toward the cool current until she did at last detect the faintest trace from the odor of the ground floor. Much cleaner, with a bitter tinge.

  Lily had just exhaled and slackened her tense shoulder muscles when Beryx Gulyas’s boot came down on her. The Hungarian stepped hard onto her neck, making it damned near impossible for Lily to breathe. At her ear, Lily heard the cocking of a gun, and the low, heavy breathing of a man up a few pounds who had clearly exerted himself. She could picture the look of gratification on his face as the Hungarian pressed his heel harder and listened to Lily’s desperate, intermittent gasps for air. It would have been the same look she’d witnessed on his face just before she blew out the beeswax candle and dropped in the dark to the floor.

  Beryx Gulyas, for his part, had no such look on his face. He puffed his breath and strained to keep the heel of his boot squarely on her shoulder. Although he was cutting off most of her air supply, it wasn’t enough to kill her. He didn’t want to do that. He wanted her to come with him. If he could get her home, or somewhere they could be alone, he was sure he could once again watch her beam up at him as if he were an angel.

  “Love,” Gulyas grumbled, just as two shots from Barnaby Pearce’s .44 Magnum thundered through the foyer, aimed in his general direction.

  A scant moment after the echo subsided, an ominous crackling sound permeated the structure. Beryx Gulyas took his boot off Lily’s neck and stepped back. He raised his gun from her ear and fired toward the shots, dealing a death blow to the weakened domicile. The clay floor quivered as half of the edifice collapsed—peeling off, then plunging down to the street like a large tablet from an iceberg. The storm rushed into what remained of the structure, and Gulyas stumbled close to the edge of its gaping side.

  Lily rose to her knees and moved to push the Hungarian off the edge when a hand gripped her ankle and began to pull her into the hole she’d been seeking. Lily clawed at the ground, but the hand was too strong—pulling her down until she fell like a ragdoll. Her head hit hard against part of the ladder, breaking a rung. The last thing Lily remembered before losing consciousness was landing onto something soft and unbreakable at the same time—curling into a ball and becoming aware of the fading scent of anise and cigarettes.

  Chapter 63

  From a neighboring rooftop, Fedot watched as the entire façade of one of the ancient Kandovan dwellings disintegrated into a powder that was instantly consumed by the blowing storm. He set his lantern down and ran to the roof’s edge. It was too long a distance for his legs to withstand a jump to the street level, so Fedot slid down a drainpipe and struggled to make his way across the narrow road that served as one of Kandovan’s main channels. The storm had grown in its ferocity, made worse by the refuse from the collapsed dwelling. Fedot felt his way to the entrance and pushed open the door, only to find himself face-to-face with the Great Detective.

  “I ran from the wolf and encountered a bear,” Fedot said, but the Great Detective ignored him. He simply covered his mouth with a handkerchief, pushing past him and making his way into the street from where Fedot had come.

  “It’s no use out there,” Fedot told him. But it was no use in there either. The partially destroyed structure—apart from being unsound—was a whirl of rubble and chalky air. But Fedot continued inside, climbing over chunks of debris and using dead Ismayil’s dagger to chip through sections of the passageway that hadn’t completely buckled. He was sure Pasha Tarkhan couldn’t be far away—perhaps stuck in the rubble, or hiding from the Great Detective. It could have been Pasha who had orchestrated the collapse in order to escape. It seemed like something he would do.

  “Miss Lily?” Fedot called. He had caught a hint of her perfume. It clung stubbornly to her hair, eclipsing even the odor of the thick air around them.

  A sound resembling a clap of thunder reverberated through the structure. It creaked and groaned like a dying man before beginning to collapse from the middle, caving in on itself like a sinkhole. The ceiling, the walls and the floor crumpled in succession, and Fedot found himself falling—not deeper into the structure, but beyond it, to a place that looked like nothing Kandovan had to offer. A double-headed horse greeted a winged King on his descent; he saw gargoyles with bulging eyes and ferocious smiles—all glimpsed like wind-swept pages in a book.

  His fall was broken by water—deep, clean and frigid—then followed by chunks of debris from the crumbled dwelling. Fedot swam toward the bottom, trying to avoid the deluge of falling refuse, but he never reached it. When he could no longer hold his breath, he surfaced—treading water until his eyes adjusted to the dim cavern.

  Fedot had plunged into an early cistern—perhaps as old as two thousand years. Faded paintings were inked onto the walls, and partially preserved mosaic patterns studded a pair of great columns that reinforced the grotto. Stone carvings sprung from the bulwarks; gargoyles ogled Fedot from every corner. There was graffiti carved into some of the wall paintings. The most recent, as far as he could see, were from the medieval era—an etching of a castle structure with three lines floating above it, perhaps representing the heavens, or a coming plague.

  Fedot swam to the ledge of
one of the columns and pulled himself up. He searched his jacket for the gun Lily had given him, but it was gone—probably at the bottom of the cistern. Gone, too, was the pension owner’s dagger, only its sheath still strapped to Fedot’s waist. Looking up into the hole from where he’d come, the Russian could see nothing other than darkness. He could no longer hear the storm outside.

  The cavern itself could have gone on for miles—perhaps linking up with another ancient cistern in Tabriz through a system of underground rivers. Near a vanishing mural that depicted a lion hunt, Fedot could detect a current in the otherwise still waters. He lowered himself back into the drink and swam closer to the mural until he could see the mouth of a tunnel. It swallowed the cold water in frantic gulps.

  Behind him, Fedot heard a gentle splash. He looked back to the column that had been his perch moments before. It sat innocently enough in the water—as it had a thousand years ago, as it might tomorrow. Still, Fedot was disturbed. A crescent shadow, slim as a nail clipping, blunted a glimmer of reflected light, and Fedot plunged his head underwater. He could feel something both slim and weighty dive only centimeters away from his skull. He reached out and caught it with his hand, his fingers closing around the rippled edge of a blade. It was the pension owner’s dagger.

  “You cur,” Beryx Gulyas growled. “This time you’ll be the one running.” Gulyas had fallen into the depths of Kandovan just as he was about to leap from the second floor of the structure onto the street. He was sucked in suddenly, violently, only a moment after he had seen Lily below him, being carried away by someone. Although the little man had nothing to do with how Gulyas had gotten into the ancient cistern and away from Lily Tassos, it seemed he was always, somehow, getting between the Hungarian and his objectives.