The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “One of your readers, disgruntled with your pro-American editorials?”

  “That from a shameless plagiarist?” Kocian asked.

  “Am I never to be forgiven?” Castillo asked.

  The reference was to Castillo’s habit—to lend authenticity to his alter ego, Karl W. von and zu Gossinger, Washington correspondent for the Tages Zeitung newspapers—of paraphrasing articles from The American Conservative magazine and sending them to Fulda to be published under his byline in the Tages Zeitung newspapers. Kocian had caught him at it.

  “Not in this life,” Kocian said, looking incredulously at Castillo and Max, who was now on his back getting his chest scratched.

  “Where did you come from, Max?” Castillo asked. “An illicit dalliance between a boar and a really horny dachshund?”

  “That’s a Bouvier des Flandres,” Kocian said.

  “‘Bouvier’ was Jacqueline Kennedy’s maiden name,” Castillo said.

  “I don’t think so! Jesus Christ!” Kocian said.

  “I could be wrong,” Castillo said.

  “One Bouvier des Flandres bit Corporal Adolf Schickelgruber when he was in Flanders,” Kocian said.

  “I told you, he’s a marvelous judge of character,” Castillo said. “What do you mean, one of them bit Hitler?”

  “One of them bit Hitler in Flanders in the First World War,” Kocian repeated. “I’ve always wondered if that’s what really happened to Der Führer’s missing testicle. Anyway, Adolf was really annoyed. When the Germans took Belgium in 1940, one of the first things he did was order the breed wiped out.”

  “Why do I believe that?” Castillo asked.

  “Because I’m telling you,” Kocian said. “I’m not a plagiarist. I can be trusted.”

  “Particularly when you’re telling me how you came to be in hospital,” Görner said. “Falling over the dog and down the stairs! Jesus, Eric!”

  “It was the best I could think of at the time,” Kocian said, completely un-embarrassed, and then returned to the subject at hand. “I heard the story of the Bouvier taking a piece out of Adolf in Russia and, when I had the chance, I checked it out and I knew I had to have one. So I went to Belgium and bought one. That’s Max VI. Maxes I through V never betrayed me the way that one’s doing.”

  “They didn’t know me,” Castillo said.

  “So aside from corrupting my dog, what brings you to Budapest, Karlchen?”

  “That’s Herr Oberstleutnant Karlchen,” Görner said.

  “God, the Herr Oberst must be spinning in his grave!”

  “If he is, it’s from pride,” Görner said, sharply.

  Kocian considered that and nodded.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. The Herr Oberst would have been proud of his grandson being Oberstleutnant, Karlchen.”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said.

  “You were about to tell me what brings you to Budapest,” Kocian said.

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me—the truth—about what happened to you.”

  “Okay,” Kocian said after a moment. “You first.”

  “I want to be released from my promise to keep the list of names you gave me to myself.”

  Kocian didn’t reply directly. Instead, he asked, “By now, I assume you’ve heard that they got to your man Lorimer? In Uruguay, of all places?”

  “I was there when he was shot,” Castillo said.

  Kocian pursed his lips thoughtfully, then asked, “Who done it?”

  “One of the six guys in dark blue coveralls who went to Lorimer’s estancia to do it.”

  “How come they didn’t get you, too, if you were there?”

  “I couldn’t ask them. They were all dead.”

  “Not identifiable?”

  “No.”

  “Sounds like the people who got me,” Kocian said. “Max and I were taking a midnight stroll on the Franz Joséf Bridge—”

  “The where?” Görner asked.

  “They now call it the Szabadság híd, Freedom Bridge. I don’t. Freedom has many meanings. Franz Joséf means Franz Joséf. I remain one of his admirers.”

  “Going off at a tangent,” Castillo said. “There’s a country club called Mayerling outside Buenos Aires.”

  “Really?” Kocian asked.

  “Yeah, really.”

  “Well, I’ll have to have a look at it when I go to Argentina,” Kocian said.

  “What are you two talking about? What’s Mayerling?” Görner asked. “What do you mean, when you go to Argentina?”

  “Mayerling was the Imperial Hunting Lodge outside Vienna,” Castillo said, “where Crown Prince Rudolph, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on being told he had to give up his sixteen-year-old tootsie, shot her and then shot himself.”

  “According to my father, it’s where Franz Joséf had him shot on learning he had been talking to people about becoming king of Hungary,” Kocian said.

  “My aunt Olga told me that version, too,” Castillo said.

  “A great lady,” Kocian said. “And you remember? I’m impressed. You were only a kid—seven, eight, maybe nine—when she died.”

  “And what do you mean, when you go to Argentina?” Castillo said.

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling you what happened to me,” Kocian said. “Max and I were coming back from taking a midnight snack across the river. We were about halfway across the Franz Joséf Bridge when I sensed there were people approaching us from behind. That happens often. You’d be surprised how many young Hungarians think robbing old men out walking late at night is a lot more fun than getting a job. Max loves it. He gets to growl a little, show them his teeth, and after they wet their pants, drop their knives or whatever they had planned to hit me in the head with, he gets to chase them off the bridge.”

  Castillo chuckled.

  “This time, it wasn’t young men. This time, it’s two full-grown men, with a third man driving a Mercedes. And the guy who got pretty close before Max grabbed him wasn’t carrying a knife. He had a hypodermic needle in his slimy little hand. Had had. By the time I saw it, Max was chewing on his arm and he’d dropped it.”

  “My God!” Görner exclaimed.

  “The second thug pulled out a pistol and started beating Max on the head with it. I jumped on him and then the Mercedes pulled up and the second guy got away from me and got in it. Off they drove. They stopped ten meters away, maybe a little more, and started shooting at me through an open window. And then they drove off for good. The license plates, it turned out, they’d stolen off a Ford Taurus.”

  “What happened to the guy with the hypo?” Castillo asked.

  “He was begging—in German—for me to get Max off him.”

  “What happened to the needle?” Castillo asked.

  “The cops have it.”

  “By any wild coincidence was it loaded with bupivacaine? Or something similar?”

  “This one was loaded with phenothiazine,” Kocian said. “I have been told they use it on lunatics. What’s the wild coincidence you were hoping to find?”

  “When Masterson’s wife—”

  “Masterson being your murdered diplomat in Buenos Aires?” Kocian interrupted.

  Castillo nodded. He went on: “When she was kidnapped in a restaurant parking lot, they jabbed her in the buttocks with a hypo full of bupivacaine.”

  “Very interesting,” Kocian said. “But, sorry. No match.”

  “What about the guy this adorable puppy almost ate?”

  “He’s in jail. His story, which I think he may get away with, is that he’s a vacationing housepainter from Dresden who was walking on the bridge when I made an indecent proposal to him, attempted to fondle his private parts, and when he resisted and pushed me away my dog attacked him.”

  “How did he explain the hypo?”

  “He never saw it before; therefore, it probably belongs to the old pervert.” He paused and looked at Otto. “That’s why I told you I fell over Max, Otto. I knew you’d be delighted to acce
pt the old pervert story.”

  “My God, Eric!”

  “What’s going to happen to this guy?”

  “I told the cops—in particular, the police commissioner, who is an old pal of mine—to see if he can connect him with Stasi…”

  “They’re out of business, aren’t they?”

  “You can ask a question like that and still get promoted as an intelligence officer?”

  “You have all the answers, you tell me,” Castillo said.

  “Did you ever think about it, Karlchen?” the old man asked and Castillo had a sudden insight: From now on, when he calls me Karlchen it will be because he has decided I am either impossibly ignorant or have done something monumentally stupid.

  “Think about what?”

  “What happened to the better agents of the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as Stasi, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and peace and loving-kindness descended on our beloved Germany?”

  “Frankly, I never gave it much thought.”

  “Maybe you should have, Karlchen,” Kocian said. “Well, I’ll tell you this, very few of them became bakers, cobblers, or took Holy Orders.”

  “Okay, so what are they doing? For whom? Who’s paying them?”

  “If you have to ask that, you must believe that once democracy came to the former Soviet Union, Russia really became the ‘friendly bear’ your President Roosevelt always thought it was. While you’re here in Budapest you should go over to Andrassy Ut 60. Broaden your professional horizons.”

  “I’ll bite. What’s at Andrassy Ut 60?”

  “Now it’s a museum. It used to be the headquarters of the AVO, and then the AVH. The Allamvedelmi Osztaly and the Allamvedelmi Hatosag. I don’t suppose you have any idea what that means.”

  “I didn’t know the address,” Castillo said, “or that they had turned it into amuseum.”

  “Great museum. They not only have a ZIS-110 in the lobby…”

  “What’s a ZIS-110?” Görner asked.

  “…Formerly the limousine of the head of the AVH…” Kocian continued, only to be interrupted again.

  “A Russian copy of the 1942 Packard Super Eight,” Castillo said. “Stalin showed up in Yalta in one. Reserved for really big shots.”

  “Maybe the plagiarist isn’t as ignorant as he sometimes sounds,” Kocian said. “And the walls are covered with pictures of people the bastards garroted in the basement. The garrote gallows is also in the basement.”

  “Now, that’s interesting,” Castillo said. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “You forgot what?” Görner asked.

  “The NKVD’s preferred method of execution was a pistol bullet in the back of the head,” Castillo explained. “The People’s Court found you guilty and then they marched you straight into a room in the basement and shot you in the base of the skull. Stasi and the Hungarian State Security Bureau—AVO and AVH—weren’t that nice. They…”

  My God, Görner thought, he’s lecturing me like a schoolboy. But, it would seem that my little Karlchen really is knowledgeable. I’m a journalist, I’m supposed to know these things. And I didn’t. More than that, he sounds like, acts like, an intelligence officer who knows his profession.

  “…took you into the basement,” Castillo went on, “stood you on a stool under the garrote gallows, put the rope around your neck, and then kicked the stool away.”

  “You mean to say they hung their…prisoners?” Görner asked.

  “No. Hanging is when they drop the…executee…through a trap in a gallows. The rope around the neck usually has a special knot designed to break the executee’s neck with the force of the fall.”

  He mimed a knot forcing his head to one side.

  “That usually causes instant death as the spinal cord is cut,” Castillo went on. “Garrote executees don’t fall far enough to break their neck. The rope is just a loop around their neck, so they die of strangulation. It takes sometime.”

  “And you find this fascinating, Karlchen?” Görner asked, more than a little horrified.

  “They also had the habit, when taking out people they didn’t like, and wanted it known that Stasi or the AVO/AVH had done it, to garrote them. Sort of a trademark.”

  “Fascinating!” Görner said, sarcastically.

  “What’s fascinating is that one of the men with me at Estancia Shangri-La, who had been around the block a lot of times, was garroted.”

  “Estancia Shangri-La?” Kocian asked. “How picturesque!”

  “Lorimer’s farm in Uruguay,” Castillo explained. “They took out my guy by garroting him and they used…”

  He stopped in midsentence as the door opened.

  A small, slight man in his middle fifties, wearing a white hospital tunic, came into the room followed by a younger man—also a doctor, Castillo decided—and a nurse.

  “You’re not supposed to be smoking,” the first doctor announced. “And you promised to get that dog out of here.”

  “Four people have tried to take Max out of here,” Kocian replied. “He took small nips out of each of them. You’re welcome to try. And I have been smoking longer than you’re old and I am not about to stop now. Say hello to my boss.”

  The doctor put out his hand to Görner.

  “No. The young one,” Kocian said, switching to German. “Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. The fat one’s another of his flunkies.”

  “I never know when to believe him,” the doctor confessed, putting out his hand to first Görner and then Castillo. “I’m Dr. Czerny. I’m the chief of staff.”

  “If you’re treating him, Doctor, you have my sympathy,” Castillo said, in Hungarian.

  “You’re Hungarian?” Dr. Czerny asked, surprised.

  “I had a Hungarian aunt.”

  “He’s mostly German and Hungarian, with a little Mexican thrown in,” Kocian said. “Tell us about…what was the name of that drug in Argentina, Karlchen?”

  “Bupivacaine,” Castillo furnished.

  “Tell us about bupivacaine, please, Doctor,” Kocian said.

  The doctor shook his head.

  “What do you want to know about bupivacaine? And why?”

  “I’m an old man. Indulge me. What would have happened if the housepainter’s hypodermic had been loaded with bupivacaine and he had succeeded in sticking it into my rump?”

  Dr. Czerny smiled.

  “You’re amused?” Kocian demanded, indignantly.

  Dr. Czerny nodded, then explained: “Your rump would have gone numb for, oh, two hours or so. Bupivacaine is a drug commonly used by dentists to numb the gums.”

  “You’re sure, Doctor?” Castillo asked.

  Czerny nodded.

  “If you’re ever going to be a decent journalist, Karlchen, you’re going to have to start checking your facts,” Kocian said, triumphantly. “And, of course, stop plagiarizing.”

  “The doctor in the German hospital in Buenos Aires,” Castillo said as much to himself as to them, “told me it was bupivacaine.”

  “That’s something else you should keep in mind, Karlchen. Never trust what a doctor tells you. They only tell you what they think you should know. Isn’t that right, Czerny?”

  “My father used to say you were the most difficult person he had ever known,” Dr. Czerny said, smiling.

  “How long are you going to have to put up with him, Doctor?” Castillo asked.

  “Well, once he regains his sanity, there’s no reason he couldn’t leave here in a day or two.”

  “His general sanity? Or is there something specific?” Görner asked.

  “When I walked in here this morning, I thought he was having a heart attack,” the doctor said. “But what it was, he was on the telephone and Air France had just told him they would not carry that animal to Buenos Aires.”

  “Aerolineas Argentina will be happy to accommodate Max,” Kocian said. “But I’ll have to take the damned train to Madrid. They don’t fly into Budapest. And Max doe
sn’t like trains.”

  “I have no idea why he wants to go to Argentina,” Dr. Czerny said. The implication was that it was one of the reasons he doubted Kocian’s sanity. “And he won’t tell me.”

  “That’s because it’s none of your damned business,” Kocian explained.

  “What is my business, Eric, personal and professional, is that you’re getting pretty long in the tooth and you have just been shot—twice—and I’m not going to stand idly by while you go halfway around the world, alone and in bandages. And with that damned dog.”

  “Your father, may his soul rest in peace, Fredric, could call me by my Christian name. I don’t recall giving you that privilege,” Kocian said. “And don’t call Max ‘that damned dog.’”

  “I beg your pardon,” Dr. Czerny said.

  “Doctor, for the sake of argument, supposing he could get someone to go with him to Argentina,” Castillo asked, carefully, “and stay with him while he’s there, would that be all right? I mean, could he stand the strain?”

  “In a couple of days, why not?” Dr. Czerny said.

  It was clear that Dr. Czerny had concluded that Castillo had come up with a way to calm Kocian down and that Otto Görner had concluded that Castillo had lost his mind.

  “Well, let’s have a look at you, Úr Kocian,” Dr. Czerny said. “Will you excuse us a moment, please?”

  He started to draw a curtain around the bed. Max stood up, showed his teeth, and growled softly but deeply.

  “Come on, Max,” Castillo said. “Let’s go terrorize people in the corridor.”

  Max looked doubtful for a moment, then followed Castillo out of the room.

  As soon as he had closed the door to room 24, Otto Görner grabbed Castillo’s arm.

  “You’re not actually thinking about taking him to Argentina, are you, Karl?”

  “For one thing, do you think we’d be able to stop him from going to Argentina?” Castillo replied, and then went on without giving Görner a chance to reply: “The people who tried to kill him—the needle full of phenothiazine makes me think they were going to question him, which means torture him, to see what he knew before killing him—are almost certainly going to have another try at him. I can protect him a lot better in Argentina than I can here. And if I take him on the Gulfstream, there will be no record of him having bought a ticket to go anywhere. That’ll take them off his trail for at least a few days.”