Hunters pa-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  "I understand."

  "I realize you don't owe him a thing-"

  Tor held up his hand.

  "When my wife was dying, he held my hand, and, later, he got me off the bottle," Tor said. "Okay, until I can get somebody he can live with, and vice versa-but only until then, understand-I'll keep an eye on him."

  Somebody Eric Kocian could live with had never appeared. And Tor learned some what to his surprise that he actually had time to both serve as director of security for the Tages Zeitung and keep an eye on the old man.

  The job now was more than keeping Kocian from behind the wheel of his Mercedes. A year before, Kocian had begun investigating Hungarian/ Czech/German involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. It personally outraged him.

  And when those who had been engaged in it learned of Kocian's interest in them, they were enraged. There had been a number of threats by e-mail, postal mail, and telephone. Eric Kocian grandly dismissed them.

  "Only a fool would kill a journalist," he said. "The slime of the world need darkness. Killing a journalist would turn a spotlight into their holes and they know it."

  Sandor Tor didn't believe this for a minute, but he knew that arguing with the old man would be futile. Instead, he had gone to Otto Gorner with his fears.

  Tor had said, "I think we had better have someone keeping an eye on him around the clock."

  "Do it," Gorner had replied.

  "That's going to be expensive, Ur Gorner. I'm talking about at least one man-probably two-in addition to myself, plus cars, around the clock."

  "The cost be damned, Tor. And, for God's sake, don't let the old man know he's being protected. Otherwise, we'll have to find him to protect him." I'm pleased to meet you," Castillo said, in Hungarian, as he offered his hand. "And you should consider that Ur Gorner is even more fond of Billy Kocian than I know you are and is therefore even more upset than you or I about what's happened."

  "Before God, no one is more sorry than me," Sandor Tor said. "I love that old man."

  Now I know I like you. [TWO] Room 24 Telki Private Hospital 2089 Telki Korhaz Fasor 1 Budapest, Hungary 1730 6 August 2005 There was a heavyset man in his fifties sitting in a heavy well-worn captain's chair in the corridor beside the closed door to room 24. He watched as Gorner and Castillo walked down the corridor, and then, when it became clear that Castillo was going to knock at the door, announced, "No visitors."

  That's a cop, Castillo thought, or my name really is Ignatz Glutz.

  "It's all right," Otto said. "We're from the Tages Zeitung."

  He took a business card from the breast pocket of his suit and handed it to the man. The man read it.

  "He said, 'No visitors,' Ur Gorner."

  "Why don't I tell him I'm here?" Gorner said and reached for the door handle.

  "He's got his dog in there," the man said.

  Gorner opened the door just a crack and called, "Eric, get your goddamned dog under control. It's Otto."

  "Go away, Otto Gorner!" Kocian called out.

  "Not a chance!" Otto called back. "Put that Gottverdammthund on a chain. I'm coming in."

  The response to that was animal-a deep, not too loud but nevertheless frightening growl.

  "Got a little cough, have you, Oncle Erik?" Castillo called.

  "Goddamn, the plagiarist!" Kocian said.

  Gorner pushed open the door to room 24.

  Eric Kocian was sitting against the raised back of a hospital bed. A large, long black cigar was clamped in his jaw. A roll-up tray was in front of him. It held a laptop computer, a large ashtray, several newspapers, a cellular telephone, a pot of coffee, and a heavy mug. Kocian's some what florid face, topped with a luxuriant head of naturally curling silver hair, made him at first look younger than he was, but his body-he was naked above the waist-gave him away.

  What could be seen of his arms and chest-his left arm was bandaged and in a sling and there was another bloodstained bandage on his upper right chest-was all sagging flesh. There were angry old scars on his upper shoulder and on his abdomen.

  Gorner had two thoughts, one after the other, in the few seconds before Max, now growling a mouthful of teeth, caught his attention.

  My God, he's nearly eighty-two.

  God, even the damned dog is bandaged.

  Gorner, who usually liked dogs, hated this one and was afraid of him.

  Castillo was not.

  He squatted just inside the door, smiled, and said, conversationally in Hungarian, "You're an ugly old bastard, aren't you? Stop that growling. Not only don't you scare me but that old man in the bed is really glad to see us."

  The dog stopped growling, sat on its haunches, and cocked his head.

  "Come here, Fatso, and I'll scratch your ears."

  "His name is Max," Kocian said.

  "Come, Max," Castillo said.

  Max got off his haunches and, head still cocked, looked at Castillo.

  "Watch out for him, Karl!" Gorner exclaimed.

  "Come, dammit!" Castillo ordered.

  Max took five tentative steps toward Castillo.

  Castillo held out his left hand to him.

  Max sniffed it, then licked it.

  Castillo scratched Max's ears, close to the bandage. Max sat down again, pressing his massive head against Castillo's leg, and licked his hand again.

  "Max, you sonofabitch," Kocian said. "You're supposed to take his hand off, not lick it like a Kartnerstrasse whore!"

  "He knows who his friends are," Castillo said. "So who shot you, Eric? More important, who shot Max?"

  "He wasn't shot," Kocian said. "One of the bastards clipped him with his pistol."

  "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 Fuhrer'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," Gorner 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 Karlch
en," Gorner said.

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

  "If he is, it's from pride," Gorner 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 Josef Bridge-"

  "The where?" Gorner asked.

  "They now call it the Szabadsag hid, Freedom Bridge. I don't. Freedom has many meanings. Franz Josef means Franz Josef. 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?" Gorner 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 Josef 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 Josef 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!" Gorner 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 accept 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?" Gorner 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?" Gorner 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 Hunga
rian State Security Bureau-AVO and AVH-weren't that nice. They…"

  My God, Gorner 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?" Gorner 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?" Gorner 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!" Gorner 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 Gorner.

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