“I think not,” Imre went on, relentless. “I thought that PSS would be better than Novak, but they are not. Not for you. Novak may have stolen your life and your future, but PSS took away your whole self.”
Very abruptly, Val was all too aware of why he had come back to Budapest so seldom in recent years. Imre’s tendency to speak the raw, unpalatable truth had always been annoying.
“I’ll go into hiding,” he said on impulse. “Fuck them all. It’s the only way to be rid of them.”
Imre blinked and looked politely doubtful. “You told me yourself how vast PSS’s resources are. It would be so easy?”
“Easy, no. Possible, yes,” Val said. “Expensive, yes, but that is no problem. I have money coming out my ass now.”
Imre looked pained. “Please, Vajda. And your business?”
Val hesitated. In point of fact, it would hurt to give up Capriccio Consulting. The business had come into existence years ago as a cover while he wormed his way into the inner circle of a drug smuggling ring, but since then, and almost by accident, it had evolved into a profitable legitimate enterprise that he truly enjoyed. Fulfilling whims. Finding and obtaining objects, treasures, information. He was good at it.
He was secretly proud of himself for having created something that functioned so well; something that was not a scam, cover, or lie. His business did what it promised to do, with an excellent success rate. God, how he liked that. The simplicity of it, the dignity. Was it so much to ask to mind his business, satisfy his clients, make his money?
But like everything else, it was dangerous to be attached.
He let out a long breath and tried to take the three steps back, but he didn’t feel the click of disengagement, the floating feeling.
“I’ll find something else to do,” he said, after a moment.
“I’ll buy you a new passport. Come with me. We’ll go someplace hot. A desert would be good for your arthritis. I could keep a better eye on you. We could play chess every night.”
But Imre was already shaking his head. “This is my home,” he said. “Near Ilona and little Tina.”
Stubborn old sentimentalist. Trotting out his wife, dead thirty years, and his daughter who had died in infancy, buried together at the cemetery. Val rubbed his face with a groan. “For two mossy graves, you stay in this moldering dump? I can look after you if you’re close to me!”
“You already look after me.” Imre’s voice was tranquil. “l will stay here. And I will die here. It’s all right to die, Vajda.”
“Spare me the cloying platitudes,” Val snarled. “This isn’t one of your fucking philosophy lessons.”
Imre regarded him for a moment, his thin shoulders stiff. “Calm yourself, please,” he said haughtily. “I will make us a pot of tea. Or should I bother? Do you have to scurry off to lick your handler’s feet?”
Val let out a long, slow breath before he allowed himself to reply.
“I’ll make the goddamn tea,” he said before Imre could rise. He needed a moment for his self-control. And he didn’t want to watch Imre’s pained, arthritic shuffle toward the kitchen.
Hegel would be furious to be kept waiting. Val did not care.
The kitchen was dirty. The dishes in the sink stank. He made a note to scold the agency he paid to send someone to cook and clean for Imre. Lazy cow. It would never occur to Imre, the perfect gentleman with his head in the clouds, to scold the stupid woman for slacking off.
Perhaps she’d been too upset by finding Imre in such a terrible state, but even so. This was accumulated weeks of mess, not days.
He put the kettle on, dumped some cookies onto a plate. The chipped, stained porcelain teapot unleashed a flood of memories.
The first time he’d seen that teapot, or sat at that table was twenty-two years ago. He’d been Vajda then, a tough, slit-eyed twelve-year-old, small for his age, trolling the streets for a trick, a pocket to pick, any way to make his quota for that prick Kustler, and avoid the beating or cutting or cigarette burns that were his punishment if he didn’t. He’d seen the man, shabby clothes flapping on his thin body, staring from across the street. He had an intense look in his deep-set eyes, as if he recognized the boy from somewhere.
Vajda thought he knew what that look meant, so he sauntered over and tried to bum a cigarette. The man had told him sternly that he was too young to smoke, which made Vajda practically choke laughing.
Then the man had invited him up to his apartment, which was a stroke of luck, as it was beginning to snow. Kustler had taken his coat that morning. Vajda hadn’t had a chance to steal a replacement yet.
The apartment had seemed luxurious and rich to him at the time, lined with books, crowded with antique furniture. He’d expected the man to open his pants, tell him to undress. Imre had not done so. He’d just summoned the boy into the kitchen and poured him cup after cup of sweet, milky tea while he soaked bread in egg and fried it in butter. The first food Vajda had eaten that day, perhaps longer. Delicious.
It had disoriented him. He’d told Imre angrily that if he wanted tail, get the fuck on with it, because he had places to go, things to do.
Imre had beckoned him into the parlor, lit the lamp, sat him down and proceeded to teach him the rudiments of chess. The place was so warm. The snow outside so cold. It was strange. He had stayed.
When he started to nod off, the man gave him a blanket, and let him stretch out on the divan. He’d slept like the dead, and wakened in the morning, confused and scared. Imre sat across from him, staring at him, and Vajda thought then, with a rush of bitterness, Here’s where it starts. He’s just like all the others. He just needs a lot of lead-in time.
But Imre had only dug some money out of his pocket, more or less what Vajda might have earned in a good night. “Up with you,” he said. “You may use the bathroom. There is milk and bread in the kitchen, and then you must go. My first music student will arrive shortly.”
Vajda stared at the money in his hand. “Why . . . ?”
“I don’t want you to suffer when you must account for your time,” Imre said, matter-of-factly. “I enjoyed your company.”
Vajda had pocketed the money, speechless. He inhaled every crumb of food Imre had put on the table and left the place with his belly sloshing with hot milk, pockets bulging with tea biscuits. A warm, worn jacket on his back, sleeves rolled up four times to find his hands.
He’d gone back another wet, cold night. Crept up to the fourth floor, listened outside the door to Imre playing his grand piano while he summoned the courage to knock. Imre had let him in again, fed him again, played Bach inventions for him. He offered the divan, although this time he insisted that the boy take a bath and change into Imre’s own threadbare pajamas. The boy had left a seething nest of fleas and lice the last time he had slept there.
Imre had regretfully explained that he enjoyed the company, but did not have the funds to finance every visit. So Vajda found his own ways to budget time, and crept to his odd haven whenever he dared.
He had barely been able to read, but Imre would have none of that. He was a demanding teacher. History, philosophy, mathematics, languages, Val sucked it all up like a hungry sponge. Besides Hungarian, he already spoke the Romanian of his infancy, and the gutter Italian that he’d learned from Giulietta, his mother’s roommate. Imre taught him more. English, French, Russian. He even tried to teach the boy to play piano, but after some effort, he had to concede that Vajda had no musical talent at all.
As Val grew bigger and vicious enough to intimidate in his own right, when he’d been promoted from picking pockets and selling tail and smuggled cigarettes to heroin dealing, he returned the favor the only way he could—by making it known on the street that anyone who bothered Imre would be gutted like a fish.
Fucking idiot that he’d been. He should have kept his mouth shut.
“Good God, Vajda! Wake up!”
Imre’s indignant voice jerked Val out of his reverie. “Huh?”
He turned to see the old man scowling
from the kitchen door, leaning heavily on his cane. “That kettle’s been wailing like a cat in heat for five minutes!” Imre shouted over the din. “Are you drugged? That would explain your chess game, at least!”
“Ah, cazzo.” Val jerked the shrieking kettle off the gas flame.
The familiar ritual of brewing and drinking tea restored a cautious equilibrium between them, but the long silences made Val uneasy.
Finally Imre set down his cup with a decisive click and threaded the tips of his swollen, arthritic fingers together. “Vajda.”
The heavy, preaching way that he pronounced the name made Val brace himself. “Don’t call me that,” he repeated grimly. “I told you.”
Imre waved his hand, impatient. “When I die, you must—”
“You’re not going to die,” Val cut in.
“Don’t be childish,” Imre said sternly. “Let me finish. When I die, do not expose yourself again to come here and bury me. Mourn my death in any way you like—from a distance. I will be safe and happy with Ilona and Tina. Swear it, Vajda.”
Val sprang to his feet, rattling the teacups on the cluttered table, inexplicably furious. “No,” he said. “I swear nothing, to anyone.”
Imre stared at him. His grim mouth was swollen and scabbed at the corner from the split, battered lip his attackers had given him.
Val stalked into the foyer, shrugged on his coat, seething. Imre did not come out of the kitchen to bid him good-bye. It was just as well. There was nothing more to be said, and if Val spoke at all, he would start shouting. He ran down four flights of steps and out into the frigid night air. Snow was falling thickly, just like the night he’d met Imre.
Images rushed unpleasantly back when he saw the black BMW idling on the curb, the driver an anonymous dark shadow. The lock popped as he approached. His stomach clenched. For a horrible half-second, he was eleven years old again, shivering on the curb.
No choice but to get in, and go wherever the car took him.
He hesitated. Detach. He was not that helpless boy anymore.
He spat into the gutter, yanked open the back door and got in. He was big, strong. He wore fine clothes, had an expensive haircut, good shoes, a cashmere coat, money in his pocket and far more in the bank. He’d forgone his guns tonight because they distressed Imre, but he had the knives. He had years of fight training. Eyes in the back of his head.
No, he was far from defenseless. Few people on earth were better equipped for that. And still, getting into that fucking car felt like climbing into a fucking crocodile’s mouth.
Fortunately, that phase of his life hadn’t lasted long. He got his growth fast, and became too big, too scary looking for Kustler’s stable. But they found other uses for him soon enough, on the heroin supply chain.
He hated dealing drugs, with his mother’s track marks and hollow eyes haunting him. He had found her body one day when he was eleven years old, sprawled on the bathroom floor. Choked by her own vomit.
That was the same day that fuckhead Kustler, his mother’s pimp, had come by, looked him over and decided that all was not lost. Vajda was unfortunately dark-complected, but pretty even so. Kustler had decided that the son would do nicely to take over his mother’s job.
He flinched from the memory of that day.
Yes, he hated drugs. But one did not say no to Daddy Novak, or to anyone who answered to him. Not if one liked staying alive.
Though “like” was perhaps the wrong word. He had clung to life out of spite. Staying alive was a fuck-you to the world. Anger kept him alive. Imre had been the only one to show him something beyond it.
It was ironic how the best way to protect Imre would be to not care about him at all. Whatever Val dared to care about was liable to end up dead on the bathroom floor. The more he cared, the higher the probability. He wished he could detach completely. Just float away.
The snow fell thickly now, flakes fluttering through the air, obscuring the cityscape until it was a blank, swirling noman’s-land. Val stared out the car window, trying to orient himself with childhood landmarks. Each one he identified sparked bleak memories.
As he grew older, without really meaning to, he’d come to the attention of Gabor Novak, the big boss, having distinguished himself as a bright young man with unusual language skills and an aptitude for computers. Useful as Novak’s business expanded and went global. Soon he was exiled from Budapest and sent off to Novak’s country palace on the Danube, far from the distractions of the city, to work on encryption software, Internet marketing, front company documentation, etc. The work was endless. But at least it was not bloody.
On the surface anyway. There was always blood at some level.
Gabor Novak was formerly from Ukraina. He had married a Hungarian woman, taken her name and nationality, and proceeded to set up illicit businesses in cities all over eastern Europe: Budapest, Riga, Prague. Before he murdered her, or so the legend went.
Imre tried to persuade him to break free of Novak’s organization, but Val knew in his bones what Imre would not understand—how far men like Kustler would go to protect their territory. Imre would have had his balls cut off and his throat slit for interfering, if he was lucky. If not, there were things that lasted much longer. Val had seen them with his own eyes, unfortunately. He wished he had not.
No, there was no way out. Until he found PSS and Hegel. Or rather, they found him, eleven years ago, after the orders had come down from Daddy Novak to groom Vajda for arms deals. Vajda’s English was quite good, thanks to Imre. Useful for doing business in West Africa. Sierra Leone, to be exact. His first gunrunning assignment.
The car stopped outside a small café in Belváros. The driver sat without turning or speaking. Val got out of the car and went in.
He found Hegel in a corner, tucking away a large steak tartare, and a heaping plateful of spicy goulash and potato croquettes. He gave Val an unfriendly look as the younger man approached.
Hegel was not a handsome man. He was grizzled, thick and square. His coarse, pitted face was heavy-jowled and scowling.
“You’re late,” he growled, wiping his mouth.
Val sat down without explanation or apology, and Hegel ignored him as he shoveled food into his face.
Hegel was an American ex–Special Forces helicopter pilot, Vietnam vet, and covert operative with Prime Security Solutions since its inception. Val had met him eleven years ago in Ouagadougou when he arrived with thirty tons of small arms and ammo, antitank weapons, surface-to-air missiles, RPG tubes, and warheads from a Ukrainian arms manufacturer, destined for the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front.
He was to trade them for a fortune in smuggled diamonds.
A plane waiting for them began to discreetly ferry the weapons to Monrovia, where the final transaction would take place.
Hegel was one of the helicopter pilots who flew the weapons into the rebel strongholds in the jungle. Val discovered afterward that he had been working undercover, investigating sources of arms that flowed to the rebels. Hegel had invited him to go on a weapons run, and out of curiosity and boredom, Val had gone along. They stopped because of mechanical difficulties in Moidu, a small town in the jungle.
By chance, they were there when rebels attacked the town.
It was a massacre. The rebel soldiers were children and teenagers themselves, crazed out of their minds on palm wine and cocaine, armed with the assault rifles and rocket launchers he had just sold to them. They sliced, hacked, and gunned down everything they saw.
Val had seen a great deal of violence in his life, but when he saw the young pregnant girl ripped apart before his eyes by two young thugs with machetes, something tipped inside him. He didn’t remember the dynamics of the fight, how it went or how it ended. It was just a blur of noise, blood. Hegel had dragged him out of it. Alive, amazingly.
He’d awakened in a hospital bed in a fog of agonizing pain and saw Hegel beside him. The man’s metallic gray eyes were looking him over. Coldly, appraisingly. As if consideri
ng his purchase.
Hegel told him about Prime Security Solutions, a private mercenary army equipped with armored fighting vehicles, gunships, fighter planes, all manner of weaponry. It provided its clients with military training, VIP protection, airline transport, offshore financial management services, intelligence, infrared photo recon, satellite imagery. PSS could deploy a battalion-strength force anywhere in the world in hours. It was well equipped, sleek, powerful. And it paid well.
Hegel made him an offer. Vajda could be reborn with a new name, a new life—in exchange for service as a covert operative.
Vajda explained that leaving Gabor Novak’s employ was more complicated than it seemed, but Hegel just shrugged. Money would solve that problem, and Vajda was well worth the severance fee Novak would charge them. It would all be taken care of—if Val said yes.
At the time, it was an attractive alternative to his former servitude. He soon realized that there was no difference that mattered. PSS’s agenda was brutally simple: to help their wealthy, powerful clients amass more wealth and power by means of pulling strings all over the world. Openly or secretly. Legally or not. To that end, PSS wanted a killing machine. Killing was killing, whoever you did it for.
So it was that he had become Valery Janos, Italian citizen, resident of Rome, born in Italy of Hungarian parents. The first of many aliases and his best developed innocuous civilian identity.
It was his favorite identity. On paper and on the Internet, Val Janos lived the life he secretly longed for. A hardworking businessman who lived quietly in his lavish apartment on Piazza Navona in Rome.
He loved his adopted country and city. He had absorbed his adopted language as if he had been born to it. He lived in it, thought in it, dreamed in it even, far more so than in the Hungarian he had learned at the age of six when his mother brought him to Budapest or the Romanian he’d been born to. He liked being Val Janos, the perfect, cultured gentleman who minded his business, and bothered no one—unless one counted his disgruntled ex-lovers, of course. The Val Janos persona was a voracious ladies’ man, who bored easily.
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