While Viktor, Andris, and Balint continued drinking, the other men completed their gory task. Once they had rolled up the body, first in the blood-saturated rug and then in the tarpaulin, they carried it away. None said a word, and none looked up from his task. They had learned their lesson.
Viktor smirked.
A lesson they will never forget while they live.
He retrieved the bottle from Balint and they took it in turns until they had drunk it dry, making a different toast to Vadik before each round.
Once it was empty, they stood by the window overlooking the grounds and the wide, sprawling valley and fell silent. On other such sombre occasions, Viktor would have called for more bottles and for food, but a funeral feast would have to wait. It would wait until they had the body of Vadik home, and Lajos, too. Hopefully, Lajos would still be alive.
The sun touched the rolling hills on the horizon, turning from orange to red, and bleeding across the cloudy sky. It reminded Viktor of the blood seeping from Torok and soaking into the rug. Perhaps he should not have killed the friend of Lajos. Perhaps Viktor should have reined in his temper. If Lajos returned … when Lajos returned … he would miss his friend, especially if he really was a cripple. If he really was a short man with one arm, Lajos would need all his friends around him.
Viktor shook himself awake.
No, killing Torok had been necessary. It served as a reminder to anyone who needed one. The five men in suits would spread the word that age had not weakened the resolve of the Giant of Győr. No, the Giant of Győr would not be insulted. He would not be ignored.
But what of Lajos? What would happen to him when Viktor was no longer around to protect him? Viktor would not live forever. Twenty years, maybe twenty-five. How would Lajos the One Arm survive without the protection of his father? How would he grow the family business? After all, expansion had been the whole point of the English adventure. It was the reason they chose the cretin, Robert Prentiss, in the first place. And talking of Prentiss, had Vadik completed that part of his mission before the mad Englishman ended his life? Did Robert Prentiss still live, and what of his pretty young wife?
“Andris,” he said, surprised the pálinka had not yet affected his speech.
Andris stiffened, stood as tall as he could. His grey eyes shone bright, but from the pálinka, not with grief for the loss of Vadik. In truth, Vadik would not really be missed. Vadik had not been a likeable man. He had no grace or skill. Were he not the illegitimate son of the Giant of Győr, Vadik would never have lived as long as he had. But he was who he was and, as such, he would be mourned.
“Yes, főnök?”
“Contact Cousin Ido. Tell him to send someone to Prentiss House. I want to know exactly what happened today.”
“As you command, főnök,” Andris said, and picked up his portable.
He turned away to make the call.
The desk telephone rang for a third time. Once more, its bell cut through the silence of the large room.
“The Englishman!” Viktor growled and hurried to answer the call.
This time, he would listen.
This time, he would remain calm.
This time, Viktor Pataki, the Giant of Győr, would keep cool and calm. Viktor would be a man of ice. The time for fire would come, and it would come soon.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Wednesday 3rd May – Viktor Pataki
Pataki Compound, Outside Győr, Hungary
Viktor picked up the ringing telephone and held it away from his ear. He beckoned Andris and Balint closer so they could hear. Although both men’s breath held the sweet smell of the pálinka, they were rock steady. Neither man swayed.
“This Viktor Pataki,” he said, quietly, “Is that you, Englishman?”
“P-Papa?” Lajos spoke. His voice weak, trembling. “They took my arm, Papa.” He cried and repeated the words. “They took my arm!”
Viktor bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to fight back the rising anger. He had promised to keep himself in check. Now was not the time to explode. Anger would come later.
In the background of the call, the dull roar of heavy traffic rumbled, partially drowning out the words of Lajos. And he sounded hollow, as though he was speaking in a small metal box. The Englishman might be moving Lajos in the back of a van.
“Lajos, my boy, at least you are alive. The Englishman murdered Vadik, your brother.”
“Half-brother,” Lajos spat, showing signs of the fire that might yet help keep him alive. “He was my half-brother, Papa. I-I am your real son.”
In spite of the situation, Viktor showed Andris and Balint a grim smile, proud of his remaining boy.
“Where are you?”
“I-I do not know. They put a blindfold on me and I have been unconscious. The … the Englishman is holding the portable phone to my ear. He gave me a message for you, Papa ….”
Viktor waited for his boy to speak but the silence dragged on, broken only by the whistling roar of fast-moving traffic.
“Tell me, Lajos,” Viktor said, encouraging his boy. “Why is the Englishman keeping you alive?”
“Fifteen million, Papa. H-He wants fifteen million for my safe return.”
What!
“Fifteen million euros?” Viktor roared, all pretence of control leaving him.
“Y-Yes, Papa.”
The swish of cloth against the microphone of a portable telephone followed a weak whimper. Immediately afterwards, the quiet, taunting voice of the őrült said, “Yes, Viktor. Fifteen million euros in cash for Lajos’ life. Sounds a lot more than he’s worth to me, but then again, he isn’t my son.”
“Fifteen million, in cash?” Viktor gasped.
“Yes, but don’t worry, I’ll give you until noon, the day after tomorrow to gather it. That’s midday Saturday. I want used bills, no larger than hundreds. Got that?”
Viktor read the time on his watch—a little after seven in the evening. The Englishman had given him over forty hours to collect the money. Not a problem. Not in terms of the money. Viktor always kept large deposits of cash available with which to run the business. After all, no one with sense would trust banks after the crash. But paying ransom for Lajos would set a dangerous precedent. Pay once, and it would be the end of the family and the end of the Giant of Győr.
“I need more time.”
“Midday Saturday. One second late, and I put a bullet in your son’s brain. Assuming I can find it.”
In the background, Lajos gasped. The Englishman chuckled.
A joke. Őrült made a joke at the expense of his boy! The filthy pig!
“And one more thing, Viktor …” the Englishman paused for, what? Emphasis? An insult?
“What?”
“You must deliver the money yourself.”
Ha! As though that will ever happen.
“Of course, Englishman. Of course. Where I bring money for Lajos?”
“I’ll give you directions closer to the time. Wouldn’t want to give you time to set up an ambush, now would I?”
“Keep Lajos safe. I bring money. You have word of Viktor Pataki, the Giant of Győr.”
Viktor paused, expecting to hear the Englishman say something, even if only to laugh again, but he heard nothing.
“Hello? Englishman?”
Nothing but the dial tone.
“He has gone,” Viktor snarled and passed the handset for Balint to replace.
“You cannot deliver the money yourself, főnök,” Andris said. “It will certainly be a trap.”
Viktor scowled up the taller man. “Of course it will be a trap. And of course I will not go. This is a job for Wendt. Tell him to make himself ready.”
Both Balint and Andris grinned. They had not forgotten Wendt and his uncanny similarity in size and shape to Viktor. Add a long wig and he would pass for Viktor, at a distance.
The Giant of Győr held as much power and controlled as much wealth as many a head of state. If those people could use doppelgängers, so too
could Viktor.
The moment the English lunatic showed himself to kill Wendt, he would die, along with anyone who stood beside him. Even if Lajos was not safe from the withering crossfire.
After all, a cripple could never command the loyalty of the men after Viktor was gone. No. A new successor must be found. Plenty of cousins would make better leaders than Lajos. In any event, who wanted a cripple for a son? A one-armed man who cried over the telephone and begged for his life?
How could such a snivelling creature come from the seed of Viktor Pataki? He had been right all along. Lajos’ whore of a mother, Viktor’s first wife, had been unfaithful. One only had to look at them, the difference in their height and their colouring to tell that Lajos was no son of his. Viktor had dark hair and stood a full six centimetres taller than the weakling.
No, the family’s expansion into the UK was over, at least for the time being. They would turn elsewhere for their future growth. A new outlook. A new successor groomed. A new chapter.
But first, Őrült would die. The murder of Vadik would be avenged, and the lost honour of the Giant of Győr would be restored.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Saturday 6th May – Evening
Hungary
Kaine yawned wide, sucking in the oxygen of life. Fighting the growing fatigue.
The van’s headlights funnelled out, cutting cones of white through the blackness. A blue sign flashing past on an overhead gantry announced their route took them towards Budapest via Győr. Hungary’s capital lay some one hundred and twenty kilometres to the far side of their destination.
Kaine yawned again, struggling to keep his eyes open. Nearly twenty-four hours behind the wheel with only two stops for fuel would do that to a driver. He wound down the passenger window, hoping the blast of cold evening air would wake him enough to continue, but he could barely focus on the road ahead. The GPS screen turned into little more than a blur.
“Cold back here, Ryan,” Lara called out.
It had taken some persuasion, but she’d allowed Lajos to regain consciousness long enough to speak to “Papa” before sedating him again. According to Lara, keeping Lajos in a drug-induced coma gave his body the best chance of fighting off the infection and the shock of losing an arm. The man had taken a great deal of punishment and the medic in Lara wanted to keep her patient as comfortable as possible. Kaine, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn how much the little creep suffered.
Try as hard as he could, Kaine was unable to drive the image of Danny dying in his arms, or of his covered body in the back of Cough and Stefan’s white Ford, from his mind. The memories would burn inside him forever. And so they should.
Lara felt Danny’s loss as much as Kaine. That was clear, but a lifetime of tending to the sick and the injured had bred in her a caring heart. She wanted the best for all the creatures under her protection, no matter what atrocities they’d committed.
Lara Orchard was a better person than Ryan Kaine, and no one who knew her could deny it.
A truck blew past them in the opposite direction, driving a cushion of cold, wet air into the cab. Kaine shuddered. Fully awake at least for the moment, he wound up the window and wiped the moisture from his face.
“Better?”
“Yes, thanks. Are we nearly there yet?”
Her question, delivered in the singsong voice of a child made him smile.
They’d breezed through Vienna over an hour earlier and the bright lights of Hegyeshalom shone in the van’s wing mirrors. The E75, a dual carriageway the Hungarians called their M1, stretched out long and straight ahead of them. Dark and flat. Interminable. One of the most boring lengths of road he’d driven on in many a year. Still, after the days they’d suffered recently, “boring” wasn’t the worst thing ever. He needed “boring” to recover his sense of self. Even though the drive from Derby to the Channel Tunnel, and the thirteen-hour trip from Calais drew out into infinity, “boring” was good, and the long drive gave him time to plan.
“Another forty minutes ought to do it,” he said.
“Want me to take over the driving?”
“No thanks,” he said, “I’ve seen you behind the wheel.” He added a cheeky smile.
“Ouch. What’s wrong with my driving?”
He glanced in the rear-view and winked.
“Nothing, love. Absolutely nothing. Honest!”
Her hazel eyes looked as tired and gritty as his felt. At least he didn’t need the tinted contact lenses for his current identity as Bill Griffin, retired Royal Marine, who was currently on holiday with his wife of twenty-odd years, Beth. For all the border crossings, they’d taken the slight risk of smuggling a heavily anaesthetised Lajos Pataki in a trunk bolted in the back of the van. As expected, they’d not been searched a single time at any border post.
The benefits of free movement within the EU. How long would that last?
A slip road, Junction 142, Lébény-Mecsér, split off to the right, arced sharply away, and disappeared. The motorway arrowed ahead into the black. The tail lights of a few cars picked red dots into the night. Dipped headlights of oncoming vehicles occasionally made him blink but, in the main, the road was surprisingly deserted.
Minutes past in relative silence. Lara checked her patient’s vitals, while Kaine contemplated the upcoming showdown with the so-called Giant of Győr. Pitiful. Viktor Pataki happened to stand at a mere one hundred and seventy centimetres, or five foot seven inches in old money. Significantly taller than his surviving son, but three inches shorter than Kaine. The Giant of Győr? Did Viktor Pataki understand irony when he heard it?
Who cared? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than extracting payback for Danny. Although Lara didn’t hold with vengeance, she knew better than to try to talk him out of it more than the one time at Prentiss House.
Another sign flashed by—Győr 19 km. One thing about driving on the continent, kilometres counted down a damn sight faster than the mile markers they still used in the UK. The van’s speedo showed seventy miles per hour. He ran the calculation. Fatigue made it take longer.
“Less than fifteen minutes.”
The GPS narrator announced a turn onto the M85 in one kilometre. Kaine eased his foot off the accelerator and slowed to sixty. With his reaction times compromised, the last thing they needed was a shunt.
After negotiating a couple of roundabouts, they filtered onto a two-lane tarmac road. He slowed even further to allow for the new conditions and the increased traffic as they closed on their destination—northwest Hungary’s most important city.
“How’s our patient doing?” Kaine asked, more to break the quiet and hear her voice than because he gave a toss.
“Temperature’s slightly elevated, but given what he’s been through, he’s holding up remarkably well. The wound looks clean. It’s early days, but I can’t see too many signs of infection. Physically, he’ll probably recover. Psychologically, though? Who knows?”
And who cares?
“PTSD might be an issue,” she added, “but that’s beyond my remit.”
“At least he’s alive,” Kaine muttered. “Danny isn’t.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
She slipped through the gap between the seats, slid into the passenger seat, and fastened her safety belt. Traffic slowed them even further.
“Ryan, are you really going through with this?”
Kaine fired a glance through the rear-view mirror to make sure their patient was in no condition to eavesdrop.
“Lara,” he whispered, “let’s not go through this again. You’re here to keep him alive. I’m running the handover. End of discussion.”
“Remind me again why we’re over twelve hours late. The transfer was supposed to take place midday yesterday.”
“We’ve been through this already.”
“Humour me. I’ve been a little busy with him”—she jerked her head towards the back—“and I haven’t had much sleep lately. My memory’s a little fuzz
y.”
“No it isn’t. You’re trying to pick holes.”
“No, I’m not. I’m trying to keep you awake.”
He took a breath and cracked the window again, but only by a couple of centimetres.
“Too cold?”
“No, I’m fine. And stop prevaricating. Why are we arriving a day late?”
Kaine tried rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. It only succeeded in spreading the grit.
“Okay. Bear with me.”
A break in traffic on the westbound lane gave him the opportunity to overtake a slow-moving convoy that included a huge truck and trailer and a petrol tanker. He indicated left, dropped two gears, and mashed the throttle into the floor mat. The Ford Transit sprang forwards with all the youthful energy of a sloth on tranquilisers.
“Ryan!”
The headlights of an oncoming vehicle flashed at them in the far distance. He cancelled the indicator and aborted the manoeuvre, tucking back in behind the trailer.
“Sorry. Must be more tired than I thought. Anyway, where was I?”
“Trying to avoid telling me the plan.”
“Tenacious, aren’t we?”
“Ryan Liam Kaine, get on with it.”
“Okay, here goes. Delaying the handover has two benefits. First, it’s given us time to organise. It’s taken far longer than I imagined to put all our ducks in a row.”
“Ducks? We have ducks?”
“One or two.”
“Which are?”
“You’ll find out when we reach Győr.”
“You’re deliberately keeping me in the dark?” Her eyebrows knitted into a frown. “I really don’t like that, Ryan.”
“No, it’s a surprise. I know how much you like surprises.”
“I like nice surprises, not shocks.”
He grinned. “This is a nice one. I promise.”
The tension in Lara’s forehead eased a little. “Okay, what’s the second benefit?”
On the Hunt Page 22