“There’s Zeki in Istanbul,” Christo continued. “His men are appropriately vicious.”
“But not very smart,” Baru countered. There were at least a half dozen other gangsters with whom he was on friendly terms who either owed him a favor, or would’ve been happy to have a debt they could collect upon in the future. None of them were a match for a man like Beryx Gulyas, whose reputation had grown so fearsome in such a short period of time.
“He’s not unbreakable,” Christo said. “He just knows how to make a statement.”
Baru took out his handkerchief and spit on it, using the cotton cloth to wipe the white dribble caked around Etor’s mouth. On impulse, he tasted the sediment—salt.
“I know how to make a statement, too,” the Cretan snarled.
Christo put his hand on Baru’s shoulder and the gangster shuddered.
“You know what you have to do. He owes you a thousand debts and should be honored to get justice for Etor.”
As any father would desire, as any Cretan would demand, Baru o Crete wanted the pleasure of at least watching Beryx Gulyas die, if not crushing his skull with his bare hands. But Baru’s men were parochial Greeks, who spoke no other languages and had no heads for strategy. Hunting down a prized assassin required an international operation with ties deep within the Soviet Union.
“Get my boy down,” Baru ordered, stepping away from his bloodied son. “I want to bury him myself.”
“It was taken just this Christmas,” Theron Tassos expounded, as he removed a photograph from his ostrich leather attaché case.
Baru o Crete adjusted the pocket square he’d hastily tucked into his jacket, its indigo dye leaving a faint stain on his fingertips. He dipped them in his tea and wiped them on a linen napkin before taking the Polaroid from his younger brother and holding it at a distance, to get a proper look. Baru hadn’t seen his niece in nearly a decade and was struck by what a beauty she’d become. The sight of the color photograph—a rarity in his world—was equally impressive. He could even make out the eggplant tint of Lily’s eyeshadow.
“She favors you,” Baru commented, scrutinizing the picture further.
“You think so?” Theron Tassos dismissed him. The man Lily called Daddy looked hardly at all like his daughter. It seemed to him she had absorbed all of her mother’s lovely features as she developed in the womb. Her high cheekbones and plump lips. Her wide-set eyes.
“She doesn’t resemble you, but she does favor you,” Baru insisted. “It’s here,” he said, pointing to the girl’s nose. “And here,” he continued, indicating her eyes. “It’s not their shape, no, but what’s behind them.”
The two brothers nodded.
“Gulyas is his name, you say. That’s Hungarian,” Theron concluded as he slid Lily’s picture back into its home in a plastic sleeve and restored it to his case. They’d been drinking tea for over an hour, having indulged in the kind of over-the-fence chatter that would’ve been impolite to forgo entirely. Even under these grave circumstances.
“No, he’s Romanian. Perhaps a Hungarian by family origin.”
Theron knelt down on two of several Turkish pillows that were strewn about Baru’s living room, and the Cretan gangster followed him. “And it’s important to you that he suffers.”
“More than Christ,” Baru hissed.
Theron put his hand on Baru’s bald head. His hands weren’t as lethal as his brother’s—made for holding weapons, not being them—but possessed the even touch of a man long accustomed to power. “No one can suffer more than Christ.”
It would’ve been sacrilegious for him to contend otherwise, but Theron Tassos had indeed made men suffer much more than Christ. Christ, it could be argued, had the added burden of humanity, which made his suffering infinitely greater from a spiritual perspective, but pain is pain when you’re made of flesh and blood, he believed.
Etor himself had once narrowly escaped one of Theron Tassos’s punishments after he’d been late with a one-time delivery to an Oriental. It was a small order from a bit player in an even smaller country, so it was just as easy for Tassos to tell Etor to get lost and stay lost than it was to teach him a lesson.
But he’d never forgiven Baru for his poor judgment. The two, who had once been as close as soldiers in a death battle, had become distant in the seven-odd years since the Etor incident. While they’d never officially fallen out with one another, they hadn’t spoken in all of this time, either.
“Do you wish to be present?”
Baru exhaled and closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh, yes,” he whispered.
Whatever their conflicts over family and business, a Greek would never deny a brother his revenge. Especially over the death of a child—no matter how disappointing that child might have been.
“Do I know the man you’ll use?” Baru asked. The Cretan’s eyes were leaden and glassy, bearing the look of an old man’s eyes in the long year before his death.
“I’d never use a Greek,” Theron insisted. “He must be a Russian. I never trust anyone but a Russian to inflict pain.”
Baru straightened his shoulders and swallowed hard, as if confronting his first glimpse of Etor’s mutilated body. “This Gulyas. He’s no Russian, yet he’s built a savage name for himself.”
Theron Tassos lit a cigarette and shrugged. He knew that men like Beryx Gulyas came and went all the time—burning bright for a few short years before descending back to earth—or rather, beneath it. Sadists rarely lasted very long. Egoists let their vanity override their intellect. Gulyas had both marks against him.
In the arms dealer’s experience, it took an impersonal character—someone imminently flexible, who took neither pleasure nor pain from his work—to last for any meaningful length of time.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have the perfect man in mind.”
Victoria Dougherty
Victoria Dougherty is the author of The Bone Church. She writes fiction, drama and essays that revolve around lovers, killers, curses and destinies.
Her work has been published or profiled in the New York Times, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune and elsewhere.
Her blog – COLD – features her short essays on faith, family, love and writing. WordPress, the blogging platform that hosts some 72 million blogs worldwide has singled out COLD as one of the top 50 Recommended Blogs on writers and writing.
Currently, Ms. Dougherty lives with her family in Charlottesville, VA and has recently completed The Hungarian, her second in a series of Cold War themed historical thrillers.
Follow COLD at www.victoriadougherty.wordpress.com
It’s bling for your soul!
Daring escapes, backyard firing squads, bowlfuls of goulash, gargoyles, gray skies and bone-chilling cold. From the author of The Bone Church and Welcome to the Hotel Yalta come these confessions of a Cold War princess.
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Welcome to the Hotel Yalta: Six Stories of Cold War Noir Page 8