The Outlaws_ A Presidential Agent Novel Part 14

[ONE].

The Hotel Gellert Szent Gellert ter 1 Budapest, Hungary 2315 4 February 2007

The silver, two-month-old, top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz S550 drove regally across the Szabadsag hid, and on the other side of the Danube River turned left toward the Hotel Gellert, which was at the foot of the Gellert Hill.

Budapest, which began as two villages, Buda and Pest, on opposite sides of the Danube River, had a long and b.l.o.o.d.y history. Gellert Hill, for example, got its name from Saint Gerard Gellert, an Italian bishop from Venice whom the pagans ceremoniously murdered there in 1046 A.D. for trying to bring the natives to Jesus.

Buda and Pest were both destroyed by the Mongols, who invaded the area in 1241. The villages were rebuilt, only to suffer rape and ethnic cleansing when the Ottoman Turks came, conquering Pest in 1526 and Buda fifteen years later.

By the time the Szabadsag hid was built in 1894-96, the villages had been combined into Budapest, and Hungary had become part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Emperor Franz Josef personally inserted the last rivet-a silver rivet-into the new bridge and then with imperial immodesty named the structure after himself.

The bridge itself was dropped-like all the other bridges across the Danube-into the river when the Russians and the Germans fought over Hungary during the Second World War. It was the first bridge rebuilt after the war by the Soviet-controlled government and named the Liberty Bridge. When the Russians were finally evicted, it became the Freedom Bridge.

The silver Mercedes-Benz turned off the road running alongside the Danube and onto the access road to the Hotel Gellert, then stopped.

Gustav, a barrel-chested man in his fifties who appeared to be a chauffeur but served as a bodyguard and more, got quickly out from behind the wheel and opened the rear pa.s.senger door.

A tall man, who looked to be in his midsixties, got out. He adjusted a broad-brimmed jet-black hat-one side of the brim down, the other rakishly up-and then turned back to the car, bending over, leaning into the car. When he came out, he had two Bouvier des Flandres dogs.

The larger, a b.i.t.c.h, was several times the size of a very large boxer. The other was her son, a puppy, on a leash. The puppy was about the size of a small boxer.

As the man had taken them from the car, another burly man in his sixties had gotten out the other side of the car, carrying an ermine-collared black leather overcoat.

The burly man's name was Sandor Tor. In his youth, Tor had done a hitch-rising to sergeant-in the French Foreign Legion. On his return to Budapest, he had become a policeman. He had been recruited into the aVH, the allamvedelmi Hatosag, Hungary's hated secret police, and again had risen to sergeant.

When the Russians had been driven from Budapest, and known members of the allamvedelmi Hatosag were being spat on and hung, Mussolini-style, en ma.s.se from any convenient streetlight, Tor had found sanctuary in the American emba.s.sy.

And only then had the CIA revealed to the new leaders of Hungary the ident.i.ty of the man who had not only saved the lives of so many anti-Communists and resistance leaders-by warning them, via the CIA, that the aVH was onto them-but also had been one of the rare-and certainly the most reliable-sources of information about the inner workings of the aVH, which he'd gained at great risk to his life from his trusted position within the secret police.

Thus, the best that Sandor Tor could have hoped for had he been exposed was a quick death from aVH torture rather than a slow one.

Tor was decorated by the Hungarian government and appointed as inspector of police.

But that, despite having triumphed over the forces of evil, didn't turn out to be a movie scenario in which he lived happily ever after.

There were several facets of this. For one, his peers in the police, reasoning that if he had been keeping a record of the unsavory activities of the aVH, it was entirely likely that he would keep a record of theirs, both feared and shunned him.

And Tor didn't like being a cop without an agenda. He had done what he had done not only because he hated the Communists generally, but specifically because his mother and father and two brothers had been slowly strangled to death in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the aVH headquarters at Andra.s.sy ut 60.

Getting back at the Communists was one thing; spending long hours trying to arrest burglars-for that matter, even murderers-was something else.

And his wife, Margo, had cancer. They had had no children.

He applied for early retirement and it was quickly granted.

Sitting around the apartment with nothing to do but watch cancer work its cruelty on Margo was difficult.

Then Tor heard of the return to Budapest of the German firm Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. The company's intention was to reclaim the properties-farms, a brewery, several vineyards, a newspaper business, and other a.s.sets-seized from them by the Communists.

He also heard they were looking for someone to head their security.

After he filled out an application form at Gossinger G.m.b.H's newly reopened downtown offices, he heard nothing for three weeks, and had decided that they weren't interested in his services.

Then there was a telephone call saying that if he was still interested, a car would pick him up in an hour, and take him for an interview. He almost didn't go; Margo had insisted and he went.

The car-a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes with Vienna plates-took him to the legendary Hotel Gellert, at Szent Gellert ter 1, overlooking the Danube River from the Gellert Hill.

Tor thought he would be interviewed, probably in the restaurant or the bar, by a personnel officer of the Gossinger organization. Instead, he was led to the elevator which carried him to a top floor apartment, overlooking the Danube, which apparently occupied that entire corner of the building.

An interior door opened and an enormous dog came out, walked to him, sniffed him, then sat down. Normally, Tor was not afraid of dogs. But this one frightened him. He thought it had to weigh well over fifty kilos. Even when the dog offered his paw, he thought carefully before squatting to take it.

"You come well recommended," said a voice in Hungarian with a Budapester accent. "Max usually shows his teeth to people he doesn't like. Often they wet their pants."

Tor had looked up to see a tall silver-haired man who seemed to be in his sixties standing in the doorway.

"My name is Eric Kocian," the man said. "Come in. We'll talk and have a drink."

He opened the door wide and waved Tor inside a s.p.a.cious and well-furnished apartment.

Kocian walked to a sideboard and turned, holding a bottle in his hand.

"Wild Turkey Rare Breed all right with you?" he asked.

"I don't know what it is," Tor confessed.

"One of the very few things the Americans do superbly is make bourbon whisky. This is one of the better bourbon whiskys. My G.o.dson gave me a case for my seventy-seventh birthday."

Seventy-seventh birthday? Tor had thought. Tor had thought. My G.o.d, he's that old? My G.o.d, he's that old?

"Sir, I don't know. I'm supposed to be interviewed for a job."

"And so you are. Don't you drink?"

"Yes, sir. I drink."

"Good. My experience has been you can't trust people who don't."

Kocian poured him a large, squarish gla.s.s half-full of the bourbon whisky.

"This is what they call 'sipping whisky.' But if you want water and ice ..."

Kocian pointed to the sideboard.

"This is fine, thank you," Tor said.

"May I ask about your wife? How is she?"

How does he know about my Margo?

"Not very well, I'm afraid."

Kocian waved him into a leather-upholstered armchair and seated himself in an identical chair facing it.

"If you decide to take this position," Kocian announced, "she will be covered under our medical care program. Most German physicians are insufferably arrogant, and tend to regard their patients as laboratory specimens, but they seem to know what they're doing. Maybe they'll have answers you haven't been able to find here."

"Am I being offered the position?" Tor asked, on the cusp of incredulity.

"I have one or two other quick questions first," Kocian said.

"Quick questions? But you don't know anything about me."

"I know just about everything about you that interests me," Kocian said. "Are you still on the CIA's payroll?"

"I was never on their payroll," Tor said.

"That's not what I have been led to understand."

"I never took a cent. If I had been exposed, they promised to try to get Margo out of Hungary and give her some sort of pension, but ..."

"You thought before the aVH arrested you, they would have arrested her for her value in your interrogation, so you didn't give it much thought?"

Tor nodded.

"I would have to have your word that you would no longer cooperate with the CIA in any way."

"I haven't talked to anyone in the CIA for over a year."

"That wasn't my question."

"I can promise you that," Tor said. "No cooperation with the CIA."

"Welcome to the executive ranks of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H."

"Just like that?" Tor asked, and then blurted, "We haven't even talked about what I'm going to do. Or how much-"

"What you are going to do is relieve me of keeping Hungarian fingers out of my cash box, prying eyes out of any part of our business, provide such other security as I deem necessary, and keep Otto Gorner off my back. So far as compensation is concerned, I suggest that twice what you were being paid as an inspector would be a reasonable starting salary. There are of course some 'perks,' as my G.o.dson would say. Including an expense account and a car."

Tor knew that Otto Gorner was the managing director of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., empire.

But who is this G.o.dson?

"You've mentioned your G.o.dson twice. Where does he fit in here?"

"His name is Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. You're a policeman. Is that enough of a clue for you?"

Tor chuckled.

"You know who Otto Gorner is?"

Tor nodded.

"Otto has the odd notion that I have to be protected from myself and others, in particular the Russians. He has managed to convince my G.o.dson of this nonsense. It will be your job to convince both of them that you are doing so while at the same time making sure that whomever you charge with protecting me from the Russians and myself are invisible to me."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me top that off," Kocian said.

Tor looked at his gla.s.s and was surprised to see that it was nearly empty. He didn't remember taking one sip.

Sandor Tor had been director of security for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. (Hungary), for six months when Margo died.

The doctors in Germany, with great regret, had been unable to do anything for her. When it was apparent the end was near, Margo asked to be returned from Berlin to Budapest so that she could die in her own bed.

Eric Kocian and a medical team from Telki Private Hospital-Budapest's best-were waiting with an ambulance at the Keleti Palyaudvar railway station. Staff from the kitchen of the Hotel Gellert was waiting at the Tor apartment.

Margo died at four in the morning the next day. At the time, her husband was asleep in a chair at one side of her bed and Eric Kocian was asleep in another chair on the other side of the bed.

Margo was buried the next day, beside Sandor's mother and father in the Farkasreti Cemetery in Buda (the western part of Budapest). Tor had found-not without great effort-where their Communist murderers had disposed of their bodies, and had them exhumed and reinterred in the Farkasreti Cemetery. He never learned what had happened to the bodies of his murdered brothers.

When Margo's crypt had been cemented closed, Eric Kocian had said, "You don't want to go back to your apartment. Come with me and we'll have a drink."

They had gone to the Hotel Gellert and stayed drunk together for four days.

Sometime during that period, Sandor had realized that while he might now be alone in the world except for his employer/friend Eric Kocian, Eric Kocian was similarly alone in the world, except for his G.o.dson, whom he apparently rarely saw, and his friend/employee Sandor Tor.

Early in the morning of their fifth day together, Sandor Tor led Eric Kocian to the thermal baths-built by the Romans-below the hotel where they soaked, had a ma.s.sage, and soaked again. And then they had a haircut and shave.

At noon, they were at work.

Sandor returned only once to the apartment he had shared with Margo. He selected the furniture he wanted to keep, and had it moved to the Gellert, where Kocian had arranged an apartment for him on the floor below his own.