The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“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?” Görner 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?” Görner 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 Hungarian State Security Bureau—AVO and AVH—weren’t that nice. They…”

My God, Görner 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?” Görner 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?” Görner 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!” Görner 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 Görner.

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

“I never know when to believe him,” the doctor confessed, putting out his hand to first Görner and then Castillo. “I’m Dr. Czerny. I’m the chief of staff.”

“If you’re treating him, Doctor, you have my sympathy,” Castillo said, in Hungarian.

“You’re Hungarian?” Dr. Czerny asked, surprised.