The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“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 ÁVH 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 Görner 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 godson would say. Including an expense account and a car.”

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

But who is this godson?

“You’ve mentioned your godson 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 Görner 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 godson 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 glass and was surprised to see that it was nearly empty. He didn’t remember taking one sip.

Sándor 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 Pályaudvar railway station. Staff from the kitchen of the Hotel Gellért 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 Sándor’s mother and father in the Farkasréti 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 Farkasréti 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 Gellért and stayed drunk together for four days.

Sometime during that period, Sándor 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 godson, whom he apparently rarely saw, and his friend/employee Sándor Tor.