The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“You were about to tell me what brings you to Budapest,” Kocian said.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me—the truth—about what happened to you.”

“Okay,” Kocian said after a moment. “You first.”

“I want to be released from my promise to keep the list of names you gave me to myself.”

Kocian didn’t reply directly. Instead, he asked, “By now, I assume you’ve heard that they got to your man Lorimer? In Uruguay, of all places?”

“I was there when he was shot,” Castillo said.

Kocian pursed his lips thoughtfully, then asked, “Who done it?”

“One of the six guys in dark blue coveralls who went to Lorimer’s estancia to do it.”

“How come they didn’t get you, too, if you were there?”

“I couldn’t ask them. They were all dead.”

“Not identifiable?”

“No.”

“Sounds like the people who got me,” Kocian said. “Max and I were taking a midnight stroll on the Franz Joséf Bridge—”

“The where?” Görner asked.

“They now call it the Szabadság híd, Freedom Bridge. I don’t. Freedom has many meanings. Franz Joséf means Franz Joséf. I remain one of his admirers.”

“Going off at a tangent,” Castillo said. “There’s a country club called Mayerling outside Buenos Aires.”

“Really?” Kocian asked.

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, I’ll have to have a look at it when I go to Argentina,” Kocian said.

“What are you two talking about? What’s Mayerling?” Görner asked. “What do you mean, when you go to Argentina?”

“Mayerling was the Imperial Hunting Lodge outside Vienna,” Castillo said, “where Crown Prince Rudolph, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on being told he had to give up his sixteen-year-old tootsie, shot her and then shot himself.”

“According to my father, it’s where Franz Joséf had him shot on learning he had been talking to people about becoming king of Hungary,” Kocian said.

“My aunt Olga told me that version, too,” Castillo said.

“A great lady,” Kocian said. “And you remember? I’m impressed. You were only a kid—seven, eight, maybe nine—when she died.”

“And what do you mean, when you go to Argentina?” Castillo said.

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling you what happened to me,” Kocian said. “Max and I were coming back from taking a midnight snack across the river. We were about halfway across the Franz Joséf Bridge when I sensed there were people approaching us from behind. That happens often. You’d be surprised how many young Hungarians think robbing old men out walking late at night is a lot more fun than getting a job. Max loves it. He gets to growl a little, show them his teeth, and after they wet their pants, drop their knives or whatever they had planned to hit me in the head with, he gets to chase them off the bridge.”

Castillo chuckled.

“This time, it wasn’t young men. This time, it’s two full-grown men, with a third man driving a Mercedes. And the guy who got pretty close before Max grabbed him wasn’t carrying a knife. He had a hypodermic needle in his slimy little hand. Had had. By the time I saw it, Max was chewing on his arm and he’d dropped it.”

“My God!” Görner exclaimed.

“The second thug pulled out a pistol and started beating Max on the head with it. I jumped on him and then the Mercedes pulled up and the second guy got away from me and got in it. Off they drove. They stopped ten meters away, maybe a little more, and started shooting at me through an open window. And then they drove off for good. The license plates, it turned out, they’d stolen off a Ford Taurus.”