The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

The old man wasn’t concerned for himself, Tor knew, but for the dog. One of Max’s predecessors—there had been several, all the same breed, Bouvier des Flandres, all named Max—had been run over and killed on that highway.

It was a standard joke around the Gellért and the Budapester Tages Zeitung that the only thing the old man loved was his goddamned dog and that the only living thing that could possibly love the old man was his goddamned dog.

Sándor Tor knew better. Once, Tor had heard a pressman parrot the joke and had grabbed him by the neck, forced his head close to the gears of the running press, and promised the next time he heard him running his mouth he’d feed him to the press.

“Turn on the flashers when you stop,” Kocian ordered as the Mercedes approached the bridge, “and I’ll open the doors for Max and myself, thank you very much.”

“Yes, Úr Kocian.”

“And don’t hang around to see if Max and I can make it across the bridge without your assistance. Go home.”

“Yes, Úr Kocian.”

“And in the morning, be on time for once.”

“I will try, Úr Kocian.”

“Good night, Sándor. Sleep well.”

“Thank you, Úr Kocian.”

Tor watched in the right side rearview mirror as Kocian and the dog started across the bridge. Tor already had his cellular in his hand. He pressed the autodial button again.

Across the river, Ervin Rákosi’s cellular vibrated in his pocket, causing the wireless speaker bud in his ear to ring. He pushed one of the phone’s buttons—it did not matter which since he had programmed the device to answer calls whenever any part of the keypad was depressed—and heard Tor’s voice come through the earbud:

“They’re on the bridge.”

“Got him, Sándor.”

“He’ll be watching me, so I’ll have to go up the Vámház körút as far as Pipa before I can turn.”

“I told you I have him, Sándor.”

“Just do what I tell you to do. I’ll pick him up when he passes Sóház.”

“Any idea where he’s going?”

“Absolutely none.”

It was Eric Kocian’s custom to take Max for a walk before retiring, which usually meant they left the Gellért around half past eleven. Almost always, they walked across the bridge, and, almost always, they stopped in a café, bar, or restaurant for a little sustenance. Lately, they’d been going to the Képíró, a narrow restaurant/bar which offered good jazz, Jack Daniel’s Black Label bourbon, and a menu pleasing to Max, who was fond of hard sausage.

But that was no guarantee they’d be going there tonight, and if Sándor Tor had asked the old man where he was going the old man would either have told him it was none of his goddamned business or lied.

In fact, it was Sándor Tor’s business to know where the old man was and where he was going, and to keep him from harm. His orders to protect Eric Kocian—“Cost be damned, and, for God’s sake, don’t let the old man know he’s being protected”—had come from Generaldirektor Otto Görner of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., the German holding company that owned, among a good deal else, half a dozen newspapers, including the Budapester Neue Tages Zeitung.

When he came off the bridge, Tor saw Ervin Rákosi’s dark green Chrysler Grand Caravan at the first intersection in a position from which Rákosi could see just about all of the bridge. He continued up the Vámház körút for two blocks and then made a right turn onto Pipa. He circled the block, on toward Sóház U, pulled to the curb behind a panel truck half a block from Vámház körút, and turned off the headlights.

Tor’s cellular buzzed.

“He’s almost at Sóház U,” Rákosi reported.

“I’m fifty meters from the intersection,” Tor’s voice said in Rákosi’s earbud.

Thirty seconds later, Eric Kocian and Max appeared, walking briskly up the steep incline.

One of these days, Tor thought, he’s going to do that and have a heart attack.

Tor reported: “He just went past. Follow him and see where he goes.”