W Griffin - The outlaws

"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 godson 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 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 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 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. 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 godson, 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 massage, 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. Sandor Tor draped the ermine-collared black leather overcoat over Eric Kocian's shoulders.

The bitch, who answered to the name Madchen, headed for a row of shrubbery to meet the call of nature. Kocian led the puppy, named Max, to the shrubbery.

"You and Gustav go to bed," Kocian ordered. "I'll see you in the morning."

Tor got back in the Mercedes, which then carried him to the hotel entrance. When Gustav had parked the car-a spot near the door was reserved for it-he followed Tor into the hotel lobby. Gustav got on the elevator to check the apartment out before Kocian got there, and Tor walked to a column and stood behind it in a position from which he could watch Kocian enter the lobby and get on the elevator.

Kocian came through the door four minutes later and walked toward the elevator bank.

A tall, well-dressed man who had been sitting in an armchair reading the Budapester Tages Zeitung suddenly dropped the newspaper to the floor and walked quickly to where Kocian was waiting for the elevator.

Where in the name of the goddamn Virgin Mary and all the fucking saints did that sonofabitch come from?

Tor had almost made it to the bank of elevators when the door opened. Gustav saw him coming and stopped, then stepped back against the elevator's rear wall.

Kocian, Madchen, and Max got on the elevator.

Tor followed.

"I thought I told you to go to bed," Kocian said.

Tor took a Micro Uzi from his under-the-arm holster, held it at his side, and then pushed the button which would send the elevator to the top floor.

"I mean Herr Kocian no harm," the tall, well-dressed man said in German, and then repeated it in Hungarian.

The elevator door closed, and the elevator began to rise.

"Pat him," Tor ordered, now raising the muzzle of the Micro Uzi.

Gustav quickly, but unhurriedly, thoroughly frisked the tall, well-dressed man.

"Nothing," Gustav said, referring to weapons. But he now held a Russian diplomatic passport, a Hungarian foreign ministry-issued diplomat's carnet (a plastic-sealed card about the size of a driver's license), and a business-size envelope.

He examined the carnet, saw that it read, COMMERCIAL COUNSELOR, RUSSIAN EMBASSY, and then handed the carnet to Tor.

"Actually, I'm Colonel Vladlen Solomatin of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki," the tall, well-dressed man then said in Hungarian, and for the third time said, "I mean Herr Kocian no harm."

"You're from the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki?" Kocian asked in Russian.

"It's the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation," Colonel Solomatin said. "Yes, I am."