“This thing is an insult to my son’s memory!” Novak’s pointing finger shook with the violence of his emotions. “That woman’s existence on this earth is an insult to his memory! And you knew about her, did you not, Jakab? Did you not?”
“No! I know nothing about this!” Jakab protested desperately. “Nothing! I am just a messenger! I was sent to find out what you wanted—”
“I want her blood,” Novak hissed. “I want her entrails, spread out upon the ground. That is what I want.”
Jakab swallowed repeatedly. He was gray-faced, shaking. Novak reached out, and stroked a finger along the ropes of gold that twined and twisted, snakelike, in an ancient Celtic design. The finials of the crescent were adorned with cabochon rubies. The piece pulsed and glowed in the light from the library lamp, as if it were somehow alive.
Novak pushed one of the rubies on the finial. It came loose, and a tiny blade slid out. “Do you see this? It’s a miniature of the dagger that opened my son’s throat. It is an exact reproduction of the torque Kurt gave McCloud’s woman. My Kurt’s foul murder is immortalized in a cheap bauble for a brainless whore!”
Jakab jumped as Novak drove the small blade into the table. It stuck, vibrating. He cleared his throat with a dry, nervous cough.
Novak picked up the card in the black velvet box. No logo, no address, just bold letters.
DEADLY BEAUTY
Wearable Weaponry by Tamara
And below, a cell number. Inactive, of course. Nothing so simple as that.
“A direct message,” the boss muttered. “A slap in my face.”
In fact, the message was hardly direct. By pure chance had András noticed the torque on the mistress of a business associate at a party in Paris some weeks before. It had caught his eye, since he knew the odd manner of Kurt’s death. The woman had demonstrated her torque’s special properties when András got her alone, and helpfully shared the name of the broker who had sold it to her lover, but she’d been unwilling to part with the piece when András offered to buy it. Happily, no one noticed that the jewelry was not on her broken body when she was found shortly thereafter, having flung herself from the penthouse terrace.
Drugs, of course. A useless life, a meaningless death. So sad.
The broker had been most forthcoming, with András’s knife digging into his carotid artery. He’d provided the business card and a physical description of the torque’s designer. A stunningly beautiful, mysterious young woman who could only be Kurt’s lying, murderous ex-mistress.
Whom Georg Luksch had sworn was dead. How very strange.
“Help me understand this situation, Jakab.” Novak’s voice was deceptively gentle. “I spent a fortune to have Georg freed from prison. I spent another fortune to have his face and body put back together. I groomed him to be my successor, to take Kurt’s place at my side. I made him rich, powerful. Now I discover, by pure chance, that this filthy whore is alive and flourishing? And that Georg has contracted a PSS agent to locate her? Without informing me?”
“He…how did…but how do you—”
“How do I know this?” Novak’s smile peeled back from long, yellowing teeth. “I have my ways, Jakab. I know everything, sooner or later. I know that it is my old protégé, Vajda, who is charged with the task of looking for her. A good choice. A whore to catch a whore.” He wrenched the dagger loose. It left an ugly divot in the gleaming table. “I have been used,” he announced. “Lied to. Where is she, Jakab? Where is Steele?”
András braced himself. Lied to, Novak’s pet hate. The words “lied to” always ended in a bloodbath.
Jakab reached out an entreating hand. “Boss. I don’t know! I swear! They don’t tell me these things! And I am sure that Georg did not mean to mislead you. Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. The situation is complex. The woman is—”
Thunk.
There was a choked gasp from Jakab. The dagger had pinned his hand to the table. The man’s jaw sagged. Blood pooled under his palm.
“Complex, did you say?” Novak’s voice had gotten even gentler. “I think it is quite simple, Jakab. Nothing like a knife through the hand to simplify things.”
Jakab had begun to shake violently. “But…but I cannot…I don’t—”
“Where?” Novak put his hand on the jeweled finial. “Where is she? Or shall I twist it?”
Jakab gasped, breath hitching. Novak wrenched the blade out. A shriek of agony jerked from Jakab’s throat. “Tell me, you useless bag of shit!” the old man rasped. “What has Vajda discovered? Where is the bitch? Tell me! Now!”
But Jakab could no longer answer. Something was very wrong with him, something more serious than a minor puncture wound. His mouth began to froth. He pitched forward, eyes wild, face squashed against the table, blood pouring from both nostrils.
His twitching slowed, gradually ceased, while they all watched, in silence.
Novak blinked, and examined the dagger in his hand with renewed interest. “Poison,” he commented. “Interesting.”
András stared at the meat that was now his responsibility to remove, with an inward sigh.
“Get rid of this garbage, András,” Novak ordered. “Cut off a few identifying pieces and send them to that lying pig, so we all know where we stand. Then get Vajda for me. He had no business working for Georg in the first place. We will remind him of where his real loyalties lie.”
“I will take care of it, as soon as Daroczy is discharged from the hospital,” András repeated, with grim patience.
But Novak was no longer listening. The boss’s eyes burned as he turned the dagger in his hand. “He will bring her to me. And I will use this blade,” he mused, his voice almost dreamy. “This very blade, once the poison is removed, of course. It must be slow. She will watch, in the mirror. And I will save her eyes for last.”
Georg bucked and heaved grimly against the body of the sex professional who writhed against him on the bed. She was making too much noise. It was spoiling his fantasy.
He was annoyed. He’d thought she’d do so perfectly when he’d seen the photographs of her. The initial effect was striking: the long red hair, the perfect body. She’d had extensive cosmetic surgery done to her face to make her look as much like Tamara Steele as it was possible to look. The surgeons had done a good job.
It was her voice that was the problem. He remembered Tamara’s husky alto voice all too well. It made him shiver with raw hunger.
This woman’s wailing squawks of feigned appreciation were high-pitched, strident, stupid. They ruined the effect.
It was disappointing. Boring and exhausting, too, but there was no question of stopping, not with three of his men standing over the bed watching him, as was his custom. He could no longer conclude a sexual act without an audience.
Fortunately, Georg had no lack of willing spectators.
He tried to close his ears, picturing Kurt Novak’s pale, crazed eyes watching him as he possessed Tamara. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The most erotically intense moments he had ever experienced.
The thought detonated something inside him. He jerked, convulsed, came.
He collapsed for a few panting seconds upon the woman’s damp body. He could hear the heavy breathing of the men watching. Her perfume was unpleasantly strong in his nostrils.
He clambered off her body, fastened his pants, buckled his belt. The woman propped herself up on her elbows. He did not look at her, but he saw out of the corner of his eye her miffed expression. Arrogant bitch. Expecting to be praised and petted for doing her job.
One of his men cleared his throat. “Uh, boss?”
“What?” He sat down at the desk and powered up the computer, already putting the experience out of his mind.
“Can we…?”
Georg glanced back at the three men who’d stood slavering over the bed, and then at the growing outrage on the masklike Tamara face superimposed upon the redheaded woman reclining on the bed.
He shrugged. “If you like. I don’t want this one again.”
She folded herself up defensively. “That wasn’t in the contract! There’s nothing about taking on four men in my contract!”
“So you’ll be paid quadruple,” he said indifferently. “In cash. And I can refrain from mentioning this bonus to the agency.”
Her red lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, calculating.
Georg turned back to the computer, bored with it, and pulled up the file of digital photos he had collected of Tamara. He clicked through them with dreamy concentration, studying her from every angle. The whimpers, grunts, and muffled laughter that began to emanate from the direction of the bed faded away, and he was alone on the earth with her. No one else existed. Perfect beauty. Beauty, strength, perfect symmetry. The only fit mate for him. She just didn’t know it yet. She had no idea of the vast empire he would offer her, the power, the wealth, the luxury.
A voice intruded on his reverie. He turned and found one of his men, Ferenc, holding a waxed cardboard box in his arms. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the woman was now on her knees, rocking vigorously as she serviced two men at once, one with her mouth, the other with her backside. The man holding the box did not appear to notice the pornographic tableau behind him.
That alone was remarkable enough to snap him to full attention.
The man’s eyes were frozen wide, his skin greenish gray. There was a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“What is it?” Georg demanded. “What’s in the box?”
“Jakab,” Ferenc said hoarsely. “Or…some of him.”
Georg pushed aside the packing material. A blood-drenched, severed head and hands were wedged inside. Jakab’s eyes stared up at him, wide and startled. He looked perplexed at his fate.
It would seem that Novak had discovered Tamara was alive.
Georg grabbed the blood-stiffened hair and lifted out the dead man’s head. Ferenc jerked his gaze away, throat working. Soft, Georg thought scornfully. Useless. He dropped the head into the box, and pulled out his phone, waving the man away. “Dispose of it.”
The man scurried out, stumbling in his haste. The panting and gurgling from the bed was beginning to annoy him. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled at the writhing knot of limbs. “I’m working.”
The heads of his men swiveled. They gave him assorted nervous glances. The head of the woman could not easily turn since she had a penis in her mouth, but her eyes rolled toward him. Her face, distorted by the act of fellatio, no longer looked even remotely like Tamara’s.
He turned away, letting it fly out of his mind while he concentrated on this puzzle. The operatives at Prime Security Solutions would never let slip any details about their search for Tamara Steele. The reputation of their organization depended upon it.
Which meant that there was a traitor in Georg’s own midst, in contact with Daddy Novak. He stepped out onto the balcony, pulling up the number for Hegel, the PSS agent on the case, as he ran through the roster of his staff, one by one, trying to imagine which one deserved a slow dismemberment.
The man picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”
“There’s been a new development,” Georg said. “I have discovered that she is in danger. I need her brought to me immediately.”
The man hemmed. “Ah, I will get in touch with the operative—”
“Immediately.” Georg dropped the phone into his pocket and looked up at the moon. It hung full and bloated on the horizon.
So he was no longer Novak’s chosen surrogate son. He did not really mind, he realized. He had developed his own power base by now. He preferred the role of avenging conquerer anyway. It suited his personality better.
He was tired of kissing the old man’s mummified ass.
A new era was beginning. His heart thudded with excitement.
He could hardly wait.
V
al shifted in the old wingback chair, restless and agitated after spending three days next to Imre’s hospital bed. He’d forgotten how it felt to fidget and tap his feet. He’d been living in a state of cool, floating detachment for so long. Years, in fact.
Twilight was fading, leaching the light out of Imre’s shabby study and leaving only dull shades of gray. In the shadows, Imre’s lean, seamed face was as unrevealing as an ancient statue, despite the bruises and the swelling from the attack mere days before. He had been discharged only hours ago, against Val’s disapproval.
“Stop twitching,” Imre said calmly. “You’re distracting me.”
The elderly man ignored Val’s automatic murmured apology and contemplated the chessboard with sphinxlike gravity. No triumph, despite how blatantly he was winning.
But the magic of a challenging game wasn’t working on Val. It was strenuous mental work, maintaining a shifting matrix of probabilities, strategies, choices, and consequences, but it was also an excellent buzz.
Imre’s gift to him. One of the many. He’d been craving it like a drug, though it was stupid to rely on anything for comfort or refuge.
But there was no buzz, no magic tonight. He could not hold the matrix in his thick head. It kept collapsing in on itself. The heavy, antique chess pieces sat squatly on the board: the white carved of yellowing ivory stolen from African elephants in another century, the black carved of aged, cracked ebony. Inert, revealing nothing, suggesting nothing. No solutions, just a puzzle he was too stupid to solve. Like the puzzle of what to do about Steele and her daughter.
“Knight to king five.” Imre’s cracked voice dragged Val’s attention back to the game just in time to see the old man checkmate him. “Too easy, boy. No sport.”
Val studied the carnage on the chessboard, trying to analyze in a glance what error in judgment had brought him to this. He quickly abandoned the effort. Fuck it. It was too hard, he was too tired. Too many stupidities piled on top of one another to count them all.
He scooped up the pieces, and stood, rolling his shoulders as he gazed out the window into this decaying back alley of Józsefváros. He was stiff, from days of sitting.
Technically, he was not supposed to be here. One condition of his employment with PSS had been that he stay away from Budapest. He had violated that order from the start to visit Imre. He had alternative identities, both PSS-sanctioned ones and ones he had obtained secretly for his personal use. He was skilled at disguise. It had been easy.
But the periods of time that passed between those visits had grown longer and longer as the work he did for PSS pushed him farther from himself. He didn’t want Imre to know what he did or have the old man examine too closely what he’d turned into because of it. He didn’t want to bear Imre’s disapproval. What was the point? Imre could not help him find his way. He had done everything he could for Val.
He was reluctant to feel again at all after years of cultivating chilly detachment, but here he was, twitching. Embarrassed at what he had become. Angry for feeling that way. Bracing himself for judgement.
He sensed the old man was quietly waiting for him to talk, but he was no longer accustomed to explaining himself. It had been years. He had lost the knack of speaking the truth, even to one who had a right to hear it.
After all. His stock in trade for his entire adult life had been lies.
“You are distracted,” Imre observed carefully. “Agitated.”
Val shrugged. “I was worried about you.”
“I am fine,” Imre said firmly. “I had many tests in the hospital. Bruises, contusions. Nothing serious. You overreacted, Vajda.”
Val just looked at him. After days of bullying doctors for details of Imre’s cracked ribs and internal bleeding, he was in no mood to be cajoled with bullshit. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Yes. It is. You should not come back here at all,” Imre scolded. “This city is dangerous for you. I am dangerous for you. You must turn your back on the past.”
“Turn my back on you?” Val demanded. “After what happened?”
The old man gazed from his chair, his face unreadable. The ugly bruises were obscured by deep shadow. “If you must,” he said quietly.
Anger wrenched him like a cramp. The old bastard cared so little, then. He was promptly shocked at himself. Getting his feelings hurt like a spoiled little child. So much for his cool detachment.
The phone rang. Imre stared at it, puzzled. Two rings, three, four.
“Who would call me at this hour?” he murmured. He reached for the phone. “Yes?” He listened. His sharp eyes glinted in the dimness as he looked at Val. “I’m sorry. There is no Valery Janos here. You must have misdialed.”
Val shifted into high alert as Imre listened to whatever the man was saying. “Perhaps you were mistaken in the person you saw entering the building,” Imre countered stubbornly. “He is not here.”
There was no point in this charade. Val reached for the phone and pried it out of the old man’s gnarled fingers. “Who is this?”
“What the fuck are you doing in Budapest, Janos?”
The rasping voice raised the hairs on Val’s neck.
Fuck.
Hegel, again. He had been found. “How did you find me here?” Val asked.
“Don’t start with me, asshole. You had a job to do. You ran away from it,” Hegel said curtly. “The car is waiting outside the door of the building. Come immediately. I need to speak to you. Right now.”
“I have other plans for the evening—”
“Shut up and move your ass.” Hegel hung up.
Val replaced the phone in its cradle. Hegel could have called the dedicated line on Val’s satellite phone more easily. The fact that he had reached Val through Imre’s phone was a message. Not a friendly one.
Imre was a dangerous weakness. Val had been aware of that since he was a child. He’d done everything he could to keep the man’s existence secret from those who might have a desire to manipulate him.
Everything had evidently not been enough.
“So,” Imre said slowly, “you are still with PSS, then?”
“Off and on,” Val hedged. “I haven’t done anything for them for almost a year. There were disagreements about my last assignment. I thought they were done with me. Then I was called for one more job. I interrupted it to come here when I heard about what happened to you. They aren’t pleased.”
“It would seem not.” Imre’s voice was uncharacteristically hard. “So you are being called to heel, Vajda? Like a good hound?”
Val swallowed the anger, with effort. He forced himself to take the three steps back. There was no point in getting his fur ruffled over the flat truth. “Don’t call me Vajda,” he said stiffly.
Imre’s eyebrow twitched upward. “It is hard for a tired old man to change the habits of a lifetime,” he complained.
What horseshit. Even at eighty, Imre’s mind was as flexible as a circus contortionist. “Try to remember,” he said. “Vajda is dead. I am Valery.”
“Are you indeed?” the old man murmured. “And who is this Valery? Do you even know, boy?”
His anger flashed up again, sharper and incandescent. He clamped down on it grimly. “As well as anyone,” he snapped.
“I think not,” Imre went on, relentless. “I thought that PSS would be better than Novak, but they are not. Not for you. Novak may have stolen your life and your future, but PSS took away your whole self.”
Very abruptly, Val was all too aware of why he had come back to Budapest so seldom in recent years. Imre’s tendency to speak the raw, unpalatable truth had always been annoying.
“I’ll go into hiding,” he said on impulse. “Fuck them all. It’s the only way to be rid of them.”
Imre blinked and looked politely doubtful. “You told me yourself how vast PSS’s resources are. It would be so easy?”
“Easy, no. Possible, yes,” Val said. “Expensive, yes, but that is no problem. I have money coming out my ass now.”
Imre looked pained. “Please, Vajda. And your business?”
Val hesitated. In point of fact, it would hurt to give up Capriccio Consulting. The business had come into existence years ago as a cover while he wormed his way into the inner circle of a drug smuggling ring, but since then, and almost by accident, it had evolved into a profitable legitimate enterprise that he truly enjoyed. Fulfilling whims. Finding and obtaining objects, treasures, information. He was good at it.
He was secretly proud of himself for having created something that functioned so well; something that was not a scam, cover, or lie. His business did what it promised to do, with an excellent success rate. God, how he liked that. The simplicity of it, the dignity. Was it so much to ask to mind his business, satisfy his clients, make his money?
But like everything else, it was dangerous to be attached.
He let out a long breath and tried to take the three steps back, but he didn’t feel the click of disengagement, the floating feeling.
“I’ll find something else to do,” he said, after a moment. “I’ll buy you a new passport. Come with me. We’ll go someplace hot. A desert would be good for your arthritis. I could keep a better eye on you. We could play chess every night.”
But Imre was already shaking his head. “This is my home,” he said. “Near Ilona and little Tina.”
Stubborn old sentimentalist. Trotting out his wife, dead thirty years, and his daughter who had died in infancy, buried together at the cemetery. Val rubbed his face with a groan. “For two mossy graves, you stay in this moldering dump? I can look after you if you’re close to me!”
“You already look after me.” Imre’s voice was tranquil. “l will stay here. And I will die here. It’s all right to die, Vajda.”
“Spare me the cloying platitudes,” Val snarled. “This isn’t one of your fucking philosophy lessons.”
Imre regarded him for a moment, his thin shoulders stiff. “Calm yourself, please,” he said haughtily. “I will make us a pot of tea. Or should I bother? Do you have to scurry off to lick your handler’s feet?”
Val let out a long, slow breath before he allowed himself to reply.
“I’ll make the goddamn tea,” he said before Imre could rise. He needed a moment for his self-control. And he didn’t want to watch Imre’s pained, arthritic shuffle toward the kitchen.
Hegel would be furious to be kept waiting. Val did not care.
The kitchen was dirty. The dishes in the sink stank. He made a note to scold the agency he paid to send someone to cook and clean for Imre. Lazy cow. It would never occur to Imre, the perfect gentleman with his head in the clouds, to scold the stupid woman for slacking off.
Perhaps she’d been too upset by finding Imre in such a terrible state, but even so. This was accumulated weeks of mess, not days.
He put the kettle on, dumped some cookies onto a plate. The chipped, stained porcelain teapot unleashed a flood of memories.
The first time he’d seen that teapot, or sat at that table was twenty-two years ago. He’d been Vajda then, a tough, slit-eyed twelve-year-old, small for his age, trolling the streets for a trick, a pocket to pick, any way to make his quota for that prick Kustler, and avoid the beating or cutting or cigarette burns that were his punishment if he didn’t. He’d seen the man, shabby clothes flapping on his thin body, staring from across the street. He had an intense look in his deep-set eyes, as if he recognized the boy from somewhere.
Vajda thought he knew what that look meant, so he sauntered over and tried to bum a cigarette. The man had told him sternly that he was too young to smoke, which made Vajda practically choke laughing.
Then the man had invited him up to his apartment, which was a stroke of luck, as it was beginning to snow. Kustler had taken his coat that morning. Vajda hadn’t had a chance to steal a replacement yet.
The apartment had seemed luxurious and rich to him at the time, lined with books, crowded with antique furniture. He’d expected the man to open his pants, tell him to undress. Imre had not done so. He’d just summoned the boy into the kitchen and poured him cup after cup of sweet, milky tea while he soaked bread in egg and fried it in butter. The first food Vajda had eaten that day, perhaps longer. Delicious.
It had disoriented him. He’d told Imre angrily that if he wanted tail, get the fuck on with it, because he had places to go, things to do.
Imre had beckoned him into the parlor, lit the lamp, sat him down and proceeded to teach him the rudiments of chess. The place was so warm. The snow outside so cold. It was strange. He had stayed.
When he started to nod off, the man gave him a blanket, and let him stretch out on the divan. He’d slept like the dead, and wakened in the morning, confused and scared. Imre sat across from him, staring at him, and Vajda thought then, with a rush of bitterness,
Here’s where it starts. He’s just like all the others. He just needs a lot of lead-in time.
But Imre had only dug some money out of his pocket, more or less what Vajda might have earned in a good night. “Up with you,” he said. “You may use the bathroom. There is milk and bread in the kitchen, and then you must go. My first music student will arrive shortly.”
Vajda stared at the money in his hand. “Why…?”
“I don’t want you to suffer when you must account for your time,” Imre said, matter-of-factly. “I enjoyed your company.”
Vajda had pocketed the money, speechless. He inhaled every crumb of food Imre had put on the table and left the place with his belly sloshing with hot milk, pockets bulging with tea biscuits. A warm, worn jacket on his back, sleeves rolled up four times to find his hands.
He’d gone back another wet, cold night. Crept up to the fourth floor, listened outside the door to Imre playing his grand piano while he summoned the courage to knock. Imre had let him in again, fed him again, played Bach inventions for him. He offered the divan, although this time he insisted that the boy take a bath and change into Imre’s own threadbare pajamas. The boy had left a seething nest of fleas and lice the last time he had slept there.
Imre had regretfully explained that he enjoyed the company, but did not have the funds to finance every visit. So Vajda found his own ways to budget time, and crept to his odd haven whenever he dared.