The Hunters Read online

  In Vienna, he had an “old friend” who was sometimes in his apartment—most often, coming out of it—when Tor went to get him in the mornings. She was a buxom redhead in her late fifties. Kocian never talked about her and Tor never asked.

  The band took a break and the bandleader came over to Kocian’s table, patted Max, and had a drink of Kocian’s Jack Daniel’s. When the break was over, the bandleader returned to his piano and Kocian resumed cutting the sausages—a piece for him and a piece for Max—as he listened to the music, often tapping his fingers on the table.

  Tor knew that the old man usually stayed just over an hour and had gone into the restaurant a few minutes before one o’clock. So, glancing at his watch and seeing that it was ten minutes to two, he had just decided it was about time for the old man to leave when he saw him gesturing for the check.

  Tor took out his cellular, pressed the autodial key, and said, “He’s just called for the check.”

  “Let’s hope he goes home,” Rákosi replied.

  “Amen,” Tor said. “You get in a position to watch him on the bridge. I’ll stay here and let you know which way he’s headed.”

  “Done,” Rákosi said.

  Eric Kocian and Max came out of the Képíró five minutes later and headed down the street toward Királyi Pál, strongly suggesting he was headed for home.

  Tor watched him until he turned onto Királyi Pál, called Rákosi to report Kocian’s location, and then trotted to where he had parked the silver Mercedes.

  He had just gotten into the car when Rákosi reported that the old man was about to get on the bridge.

  He had driven no more than four minutes toward Vámház körút when his phone vibrated.

  “Trouble,” Rákosi reported.

  “On the way.”

  Tor accelerated rapidly down the Vámház körút and was almost at the bridge when he saw that something was going on just about in the center of the bridge.

  Max and the old man had a man down on the sidewalk and the man was beating at the animal’s head with a pistol.

  Rákosi’s Chrysler Grand Caravan was almost on them.

  And then a car—a black or dark blue Mercedes that had been coming toward Sándor Tor—stopped and a man jumped out and, holding a pistol with two hands, fired at the old man and the dog.

  Rákosi made a screaming U-turn, jumped out, and started firing at the Mercedes as it began to speed away.

  “I’ll get the old man,” Sándor Tor said into his cellular. “You get the bastards in the Mercedes. Ram them if you have to.”

  Rákosi didn’t reply, but Tor saw him jump back into the Chrysler.

  Tor pulled his Mercedes to the curb.

  The old man was sitting down as if he had been knocked backward. Tor saw blood staining the shoulder of his white suit.

  The man on the ground was still fighting Max, whose massive jaws were locked on his arm.

  Tor jumped out of the Mercedes, taking his pistol from its holster as he moved.

  He took aim at the man Max had down, then changed his mind. He went to the man and swung the pistol hard against the back of his head.

  The man went limp.

  Tor looked down the bridge and saw that both the attackers’ Mercedes and Rákosi’s Chrysler had disappeared.

  He punched another autodial button on his cellular, a number he wasn’t supposed to have.

  “Inspector Lázár,” he announced. “Supervisor needs assistance. Shots fired on the Szabadság híd. One citizen down. Require ambulance.”

  So far as Tor knew, there was no Inspector Lázár on the Budapest police force. But that would get an immediate response, he knew. Before he had gone to work for the Tages Zeitung, he had been Inspector Sándor Tor.

  He went to the old man. The dog was whimpering. There was a bloody wound on his skull.

  Christ, I only hit that bastard once and he was out. I saw him beating on Max’s head and Max never let loose.

  That dog’s not whimpering because he’s in pain. He’s whimpering because he knows something is wrong with the old man.

  “An ambulance is on the way, Úr Kocian,” Tor said.

  “Sándor, I need a great favor.”

  “Anything, Úr Kocian. I should not have let this happen.”

  “What you should have done is gone home when I told you.”

  “Do you want to lie down until the ambulance gets here?”

  “Of course not. The first thing I want you to do is call Dr. Kincs, Max’s veterinarian, and tell him you’re bringing Max in for emergency treatment.”

  “Of course. Just as soon as I get you to the hospital—”

  “The Telki Private Hospital. Don’t let them take me to the goddamned Szent János Kórház. They’d never let Max stay with me there.”

  “All gunshot victims are taken to Szent János Kórház,” Tor said.

  “And you can’t fix that?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Jesus Christ, what are we paying you for?” the old man demanded and then ordered: “Help me to my feet.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Úr Kocian.”

  “I didn’t ask for an opinion, goddamn you, Sándor! Do what you’re told! Get me the hell out of here before the police show up.”

  The old man winced with pain as he tried to get to his feet.

  A police car—a Volkswagen Jetta—came onto the bridge. It pulled up beside the silver Mercedes and a sergeant and the driver got out.

  “What’s happened?” the sergeant demanded.

  “That man and two others tried to rob Úr Kocian,” Tor said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Sándor Tor, director of security of the Tages Zeitung,” Sándor said as he reached down and pulled Eric Kocian erect.

  “What are you doing?” the sergeant said.

  “I’m taking Úr Kocian to the hospital.”

  “An ambulance is on the way.”

  “I can’t wait. Take that slime to the station and I’ll come there,” Tor said.

  He half carried the old man to the Mercedes, hoping the sergeant was not going to give him trouble.

  “I’ll meet you at the Szent János Kórház,” the sergeant said.

  “Fine,” Tor said.

  I’ll worry about that later.

  The old man crawled into the backseat. Max got in and jumped on the seat and started to lick his face.

  Sándor closed the door and then got behind the wheel.

  “Take Max to Dr. Kincs first,” the old man ordered.

  “You’re going to the hospital first. I’ll take care of Max.”

  “Not one goddamned word of this is to get to Otto Görner, you understand?”

  At that moment, Tor had just finished deciding that he would call Görner the moment the doctors started to work on the old man at the Telki Private Hospital.

  “I’m not sure I can do that, Úr Kocian. He’ll have to know sometime.”

  “I’ll call him as I soon as I can. I’ll tell him I fell down the stairs. Fell over Max and then down the stairs. He’ll believe that.”

  “Why can’t I tell him?”

  “Because he would immediately get in the way of me getting the bastards who did this to me.”

  “You know who they are?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good goddamned idea. They know I’ve been nosing around. They want to know how much I know about the oil-for-food outrage. Why do you think they tried to kidnap me?”

  “Kidnap you?”

  “The sonofabitch who came after me on the bridge had a hypodermic needle.”

  “A hypodermic needle?” Tor parroted.

  “It’s in my jacket pocket,” the old man said. “When we get to the hospital, take it and find out what it is.”

  “They were going to drug you?”

  “They only started shooting after Max and I grabbed the bastard on the bridge. Jesus Christ, Sándor, do you need a map? They were going to take me someplace to see what I know and where
my evidence is. When they had that, then they were going to put me in the Danube.”

  “Where is your evidence?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “Where in your apartment?”

  “If I told you, then you’d know,” the old man said. “Someplace safe.”

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  “No. Can’t you drive any faster? I’m getting a little woozy.”

  A moment later, Sándor looked in the backseat.

  The old man was unconscious. Max was standing over him, gently licking his face as if trying to wake him.

  Sándor turned and looked forward again, and thought, Please, God, don’t let him die!

  He pushed another autodial button on the cellular, praying it was the right one.

  “Telki Private Hospital.”

  “I’m bringing an injured man to the emergency room. Be waiting for me,” Tor ordered.

  Five minutes later, he pulled the Mercedes up at the emergency entrance of the Telki Private Hospital. A gurney, a doctor, and a nurse were outside the door.

  Tor helped the doctor get the old man on the gurney.

  “He’s been shot,” the doctor announced.

  “I know,” Tor said.

  The doctor gave him a strange look, then started to push the gurney into the hospital.

  Tor put his arm around the dog.

  “You can’t go, Max,” he said.

  Max strained to follow the gurney but allowed Tor to restrain him.

  Tor looked at his watch. It was two twenty-five.

  [TWO]

  Estancia Shangri-La

  Tacuarembó Province

  República Oriental del Uruguay

  2225 31 July 2005

  At almost precisely that moment in real time—by the clock, it is four hours later in Budapest than it is in Uruguay—a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, Sergeant Robert Kensington, who had been kneeling over a stocky blond man in his forties and examining his wound, stood up and announced: “You’re going to be all right, Colonel. There’s some muscle damage that’s going to take some time to heal, and you’re going to hurt like hell for a long time every time you move—for that matter, breathe. I can take the bullet out now, if you’d like.”

  “I think I’ll wait until I get to a hospital,” Colonel Alfredo Munz said.

  Until very recently, Munz had been the director of SIDE, the Argentine organization that combines the functions of the American FBI and CIA.

  There were three other men in the room, the study of the sprawling “big house” of Estancia Shangri-La. One of them—a some what squat, completely bald very black man of forty-six—was lying in a pool of his own blood near Colonel Munz, dead of 9mm bullet wounds to the mouth and forehead. He had been Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer, an American who had been a United Nations diplomat stationed in Paris and who had taken some pains to establish a second identity for himself in Uruguay as Jean-Paul Bertrand, a Lebanese national and dealer in antiquities.

  Eighteen days earlier, on July thirteenth, Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer had gone missing in Paris. A week later, his sister, who was married to J. Winslow Masterson, the chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, had been kidnapped from the parking lot of a restaurant in San Isidro, an upscale Buenos Aires suburb.

  The President of the United States, suspecting the kidnapping had something to do with international terrorism and wanting to know what was going on without that information having to be slowly filtered through State Department and intelligence channels, had sent to Buenos Aires a personal agent—an Army officer serving as executive assistant to the secretary of Homeland Security.

  Major C. G. Castillo had arrived in Buenos Aires on July twenty-second. The next morning, El Coronel Alfredo Munz of SIDE informed the American ambassador that Mr. Masterson had been found in a taxi on the riverfront, drugged and sitting beside the body of her husband, who had been shot before her eyes.

  The President had been enraged. He telephoned Ambassador Juan Manuel Silvio to personally tell him that he was placing Major Castillo in charge of both the investigation of the kidnapping and murder and of the protection of Mr. Masterson and her children until they were safely returned to the United States.

  When the Air Force Globemaster III carrying Masterson’s family and remains—and the remains of a Marine Guard sergeant, who had been murdered when driving a female Secret Service agent away from the Masterson residence—touched down at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi on July twenty-fifth, Air Force One and the President of the United States were waiting for it.

  The President sent for Major Castillo. Just before he got off the Globemaster to go aboard Air Force One, Mr. Masterson told Major Castillo that her kidnappers wanted to know where her brother was hiding and that they would kill her children if she didn’t tell them. They had murdered her husband to make the point the threat was serious. Mr. Masterson told Castillo that she had absolutely no idea where Jean-Paul Lorimer was or why the kidnappers were after him.

  When Castillo reported to the President aboard Air Force One, the President showed him the document he and Secretary of State Natalie Cohen had just made law:

  * * *

  TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  COPY 2 OF 3 (SECRETARY COHEN)

  JULY 25, 2005.

  PRESIDENTIAL FINDING.

  IT HAS BEEN FOUND THAT THE ASSASSINATION OF J. WINSLOW MASTERSON, CHIEF OF MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA; THE ABDUCTION OF Mr. MASTERSON’S WIFE, Mr. ELIZABETH LORIMER MASTERSON; THE ASSASSINATION OF SERGEANT ROGER MARKHAM, USMC; AND THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF SECRET SERVICE SPECIAL AGENT ELIZABETH T. SCHNEIDER INDICATES BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF A CONTINUING PLOT OR PLOTS BY TERRORISTS, OR TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, TO CAUSE SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES, ITS DIPLOMATIC OFFICERS, AND ITS CITIZENS, AND THAT THIS SITUATION CANNOT BE TOLERATED.

  IT IS FURTHER FOUND THAT THE EFFORTS AND ACTIONS TAKEN AND TO BE TAKEN BY THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO DETECT AND APPREHEND THOSE INDIVIDUALS WHO COMMITTED THE TERRORIST ACTS PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED, AND TO PREVENT SIMILAR SUCH ACTS IN THE FUTURE, ARE BEING AND WILL BE HAMPERED AND RENDERED LESS EFFECTIVE BY STRICT ADHERENCE TO APPLICABLE LAWS AND REGULATIONS.

  IT IS THEREFORE FOUND THAT CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ACTION UNDER THE SOLE SUPERVISION OF THE PRESIDENT IS NECESSARY.

  IT IS DIRECTED AND ORDERED THAT THERE IMMEDIATELY BE ESTABLISHED A CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ORGANIZATION WITH THE MISSION OF DETERMINING THE IDENTITY OF THE TERRORISTS INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATIONS, ABDUCTION, AND ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED AND TO RENDER THEM HARMLESS. AND TO PERFORM SUCH OTHER COVERT AND CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES AS THE PRESIDENT MAY ELECT TO ASSIGN.

  FOR PURPOSES OF CONCEALMENT, THE AFOREMENTIONED CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ORGANIZATION WILL BE KNOWN AS THE OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS, WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. FUNDING WILL INITIALLY BE FROM DISCRETIONAL FUNDS OF THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT. THE MANNING OF THE ORGANIZATION WILL BE DECIDED BY THE PRESIDENT, ACTING ON THE ADVICE OF THE CHIEF, OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS.

  MAJOR CARLOS G. CASTILLO, SPECIAL FORCES, U.S. ARMY, IS HEREWITH APPOINTED CHIEF, OFFICE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS, WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

  SIGNED:

  PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  WITNESS:

  Natalie G. Cohen

  SECRETARY OF STATE

  TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL

  * * *

  No one anywhere had any idea why anyone was so determined to find Jean-Paul Lorimer and was perfectly willing to commit murder to do so. But it was obvious to Major Castillo that the best—indeed, the only—course of action was to find Jean-Paul Lorimer and the place to do that was in Paris.

  A CIA agent in Paris seemed to have some answers. He told Castillo he suspected that Lorimer was involved in the Iraqi oil-for-food sc
andal, which had just come to light. The CIA agent said he thought Lorimer had been the man who distributed the money involved. He also said he thought he knew where Jean-Paul Lorimer was: cut in small pieces in the river Seine.

  Castillo had gone next to Otto Görner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., in Fulda, Germany. He had a close relationship with both the holding company—which owned, among a good deal else, all the Tages Zeitung newspapers—and with Görner himself.

  Görner told him that he agreed with the CIA agent, that Lorimer had some connection with the oil-for-food scandal, which he had also been looking into. He also pointed him to Budapest, where the editor in chief of the Budapester Tages Zeitung, Eric Kocian, had a list of names of people he strongly suspected were involved.

  Kocian had never heard of Lorimer, but said there obviously had to be a “bag man,” and it could easily be a UN diplomat who could travel around Europe and the Near East without drawing attention to himself. If Lorimer was that man, those deeply involved in the scandal would want him dead and would be willing to kill to see him eliminated.

  Kocian also said his information suggested that much of the oil-for-food money was going to South America. On condition that Castillo would not reveal either his name or the names on his list to any U.S. government agency, Kocian gave him a list of names of people who he thought—or knew—were involved and who were in South America, mainly in Argentina and Uruguay.

  Castillo had gone back to South America, where he found that Lorimer’s name had not come up to any of the U.S. intelligence agencies operating there or to SIDE. But he had also learned that Uruguay was known as the “money-laundering capital of the Southern Cone.” So he went there.

  The FBI agents in Montevideo, euphemistically called “legal attachés” of the embassy, had never heard of Lorimer either, but one of them, Special Agent David W. Yung, Jr., did say that he recognized a squat, bald, very black man in one of Castillo’s photos as being the Lebanese antiquities dealer Jean-Paul Bertrand, who owned an estancia called Shangri-La and was known to be there.