torture chamber. Designated for executions, interrogations. No need for luxury here, just privacy, soundproof walls, and a drain in the floor for easy cleanup.
His past had caught up with him altogether. Its fanged jaws clamped down, crunching his bones.
He braced himself against the pain and nausea, and forced himself to look up at the blazing fluorescent lights. Eight men stared down at him. Seven held guns. All were pointed at him.
It had been eleven years since he had seen Daddy Novak. He’d been hideous then. He was a death’s head now: bulging eyes, jaundiced skin, long teeth. An old, pitted skull dipped in yellow wax.
Novak dug an ungentle toe in Val’s kidney. He flinched. Someone had already found the place and given it a thorough pounding.
“Wake up, fool,” Novak said. “We have business to conduct.”
Val ran a quick damage assessment as he rose carefully to his feet. A couple of teeth loose. Ribs cracked but probably not broken. A knot on his temple, sticky with blood. Hot red pain pulsing in his head with every heartbeat. Bruises, a shallow slash across his forearm, clotted and black, oozing fresh blood through the white sleeve.
Not so bad. He’d taken much worse on other occasions. They hadn’t meant to hurt him, just subdue him.
He looked around. He recognized András from the old days. That hulking, beady-eyed sadist had been Novak’s main man for years. Three more he remembered from the old guard, the rest were fresh blood. The blue-eyed blond man he had stabbed was not there. Dead, perhaps, or close to it. Several were marked. By him, he surmised, glancing around at the crushed noses, the split lips, the cold, murderous eyes.
New enemies. God. As if he needed more of them.
His eyes flicked back to Novak. He coughed to clear his throat and tasted blood. “This drama was not necessary,” he said. “You could have e-mailed or called.”
Novak smiled. “You would have ignored me, as you have done for eleven years. Now that you have risen so high in the world, you have forgotten your old friends, no? And besides, important business is best conducted in person.”
Dread settled deep inside him, heavy and greasy and cold. “We have no business,” he said. “I work for another organization.”
Novak steepled his skeletal fingers, smiling thinly. “Yes, of course. PSS bought you from me for a tidy sum, but I always suspected that I accepted too low a price for you. But this is special. I have a business proposition that you might find interesting.”
“I’m out of this business,” he repeated.
“Yes, yes. We know the success story. Vajda, prostitute, drug dealer, and gunrunner, who repented his wicked ways and now conducts a glamorous double life—covert operative by night, pampered entrepreneur and gigolo playboy by day. I follow your cover career on the Internet, you see. Very inspiring. Makes the boys weep with envy, particularly all the women you fuck. Bad for discipline, Vajda.”
“I do not want to—”
“What you want does not interest me.” Novak’s voice cut through his. “You’ve forgotten your manners. Must I re-educate you?”
Val shut his eyes against the light, the pain, and Novak’s probing gaze. The man’s hot, foul breath was inches from Val’s face, like gas escaping from a decomposing corpse.
Val hardened his belly to iron to control his gorge. He’d endured worse. In fact, he would endure worse tonight. Far worse, before this was all over. No way out. He tried to wrap his mind around it.
He swallowed. “What do you want?”
Novak seized Val’s shoulder, spun him around, and shoved him, stumbling, against a long, dented metal table. A file lay open upon it, a sheaf of photographs fanned out across it. “Her,” he said.
Val stared at the photos. They were of Tamara Steele. The one on top showed her in a bikini, on the arm of a hairy middle-aged man on the deck of a yacht. She was laughing, holding a champagne flute. Blond hair swirled out in the wind like a pale flag.
The next was a closeup. She wore a silvery evening gown. Her hair was red, coiled close against her head. She was looking over her shapely shoulder, listening to a man whisper in her ear. He recognized the blond, tight-lipped, pale-eyed young man. Novak’s son, Kurt. Her crimson lips curved in a secret smile. Jeweled earrings dangled low. Her huge eyes looked past the man, almost directly into the camera.
In another, she was getting into a black Jaguar, beaded with rain. The place looked like Paris. Dark hair, long against her white raincoat.
The next was unlike the others. It was black and white, shot by a long-range camera. She was oddly unglamorous, wearing a simple black dress, rendered elegant only by the intrinsic grace of her body. Her hair was drawn back in a severe roll. Her face was free of makeup. Pale, stark, and sad. People milled around her, but she did not notice them.
She was leaning over to drop a bouquet of small wild daisies and lavender in front of a bronze plaque on a big marble slab. He turned it over. The photo was date stamped. Five years ago.
He reached out, rifled through the rest. No pictures of her with Rachel. All of them must be from the Kurt era, four years ago or longer.
Perhaps Novak didn’t know about the child yet. He refused to let himself hope for that much grace. “Who is she?” he asked.
Novak backhanded him with his fist on the temple. The hard blow knocked Val against the table. Bloody spittle flew from his mouth, and spattered the silver evening dress photo. His head spun, his vision blurred. The old man was much stronger than he looked.
“Don’t even try,” the boss hissed. “I know that you are the one investigating her. That you know where she is.”
He pushed the pain aside, forced himself to concentrate. Three steps back. “Why do you care?” he asked.
“She was Kurt’s last mistress. The whore who delivered my only son up to his death.”
“Ah.” He kept his voice neutral. “So you want her dead then?”
“Nothing so quick. I want her chained to a table. I want to teach her what happens to a lying bitch who betrays my son.”
He let out a long breath. “And what do I have to do with this?”
Novak smiled. “You will bring her to me, Vajda. I know that you are looking for her, for PSS and Georg Luksch. But you will not bring her to Georg. You will bring her to me. Simple.”
The prospect of pain was getting more and more imminent. Val’s knees felt watery at the prospect. Chilly detachment only went so far when it came to torture. He closed his eyes. “I cannot—”
“Oh, but you can.” Novak’s voice oozed insinuation. “With your looks, your charm, your pretty body. Your respectable identity as a rich Roman business consultant. Your reputation as a gigolo and bon vivant. Any contract killer could blow her head off from a distance, but that does not satisfy me. I want her seduced. I want you to gain her trust. I want her to fall in love with you. I want her betrayed, turned inside out, as she did to Kurt. One pretty, lying whore to catch another.”
Val
