secrets are beautiful, don’t you agree? He had taken Steele’s words in Shibumi as meaningless banter, but now, they rang in his head, as a fundamental truth. Imre had always been his dangerous secret. A treasure that he had to hide just so it could survive.
Most people had to hide their ugliness, their shame. With him, the situation was inverted. He had to keep the beautiful things secret.
Or else risk finding them dead on the bathroom floor.
Ironic. A man like him compelled by an irrational longing to protect Steele, instead of exploiting her. A dangerous secret, indeed. Like her jewel-studded pendant earring bombs. Her taser necklace. It was an urge he would have to keep secret even from her.
He sensed very strongly that she would not welcome it.
The key rattled in the heavy metal door, jolting Imre out of his deep contemplation. He had been mentally walking through the rooms of the Uffizi Gallery, looking at all the pictures he could call to mind. Which was to say, all of them, though his favorites were the clearest.
The mental construct disintegrated. Waves of faintness and dread washed over him.
Another visit. It pleased Gabor Novak to check upon Imre’s progress, or degeneration, to put it more clearly. The man liked to prod and pry for weaknessess, to inflict all the psychological torment that he was able. He was fiendishly talented at it.
Imre’s defenses were limited to silence, but it was a poor defense. Already, he was cringing as if he was to be beaten or burned.
The metal door swung wide, clanging with an ear-bruising bang against the concrete blocks. Two large men walked in, one training an automatic pistol at Imre, the other carrying a folding chair.
Novak shuffled into the room and seated himself. Beaming.
Imre focused somewhere beyond the man’s shoulder, clasping and unclasping his hands and fighting the urge to sit upon them to hide his frightened fingers.
He’d told himself not to be afraid. He was dying anyway, no? Soon he would lose everything he had to lose. If some parts, like fingers, for instance, died sooner, what of it? The pain would soon be behind him.
His efforts were futile. He could not talk himself out of the fear.
Imre was grateful, at least, that he was not wearing his spectacles. Only one lens was still intact. The other had been shattered in the second beating. Having one corrected eye and the other blurred gave him a blinding headache. Since the last thing he needed was more pain from any quarter, he had given up on the glasses altogether, and hidden them under his mattress. Thus, he could not see the hideous details of Novak’s face, the feverish glow of those jaundiced, bulbous eyes, only a malevolent blur.
Although he smelled the stench of the man’s breath all too well.
“I have been thinking about you a great deal, Imre.” Novak had the air of a man conferring an honor. “I believe you and I have something in common.” The man’s voice was pleasant, chatty.
God forbid, Imre thought, dropping his gaze to his twitching fingers. He willed them to lie still, to not draw attention to themselves.
“I can see by your color, your thinness, that you are being consumed by some wasting disease,” Novak said. “Cancer?”
Surprise betrayed Imre into looking up and meeting Novak’s eyes.
He dropped his gaze just as quickly, but Novak chuckled, pleased.
“I thought so. Liver, stomach, brain? Not long for you now, is it? I can feel it on you, Imre. How ironic for Vajda, is it not? Working so valiantly to save the life of a dying man. How long did they give you?”
Imre tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He began to cough, and once he started, he could not stop.
“Not long, no?” Novak laughed again. “Three months? They like to say three months. It’s their standard phrase. That’s what they told me seven months ago, but I live on, see? Rotting from within, true, but here I am. The pleasure I will take in this woman’s death will grant me another month, at least. These punishments charge me like a battery. Would you like to participate? It might have the same effect upon you.”
Imre looked up at him once again. “No,” he said hoarsely.
Novak blinked and smiled, pleased to have dragged another response out of him. “Then you can be a spectator when the time comes. It won’t be long. Vajda works fast. He has always been efficient.”
Imre grasped the edge of the bed. Horror darkened his vision. Faintness threatened. He teetered, on the brink of that long, dark fall.
“Poor man,” Novak crooned. “I feel for you, being old and infirm myself. The pain is terrible, no?” He dug in his pocket and took out a vial of capsules. He rattled them, then opened the bottle and shook one of them out into his hand. “Powerful slow-release opiates. Shall I give you one? I won’t leave you the whole bottle, because you would gobble them all at once, naughty fellow. But I will give you this pill, if you would just explain one thing that continues to puzzle me.”
He waited for Imre to reach for the pill, to beg, to ask what the one thing that puzzled him was. But Imre could not have spoken if he wanted to. He was frozen. Fear had turned him into a pillar of salt.
Novak’s eyes squinted to bright, wrinkled slits. “I wish to know how your catamite remained so devoted to you. When I was young, a man made me his pet in exchange for food and shelter, just as you did for Vajda. Do you know what I did to him when I was older?”
Please. No. Do not tell me. Imre closed his eyes, summoned up a deafening mental rendition of Bach’s first Brandenburg Concerto to drown the words out.
Novak’s voice cut through the music like a hot knife through butter. “I removed his skin strip by strip,” he said, almost tenderly. “Perhaps I shall do that to the woman. Let us make a tally, Imre. From now on, for every question that you disdain to answer, I tear off a shred of her skin. While you watch.”
He laid the pill on the blanket that covered Imre’s cot and stood.
“Take it,” he said magnanimously. “I can be reasonable, if you are reasonable with me. I am alone, as you are. We could have such interesting conversations if you would lower yourself to speak to me. We are just two old men, after all, facing the same ultimate fate. I am so curious about you. Vajda got his culture and sophistication from you, no? In fact, thanks to you, he became too good to work for the likes of me.” He laughed and patted Imre’s shoulder.
Imre flinched.
“I do hope that Vajda succeeds in bringing the woman to me,” Novak mused. “I will conduct the punishment upon you, if I must, but to be quite truthful…torturing a wretched old man who is already wracked with pain is much less satisfying. Pain is so familiar to you already, you see. The experience falls a bit flat. But do not fear. I am sure my András could wring a lively response, even out of a dying wreck like you. He is so talented. You will see, you will see.”
Imre squeezed his eyes shut. Tears slipped down against his will.
One of Novak’s men opened the door, the other folded up the chair. They waited until the boss shuffled out.
