sliding by like a big, quiet ghost.
He knew exactly where to go, having sent flowers earlier that afternoon. The stringy youth who he’d paid to deliver them had ascertained the room number for him. Ah, yes, there it was, a big bouquet of calla lilies and birds-of-paradise. The nurses had placed it with the other flowers clustered around the white and blue ceramic statue of the Madonna who presided at the end of the corridor, her electric crown glowing eerily in the darkness.
A grim-faced old man in pajamas and a green bathrobe sat outside his room door with an IV in his arm, the rack clutched in his fist. No doubt trying to evade the groaning or flatulence of his roomates. He blinked at András with clouded eyes. A witness. Pity. András took note of the room number. Unfortunate for the old man, but he was well into his eighties and clearly not enjoying his life overmuch. András would probably be doing him a favor by holding his nose shut for a few minutes after he finished with Hegel.
Hegel was not alone in his room either, András was irritated to note. He hadn’t wanted to conduct a full scale massacre tonight. At least the other man was sleeping. A stringy, grayish creature with a chicken neck and a mouth that gaped wide and toothless.
Hegel’s eyes were closed. His head was bandaged and one arm was in a cast. András grasped the nurse call button, which dangled on the end of a plastic cord, and looped it up high over the IV rack next to the bed. Well out of the man’s reach. He grabbed a chair and sat down.
Hegel’s eyes popped open at the scrape of the chair, widening with alarm when he saw who sat before him. András was ready with the rubber ball, which he shoved into Hegel’s mouth. He wrapped a gag of rubber around the man’s mouth to hold it in, knotting it behind his head. He fastened Hegel’s good hand to the metal bedstead with a cable tie, pulling it tight enough to cut off the circulation.
Then he laid a heavy hand over the other man’s throat, putting a relentless pressure on his larynx. “We need to talk,” he said. “My original plan was to cut or burn you for a few minutes before we started to demonstrate my commitment, but you must be loaded with pain medications right now. My skills would be wasted on you. But I could puncture your eyeball, for instance, with this.” He held up a long, gleaming needle. “Or saw off one of your ears with this.” He held up a serrated blade, one of the offerings of his multiblade pocketknife.
Hegel’s eyes protruded. He made a gurgling sound in his throat.
“Or we could skip that part of the conversation and speak of Tamara Steele and Val Janos,” András suggested.
Hegel nodded frantically.
“I will take off the gag,” András told him. “If you speak above a whisper, I will put it back in, saw off one ear, and deflate one eye. Do we understand each other?”
Another frantic nod. András reached back, loosened the rubber gag, and plucked out the ball, wiping the spit off on Hegel’s sheets.
Hegel coughed, staring wide-eyed at the other man. His jowled face glistened with pain and fear sweat.
András reached into his briefcase and took out the laptop which he had taken from Hegel’s hotel room after speaking with Ferenc. He opened it, perched it on the man’s chest, and unfastened the tourniquet that held his arm to the bed. “The password, please.”
András observed carefully as the man’s stubby, trembling finger punched a sequence of letters, numbers and symbols into the computer. He committed the password to memory.
“And now, explain to me how you have been monitoring Janos and Steele,” he said.
Hegel cleared his throat. “Janos has an RF trace implanted in his body.” His voice was thick and hoarse. “He doesn’t know.”
András chuckled. “How despicable of you, Hegel. That’s cheating. Tell me about the frequency, and how the tracking software works.”
Hegel swallowed, licked his lips. “But I can’t—”
Pop, the ball was wedged into his mouth again, and András’s big hand ground the man’s teeth into his lips on top of it. “I do not want to hear those words again,” he said. “First your eyes, and then your ears. Is that turd Luksch worth that kind of loyalty?”
Hegel squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
András lifted his hand, and let the other man push the ball out with his tongue, coughing desperately. András gestured toward the laptop. “Tell me everything,” he said softly.
It took twenty minutes to pry the technical information out of the man: the frequency of the trace, the use of the software, how to access archived data, how to monitor in real time. Relatively simple for András, who had used similar technology many times before.
He stared at the screen, committing to memory the exact spot where the man was lurking this very night. Some obscure point in the mountains, several kilometers from the main coastal highway. Thinking he was safe and hidden. It gave András a pleasurable feeling of power.
Good. It was all good. This was becoming so easy, it might not even be a worthy challenge, he reflected with faint amusement. But he would gladly exchange challenge for speed. It reflected well upon him in any case. And his work here was done.
He took the laptop, stowed it, and stood. He looked down at Hegel, trying to think if there was any reason on earth, any reason at all, not to kill him. The man saw death in his eyes and held up his hand to ward it off. András had seen that classic gesture many times.
“There’s more,” he said hastily.
András fondled the knife in one pocket. “More? What more?”
“Don’t kill me. Help me get away from here, from Georg, and I’ll tell you everything I—”
“Don’t try to bargain with me, fool,” András said. “You will tell me everything you know now, or I will cut off your dick and choke you to death with it. What more do you have?”
Hegel swallowed repeatedly. “The child,” he said hoarsely.
András frowned down at him. “What child?”
“She has a child. Steele. She adopted a girl. Three years old.”
András began to grin. Ah, yes. This would make the old man very happy. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know exactly. She appeared on the airport security cameras in Sea-Tac International three days ago. I had three men following Janos in an attempt to locate Steele and the child. He killed the men, took Steele and the girl, and from that point, all I know is that he climbed on a plane in Portland with Steele alone. Somewhere between Sea-Tac and Portland International Airport, they left the child with someone. I do have some archived footage from the night between those events, and I know he spent them at a luxury resort between Tacoma and Seattle,” Hegel babbled on. “A place called the Huxley. I assume they left the kid with someone during that interval, but I didn’t investigate any further because Luksch just wanted Steele. Nothing else.”
András sat down on the chair, chewing the inside of his lip.
“She has, ah, dark curly hair,” Hegel added, a note of desperation in his voice, the sound of a man with no bargaining chips left. “She’s small, very thin for her age. And she’s extremely—”
