My God, Gorner thought, he's lecturing me like a schoolboy. But, it would seem that my little Karlchen really is knowledgeable. I'm a journalist, I'm supposed to know these things. And I didn't. More than that, he sounds like, acts like, an intelligence officer who knows his profession.
"…took you into the basement," Castillo went on, "stood you on a stool under the garrote gallows, put the rope around your neck, and then kicked the stool away."
"You mean to say they hung their…prisoners?" Gorner asked.
"No. Hanging is when they drop the…executee…through a trap in a gallows. The rope around the neck usually has a special knot designed to break the executee's neck with the force of the fall."
He mimed a knot forcing his head to one side.
"That usually causes instant death as the spinal cord is cut," Castillo went on. "Garrote executees don't fall far enough to break their neck. The rope is just a loop around their neck, so they die of strangulation. It takes sometime."
"And you find this fascinating, Karlchen?" Gorner asked, more than a little horrified.
"They also had the habit, when taking out people they didn't like, and wanted it known that Stasi or the AVO/AVH had done it, to garrote them. Sort of a trademark."
"Fascinating!" Gorner said, sarcastically.
"What's fascinating is that one of the men with me at Estancia Shangri-La, who had been around the block a lot of times, was garroted."
"Estancia Shangri-La?" Kocian asked. "How picturesque!"
"Lorimer's farm in Uruguay," Castillo explained. "They took out my guy by garroting him and they used…"
He stopped in midsentence as the door opened.
A small, slight man in his middle fifties, wearing a white hospital tunic, came into the room followed by a younger man-also a doctor, Castillo decided-and a nurse.
"You're not supposed to be smoking," the first doctor announced. "And you promised to get that dog out of here."
"Four people have tried to take Max out of here," Kocian replied. "He took small nips out of each of them. You're welcome to try. And I have been smoking longer than you're old and I am not about to stop now. Say hello to my boss."
The doctor put out his hand to Gorner.
"No. The young one," Kocian said, switching to German. "Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. The fat one's another of his flunkies."
"I never know when to believe him," the doctor confessed, putting out his hand to first Gorner and then Castillo. "I'm Dr. Czerny. I'm the chief of staff."
"If you're treating him, Doctor, you have my sympathy," Castillo said, in Hungarian.
"You're Hungarian?" Dr. Czerny asked, surprised.
"I had a Hungarian aunt."
"He's mostly German and Hungarian, with a little Mexican thrown in," Kocian said. "Tell us about…what was the name of that drug in Argentina, Karlchen?"
"Bupivacaine," Castillo furnished.
"Tell us about bupivacaine, please, Doctor," Kocian said.
The doctor shook his head.
"What do you want to know about bupivacaine? And why?"
"I'm an old man. Indulge me. What would have happened if the housepainter's hypodermic had been loaded with bupivacaine and he had succeeded in sticking it into my rump?"
Dr. Czerny smiled.
"You're amused?" Kocian demanded, indignantly.
Dr. Czerny nodded, then explained: "Your rump would have gone numb for, oh, two hours or so. Bupivacaine is a drug commonly used by dentists to numb the gums."
"You're sure, Doctor?" Castillo asked.
Czerny nodded.
"If you're ever going to be a decent journalist, Karlchen, you're going to have to start checking your facts," Kocian said, triumphantly. "And, of course, stop plagiarizing."
"The doctor in the German hospital in Buenos Aires," Castillo said as much to himself as to them, "told me it was bupivacaine."
"That's something else you should keep in mind, Karlchen. Never trust what a doctor tells you. They only tell you what they think you should know. Isn't that right, Czerny?"
"My father used to say you were the most difficult person he had ever known," Dr. Czerny said, smiling.
"How long are you going to have to put up with him, Doctor?" Castillo asked.
"Well, once he regains his sanity, there's no reason he couldn't leave here in a day or two."
"His general sanity? Or is there something specific?" Gorner asked.
"When I walked in here this morning, I thought he was having a heart attack," the doctor said. "But what it was, he was on the telephone and Air France had just told him they would not carry that animal to Buenos Aires."
"Aerolineas Argentina will be happy to accommodate Max," Kocian said. "But I'll have to take the damned train to Madrid. They don't fly into Budapest. And Max doesn't like trains."
"I have no idea why he wants to go to Argentina," Dr. Czerny said. The implication was that it was one of the reasons he doubted Kocian's sanity. "And he won't tell me."
"That's because it's none of your damned business," Kocian explained.
"What is my business, Eric, personal and professional, is that you're getting pretty long in the tooth and you have just been shot-twice-and I'm not going to stand idly by while you go halfway around the world, alone and in bandages. And with that damned dog."
"Your father, may his soul rest in peace, Fredric, could call me by my Christian name. I don't recall giving you that privilege," Kocian said. "And don't call Max 'that damned dog.'"
"I beg your pardon," Dr. Czerny said.
"Doctor, for the sake of argument, supposing he could get someone to go with him to Argentina," Castillo asked, carefully, "and stay with him while he's there, would that be all right? I mean, could he stand the strain?"
"In a couple of days, why not?" Dr. Czerny said.
It was clear that Dr. Czerny had concluded that Castillo had come up with a way to calm Kocian down and that Otto Gorner had concluded that Castillo had lost his mind.
"Well, let's have a look at you, Ur Kocian," Dr. Czerny said. "Will you excuse us a moment, please?"
He started to draw a curtain around the bed. Max stood up, showed his teeth, and growled softly but deeply.
"Come on, Max," Castillo said. "Let's go terrorize people in the corridor."
Max looked doubtful for a moment, then followed Castillo out of the room.
As soon as he had closed the door to room 24, Otto Gorner grabbed Castillo's arm.
"You're not actually thinking about taking him to Argentina, are you, Karl?"
"For one thing, do you think we'd be able to stop him from going to Argentina?" Castillo replied, and then went on without giving Gorner a chance to reply: "The people who tried to kill him-the needle full of phenothiazine makes me think they were going to question him, which means torture him, to see what he knew before killing him-are almost certainly going to have another try at him. I can protect him a lot better in Argentina than I can here. And if I take him on the Gulfstream, there will be no record of him having bought a ticket to go anywhere. That'll take them off his trail for at least a few days."
Gorner considered that for thirty seconds, then asked: "When will your airplane be here?"
Castillo thought out loud: "It was probably ten, Washington time, by the time Dick had the cashier's check from the Riggs Bank. Torine said twelve hours from then. That would make it ten tonight, and how far ahead of Washington is Budapest? Five hours this time of year?"
"Six," Gorner furnished.
"That'll put them into Ferihegy at four tomorrow morning. Figure an hour-maybe a little more-to clear customs and get to the Gellert. Five o'clock. I think we'd better spend a day here, both to give Billy a chance to get his stuff together and for Torine and Fernando to get some rest."
Gorner nodded.
"You can protect him in Argentina?" he asked.
Castillo nodded. "But I'm a little worried about here. That one cop doesn't look like much protection. Can you do something about that?"