The belt sliced down again; the boy cried out.
“That will teach you to take my phone,” his father said.
From the moment Mian Krucevic had learned of Mirjana's intrigue — of the brazen theft of his drugs in broad daylight — he had been convinced that Jozsef was the source of 30 Aprils leak. It was entirely like his bitch of a wife to milk the boy for information. Jozsef was young, he was not yet tough, he could be manipulated by his emotions. That was one reason Krucevic had taken him from his mother. He would not have Jozsef spoiled by a Serbian whore.
But he had beaten the boy almost senseless, and the story had never changed.
Jozsef was not the source of Mirjana's information. And what a lot of information she possessed.
Mirjana had known how to find VaccuGen. That could be explained. It was, after all, a private corporation that conducted legitimate business. VaccuGen vaccines ensured that livestock the world over — particularly in developing nations — would not fall prey to a host of diseases. But how had the zaiba known Greta Oppenheimer's name? How had she known exactly which vaccine to steal?
There was only one answer. Someone within 30 April had betrayed him. And Krucevic had a very good idea who that person was.
He glanced at his watch. Almost dinnertime. Like Christ at the Passover supper, he would break bread with the man who had sold him for thirty pieces of silver.
And afterward, he would crucify him.
The airport taxi carried Tom Shephard and Caroline Carmichael through boulevards of screaming sirens, around squares of massed police. They passed checkpoints and blockades and forced their way across bridges thronged with people. The false stone facades of the nineteenth-century buildings flickered against a backdrop of flame.
Hungary's Houses of Parliament were burning.
Caroline stood at her hotel room window and watched. The glorious old buildings were ablaze with light, like something from an Impressionist painting, the crimson and gold flames mirrored in the black of the Danube.
“The government fell an hour ago,” Shephard said from her doorway.
The flames rippled, reflected, in the black water.
“And the Volksturm land in the morning,” she replied.
Tonio shivered beside Michael in the passenger seat, the latest of Krucevic's videos resting on the console between them. He had been whistling a tune something by U2, a B-side recording, he knew them all but not even rock and roll could comfort him tonight.
“Jesus .. . who'd have thought they'd riot over money?”
“Krucevic,” Michael answered. “That was the point of the plan, Tonio. Mian needed an excuse to get the Volksturm into Hungary, and you certainly gave it to him.”
“I just do what I'm told.” Tonio was defensive. “I just work the keys.”
They were close to the city now, and the sky above Budapest glowed like a blast furnace. Tonio shivered.
“From the look of that, the place'll be crawling with cops. Cazzofottuto” He crossed himself, the scars on his wrist livid in the light from the dashboard.
The Italian prison system had not been kind to Tonio.
He jabbed at the car stereo buttons; a czardas filled the car, some guttural words.
“They've got shit here for music, you know that? Like their language. And their economy. Pure shit.”
Michael reached over and snapped off the radio.
“Why don't you sing? A little Paul Simon always works in the darkness.”
“I could use a drink,” Tonio said.
“It's not much farther.”
“There's bound to be roadblocks. Detours. Police barricades. Maybe we should just go back. Tell him we couldn't get close”
“We'll get close.”
Tonio glanced at him.
“You know this place, huh? You've been here before?”
Michael looked over his left shoulder, signaled, and moved into the fast lane.
Tonio hadn't really expected him to answer. Michael said less than any man he'd ever known any man without a bullet in his brain.
“Did you know that Mian is following us?” he asked Tonio conversationally.
“Following us?” Panic, pure and deadly, flooded through his body.
“Or at least Vaclav is. He's driving. I picked him up about fifteen minutes out of the bunker. Otto's in the passenger seat. He looks happy.”
Nobody liked it when Otto looked happy.
“Why would they be following us?”
“I don't know. Maybe it's a test.”
Tonio swallowed hard on the fear that filled his throat.
“What kind of test?”
“For Mian, there's only one kind.”
Michael was right. A year ago, Tonio had watched the boss put a gun to the heads of two men he'd known and liked.
“What the fuck have you done, Michael?”
“Me? All I did was shoot a little girl when Mian asked. What have you done, Tonio, with your magic fingers? Have you looked somewhere in Mian's computer that you shouldn't?”
“No! I swear it on the Virgin!”
Michael raised an eyebrow.
“Then I guess we've got nothing to worry about. Sing. With any luck, we'll lose them.”
He exited the Ml abruptly, well to the west of Buda, snaking the car through the traffic of the side streets and heading downhill toward the bridges over the Danube. They were in the eleventh district now, Gellerthegy, the neighborhood behind the castle's heights, and the broad expanse of Villanyi Ut was ominously deserted. Then, in the headlights, the plaza that was Moricz Zsigmond Korter and the police checkpoint.
“Merda,” Tonio muttered. He huddled lower in his seat, a furtive rodent beneath a mop of blond curls. “Turn around.”
“Absolutely not. We're going ahead.”
“Why?”
“Because Mian never will,” Michael answered implacably.
He slowed the Audi to a stop and rolled down the window. An officer approached.
Incomprehensible language, and then Michael nodding.
“Get the registration,” he told Tonio.
“What?”
“It's in the glove compartment.”
There was a gun in the glove compartment, too at the bottom, where a casual observer would never suspect, and for an instant, Tonio saw Michael's plan. But the Hungarian cop was staring at him, his cap visor very correct across the brow, and under the weight of those flat dark eyes Tonio could not move, could not seize the gun and shoot the man in the forehead. He had watched while Otto had killed the finance minister, Lajta, he had watched a score of deaths in the past few months, but he could not bring himself to murder now.
Besides, there were other police waiting beyond the headlights, their uniform pants picked out in a halogen glare.
Michael reached across him and took a packet of papers from the glove compartment. Another few words in halting Hungarian.
The cop nodded, nipped through the documents, and then returned them. He barked a word.
Michael produced his passport.
“Tonio?”
“What? Santa Maria what?”
“The officer would like your passport.”
His brown eyes widened, and he drew a quick breath. Did he have it? Or had he left it in the bunker? Madonna, but Krucevic would kill Michael. What if their names were already on a list somewhere what if these cops followed them, saw the videotape tossed out a window, gave the registration to the Americans The cop held out his hand. Tonio reached inside his jacket. His fingers brushed the textured butt of his gun. A few seconds, a flare of light, and Michael could wheel the car up Villanyi Ut before the others thought to follow.. ..