Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(13)

“What the f*ck are you doing in Budapest, Janos?”

The rasping voice raised the hairs on Val’s neck. Fuck. Hegel, again. He had been found. “How did you find me here?” Val asked.

“Don’t start with me, *. You had a job to do. You ran away from it,” Hegel said curtly. “The car is waiting outside the door of the building. Come immediately. I need to speak to you. Right now.”

“I have other plans for the evening—”

“Shut up and move your ass.” Hegel hung up.

Val replaced the phone in its cradle. Hegel could have called the dedicated line on Val’s satellite phone more easily. The fact that he had reached Val through Imre’s phone was a message. Not a friendly one.

Imre was a dangerous weakness. Val had been aware of that since he was a child. He’d done everything he could to keep the man’s existence secret from those who might have a desire to manipulate him.

Everything had evidently not been enough.

“So,” Imre said slowly, “you are still with PSS, then?”

“Off and on,” Val hedged. “I haven’t done anything for them for almost a year. There were disagreements about my last assignment. I thought they were done with me. Then I was called for one more job. I interrupted it to come here when I heard about what happened to you. They aren’t pleased.”

“It would seem not.” Imre’s voice was uncharacteristically hard. “So you are being called to heel, Vajda? Like a good hound?”

Val swallowed the anger, with effort. He forced himself to take the three steps back. There was no point in getting his fur ruffled over the flat truth. “Don’t call me Vajda,” he said stiffly.

Imre’s eyebrow twitched upward. “It is hard for a tired old man to change the habits of a lifetime,” he complained.

What horseshit. Even at eighty, Imre’s mind was as flexible as a circus contortionist. “Try to remember,” he said. “Vajda is dead. I am Valery.”

“Are you indeed?” the old man murmured. “And who is this Valery? Do you even know, boy?”

His anger flashed up again, sharper and incandescent. He clamped down on it grimly. “As well as anyone,” he snapped.

“I think not,” Imre went on, relentless. “I thought that PSS would be better than Novak, but they are not. Not for you. Novak may have stolen your life and your future, but PSS took away your whole self.”

Very abruptly, Val was all too aware of why he had come back to Budapest so seldom in recent years. Imre’s tendency to speak the raw, unpalatable truth had always been annoying.

“I’ll go into hiding,” he said on impulse. “Fuck them all. It’s the only way to be rid of them.”

Imre blinked and looked politely doubtful. “You told me yourself how vast PSS’s resources are. It would be so easy?”

“Easy, no. Possible, yes,” Val said. “Expensive, yes, but that is no problem. I have money coming out my ass now.”

Imre looked pained. “Please, Vajda. And your business?”

Val hesitated. In point of fact, it would hurt to give up Capriccio Consulting. The business had come into existence years ago as a cover while he wormed his way into the inner circle of a drug smuggling ring, but since then, and almost by accident, it had evolved into a profitable legitimate enterprise that he truly enjoyed. Fulfilling whims. Finding and obtaining objects, treasures, information. He was good at it.

He was secretly proud of himself for having created something that functioned so well; something that was not a scam, cover, or lie. His business did what it promised to do, with an excellent success rate. God, how he liked that. The simplicity of it, the dignity. Was it so much to ask to mind his business, satisfy his clients, make his money?

But like everything else, it was dangerous to be attached.

He let out a long breath and tried to take the three steps back, but he didn’t feel the click of disengagement, the floating feeling.

“I’ll find something else to do,” he said, after a moment. “I’ll buy you a new passport. Come with me. We’ll go someplace hot. A desert would be good for your arthritis. I could keep a better eye on you. We could play chess every night.”

But Imre was already shaking his head. “This is my home,” he said. “Near Ilona and little Tina.”

Stubborn old sentimentalist. Trotting out his wife, dead thirty years, and his daughter who had died in infancy, buried together at the cemetery. Val rubbed his face with a groan. “For two mossy graves, you stay in this moldering dump? I can look after you if you’re close to me!”

“You already look after me.” Imre’s voice was tranquil. “l will stay here. And I will die here. It’s all right to die, Vajda.”

“Spare me the cloying platitudes,” Val snarled. “This isn’t one of your f*cking philosophy lessons.”

Imre regarded him for a moment, his thin shoulders stiff. “Calm yourself, please,” he said haughtily. “I will make us a pot of tea. Or should I bother? Do you have to scurry off to lick your handler’s feet?”

Val let out a long, slow breath before he allowed himself to reply.

“I’ll make the goddamn tea,” he said before Imre could rise. He needed a moment for his self-control. And he didn’t want to watch Imre’s pained, arthritic shuffle toward the kitchen.