And there was a palpable sorrow present in even the freshest newborn—a thirst for the agonies of life that courted lucklessness for the sheer thrill of surviving it. A Hungarian, though also drawn to the melancholy and macabre, might kill himself to end his grief, while a Romanian—particularly a Transylvanian—would hang on to the bitter end. Beryx Gulyas had a Hungarian heart, unable to truly love anyone except one of his own, but he possessed the soul of a Transylvanian.
“I’m going out,” he said, as he retrieved the keys to his new Berlina from a wooden bowl by the door. He told her he wouldn’t be coming back for at least a week, and would appreciate the holes in his trouser pockets being mended by then. It was a terrible inconvenience not being able to wear them, and they were his favorite pair—forgiving in their cut and capable of retaining their shape and crispness for hours longer than the other pants he owned. They also made him look at least five kilos slimmer.
Strangely, the pants meant more to him than the Berlina, which had been a recent gift from his boss. He’d “Oo’d” and “Aah’d” the way he was expected to, but a car was little more to him than a vehicle that got him from one place to another. Certainly, it spared him the inconvenience of having to take a bus or a train, but even at that moment, with his foot pressing the pedal to the floor and nothing but an empty, winding road ahead of him, Beryx did not feel the rush of adrenaline that consumed so many ardent drivers. There was only one thing that gave him that kind of rush.
A muffled groan pierced his reverie.
“Quiet!” he bellowed, and finally there was some peace in the car. Beryx had grown used to the incessant whining of the doomed over the years, but Leon Kunz, his regular pilot, had been begging since the Hungarian had returned to the car, repeating, “Please, no,” over and over again in various intonations like an actor rehearsing his one big line. Although the moans were hushed by the trunk walls, they were beginning to wear on Beryx’s already raw nerves, and he’d almost pulled over and shot the man like he had his co-pilot at the airfield.
“What have you done to yourself?” he’d demanded, as the co-pilot had begun slurring and sputtering that they weren’t expecting him—no one had called. “You’re too drunk to hear a phone, you mongoloid.”
Beryx had broken their bottle of Boza on the concrete floor and carved the word idiot into the man’s forehead before shooting him in the groin, stomach, and finally mouth. That was when Leon Kunz started whimpering and “Please, no,” became the only words in his vocabulary. It was a common enough phenomenon amongst the very frightened—getting stuck, like a needle on a defective record album—but Beryx was in no mood for it tonight and was relieved that the German had been able to reign himself in. Now, he could sit at the wheel for a few moments after pulling over into the dead stillness of the mountain overlook, and think through what he wanted to do in the next twenty-four hours.
Anyone who had ever heard of Beryx in a professional capacity would know better than to lie about a botched job, but Greeks were unpredictable, and men like Etor had a far less exacting definition of success than a man in Beryx’s position. He couldn’t look Nicolai Ceausescu in the eye until he knew without a doubt that the American agent was dead and there were no loose ends to be tied up.
That realization changed his plans for the night. He tucked his gun into his holster, slipped on the thick, tobacco wool turtleneck Zuzanna had knitted for him, and stepped out of the warm car and into a freezing drizzle.
“Get up, Leon,” Beryx ordered as he unlocked the trunk. Leon Kunz was rolled up into a ball with his face buried in his knees.
“Please, no,” he started, and once he said it he couldn’t stop.
“Leon,”
“Please, no,”
“Leon!”
“Please, no,”
“Shut up!”
“Please, no. Please, no. Please no.”
“Leon,” Beryx whispered, taking a long, deep breath. “I’m not going to kill you tonight, Leon. I’m not even going to beat you.”
“Please, no.”
“I’m an honest man, Leon. If you were going to die, I’d tell you. And if I was going to torture you, I would torture you. We wouldn’t have to talk about it.”
Leon Kunz stopped begging, but continued to cry, keeping his eyes closed tight and his kneecaps pressed against his brow.
“Let tonight be a lesson to you, Leon.”
Leon Kunz nodded his head feverishly and vomited.
“Now take your stinking clothes off before coming into the car. It’s almost dawn, and you’re flying me to Greece in an hour.”
Etor was not as stupid as Beryx had originally thought him to be. He was careless. He was trivial. But he wasn’t an idiot, like Leon Kuntz’s co-pilot had been, according to the crude carvings on his forehead.
“I shouldn’t use so much salt,” the Cretan gigolo reproved, helping himself to a liberal pinch for his baked eel. He had finished explaining to Beryx why he’d chosen to kill the American agent with poison instead of the sniper’s rifle the Hungarian had championed, and was now looking forward to digging in to a costly lunch that wouldn’t cost him a thing.
“What if you hadn’t used enough of the toxin?” Beryx queried.
Etor shrugged and shook his head in the same manner he had used to dismiss their waiter when the young boy offered them another bottle of Retsina. The noonday sun was beaming into his eyes, but the gigolo wouldn’t squint. It put his wrinkles on display.
“Then he would have died in three hours instead of three minutes. You only need enough to cover the head of a pin. And there’s no antidote.”
“Good,” Beryx murmured.
Throughout the ages, poison had been referred to as “the coward’s weapon,” but the Hungarian assassin disagreed. Poison takes knowledge and a strong stomach. It can disfigure, distort and liquefy, forcing the perpetrator to watch an often gruesome process. It wasn’t a coward’s weapon, no, but it was certainly a feminine one.
“An Arab’s Kiss, you called it.”
“Arab’s Kiss, yes. Very potent. Fast acting. It’s cultivated from a type of passionflower that grows in the Middle East. They call it a… a… I can’t remember, but it’s a nice word. Beautiful. Like a woman’s name—Alehlah.”
Although Etor relayed all of this with his mouth full, he managed to avoid looking uncouth. He spoke equally with his hands, which moved in sensual, dancing motions and drew attention away from his lips.
“Alehlah. A very clever poison,” Beryx acknowledged, and Etor smiled.
“Of course, if I’d used a gun, I would’ve been better prepared for circumstances created out of my control. If something or someone else emerged, I could’ve fired another bullet. The darts are more complicated. They’re difficult to handle because you don’t want the poison to come in contact with your skin.” Etor stuck his fork into a heavily salted yellow potato the size of a walnut, and held it up while his tongue fished a piece of eel skin out of his back molar.
“But,” he continued. “The fact is I’ve never liked blood. It’s ugly and it stains the clothes.”
Beryx knew how to get a man like Etor going. Initially reticent, the gigolo was growing more forthcoming with every glass of wine. All he needed to be assured of was a sympathetic ear, which would give him permission to bask in the sound of his own voice and boast an expertise in something other than luxury clothing and women’s genitalia.