The God Hunter (6 page)

 

CHAPTER 11

YOUTH AND OTHER ERRORS

“I
was a stupid, irritating, snot-­nosed kid. There. I admit it. Jeez. I'd fucking hate myself if I could see me now. Self-­obsessed, annoying little bastard. Oh, I know, I know, don't think I don't . . .”

You were twenty-­two,
I thought.
That's more than old enough
.

“Thing is, see—­thing is, I didn't want to be there. Hated the whole bit. I—­look. You've got to understand about my
life,
OK? I know what ­people say. Christ, I'm not dumb!
Adam Shailer, spoiled little rich kid
. Well, I tell you. When you live it, it's not like that. It's not like that at all.

“My mom and dad, they'd got no time for me. Wouldn't say it, but it's true, just the same. Growing up—­yeah. I ask for something, I get it. Every birthday, there's some top act for the party, TV stars, movie stars, whatever. But in between . . . in between, I don't see anyone. My dad is this guy
miles
away, you know? All I see is the nanny, and after that they just kind of—­they farm me out. Uncles, cousins, older brother. They
didn't have the time
. Lots of ways, a family like mine, well, it's a burden. That's a fact.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“Oh, wait. Wait. I don't want
sympathy,
OK? I don't want ‘
oh poor Adam,
' shit like that. Just want you to understand. I'm not the man you think, Chris. Honest I'm not. I'm . . . Let's say, it's not been easy for me. Not a bit.”

“OK.”

“I lived in England, two years. Southend. Brits all think it's like some great vacation town, like Vegas . . . I dunno. Live there, though, and it's a hole. I'm telling you. A fucking hole.

“I'd had—­well, I suppose I'd had some problems. Youthful rebellion, all that kind of thing. Public intox. I mean, my dad squashed all the charges, straight out. But . . . family was worried. I was smoking too much pot, and even I could see the crew that I was hanging with were losers, plain and simple. Solution? Pack me off to Auntie Millie in Southend. Christ, I was just growing up, that's all. It's normal, right? So they send me to this school, this
crammer,
right, supposed to
put
me somewhere. Hated it. The Brits all called me Yank. Home on vacation, and I get, ‘Ooh, listen, he's gone Brit.' It was shitty. Then finally, I'm out of it. Amherst wasn't great. But after that . . . New York. I'm there, I'm training for the Registry. All my life I've been pushed around, one place to the next, no one gives a damn. And here I am, I'm in the greatest city in the world, got money, got connections . . . I walk into a club, a party—­­people know me. For the first time in my life, I am the person that I want to be. Imagine how that feels? At that age? It's like,
rock star, man!
Then all at once . . .”

“Field Ops.”

“Yeah. Yeah. You get it, don't you? You understand. You'd feel the same.”

I had a drink instead of a response.

“These days, of course—­it's policy, and I'd support it. Course I would. But then—­”

He shrugged. He smiled. He had the look of somebody who knows he'll be forgiven; or that everyone will tell him he's forgiven, because nobody would dare do otherwise. And that's just as good.

“Unprofessional. I know, I know.” He put his hands up, open palms, fending off a comment that I wasn't even going to voice. He pressed a knuckle to his nose and sniffed. “Here's the problem, see. That episode, that whole thing . . . We've got fallout. I mean, none of it was meant. Accident, OK? Or pretty much. But now, there's repercussions. For the Registry. But most of all, for us. For you and me.”

I sipped my drink.
So this is how it feels to be blackmailed,
I was thinking.

“Let me stress now. Let me stress. There is nothing, nothing right now that links us with what's happened. But in the interests—­the interests of humanity—­it seemed to me the Registry should offer up its ser­vices. Out of goodwill, see? Remember that. And if I'm going to send someone, who else can I trust? Who else?”

He was looking straight at me. I had an urge to get up, move aside, avoid that arrow stare.

We are the cleaners of the world. We drain its sumps, siphon its spills, empty out its cisterns, and recycle what we find. We are priests without a faith. Exorcists with neither cross nor holy water, bell nor book nor candle. We are the ones who must exist, here in a world that worships far too much.

Or look at it another way: we're pest control. We're sanitation. That's what I was taught. That's how we see ourselves.

We solve problems, and the problems that we solve we put to solving other problems. That's all. The world, which once throve on religion, now thrives upon electric power.

That much, at least, of Shailer's long and stirring public speech was right.

The rest was bullshit. Not “spin,” not “propaganda,” not even just “slanting the truth.” Bullshit, nothing more.

A phrase came to my mind: “The man who lies convincingly can rule the world.” Did I read that somewhere? Hear it in a play or some political commentary?

It's what I thought of when I thought of Shailer. From the youthful idiot I'd once known, I saw the seeds of something truly frightening, a self-­belief able to shift and change and
volte-­face
just as its audience required, to switch sides in a moment and not so much as blink at any contradiction.

So I said yes.

I told him I'd do anything he asked, meanwhile resolving to do nothing of the kind and, what's more, having paid lip ser­vice, to stay as far away from Adam Shailer as I could and pray I never had the misery of falling any further under his unpleasant sway.

That should have ended it. But Shailer wouldn't leave. Near dawn, he got very, very friendly, talked a lot about himself, and how his parents never loved him, and how his family never cared, and how he'd had to prove himself, and work for every step he'd ever gained . . .

And if I hadn't been so tired, I think that I could cheerfully have murdered him.

 

CHAPTER 12

GANZ

T
he Budapest police have an attractive modern building for their central offices, a glass tower both at odds with, and peculiarly complementary to, the beauty of the old city. It's known as “Police Palace,” and, according to rumor, the lifestyle of the higher-­ranking officers within is truly royal.

But that wasn't where I went.

I'd been given an address up on the fourth floor of a big apartment block, one of those old buildings as solid and as sturdy as a basalt outcrop. The stairwell on its own was wider than my London flat. It was also dark. I thumped the light switch a few times without success, then felt my way up through a deep brown fug, like wading through an antique oil painting.

The brass plaque by the door had lettering that matched the letters on my card. So I knocked, then turned the large brass knob and went inside. A cupboard-­sized reception room held two chairs and a wall hatch closed with a wooden shutter. An old-­fashioned brass bell stood on the countertop before it, so I dinged on this a few times, caught a faint buzz of activity from the other side, then nothing for a fair while longer.

I checked my calling card; I was supposed to see a Detective A. Ganz, a person with whom Shailer claimed some sort of contact. In Hungary,
A
is almost always short for
Attila,
accent on the first syllable; one man's barbarian being another's national hero, after all. He was their Boudicca, their William Wallace. One day I would have to read up on the history.

With a ripping sound, the shutter suddenly slid back. A young woman regarded me through black-­rimmed glasses. There was a large mole on her upper lip. Behind, I glimpsed an office of old filing cabinets, monumental wooden desks, and two middle-­aged men earnestly discussing something over coffee and cigarettes. A younger man went by, carrying a stack of files. I said the name on the card. The girl took the card, repeated the name, and somehow made its one syllable sound altogether different from the way I'd said it. There was discussion with the two guys at the back, and the shutter slid closed. A door opened. I was invited in. The middle-­aged guys, either one of whom I had expected to be Ganz, gave no more than a glance at me. The girl took me across the room, down a corridor, pointed to one of the doors, then motioned me to knock. I hesitated. Again she made a fist, mimed tapping. Then she went away.

I knocked. Heard something, though it might have been a cough. And I went in.

The walls were stacked with shelves. The shelves were stacked with files and papers. A woman in a skirt-­suit perched upon a small stool, arms weighed down with documents, struggling to place them in their rightful spots. I muttered a hello, said, in English, “I'm looking for Detective Ganz . . . ?” and then, seeing her trouble, stepped forward and held my hands up for the bundle of loose papers she was carrying. She stared at me a moment, frowned beneath a blonde-­dyed bob, then dropped the pile into my hands. I held it while she picked through items and, at manic speed, stuffed them into folders, sometimes holding one set in her teeth while she placed the next.

“I've an appointment,” I was saying. “Adam Shailer at the Registry—­he set it up. He wanted me to meet Detective Ganz, if he's around . . . ? I'm sorry. Do you speak English?”

“English,” she nodded.

I nodded. I smiled. She didn't smile back.

“I speak English, Mr. Copeland. There is no need to speak slowly. I understand quite well, I think.”

She stepped down from the stool, took another scattering of papers from the desk, gave them a quick once-­over, and then, as if they'd done her some kind of personal affront, stapled them brutally together and threw them in a drawer.

“I am Detective Anna Ganz.”

I started to apologize, but she held her hand to block me.

“This is matter of importance to you, I am sure. We discuss when I am finished doing housework. Yes?”

There's a quality to the Hungarian accent—­I'm told it's due to the way the stresses fall in the original language—­that makes their English stern, formal, and always just a bit exasperated, as if everyone around them is quite obviously a fool.

Even her “thank you” when we cleared away the filing didn't seem to help. Nor did my apologies.

She sat herself behind the big oak desk. Its surface had been scratched and dented by the wear of many years' bureaucracy; the Communists had sat here, and perhaps the Nazis, too. A big old computer lay upon it, monitor on top, big as a '50s television set.

She said, “Let me be clear, please. I do not ask for Mr. Shailer's ‘help' or yours. But you are here. Please tell me what you think that you can do for me, Mr. Copeland.”

“I—­well.” I shuffled, trying to look competent. “Mr. Shailer said that you'd explain. He told me there was some kind of a problem, something he thinks the Registry might deal with, possibly, and . . .”

I was improvising. Shailer had been only half coherent by the time he'd got around to explanations, and I'd been only half awake.

The main thing he'd impressed on me was to keep quiet about what happened on our last visit. And to act magnanimous; a disinterested party, offering its help.

I told her, “We've got specialist knowledge and equipment. We don't usually act with the police, but we've been called upon to do so several times, both at home in England, where I'm from, and in the US. I don't want to intrude or waste your time, but Adam—­Mr. Shailer—­thought that we could offer some assistance. I gather you've a case with some unusual aspects, which you'll explain to me. Mr. Shailer was discreet about their nature, so if you could assume that I know very little about this . . . ?”

I waited. She lit a cigarette. She watched me, weighing me up. I did my best to meet her gaze.

“Mr. Copeland.”

“Chris,” I said. “Please call me Chris.”

“This is—­I am frank with you—­this is case without clues and leads. If you have information, information will be welcome. You say Mr. Shailer is discreet, and I am hoping this extends to you, too. Please assure me you will speak to no one, yes? There are prurient elements. There are elements we try to hide from public to distinguish the . . .” She paused, looking for words. “Phone callers? ­People who admit to crimes they do not do.”

“Crank calls.”

“Yes. Big problem with free press, is free to everyone and everything. Nothing is kept out. When I was young, before I work here, very different. Freedom of press was then great cause, everyone wants. We march for it, we sign petition. Now . . . it makes job harder, not easier.”

She clicked her mouse, then clicked again.

“You read, Mr. Copeland? Newspaper?”

“Sometimes.”

“But not Hungarian press, I think. Or television. You know we have bogeyman here? ‘Budapest Bloodsucker'? That is name you know?”

I shook my head. “I don't know Budapest that well. Or Hungary . . .”

“In this case, you are lucky, I think. Though that,” and for the first time, there was just the flicker of a smile, “will change.”

She swung the monitor around so we could both see it. The screen showed thumbnails; another click, and I was looking at a large, impressive building façade; the beautiful Budapest buildings, dressed in soot. Little windows and a rainy sky. A big sign:
Hollywood Hotel
.

“You know this place, Mr. Copeland? You have seen, perhaps?”

I think I'm good at hiding my feelings; a natural poker player. Not good in relationships, but good at times like this. Even so, she watched me just a little bit too long, I felt.

I said, “It looks familiar. I might have passed it sometime. I don't know.”

“Not luxury hotel, but good enough, I think. Above the budget of Hungarians. Of ordinary ­people. Of you and me.”

I nodded, pursed my lips, and tried not to incriminate myself in any way.