Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [39]
The dossier also explained the ornate building Pajerski had entered with his friends. It was the most expensive and exclusive brothel, not only in Budapest but in the whole area behind the Iron Curtain as well. After caressing every girl in the parlor, Pajerski never took fewer than two upstairs for his pleasure. An hour later he would reappear in the street, puffing on an enormous cigar, looking as content as a bear ready to hibernate. But both inside the house and out, his guards stuck as close to him as possible, without interfering with his pleasures. He was not vulnerable in that area.
Rogan closed the dossier and looked up at Vrostk. “How long has your organization been trying to kill him?” he asked.
Vrostk grimaced. “What makes you think that?”
Rogan said, “Everything in this dossier. Earlier today you gave me a lot of crap about how you’re the big boss of this operation because you’re so much better an agent than I am. I took it. But you’re not my boss. I’ll tell you what you have to know, and I’ll count on you to get me out of the country after I kill Pajerski. But that’s all. And I’ll give you some good advice: Don’t pull any fast ones on me—none of those tricky Intelligence moves. I’d kill you as soon as I’d kill Pajerski. Sooner. I like him better.” Rogan gave the man a brutally cold smile.
Stefan Vrostk flushed. “I didn’t mean to offend you earlier,” he said. “I meant it well.”
Rogan shrugged. “I haven’t come all this way to be jerked around like a puppet. I’ll pull your chestnuts out of the fire; I’ll kill Pajerski for you. But don’t ever try to bull me again.” He got out of his chair and walked out the door. Vrostk followed him and conducted him out of the consulate, then held out his hand. Rogan ignored it and walked away.
He could not explain why he had got so tough with Vrostk. Perhaps it was the feeling that only an accident of time and history had prevented Vrostk from being one of the seven men in the high-domed room of the Munich Palace of Justice. But it was also that he distrusted Vrostk even now. Anyone who acted so imperiously in small matters had to be weak.
Not trusting anyone else, Rogan checked out the dossier by personal observation. For six days he frequented the Café Black Violin and memorized Pajerski’s every move. The dossier proved to be correct in every particular. But Rogan noticed something that was not in the dossier. Pajerski, like many genial giants, always looked for an advantage. For example, he always took the white pieces, without fail, in his chess games. He had a nervous habit of scratching his chin with the pointed crown of his king piece. Rogan also noted that though the chess set was the property of the Black Violin, it was not loaned to other patrons until Pajerski had finished with it for the evening.
The Hungarian also passed a café whose music delighted him, and he would invariably go into his bearlike dance when he heard the music from that café. The dance took him usually thirty yards ahead of his guards to a street corner, which he then turned. For perhaps one minute he was out of the guards’ sight, alone and vulnerable. Vrostk wasn’t such a hot agent, Rogan thought, not if that one vulnerable minute was not recorded in the dossier. Unless it had been deliberately omitted.
Rogan kept checking. He thought the brothel a likely place to catch Pajerski unguarded. But he found that two men from the secret police invariably took their posts outside the bedroom door while Pajerski took his exercise within.
The problem was admittedly difficult. Pajerski’s living and working quarters were impregnable. Only in the evening was he slightly