Sandor looked sideways at Balthazar in mock indignation. ‘What a question, Tazi. Of course. Apricot, from our trees.’
The drink was warming and full of flavour. ‘Nagyon finom,’ said Balthazar, and it was really as delicious as he said. But there was still the matter of Elad Harrari’s disappearance. ‘So here we are, boss. Let’s talk.’
Sandor’s voice softened. ‘Look, Tazi, I asked about the case for you.’
‘And?’
‘This is no longer a police matter. Budapest and Jerusalem both want a news blackout on this. It’s been passed upstairs. Leave it alone, I was told.’
Upstairs meant state security. Balthazar asked, ‘By who?’
Sandor turned to Balthazar. He laughed. ‘What do you want? A name? Someone.’
Sandor had been a policeman for forty years. He had not only outlasted almost all of his superiors, but prospered. Born into a family of smugglers in a small village in southern Hungary near the Serbian border, he might easily have slipped into a life of low-level criminality, like his siblings and cousins. But the communist regime wanted to promote young people from underprivileged backgrounds. Sandor did very well at school, so much so that a sharp-eyed party official spotted his potential and brought him to Budapest, where he joined the police.
The country boy thrived in the capital, the archetypal Hungarian who could navigate any system and the period of transition between them. The walls in his office were bedecked with photographs of Sandor with every prime minister since the change of system in 1990, although lately Balthazar had noticed that Pal Dezeffy had disappeared. Sandor had been Balthazar’s patron, spotting his talent and intellect when he was a cadet at the police academy, and subsequently an officer on the beat in the rougher parts of Budapest, before recruiting him to the murder squad. And when, despite the force’s supposed commitment to equal opportunities, Balthazar’s progress had been stalled because he was a Gypsy, Sandor had stepped in to clear the obstacles. Sandor was close to Reka Bardossy and had helped her out over the years with useful information. But few believed Reka would survive the coming election and as her power faded, so did his.
Balthazar looked out over the Danube. The river was flowing hard now, the grey-green water spinning and eddying, shards of ice floating on the surface. Should he mention the USB stick? Probably. He did not like to play games with his patron. And Sandor would find out eventually anyway. He seemed to find out most things. ‘There’s more, boss,’ he said.
Sandor sat back and finished off his tea. ‘Mondd, tell me.’
Balthazar told him about his and Eva’s search of Elad’s flat. Sandor tutted and shook his head. ‘Tazi, that wasn’t very smart. You do know how many police regulations and actual laws you broke doing that?’
Balthazar nodded. ‘Yes. But we, she, found something. A memory stick, hidden in the bathroom, behind a loose tile. Eva knew where to look. The local cops would never have seen it.’
‘Where is it?’
Balthazar explained how he had left the memory stick with Vivi, who was trying to break the encryption.
‘Who else knows about the memory stick?’
‘Just the four of us. You, me, Vivi and Eva neni.’
‘Who is this Vivi anyway?’
Balthazar gave Sandor a quick précis of her career. ‘Boss, do you think that Nationwide has kidnapped Elad?’
‘That’s a big move, if they did. But I do know what Karoly Bardossy is capable of.’
‘Which is?’
Sandor took a long draught of his tea. ‘If he feels threatened, anything.’
EIGHT
Liberty Square, 1 p.m.
Zsuzsa knelt for a moment and looked at the photograph of the young man and woman before she read the text on the sheet of paper inside the thin plastic folder. Miklos Berger had been forty-one and his wife Rahel thirty-three when they had been killed. Their story was one of many tied, pinned or pegged to a thin rope that ran across one side of Liberty Square. They had both been deported to Auschwitz in March 1944, where they were gassed on arrival.
The accounts were placed there by relatives or simply those who wanted to record the life of someone murdered in the camps or shot to death in the Danube. Underneath the pinned stories were mementoes as well: pieces of luggage, stones and rocks marked with names and dates, more photographs, a glasses case, a cigarette holder. All of the testimonies had been placed in plastic covers to protect them, but many were faded and several were nearly illegible. The Bergers’ story, however, was notably crisp, their pictures clear, printed on thick, glossy, photographic paper – it looked like the account of their fate had been placed there very recently.
Zsuzsa knew that the story of Miklos and Rahel was unusual – the mass deportations began in May and June, and started with the Jews of the countryside and provincial towns. Most of the Jews of Budapest, the last sizeable community in Nazi-occupied Europe, largely escaped deportation until after October 1944 when the murderous Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis, deposed Admiral Horthy with the help of the SS. Then the transports, and the killings, resumed.
Rahel had been a primary school teacher, Miklos a businessman and industrialist. The photograph was a formal portrait, sepia-toned, and had been taken at a studio in 1935. Rahel wore a long, heavy skirt, a plain white blouse and matching jacket. She had medium-length hair, and dark, intelligent eyes, full of wonder and excitement at the life before her. Miklos stood handsome and erect. He wore a black suit and tie, his pride at his beautiful young wife beaming from his eyes.
Zsuzsa was steadily making her way down the line of family stories. Every few days she read another account, then sat on a nearby bench for a few moments, trying to process the enormity of what she had read. Rahel had been twenty-four when the photograph was taken, the same age as Zsuzsa was now. As she came to the end of Rahel’s tale, she stared again at the photograph of the young woman. The wind gusted, flapping the sheet of paper back and forth, so hard it almost pulled it from Zsuzsa’s hand, then stopped as suddenly as it had started.
A few weeks ago, before the weather turned too cold, Zsuzsa had gone on a historical walking tour of downtown and District VII, wanting to know more about the history of Hungarian and Budapest Jewry. Zsuzsa had grown up in the countryside in a small village in the far east of Hungary, not far from the Ukrainian border. She had never met anyone Jewish before she moved to Budapest to study English and Media at the city’s Eotvos Lorand University.
She knew that there had once been a thriving Jewish community in her home town, but there was nothing left of it except an overgrown cemetery and a dilapidated synagogue that was scheduled for demolition. No Jews lived there, or in any of the neighbouring villages any more. Zsuzsa had once asked her grandmother about the Second World War and what she remembered about her Jewish neighbours. At first she started describing her school friend Vera and how they used to play together and share their sweets. Vera’s father was a carpenter, and her mother ran a small grocery store. When Zsuzsa asked what happened to Vera, her grandmother started crying and could not speak. She got up and stood by the window, staring out over the fields. Zsuzsa’s father had then become angry and yelled at her for upsetting her grandmother. Zsuzsa did not ask again.
A few yards in front of the makeshift memorial on Liberty Square was another, far more elaborate construction. In the middle of a row of jagged, broken pillars, stood a mawkish statue of the Archangel Gabriel. Above him an eagle swooped menacingly. The memorial had been put up by a previous government to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. The Archangel Gabriel was supposed to represent Hungary, pure and innocent, until the evil German eagle had swooped down on a virtuous land to take away its Jews. The reality, Zsuzsa knew, was very different. It was true that for much of the war Admiral Horthy had refused to hand over Hungary’s Jews to the Nazis, which was one reason why the Germans invaded in March 1944. But after that Hungary had turned on its Jews with a vengeance. The Hungarian state had proved so efficient at organising the ghettos and deportations that even the SS was impressed. More than 420,000 people had been deported to Auschwitz in less than two months – a record, even for the Nazis. Most had been murdered on arrival.
Zsuzsa stood back up and walked over to a nearby bench on the edge of a deserted playground. The trees around the edge of the square were stripped bare, and the café in the middle was closed. A few years ago the area had been pedestrianised, and the footpath was now slick with slush and ice. She glanced at the other end of the square, at the Soviet war memorial to the Red Army soldiers who had died fighting the Nazis and the Arrow Cross in the winter of 1944 and 1945: a plain, pale stone obelisk with a golden wreath in the middle, standing on top of a stepped, raised platform. Next to the memorial was the grandiose building that housed the American embassy, fenced off from its surrounds. During the war Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat, had operated out of here, issuing Swiss protection papers to desperate Jews to save them from the Arrow Cross and the Nazis. For a moment Zsuzsa was back at the makeshift memorial, kneeling down as the wind pulled the plastic envelope with the story of Miklos and Rahel back and forth in her hand. There were ghosts here, she knew.
Zsuzsa pulled her coat tighter but the wind was gusting hard now, the freezing air sliding down the back of her neck like icy fingers, and she shivered as she sat down. She closed her eyes for a moment, ignoring the cold, thinking of Rahel and Vera, her grandmother’s childhood friend. Which was worse? To be Rahel, knowing that you would not live your life, never have a family, that you and your husband were being taken to your deaths; or to be a child and not understand what was happening while your parents tried to shield you from the coming horror? There was no answer to that question.
Zsuzsa opened her eyes. There were two benches in the park and a man in his thirties was now sitting on the other one. Something about him made her uneasy. He was holding a copy of Magyar Vilag, Hungarian World, the pro-government newspaper, but she could sense him glancing at her.
This was the fourth or fifth time she had felt that someone was watching her since she had filed her Nationwide article. There was nothing definite, but several times recently she had felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She had no idea how to tell if she was being followed, other than common sense, but today, of all days, she had no patience for this. She had to call Eniko Szalay, immediately. But not while this guy was around. Then an idea struck her.
She took out her mobile phone and let it fall from her lap onto the ground. Shaking her head at her supposed clumsiness, she bent down to pick it up, using the movement to glance sideways at the man on the bench and sneak a photograph of him. It worked and she looked at the snap on her screen, making sure not to look back at him after she did. He looked short, perhaps five feet six, wore jeans, a black parka, expensive-looking light-brown boots and a grey woollen hat pulled down over his head. His nose was slightly crooked and had a noticeable bump in the middle, the kind that comes from having it broken.
Now she had a photograph of him for her records but she needed to find out if he was watching her.
She turned on the bench and held her camera in front of her, as though she was taking a selfie. The man was visible in the background. She watched on her mobile’s screen as he stood up and briskly walked away.
She smiled to herself, unnerved, yes, but also feeling that for once, she was in control of the situation. Now she could make her call.
NINE
Margaret Island, 1 p.m.
Sandor proffered the flask to Balthazar, who nodded. He filled Balthazar’s cup and the two men sat in silence for a several moments, sipping their palinka-infused fruit tea, watching as a seagull hovered over the water, then banked and soared away.
‘You know what day it is next Saturday?’ asked Sandor.
‘Of course. It’s her birthday. She would have been thirty-six.’ Balthazar swallowed for a moment, wiped his eyes, told himself it was the sleet.
‘I think about her every day. She’d be married now. A mother with kids.’
Balthazar laughed. ‘A grandmother, probably. You know how we are.’
There was another reason why Sandor had protected Balthazar and nurtured his career behind the scenes, beyond his natural talent for police work. The two men’s lives were deeply entwined, bound together by far more than a shared profession. Balthazar had once had a cousin called Virag, or someone he thought was his cousin. The two were very close. A beautiful young woman with a singing voice to match, Virag, then sixteen, had been hired to perform at a fancy party at a grand villa in the Buda hills in 1995. The party’s hosts were Pal Dezeffy, the former prime minister – at that time a rising young apparatchik – and his then girlfriend, Reka Bardossy. Something very bad had happened and Virag, who could not swim, was found drowned in the swimming pool.
The Kovacs family was devastated. Some of the hotheads wanted to take revenge, to make Dezeffy and his family pay. Balthazar and his mother, Marta, shut down the wild talk. Virag was gone, would be mourned and never forgotten, but more bloodshed would not bring her back – and would only end with the Kovacs menfolk incarcerated for a very long time. As for suing, no court would take the side of a family of pimps from District VIII against the gilded son of one of the country’s most powerful dynasties. The Dezeffys, like the Bardossys, had supplied a steady stream of ministers and officials before and during the communist regime and continued to do so after the change of system in 1990. Even in 1995 Pal Dezeffy had been marked out as a potential future prime minister. The Dezeffys offered Balthazar’s family the villa as part of a compensation package in exchange for not making a fuss. In truth there was very little the Kovacs clan could do but accept. The swimming pool was filled in and the villa was now an upmarket brothel, run by Gaspar, Balthazar’s brother.
One day in the previous autumn, Marta had brought Balthazar lunch, her csirke paprikas, chicken paprika, his favourite childhood dish. She looked at the large, framed photograph of Virag and started crying. The story had tumbled out. There was a reason Balthazar felt so close to Virag. She was not his cousin. She was his half-sister. And her father was Sandor Takacs.
