‘We can, usually. But you wanted to talk about this Israeli business.’
Balthazar frowned. ‘And?’
Sandor raised his right index finger and spiralled it upwards. The gesture meant that someone was listening.
‘How do you know?’
Sandor patted Balthazar’s leg. ‘I just do, Tazi.’
Balthazar nodded. The news that Sandor’s office was bugged wasn’t entirely a surprise. Rumours were swirling around the police headquarters that his boss would soon be retiring, to make room for his much younger deputy, Bela Szilagyi. Bela was adding more and more tiles to his roof – slang for protection – including several senior officials in the Ministry of the Interior. Bela’s portfolio, Balthazar had heard, would soon be expanded to include liaison with the state security service. That would mark the beginning of the end of Sandor’s career.
Short and tubby, with shrewd brown eyes and thinning grey hair, Sandor was a devoted family man, still married to his childhood sweetheart. Sunday lunches were an institution in Hungary, and Sandor never missed one, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. ‘Don’t worry about me. Everyone needs to know when their time is up. I’ve had a good run, Tazi. I’ll get a decent pension. Very decent, actually. Several security companies have already been in touch to talk about consultancies. I’ll be sixty soon. I want to enjoy the rest of my time, and my family.’
He reached inside his shoulder bag and took out a small metal thermos flask. He slid the white plastic cup off the top, unscrewed the cap, poured a pink liquid into the cup, steam rising from the surface, and handed it to Balthazar.
‘That will warm you up,’ said Sandor as he reached inside the bag for another cup and poured himself a drink. ‘Winter fruit tea, Takacs-modra.’
Balthazar smiled as he accepted the ‘Takacs-style’ drink. He knew what that probably meant. The first sip confirmed it – a rich mix of peach-and-apricot tea overlaid with alcoholic fumes. Sandor was justly proud of his home-distilled palinka, Hungary’s powerful fruit brandy. ‘Is it your palinka?’
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.
