This corner of downtown was usually a busy interchange. He glanced rightwards. A crowd was gathering on Nyugati Square, some people emerging from the pedestrian underpass that led to the station, others from nearby side streets. Many held Hungarian flags with the centre cut out, a symbol of the 1956 uprising when revolutionaries had removed the hammer and sickle emblem. A middle-aged lady in a padded coat waved the Arpad flag of red and white stripes, an ancient Hungarian banner.
Many of the demonstrators held up posters and placards with Reka’s face on them, superimposed with a red circle with a line through and the words Eleg volt a komcsikbol, We’ve had enough of the commies. A clutch of burly men in their twenties, each with a beer bottle in hand, stepped out into the traffic jam, banging on the roofs of the stationary vehicles, slapping the vehicles’ windows, while they shouted ‘Eleg volt a komcsikbol, eleg volt a komcsikbol.’
Balthazar turned to Anastasia, shot her a questioning glance. ‘Now what?’
‘Pass me the blue light, please. It’s on the back seat,’ she said, still looking ahead and scanning.
Balthazar reached behind him and did as she asked. She opened the window and placed the light on the roof of the car. She turned to Balthazar. ‘It’s going to get noisy.’ A second later the siren was howling, the racket filling the inside of the car as the blue light spun around.
The other drivers looked to see what was happening and started to inch sideways. As soon as a space opened up, no matter how small, Anastasia edged the car forward, sometimes veering rightwards, at other times to the left, pushing hard on the horn as well for good measure.
After a couple of minutes she had managed to clear a path through most of the jam. Only one car was blocking their escape onto the boulevard, a white Subaru SUV with tinted windows. It needed to jump onto the kerb at the tram stop. The edge was lined with concrete half-globes to prevent cars doing precisely that, but it would be an easy move for a large-wheeled SUV. Anastasia hooted repeatedly, the siren howled, but the car did not budge.
Balthazar picked up his phone and called the police headquarters. ‘I need the name and address of the registered owner of this car,’ he said, reading out the number plate. Half a minute later, he thanked the voice, hung up and stepped out of the car, his police identity badge in his hand.
One of the drunken protestors lurched forward at him, muttering about Gypsies, then took a wild swing at him. Balthazar easily blocked the punch with his left hand, stepped sideways, gave him a hard shove to the chest with the heel of his right hand. The man went flying backwards, crashing into the door of a nearby car. He dropped his beer and stumbled off, banging into several vehicles along the way.
Balthazar approached the driver’s side window of the white SUV and knocked. Nothing happened. He knocked again on the window. This time it opened.
A skinny woman in her mid-thirties with a tanning salon sheen and oversized lips was speaking on the phone. She glared at Balthazar, taking in his appearance. Her fingernails were long and painted white. ‘What is it?’ she demanded, then turned away to carry on her conversation. ‘Someone’s annoying me… He made me open the car window… I don’t know who he is… I don’t know if he is dangerous. Maybe you should get here or send someone.’ She looked back at Balthazar. ‘He looks like a…’
At that moment Balthazar showed her his police badge. Her manner changed instantly. She ended the call. ‘Yes, Officer. How can I help?’
Balthazar pointed at Anastasia’s Opel Corsa, the blue light still flashing, and the siren wailing. ‘We need to get past. It’s urgent. You can move out of the way, onto the pavement there.’
She peered forward at the row of concrete globes, frowning. ‘But that will bump my new tyres. It might damage them. This is a brand new car. I’m fine here, till the traffic clears.’
Balthazar’s tone of voice became harder. ‘You are obstructing a police officer in his line of duty.’ He quickly glanced again at the Opel, momentarily distracted. He knew very little about cars, except how to drive one, but weren’t its wheels wider and larger than usual? And why were there were two exhaust pipes?
There was movement inside the SUV and Balthazar turned back to the driver. She was scrabbling inside her handbag and took out several 10,000-forint notes, smiling brightly as she held out the money. ‘Is there a penalty? Or a spot fine?’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘Put it away,’ he snapped. ‘Here’s how it’s going to work, Emese Bathory.’ She started at the mention of her name. Balthazar pointed again at the expanse of pavement next to the tramline, and continued talking. ‘You are going to park your vehicle there so we can get past. Or, I can bring you in for obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty’ – he paused – ‘and attempted bribery. That’s prison. I don’t think you would like being inside much. No tanning salons.’ He glanced at her nails. ‘Or manicurists. Although they might like you.’
Emese’s eyes opened wide. She nodded quickly, dropped the banknotes on the passenger seat and started the engine. Balthazar stepped back and watched as she drove the car up over the bumps onto the edge of the pavement and waited there.
The other cars immediately started to move forward to fill the gap but he stood in the space, holding out his police badge. A few seconds later Anastasia’s Opel Corsa pulled up. He opened the door and jumped in.
Anastasia said, ‘Nice work, Detective.’
‘Thanks. Threatening someone with arrest usually makes people cooperate.’
She gave him a cool glance. ‘Not just her.’
‘All in a day’s work, Colonel,’ he said, half smiling, then looked ahead. There was plenty of traffic on the boulevard, but enough space for Anastasia to clear a path. She put the siren back on and the cars quickly started to edge sideways to make room for her vehicle.
Instead she bumped up onto the pavement, drove around the SUV and down the tramlines, cutting two red lights. Balthazar watched the shops and cafés fly by as they headed towards Oktogon, where the boulevard crossed with Andrassy Way, the grandest of the city’s avenues.
The trees were bare, their branches poking upwards like withered brown fingers. A light sleet began to fall on the windscreen as the engine growled. A tram appeared in front of them, its horn sounding loudly. Anastasia cut around it. He glanced at her, her face set in concentration, as the car sped down the tram path, dust clouding up in their wake.
At Oktogon, the lights were red. Anastasia pulled up on the tramlines next to a bus stop while the traffic flowed in front of them, the blue light still flashing, the siren quieter now.
Balthazar glanced at the bus stop. The three glass panels by the seats were methodically covered with much larger versions of the same poster that the demonstrators had been carrying at Nyugati Square a few minutes earlier: Reka Bardossy’s face, the red line and the circle. Now they were still for a minute or two, Balthazar had a chance to take a longer, closer look at the image. The photograph had been altered, quite subtly, to make Reka’s features look sharper, her eyes dark, glazed and fixed in a stare, her mouth slightly open. Underneath her face on one of the posters someone had written Voros boszorkany, Red witch.
Balthazar saw that Anastasia too was looking at the poster. She said, ‘The image of Reka has been photoshopped, digitally manipulated. We checked. Someone’s paying for these posters and those placards we saw at Nyugati Station. Probably those guys’ beers as well. Those new parties, the Workers’ Alliance and the National Renewal Movement, they are also getting plenty of money.’
‘From who?’
‘We’re not sure yet. We are working on it. There are lots of front companies involved, going via the Cayman Islands, Ukraine and Minsk, for some reason. I’ll keep you posted.’
The lights changed to green. The tramline ahead was clear and Anastasia accelerated away at speed. The force pushed Balthazar back in his seat.
‘This is an Opel Corsa?’ he asked. ‘Standard-issue government vehicle?’
‘Unless you merit a big black Audi or a Merc, yes. But yes, it was.’ She turned to him for a second. ‘They asked me if I wanted anything else when I got promoted. I had some suggestions for my car.’
‘Which were?’
‘Turbo-charged 2.5-litre engine, sports wheels, hard suspension. I like driving. And we are bulletproof.’
‘All that for an Opel Corsa? Why didn’t you just get a new car?’
‘Camouflage. And sometimes it’s just fun to surprise people,’ she said, before turning to Balthazar. ‘Don’t you think, Detective?’
‘I think that’s a tram right in front of us, Colonel.’
The back end of a tram suddenly appeared in front of them as it trundled along the lines. The Opel slowed right down, hugging its rear.
‘I do believe it is,’ said Anastasia as she peered around the tram, spun the wheel and roared down the other side of the tracks. Balthazar could see a yellow shape in the distance as another tram started speeding towards them, getting larger by the second. Anastasia cut in front of the tram she had just overtaken with a few metres to spare as the tram on the other side rumbled past. Above the wail of the siren, Balthazar could hear both sets of bells ringing loudly and indignantly.
‘Nicely done,’ said Balthazar.
‘You sound surprised,’
He smiled. ‘I’m not, not at all. I was just remembering the last time we were in a car together.’
Last September Anastasia had been driving them at speed through a narrow maze of back streets in District VII and VIII, trying to avoid being arrested by the gendarmes, the national paramilitary police force, on their way to see Gaspar.
The Gendarmerie had been working for Pal Dezeffy, trying to destabilise Reka’s government by taking control of Kossuth Square and the area around parliament. Despite Anastasia’s skill behind the wheel, she and Balthazar had been captured by a Gendarmerie unit after they threw a spiked chain across the road, instantly shredding her car’s tyres.
The unit’s commander was Attila Ungar, Balthazar’s former partner. When Attila had given Anastasia the option of arrest or joining the gendarmes she had called him a kocsog. The literal meaning of the word was jug, but it was slang for ‘prison bitch’. Hungarian offered a rich and baroque vocabulary of insults, but kocsog was generally agreed to be the worst of the worst. Attila’s men had tasered her immediately.
Anastasia laughed. ‘I can’t promise you that much excitement this time.’
Balthazar had then attacked Attila, even managed to grab his gun and try to escape, before he too was tasered. Dezeffy’s planned terrorist attack was supposed to be the coup de grâce to Reka’s wobbly government. In the end, thanks to Balthazar – and Anastasia – Dezeffy had failed, just. The gendarmes had since been disbanded.
‘No tasers?’ said Balthazar.
Anastasia smiled. ‘I hope not.’
