Boho Bar, Klauzal Street, 11 a.m.
Ilona Mizrachi sipped her café latte, her brown eyes assessing Balthazar. He could sense her calculating: What does this guy know – and how am I going to get it out of him? In the time-honoured fashion, it seemed. Ilona wore a close-fitting white blouse that was open to the top of her bust, where a silver pendant inset with a brown stone rested. Her olive skin and black curls seemed to almost glimmer in the bar’s dim light.
She leaned forward, her voice warm and concerned as she spoke. ‘How are you, Detective? You weren’t hurt yesterday?’ She tilted her head to one side, her hair rippling around her face, eyes holding his, not giving him a chance to answer. ‘A shootout, in broad daylight, in Budapest. It’s shocking. I’m so glad you are OK.’
Balthazar smiled inside. He had hoped for a less-obvious gambit. ‘I’m fine, thanks. I was still in Klauzal Square when they opened fire. By the time I got there, it was all over and the motorcyclist was at the other end of Dob Street.’
They were sitting in the upstairs gallery of the Boho Bar where they were the only customers. The Boho Bar was a classic District VII establishment that would have sat happily in Brooklyn or Hoxton: bare-brick walls, second-hand furniture and recycled chairs salvaged from school classrooms. Soft jazz drifted through the space. Several pieces of toast smeared with a white paste rested on a plate in front of Balthazar.
Ilona asked, ‘And your colleagues, Anastasia and the other girl, what was her name?’
‘They are fine.’ Balthazar did not reply to Ilona’s question about Vivi, instead offered her the snacks. ‘Would you like to try one?’
She looked down at the plate then at Balthazar, doubt written large on her face. ‘What is it?’
‘Vegan lard bread,’ he replied as he picked up another piece of toast and bit in. Zsiros kenyer, bread and dripping, was the poor person’s meal in Hungary: a thick smear of animal fat – goose, duck or pork – on bread or toast, sprinkled with paprika and topped with a slice of red onion. The Boho Bar’s version was made out of tofu, laced with chilli, spread on sesame crackers. It tasted better than he expected, the chilli giving the tofu a nice bite. One of the house craft beers would wash it down nicely, but Balthazar was sticking to sparkling mineral water. He knew he needed all his wits about him for this encounter.
Ilona asked, ‘Are you a vegan, Detective? You don’t look like a vegan.’
Balthazar smiled. Why not play the game a little? ‘What do vegans look like?’
Ilona’s eyes opened slightly wider. ‘Thin, pale, weedy.’
‘No, I am not. Not even a vegetarian.’ He offered the plate again. ‘Try one.’
Ilona shook her head. ‘No thank you.’ She sat back, still looking at Balthazar, a slight frown on her face, clearly trying to work out who he was and how to deal with him. ‘Tell me about yourself, Detective. Are you from Budapest? How long have you been a policeman? I’ve seen that footage of you on the internet, taking down the Gardener, stopping the attack on Kossuth Square. I’m having coffee with a celebrity. A celebrity detective.’
Balthazar obliged with a potted history of his life so far – growing up in District VIII, university, starting a PhD on the Poraymus, his work as a detective, but leaving out his marriage and divorce. Ilona listened and, as far as he could tell, was genuinely interested. The atmosphere began to ease, although he knew that this meeting was business rather than social. Still, she was a very pretty woman, and sometimes it was fine to just appreciate the attention, whatever motivation lurked in the background.
Ilona asked, ‘And being a Gypsy and a cop, how is that?’
‘Do you want the long version or the short one?’
Ilona smiled regretfully. ‘I would like the longer one, but today I only have time for the short.’
‘Overall, it’s fine. My boss looks out for me. I am not always loved, but I believe I am respected.’
‘Vitamin P, we call it. Proteksia. And when you have to arrest Gypsies?’
He gave her a wry smile. She was as smart as she was attractive, he realised. ‘That’s always interesting. Sometimes they yell at me, call me all sorts of things, question whether my parents were married, or suggest various farm animals I could connect with.’
Ilona laughed. ‘May I?’ she asked, gesturing at the plate of snacks. Balthazar nodded. She took one and bit into the cracker. ‘You’re right. Not bad.’
Balthazar continued talking. ‘Or they just laugh and give me their hands for the cuffs. Prison sentences here are not usually very long. They know what’s coming.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So, you’ve heard about me, now tell me something about you. Where is your family from, originally, before Israel?’
‘The two Bs, Baghdad and Budapest. My father’s family left Iraq in the 1940s, my grandmother escaped from here in late 1944, somehow made it to Romania, then Turkey and Palestine. She lived around the corner, on Wesselenyi Street, number 36.’
‘So you are Hungarian?’
‘One quarter, a very proud quarter.’
‘Do you speak Hungarian?’
‘A few words, not much more. I’d like to learn.’ Ilona blinked for a second, sat up straight, as if realising she was opening up too much. Her tone changed, turned businesslike. ‘Detective, I wanted to meet you today to find out more about the attack on Klauzal Square. We are obviously very concerned about this, a gunman on the loose a couple of days before our prime minister arrives, and the smoke bomb attack on a Jewish-owned café, followed by a gunman shooting up a car parked outside. At the same time, as you know, an Israeli citizen has gone missing. This changes the security situation. Do you think the gunman was after Anastasia and the other girl?’
‘I think it was a warning. If he wanted to kill them, he would have, or at least tried to. He hit the windscreen then drove off. But still, this is very serious.’
Ilona considered this for a moment. ‘Yes, it is, even if thankfully nobody was hurt. I’m curious, though, why was Anastasia there? Why this bar, Javitas, of all places?’
Because Vivi was decrypting a memory stick that Elad had hidden in Eva neni’s bathroom, Balthazar thought. Instead he answered, ‘You must ask her that. She is not a police officer.’
‘I will. The owner, this Mishi guy, he is Jewish, right? Was this an anti-Semitic attack?’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ The main dangers in District VII were being overcharged in a tourist restaurant, losing a wallet to a pickpocket or accidentally getting into a drunken brawl with a British stag party. Serious violent attacks in Budapest were rare outside mafia disputes, those against Jews even rarer, and gunfire almost unheard of. ‘I hope not. It would be the first of its kind.’
Ilona’s gaze sharpened. ‘Still, all this is taking place right outside the building where Elad lives – and the day after he disappears. That’s not by chance, is it?’
Balthazar took a sip of his water before he answered. She was right, of course. ‘We don’t know. We are working on that. But it may be a coincidence.’
Ilona sat back. ‘A coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences. Not when an Israeli has gone missing. OK, Detective. Let’s get down to business. What have you got for me?’
Balthazar had told Sandor Takacs that he was meeting Ilona. Sandor had warned him not to share anything important with her, at least until Balthazar and Anastasia had a much clearer idea of what was going on and how and why Elad had disappeared. Israel was a friendly country, and an ally of Hungary, but the interests of the Budapest police and the Jewish state were not necessarily the same. Balthazar had decided that he might trade a few snippets with Ilona, depending how the conversation went, but overall, he agreed with Sandor. In any case, as his grandfather had taught him, only family gets things for free.
Balthazar said, ‘We have what you have – the CCTV footage of Elad in the city before he disappeared.’
Earlier that morning Vivi had managed to find several recordings of Elad on Wednesday afternoon, video of the last time he had been seen, from the municipal network. Vivi had decided to try working with Anastasia for a few days’ trial. If it worked out, she would join the state security service full-time. If not, she would go back to her room at Javitas, once the police allowed the bar to reopen.
The video showed Elad walking to Astoria, then down Rakoczi Way and over the Elisabeth Bridge to the Buda side. From there he vanished. Downtown was reasonably well covered by cameras – especially the area around the synagogue and the nearby headquarters of the Jewish community – but there was much less coverage in Buda, where the population was spread much thinner. Anastasia had sent the footage to the Israelis as soon as it was ready.
Ilona drummed her nails on the salvaged wooden table. ‘I’ve seen it. It shows him taking a walk then disappearing. The footage was taken on Wednesday. Today is Friday. Where did he go next?’
Balthazar said, ‘We don’t know. We would like to, obviously. We are working on it, as fast as we can.’
‘Try harder, please.’
Balthazar picked up another cracker and ate it in one go. Ilona looked at her watch.
Now his voice turned businesslike. ‘Sure, we can do that, but what can you share with us? Your organisation has far more resources than the Budapest police. We could make more rapid progress if you would share the information you have on Elad. His background, his education, army service and so on. The more information we have, the more potential leads we can explore. We haven’t received much from your side. In fact, we haven’t received anything. Nobody has even replied to our request.’
Ilona said, ‘The diplomatic service of the State of Israel is fully cooperating with our Hungarian partners. We are looking for the information you have requested.’
Balthazar took a drink from his glass of mineral water then looked around the room. Her bodyguards, two very fit-looking, shaven-headed Israelis in their twenties, stood nearby, one in the near corner, the other in the far corner. One of the bodyguards was watching Balthazar and Ilona, sensing the rising tension, while the second was scanning the room and the staircase that led to the upper bar. Diplomats in Budapest were usually protected by Hungarian police officers from a special squad. Clearly, the locals had been ditched.
He put his glass down slowly, and let the silence play out. Silence, he had learned from countless interrogations of suspects, was probably the most underrated technique in an investigator’s armoury. Endless television cop series showed police officers yelling at suspects or threatening them to get information. But saying nothing often yielded far better dividends. People started to babble to fill the quiet, especially when they were concealing something.
Ilona blinked first. ‘Have you been to the museum, to see Erno Hartmann? Does he know anything more about Elad?’
‘This morning.’ Balthazar paused. ‘I met a friend of yours on the way.’
