There was a brief conversation between Bela and the young woman. She started to protest, then Bela said something that made her stop arguing and reach into her bag. She took out a wallet and showed Bela her identity documents. He took the card and looked down at it for several seconds then handed it back. The young woman jammed it into her pocket, folded up her map and immediately walked away, scowling.
Balthazar’s mobile rang and he listened for less than a minute before thanking Bela and hanging up. He turned to Erno, who was watching the whole event with delighted fascination. ‘Shoshanna Cohen, dentistry student at Semmelweis University,’ said Balthazar. ‘She’s been living here for three years, two blocks up the road on Dohany Street, so I am not sure why she needs a map.’
‘Someone is keeping an eye on you, Detective,’ said Erno.
‘It looks like it. When was Elad last here?’ asked Balthazar.
‘He came in Wednesday morning, stayed until lunchtime, packed up his at laptop and we have not seen him since.’
‘Did he say anything about going somewhere, meeting someone?’
Hartmann shook his head. ‘No. No meetings, no trips. It was not unusual. He wasn’t a museum employee. He came and went as he pleased.’
Balthazar asked, ‘What kind of person is he?’
‘Diligent, polite, kept his desk in order. We had no complaints. What do you think has happened to him? Please tell me what you really think, Detective. I feel very responsible. He came to Budapest to work with us.’
‘We don’t know, and anything that may have happened is not your fault. But we think he has been kidnapped.’
‘Yes, I think so too. Do you think he is still alive?’
Balthazar nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I think whoever has him wants to scare him, stop him digging into something. I understand he was working on Nationwide. Maybe he found out something important, or threatening. Tell me more about what he was researching.’
Hartmann gave Balthazar another of his assessing glances, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘Let’s go to my personal office, Detective. It’s more comfortable there.’
He walked across the room with Balthazar to a door on the other side, stepped through and gestured at Balthazar to follow him. Erno’s workspace had escaped the modernisation. The walls were a faded yellow, the floor a dull, worn parquet, its varnish long-since faded. He had a large, old-fashioned heavy wooden desk, that was piled high with papers, reports and books, and a dark-wood chair whose leatherette cushions were cracked and worn.
Several sepia and black-and-white photographs were carefully arranged on the surface of the desk, by an old-fashioned, thick-framed monitor and keyboard. Books were piled up on the windowsill, on the top of the filing cabinet, and on another, smaller, chair in the far corner. Erno lifted the books off the second chair, brought it over to his desk, sat down in his own chair, then patted the second.
Balthazar sat down and looked around. Hartmann’s room even smelled different, slightly musty and dusty. It wasn’t unpleasant. He took out his notebook and sat back as Hartmann started talking.
‘They asked me if I wanted my space to be all new and fancy like it is outside. I said no, it was a bit late for me. I’ve been in this room for more than forty years and I don’t want to change it now.’ He rearranged some papers on his desk, to little or no effect. ‘So, to answer your question, yes, Elad was researching Nationwide, focusing on its origins. As you may know, Nationwide was first formed after the war in the summer of 1945. It was a conglomerate, merging together several other firms with interests in property, industry and manufacturing.’
The previous evening, once he got home, Balthazar had spent some time on the internet trying to find out more about Nationwide. The company website gave little away. There were plenty of articles about the firm in the Hungarian media, many alluding to its complex structure that seemed to lead to various tax havens and the growing prosperity of its owners and directors, first among them Karoly Bardossy. But none of the investigative journalists had looked at the formation of the company after the end of the war.
Balthazar asked, ‘Merging means what in this case?’
Hartmann exhaled sharply. ‘Appropriating. Stealing, in plain language. Factories, villas, bank accounts, assets, foreign currency accounts abroad. Right down to the office furniture. All funnelled into the new structure. We half knew this, but Elad told me he was digging up new evidence.’
Balthazar took notes as Hartmann spoke. ‘What kind of new evidence?’
‘I don’t know precisely. Elad did say he thought much of Nationwide’s post-war wealth came from one company in particular, but he didn’t say which one.’ Erno smiled ruefully. ‘I am sorry I don’t have more details. Nationwide would not cooperate. No interviews, no access to the company records, no questions at all, then legal threats if Elad kept asking questions. A total stonewall, which surely tells us something. But he kept digging. We agreed that Elad would write a proper report once he had gathered as much evidence and verified as much documentation as he could. It all needed to be put in context as well and properly referenced. I did not want to know snippets of this and that. We needed solid evidence that we could evaluate.’
Balthazar nodded. ‘What about restitution after the change of system? Has Nationwide returned anything to the heirs or the original owners?’
Erno laughed. ‘Forgive me, Detective. No. Nothing. Their lawyers – they have some very fancy lawyers, not just here, but in London and New York – say that as Nationwide, as now constituted, was founded in 1948 and so did not exist in 1944 and 1945 when these properties and assets were acquired by a previous entity, as they put it’ – his voice changed as though reciting very familiar lines – ‘the company has no legal liability for the properties or holdings of any previous entities nor for any actions the previous entities may have or may not have carried out or any agreements entered into by previous entities. Even if the previous entity operated out of the same address, with the same staff and owned the same assets. It’s a neat argument. Very popular in neighbouring countries as well.’
Erno sat back in his chair for a moment, picked up one of the sepia-tinted portraits, showing a distinguished-looking gentleman in his Sabbath best. ‘This was my great uncle, Odon – the one who had charged the machine gun in 1916. He was a lawyer in Debrecen and the town notary. The keeper of Debrecen’s secrets if you like. Which is probably why he was one of the first to be deported. He was a slave labourer at Auschwitz for IG Farben. He lasted six weeks.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Balthazar.
Erno coughed gently, then wiped his eye. ‘So am I. But I am sure you have more questions, Detective.’
Balthazar asked, ‘Which company in particular was a generous benefactor?’
Erno smiled. ‘I’ll give you one guess.’
‘Nationwide.’
‘Yes. They paid for fifty per cent of the renovation, but they didn’t want it made public. Karoly Bardossy asked for a private viewing, which I was happy to provide, of course.’
Balthazar wrote the name of the company in his notebook and scribbled a line about money for the museum. ‘Why did they do that?’
‘Who knows? If and when the whole story comes out, we are a useful alibi. Maybe Karoly Bardossy felt guilty. Maybe he wanted to see who we were and what we were doing. He did ask a lot of questions about our archives and what kind of documents we had. Maybe he was genuinely interested. He seemed to be when he was here. Probably it was mix of all of these.’
Erno shrugged, then continued speaking. ‘People are complicated. They do all sorts of interesting things. Karoly Bardossy came a couple of months ago, before Elad started work. Elad was very interested in the Bardossy family. One branch of them were Arrow Cross, fanatical Hungarian Nazis. Some of them were executed after the war. The other branch, led by Karoly’s father, Tamas, were communist sympathisers, before the communists even took power. They were secretly funding the party during the war, via Swiss bank accounts, even though they were rich capitalists. Tamas saw what was coming, I guess. He was minister of the interior, as you know, during the Stalinist times, and again after 1956. The most powerful position, even more than the prime minister. The interior ministers controlled the secret police. They knew where the bodies were buried. Literally, in some cases. It was a family business. Reka’s father, Hunor, was also interior minister during the early 1990s, until he was killed in a skiing accident.’
‘Is that how Nationwide stayed in business under communism?’
‘Partly. But mainly because even communists need a window to the world, to trade and bring in foreign currency. Better to run that through Nationwide, then they could control it. The national archives had been wiped clean. We had very little documentation. Elad started contacting descendants of the families who had owned the appropriated companies. Some of them did not want to know. Who wants to go up against one of the most powerful businessmen in the country, whose niece is the prime minister? But one or two said they would help him, see what papers they had.’
Erno sat back and exhaled. ‘We had tried ourselves, over the years, of course. But we get much of our funds from the public purse. At one stage, a few years ago, we actually took on a researcher to look at Nationwide.’
‘And then?’
‘And the stories started to appear in the newspapers about impending budget cuts to the cultural sector. Museums would be ranked according to the number of visitors they received.’
Erno smiled. ‘In those days we did not receive that many. It was quite clever. We got the message. But when Elad arrived we thought we could try again. Our finances were finally in decent shape.’
