TWENTY-FOUR

Mariahegyi Way, Obuda hills, 4 p.m.

Karoly Bardossy stood on his terrace and sipped his single-malt whisky as he looked out over Budapest. Far in the distance, past fields and woodland, the city glimmered faintly, as dusk fell. His city.

Sometimes he felt intensely protective of the Hungarian capital. He had reshaped it, moulded the skyline, scraped forty years of dirt off grandiose Habsburg apartment houses, demolished communist-era concrete piles, put up new towers of glass and steel, dragged Budapest into the twenty-first century. Here and there he could make out the faint shapes of Nationwide’ constructions – tall office blocks, residential parks, new museums, shopping centres, gated residential compounds. Whatever was coming – and he sensed that something was – nobody could take away his legacy.

The air here was fresh and clean, sharp with the coldness of winter. The ten-room villa stood high on the top of Mariahegyi – Mary’s hill – and could only be reached by a winding, narrow track through the surrounding woods.

At the end of the track was a security cabin, manned twenty-four hours a day by armed guards. A CCTV network covered the track and the surrounding woodlands, as well as the entrance to the house, the terrace and every room inside, except of course his bedroom and bathroom.

A short tarmacked path led from the security cabin to the entrance of the villa, and the house itself was surrounded by a high wall. There were no neighbours here for several hundred metres in every direction, which is how he liked it. He had designed the villa himself and overseen the construction in conjunction with an Italian architect whose usual clients were Russian oligarchs. All the materials, from the imported marble tiles to the custom-made furniture, and the labour had been run through the construction division of Nationwide. The architect had accepted payment in 500-euro notes from the company’s petty cash.

Karoly turned to look at the house, its angular modernist facade softly illuminated by light-sensitive LEDs. His home had not cost him personally a single forint, which only increased his pleasure.

He took another sip of his whisky when a soft cough sounded to his right. He turned to see Porter, his butler, standing expectantly. ‘Will sir require the jacuzzi later tonight?’

The jacuzzi sat on a raised teak platform and took up most of the corner of the terrace. Thursday nights were his midweek break and time for female company, lately in the shape of two nineteen-year-old countryside girls who claimed to be sisters. He had no idea if that was true, but they certainly seemed very well acquainted.

He had first met them in the VIP suite of his favourite brothel, a villa in the Buda hills, on the recommendation of the madam. Karoly had been a customer there for many years, as was much of the city’s business and political elite. After his wife died last year there was no need for him to spend two hours travelling there and back. Instead he had asked the madam to send the girls to him.

The owner, an overweight Gypsy, had agreed, but had asked for an extra fifty per cent. Money wasn’t an issue and Karoly had paid. Usually, the three of them would bathe together, drink a substantial amount of vintage champagne, then retire to the master bedroom. It was Porter’s job to have the drinks ready on ice as well as a supply of gourmet snacks.

Karoly shook his head. ‘No thank you, Porter. Not tonight. Please call the agency and cancel the visit. I’ll call you if I need something.’

Porter had served in the British army for twenty years before retraining as a butler. He had previously worked for a Kazakh oilman until his master was found slumped at the wheel of his Ferrari with a small hole in his forehead. Six feet tall, with laser-sharp hazel eyes and close-cropped steel-coloured hair, the Englishman was the very soul of discretion. Still, Karoly kept the cocaine in his bedroom, where he parcelled out the lines himself. It would not be fair to ask Porter to engage in illegality, and anyway, by that stage even the most discreet butler would doubtless prefer not to be a witness to what followed.

Porter nodded as he retreated into the house. ‘Very good, sir.’

Karoly glanced at his watch, a vintage Patek Philippe that had cost him €50,000. He had bought the watch for his son Fulop as a thirtieth birthday gift, an attempt to repair their fractured relationship. But Fulop had moved out the day after his mother died and cut all communication with his father. He was now living in London, in a part of the city Karoly had never heard of, called Shoreditch, working for an internet start-up, or so the private detectives he had employed told him. The private detectives had found out details of Fulop’s bank account in London. Karoly had transferred £5,000. Fulop had immediately sent it back.

Karoly tipped back his glass and finished off the whisky. The bottle, from a small distillery on the isle of Jura where he had bought a controlling interest, stood on a small table nearby, with a crystal bowl of ice and jug of water. He looked at the drink then shook his head.

He needed a clear mind for this evening. Instead he walked over and poured himself a glass of water. He took a long drink, sat down on one of the chairs on the terrace and picked up a cream-coloured cashmere blanket from a nearby pile and wrapped it around his shoulders. For now he had more immediate problems than a son who refused to communicate.

His relations with Reka had been cool for years, but had turned glacial after the death of his brother, her father, in a skiing accident more than twenty years ago. He had hoped that when Reka became prime minister he could repair things – Hungary was a small country, where the political and business elites were entwined and her predecessors had usually courted him. Instead she had cancelled a number of major state contracts with Nationwide, citing irregularities in the tendering process, and refused to meet either him or anyone from his company.

This was problematic, not just because of the immediate loss of income, but also because of the way he – and Nationwide – were now perceived. News of the government cancellations spread quickly. Nobody wanted to be tainted by association. Suppliers were putting their prices up, demanding faster payments. Other company tenders, from different divisions and for non-government work, were not chosen, even though their price was the lowest. Still, none of this would matter if he could make this deal with the Israelis work. Unimaginable riches would follow.

He drank some more of the water as he stared out into the night. Far overhead an airplane passed on its way to land at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc airport, its wing lights blinking in the night. Fulop, Reka, sliding turnover, cancelled contracts, all of these he could deal with. The first two were probably not fixable and the others would not last forever. The company had enough cash in the bank to tide over several lean years. But the real problem was the Israeli historian.

Karoly had used his contacts in the police and security service to track Elad Harrari’s communications and internet research. But the Israeli was very security-conscious, almost as though he knew he was being watched. He used a network of VPNs and proxy servers to disguise his trail across cyberspace. One of Karoly’s people had told him that he thought Elad was filming the car that was following him. Elad’s emails were just brief notes to his family at home; he rarely spoke on the phone and much of his work was carried out in the archives of the Jewish Museum, none of which were online. Karoly had told the firm’s communications people to stonewall every request, and then sent the lawyers in with threats of criminal prosecution. None of that had worked. They all knew that Elad was not breaking any laws. The smarter play, perhaps, would have been to welcome Elad with a smile and promises of cooperation then drip-feed him bits and pieces of information that led nowhere significant. But it was too late for that. Elad Harrari, Karoly sensed, was onto something. Which made him dangerous.

So where the hell was he?

Karoly had put out an alert at the borders and at the airport, but nobody going by that name, or answering his description, had left. Still, Hungary bordered seven countries and there were no checks on the road to Vienna. He could be anywhere by now, writing up his report.

And that was what worried Karoly the most. There were two dark secrets in his family and both were inextricably bound together. For a moment he was back at the funeral of the Librarian, watching his niece speak to the crowd, all of whom were asking a question she was about to answer:

After consulting with my advisors, and several historians, I have decided that the overwhelming historical importance of the materials means Toth’s archive must be preserved for current and future generations.

This was a disaster waiting to happen.

The Librarian had known everything. Somewhere in that pile of musty papers, he would have made the connection between those two events. And if that came out it would be the end of everything: of Nationwide, his comfortable life in this house, of any chance of reconciliation with his son and the deal with the Israelis. Especially the deal with the Israelis. Instead he would be looking at shame, disgrace and a lengthy prison sentence. Anxiety twisted inside him.

He would have a little more whisky, he decided. He stood up and walked over to the table and poured himself a small measure, topped with a few drops of water. He sipped the mix, trying to focus on the complexity of the bouquet and the aftertaste. Honey, bitter oranges and notes of dark chocolate, the whisky master had promised him. But the alcohol was sour in his mouth. He could definitely taste bitter oranges, but not much else.

Still, at least the long-term project was coming to fruition. The money spent on funding the Workers’ Alliance and the National Renewal Movement was really proving its worth. The hoodlums and thugs rampaging around on demonstrations were also earning their pay. Support for the ruling Social Democrats was leaking in all directions. It was commonplace now to hear that the government was losing control, that law and order were collapsing.

Karoly smiled at the memory of the first time he had seen the mock-up of the posters declaring Eleg volt a komcsikbol, We’ve had enough of the commies. And those pictures of Reka, sharpening her features, adding shadows, making her look devilish. What did they call it – photoshopping? It was a marvel. Technology made it so easy to manipulate people. There were no communists any more, had not been for decades. That system, the idiotic ideology of equality, had only ever been a front, a gloss to ensure that once the old, bourgeois elite had been disposed of, a new one could take its place. With the Bardossy family front and centre, and profiting handsomely – at least until Reka became prime minister. His greatest enemy was his own niece. For a moment he wondered what his brother Hunor would say, then quickly banished the thought.

Instead, he considered the events of the last couple of days. The smoke bomb at the bar and the shooting outside had not worked. The cop, the state security woman and her hacker sidekick were all still on the case. And the video file that he’d hoped would bring Reka down had fizzled into nothing. Part of him was admiring. His niece had played that gambit rather brilliantly. All of which meant he would now have to escalate. It was dangerous, but there was no option.

And if the Israeli had disappeared, the cop had not. He lived in the same building as where Elad had been staying. There was some connection to a neighbour, an old Jewish lady. The cop was key, Karoly knew. He was a Gypsy, could not sit still, roamed around the city day and night. How hard could it be to bring him in? This should have been a job for the new security company that he had hired – which he would never have done if he had known that Attila Ungar was the cop’s former partner.

But that didn’t matter in the end, because people a lot more efficient than the hoodlums and ex-gendarmes that Attila employed were on the cop’s trail.

Karoly glanced at the house. Once he had him here, he would find out exactly what he – what they all – knew.

TWENTY-FIVE

St Istvan Square, 4.45 p.m.

Balthazar stepped away from the young woman, and carried on walking up Zrinyi Street into St Istvan Square. Once he was a few yards in, he turned back for a moment. The young woman was sitting with the guy in the brown jacket at the café table. They seemed to be arguing.

He smiled and walked down the side of the Bazilika. The church entrance was higher than street level and the building was surrounded by a low wall and several steps. He sat on the steps for a moment watching the flow of people around him and called Alex. Nothing happened. He looked at his iPhone, an old model that lately was frequently playing up. The screen had a hairline crack and volume control barely worked. The handset was definitely coming to the end of its useful life. It was time to change it, he knew. He tried again – this time the call went through. The phone rang and rang but eventually the boy picked up.

As soon as he spoke, his dull, resigned ‘Hi, Dad’ told Balthazar that something was wrong. He let Alex speak for a while, with his usual chatter about school and his friends, then asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s not fair,’ he exclaimed, his voice full of youthful indignation.

‘What isn’t?’ asked Balthazar. He sighed inside, as he knew exactly what was coming. The only question was why – what would be the latest reason?

‘Mum says I can’t come now on Saturday. I have to be with her. I have to go to American nagyi’s birthday.’

American nagyi – grandma – was Sarah’s mother Elsa Rosenbaum, a well-to-do New York socialite and widow who spent her time doing good works. Elsa had just made a substantial donation to a new library wing at CEU and was also close friends with the American ambassador, a person of considerable influence in Budapest, as Sarah often reminded Balthazar when they argued about his access to Alex.

Balthazar watched a tourist couple stare at the menu of the small restaurant across the road. ‘How? American nagyi lives in New York.’

‘She’s flying in tonight. Mum says we are going to the Four Seasons for dinner to celebrate. She’s seventy or something. She’s OK, but it’s going to be soooo boring. I don’t want to go. I want to be with you, Dad.’

Balthazar felt a familiar anger start to rise up. The divorce agreement gave him one day with Alex every other weekend and two hours one evening a week. His erratic work hours meant he could not always arrange to see Alex for the two hours in the evening. Sarah sometimes let him trade that evening for an overnighter on the weekend and that had been their plan for Saturday.

‘Let me speak to Mum,’ said Balthazar. ‘Give her your phone.’

‘She’s not here. She’s gone to the airport with Amanda.’

At one stage a year or so ago, Balthazar had seen so little of his son that he had taken to borrowing an unmarked police car and parking across the road from the entrance to the American school in the village of Nagykovacsi, just outside Budapest, simply to get a glimpse of Alex.