‘This is not the Gendarmerie. No rough stuff. That’s all over,’ Attila said, emphatically shaking his head. ‘I am a respectable businessman now. Apart from Nationwide we have some nice fancy clients – American CEOs living the expat high life, Chinese businessmen, German bankers. I have to focus on Nationwide now, but the others need looking after. I’ll at least triple your salary, Tazi. You can have a modern office, a hot secretary, expenses, a car – whatever you want.’
He looked down at his desk for several moments, exhaled, then looked back up at Balthazar. ‘Look, Tazi. I owe you one. I was going down the wrong path.’
Balthazar thought before he answered. On one level, Attila’s offer was tempting. A tripling of his salary – even a fifty per cent increase – would be welcome. Much of it already went on maintenance payments to Sarah and lately she had been asking for more to cover Alex’s fees at the American school, even though she was paid far more than him in her job at Central European University.
There was a chance, he guessed, that at least part of Attila’s company was clean and legitimate, probably the part dealing with the expatriates. But if he ever left the police force, it would be to work for his people in some way, not for an overpaid job in a private security company. His conversation with Erno Hartmann still echoed in his mind, about a museum commemorating the Poraymus and the Gypsy contribution to Hungarian culture.
Balthazar said, ‘Thanks, Attila, really. I appreciate the offer. But no thanks, at least for now.’ He leaned forward. ‘So, the guy in Klauzal Square? Because I remember the face,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘But not the name.’
Attila had the grace to look almost embarrassed at the reference to their encounter last September on Republic Square, when Balthazar had been surrounded and threatened by Attila and his fellow gendarmes. ‘OK, Tazi, this one I will give you. Geza. His name is Geza. I offered him a job when we set up the company, but he said no, said he had some freelance offers.’
‘Geza what?’
‘Geza Kovacs.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe he’s a relative of yours.’
Kovacs was Hungarian for Smith. And Geza Kovacs, whoever he was, was clearly not a Gypsy. ‘Very funny. He’s not.’
Attila looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘OK. Let’s be serious. So what’s this Kovacs doing sitting around in Klauzal Square with a walkie-talkie in his hand, being stalked by the country’s best-known cop a few seconds before a gunman on a motorcycle shoots up a car and nearly kills our favourite state security officer?’
Attila had not lost his ability to sum up the situation in two or three sharply focused sentences. Balthazar smiled. ‘I was hoping you could help me with that, Attila.’
‘Like I said, Geza’s gone freelance.’
‘For who?’
‘Nem tom, dunno,’ said Attila, sliding into street slang. ‘Really. Otherwise I would tell you.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘That I do know.’ Attila took out a pen, wrote down an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Balthazar. ‘Tazi,’ he said, his voice serious, ‘be careful.’
TWENTY-THREE
Liberty Square, 4 p.m.
He would be careful, but before going anywhere, Balthazar decided, he would head home and grab something to eat. He stepped out of Attila’s office building onto a small piazza that led onto Liberty Square. From there to Dob Street was just a ten-minute taxi ride, but he would walk at least some of the way, he decided.
The walk would help clear his head, and give him to think through where he was with this case. On the way he would call Anastasia and send her the address Attila had given him, so she could send someone over there to meet him. Or maybe she could come herself. He smiled at that prospect, realised that would be his preferred option.
A memory flashed through his mind. One day last September, before things had turned violent with Attila and his henchmen, Balthazar and Anastasia had been sitting in her car when he had threatened them.
‘The Duchess and the Gypsy. A real Hungarian scene. Someone should paint you both,’ Attila had said, with a smirk on his face.
Still, it was quite a sharp line. The Duchess and the Gypsy. One descended from a line of noble aristocrats and the other from a dynasty of pimps. Could that ever work? Was she even interested? Perhaps, he thought. He remembered how she had blushed when they were joking about Ilona Mizrachi, the times when their eyes had met, the way her leg had brushed against his in her office. Or maybe Anastasia was just being polite and friendly, overcompensating a bit like many liberal-minded Hungarians, to show she wasn’t prejudiced? Sooner or later, he knew, he would find out.
Meanwhile, he had something more pressing to deal with. He needed to speak to Alex. Text messages were generally fine – Alex’s generation seemed to live by them – but he needed to hear his son’s voice. Partly because that was more intimate than staring at characters on a mobile screen, but also because he could hear the timbre and tone of his voice, and sense Alex’s emotions and mental state. Now that Sarah had started playing power games again with his access to his son, he made sure to speak to him every day.
Balthazar glanced at the makeshift Holocaust memorial as he walked through Liberty Square. A young woman with pale-blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses was poring over the testimonies in the plastic folders that were pinned to the rope. He walked over for a moment and watched a tour guide point at the statue of the eagle swooping over the Archangel Gabriel, explaining how inaccurate the imagery was, that Hungary had been many things during the Nazi occupation, but an innocent angel was not one of them.
He was about to walk away when one of the testimonies caught his eye. The photograph and the testimony were very clear – the photograph especially so. He walked over to take a closer look. Miklos and Rahel Berger had been attractive couple, he thought, clearly devoted to each other. The names meant nothing to him but there was something about them that looked almost familiar – why was that?
He read through their brief biography until the last line – Tragically, they were too trusting – then his telephone rang, breaking his line of thought.
He took the call – it was Gyula, a contact of his in the municipal vehicle registration department, ringing with information about the number plate Balthazar had photographed at the Librarian’s funeral. Balthazar had not made an official request to check the plate, as that would be logged and go through the system. Instead he had used every Hungarian’s favourite entranceway: the kiskapu, the little gate where a contact would do an unofficial favour, one to be banked for future credit.
‘That Merc’s registration number you asked me about. I checked it,’ said Gyula.
‘And?’
‘It’s a company vehicle, registered to Nationwide. There’s no more information, no name in particular, just the usual company details.’
‘Thanks, Gyula. I owe you one,’ said Balthazar and hung up.
Distracted by the call, he turned away from the memorial, and headed down Oktober 6 Street. The drizzle had stopped, the wind now just a breeze and the air pleasantly brisk before the chill of the night set in. The building on the corner was a former communist-era office building, now a bank, covered in pale marble. At first glance it looked yet another identikit homogenous structure. But Budapest could still surprise and delight. On its side the architects had preserved a giant fresco of two-metre-tall, sturdy, jolly peasants leading a horse as they brought in the harvest.
So what was his harvest with this case? It was now Friday afternoon. Elad had been missing since Wednesday evening. Balthazar had checked with Eva neni earlier in the day. There was still no sign of him or any messages. She was frantic with worry.
At least he now knew that it was a Nationwide vehicle that had been following Elad. But would Karoly Bardossy really be that unconcerned about leaving a trail of images and evidence that led back to his company, then arrange to kidnap Elad? Especially when he was such an obvious suspect? Maybe Karoly thought his wealth and connections made him invincible. Perhaps he was, for the moment. But nothing lasted forever, especially in Hungary, and Karoly would know that. Why bring so much heat down on yourself?
And what was the connection with the gunfire on Klauzal Square? That was a warning, but from whom? Had Karoly Bardossy, or someone at Nationwide discovered what Vivi had found on the decrypted memory stick? And if they had, then how? Vivi had not told anyone about the contents of the memory stick, except him and Anastasia.
And all of this against the backdrop of the forthcoming visit of the Israeli prime minister in three days – and Ilona Mizrachi’s not very subtle fishing expedition at the Boho Bar. Hopefully, Geza Kovacs would be able to help make sense of this – if he was ready to talk about whoever was paying him.
For a moment Balthazar felt a familiar, unwelcome pressure on the back of his neck as he walked down Oktober 6 Street. The kind of pressure that signalled someone was watching him, perhaps even following him. Then it faded and he was suddenly hit with a burst of nostalgia, displacing everything else.
This part of downtown, the heart of District V, was home to Central European University where Balthazar had for a while been a PhD student. He strolled past the spacious Israeli-owned falafel bar where he had spent so many lunchtimes experimenting with the menu of unfamiliar dishes, and Bestsellers, the English-language bookshop whose friendly owner, Tony, was always happy to recommend his latest choice – and which had always proved enjoyable.
A clutch of students exited one of the CEU buildings on the other side of the road, a 1970s communist-era horror of smoked glass and concrete in the middle of a row of elegant Habsburg apartment houses. Their laughter and happy chatter carried across the street as they discussed where to go for a drink. For a moment Balthazar envied them, not just their youth, but the world of possibilities that they would soon face, where decisions were still to be taken, of life paths that could still go in a myriad of directions.
