‘I can ask around,’ said Balthazar.
‘Thanks.’ Goran shot Balthazar a look. ‘She likes you.’
Balthazar smiled. ‘Really?’
‘I think Slav girl is better for you. Not so many games as Hungarians. Yes, we are together. No, we are not. Maybe you, maybe Csaba, maybe Zoltan. Serb girls make their mind up.’
‘You are probably right,’ said Balthazar, but now wasn’t the time for that conversation. Now he needed sleep and to wake up with a reasonably clear head. ‘How’s the car?’
The car was a turbo-charged Lada Niva, a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle that was far tougher than its fancy Japanese equivalents that cost at least double the price.
Goran smiled, and knocked back his glass of sliva. He held the bottle over Balthazar’s glass, but Balthazar shook his head.
‘Car is fine,’ said Goran. ‘Do you want a ride?’
Balthazar nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
Goran laughed. ‘Fun ride, like last time? Or normal ride?’
Balthazar had last sat in Goran’s vehicle the previous September, during the refugee crisis. Goran had accompanied Balthazar to a cage fight between two migrants where the prize was a Hungarian passport. On the way home they had been stopped by two gendarmes pretending to be policemen.
Goran had burst through the fake checkpoint. When the gendarmes pursued them he led them through a wooded area, and managed to get several of the gendarmes’ cars to bang into each other. Balthazar and Goran then threw several stun grenades, blinding and disorientating the drivers even more, causing a second set of crashes, before escaping.
Balthazar said, ‘Normal ride please. Home.’
Goran looked across the room and nodded at a dark-haired, wiry man in a white T-shirt sitting at a corner table, nursing a coffee and reading a two day old copy of Blic, a Serbian tabloid newspaper. This was Memed, a Bosnian Muslim from Sarajevo and one of Goran’s lieutenants. Memed never touched alcohol. Memed walked over, shook hands with Balthazar and said, ‘Hajdemo, let’s go.’
The two men stepped outside and began to walk down Nemet Street, where Goran’s Lada Niva was parked nearby.
THIRTY-TWO
Margaret Bridge, 8 p.m.
Zsuzsa sat in the back of the Audi, waiting for the traffic to clear so that the car could turn right from Jaszai Mari Square onto the Margaret Bridge.
The evening scene looked familiar, almost comforting. An orange tram trundled across the bridge onto the Grand Boulevard as it headed towards Nyugati Station. A gaggle of teenagers loafed around the McDonald’s on the corner while a middle-aged lady in lycra with a determined expression on her face pedalled her mountain bike down the cycle path.
Zsuzsa felt nervous, excited, but also reassured by the company of the two men. Antal, who had picked her up, was sitting in front of her, while another man called Gyuri was driving. Both were tall, burly and shaven-headed, and looked like they could handle themselves. The two men wore small radio earpieces under which she could see a pale cable, tightly curled, stretching into their jacket pockets. They were tense, on alert, she sensed.
Antal turned round for a moment as the car slowly began to move forward. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ she replied, nodding. ‘Where are we going?’
He glanced at his watch, a large Rolex, she saw. ‘Obuda. Remetehegyi Way. We should be there in twelve minutes.’ He paused for a moment, looking at Zsuzsa in an unusual way, as though assessing her – not whether or not she was attractive, but as though trying to make a judgement. ‘Strapped in properly?’
Zsuzsa nodded. She was held in place by a four-point seatbelt that reached around her hips and over her shoulders, the kind usually worn by flight attendants sitting by the emergency exit on an airplane.
‘Good. Keep your seatbelt on.’
She nodded. ‘Sure. Why? Are we going to crash?’
Antal seemed to come a decision. ‘Not with Gyuri driving. But there may be some… interference ahead. I’ll let you know. You’ve been on an airplane?’
‘Of course.’
‘Think of this car like a plane, Zsuzsa. If I shout brace, lean back and push your head back into the cushion on the headrest. You’ll be fine. The seat belt will hold you in place. Just make sure your head does not fly forward. Got that?’
Zsuzsa blinked. Brace?
What had she got herself into here?
Antal said, ‘Show me, please.’
She did as he asked, resting the back of her head into the front of the head rest. ‘Push harder, and tense yourself, squeeze your muscles, so you can’t move,’ said Antal.
Zsuzsa pushed harder, tensing her back and shoulders, forcing her head into the headrest.
Antal nodded. ‘Better. Sit back now and enjoy the ride.’
She would try, she told herself, as the car turned properly onto Margaret Bridge and she looked leftwards to take in the night-time view. The city could still take her breath away with its luminous beauty. The Danube shone black, its waters sleek and glistening. The neo-Gothic extravaganza of the parliament building loomed over the river, its sharp spires and domed roof glowing golden, like some fantastic castle in a fairy story. Across the water the lights of Buda were spread out like a carpet of jewels reaching high into the hills, blinking and shimmering in the dark. Two flags flew from the lampposts spaced along the bridge – the red, white and green of Hungary and the blue-and-white ensign of Israel.
Margaret Bridge wasn’t straight. It had a large kink in the middle from where a feeder road ran down onto the island. The few pedestrians around were bundled up against the cold, and by now the commuter traffic had finished and the roads were quite clear. A metal fence separated the edge of the road from the bicycle path that ran along the bridge. A teenager in a lime-green hoodie zipped past her in the opposite direction, on a scooter with tiny wheels.
Gyuri took the bend at speed, the G-force pushing her back in the leather seat. No need to brace yet, but it would be a relief when they finally arrived, and Eniko and Reka could tell her what all this was about. Still, she was enough of a reporter to take mental notes of the journey so far. She could already start to write the colour story to go with the main one, the story of how she got the story. A headline something like ‘How I Was Smuggled Into the Prime Minister’s Residence at Night’ would work nicely, she thought.
A few metres before the tram stop at the end of the bridge, the Audi cut into the traffic without indicating, triggering several indignant bursts of hooting from nearby drivers. Gyuri moved across into the far-right lane and turned right.
A red light showed at a zebra crossing, but there was nobody in sight and the car went straight through at speed. Zsuzsa glanced at the apartment block at the side of the road. She could see a young couple through the window, sitting down to their evening meal. The man leaned forward across the small table to kiss the woman before they started eating.
