For a second he was puzzled. Why wasn’t he coughing and retching?
The street began to spin and the world turned dark.
THIRTY-SIX
Remetehegyi Way, 9.30 p.m.
Eniko sat hunched over her laptop, her stomach tight with anxiety, staring at the video that filled up the homepage of newsline.hu.
She had watched it three times by now and a flashing panel proclaimed that more footage would be uploaded soon. HERO POLICE OFFICER ABDUCTED BY FAKE COPS? DRAMA TONIGHT ON WESSELENYI STREET! blared the headline, next to a large photograph of Balthazar.
A short and shaky film, it showed the blue Mercedes skewed across the road, with its windows smashed and the driver slumped against the airbag while Balthazar staggered out of the car. He then encountered the two men in police uniforms. One stood in front of him, the other behind. The sound was unclear, overloaded with voices as if whoever was holding the camera was shouting with excitement at her friends to come and see what was happening.
One of the policemen sprayed something directly into Balthazar’s face. He waved his hands, trying to bat away the mist, to no effect. The other officer, behind him, caught Balthazar as he crumpled, then dragged him to the waiting police car. The doors closed and the vehicle sped away down Wesselenyi Street. Spliced onto the end of the footage was an interview with a teenage girl with purple hair, who gave an excited account of what she had seen.
Eniko exhaled hard, sat back and closed her eyes for a moment, everything that had happened in the last couple of days rushing through her mind: Reka’s video, the deepfake strategy, Reka’s plan to release the truth about her family’s dark wartime history and now this, Balthazar staggering from a car crash, dazed and bloodied, before being gassed and abducted.
Meanwhile, the shooting on Dob Street was giving Reka’s opponents a strong attack line on the daytime and evening chat shows, accusing the prime minister and her government of losing control of the streets, letting the capital descend into lawlessness. One channel, funded by a right-wing oligarch who made no secret of his desire to depose Reka, had somehow got hold of some CCTV footage that showed the gunman on the motorcycle opening fire and was showing it continually.
Eniko opened her eyes, took a drink from her glass of water. If all that wasn’t enough, it now turned out Elad wasn’t missing at all, but was here, working on some kind of article or statement about Nationwide with Zsuzsa in the garden house. This was quite incredible news. Reka had promised her that this was the last secret she had been keeping from her, but how could Eniko believe that? What else was buried from Reka’s dark past – or her present – that would be suddenly dumped on her?
The real question, one that Eniko was increasingly asking herself, was how much longer did she want to keep on doing this? Working for Reka had been – still was – an incredibly interesting experience, one that brought her closer to the fire, as the Hungarian saying went, than anyone else, apart from Reka herself and Akos Feher.
But over the last few months she had realised that she was still a reporter at heart. She wanted to break the news, not manage it. And there was something else she could admit to herself, if nobody else.
She missed Balthazar. She was starting to think, actually admit to herself, that she had made a terrible mistake in dumping him. Instead of moving in with him, as he had suggested, she had run away to London and worked for Newsweek. Looking at the video footage of him getting abducted not only made her angry, but also sick with worry.
Eniko glanced at Reka, who was standing on the other side of the room, by the large windows that opened onto the terrace, talking to Akos Feher, nodding vociferously.
Why was the prime minister so obsessed with Nationwide? It seemed a strange, even deeply unwise strategy to go to war with one of the country’s largest companies a few days before an important diplomatic visit and a general election soon after that.
Especially as Nationwide was the Bardossy family business – essentially owned and run by her uncle. Of course, that was somehow tied into the whole story. Eniko knew that Reka and Karoly Bardossy could not stand each other. Their mutual antipathy was an open secret among Budapest’s business and political elites. There was something deeply personal there, but what?
For now, that would have to wait. Eniko’s immediate concern was Balthazar. She pressed play and watched the video clip again until the moment he stepped out of the car. She pressed pause and froze the frame. Something about Balthazar’s hands. She leaned forward, focusing hard on what she saw. Yes, that was it. There were shreds of tape around his wrists. Police officers did not use duct tape – or knockout sprays.
He had been abducted twice, once in the first Mercedes that had crashed – presumably he had caused that collision – and then again.
This level of backup, to have a second car ready in case the first failed, was highly organised. Who was behind this? Somehow she knew that this was connected to Nationwide and Elad Harrari. There was too much going on in the city in the last twenty-four hours for this to be any kind of coincidence.
Eniko looked at Reka once more. She had stopped talking on her phone and walked over to Eniko with Akos. They sat on the sofa, one on either side of her.
‘You look very stressed,’ said Reka.
‘You both need to see this,’ said Eniko, pointing at her laptop screen. She gave them both a few seconds to read and absorb the headline and the photograph then pressed play.
Reka and Akos both watched the clip. Reka sat back, silent for a few moments as she processed what she had seen. Just when she thought everything – and everyone – was in place, this happened.
Eniko said, ‘They aren’t real cops, are they?’
She played the video segment once, this time freezing it at the point where Balthazar was waving his hands after being sprayed. Eniko pointed at the shreds of tape on his wrists. ‘That’s duct tape.’
At that moment Reka’s mobile rang. She glanced down at the number. ‘I’m sorry, Eniko, I need to take this. And he might have some answers for us.’
Reka pressed the accept button, lifted the handset to her ear. ‘Yes, Sanyi, I’m watching it now.’ She mouthed ‘Sandor Takacs’ at Eniko, then carried on speaking. ‘I don’t know anything more than you do. Are they real cops?’
Reka waited for the answer. ‘No, I didn’t think so either. Who sent them? I am not sure. But I have a pretty good idea.’
Reka ended the call, and walked over to the picture window. She stood there for a minute or so, lost in thought. Eniko and Akos looked at each other quizzically, but said nothing.
Reka made another call. It was answered almost immediately. ‘Antal, I need you to bring someone else here,’ she said. ‘Now, please.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Tito Grill, 10.30 p.m.
The Council of War was composed of a veteran officer of the state security service descended from Transylvanian aristocrats, a highly skilled computer hacker who was its newest employee, the city’s most powerful pimp, his consigliere, and a Serbian restaurant owner with a shadowy past.
Several of them had met before, even worked together. Last autumn Anastasia had also been held captive in the basement torture chamber of the former police villa in the Buda hills, in a neighbouring room to Balthazar. It was Gaspar and Fat Vik who had led the charge into the building, rescuing both of them, with the help of Attila Ungar after he changed sides.
Now they were gathered at a corner table inside the restaurant while Biljana and Marika ferried over a continual supply of drinks – but no alcohol, that was universally agreed, at least until they got Balthazar back – and food.
All of them had also watched the footage of Balthazar’s abduction on newsline.hu, but Vivi was now hacking in and out of the city’s municipal CCTV network, sitting at the corner table, with the others standing around her, trying to follow the car’s progress through the city.
The footage showed the fake police car cutting through downtown and roaring down the tramlines on the Margaret Bridge onto the Buda side, then turning right. The cameras showed the vehicle’s course as it sped along the embankment, then coverage ended.
Vivi looked up at the group. ‘That’s it. They were headed towards Obuda.’
Gaspar, Fat Vik, Goran and Anastasia sat back down at the table. Gaspar reached for one of the toothpicks in a small plastic box.
