Balthazar nodded, half smiling. He could guess what was coming. ‘We have met twice now, Detective Kovacs. Once when you were knocked unconscious and again when you have again subjected your body to notable trauma. You are now at least sitting upright and talking. But you are in your mid-thirties. You are slower and need more time to heal than you think. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.’
Balthazar glanced around the room. Anastasia was watching them both, affection and concern written on her face. Gaspar was nodding at the doctor’s words, his jowls wobbling.
Balthazar asked, ‘And the advice, Doctor?’
She gathered her equipment and began to pack away. ‘Get a desk job, Detective.’
The doctor turned to Gaspar and Anastasia. ‘If he won’t go to hospital, then someone needs to stay with him tonight. If he vomits, or his condition worsens, or if he passes blood, you must call an ambulance.’
Gaspar and Anastasia looked at each other and nodded. They thanked the doctor and Gaspar walked her out to the front door of the flat.
He spent a couple of minutes in the kitchen, smiling as he looked at the photographs on Balthazar’s pinboard of the two brothers as children, then walked out into the lounge. There he picked up the large framed photograph of Virag and stared at it for some time, his stubby fingers resting on her face. The doctor was right about the desk job. He had already lost a sister – and he could not lose his brother.
Gaspar put the photograph down, walked across to one of the armchairs, picked it up and carried it through to Balthazar’s bedroom. His brother was fast asleep on his side. Anastasia sat on the end of the bed, watching him. Gaspar put the armchair down by the side of the bed and moved to sit in it.
Anastasia said, ‘It’s fine, Gaspar. I can stay with him.’
Loud voices echoed from the street for a few seconds, shouting in English, then faded as the partygoers moved past. Balthazar murmured for a moment, then fell silent.
Gaspar asked, ‘Are you sure? There’s nowhere to sleep properly. That chair is thirty years old. It’s not very comfortable.’
‘Really, I will be fine. Don’t worry.’
Gaspar thought for a moment. The doctor had said someone needed to stay with him. And he was responsible for his brother. He looked at Anastasia again, understanding slowly dawning.
She smiled. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens. I promise.’
Gaspar nodded. Being a good brother also meant knowing when to get out of the way. He stepped forward, kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Colonel. And for everything tonight.’
He walked over to Balthazar, bent over him to stroke his hair, whispered, ‘Bro, try not to mess this one up.’
He switched the main light off, turning to look before he left. Anastasia was sitting in the chair by Balthazar’s bed, watching him as his chest slowly rose and fell. The sound of his breathing echoed in the small space, softly lit by the pale glow of the streetlights on Klauzal Square.
FORTY-TWO
Obuda, Sunday, 9 a.m.
Reka and Karoly Bardossy stood facing each other on either side of a barbecue pit in the Obuda park. Charred pieces of wood and a half-burned log lay on the ground between them. In spring and summer teenagers gathered here for makeshift barbecues but now the fragments were covered in a thin layer of ice.
The prime minister and her uncle had agreed to meet here, on neutral territory, in the middle of a green space roughly equidistant from each of their houses. Two semicircular benches framed the barbecue pit, but nobody was sitting.
Antal Kondor stood a few feet from Reka; George Porter watched over Karoly Bardossy, although the bodyguard was now unarmed. It was a crisp, sunny winter morning, with white streaks of clouds in a clear blue sky. The air smelled fresh, of woodlands and earth. The sound of distant traffic murmured in the background.
Reka looked up for a moment, feeling the bright sun on her skin, then at Karoly. ‘There’s two ways this can go, Uncle.’
He snapped back, his voice taut with anger. ‘What are we doing here, Reka? What the hell is this about? You don’t talk to me for years, ignore all my communications, snub me at the funeral, then suddenly you summon me and I have to stand in a park with your goon watching me.’
Reka said, ‘As I said, two ways.’
‘Which are?’
‘Public or private.’
‘I don’t understand what you are talking about. Why am I even here?’
Reka sighed. ‘Uncle, Uncle. Can’t you ever stop? It’s over. It’s finished. The story will be published tomorrow.’
‘What story?’
‘How we made our money. Where it came from. What we did to get it.’
Karoly sneered, his eyes narrowing. ‘It came from running a successful business empire. From navigating a path through wars, dictatorships and terror. From looking after our interests. Like everyone else did.’
He glared at her. ‘How do you think you paid for that fine Italian cashmere coat, those shoes? That fancy furniture in your house? The paintings? On your prime minister’s salary? You’ve been spoiled all your life, Reka. You’re just like everyone else. You grabbed whatever you could and enjoyed it as long as you could.’
She nodded in agreement. ‘I did. It’s true. But not any more. The article is written. I’ve read it. It’s very good, very detailed. It tells how our family was friends with the Bergers, how in 1944 your father, my grandfather, promised to look after them and return their holdings to anyone who survived. And how we broke our word to them.’
He shrugged. ‘Who cares? That was decades ago. Ancient history. There are hundreds, thousands of stories like that, Jews who made the wrong choice, trusted the wrong people. It was a war. Everyone looked out for themselves.’
‘Not everyone, Uncle. Some people saved their Jewish friends and neighbours, looked after their homes. But we did not. We even had a legal agreement with the Bergers. And then we stole everything.’
Karoly’s voice softened. ‘Reka, it was wrong what happened, I know. It’s a sad story, but an old one. Look, even the Israeli prime minister is coming on Monday. They want to do business with Hungary, with our firm. They’ve moved on. Why can’t you? There’s nobody to return anything to, even if we wanted to. The Bergers are all dead now.’
‘No, Uncle, they are not all dead. Eva, Miklos and Rahel’s daughter, survived. She’s still alive. You know that. Tamas, your father, commissioned an investigation after the war. They found her, living on Dob Street. She’d changed her name to Hegyi. She lived with Orsi, Rahel’s sister. I found the report in the Librarian’s archive.’
Karoly laughed. ‘So what? And what should Tamas have done? Handed control of a massive economic empire to a ten-year-old girl? Absurd.’
‘Maybe not. But we could have helped. Even when the communists took power, we were still rich and influential. Orsi lived out her life in poverty. I found some letters from her to Tamas, explaining her story, that she was looking after Miklos and Rahel’s child, asking for help. She never received a single reply. You saw those letters.’
