Deceptions

by Anna Porter

  “Mrs. Lewis,” he said, using her most recent name, “how nice that you have been able to find me.” He approached with his hand palm up and when Helena put her own hand into his, he lifted it to his mouth for a kiss.

  “Mr. Vargas?”

  “Who else would be here, my dear? I am so glad that Laci called ahead, I could have gone next door for a coffee or a glass of something stronger and would have missed you altogether . . .”

  “Laci?”

  “Your concierge, of course. Such a good man. But how impolite I am. Perhaps you would take a coffee or a brandy with me, while we discuss the gift for your husband?”

  So much for discretion by the concierge. She could not blame him for phoning Vargas, but whom else would he call? “I am in a bit of a hurry,” she told him. “Only a couple of days in Budapest, but I wanted to get something special for my husband.”

  “A coat, I hear, my dear lady. You have come to the right place. It is what I do. Coats and suits for gentlemen. And I have customers all over the world. Why, only yesterday there was a man from Brazil . . .”

  Helena let him blather on. No sense in interrupting him, and maybe something useful would drop into the monologue. She waited until he finished the story about the Brazilian and went on to someone from Chicago who ordered a morning coat, before she agreed that a coffee would, after all, be a grand idea, but perhaps they could look at some samples before they went.

  She easily found the material she had been looking for and, to Vargas’s considerable delight, mentioned a silk lining. Then he ushered her downstairs and out onto the street where he led the way to a café and pulled out the chair for her, bowing a little as he did. “In this country, madam, we pride ourselves on being old-fashioned,” he said. “We never conclude our business without a little friendship.”

  She ordered a double espresso, and he asked for a brandy. Then he inquired how she had learned about Vargas.

  “Someone I met in Strasbourg,” she said, “had a coat I liked. His name . . . I don’t remember his name, but he was Hungarian and worked for the government. Perhaps Mr. Nagy? Or Mr. Magyar?”

  Vargas shook his head, sadly. “Neither of them buys his coats from me. Magyar, I hear,” he leaned in and lowered his voice, “orders his in Italy. Not at all sure why he would bother to do that when we make as good here as they do there — better — and we are a lot less expensive. He and his wife holiday on the Riviera. Maybe you’re expected to wear Italian there, I don’t know. And Nagy? He told my friend he had his made in London. These men, they want to show off that they can spend a lot of money, and it doesn’t matter because they have already made millions.”

  “I met Mr. Vaszary, as well, but I don’t think he recommended you either.”

  “He is another one of the new establishment. All it takes is to belong to the right party and presto! You’re rich already! Vaszary, like Nagy, has his suits made in Italy. Perhaps you mean Berkowitz, Gyuszi, he works for them, too, and he is a good customer.”

  Vargas nodded when Helena described the killer. “Sounds like Gyuszi,” he said. “And I know he was going somewhere in Europe. He needed the coat before he left. Did Laci tell you I specialize in being on time, never delay on my commitments? If I tell you it will be ready, it will be ready.”

  “Mr. Berkowitz,” Helena asked as casually as she could manage, “he lives around here?”

  “Up in Buda, on the other side of the Danube. Why do you ask?”

  “I thought I would thank him for suggesting you.”

  “Only if I deserve it,” Vargas said, and Helena thought this was the kind of man she would really want a coat from, if she wanted a coat at all. She asked whether she could offer him an advance payment while she obtained the exact measurement, but he refused.

  * * *

  Vaszary’s initial reaction to Attila’s news that Magoci had recorded their meetings was one of vague dismissal. The lawyer, he insisted, had never met with him, and he had no interest in any records he may have kept of his discussions with his wife about the divorce. What possible business was it of Attila’s anyway? He had been hired to shadow Vaszary, not to interfere in his personal affairs.

  After another tiresome tirade about Attila’s lack of skills, let alone professional behaviour, he went on to detail the reasons why he didn’t need to engage in conversations with men such as Attila, that he would complain to the home office about continuing Attila’s posting here. Although Attila was deeply interested in who, exactly, Vaszary meant by “the home office,” he had to interrupt with the news that Mademoiselle Audet had, actually, retained the records and that she wished to be appropriately rewarded if Mr. Vaszary didn’t wish her to turn them over to the police.

  “Oh,” Vaszary said, sounding very much like a deflating balloon.

  “She is planning to quit her job and move to Paris,” Attila said. “And she wants to know what your best offer is by tomorrow morning. She has suggested we meet for coffee to discuss it.”

  Vaszary sat down hard and stared at Attila as if he were looking at him for the first time. “Oh,” he said again. “What else did she say?” he asked quietly, looking around his spacious office as if to make sure they were alone.

  “There was the matter of the painting,” Attila said.

  “What about the painting?”

  “Not much. Only that you needed Magoci to sell it for you.”

  They sat in silence as Vaszary swivelled his chair so as to present his back to the room. He stared out the window at the river. “That’s all she said?” he asked quietly.

  Attila debated whether to keep guessing but decided it was pointless. He would be more likely to get a clear answer from Monique Audet if he pretended to play her game. “That, and her offer to sell it to you for the right price.”

  “Did she mention the price?” Vaszary asked faintly.

  “No. She wants to hear your offer.”

  “I cannot meet with her,” Vaszary said.

  “You don’t have to. She suggested breakfast at eight, and I can go for you, but you have to come up with the number. How much are you willing to pay for the recordings?”

  Vaszary intertwined his fingers on his belly, and they sat that way for several minutes. “I will have to make some calls,” he said, finally. “This is all very unfortunate. For all of us.”

  Attila was hoping that there would be some explanation of who “all of us” entailed, but there was none.

  “Please wait outside,” Vaszary asked politely, and he watched Attila leave the office. He was already reaching for his phone when the door clicked shut.

  Not only were the walls thick, the door had been soundproofed as well. Although Attila lingered nearby, he heard nothing. He paced and worried about Helena, stared out the green-tinted windows at the river, and tried to imagine what his daughters would have said to their mother about their time together. Would they tell her that he had abandoned them at a playground? Would they mention Helena? And if they did, would Bea seek revenge by not allowing him to take them to Strasbourg to show them his tidy room at the B & B?

  To distract himself, he called Tóth to tell him that he would not be able to make it to Budapest the next morning because he had an important errand to run for Vaszary. No, it could not be put off, and Attila said he was not in a position to question Vaszary’s judgment in this matter — or any other matter, really, as even Tóth would be able to understand. “Is the man who was shot in the balls still alive?”

  “Yes, but our doctors say he can’t be moved.”

  “Why would you want to move him?”

  “The Russian embassy wants to move him, not me.”

  “Why?”

  “They insist he would get better care in Moscow. And they say he has now confessed that he shot himself accidentally, that he had been confused and hallucinating. But he says there was no woman.”


  “He says, or they say he says?”

  “The embassy says. The man doesn’t speak Hungarian; barely speaks anything except Russian.”

  “He spoke enough to say he had been shot by a woman?”

  “One of the ambulance guys spoke a little Russian. We looked at CCTV footage and no doubt there was a woman. Too dark to see much of her but she was very . . . agile. Good legs. Wore a bandana. Shortish hair, but she still looked like your friend to me.”

  “Not my friend . . .”

  “Since you got her involved in this thing with the Vaszarys, I assume you can find her.”

  “I got her involved?”

  “Jeezus, you must have known I would find out! You brought her to Strasbourg to look at the Vaszarys’ painting. And one more thing. Your other friend at the Russian embassy . . .”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Fehér! Your haver who likes to dress like he was some kind of European royalty. Or a model, except he is too old to be a model. Ask him why his fucking embassy wants to move this son-of-a bitch and what he knows about him. Then call me.”

  “If by my so-called friend you mean Alexander Merezhkov, the undersecretary for government relations at the Russian embassy . . .”

  “That FSB bastard, by whatever official name. Or do you have a lot of friends to choose from at the Russian embassy?” Tóth shouted. “And one more thing, Fehér, no matter what shit you’re doing for Vaszary, it would be healthy for you to remember that you work for me. He is not going to need you when all this is over.”

  “All this?”

  Tóth hung up just as Vaszary came out of his office. He didn’t look well. A film of sweat on his forehead, damp stains on his shirt front, his collar unbuttoned.

  “You meet her tomorrow,” he said. He made no effort to hide his anxiety, rubbing his hands together as if he had soaped them. “You will find out what she wants.”

  “I think the only way to find out is to offer her something and see if she accepts,” Attila suggested. “The problem with bribes, Mr. Vaszary, is that people who take bribes usually want more than what you can comfortably offer.” He emphasized “comfortably.”

  “That will simply not do,” Vaszary said.

  “An apartment in Paris would cost a lot, and she said she wanted one on the Île Saint-Louis, an island in the middle of the Seine in the middle of Paris. Very, very expensive, I think.”

  “How expensive?” Vaszary asked.

  “I would think millions even for a small—”

  “How many millions?” Vaszary’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.

  “I really don’t know, Mr. Vaszary.” The man was so distressed, Attila didn’t want to tell him that a small apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, near Helena’s office, was advertised at €1.2 million a year ago when he thought he would leave Budapest to be closer to her. He had thought he could get some work from various Hungarians in Paris and that the local police might use him. He’d had the crazy notion that Helena would want him near and that Bea would agree to his commuting once a month to Budapest or, better still, the girls spending some time with him in Paris. But both Bea and Helena preferred he should stay where he was.

  Bea had made her preference known by suggesting that they review the proposed divorce agreement with the lawyers and adjust them to occasional visits without sharing custody. If all he wanted of his daughters was a couple of days a month, “he obviously didn’t wish to share their lives in any significant way.” He thought Bea’s reaction was so venomous, she must have been jealous of what she called his “liaison.” Anna and Sofi declared they had not been consulted about the prospect and, frankly, loved the idea of Paris with their father. Cruise on the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame — Anna had read his copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. That their notion of Paris didn’t include Helena was more understandable than Bea’s reaction had been. They been separated for a while, and Bea had found a new man who was much more suitable to her needs than he had been.

  He had presented the idea to Helena early one morning in Budapest over coffee and croissants. They had spent the night before in his apartment. She had still been asleep when he went out to buy the coffee and croissants from the little shop around the corner where he went most mornings because they had the best coffee in the Eighth District. She had been awake when he returned; she had drawn the curtains and sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms around her legs, as if she were expecting an attack of bedbugs. The place did look like it had been abandoned, books in boxes, open pizza containers on the coffee table, dishes piled up in the kitchen where Gustav was standing expectantly by his plate.

  Perhaps it had not been the best time to suggest that he could move to Paris.

  “Why don’t we try half a million,” Vaszary said.

  “Euros?” Attila asked. What kind of information could possibly be worth that much to Iván Vaszary?

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Attila called Alexander’s cellphone, he thought he knew what to expect. Alexander had told him early in their friendship that a few influential Russians would remain, generally, off their list of conversational topics. Billionaires were in that category and influential billionaires — “they are all influential, or they couldn’t be billionaires” — were never to be discussed. Piotr Denisovich Grigoriev was definitely in that small elite group. And, as Attila knew first-hand, he could be dangerous. Grigoriev had a nasty habit of eliminating his enemies, often using FSB or former FSB operatives to assassinate them. He lived well. He had a twenty-two-year-old wife, an eighteen-year-old girlfriend, a bunch of racehorses, a private jet, a massive boat with a helicopter pad, and a dacha close to the president’s. Alexander assumed these men talked over vodka and cigars, planning how the world would be shaped when the Yanks were out of the business of thinking they still ran things and the Kremlin would finally rule. It was not a newly hatched plan. It had been centuries in the making, and wasn’t it time, really, Alexander said, that somebody else had a shot at it.

  Attila had anticipated a pause while Alexander switched phones — he rarely wanted to talk on his official phones — but he hadn’t expected the enthusiasm Alexander exuded when he heard Attila’s voice. After the usual clicking as he switched phones, he said he was amazed and delighted with Attila’s timing.

  “How did you know I was in Strasbourg?”

  “I didn’t. You are?”

  “Arrived yesterday,” Alexander said in Hungarian. He was obsessively proud of having learned Hungarian in only five years. It was an impossible language for an outsider, unnecessarily complicated, with a dictionary of forbiddingly unpronounceable words that were often used incorrectly or with their endings cut off. Naturally, there were some attractive incentives for FSB guys to learn the languages of countries where they were stationed, but no one, as far as Attila knew, had ever mastered Hungarian. Although, officially, Alexander was undersecretary for government relations at the Russian embassy, he had never pretended to be anything other than what he was. A spy and a fixer when something affecting Russians or Russian interests needed fixing.

  “Such a grand city,” Alexander continued. “Lucky for you to be sent here, my friend; there are many other much less attractive places that could use your services. Alma-Ata, for example, where your esteemed prime minister is about to deliver a speech about co-operation among the Turkic peoples. Did you even know that Hungarians are Turkic?”

  “We are not Turkic,” Attila said, rising to the occasion. “And it’s not been so cushy these last several days.”

  “I knew that . . .”

  “Have you been transferred?”

  “Luckily, no. I love Budapest and the Hungarians, and I don’t like the French, except when it comes to their wine.” Alexander had an abiding interest in fine wines. “Can we meet?”

  “If you haven’t been transferred, what ar
e you doing here?”

  “I walked through the French Quarter today. Very pretty in a chocolate box kind of way. I thought Au Petit Tonnelier looked like something we could try. Très français, they claim, and it’s a walk from where you are . . .”

  “I thought you didn’t like the French.”

  “This is about food, not national preferences.”

  “And how do you know where I am?”

  “Attila, you keep forgetting that I am in the spying business. And I always do my research. Shall we say at three? A civilized time for a late lunch in France, I am told.”

  Attila extracted one of his Helikons from its flattened package — it had spent too long in his jacket pocket and Helikons were not known for durability — and smoked as he walked to the Petite France sector of the city. Smoking made the exercise bearable, and he thought he would need the exercise before facing another lunch.

  The door, festooned with climbing clematis, of Au Petit Tonnelier was low. So low that Attila thought that the building must have been erected for very short people centuries ago. Or, it could have been the plan that anyone entering would be at a disadvantage when those waiting inside with their swords drawn were ready for a bit of carnage. A perfect ruse for your enemies. Attila ducked his head and stepped inside.

  Except for one large, elegant Russian, the place was empty. He had chosen a corner table with a small window and a tall potted plant in the window’s alcove. Alexander, too, preferred to have his back to the wall.