Carnival of Shadows

by R.J. Ellory

  “It depends…”

  “On what, Agent Travis? On what you believe?”

  “Yes, I suppose it does depend upon what you believe.”

  “Oh no, and there lies the rub! It does not depend on what you believe, Agent Travis, but more upon what you permit yourself to believe. And permitting yourself to believe that there might be a past and a future for every human being on this planet is entirely dependent upon being willing to experience the fear that comes with such a possibility.”

  “The fear?”

  Doyle nodded sagely, seriously. “Yes, my friend. The fear.”

  “Fear of what?”

  “That there might be some life that you have lived before. That when your body dies, you might discover that your body was nothing more than a shell, a vehicle, an envelope for a message, you know? That there is a future, and that future carries with it the responsibility and consequence of what you have done in the past.”

  “Reincarnation,” Travis said. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  Doyle waved aside the question dismissively. “A name. It doesn’t have to have a name, Agent Travis. Not everything needs to carry a label, you know? Call it whatever you like; it makes no difference. Just because a table is called a table doesn’t make it any more or less of a table.”

  “But things have order, Mr. Doyle. There is order and disorder—”

  “And it seems to me that the crux of many of your own problems have come about as a result of your unwillingness to tolerate the magic of disorder.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Travis said.

  “Oh yes, you do, Agent Travis. You know precisely what that means. Everything in your life is packed up neat and tidy in a little box. The box has been stowed somewhere safe, somewhere where it can be found if needed, and each box has a label. The problem here is that you never want to open the boxes, do you? You never want to go back down the corridor of your past and look inside those boxes. Well, there are some people who will look, and they have been looking for a long, long time. The five senses, Agent Travis, depicted as five horses drawing the chariot of the body, the mind being the chariot’s driver. Katha Upanishad, sixth century BC. The Tamil text, Tolkaˉppiyam, third century, speaking of the sixth sense of mind. Aˉyatana, and the sense sphere of the human mind. The Greco-Romans cults, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the history of Esoteric Christianity, Clement of Alexandria and the disciplina arcane, Origen’s belief in the preexistence of the human soul, alchemy, astrology, theurgy, the demonic magic of goetia, the Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Behemenists, and then, as advocated by our dear friend and savior, Mr. Hoover, the supposed benefits of Freemasonry, the craft and all it proposes, its history going back to Hiram Abiff, the architect of the Temple of Solomon.”

  Doyle leaned forward and took Travis’s hands. “The good, the bad, the crazy, the brave, the brilliant, and the deranged, my friend. They have been looking for a very long time, and no matter their intention or motivation, they have all wanted answers to the same questions… Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? This is a history so much longer than you and I can even imagine… and what we have here, this ragtag band of troublemakers and subversives, is just another echo of that same song.”

  Doyle’s eyes were alight. Travis was unnerved, but he could not look away.

  “Too scary to even contemplate, eh?” Doyle asked. “What if we stepped outside the box and took a walk, Agent Travis? What would happen if we just took a walk beyond the borders?”

  “I—I don’t know…”

  Doyle smiled. He squeezed Travis’s hands reassuringly and then released them. He rose to his feet suddenly. He looked at his watch and then smiled enthusiastically.

  “It is past lunchtime. Valeria has not returned. We have both been talking for some considerable time. I don’t know about you, but I am starving. In fact, there should be some food in the marquee. We could perhaps go and eat with everyone else?”

  Travis’s chest felt hollow, like a fairground balloon. He was suddenly aware of how hungry he was.

  “Very well,” Travis said. “I will come and eat with you, and then I can perhaps speak with some of the other personnel.”

  “Personnel? Really? I would think that they are the most unlikely kind of people to be referred to as personnel.”

  “I am who I am, Mr. Doyle,” Travis said, somewhat defensively. “My manner is my manner, and if it appears too formal, then I am sorry. This is just the way I am, and for a short while, you will have to tolerate it.”

  “Oh, I don’t tolerate a great deal, Agent Travis,” Doyle replied. “In fact, I would say that my personal philosophy of life compels me to take all those things I find intolerable and change them for the better.”

  “Well, you will have to exclude me from your philosophy, Mr. Doyle. I am more than happy with who I am, and I have no desire to change.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, Mr. Doyle. That is so.”

  “Well, perhaps we might be able to stretch your imagination a touch, Agent Travis. After all, even Mr. Hoover himself has requested that much of you.”

  Doyle led the way out of the caravan and across the field toward the marquee. Already the sound of voices was audible from within, and across the field came the aroma of something that served only to heighten Travis’s hunger.

  “Aha,” Doyle said. “Gabor has been cooking. That, if I am not mistaken, is the smell of porkolt. Maybe he will have made dumplings as well. Most excellent.”

  “Porkolt.”

  “It is like a stew, perhaps. Beef, maybe chicken. Whichever, it will be good. And you have to drink a glass of wine with it, Agent Travis. If you refuse, you will offend Gabor, and he is six foot eight and three hundred pounds! I am not suggesting you get drunk and dance for us, Agent Travis, merely that you share a small glass of wine with your meal. If nothing else, it will perhaps make these people feel a little less threatened by your presence.”

  “Perhaps one glass, then,” Travis said, “for courtesy’s sake.”

  “For courtesy,” Doyle said. “Another gentlemanly quality.”

  Together they entered the tent, and Doyle greeted Gabor Benedek warmly.

  “Porkolt, I believe,” Doyle said.

  The giant nodded.

  “Agent Travis will be eating with us, Gabor, and he has yet to experience the wonders of Hungarian cuisine.”

  “Welcome, Agent Travis,” Benedek said, and extended a hand twice the size of Travis’s.

  Travis’s hand was swallowed, crushed, and then returned. Even as they exchanged pleasantries, Travis thought of Fekete Kutya, whether Benedek would know anything of this organization, whether he actually knew something of his dead countryman.

  “Get a plate,” Benedek said, and indicated crockery and cutlery beside the large pot of stew.

  Travis did so, Doyle followed suit, and soon there was a line of people behind them, all waiting to be fed.

  20

  The return of Valeria Mironescu changed the atmosphere within the central marquee immediately.

  No more than five minutes had passed since Travis and Doyle had sat together at one of the tables before she appeared. She was alone, dressed in jeans, a chambray shirt, a suede jacket, and boots.

  Doyle rose to take her hand, kissed her on the cheek, asked her to sit. She did so, and Doyle left to get food for her.

  “Bring wine!” she called after him.

  “Was it a successful trip?” Travis asked.

  “Always the little adventure,” she said. “Despite their seeming similarity, each town has its own unique identity. Kansas is very different from Colorado, which is very different from Texas or Alabama or… where is it you are from?”

  “Nebraska, originally.”

  “Nebraska, yes. They are all so
very different. Each state seems to be its own little country.”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “How is your porkolt?”

  “Excellent, really excellent.”

  “Of course. Gabor only uses the best horse meat.”

  Travis near-choked, and Valeria started laughing.

  “I am teasing you, Agent Travis.”

  “No horse, then?”

  “No, of course not. How could we afford horse meat? He uses only the tiredest old donkeys for the stew.”

  “I thought it was a little different from the usual,” Doyle said. He had reached the table, and he set down a plate before Valeria. He had also brought a bottle of wine and three coffee cups.

  “I didn’t want to ask Gabor in case he crushed my head like a grape.”

  Doyle poured wine. He passed the cups around.

  “Excuse the absence of glasses,” he said.

  Travis took the cup tentatively. He felt he should not drink with these people, but he wanted to. A couple of mouthfuls would not hurt, and—as Doyle had said—such a gesture might ingratiate Travis into their community a little.

  Doyle raised his cup for a toast. “To new friends,” he said.

  “New friends,” both Valeria and Travis echoed.

  They drank. The wine was good. It reminded him of evenings with Esther, the months before he lost her.

  “Where did you go?” Valeria asked.

  Travis looked up at her. “Am I so easy to read?” he said.

  “One of the easiest, I believe, Agent Travis.”

  “I was remembering someone.”

  “You lost them?”

  “They died.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “What was her name?”

  Travis smiled. “What makes you think it was a girl?”

  “Because men never look like that save when they are thinking of lost loves, Agent Travis.”

  “Her name was Esther. She got very sick, and then she died.”

  Valeria raised her cup, as did Doyle. “To Esther,” she said.

  Travis looked at the strange pair facing him—the crazy Irishman, his Romanian wife—and it felt for a moment that there, right there and then, that a more heartfelt and sincere acknowledgment was being made for the loss he had suffered than any funeral or memorial service back in Grand Island.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice a broken whisper. “To Esther.” And then he drank from the cup and the cup was empty, and before he knew it, Doyle had refilled the cup and Travis did not protest.

  “Eat,” Doyle said. “Eat your porkolt, some dumplings, drink some wine, and we will talk of other, less difficult matters.”

  And so Travis ate, and there was nothing for a while but the hubbub and laughter of gathered people, and as he looked around at the adjacent tables—at Akiko Mimasuya and Oscar Haynes, at Harold Lamb from Minnesota whose mother was a prostitute, at Gabor Benedek and the five identical Bellanca brothers, as each of them caught his eye and nodded, smiled, raised a cup in his direction—he felt somehow strangely comforted by their collective presence. He did not know why, and he did not understand it, and it did not matter.

  Travis went back to his meal, and when he was done, he looked up at Doyle and Valeria Mironescu and he smiled.

  “Thank you for sharing your meal with me,” he said. “That was the best meal I have had for some considerable time.”

  “Tell Gabor,” Valeria said, and nodded toward the giant.

  Travis looked at Benedek, caught his attention.

  “A wonderful porkolt, Mr. Benedek,” he said. “Truly wonderful.”

  Benedek smiled, raised his cup. Travis raised his cup also, found it empty, and Doyle refilled it for the third time.

  Travis drank.

  “So, I left you two alone and what trouble did you cause?” Valeria asked.

  “We shared a little history,” Doyle said.

  “Did he bore you to death with his war stories, what a hero he was, how many lives he saved?”

  “A little of the war, Miss Valeria. And I understand you fought with the Resistance in France?”

  “I have been fighting my whole life, Agent Travis,” she said. “Against the Communists, against the Nazis, against the imperialists, the fascists, and now against mediocrity, banality, ignorance, stupidity, against all the preconceptions that people have about one another. Some of us are born to fight, Agent Travis. Some of us will even start a battle in order to have something to fight for.”

  “And Agent Travis told me a little of his own life,” Doyle interjected. “You were right, my dear. He is indeed a man of many shadows.”

  Travis waved Doyle’s comment aside.

  “And how is your case progressing, Agent Travis?” Valeria asked.

  “Beyond ascertaining the significance of the design I found on the dead man’s body, there is very little else.”

  “And you know what it means?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “You can tell us, perhaps?” Doyle asked.

  Travis saw no reason not to divulge some small part of the information he had gleaned. “The dead man was part of a Hungarian criminal organization known as Fekete Kutya, or Black Dog.”

  “Is that so?” Valeria asked. She turned and called out to Benedek. “Gabor, come here a minute.”

  Benedek joined them at the table. Seated facing him, Travis felt like a child.

  “You know of an organization called… what was it?”

  “Fekete—”

  “Fekete Kutya,” Benedek interjected. “Yes, I know of them, but I am surprised to hear that name here.”

  “Apparently, the dead man was part of this group,” Valeria explained.

  Benedek was visibly surprised.

  “What do you know of this?” Travis asked.

  “Not a great amount,” Benedek explained. “I know of them. They are criminals and killers. I have no personal history with them.”

  “But you know of them because…”

  “Because everyone knows of them, Agent Travis. There are stories about them, the things they have done, the influence they have over the police in Budapest. That is all.”

  “You have not been here long, have you, Mr. Benedek?”

  “Not long, no.”

  “And yet your English is excellent.”

  “I left Hungary in January of last year. My father was a professor of literature at the University of Budapest, and we spoke English at home, even as children. My father’s brother came to America in the twenties and raised his family in a place called Aurora in Illinois. He owns a restaurant there. That’s where I went after the uprising. I was with my uncle for some weeks, and then I met Edgar and Valeria in a town called De Kalb, and I decided to travel with them. Like Valeria, I have the Eastern European gypsy in my blood, and I cannot get rid of him.” He smiled, his expression somehow pensive. “Every time I stop moving, he starts to scratch at my soul.”

  “And your own parents… they are still alive?”

  Benedek shook his head. “No, Agent Travis, they are dead. My family is Jewish, and he and my mother were murdered in Auschwitz in June of 1944.”

  “The Holocaust,” Travis said.

  “Indeed, the Holocaust. My grandparents also, several aunts, uncles, cousins… In fact, when the war ended, there were very few of us Benedeks left at all. My brother and my sister both survived, but my brother was shot by the Soviets and my sister was killed by the State Security Police.”

  Travis shook his head in disbelief. “Is there no end to the tragedy in your life, Mr. Benedek?”

  “My life is no better or worse than anyone’s here, Agent Travis. There are some who say it is our lot to suffer in this life and that we will be rewarded in the next.”

  “Do you believe th
at?” Travis asked.

  “I want to believe it,” Benedek said, “if not for me, then for my parents and the rest of my family who are dead.”

  Travis reached out and placed his hand on Benedek’s forearm.

  “I did not mean to cause you any upset, Mr. Benedek. I am sorry if recounting these events has troubled you.”

  Benedek gripped Travis’s shoulder with a huge hand. “If you had upset me, I would have just crushed your head like an apple!” He laughed, lifted the wine bottle, and refilled the cups on the table.

  “I think I’ve had more than enough wine,” Travis said.

  Benedek looked stony-faced and then raised his hand over Travis’s head.

  “Drink,” he said, “or your head will be crushed!”

  They laughed, all of them, and they drank the wine, and then Benedek rose from the bench and started clearing away plates and cups from the other tables.

  “Can I help you?” Travis said.

  “It is good. You should go about your business, Agent Travis. You have a dead Hungarian killer to identify, and that is far more important than washing plates.”

  “And I have matters to attend to also,” Doyle said as he rose from the bench.

  Travis rose also, watched Doyle and Valeria Mironescu leave the marquee and head back toward the Westfalia.

  Within less than a minute Travis was alone, and he looked out through the doorway at the landscape before him. All of a sudden, it seemed bleak and desolate, as if there were nothing at all for him beyond the canvas walls of this tent.

  He sat down again, drained the cup before him, and then he reached for the bottle of wine.

  21

  Travis sat at the small table in his room. The typewriter before him remained silent. It was Thursday evening, and here he was trying to type a report that should have been completed the previous day. He remembered leaving the marquee alone and walking back to his car. Then he must have fallen asleep. That would have been the only explanation, for the next thing he recalled was the fact that it was almost dark and he was very cold. He had drank perhaps half a bottle of wine, and he had passed out. That was the truth. There was no excusing such lack of professionalism. He did not feel so much guilty as slightly ashamed of himself.