Gaddis stood up. He was about to reach for the bag when the train came to a sudden halt. He would have thought nothing of it, but from his standing position in the carriage he could see through a window towards the front of the train. It had stopped at a level crossing. Two police cars were parked on a deserted country road, blue lights revolving noiselessly. Gaddis felt a caving sense of dread as the mute sirens pulsed against the late-morning sky; he had a sure sense that the train had been stopped by the Hungarian police, in co-operation with their Austrian colleagues, as part of a co-ordinated search for the murderer of Robert Wilkinson.
He sat down without a book. This in itself seemed a reckless act. Why stand, only to sit down again without unzipping his bag? He felt a dozen eyes upon him, as if his guilt was as plain to his fellow passengers as some mark on his body. He was being blamed for what was happening, for the delay to the journey. The tattooed man, his girlfriend, the teenager with the MP3, the red-haired executive with the smile and the pin-stripe suit - all of them knew that he was on the run from Vienna.
Then the engine of the train shut off, like a definitive signal of the hopelessness of his predicament. There was a moan of frustration throughout the carriage as the suspension shuddered and then fell silent, all power stripped from the train. There were shared looks of annoyance from the seats around him; Gaddis tried to join in by frowning and shaking his head. I’m one of you, he was saying. None of this has anything to do with the Kleines Cafe. The red-haired executive caught his eye and he produced what he hoped was a look of friendly camaraderie; instead, she frowned, as if Gaddis had in some way offended her. She looked past him at the far end of the carriage. Somebody was coming through the door.
Gaddis turned. There were two uniformed policemen ten metres from his seat. Was it his imagination, or did the taller of them immediately double-take, as if he had recognized him? Gaddis looked across the aisle at the teenage girl, who was bobbing her head to ‘Eleanor Rigby’. He felt a rush of panic involuntarily turn his face scarlet. He began to imagine a scenario whereby he would be arrested not by the police, but by the executive, who was again staring at him, and whom he was now certain was a plain-clothes Austrian law enforcement official positioned close by in order to facilitate his capture.
Calm down, he told himself. Take it easy. The train could have stopped for any number of reasons. There could be illegal immigrants on board, a smuggler taking drugs or cigarettes into Budapest. Behind him, Gaddis could hear the policemen working their way through the carriage, as slow as the ticket inspector, as thorough and as sinister as jackbooted thugs in the Waffen SS.
‘Tickets please.’
The taller of the two policemen, the one who appeared to have recognized him at the door, was standing above the table. Gaddis fumbled in his jacket for the ticket Eva had handed to him at Hegyeshalom. He could not remember any of the advice that she had given him. Why had she not joined him on the train? Had he been set up? Why had Tanya not arranged for a second MI6 agent to accompany him to Budapest?
‘Thank you,’ said the policeman, as Gaddis passed him the ticket. He made a deliberate point of looking the policeman in the eye, trying to seem bored, trying to seem indifferent. For a wild moment, he was convinced that he was the same man who had tailed his cab from the UN.
‘You are English?’
Gaddis had not spoken. How had the policemen managed to establish his nationality? The game was up. They knew who he was, where he was from, what he was doing. For a split second he considered responding to the question in Russian, but if the police had seen his face on CCTV at the Kleines Cafe, any attempt at subterfuge would simply convince them of his guilt.
‘Yes. From London. How did you know?’
Though he had asked his question in English, the policeman did not appear to understand the reply. Gaddis looked behind him, at the second officer, who was busily checking tickets on the opposite side of the carriage. This, in itself, gave him a glimmer of hope: why would they carry on with their search if they knew that they had found Wilkinson’s companion? The girl with the pink-and-yellow headphones was reaching into the pocket of her jeans; she had not even bothered to take off the headphones. Gaddis was staggered by her sense of calm. But what was she looking for? A ticket or an identity card? If the police asked Gaddis to produce a passport, he was finished. Across the table, the crew-cut Hungarian had woken up. One of the tattoos on his arm was a caricature of Elvis.
‘So you are going to Budapest?’
‘Just for the night, yes.’ Gaddis remembered what Eva had told him. You are coming back tomorrow. A one-way journey always looks more suspicious. He cursed her for not providing him with a passport, a driving licence, some kind of photo ID with which to bluff his way through. What kind of tourist crossed an international border without a passport? What kind of intelligence agency left a man to fend for himself on a train crawling with cops?
‘Enjoy yourself,’ said the policeman.
Gaddis wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly. Was he imagining it? But the officer had turned his attention to the Hungarian and his girlfriend, both of whom flashed tickets at him with complete indifference to his authority. Perhaps these kind of searches were commonplace. Just then, a radio crackled on the jacket of the second officer. He responded instantly to the message, walking directly out of the carriage and down on to the track.
‘What happened?’ Gaddis asked.
‘They find him,’ said the Hungarian.
Both men stood in their seats and craned to look at the police cars parked at the level crossing. Through the cluster of passengers trying to see the same thing, Gaddis made out a young man who was being bundled into the back seat of the furthest car. A policewoman pushed his head downwards with the flat of her hand, and there were handcuffs on his wrists, secured behind his back.
‘Any idea what that was?’ Gaddis asked.
The Hungarian shook his head. ‘No. I do not,’ he said, and leaned over to kiss his girlfriend.
Chapter 47
An hour later, the train was pulling through the ghost town suburbs of Budapest, past abandoned freight cars on sidings, clusters of wild poppies and weeds. Gaddis saw the entrance to Keleti station opening up ahead in a delta of gleaming tracks. It felt like a cause for celebration. It was now surely just a question of meeting Eva’s contact and of being driven out to the airport.
He stepped down on to the platform and was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of local men and women offering him a room for the night, a taxi into town, a meal at a local restaurant.
‘Car?’ they said as he shook his head. ‘Where you like go, sir?’
He ignored them and stuck to Eva’s instructions, walking towards the great glassed roof of the station in search of Miklos. There was a bench fifty metres along the platform, positioned just a few feet from the ticket inspectors. Sitting on it, exactly as she had described, was a man with a beard wearing a green jacket. Gaddis could see a bottle of Vittel in the man’s left hand. At that moment, Miklos looked up and caught Gaddis’s eye, smiling broadly. Gaddis knew immediately that he would like him: the Hungarian, who was about fifty, had quick, lively eyes, mischief in his face and the aura of a man who was lucky and self-assured.
‘Mr Sam?’ he said, reaching to shake his hand.
Gaddis took it. Miklos was wearing brown leather gloves. The palm was sticky and cold against his own.
‘Will you forgive me if I ask who sent you here?’ Gaddis asked.
‘Of course I will forgive you.’ Miklos was still smiling, still pumping his hand. ‘It is important to be certain about these things, no? My name is Miklos. I was sent to meet you by our mutual friend, Eva, in Vienna, who was in turn acting for the woman you once knew as Josephine Warner.’
Gaddis felt a wave of relief. Miklos took his bag, against Gaddis’s protestations, and walked past the ticket inspectors without a glance. They went outside to a four-door Seat parked just a block from the station.
‘We
go to my apartment first,’ Miklos explained. Gaddis thought that there was nothing unusual about this. ‘Your aeroplane, it does not leave for a few hours.’
He had opened the rear door of the car, as if hiring a taxi, but realized his mistake and moved to the passenger seat. Outside, Budapest felt a world away from Vienna, churning and chaotic and still touched by the faded grandeur of Communism. Gaddis was reminded of the grey, dirty light in Moscow; there was that same blanket smell of bitumen and diesel on the air and he felt the kinship of a world with which he was far more familiar. Miklos drove quickly, swerving and leaning on the horn, down film noir boulevards that, to Gaddis’s romantic eye, were full of all the bustle and wonder and threat that had been scoured clean from modern Vienna. For a blessed instant he felt free. Then he thought of Wilkinson and the screaming crowds in the Kleines Cafe and knew that he was far from safe.
‘So I am to understand that you have been through a very difficult trauma,’ Miklos said.
The word ‘trauma’ sounded excessive, even melodramatic, but Gaddis found himself replying: ‘Yes.’
‘Well, do not worry. It is all right now. You are in good hands. I take you to my apartment quickly. My wife, she fix you the soup. I will hand you your new passport, also some money. By sunset you are back in London.’
‘You’re very kind.’ He wanted to ask the same questions that he had tried to put to Eva. How did you come to be working for MI6? How often do you do this kind of thing? But he knew now that it was best to allow these angels of the secret world the privilege of their anonymity.
‘Are you from Budapest?’ he asked instead. It was an unimaginative question, but a little conversation seemed important.
‘I am,’ Miklos replied. ‘I give you the language lesson, OK? Quick guide to Hungarian.’
‘All right.’
They were turning down a narrow street, heavy brown-stone buildings weighing down on all sides. Gaddis was amazed to see a small branch of Tesco on one corner.
‘You order cheeseburger, you say “Shiteburger”.’ Miklos was laughing. It occurred to Gaddis that he must have used the same line on every foreigner who crossed his path. ‘Is funny, no?’
‘It’s funny.’
‘And the nipple we call the “mellbimbo”. Male bimbo. Crazy language, Hungarian. You like it? Crazy.’
Soon they had parked on a wide avenue beside a pile of neatly chopped wood, around which had been thrown a makeshift fence of orange plastic. Miklos retrieved Gaddis’s bag from the boot and led him down a passageway which ran between an electrical shop and a small restaurant. They emerged into the large internal courtyard of a nineteenth-century apartment building. A creaking lift carried them to the third floor.
‘I live just down here,’ Miklos said, steering Gaddis down a corridor which was open to the courtyard on the eastern side. He took out a set of keys and opened the door of his flat.
Inside, there was a large, modern kitchen with a staircase at one end, unprotected by banisters. A woman was standing at the stove, chopping mushrooms.
‘Let me introduce you to my wife,’ said Miklos.
‘Viki.’ Viki was an attractive woman, at least fifteen years younger than her husband, with long, dark hair and a slim figure partly concealed by a navy-blue apron. Gaddis raised a hand in greeting but did not approach her; she had indicated that her hands were dirty from cooking and it did not seem appropriate to kiss her on the cheek. He felt as though he had popped round to a neighbour’s house for lunch; there was no sense of anxiety in the room, no undercurrent of alarm. Was Viki in on the situation? Was she another Hungarian on the MI6 payroll? Miklos spoke to her briefly in their native tongue then offered Gaddis a stool at a breakfast bar in the centre of the room.
‘You have a beautiful place,’ he said, setting his bag on the floor.
‘Thank you. The building is very typical, but we make some adjustments. You will take a coffee? A shower?’
‘At the same time?’
Viki laughed, turning to catch her husband’s eye. There were expensive pots and pans on butcher’s hooks above the stove, black-and-white prints in frames, an iPod hooked up to some Bose speakers on a shelf adorned with paperback novels. A dog wandered into the kitchen, glided past Viki’s legs and settled beneath a deep ceramic sink.
‘Bazarov,’ said Miklos. ‘Our best friend.’
‘After Turgenev?’
His face lit up. ‘You know Fathers and Sons? You are an educated man, Mr Sam.’
Gaddis explained that he was a lecturer in Russian History and, before long, he had a cup of coffee in front of him and was knee-deep in a conversation about nineteenth-century Russian literature. Viki produced some bread and a bowl of soup and they sat together, at the breakfast bar, pinging opinions about Tolstoy back and forth while Gaddis wondered why he felt so relaxed.
An hour after he had first sat down, he was offered ‘a good hot shower and a nice change of clothes’. He duly went upstairs, armed with a white towel which smelled of chemical pine, and stood under the torrent of a steaming shower, cleaning away all the sweat and the worry and the rage of his long night in Vienna. Miklos had laid out a shirt and a jumper in a small bedroom nearby, as well as a pair of blue jeans which appeared never to have been worn. All three items fitted him perfectly; it occurred to Gaddis that MI6 even knew his sizes. He shaved and changed in front of a faded poster of Steven Gerrard brandishing the European Cup. The bedroom presumably belonged to Miklos and Viki’s son.
By half-past twelve Gaddis had made his way downstairs. Viki complimented him on his appearance and helped to pack his dirty clothes in the bag given to him by Eva. Miklos advised him to change his jacket - ‘in case a witness from the Kleines Cafe has described it to the police’ - and in its place provided a long black overcoat which was slightly tight at the shoulders. Gaddis found a tweed cap in the pocket, but did not want to put it on, arguing that it would draw unnecessary attention to him at the airport.
‘You are probably correct,’ Miklos replied, rolling the first jacket into a ball and stuffing it into the bag. ‘You look good anyway, Mr Sam. You look normal.’
They went into a sitting room cluttered with books and lamps. Viki did not follow them. There was a chess board on a low coffee table in the centre of the room, the black king toppled over. Beside the board, resting on a copy of the Economist, was a battered British passport and 40,000 Hungarian florints, the equivalent of about PS200. Miklos handed them to Gaddis.
The passport seemed a perfect fake. There were stamps from Hong Kong, a stamp from JFK, even an exact copy of the photograph which appeared in Gaddis’s regular passport, taken eight years earlier. How had Tanya acted so quickly? Where the hell had the passport been printed? The British Embassy in Budapest must have been involved. He flicked through the watermarked pages and looked up at Miklos.
‘Astonishing,’ he said.
‘I have seen better.’
The Hungarian now produced a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it across the chess board. A number by which he could reach Miklos was listed under the name ‘Mike’. Gaddis knew now that the hard part was to come. The long journey home was ahead of him.
‘So.’ Miklos had also sensed the change in mood. ‘You now have what you need. I suggest we make our way downstairs to the car.’ Viki appeared in the doorway of the sitting room and came towards Gaddis, kissing him on both cheeks. He assumed that she had been listening all the time.
‘Good luck,’ she whispered, the smell of her skin like a strange memory of Holly. ‘Miklos will take good care of you.’
‘Thank you for all your kindness,’ he told her, and they stepped outside into the corridor.
Miklos’s car was still parked outside the entrance to the apartment building, close to the pile of wood. A tram chimed past, almost knocking over a stooped, elderly lady pulling a shopping basket across the street. Gaddis tried to catch Miklos’s eye but saw that his attitude was now altogether more serious. They placed his bag
in the boot, stepped into the car and fastened the seatbelts.
It was a measure of the extent to which Gaddis trusted the Hungarian that he had not checked the contents of his bag before zipping it up. Had he done so, he would have discovered that Viki had placed a small package inside it, wedged between his jacket and dirty clothes.
It had been decided that Dr Sam Gaddis was going to act as a courier.
Chapter 48
‘Listen carefully.’ Miklos had started the engine and was pulling out into traffic. ‘We drive to the airport. You are booked on the 15.30 easyJet to London Gatwick. According to the computer in my house, the plane is on time. We can check this for certain when we arrive at Ferihegy. If there is a problem, we just sit together in a cafe and make a conversation. OK? You have your passport in the coat?’
Gaddis reached into the inside pocket of the overcoat. He found the passport and held it out.
‘As you can see from the back page, your name is not Samuel Gaddis today. For the purpose of this journey, you are Samuel Tait. You have the same forenames, you have the same birthday. You can see that, for the purposes of realism, we have also given a name and address for persons to contact in the case of emergency.’ Gaddis looked at the inside back page. Somebody had written an address and telephone number for ‘Josephine Warner’ in blue biro. ‘If you need to contact Tanya in London, use the number for “Jo” in the mobile. It will go through a switchboard.’
The Trinity Six (2011) Page 29
