The Appraisal

by Anna Porter

  There was a neatly typed memorandum dated February 11, 1953, from Krestin to László Péter, recommending continued surveillance of Géza Márton. Péter, Attila knew, had been the feared and despised head of ÁVO, the state security police in Hungary; he was arrested a few months later, tried at a court martial in 1954, and condemned to life in prison. Like his boss, the unlamented Gerö, Péter was charged with being part of the Soviet-invented Jewish conspiracy to control elite positions within the Soviet bureaucracy.

  The name Bika popped up again as one of a group of friends who had visited Krestin at home.

  Krestin’s report on what he had observed during the 1956 Revolution was in the file, together with his sworn testimony that he had been a witness to the attack on Party headquarters. He had been inside the building in the morning, went out for something to eat, and found the crowd had grown much larger while he was away. Instead of entering the building, he had gone home for a camera. It was a German-made Leica, already four years old, a gift from Ernö Gerö, the comrade who had earned his stripes in the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB. (Why would Gerö have given Krestin a camera? He was not known for his generosity even toward those who followed all his orders.) Krestin had taken photos of some of the people in the square. He claimed that he told anyone asking why that he worked for LIFE magazine. The photographs were fuzzy, some had been scratched, some folded and bits were missing from five of them. Clearly, someone had decided to eliminate a few faces.

  A signed affidavit testified that Krestin had seen Károly Márton carrying a rifle at the scene and witnessed his aiming it at one of the officers who had escaped from the building.

  A new observer wrote that Krestin met Gertrude Lakatos in January 1957 in a bar called Kedves, close to ÁVO headquarters on Andrássy Avenue. She had offered to teach him French. He had accepted. There was a report on his courtship of her, because she was already a person of interest. Her former liaison with Géza Márton had triggered an investigation. The Krestin file cross-referenced a file under her name. There was a note there about her family’s move from Slovakia to Hungary and Krestin’s first meeting with her parents. The person who wrote the report must have been close to Gertrude, as he (she?) knew that Krestin had been invited to dine with her parents and that the meeting had been frosty. Krestin had not been interested in listening to the elder Lakatos’s views on collective farming and his critique of the latest five-year plan. The next time this person reported contact between the parents and Krestin was at the wedding, a civil ceremony.

  Krestin had remained friendly with his group of Communists as they aged. One of them died, the others, including Bika, kept meeting Krestin for drinks and dinners.

  There was no mention anywhere of a relationship between Géza Márton and János Krestin. No mention that they had ever known each other. If, as Helena Marsh had said, the Titian or quasi-Titian that Krestin had decided to sell had once belonged to Márton, there was no suggestion in the file of how Krestin had acquired it.

  There were several reports from Toronto and one from Vaughan, dating from Márton’s arrival in Canada in early 1957. The fact that these were in Krestin’s file suggested that he had initiated the surveillance, but there was no signature and no names attached to the reports.

  Krestin, who had been close to the various governments that followed the collapse of Soviet rule, could easily have accessed these files and just as easily removed anything he thought incriminating. The existence of the file was evidence that Krestin himself had been under suspicion.

  Márton had plenty of motives for Krestin’s murder: the imprisonment of his father, the loss of Gertrude’s affections, or just the fact that Krestin had been a faithful ÁVO officer in the service of a murderous state. Heck, thought Attila, that alone should have been enough to have the bugger killed.

  Magda came back to the car with a very cheerful Gustav, and the three of them entered Kisbuda Gyöngye exactly on time for their 8 p.m. reservation. The maître d’ looked stunned by this unaccustomed punctuality. Their table was not yet ready, but the owner was delighted to see them (“Such a long time, Attila.”) and squired Gustav into the garden.

  The restaurant was exactly as he had remembered: low lights, red tablecloths under white ones, gold-edged white plates, tall crystal glasses, deep armchairs, four to a table. The maître d’ showed them to the corner table, with just two armchairs, far from the kitchen, and served them glasses of Champagne to start.

  “Lovely place,” Magda said. She seemed to relax now that the file was safely back in her purse. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I am not sure yet. János Krestin was not the most likable guy, but we still need to find out who killed him. Did you read his file?”

  “Of course, as soon as I heard that he had been murdered. He was an old-style Commie, not someone you would have wanted to cross in the good old days. It’s interesting how fast he managed to become part of the new capitalist system. He had become useful as a negotiator for gas prices. He spoke good English, French, serviceable Russian. Bought a football team, a couple of apartment houses, a shopping mall. Invested in the movie business. A seamless transition with a great deal of unexplained cash. Friends in high places. A few boards. Connections with all political parties.”

  “You can buy political connections everywhere. The only questions are how much and to what end,” Attila said. “Even Americans use money to buy votes. It’s not as obvious as here, but everybody knows.”

  “You were also interested in his wives?”

  “Wives?”

  “He had two. Too few for a Hungarian, don’t you think? Are you planning to remarry?”

  The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. He gulped down his water and pretended he hadn’t heard the question. He told her what he had gleaned about Gertrude. “I assume his second wife is still alive?”

  “Yes. She’s much younger than him.”

  “Children?”

  “Just the one with his first wife.”

  “I wonder whether your great video system managed to get a shot of the woman who had asked to see her file.”

  “Ms. Lewis? Of course,” Magda said triumphantly, and she produced a fuzzy but unmistakable picture of Helena Marsh.

  “That’s Marianne Lewis?”

  “Yes. She showed us an American passport when we asked. We don’t let just anyone walk into the Archives, you know.”

  Alexander had told him that Helena was a master of disguises. She could be anything she wanted. Young, old, pretty, frumpy. And she could be dangerous. This woman had killed a man in Russia. Could she have killed two men in Budapest?

  The Russian in St. Petersburg had had his throat cut.

  He couldn’t shake the image of her walking across the Szabadság Bridge, her skirt swishing around her long, tanned legs, her smile. Then he remembered her clinical concentration when he showed her the photos of the dead Ivan Dalchev. She had shown no shock, no disgust, just that little smile, different from the one on the bridge but still a smile.

  He let Magda order the wine, because he was sure she would be frugal. The last time they had met, she told him she had never had Champagne before. Not even Hungarian sparkling wine. He was optimistic she would select something less expensive than what he, in thanks for her bringing him the file, would have felt obliged to order. She studied the list with the attention she would have given a new acquisition for the Archives, or so he thought. In the end, she decided on a half litre of the house red and one of the white. Luckily Kisbuda Gyöngye had chosen its house wines with care.

  After they ordered, she talked about the sixty boxes of state police files that had been found in a warehouse in Szúcs and, although she wouldn’t mention names, she said they were all on highly placed people whose pasts had been successfully buried until now. Attila presumed the contents would be revealed selectively, depending on whose lives would be hurt an
d how much those lives were worth.

  She thought there might be more information in these files about Krestin and his connections during and after the war.

  He did not tell her that he had been hired to follow Helena Marsh, but he did say that he was interested in the No.442 Gulag file. Everywhere he turned, the camp’s name came up. He was becoming convinced that the answers to this case lay there.

  “I may be able to help you with that file,” she said after her second glass of wine. “I will be in charge of cataloguing them, and my staff will enter them into the records.”

  He took her hand across the table and held it, gently.

  “All the original Gulag files have been transferred to the vaults,” she said.

  He kissed her palm.

  “But I have access to the vaults.”

  He poured more wine and gazed into her eyes.

  “Perhaps—” she said, as his phone buzzed. He ignored it, but it buzzed again almost immediately.

  “Helena Marsh,” a woman’s voice said. “I have something for you. It’s about the man they called Bika. Can we meet in half an hour?”

  He should have said no, but he didn’t. Instead, he gave Magda a sorrowful look and said, “I have to work tonight, after all.”

  She withdrew her hand.

  “Could we do this again next week?” he asked.

  Magda didn’t reply. Nor did she say anything on the drive across the Danube to her building off Erzsébet Királyné Street. Had Attila been more courageous, he would have ventured a joke or a cheerful remark about the exigencies of after-hours work, but she had turned into a statue. It was only when he drew up in front of the entrance that he dared a gentle “Goodnight then,” and climbed out of the car to open her door only to discover that she had already left without so much as a curt farewell.

  “I will call you on Monday,” he said feebly to her back.

  She shrugged without turning and walked into the building without a backward glance. A lost opportunity, he thought, regretfully. But, then, Helena Marsh was waiting for him in the lobby of her hotel. He found even the idea of her exciting and, yes, maybe dangerous. He had assumed that he was long past the age of finding danger an aphrodisiac, but with Helena it was the whole package: attractive, confident, muscular in a feminine way, foreign. That little smile of hers had somehow quickened his pulse. He squared his shoulders and made a valiant effort to rein in his belly.

  Even dressed in training pants and a T-shirt, she seemed too attractive for an art expert. But, then, Attila’s idea of an art expert was a weedy egghead with a tuft of hair and the facial expression of a giraffe — somewhat like Kis, in fact. She greeted him with the same smile that had got his attention in the gallery. As if she were thinking over a joke or knew something funny she had chosen not to reveal. Yet.

  “I thought I would go for a run up and down Gellért Hill and along the Danube,” she said. “Since you won’t let me leave the city, I may as well get to know it better.”

  “What is so urgent you had to see me tonight?” he asked as gruffly as he could manage.

  “You remember the old man in the apartment building near the synagogue?” she asked.

  He stared at her.

  “You followed me to Dob Street and waited outside the building where the old man lives.”

  “I may have . . .”

  “Gábor Nagy,” she said. “I assume you worked that out.”

  There was no point in dissembling. “I may have.”

  “He contacted me today. He says he is afraid. Someone has threatened him.”

  “What does that have to do with János Krestin? Or with the dead Bulgarian?”

  “The man who threatened him is called Gyula Németh. When they were all in Vorkuta, he went by the name of Bika, most likely because he looked like a bull.”

  “Who all?”

  “Nagy, Márton, Németh, and Krestin. Gyula Németh is the man I mentioned to you before, but I didn’t know his real name then. Now I do. And I know that he told Gábor Nagy he could find himself being thrown down into his courtyard to sniff the remnants of his potted plants if he talked about Vorkuta to anyone. And one more thing, this guy Németh was in your ÁVO with Krestin.”

  “It’s not my ÁVO,” Attila said. “And who told you that?”

  “Nagy. It’s amazing how his memory returned when he needed it. When I talked with him before, he was all for burying the past and letting the future take care of itself. That’s why he didn’t tell me Németh’s name then. Very philosophical. Now, it turns out, he remembers.”

  “And why would this man want to kill Krestin?”

  “Perhaps they shared a secret he didn’t want revealed. Maybe Krestin owed him and didn’t pay up. I don’t know, but judging by what Nagy told me, Németh was the muscle in that camp. And now that Krestin is dead, Nagy felt free to tell me that Krestin was in charge of a group of prisoners. He was a kapo, and Bika was his enforcer.”

  “You made me come all the way here to tell me this?”

  “Not entirely,” she said. “I think Nagy needs protection. If this Bika knows enough to threaten him, he could be thinking of killing him, and you and your friends in the police may be tired of finding dead bodies. The first two may have been unpredictable, but for this one, you have had fair warning.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Alexander was smoking his second Sobranie and enjoying a glass of whisky and crushed ice when Attila arrived at the Diablo. The Russian waiter was hovering over the table, talking in a low voice. Being Russian, he managed to keep his face almost expressionless, but his hands were moving as if he were weighing something. Attila hoped it was nothing that concerned him. Perhaps sins against the ruling czar.

  When he saw Attila, Alexander leaned back in his seat, blew a smoke ring, and said, “Hello faszfej,” then lifted his finger over his glass and pointed at Attila to indicate to the waiter that Attila wanted the same drink. Attila ignored being greeted as a dickhead and wedged himself into the seat across the table. Alexander wasted no time in asking Attila why he had thought it important to take a run at Grigoriev, and, since he had decided to ignore Alexander’s very clear instructions, exactly what he thought he had accomplished.

  “Not much except to make them think that they are not immune here, that having billions does not justify killing someone or refusing to co-operate with the police when the dead man was one of your employees.”

  Alexander finished his drink. “You knew he hadn’t killed the guy.”

  “Personally? Of course not. But that so-called secretary of his could have done it.”

  The waiter arrived with Attila’s drink, and Alexander ordered two more.

  “I tried to tell you where to look for the killer.”

  “Italians? There are none here, as far as we can tell.”

  “Tihanyi?”

  “Don’t be silly. And he is not Italian.”

  “Never overlook an Italian connection when there’s money involved. But what about the woman?”

  “I met her today.” More than once, he thought. He decided not to mention Nagy. He had already called Tóth and asked him to send a plainclothes guy to watch the building.

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I don’t believe she did it.”

  “Of course not,” Alexander said with an exaggerated seriousness that may have passed for sarcasm in Russia. “And it wasn’t her who did in Krestin either, right?”

  Attila was surprised. The police hadn’t released any information on how Krestin died. Given his age, he could have died of a heart attack in his bed. The only local newspaper that could still publish uncensored news had merely mentioned that he had died, and it ran a glowing obituary: owner of the Lipótváros football team (no mention of the missing funds), philanthropist, opera buff, art collector, and so on.

  “You kn
ow already?” he said after the waiter brought their drinks.

  Alexander laughed. “I knew before you, I expect. Piotr Denisovich was concerned that a man who tried to sell him a fake Titian should have been killed. And, despite your idiotic meddling, he called me.”

  “To say?”

  “To ask that I look into the matter. He doesn’t want any mud sticking to his name.”

  “Other than the mud we already know about.”

  Alexander finished his whisky in one gulp and lit another Sobranie. “Attila, you know too little and, at the same time, too much. You have attracted Piotr Denisovich’s attention by showing up, asking dumbass questions, and pretending to be a policeman. I can try to save your hide, but it’s a waste of effort if you continue to mix in his business. He is a dangerous man, but one who is careful how he acts. For example, if he were to have you drowned in the Danube, there would be no one, other than me, who’d want to know who did it and why. Tóth may even be relieved to have you off his back.”

  Attila thought of the girls and concluded they were too young to launch an investigation into his sudden death. Tibor had always been a let-sleeping-dogs-lie kind of guy. Tibor’s mother wouldn’t miss Attila. Despite her tempting invitations to drink J&B and try her delicious homemade desserts, he rarely visited her. That was also the case with Attila’s own mother, and besides, she had begun a late-life affair with a spry octogenarian who disapproved of Attila’s current profession. There was his cousin in Temesvár (now, for some complicated reasons, Timisoara) who was too busy trying to foment the separatist Hungarian movement in Transylvania to take time over Attila. Magda was pissed off with him and with reason. The ex would miss the monthly payments but not him.