by Anna Porter
Helena had resisted her father’s offer to look at the portrait. “I will take your word for it,” she told him when he said the picture was of his client’s great grandfather, one of the szlachta, the nobility practically eliminated by the Nazis.
“He couldn’t afford to buy it, but he can afford your price,” she had said.
Simon had laughed. The painting had, obviously, not been for sale — at least not after the war.
He had tried to put a good face on his business when he told her about it. By then, she had a degree in art history and was working at Christie’s. “It’s better that you know as little as possible,” he said. “But one day, you may want to do this yourself. It’s a way to keep warm and well fed and to give your kids a good education.” He had been proud of being able to send her to a private school and a good university. Now she knew that he had viewed her education and her apprenticeship at Christie’s as an investment.
Her mother never explained where the money had come from, and she had prepared for Simon’s visits with the excitement of a young girl, putting on a new dress, applying makeup, spraying a bit of Chanel No. 5 behind her ears. Helena was still furious with them both: him for deceiving her all those years and her for going along with the deception. Was it only the money that mattered to her mother? The big house on Roxborough Drive, where the wealthy lived, the expensive cars she bought, including the latest, a Mercedes convertible? Or had she really loved him? And loved him enough to acknowledge that she had an illegitimate daughter at a time when and in a neighbourhood where people still frowned on that sort of thing.
She had not once turned her head to look at Simon while he told her about the Gierymski portrait, which now she regretted, because he had lived for only another month, and they would never have another conversation.
Even now, thinking about her father gave her a toothache.
Her wine was warm by the time she lifted it to her lips. She knew she’d been silly to sit here, not watching the street, but that’s what thinking about him did to her. “You must always be aware of your surroundings,” he had told her. “Always scan faces. Watch how people move. Do they turn after they pass you? Do they give you a second look?”
She picked up the copy of SME Bratislava she had taken from the restaurant’s stack of newspapers, but she was looking beyond its open pages at the people walking along Sedlárska, angry at herself for becoming careless. The new wig and the glasses had given her a false sense of security.
She first saw him stop at the corner of Sedlárska and Hlavné Square, looking up at street numbers and down at a map in his hand. He seemed slimmer in his black windbreaker, but still thick-necked and bulky in the shoulders. His sunglasses were balanced on his short-cropped sandy hair. Attila from Budapest. What the hell was he doing in Bratislava?
She hid her face behind the newspaper but kept watching. There was a movement in the doorway of the facing building, a large dark shape. At first she could not make out whether it was male or female, but there was no doubt once he poked his big moonface out and the sun hit the visor of the cap he was wearing. Big chin under the cap, mouth a straight line. He stepped onto the street, huge, leaning forward, like a boxer flexing for a fight. He was not looking at Helena, but at Attila Fehér. There was a barely perceptible movement as he drew something from the front of his bunched-up jacket while Fehér was still looking at his map. Helena put down the newspaper and reached for the cardboard tube.
Fehér turned slowly toward the big man. It was impossible for Helena to see the big man’s face from this distance, but he seemed to square his shoulders and bring his arms forward. Then he marched, almost ran, toward Fehér. They met at the corner, facing each other, the bigger man’s gun rising up toward Fehér’s midriff. Helena threw her new knife at his back with enough force to stop him but not enough to kill him. Given her seated position, she thought it was a pretty good throw.
Everything stopped. The noise in the street suddenly hushed, then started up louder and sharper than it had been before. Everyone froze as Fehér kicked the gun out of the big man’s hand and stepped on his arm for good measure. A woman screamed and pulled her child close.
No one was looking at Helena.
She left some euros beside her wine glass, picked up the papers and her handbag, and left for the taxi rank outside the Carlton Hotel. She had a plane to catch.
CHAPTER 31
Attila had been vaguely aware of the man bearing down on him, but had not recognized the imminent danger. He had spent a few hours on the internet looking for Gyula Németh, G. Németh, and a variety of other Némeths. It was amazing how many Némeths there were in this small country, particularly as the name meant German in Hungarian, and neither Germans nor Hungarians were held in high regard in this part of the world. As he could not afford to hire help, he had no option but to phone every one of them until a G & M Németh in Bratislava — specialists in karate, lessons at reasonable prices — agreed that at least one of them was called Gyula and that he knew a Mr. Krestin in Budapest.
Had Attila left it at that, he would never have seen the formidable bulk of Gyula Németh hurtling toward him along Sedlárska Street while he was checking street numbers for the karate studio.
Instinct took over. Attila fended off Németh’s upraised arm, kicked the gun out of the way as he dropped to his knees, then twisted his arms behind his back, ready to handcuff him. Except, of course, he had no cuffs with him, so he waited with the shocked crowd for a policeman to arrive. All the time, Németh was screaming that he was the victim here.
The two young Slovak policemen who showed up had little interest in Attila’s explanation of his quest to identify who had killed someone in Budapest, but they did agree that this was likely some crazy Hungarian case, since both the victim and Attila were Hungarians, and so was Attila’s boss, the man he called on his cell phone when the Slovak police attempted to arrest him.
“Does anybody here speak Slovak?” Attila heard Tóth shouting at the other end of the phone. “Anyone?”
It would have been insanity to admit to any such thing in Budapest, as it was equally risky to admit to understanding Hungarian if you wished to keep your police job in Bratislava, but everyone agreed to speak enough English that Attila was not charged with an offence, not even after a knife — a long blade with a polished wooden handle — was found embedded in the unfortunate Németh’s upper thigh. One of the policemen suggested he needed medical attention. No one seemed to know how the knife got there, although some bystanders were sure it could not have been Attila’s.
The policemen confiscated the gun and the knife after the laborious work of dislodging the latter from Németh’s bleeding thigh. “Evidence,” one of them said, admiring the knife’s sharp point against his thumb. He asked Attila to stop by the central Bratislava police station the next day before he went on his way back to where he had come from. Attila had only the faintest idea what Németh had said to them in Slovak, but they seemed to have no further interest in the big man or in his reason for attacking Attila, other than in helping him to stand up.
Attila used his shirt to staunch the blood spurting out of Németh’s wound but he didn’t take off the man’s pants, so the blood soaked both the shirt and the pant leg and ran in thin rivulets into his blue Nikes.
The ambulance took them both to Hospital Ružinov, neither the closest, nor the newest, of Bratislava’s medical centres, but the one named on Németh’s medical ID card. Attila travelled in the front with the driver, who assured him that “his friend” would be fixed up very quickly. The ambulance service was not free and not covered by Németh’s policy, according to the driver, but it was by no means the most expensive service in the city, and there would be a small discount if Attila paid cash.
As Németh’s card was for the geriatric wing of this old city hospital, it was safe to assume the doctors there would have very few knife-wounds to deal with. The
unusualness of this case alone was likely to guarantee immediate attention.
They had been in the waiting room for maybe fifteen minutes before Attila decided to sit next to Németh and try to find out whether the man had been in Budapest the day Krestin was killed. His “Bika” nickname made sense. The man looked like someone who could inflict serious damage on an opponent. His broad forehead was set in deep frown lines, and there were scars along his wide jaw and down from the corner of one eye. Its eyelid drooped.
He refused to look up at Attila but he did answer the question. “I was there to see János,” he drawled in deep south-country Hungarian, the sort of accent Attila used when he was bent on irritating someone with class pretensions.
“The day before yesterday?” Attila said.
“He is my oldest friend.”
“What time did you visit?”
“What’s it to you?”
When one of the emergency doctors took Németh into a curtained-off area, Attila followed. He watched as the doctor stitched and bandaged the knife wound. Attila couldn’t understand a word of their conversation but he was pretty sure Németh was accusing him of the attack, but, as he had brought the man into the hospital and had given him his own shirt, the doctor seemed prepared to offer Attila the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible that Németh had a nasty reputation at the hospital. Or the doctor was just eager to leave the small, stuffy area. In any event, he left.
“Why were you trying to kill me?” Attila said.
“I thought you were going after me,” Németh protested. “You called. You asked whether I knew János Krestin. You told me he was dead. You didn’t explain what you wanted from me. It’s your own damned fault. You could have said you were with the Hungarian police. I’ve never had any trouble with them. Ever. And János, he was friends with the police chief. And the prime minister. All the prime ministers. He knew everybody.” Németh was examining the bandage on his leg. The blood had oozed through it and was trickling down his leg again. When the nurse came back with the release papers, his blood had soaked through the sheets on the narrow slab of a bed and began to pool under its wheels.
She didn’t bother with the doctor this time. She just changed the bandage, gave him a spare wad of gauze, a packet of pills, some tape, and written instructions.
“I gotta keep my leg up,” Németh said after glancing at the instructions. “My lucky day today! My friend dies. Some chick knifes my leg, and you turn out to be a policeman.”
“Chick?”
“I saw her sitting outside the restaurant before I saw you.”
“A woman?”
Németh didn’t bother to answer that. “She was working with you.”
A woman? What kind of woman would have done that? And why?
“She wasn’t working with me,” Attila said. “I didn’t even see her. What did she look like?”
“Thin, brown hair, glasses, blue raincoat.”
Attila shook his head. “I have no idea who she is. Maybe something to do with Krestin . . .”
“More like someone who killed him.”
“Someone like you, for example?”
“I would never have hurt János,” Németh said. “I loved him. Like I said, he was my oldest friend.”
“Since Vorkuta?”
“Since Vorkuta.”
“Where you were known as Bika?”
“What difference does that make now? It’s more than sixty years ago. Who even remembers those camps?”
Attila nodded. Not many did. Most were now dead. “But people still remember the state security men. That’s only twenty-some years ago. Guys in the ÁVO and AVH, like you and Krestin. He’d be remembered for that.”
“There were a lot of us in the service,” Németh said. “There was only one man I know of who was killed for it. And you guys never figured it out. You put it down to a simple robbery gone wrong.” He snorted with derision, sounding like his nickname.
“Who would want to kill Krestin?”
“Some guy jealous of his success. A couple of days ago he had a call from this little guy who was in Vorkuta with us,” Németh said. “Guy was nursing nasty memories.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say, but János hadn’t liked his tone. He thought the guy could have been looking for a bribe.”
“So you threatened him.”
“Not threatened. I just told him to stop harassing János. He was one of János’s men in the camp. Not too willing at first, but he came around when he saw what was in it for him.”
“And that was?”
“More food. It’s what we all wanted. Enough to stay alive.”
“You mean Gábor Nagy?”
“That little squirrel . . .”
“And what did he do for Janos?”
“Whatever it took to stay alive.”
He looked out the grimy window, as if the answer was somewhere out there. “You’ve seen the photos,” he said.
“Like you said, sixty years ago,” Attila said. “So what could Nagy have on János that he thought would be worth a bribe?”
“A lot of bad stuff in those camps.”
“Like being a kapo?”
Bika shrugged.
“Or something before the war? He was Arrow Cross, wasn’t he?” Attila was taking a stab in the dark, relying on the bit of information in Krestin’s file that had him emerge from jail, while other members of the Communist Party languished for years behind bars.
“As if that matters now he is dead.”
They made their way out of the hospital, Bika leaning hard on Attila, almost pushing him over. The man must have weighed more than a hundred kilos. “And then there is that bastard,” Németh said.
“What bastard?” Attila asked.
“The son of a bitch his mother bore before she left János.”
“Bastard? You mean Jenci is not Krestin’s son?”
“I tried to tell János that the kid was a bastard, but he wouldn’t go along with me. He thought his little lady was not interested in other men.” Németh’s laugh was like a bark, loud and angry. “Last month I got the proof!”
“Last month? How?”
“I took the little bastard out for a drink. Got his DNA.”
***
Attila left another message for Helena at the Gresham. “If you happen to be talking with your client in Canada, please try to find out about a numbered company that made an investment in a big deal of Krestin’s that went sour.”
CHAPTER 32
Once she’d cleared immigration at Charles de Gaulle airport, Helena took the train to Gare du Nord, transferred to the métro, and came up to bright, crisp sunshine at Odéon. She could have got off at a station closer to her office on Cherche-Midi, but she loved walking in Paris.
Her father’s favourite arrondissement had been the sixth. He told her he always stayed on the Left Bank and never failed to make pilgrimages to Saint-Germain-des-Pré and to Les Deux Magots. Although the service there had declined over the years, it was good to sit in the café once frequented by Simone de Beauvoir, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. Now, Les Deux Magots reminded Helena only of her father; she avoided it. Even on sunny mornings, when the smell of coffee wafted by her, she crossed to the other side of the street.
She stopped for an espresso on Rue du Four, bought flowers for Louise from the vendor at Saint-Sulpice, discarded her cell phone in the garbage bin meant for junk and dog turds, and picked up a couple of new phones with SIM cards at Bon Marché.
Paris was now her city. Simon, the fake art trader, the occasional thief, the man suspected of both the Gardner and the Stockholm museum heists (he had not done either of them, but he was guilty of others), still sought by Interpol and profiled (quite inaccurately) in “Art Theft,” had been dead for more than five years. There had been no announce
ments, no obituaries, not even Interpol had noted Simon’s death. The doctor who had signed the death certificate asserted that he had died of natural causes, despite the bullet wounds in his back. The doctor, “an old family friend,” according to her mother, had called Annelise to report that Simon was dead. He had also arranged for the pick-up and cremation of his body. That is how Helena learned that Simon had been living not far from the house on Roxborough where she grew up.
Annelise, who had predicted Simon’s demise and even guessed who would pay to have him killed, did not arrange for a funeral. “If there was a funeral, or even a private service, you couldn’t be there. Any connection with him at this stage in your career would destroy your credibility,” Annelise had told her daughter.
Afterward, they had argued over who would fly to Paris with the ashes. Neither of them was keen to follow Simon’s final instructions to scatter them on the Seine.
“His presence in the city will spoil it for me,” Helena said.
“Well, he won’t exactly be present,” Annelise said. “You dump him into the Seine, and God knows where the ashes will drift. I, on the other hand, will have to live here with all of this so-called art until I have disposed of it, one by one, so as not to arouse suspicion.”
In the end, her mother stayed in Toronto and Helena flew to Paris. She quickly found out that Simon had not tarnished the city for her at all.
Annelise sold what was left of Simon’s paintings as good fakes or skillful forgeries. She had no desire for, as she put it, “a criminal inheritance.”
“You chose him, I didn’t,” Helena said.
Annelise agreed that that was so, but Simon had been young and gorgeous then. Long hair, tanned skin, lovely slender fingers. He had earned his degree, he was a painter, a water colourist, an enthusiastic traveller, a guide to all the best museums in Europe. His excessive admiration for the early Impressionists was the only sign of what he would later become.
