Kossuth Square

by Adam LeBor

  Budapest police headquarters, 10.00 a.m.

  Balthazar passed Sandor Takacs a slim, brown cardboard folder. ‘Kovacs Virag’ was written on a white label on the top right-hand corner. ‘Please open it,’ he said.

  Sandor placed the folder on the coffee table between them. He shook his head as he replied, ‘I don’t need to, Tazi.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I know what’s in it,’ he said, his voice soft.

  ‘Nothing. That’s what’s in it.’ Sandor was his boss, so he had to keep his temper. But a boss who had kept a secret from him for more than a decade, for all the time they had worked together. A secret about his own family. Balthazar leant forward as he spoke, his voice tight with anger. ‘It’s empty, sir. I asked Agota, the archivist, where the contents were. You know Agota – she’s been here forever, remembers when we used card indexes. A memory like an elephant. Agi knows everything. Or she usually does.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She turned pink and looked away. Then she said she did not remember the case. Or know anything about it. She’s a terrible liar. I asked her who had last asked for the file and when. She looked up the records. Nobody has touched this since 1996, when the case was closed. I asked her if she knew who that was. Because that had to be recorded.’

  Sandor looked down for a moment, as if searching for a cigarette to shred, or a carrot stick to eat, but the desk was empty. They were sitting in the corner alcove of his office, on the brown fake-leather easy chairs, two cups of thick black coffee cooling on the table in between them. For once the air-conditioner was working, rattling out intermittent gusts of cold air. Sandor’s stubby fingers, the tips brown with nicotine, twisted inside his palms as he spoke. ‘And did she?’

  ‘Yes, sir, she did.’

  Sandor sat back for a moment, closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t suppose there is much point reminding you that you are supposed to be investigating Pal Dezeffy, with a special warrant issued by the prime minister, on a matter of urgent national security.’

  ‘I am,’ said Balthazar. ‘That’s exactly what I am doing. Sir.’

  Sandor said, his voice weary, ‘Drop the “sir”, Tazi. I get the message.’

  Balthazar paused, looked at his boss for a moment. Sandor looked tired. There were sweat stains at the armpits of his white shirt. His thinning grey hair, usually neatly combed over his bald spot, was splayed in different directions and his brown eyes were dull and red-rimmed. ‘OK. But when are you going to tell me what happened to Virag? And why the case was shut down.’

  Sandor sat back for a moment, closed his eyes and slowly shook his head before reaching for his coffee cup. He looked down at the last drops of the tarry liquid and swallowed them before he answered. ‘Do you want another one, Tazi?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thanks.’ Balthazar shook his head, stayed silent, tried to let some of the tension drain away. There was no point getting emotional about this, even less in going to war with his boss, not unless he wanted to leave the police force, which he did not.

  Sandor said, ‘The case was not shut down. We have a pretty good idea of what happened to Virag. It was investigated and recorded. There is a proper case file.’ He tapped the brown folder on the coffee table. ‘It’s just not in there.’

  ‘Then where is it?’ asked Balthazar.

  Sandor said, ‘Let’s go outside, get some air.’ He picked up the folder, walked across the room to his desk and locked it away. He picked up the telephone handset which had a direct connection to Erzsi, his secretary. ‘Erzsike, please arrange for Gyuri to be in the car,’ he asked, then replaced the handset. He gestured to Balthazar and walked to the door. Balthazar stood up and followed behind him. The two men walked to the end of the grey-painted corridor and waited for the lift, neither speaking as they travelled down to the basement. After a couple of minutes Gyuri drove up, at the wheel of the same black Audi A6 that had taken them to Parliament that morning. He steered the car through the car park to the exit, where a red barrier lay across their path. There he took out his car permit card and held it over the sensor. The barrier stayed in place. He tried again, twice more, but the barrier did not rise. After a minute he took out his telephone and made a call. Soon after that a man in his fifties shambled across, apologised, pressed a button on the side of the barrier, inserted a key and turned it, and the red barrier finally creaked upwards.

  Two minutes later they were cruising down the far lane of the Arpad Bridge, heading west over the river towards Buda. The end of Arpad Bridge was flanked on both sides by glass-fronted office buildings, their walls of windows glinting in the bright summer sunshine. The traffic was thick on all three lanes on each side.

  ‘Where are we going, boss?’ asked Balthazar.

  ‘I told you. For a little walk,’ said Sandor. ‘It’s a beautiful day. I thought we could get some fresh air.’ He turned to Balthazar, ‘Margaret Island. Is that OK with you?’

  Balthazar nodded. ‘Fine.’

  The car crossed the bridge, turned right onto the narrow slip road that let down towards the northern tip of the island. The Audi swept down the slip road as it curved sharply, first to the left, then to the right, all the while flanked by a high wall of grey cement blocks, before passing under a low, grimy ceiling, the underside of the bridge, and into the bright summer sunlight before pulling in by a bus stop. Sandor thanked Gyuri, told him not to wait. He and Balthazar got out of the vehicle and began to walk alongside the running track until they reached a green bench overlooking the water.

  Sandor sat down, gestured for Balthazar to sit next to him. ‘We have two things to talk about, Tazi. First work, then the personal stuff.’ Sandor reached into his jacket pocket and handed Balthazar a burner phone, an obsolete Nokia candy bar model. ‘I’m the only one who has this number. So if you get a call, you’ll know it’s me.’

  Balthazar took the handset. ‘Why do I need this?’

  Sandor looked out over the water, watched a mallard duck drift by on the water, droplets shining on its wings. He turned to Balthazar, almost paternal affection in his eyes. ‘She’s going to war’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘in about twenty minutes. She has to. She has no other choice, but she might not win, Tazi. I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire. We need a safe means of communicating.’ He looked down at the Nokia. ‘That’s it.’

  Balthazar nodded, slipped the handset into his pocket. ‘Thanks. The personal stuff?’

  A light wind blew across the island, sending ripples across the wide expanse of the river. The breeze was fresh and clean, already scented with damp leaves, the first hint of autumn. The water glittered silver in the sunshine. ‘I’m sorry, Tazi. I owe you an apology. More than that, actually. A confession.’

  Balthazar looked at his boss, tried to read his mood. There was guilt, yes, a nervousness too, but also a kind of weariness, one that he had never seen before. Sandor was a survivor, one of the compromise generation. He had grown up under Communism, been nurtured by the system, given opportunities that many of his peers in the village could only dream of. But his glittering career in the Budapest police, the prized trips abroad when the borders were sealed, the luxurious dinners with foreign delegations, the family summer holidays at the police villa on the shore of Lake Balaton, all these came at a price: to know when to probe and when to back off, when to press for charges to be brought and when to let those charges fade away. And there were no more difficult or embarrassing questions under a one-party state than those involving politicians or Communist officials. Virag had died in 1995, five years after the change of system. The borders were open then, the economy was a free-market free-for-all. But the same people were still in power, reborn and renamed, and old reflexes, honed over generations, had not faded away. In any case, Balthazar asked himself, who was he to demand probity, ethical and honest behaviour? He was the son of a family of pimps. Only a day ago he had colluded in the cover-up of what was almost certainly a murder.
Virag’s death, however, he would not allow to fade away. ‘No need to apologise, boss. But I’ll take an explanation.’

  Sandor wore a light summer suit jacket over his shirt. He scrabbled in the inside pockets until he found what he was looking for. His right hand emerged holding a half-crushed packet of Sopianae cigarettes. He took one of the cigarettes out, held it to his nose and breathed deeply before exhaling, then turned to Balthazar. ‘Tell me what you know, and I’ll try to fill in the gaps.’

  ‘She was sixteen years old. She went to Pal’s house to sing. She had an incredible voice. Once she started singing the whole room would fall silent. Her voice was like an instrument. She was a naïve young girl. She had barely been outside District VIII, had certainly never seen a house like that. I remember them washing her hair before the concert.’ Balthazar paused for a moment, suddenly back in the kitchen of the family home on Jozsef Street, Virag bent over the sink while his Marta gently shampooed her long tresses then rinsed them. ‘I remember wondering why my mother was washing Virag’s hair as well.’ He watched a long boat hotel as it headed downstream. Each room had large French windows which opened out. The sound of laughter and excited chatter carried across the water.

  ‘And why was that?’ asked Sandor.

  ‘Because my mother was also her mother.’ He turned to Sandor. ‘Virag Kovacs was my half-sister.’

  Sandor did not turn as he spoke. ‘Your half-sister, Tazi,’ his voice barely audible.

  Balthazar looked at Sandor, glanced down at his hand where his fingers were twisting around the cigarette. Balthazar said, ‘You don’t sound surprised, boss.’

  Sandor’s face creased in a wan smile. ‘That’s because I’m not. I already knew.’ Balthazar sat rigid, in a state of shock. His boss knew his deepest family secret. Sandor continued talking: ‘I’ve always known.’

  ‘Why? How?’

  Sandor was staring far out, down the river, where the shores of the Obuda factory island loomed in the distance, his mouth slightly open, his eyes not seeing the vista, but locked on something, or someone, who had long vanished from his life. ‘I’m sorry, Tazi, it was wrong to keep this from you. Wrong of all of us.’

  ‘All of us? Us?’ asked Balthazar.

  ‘Yes, Tazi. Us.’

  ‘What’s your involvement here?’ asked Balthazar, looking Sandor up and down. The cigarette was shredded, scraps of white paper and tobacco gathering at Sandor’s feet. Sandor stood up. Balthazar followed.

  Sandor gripped Balthazar’s arm, swallowed hard before he answered, his voice cracking as he spoke. ‘I was her father, Tazi.’ He sniffed hard, wiped his eyes. ‘Virag was my daughter.’

  NINETEEN

  Parliament, 11.50 a.m.

  Eniko walked quickly behind Reka Bardossy and her bodyguards as they strode through the long ornate corridor towards the Kossuth Hall, where the press conference was taking place. The journalists’ clamour echoed through the hot, sticky air. Part of her asked what on earth she was doing here, trailing behind the prime minister. She should be with her colleagues, in front of her, preparing a series of sharp, devastating questions. Instead Eniko and Reka had spent the morning role-playing the press conference and planning their answers. The media gathering, they both knew, was much more than a forum for transmitting information to journalists. Unlike Pal Dezeffy, Reka had not won an election. She had taken power through his wrongdoings. That meant that Hungary’s first woman prime minister urgently needed to assert her authority and legitimise her government. The next hour would be crucial: as soon as she took the podium and stood in front of the lectern she would expose herself. That meant she needed to take full control of the instruments of state. If all went well, she would banish the shadow of her predecessor, deal a fatal blow to his plans to return to power, and properly anchor herself in national life as prime minister. And if not? Eniko briefly shook her head, as though the movement itself would banish the idea from becoming reality. She glanced at her surrounds as she bustled onwards. Was there another building anywhere bedecked in so much gilt and marble? Gothic arches, trimmed with gold, reached across the ceiling. Both sides of the corridor were flanked by tall columns of dark-pink stone. The columns to her right were topped with statues, while those on the other side framed long, narrow windows that overlooked Kossuth Square, and each of those was topped in turn with a stained-glass panel. Plush benches with maroon padded seats lined one side.

  For a moment she was a schoolgirl again, on a tour of the building. She could hear the guide’s voice intoning statistics as though outlining the version of a five-year plan: almost seven hundred rooms, ten courtyards and thirteen lifts. Add to that today one nervous former journalist, hoping that her jitters did not show. As if reading her mind, Reka turned around and glanced at her, nodding reassuringly. Eniko nodded back, watching how the prime minister was flanked by four bodyguards, one on either side, one in front and another behind, marvelling at how they moved as though synchronised, keeping Reka boxed in, maintaining the same distance from each other as they headed towards the press conference. Eniko rushed to catch up and almost lost her balance as her formal dress shoes slipped on the thick purple carpet. In among the clamour of voices for a moment she thought she heard Zsuzsa speaking. But it was impossible to tell for sure. One thing was clear: Eniko was a long way from the offices of 555.hu.

  She glanced quickly out of the last window before the ante-room. There were now half a dozen tents on the two patches of green that flanked the central square. A number of burly men were walking around and gesticulating, several holding what she now recognised as walkie-talkies. Eniko made a mental note to talk to Reka about the tents and men in Kossuth Square but the thought flew from her head as she walked into the crowded ante-room. There were more than a hundred people in the space, a mix of Hungarian journalists and foreign correspondents, gossiping and warily trading information in an excited babel of languages. In among the Hungarian voices Eniko heard English, Russian, French, Chinese and Arabic. Gerald Palin and Theodore Nichols, she saw, were standing slightly to one side at the back, near the tea and coffee jugs and cups laid out at the back of the room. Others were adjusting the headsets and small grey handsets that would provide simultaneous translation from Hungarian into English, French, Spanish, Russian and German. The chatter faded as the first bodyguard walked into the room, immediately followed by Reka and the three other protectors. Eniko paused for a moment as they continued into the hall, feeling the familiar buzz that a story would soon be breaking. The air itself seemed to be alive with energy. The familiar story-hunger surged again inside her but she damped it down. That was her old life, she told herself. Perhaps one day she would be back, but not today.

  The journalists rushed to sit down or take their place behind their television cameras. Sensing movement to her right, Eniko turned to see Zsuzsa walking towards her, notebook in hand. Their eyes met. Zsuzsa mouthed, ‘Are you OK?’ Eniko nodded. Eniko could see that Zsuzsa was clearly about to ask another question, doubtless about the coming announcement. Part of Eniko wanted nothing more than to hustle her former colleague into a corner and give her the scoop ten minutes early. Instead she smiled, said, ‘We’ll catch up soon,’ and walked on.

  The chatter faded away as Reka walked onto the platform. Press conferences were usually held in the Delegation Hall. Eniko and Reka had discussed today’s venue. They had agreed that the Delegation Hall, while decent enough, was not appropriately imposing for her first press conference. Eniko was about to announce a decision that would – if it worked – permanently alter Hungary’s balance of political forces. They needed somewhere that was part of a historical continuum that reached back through the centuries, but could also launch a new kind of leader, firmly bringing Hungary into the twenty-first century. The answer, they decided, was the Kossuth Hall, one of the grandest rooms in Parliament, where the highest-ranking visiting politicians were received. One wall of long windows, overlooking Kossuth Square, gave a clear view over the main piazza, all t
he way up Alkotmany Street. The other walls were half lined with dark-wood panelling. But the rows of paintings of the usual men in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dress that usually hung above the panelling had been replaced with photographs of young Hungarians: an Oscar-winning film director, several famous writers and artists, a fashion designer whose clothes were the talk of Paris and London, a particle physicist, a former student at Fazekas school – Balthazar’s alma mater – who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize, and a female fencer who had won three gold medals at the last Olympics. The windows were open and the sounds of Kossuth Square drifted up, half muffled by distance: a number-two tram rattling around the corner towards the Ministry of Justice, shouts of excited tourists, the far-off revving of engines.

  There were two light-wood lecterns in the room, each with a Hungarian flag on the front panel, facing out towards the reporters. Reka took her place behind one, Eniko the other. The four bodyguards fanned out, one to each corner. Eniko’s early-morning flagging of the event had worked even better than she expected. She had never seen a government press conference as crowded as this: the room was jammed with reporters, sitting, standing, several even crouching on the gleaming polished parquet floor, notebooks in their hands, waiting expectantly.

  In front of the two daises, a long table was crowded with microphones, each emblazoned with the symbol of their network, attached to a thick tangle of cables snaking back through the room. Behind the microphones were rows of television cameras: Eniko counted crews from the state and private Hungarian channels, as well as CNN, the BBC, French, German and Italian television, Russia Today and China’s Xinhua. These were the lucky ones – chosen by Eniko on the understanding they would pool their footage. Budapest was crowded with international networks covering the refugee crisis at Keleti and the borders. Now that story – and its repercussions – had merged with the fall of Pal and Reka’s rise, Hungarian domestic politics were suddenly international news. And not everyone in the room was a journalist, Eniko noticed. She had once been introduced to the striking tall black woman with buzz-cut hair sitting at the rear of the room. What was her name? Then Eniko remembered: Celeste Johnson, the British deputy ambassador. On the other side of the room sat a scruffy, unshaven American in rumpled chinos and a grubby button-down shirt whom Eniko had seen several times at Keleti. ‘Brad’, as he called himself, claimed to be a ‘freelance reporter’. He had a strong New York accent and took a lot of notes in a spiral notebook but somehow had never revealed a family name or which news media he worked for. Reka, Eniko noticed, glanced at both Brad and Celeste before looking away. For a second a cloud passed across her face before she slipped into a politician’s professional smile.