Kossuth Square

by Adam LeBor

  Attila sniffed and scratched the back of his neck, before turning to several of his colleagues. They, like him, were leaning on the doors of their black SUVs, which were now parked in the centre of Kossuth Square, ten yards from the main doorway to Parliament. ‘Hear that, lads? Apparently we’ve been disbanded.’

  The other Gendarmes shrugged. One lit a cigarette, another checked his mobile telephone. Attila turned back to Kata Kiss. ‘News to us.’

  The cameraman panned to a group of Israeli tourists passing by on electric Segways, then to a young Chinese couple posing for selfies with the Gendarmes and their vehicles in the background. The thud of rotor blades again sounded in the distance.

  Kata replied, ‘I was at a press conference a short while ago with Prime Minister Bardossy. Not only did she say that your organisation has been disbanded, but also that unless you surrendered your uniforms, vehicles and weapons within four hours, you would all be arrested.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Attila, ‘that’s scary.’

  The cameraman panned to several members of the parliamentary ceremonial guard. The guardsmen usually goose-stepped back and forth across the flagstones with military precision every half-hour, but now stood huddled by the doorway. Their Second World War rifles, complete with bayonets, were stacked in a corner. Several of the guardsmen stood smoking. Others watched disconsolately at the spectacle unfolding on their former parade ground.

  Attila nodded, dropped his cigarette on the ground and ground it out with his boot. ‘So we’ve got three hours, you say.’

  ‘Not me, the prime minister.’

  ‘Who’s going to arrest us?’

  ‘I don’t know. The police maybe? The army?’

  ‘The army.’ Attila laughed, took his pistol out of its holster and looked it over as though checking for flaws. Kata looked alarmed. Attila said, ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, the safety’s on.’ He stared at the camera, his gun still in his hand. ‘Well, officers, you know where to find us.’

  As if on cue, the sound of the rotor blades became a roar as the black helicopter swooped low over the square, scattering the tourists in every direction.

  TWENTY

  Balthazar’s flat, 9.00 p.m.

  Balthazar sat back on his sofa, feet up on the low coffee table, flipping through the foreign news channels as he half watched the evening footage. All his telephones, the burners from Sandor and Anastasia and his iPhone were there, together with his wallet, a new Glock 17 pistol that he had been given by the Parliament security staff, a black leather shoulder holster and a cold cup of tea. The same clip was playing on both of them from the end of Reka Bardossy’s disastrous press conference: the footage showed her walking out of the Kossuth Hall, surrounded by her bodyguards, Eniko trailing behind, while the world’s press corps were huddled excitedly around the windows that looked out over Kossuth Square. And Kossuth Square, it was clear, was now the epicentre of the story. The white television vans that just a day ago had been parked at Keleti Station had now relocated to the space in front of Parliament and the patches of green to its sides. A reporter from CNN, a middle-aged American woman with dyed blonde hair and an over-eager smile, was interviewing an angry Hungarian man in his fifties, standing by a blue tent. He wore a black T-shirt and black combat trousers and claimed to be representing something called the Hungarian Freedom Movement. His long black hair, streaked with grey, was pulled back in a ponytail, under a bandana in the colours of the Hungarian flag. As a Gypsy, Balthazar kept a fairly close eye on Hungary’s fissiparous far right, but he had never heard of this group.

  ‘Why are you here and what do you want?’ asked the reporter.

  ‘Reka Bardossy is a traitor. She must resign,’ said the man, jabbing at the camera with his right forefinger.

  The reporter gestured for the cameraman to step back a little and continued talking. ‘How is she a traitor? She is an elected MP and a former cabinet minister.’

  The man paused for a moment, his face creased in concentration before he spoke. ‘She is a komcsi. She turned our country into a staging post for terrorists. An army of migrants is on the march, using Hungary as a launch pad to get to the west. She must resign.’

  ‘And if she refuses?’ asked the CNN journalist.

  ‘She will have no choice,’ said the man.

  Balthazar picked up his telephone and called Sandor Takacs. He answered on the first ring. ‘Have you seen CNN?’ asked Balthazar.

  ‘Sure. He’s also on the BBC and our television as well.’

  ‘Who is he? What is the Hungarian Freedom Movement?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they have tents, walkie-talkies and matching bandanas. So they are organised.’

  ‘Where are the police? What are our people doing? I thought we were supposed to enforce law and order. We weren’t scared of the Gendarmes last weekend. Why are we now?’

  Sandor said, ‘Last week Reka looked like a winner. Now she doesn’t. I can’t pull that stunt again with their vehicles, Tazi. Attila’s boys have since threatened all the officers who went to the Four Seasons. Some of their families as well. I can’t give orders or make requests that will be refused.’

  ‘What about the army? They could clear the square, get rid of the Gendarmes in a half-an-hour.’

  ‘Do you want a civil war, Tazi? Nobody is going to fight for a prime minister who has not even won an election. The soldiers are like the cops. Watching and waiting.’

  That left one other force. ‘And the state security service?’ asked Balthazar.

  ‘The same. Except maybe for Anastasia and one or two others.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’

  ‘Reka is a survivor. She’ll think of something, I’m sure.’

  ‘She might think about surrendering.’

  ‘She might, Tazi. But she probably won’t. Good night. We’ll speak first thing tomorrow.’

  Balthazar picked up his wallet and took out the government-issued ID with the warrant from the prime minister’s office. He looked at his photograph, the wording authorising his mission, the request for assistance from all state bodies and authorities. He should be down at Kossuth Square, seeing for himself what was happening. In fact it was clear what was going on: an organised attempt at some kind of coup, doubt-less being run behind the scenes by Pal Dezeffy. He put his wallet down and checked the 555.hu website on his phone. The site was running live updates from its reporters positioned across the city. The Gendarmes had not been disbanded. Instead they had deployed in force across downtown Budapest. They had set up checkpoints by the main interchanges, along the Grand Boulevard, the main metro and train stations. Most crucially of all, they had taken control of Kossuth Square and so now controlled entrance to Parliament. Balthazar scrolled through the BBC and CNN. Both home pages featured a large photograph of Attila Ungar in uniform, lounging on his black SUV, with Parliament in the background. In the age of social media, the image was everything. Attila was in control. As for the actual prime minister, Reka had not been seen in public since the disastrous press conference. Her authority was draining away minute by minute. She could not control the patch of ground in front of her office. So how could she run a country? After the events of the day, it was looking more and more likely that Reka would be forced out of office, thought Balthazar. And if the prime minister did step down, where did that leave him?

  But now family matters pressed down on him, not those of state. Balthazar leaned back for a moment and closed his eyes. He could still smell his brother on the sofa fabric. Had Gaspar known? There were many different ways to know things, especially in a family like his, with its rich – too rich – repository of secrets. But on balance, he thought that Gaspar had not known that he – they – had a half-sister, and a half-gadje one. Gaspar was quite hopeless at keeping secrets from him. Balthazar could read his younger brother like a book – luckily, as that skill had ensured that he got his brother out of trouble more times than he could count.

  He glanced across the room, where V
irag still looked out at him, frozen in time in her youthful beauty. How to process what he had learned today? He had once had a sister. A half-sister, in fact, but whatever their connection he could not have loved her more. No more pain accompanied this discovery. But there was amazement, amazement tinged with anger. His mother had kept this from him for twenty years. Not just the fact of his actual connection to Virag, but his mother’s affair… fling, whatever… with his boss. Except his mother did not have flings or affairs. She had fallen in love with Sandor Takacs all those years ago. In another world, Sandor Takacs might have been his father. Was that why he had taken him under his wing as his protégé, protected Balthazar as his career had steadily progressed? Because of guilt? No, not solely. There was some, how could there not be? But guilt alone was too simple an explanation.

  Balthazar and his boss had sat on the bench and talked for some time after Sandor’s confession. Balthazar had asked question after question. But the basic narrative was clear and simple. One night in the late 1970s, when Sandor was a young detective in the Budapest vice squad, he had been called to a fight in a bar in the backstreets of District VIII owned by Lajos Kovacs, Balthazar’s grandfather. One of the hostesses, a seventeen-year-old Marta Kovacs, had been talking to a customer called Mishi. Mishi wanted to take Marta to a nearby hotel where rooms could be rented by the hour. It was explained to Mishi that the bar was not a brothel, but that service was available nearby, with plenty of girls to choose from. Marta, however, was not one of them and would be going home soon. Without Mishi. But Mishi, drunk and angry, refused to take no for an answer. He slapped Marta and insulted her.

  This was a very bad idea. Marta’s protectors, her uncles and brothers, instantly fell on Mishi and his friends. The fight did not go well for them. They were thrown out onto the street and given a serious kicking. Scared by the level of violence she was witnessing, Marta called the police. By the time Sandor Takacs and two colleagues arrived, the fight was over. Mishi had been taken away in an ambulance. Sandor and his fellow police officers did their best, trying to take statements, but eventually gave up after being continuously stonewalled. Nobody saw anything, nobody knew anything. Sandor expected nothing else but still went through the motions. In any case, they all – cops and Gypsies alike – knew that a fight in a bar in the backstreets of District VIII would never be a priority for investigation. But the young detective was completely beguiled by the girl who had phoned for the police, and she by him. They began to meet in secret. The danger of discovery – Sandor would have been sacked, Marta ostracised by her family, or worse – only fuelled their passion. Sandor was Marta’s first boyfriend and she, his first serious relationship. They fell in love and began to talk of a future together. Then Marta became pregnant. After the initial shock – as far as her parents knew, she was still a virgin and would be when she soon married – it was decided that she would be allowed to keep the baby. On condition that she broke off all contact with Sandor and never saw him again. She agreed. She had no choice. A seventeeen-year-old Gypsy girl with a limited high school education had nowhere to go. Soon afterwards, Marta was married to Laci, Balthazar’s father. Virag was absorbed into the family and her origins never spoken of.

  The story of Virag’s brief life, Balthazar realised, raised more questions than it answered. Had Sandor kept in touch with Marta? Had he followed Virag’s progress to adulthood? Had he ever met his daughter? And did Virag know who her real father was? A simple deception about Virag’s paternity had needed a whole web of lies around it to hold it in place. And what did he know about her death? But Balthazar knew that whatever answers he was looking for would not materialise that evening. This would be a long and slow investigation. He glanced again at the photograph of Virag, emotions surging through him. There was nothing to do except to let them flow. In time the shock would lessen and he could plot a course through the minefield of his family history. He picked up the warrant again and weighed it in his hand, once more looking down at his face staring out of the plastic laminate. He had accepted an assignment, which meant he needed to honour that commitment. Reka Bardossy might be a busted flush, but she was still prime minister, for now, at least. In any case, he reminded himself, he had a personal reason to carry out his mission of investigating Pal Dezeffy: Virag had died at Pal’s house.

  He glanced at his watch: it was one minute before nine. Panorama, the Hungarian state TV evening news bulletin, was about to start. Like every Hungarian who followed current affairs, Balthazar knew how to read the runes. The system of coded messages honed under Communism had outlived the one-party state. Panorama’s slant and bias would give a good sense of whether Reka Bardossy might yet weather the storm or if her power was already waning. The earlier news programme, with the footage of Reka and Eniko at the Four Seasons, was not a good omen for either woman. Balthazar sat up and watched as the lead story, shot earlier that day, showed Attila Ungar looking supremely unconcerned as he answered Kata Kiss’s questions, and his mocking answer as he played with his pistol. A panning shot followed of the chaos on Kossuth Square as the helicopter roared overhead, scattering tourists and reporters alike, then footage of the two clusters of tents, which had now grown to half a dozen on either side of Parliament. The programme then switched to live footage of Kossuth Square. The Gendarmerie vans were all still in place, and numerous uniformed Gendarmes were nonchalantly strolling around, several smoking cigarettes or taking selfies in front of their vehicles. A voiceover noted that while Reka Bardossy had disbanded the Gendarmerie that day at noon, the message did not seem to have reached Kossuth Square.

  The show then switched to the studio where Nandor Balogh, the youthful host, was introducing two familiar guests. Demeter Lazar, a pompous, pot-bellied man in his late sixties with thick grey hair that badly needed a trim, was introduced as a ‘politologist’, a Hungarian speciality which meant, more or less, a cross between a political scientist, commentator and analyst, and Kitti Karpati, an attractive young historian in her early thirties. Demeter had been a regular on the evening news for years, long before Balogh had taken the hot seat, and would doubtless be there once he had moved on. Demeter’s politology largely consisted of apologia for the old system, under which he had also been a well-known analyst, and praise for Pal Dezeffy’s reforms. Karpati had recently headed a commission of historians who had caused outrage on the conservative wing of Hungarian politics after authoring a new history textbook that positioned the Communist Party of the 1980s as far-reaching reformers who had intentionally brought down the one-party state for the greater good.

  State television, Balthazar could see, had made its mind up. After days of equivocation, slanting the evening news one day in favour of Pal and the next to show Reka Bardossy in a good light, the broadcaster had come down in favour of the former regime. Pal was winning. In terms of viewers, that counted for little. Hungarians watched a lot of television, but most preferred the many commercial channels and streaming services such as Netflix and HBO. State television was the least-watched channel in the country, of interest only to politics geeks and junkies in the capital. But it was the perfect bellwether for judging political battles. It was clear that behind the scenes – and the studios – Pal was marshalling his forces.

  The discussion, such as it was, was only of interest to confirm the new political line. Both Demeter and Kitti repeatedly referred to Reka Bardossy’s role in the passport scandal, with frequent cut-aways to scenes of chaos at Keleti Station and on the border. The consensus was that if that was not enough, today’s events on Kossuth Square were the beginning of the end for her administration. Demeter shifted in his seat, making sure he addressed the camera before intoning: ‘We will not let Hungary be a staging post for terrorists. Nor are we a launch pad for an army of migrants to get to the west.’ The same phrases, Balthazar noticed, that the angry man from the Hungarian Freedom Movement had used.

  The ring of a telephone sounded, breaking his train of thought. Balthazar glanced down at the coffee t
able and saw his iPhone screen glowing. He glanced down at the screen: it was Eniko.

  Headquarters of the Foundation for the Relief of Poverty, Szabadsag Square, 9.10 p.m.

  Marton Ronay watched Pal Dezeffy as he turned towards him, a smile slowly spreading across his face. Pal’s body language was relaxed and confident, quite different from their encounter that morning, as he started speaking. ‘Marton, what a difference a day makes. Well done. I must admit I had some doubts when you presented your action plan. But it seems to have worked. So far, so good.’

  Marton nodded warily. ‘Thank you. I am pleased you are pleased.’

  There were four of them in the room again: Marton, Pal, Adorjan Molnar and the old guy with the skin problem, all sitting back around the black mahogany table. The blinds were down and the lighting was muted. Trays of coffee, biscuits, fruit and muffins sat in the middle of the table. The large flat-screen television was showing four news channels simultaneously: BBC, CNN, NBC and Reuters. All were reporting from Kossuth Square, showing the now-familiar vista of Gendarmerie vehicles, blue tents pitched on the grass, protestors from the Hungarian Freedom Movement, and legions of tourists taking selfies. Marton and the others had been talking for twenty minutes or so, outlining Reka Bardossy’s political position.

  Adorjan looked around the table. Pal nodded at him and he started speaking. ‘Let’s recap where we are.’ He looked at Marton. ‘You emphasised this morning the words doubt and confusion. On both those fronts we are doing very well. Reka Bardossy’s strategy was to portray her involvement in the passport scandal as a sting operation, aided by Eniko Szalay’s reporting. Their credibility has been shredded by our release of the video of them drinking cocktails at the Four Seasons, as you recommended. In addition Szalay now works for Reka, which casts a backwards shadow over all her previous reporting. Your clever hashtag, #honestreportingHungary, is still trending here. The phrases that you suggested: “staging post for terrorists”, Hungary as “a launch pad for an army of migrants” are now entering common parlance. And Reka Bardossy’s first press conference, where she attempted to impose her authority as prime minister, was a disaster.’