District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  Balthazar gave a wry smile. ‘Maybe Sarah thinks two mothers are enough.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s her...’ Takacs looked at the ceiling for a moment, searching for the right word. ‘... partner. Turning her against you.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I get on fine with Amanda. Just not with Sarah. She’s always so angry with me. She’s still playing hardball, even though she left me. And that was almost three years ago.’

  ‘There’s no logic in these situations. Maybe you make her feel guilty, so she gets angry and she’s taking it out on you. But watch yourself with Sarah. She’s built a very good roof.’

  Roof was criminal slang for protection. ‘Who?’

  ‘The American ambassador. Sarah had dinner there twice in the last month. It seems the ambassador went to college with Sarah’s mother. They are still close friends. There’s a $100 million Anglo-American investment on the table, for security equipment, staff and training for the new border fences. If the ambassador makes a request to the PM’s office for help dealing with a troublesome police officer harassing an American citizen, it will be heeded. Especially after you had to be officially—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Balthazar, cutting Takacs off. ‘So where are we? Officially?’

  Takacs shrugged, slid the evidence bag across the desk. ‘Expect an email from me informing you that the events at Republic Square are now a matter of national security and under the jurisdiction of the Gendarmerie. The email will be an official record of my instructions not to pursue it any further. Otherwise, what you do in your own time is your own affair.’

  Balthazar smiled, placed the evidence bag in his shirt pocket. ‘Meaning?’

  Takacs’s voice was deadpan but his eyes glimmered. ‘No calls to or from this office, or my home or mobile numbers, no use of police email or databases, no requests to any colleagues, either verbal, on paper or by email. And no use of police communications, internet or telephone facilities. Find an internet café. And not the one nearest your house. You are on your own. Off the books. Vilagos?’

  ‘Vilagos.’

  Takacs opened a drawer in his desk, tossed an ancient Nokia at Balthazar. ‘Catch.’

  THREE

  British embassy, Harmincad Street, 11.20 a.m.

  As Balthazar walked out of Sandor Takacs’s office, three miles away, in the heart of downtown Budapest, in a secure, sound-proofed basement room, the newly appointed Deputy Chief of Mission handed a Hungarian passport to a Hungarian civil servant called Akos Feher. Gold letters spelled out ‘Europai Unio’ and ‘Magyar Kosztarsasag’ on the top of the cover, ‘Utlevel’, on the bottom.

  ‘Open it, please, to the photograph page,’ said Celeste Johnson.

  Feher did as he was bade. The photograph showed a middle-aged man with dark-brown skin, jet-black hair, dark eyes, a curved, hawk-like nose and black eyes staring out at the camera.

  ‘Who is he?’ Johnson asked.

  ‘As it says on the photograph page, Miss Johnson. Zsolt Szabo.’

  ‘Ms.’ She picked up the passport. ‘Does he look like somebody called Zsolt Szabo to you?’

  Feher sat back, shrugged. ‘I don’t know what a Zsolt Szabo looks like. It is a very common Hungarian name. He is dark, yes. Maybe he is a Gypsy. Or a Romanian Hungarian.’

  ‘He is not.’

  Feher looked at her before he answered. She was in her mid-thirties, he guessed, tall and well dressed in a white blouse and black trousers with distractingly large breasts. She was neither friendly nor unfriendly. No wedding ring. Two plain gold studs in her ear. Short, black, curly hair, very short indeed at the sides. A plain manila file on the table in front of her. He could not read her at all. He had never dealt with a foreign woman in a position of power over him before. Let alone a black one. But this was Hungary, his homeland, where his party ruled and his boss was the minister of justice. Be confident, be bold, he told himself. ‘We have all sorts of Hungarians now. Immigrants get citizenship. Even negers.’

  ‘Even who?’ Johnson was incredulous.

  Feher burned red. What had he said wrong? Neger was just the Hungarian word for a black person. What word should he use? ‘I am sorry, really, I didn’t mean anything bad. It’s the Hungarian word for negro.’

  Johnson raised her eyebrows, barely mollified. ‘We don’t use that word any more, either, Mr Feher.’

  He looked down at the table. The red top was chipped and cracked. ‘My English is not always the best. Excuse me. I apologise.’

  So much for being bold, he thought. He was floundering badly. He was out of his comfort zone and the power dynamics were definitely not in his favour. There was something not right here, he sensed, at least not right for him. Definitely not right for his career. Diplomatic protocol dictated that if Johnson, or any diplomat, wanted to meet someone with his rank of state secretary – a very senior official – at the Ministry of Justice, they request an appointment at his office, a few minutes’ walk away. The request would be granted, in three or four days, maybe a week, depending on who was asking.

  Instead he had been summoned – there was no other word – on twenty-four hours’ notice to the British embassy on Harmincad Street. That had made him uneasy. He had questioned the request with his superiors, asked for a trusted colleague to accompany him. But his boss had breezily said there was no need, promised there was nothing to worry about. Once Feher crossed the embassy entrance and walked through the security check, legally he was no longer on Hungarian soil. The power dynamic had shifted completely. He was not in danger, of course, but nor was he in charge. He was in Britain. And in trouble. That much was getting clearer by the minute.

  Johnson tapped the edge of the passport on the desk. ‘Apology accepted. Let’s move on. This man, the so-called Zsolt Szabo, was issued with a Hungarian passport on’ -she checked the file in front of her – ‘August 30th. Two days later he was stopped at Luton airport attempting to enter the United Kingdom.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because whoever he is, he is definitely not Zsolt Szabo.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Johnson closed the file. ‘The passport records that he was born in Budapest. But he cannot speak a word of Hungarian. He cannot tell us which school he attended in Hungary. He cannot name three cities in Hungary. He cannot name any, apart from Budapest. Which he mispronounces.’

  ‘Then who is he?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. We were hoping you could tell us.’ Feher’s sense of unease grew. Unease and guilt. Which was doubtless Johnson’s intention. But what did she know? And how? He needed to hit back. ‘How would I know? I don’t work in the passport office. Maybe you should...’

  He glanced at Johnson. She was surprisingly sexy in a strict, domineering way, with a blouse that was just slightly too tight. One button was undone. How would it be to undo another? Johnson caught Feher staring at her breasts. Her face was set in stone. He swallowed to cover his embarrassment. ‘... you could... ask them for help,’ he said, his voice trailing off.

  ‘We did. They did not know anything useful. They just produced the document. The necessary checks were carried out by the Ministry of Justice, they told us.’ Johnson leaned forward, her brown eyes flashing. ‘Mr Feher, I cannot emphasise enough how serious this matter is. There is a Europe-wide terrorist alert. Every day thousands of people pour across the border here and no records are kept of their arrival or departure. Many of them are fleeing, or say they are fleeing Syria and Iraq. Your government has no idea whose these people are. A non-Hungarian national attempted to gain entry to the United Kingdom using this document. That is bad enough. But it is not a fake, it is a genuine passport, with a correct serial number.’

  Feher had been to the British embassy several times for meetings about cross-border cooperation and other legal issues. He had even attended a seminar here on human rights and the prison system. The building was magnificent, a former bank in the very heart of downtown. It had a marble-floored reception room with a glass-tiled roof and a sweeping
central staircase. The last time he had been here, he was received by the ambassador in a grand office with views of downtown Budapest, served coffee on Zsolnay crockery and small pastries from the Gerbeaud coffee house, Budapest’s most famous café on nearby Vorosmarty Square. He had even been invited, with his wife, to a reception marking the Queen’s birthday.

  Now he was sitting on a cheap office chair, across a worn table, in a small, windowless room. The space was about five yards long and five yards wide. It had grey walls, a grey floor and ceiling, and was accessed by Johnson placing her thumb over a biometric lock. There was a similar room in the basement of the ministry, daily swept for bugs, that was reserved for the most sensitive meetings. He had once seduced the most attractive of that year’s crop of interns there.

  Feher had refused to surrender his telephone at reception and it now sat in front of him, in a signal-blocking bag. None of his usual tactics – flirtation, promise of advancement, all-expenses-paid trips to the ministry’s villa on the shores of Lake Balaton, or the Nokia box, a mobile-telephone box filled with 20,000-forint notes – would work here, he knew. Feher asked, ‘Could I have something to drink?’

  Johnson nodded. ‘Of course. Tea, coffee or water?’

  Feher thought for a moment. A hot drink would need a few minutes to prepare, could buy him some time. ‘Tea, please.’

  Johnson stood up, excused herself and left the room. Feher sat back, tried to get comfortable, but his neck was locking up. He rubbed the base of his head, tried remember what he knew about his interlocutor from the ministry’s files. He had skimmed her CV before the meeting. Perhaps he should have paid more attention. She had previously been posted in Ankara, Cairo and Islamabad. She seemed to have no experience at all in central or eastern Europe. So what was she doing in Budapest; quiet, sleepy Budapest?

  He knew the answer, of course. Nowadays Budapest was neither quiet nor sleepy. Johnson had arrived just a month earlier, as the migrant crisis reached its peak. That told him plenty. She must work for MI6. He needed to consult with the minister. This was clearly serious. Not only serious, but political. For a moment he felt a flicker of fear, then banished it. He was on the fast track, backed up, hand-picked by the minister. A state secretary at the age of twenty-eight, the promise of a place on the Social Democratic Party’s candidate list at the next election. A lovely wife, a child, another on the way, and all the extra-marital partners he could wish for as long as he was discreet. He just needed to ride out this storm, this squall, and keep his head. Until then, he would use his usual tactics: offer to cooperate, but actually stonewall and stall. Yes, that was the way forward, at least for now. He felt better for thinking things through, for taking a decision.

  He opened the bag, took out his telephone and tried to call the ministry. Silence. He checked the handset screen. No bars and no Wi-Fi. But what had he expected? He exhaled loudly, slid the handset back into the bag.

  A few seconds later the door opened. Johnson came in with an aluminium tray on top of which were two glasses of water and two white mugs, each emblazoned with the words GREAT BRITAIN. A copy of that day’s Magyar Vilag lay next to the mugs, folded over on an inside page, next to a brown envelope and a white plate with two biscuits. She passed a mug to Feher. A tea bag floated in the beige liquid, under a layer of milk. It looked revolting.

  ‘Biscuit?’ she asked, gesturing at the tray.

  Feher looked at the tray. They were plain Gyori biscuits, the cheapest available. ‘No, thanks.’ He took a sip of the drink. It was tepid and tasteless.

  Johnson sat back down in her chair. ‘So, Akos. May I call you Akos, as it seems we will be working together?’ She smiled as she spoke, a smile that almost reached her eyes, and leaned forward as if to display more of her impressive cleavage.

  No, you may not, Feher wanted to say, even if you have undone that second button. I am not on first-name terms with foreign women who lock me in basement rooms in another country’s embassy. But today it seemed, he was. ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘So, Akos, we were talking about the passport serial number. We would like your assistance.’

  He sat back and summoned his courage. ‘Firstly, I would like to thank you, Celeste, for bringing this to our attention,’ he said confidently. ‘It may be that this passport is a forgery. Our borders are overwhelmed at the moment. People-traffickers are ever more organised. They have access to extraordinary technology. You have doubtless read the Europol report that criminal gangs can even produce machine-readable passports with the new chip technology. I can promise you that we at the ministry will give this matter our urgent attention.’

  Johnson smiled. ‘That’s a good start, Akos. But only a start.’ He looked again at Magyar Vilag: the newspaper had been carefully folded over and positioned on the tray facing him so he could read it. The headline on page three was clearly visible: ‘State Secretary Arrested: Government Cracks Down on Corruption.’ Clever. He would remember that trick, next time he was in charge in a meeting. If there was a next time. He continued talking, ‘I am sorry, I don’t understand,’ he said, although they both knew he did.

  ‘Oh, Akos, I think you do.’ Johnson opened the passport, slid it across the table. ‘Not only does the passport office say your ministry carried out the checks, the passport serial number starts with HM. That means it was issued at the specific request of the Ministry of Justice.’

  Feher thought quickly. How did she know that? MI6 knew everything, he supposed, and what it didn’t know the CIA would tell it. Either way, there was no point denying it.

  He opened the document at the photograph page. There it was: HM3097889. ‘I will need to keep this.’

  Johnson extended her arm and turned her hand over so the palm was face up.

  Feher said, ‘This is Hungarian government property.’ Johnson smiled. ‘Maybe. But this is British sovereign territory. This passport was seized at Luton airport. The man using it is now being detained at a British immigration holding centre. We have offered him a deal: tell us how you got the passport and we will deport you, rather than imprison you.’

  She checked her watch. ‘He’s been locked up for almost two days now. That’s usually enough.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Of course, your government is welcome to make an official request for the return of the passport.’

  Feher handed her the passport back. His instincts were right. This was worse than he thought. Much worse, especially if the man talked. ‘Keep it for now.’

  Feher read the headline in Magyar Vilag again. He had seen the newspaper that morning, of course, knew the man the story was about, a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior. He had made two mistakes: the first was to argue at an inter-ministry meeting that the government should provide medical services to the migrants. You did not need to be a liberal or an opposition supporter or a bleeding-heart activist to wonder why the government allowed such squalid conditions to continue. The scenes at Keleti were not only distressing, they were a public health hazard. Ten toilets and six taps for thousands of people. Foreign television stations – BBC, CNN, all the major networks – showed rolling footage of filthy, hungry children, queuing for food provided by volunteers.

  The arrested man’s second, and larger, mistake was to drive his Porsche convertible to work in Budapest. The rules were clear: government positions were opportunities for lavish selfenrichment. But never show your spoils in public. Sports cars were to be kept in the secret government garage on the outskirts of Vienna and could only be driven outside Hungary. Johnson’s message was not very subtle. And what was in the envelope?

  ‘How shall we go forward?’ asked Akos.

  Johnson picked up her mug, sipped her tea. ‘By working together.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You use your contacts to find out who took the decision to issue this passport, how many others like it have been issued, when, by whom, and share copies of all the records with us.’

  Feher almost laughed out loud. ‘You are asking me to s
py for you? On my own colleagues and ministry?’

  ‘Of course not. I am asking you to cooperate with us on a matter of bilateral concern.’

  Feher looked at his watch, a sleek, black Rado. ‘I have noted your request.’ It was almost noon. He was having lunch with the deputy minister today. He slid his chair back, was about to stand up. ‘I would like to leave now. Unless I am being held prisoner.’

  Johnson laughed lightly. ‘Akos, you are free to go whenever you like.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Just one more thing.’

  ‘What?’

  Johnson passed him the white envelope. ‘Take a look. You can keep the photographs. We have copies. Digitally stored.’

  Feher took out a photograph and turned pale. He was sitting at the wheel of a silver Porsche convertible, the snowcapped Austrian mountains soaring in the background. The car could probably be explained away. But not the pretty, blonde young woman next to him, her arm around Feher’s shoulder as she nuzzled his neck.

  Number 8E bus, Thokoly Way, 12.00 p.m.

  ‘I have to what?’ demanded Balthazar, as the bus suddenly slowed, two stops from Keleti. He held his mobile phone closer to his ear, not sure if he had heard correctly. A siren sounded in the distance. ‘But it’s nothing to do with the prime minister’s office. Municipal CCTV is under the authority of the Budapest mayor. Why do I need a permit from the prime minister to get hold of this morning’s footage from Keleti? When was this introduced?’

  He sensed immediately there was no point continuing this conversation. The city official, usually cooperative, was merely relaying the news of the new requirement. Balthazar would have to use the kis kapu, the little gate, to get around it. Every Hungarian had their clutch of little gates, contacts across officialdom who sidestepped obstacles, sometime for a fee, but more often for a favour banked. Balthazar already knew who he would ask. Meanwhile, he called up the 555. hu website on his phone. Eniko’s story was still the lead, but another, smaller article underneath caught his eye.