District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  She tried to get traction on the ground, but he was far too powerful and it was impossible with one foot bare and the other still wearing the Louboutin. Her feet scraped along the cobbles as he dragged her forward. The ramparts drew nearer and nearer. She hooked her right hand over the edge of his palm, managed to slide her finger through the gap between his hand and her face and pulled down as hard as she could. The man’s hand moved a fraction of an inch. She yanked down again, even harder, knowing that she was now fighting for her life. His hand slipped further.

  She grabbed his palm, dropped her face to the flat edge and bit down as hard as she could, feeling her teeth pierce his skin. He yelped in pain, released her and stepped backwards. She spun around and limped forward, kicked up with her right foot between his legs. This time her foot connected, its front slamming into his groin. He grunted. She leaned back and kicked again and again, using her whole body weight. He staggered back. She turned to run and the heel of her left shoe broke off, sending her stumbling.

  That second delay was all that he needed. He grabbed her leg and she went down hard, her head sliding against the cobblestone path. He lumbered over towards Reka. She was on her back now, winded and dizzy.

  He sat over her torso with his hands around her throat. She scrabbled at his right hand and gained purchase, but his palm was slippery with blood where she had bitten him. She slid one leg between herself and the attacker, tried to lever him off her, but he was too heavy. His grip tightened around her throat. She had a few seconds at the most, tried to remember what she had learned and the different defences: against an attacker choking her from the side, kneeling between her legs, sitting on top of her stomach as he was now, but the moves all blurred into one as the fear turned to panic and she flailed helplessly. His face was curiously calm as he worked, she saw. Her instructor’s voice sounded in her ears: ‘eyes, groin, eyes’. She reached upwards, tried to force her thumbs against his eyeballs. He batted her hands away with ease, but the moment gave her a second’s reprise. She coughed, spluttered, as her lungs filled with air again and scrabbled on both sides of her.

  Her fingers slid across the dirt until her right hand found something, a sleek shaft a few inches long, with a pointed, square end: the broken Louboutin heel. Now his face was set with determination, his rank breath catching in her throat. Her vision began to turn grey, her strength faded. His hand slid between her legs, tearing at her dress. It was all the opening she needed.

  Her right hand flew upwards, slammed as hard as she could into the side of his neck; she felt the skin resist for a second, yield then tear as the heel slid in.

  He roared in pain, lurched upwards. Blood fountained out as he grabbed and scrabbled at the shank sticking out of the side of his neck. She swung her arm out and hammered her right palm into his hand, forcing the edge of the heel deeper into his neck. His arms flailed for several seconds as he tried to pull the heel free. He coughed, retched, convulsed. Panic filled his eyes for several long seconds. They rolled back in their sockets and he toppled over.

  Reka pushed him off her. She lay on her back for several seconds, staring at the sky, panting. She sat up, slowly got to her feet, her legs shaking underneath her. She sensed movement in the shadows, stood up, looked around for another weapon.

  Akos Feher stepped towards her, glanced at the dead man, an iron bar in his right hand. Blood was seeping out of the hole at the side of the dead man’s neck, pooling black under the dim light. Bardossy stood still, breathing hard, her dress torn and filthy, her hair in disarray. Her shoulders were locked solid, her eyes still wild as the adrenalin coursed through her. She looked down at her right hand with a kind of wonder, watching the crimson blood seep between her fingers.

  Feher put the bar down and looked around at the pile of builders’ debris. A thin plastic bag, the type used by greengrocers to pack fruit, lay under half a brick. He picked the bag up, put his hand inside as though it were a glove, and pulled the heel from the dead man’s neck.

  Reka watched, shaking, as he wrapped the bag around the spike, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Part of her wondered what he was doing, and another began to understand. But she was too shaken to stop him. She looked at the dead man, back at Feher. He nodded reassuringly. He was no threat, she realised. Reka forced herself to calm down, to think, took several long, deep breaths. She walked over to her bag, picked it up and reached inside for her phone. There was only one person she knew who could clear up this mess.

  ELEVEN

  Balthazar’s flat, Saturday, 5 September, 10.00 a.m.

  HUNGARIAN STATE SECURITY SERVICE SECRET

  From: XXXXXXXXXXXX

  To: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

  Operational report KN3/9/5

  At 6.00 a.m. on 4 September 2016 I took over from GS1 at Keleti Station at vantage point 2 (the taxi rank at the side of the station on Thokoly Way). We estimate that there are now approximately 5,000 people sleeping out at Keleti. Numbers are rising continually after the government cancelled all trains to western Europe, but the southern frontiers remain open. There are increasing scenes of squalor but tensions remain under control, in part due to the pact agreed by different Syrian opposition groups (excluding the Islamists).

  At 6.06 a.m. MAHMOUD HEJAZI appeared, having walked to Keleti from the nearby Hotel Continental on Baross Square. He then made contact with two other males, both men of Arab appearance in their early thirties. These two had slept at Keleti, in the station forecourt, away from the other Syrian refugees. These two are hitherto unidentified. Considering HEJAZI’s prominent standing in the Islamist opposition we believe the two to be Islamist cadres and expect some form of identification later today from the station CCTV.

  To recap what we know so far: HEJAZI is a high-ranking Islamist operative from Aleppo and a person of interest to all western intelligence agencies. HEJAZI is on an interagency watchlist and has been tracked since he left Syria three weeks ago. He arrived in Hungary yesterday at 3.06 p.m. The British MI6 and United States embassy CIA stations have liaised continuously with us. HEJAZI crossed the Serbian border illegally at Kelebia with several dozen others, then left the group to take a taxi to Budapest.

  The Kelebia taxi driver, DEMETER CSONGRADI, is a parttime asset of the ABS and one of several Kelebia drivers we keep on a retainer. CSONGRADI has supplied me with a detailed account of HEJAZI’s arrival in Hungary and the journey he took to Budapest in CSONGRADI’s car. CSONGRADI had been supplied with several photographs of HEJAZI and told to look out for him. The top of HEJAZI’s right ear is gnarled and misshapen, the result of a burn from an incendiary bomb.

  CSONGRADI observed other anomalies. (CSONGRADI’s mother was born in Syria and studied medicine in nearby Szeged, where she now works as a GR CSONGRADI speaks fluent Arabic.) His suspicions were aroused for multiple reasons. While chatting in English with CSONGRADI, HEJAZI claimed to be from Basra, in southern Iraq, but spoke Arabic with a Damascene accent.

  HEJAZI spoke at length in Arabic on his mobile phone about deliveries, arrival times and a birthday party. He asked several times for confirmation that the deliveries and the birthday party were guaranteed to take place on time. It is inconceivable that a newly arrived Iraqi migrant would be organising a birthday party in Budapest while speaking in Arabic. After this conversation, HEJAZI removed a blue-and-white SIM card from his phone and changed it. CSONGRADI observed that HEJAZI seemed to be about to place the first SIM card in some kind of box when his telephone rang. He took the call and quickly placed the blue-and-white SIM card in his shirt pocket as if to put it somewhere secure for the moment. He did not touch it again during the journey.

  Like many migrants, HEJAZI carried only a small backpack, but he also had a very thick money belt under his shirt. HEJAZI paid the €500 fare in cash from a thick wad of €100 notes. The receptionist at the hotel passed us a copy of HEJAZI’s fake Iraqi passport. Although the photograph was taken before HEJAZI suffered his injury, we were able to positively identify him from the photograph.


  To summarise, after some discussion with our partner agencies, it was decided to follow HEJAZI and try and unravel his network of local contacts rather than arrest him. At around 6.10 a.m. HEJAZI and his two colleagues gathered their rucksacks. At this point SIMON NAZIR got up and followed them. NAZIR is here with his wife MARYAM. They are both Christians from Aleppo. I have been developing NAZIR as a source over the last ten days. He is a well-informed observer. NAZIR stayed behind HIJAZI and the two unidentified men as they walked down Rakoczi Way. I followed NAZIR at a distance until my path was blocked on the corner of Luther Street by ATTILA UNGAR and three others. However, I could see NAZIR lying face-down on the site of the former Party headquarters and assume that he is dead as he has not returned to Keleti.

  Balthazar put the document down. The rest of the account related how the author had shown a state security ID card to Ungar and demanded to pass. Ungar had laughed, refused to move. The author had insisted. Ungar then threatened violence and sexual assault. The report also detailed how MI6 had informed its Hungarian counterparts that several known Islamic radicals had been apprehended at British airports while travelling on Hungarian passports.

  These were the papers in the envelope Eva had handed him last night: an internal report from the Allami Biztonsagi Szolgalat, the domestic state security service.

  Balthazar digested what he had read. The report seemed to suggest that Attila Ungar was running some kind of clean-up squad and had disposed of Simon Nazir’s body. The Gendarmes did not want anyone poking around the square, especially from another government agency. Presumably the site was under some kind of surveillance by the Gendarmes, which is how Ungar knew that Balthazar had arrived. Ungar’s threat of sexual violence made it likely that the agent was female, although that was not guaranteed. But why, and what were the Gendarmes guarding so fervently?

  And could Balthazar work with state security? Relations between the police and the ABS were guarded at best. Both forces came under the purview of the Ministry of the Interior. While the police needed to persuade a judge to intercept a suspect’s communications, the ABS had carte blanche to tap telephones, hack computers, plant bugs, and break into apartments at will. The ABS also had an annoying habit of letting the police do all the heavy lifting on the most interesting murder cases, then walking in and taking them over on the grounds of ‘national security’ – as had happened to him last summer, just as his investigation into the murdered Iranian property developer at Keleti was getting somewhere.

  But Pal Palkovics’s private police force, the Gendarmerie, had upended the old power relations. Balthazar’s encounter with Attila Ungar at Republic Square, and his beating at Keleti, had shown that the Gendarmes held the police in contempt – and felt confident enough to show it. It seemed from the ABS report that the Gendarmes had declared war on the ABS as well. It was surely no coincidence that all this was happening after Bela Balogh, the minister of the interior, had resigned, brought down in a corruption scandal exposed by Eniko.

  Which reminded him. The SIM card. He tapped out an SMS on the Nokia burner that Sandor Takacs had given him: ‘One/I2’. Balthazar had shared the telephone number with Eniko the previous evening. He and Eniko were also using a code: the first number referred to one of three different meeting places, the second, the time, plus two hours. It was crude, but should be effective enough, Balthazar believed. And after his beating and the report he was reading, clearly necessary.

  Balthazar carried on reading. The report further detailed how the author had tried three different routes to follow Nazir. Each had been blocked by the Gendarmes. Which was why, presumably, these papers had been delivered to him. For now, at least, the police and the ABS were allies. Contact, he expected, would soon follow. As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to see Eva neni standing there, holding an aluminium tray. A small, brown padded envelope lay next to a white china plate with another plate on top.

  ‘Do I look like a post office?’ she demanded.

  Balthazar laughed, shook his head. ‘Good morning, Eva neni. No you don’t. You are much prettier, for starters.’

  She huffed with mock indignation, stepped towards him, lifted the envelope and handed it to him. ‘Then why do people keep giving me things to deliver to you?’

  Balthazar took the envelope. It was heavy in his hand, a weight inside. ‘I don’t know. But thank you. Who brought it?’

  ‘A motorbike courier this time. He kept his helmet on. He didn’t tell me his name.’ She softened her voice. ‘Are you OK? Sleep OK?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes and not bad. The storm woke me. But I went back to sleep.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘Me too. Get that girlfriend of yours to put some more Betadine on those cuts and scratches.’ Betadine was iodine solution. Hungarians coated every abrasion with the black liquid, believing it far more effective than modern antiseptic creams.

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my ex-girlfriend. I think she has a boyfriend, Tamas Nemeth, the actor.’

  Eva neni, Balthazar knew, was a voracious reader of the gossip press. Her daughter had bought her an iPad on her last visit, so she could read Szilky.hu. She snorted with derision. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not interested in Tamas Nemeth. He can’t string a sentence together without a director whispering in his ear. She’s probably only meeting him to make you jealous. Any woman who brings you home in that state and looks after you is either your girlfriend or your wife, or wants to be.’

  Balthazar smiled. ‘Thanks, Evike. I’ll tell her next time we meet.’

  Eva nodded. ‘Do that.’ She handed him the tray. ‘Meanwhile, breakfast.’

  Balthazar took the tray, lifted the first plate up. Four pancakes lay in a row, each oozing soft white cheese, topped with grated lemon zest and a dusting of icing sugar. His favourite. ‘Thank you.’

  Eva smiled. ‘Turos palacsinta. Easy to chew.’ She wagged her finger at him, mock-stern. ‘Betadine, Tazi. Don’t forget.’

  He stepped back inside, suddenly ravenously hungry, put the tray down on the coffee table and picked up the envelope, still smiling. His name was written on the front. He turned it over. No sender’s name or address, but there was a green-and-white sticker advertising Bubi bikes. He opened the envelope. Inside was a mobile phone, another old-fashioned Nokia candy bar model, this time grey.

  He walked over to the small balcony, phone in his hand and looked out over Klauzal Square. Each movement, no matter how small, was stiff, almost painful. His back and shoulders ached and throbbed. He touched his jaw. It felt bruised and tender as he squinted against the bright morning sun. The square was almost empty, although he could see a few children romping around the playground, while their mothers stood at the edge, watching their charges and gossiping. For once, the morning was cool and fresh, but it was a temporary respite. The summer heat in Budapest built and built, the air becoming heavier and stickier, until every ten days or so it broke. The skies opened, the rain poured down, sometimes just for a few minutes, the temperature dropped, then the cycle started again.

  There were no blondes lurking nearby and smiling enigmatically. But it was clear enough who had sent him the report. The question was, why? He stepped back inside, found some cutlery, and started to eat his breakfast. The pancakes were delicious, thin but sturdy enough to hold the filling and every mouthful was a pleasure, not least because someone cared enough about him to cook for him. Turo was Hungary’s version of cottage cheese, but thicker and heavier, its sweetness perfectly set off by the sharpness of the lemon zest. He ate slowly and carefully, wary of his bruised jaw. Three was all he could manage. He stood up, picked up the grey Nokia, walked back out to the balcony, sat on the rickety office chair and waited. A minute later the phone rang.

  Bardossy home, Remetehegyi Way, 10.00 a.m.

  Reka stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, her hands resting on the edge of the black granite twin sink. Her face was pale, her blue eyes surrounded by dark shadows. Her blon
de hair hung in lank tendrils down the sides of her face. She had stripped off her dress and fallen asleep on the bed without showering, waking up an hour later to find a T-shirt and crawl under the cover. She had slept badly, her recurring nightmare especially vivid last night: she was trapped in a luxurious hotel suite. The door handles were solid gold, but the rooms had no windows and no doors. She ran from room to room, banged and banged on the walls, shouted as loudly as she could, but nobody came. Still, while she looked awful – there was no other word – her face had more or less escaped. She did not have a black eye or split lip. She was alive. Even though someone had wanted her dead. She had fought and she had won.

  She glanced down at her hands. She smiled for a moment as she imagined her manicurist’s expression if she saw them. Every nail was scratched, chipped and filthy, the clear varnish scraped away in patches. At least three were broken or torn. Her fingertips were covered with mud and dirt. Her palms were grazed, marked with swipe marks as she had skidded along the ground. Her arms were bruised and her back and shoulders throbbed. Her neck was sore and stiff. Her hands she could patch up; she could claim that she had fallen over and scraped them. Then she remembered what she had done with her hands last night. She stared at her right palm for several seconds, felt it slam into her attacker’s neck. She began to shake, dropped her head down, drew several deep breaths to steady herself.

  She looked back into the mirror, traced the vivid red line around the base of her neck with a trembling index finger. That would be harder to explain away. She glanced at the row of men’s toiletries by the second sink. Several had not been opened. The sink was dry and unused, polished to a sheen. Peter was rarely here now, spending more and more time in Gulf or Russia or China, courting investors. Generally, that suited Reka. They had grown – were growing further – apart. She was fairly sure that Peter was having an affair with his executive assistant, Zita, a slender brunette in her mid-twenties, who accompanied him everywhere. But on days like this, she wished her husband was at home.