District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  Reka had two problems, she realised. Both were pressing. The first was that someone had tried to kill her. She had been lured out of the reception by someone who knew that she was there – which was a lot of people – and also knew that the Snapchat messages, detailing the passport operation, would leave her no choice but to show up. That could be one of three people: Akos Feher, the man they called Black George, and Pal Palkovics. Akos Feher had been there while she was attacked, and had not tried to save her. But why would he? Her death would solve a number of problems for him. She had tried to destroy his life.

  Had Feher really hired a hit man? Anything was possible, she supposed, but then why hadn’t he finished the job? She had been half out of her mind after killing the attacker with the heel of her shoe. It would have been simple for Feher to push her over the castle rampart. But he hadn’t. Perhaps it had been a mistake to try and make him the fall guy for the passport operation, and so brutally, especially when he had so much information. And now he was a witness to murder, one in possession of the murder weapons. The Louboutin heel had her fingerprints all over it. She needed that back. Akos Feher was a smarter operator than she had imagined. And that meant that he would do a deal, she was confident.

  Reka turned on the water, put her hands into the warm stream, wincing as it found its way into the cuts and grazes. And Black George? She had met him once, by chance, at the Japanese restaurant downtown, where he was holding court, surrounded by beautiful young women and his female bodyguards. Reka was not easily frightened, but Black George scared her. He was of medium height, wiry, with dark-brown skin and piercingly intelligent black eyes. It was instantly clear that he was capable of extreme violence. Her dealings with him were handled by a series of intermediaries. There was no reason for Black George to kill her, as far as she could figure out. The operation was making plenty of money for everybody. Black George would not care about diplomatic difficulties and complaints from MI6. But Pal Palkovics certainly would. Enough to kill her?

  She let her silk bathrobe slide off and stepped across the room into the rainforest shower. The bathroom was the size of a studio apartment and seemed even larger, thanks to the efforts of the Swedish interior designer Reka had flown in when she had inherited the house from her father. Three walls were white, covered to chest height with tiny tiles, the third a floor-to-ceiling mirror. The floor was black Italian marble, while a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. A Bose sound system was built into the room, while a touchscreen next to the shower cubicle was linked to the internet and her telephone by Bluetooth.

  She turned on the music system. The voice of Marta Sebestyen, once of Hungary’s best-known singers, filled the room as violins surged in the background. Reka stepped into the shower cubicle, turned on the water as hot as she could stand it, and leaned back against the wall.

  She looked down again at her hands, started to scrub and scrub until they were raw. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, the water pouring on her, running down her back and neck, her head resting on her knees. The sobs were small at first, then grew until she was crying hard, her breath coming in jagged bursts as her tears mixed in with the shower water, flowing brown and red down the plughole.

  Kadar restaurant, Klauzal Square, 11.00 a.m.

  ‘I was thinking of inviting you to go for a bike ride,’ said the blonde woman Balthazar had seen on the Bubi bike in Klauzal Square, a glimmer of a smile on her face.

  ‘I’d fall off. Walking is enough at the moment.’

  ‘I guessed as much. That’s why I suggested we meet here.’ They were sitting at a table in the back room of the Kadar restaurant. The eatery, on the square, fifty yards from Balthazar’s apartment, was a venerable Budapest institution. It served traditional Jewish food and was renowned for its choient, a heavy stew of beans and meat, traditionally cooked overnight for the Sabbath lunch. The tables were covered with blue-and-white plastic cloths, the walls bedecked with signed photographs of celebrities, local and international. The owner, a jolly, bearded man in his sixties, sat by the door, nursing a murky coffee served in a stubby brown glass, calculating yesterday’s takings in a school exercise book.

  Balthazar picked up the old-fashioned heavy-glass soda siphon and filled both their beakers. ‘I still don’t know who you are. Other than someone who sends me documents and phones.’ He took a sip of the drink. It was cold and refreshing. ‘And instructions to meet in restaurant back rooms.’

  She reached into her trouser pocket, took a small leather folder and handed it to Balthazar. He opened it. Her photograph stared out from a laminated ID card, with her name, Ferenczy Anastasia, underneath the words Allami agi Szolgalat. Dark-blonde hair pulled back, a long face with a straight nose, large green eyes that looked at you questioningly, a determined set to her chin. Someone you could rely on. Not pretty, exactly, but a face that drew you in. A face to confide in.

  ‘Thank you.’ Balthazar handed the ID back. ‘Are you one of the...’

  ‘Famous Ferenczys,’ she said, interrupting him. ‘Yes.’

  The Ferenczys were one of the best-known aristocratic dynasties in Hungary. Every schoolchild knew the family history. During the nineteenth century the family castle in Transylvania was the centre of one of the largest estates in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Ferenczys had played a pivotal role in the failed 1848 revolution, when Hungary fought for independence against Vienna, for which several of their menfolk were later executed. After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Transylvania was handed to Romania. The Ferenczys, like most of the Hungarian aristocracy, lost their land and their family seat. They moved to Budapest, where they tried, with some success, to rein in the anti-Semitic excesses of Admiral Horthy, the country’s ruler from 1919 to 1944, when the Nazis invaded. The family went into hiding and helped organise Hungary’s meagre resistance. When the Russians arrived, they emerged, hoping to build a new, democratic Hungary. The men were promptly deported to Siberia and the Gulag, the women forced to work as maids and cleaners. Some of the men returned after Stalin’s death in 1953 and took part in the 1956 revolution, for which they were again arrested, before being released in an amnesty in the 1960s. The family’s tumultuous history symbolised the country’s.

  For a moment Balthazar was a schoolboy again, devouring his history book. He was having coffee with an actual Fer-enczy. ‘Do you have a title?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘ Grofno? Countess?’

  ‘Senior officer, counter-intelligence.’

  ‘Almost as good. You made an interesting career choice.’

  The ABS was the successor to the Communist secret police, which had arrested many of Anastasia’s relatives. Even now, twenty-five years after the change of system, the state security service was one of the last bastions of the power networks from the Communist era. Some senior officials, who had trained in Moscow, were still in place, although a new young guard was advancing. Time, if nothing else, would eventually hand them victory.

  Anastasia raised her eyebrows. ‘I could say the same.’

  Balthazar smiled. ‘You could. And you would be correct.’

  ‘We are both outsiders, Balthazar. May I call you by your first name?’

  He nodded. ‘My friends call me Tazi.’

  She laughed, her face coming alive. ‘So do mine.’

  They raised their soda glasses.

  Anastasia continued talking. ‘It’s true, my parents were not best pleased when I joined the service. We had many... spirited... discussions about that. Perhaps you know what that’s like.’

  He smiled. ‘We are Gypsies. So they were very spirited.’

  Anastasia continued talking. ‘But we are both realists as well. You believe in the law and the police enforce that law. I believe in my country. Every state has a secret service. Here, it’s the ABS. Politicians come and go. We remain. We don’t live in a perfect world. We have to work with the world as it is and our institutions in Hungary as they are.’ She paused, shot him an appraising
look. ‘Especially at the moment. You have a difficult case. I thought I might be able to help.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Balthazar, his voice wary.

  ‘Because that’s my job. Keleti is a national security issue. You are part of that story now. Do you want my help or not?’

  ‘Sure. We can start with a photo of the Gardener. Do you have one?’

  Anastasia nodded, reached into her shoulder bag and passed a printout to Balthazar. Mahmoud Hejazi was in his mid-thirties, tall and lean, with black hair and piercing brown eyes. The burn scar on the top of his right ear was very prominent.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Balthazar. Such help, Balthazar knew, always came at a price. But still, it was worth asking Anastasia what she knew. ‘Where is Simon Nazir’s body?’

  ‘We don’t know. Nazir followed Hejazi from Keleti to Republic Square.’

  ‘It’s not called that any more.’

  Anastasia reached for the photograph of Hejazi and placed it back in her bag. ‘You were born in Budapest?’

  Balthazar nodded. ‘Semmelweis.’ The hospital, on the edge of District VIII, was also the city’s medical university.

  ‘Me too. At least it’s still called Semmelweis. I’ll give them back Lenin Boulevard and Karl Marx Square. But not Republic Square.’

  ‘Or Moskva,’ said Balthazar. Moskva Square, the main transport interchange on the Buda side, had been renamed for Szell Kalman, a nineteenth-century prime minister. No self-respecting Budapester would ever use the term.

  Balthazar raised his drink. ‘Here’s to proper names.’

  Anastasia raised hers. ‘And proper squares.’

  They raised their glasses again and clinked. Anastasia continued talking. ‘Hejazi met the Gendarmes at Republic Square. They will guard him before they move him out of the country. I followed Nazir, then the Gendarmes appeared and stopped me from going any further. When I finally got to Republic Square, Nazir was gone. He did not return to Keleti. I believe he is dead. If he is, the body has gone. Maybe the Gendarmes took it. What a miserable end. He almost made it.’

  For a moment Balthazar was back at Republic Square, talking to Jozsi, the Gypsy street kid. ‘The men took him away,’ he had said. Balthazar asked, ‘Why do the Gendarmes care about Nazir?’

  ‘Palkovics and Reka Bardossy are selling passports to traffickers. The traffickers are selling them to Islamic radicals, like Mahmoud Hejazi. Hejazi made a mistake and showed his face at Keleti. It was early, everyone was asleep, so he thought he wouldn’t be noticed. But he was. Simon Nazir made a bigger mistake – to follow him. Now Palkovics is running scared. This has gone way beyond the usual corruption. It’s about international terrorism. Palkovics is a thief, quite a good one, but he’s way out of his league.’

  ‘Then why don’t you hand over your evidence to the police, and we can arrest Palkovics and Bardossy and shut this whole thing down before anyone else gets killed?’

  ‘Because we need more evidence. Much more. This would -should – bring down the government. We need to show a clear connection between Palkovics, the traffickers and the Islamists. We can’t shoot from the hip, or this will end very badly for all of us. And there are other interested parties. Very interested.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our friends in London and Washington DC. Nobody there wants Hungary to become the Islamists’ entry point into western Europe. We are a small country, Balthazar. We need friends. Especially at the moment.’

  ‘How can I help? I’m a policeman, not a spy.’

  ‘Yes, and a very good one. With a network of contacts that most of your colleagues don’t have. You can get in where they can’t.’

  Balthazar smiled wryly. ‘You mean because I’m a Gypsy.’

  Anastasia held his gaze, her eyes resting on his. ‘Yes, Balthazar, that’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’

  ‘Not so much a place, as a person.’

  ‘Who?’

  Her answer chilled him. Black George was the boss of District IX. He was utterly ruthless and the most dangerous, violent crime leader in the city. He had been sending probing missions to District VIII, testing Gaspar’s responses, for weeks.

  Balthazar asked, ‘Why him? He runs hookers, protection rackets. He’s not interested in terrorism or terrorists.’

  ‘No, but he is interested in money. He is the point man between Palkovics and Bardossy and the traffickers.’

  That explained the probing missions into District VIII, thought Balthazar. He would want to take over every peoplesmuggling operation in the city. ‘Let’s say I get to him, have a meeting. What am I offering?’

  Anastasia glanced around the restaurant before she answered. They were still the only two customers. ‘Cooperation.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Ours. The state security service. Occasional tips, useful information. Kez kezet mos.’

  Balthazar sat back in amazement. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Absolutely. Black George’s network runs deep into the Balkans. He knows all sorts of things. The Islamists are setting up networks in Bosnia, Kosovo, even in Serbia. He has contacts everywhere.’ She looked at Balthazar. ‘Why are you so surprised? You have informants? Criminals?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You trade? With pimps, burglars, robbers? A quiet word of warning in exchange for useful information?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘So what’s the difference?’

  It was a good question and he was not sure that he knew the answer. But another idea was germinating. ‘What if he says no, he won’t cooperate?’

  ‘Then he won’t know what’s hit him. Meanwhile, you have something we need.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The SIM card from Hejazi’s telephone. Those numbers will help us unravel his network here.’

  ‘What SIM card?’

  ‘The one you found on the ground at Republic Square.’

  There was no point denying it. ‘How do you know about the SIM card?’

  Anastasia smiled. ‘A breakfast at McDonalds and a big bag of cakes for brothers and sisters will get you a lot in District VIII.’

  Balthazar sat back. ‘Jozsi? The kid who was watching me?’

  ‘Yes. He’d never been to McDonalds. His parents don’t have any money. Imagine, he’s never had a hamburger. He saved up once for months and tried to go to another burger restaurant, but the security guard would not let him in. I don’t know many Gyp... Roma people.’ She paused. ‘Actually I don’t know any. Apart from you. There’re none at the ASB. Is that what it’s like, always being turned away?’

  Balthazar gave her a wry smile. He was starting to like Anastasia. She was a rare professional who had not given him the Look when they first met and asked straightforward questions. ‘Pretty much. Especially when you are a kid. Not so much when you are a cop.’

  Anastasia laughed. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Her voice changed, became businesslike. ‘So, the SIM card. Where is it?’

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ he replied, surprised at how easily the lie came.

  ‘We need that card.’

  ‘And what do I get in this trade?’

  ‘Our cooperation. In this case and future cases, Bal-tha-zar,’ she said, tapping her fingers on the table.

  Future cases. A helpful contact at the ABS would be extremely valuable. The service had means of gathering information, contacts and networks far beyond the Budapest police. Was she flirting with him? Balthazar wondered. She was a Hungarian woman who wanted something from him. So the answer was obvious. He was even starting to enjoy this encounter. ‘Thanks for the report.’ He sipped his soda. ‘I have another question.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘The Iranian property developer who was murdered at Keleti last summer. The ABS took the case. What happened?’ ‘We found out that he was connected to a money-laundering operation. The funds went through Budapest to Zurich to Doha. Then we were ordered to close it down. By the prime minister�
��s office.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Officially, yes.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘We think it was some kind of advance network, in preparation for what happened this summer. Mahmoud Hejazi is a trial run, we think. If the Gulf countries can get him through Hungary and into Europe, they will bring many more. The Gulf monarchies are unstable. The Islamists are organised, dynamic, believe they have God on their side. There are more and more terrorist attacks there. The monarchies are autocratic, repressive. Sooner or later the Islamists will take over.’

  ‘But not if they are blowing people up in Paris and London,’ said Balthazar. ‘The Gulf states are using Palko-vics’s scam as a channel to get rid of their Islamists, to ship them to Europe.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Balthazar asked, ‘You’ve seen the National Security Committee’s report?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The parliamentary report was classified, above Balthazar’s pay grade, but Sandor Takacs had somehow obtained a copy and shown it to him. The report warned that the Qataris would expect more than business opportunities for such a large investment. In other countries, with substantial Muslim minorities, that had meant new mosques and schools run by Islamic hardliners and radicals. The report also warned that there was growing evidence that certain circles in Qatar were funding the Islamic State and its European terror networks. Qatari investments would need to be scrutinised and monitored at the highest level, the report said.

  Anastasia said, ‘They usually want to influence the local Muslim community. But there’s no point spending time or money on that here. There are only a few thousand Muslims here, and a handful of local converts.’

  ‘Are they are funding a network to carry out a terrorist attack here?’

  Anastasia shook her head. ‘We think that’s unlikely. Islamic State and Al-Qaeda like what they call “spectaculars” – 9/11, or 7/7 in London, Charlie Hebdo, something that sends shockwaves around the world. It takes a lot of time, energy and organisation to engineer a spectacular. You need local networks, access to explosives and guns, trained people and a high-profile target. Hungary is not high-profile enough. And we keep a very close watch on the Muslims here. There’s no chatter, no word of new people preaching Salafism. The terrorists want Hungary to be their kis kapu, not their target.’