District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  Balthazar said nothing, pressed his finger down on the I button. Eniko also said nothing. He pressed the I button again.

  Eniko waved her right hand. ‘Wait, wait.’

  Balthazar paused, his finger hovering over the keypad. ‘You have got ten seconds.’

  Eniko swallowed. ‘I can’t believe that you would really do this.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe. What matters is that you give me back the SIM card.’

  ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’

  Balthazar glanced at his watch. ‘Four seconds.’

  ‘I will give it to you, but hear me out. Please.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Let’s work together. We can trade.’

  ‘We can. And the first trade is you freely walking out of the door once you have given me the card.’ His voice turned cold. ‘Don’t push me any further, Eni.’

  Eniko blinked several times, clearly shocked at his tone, reached inside her bag, took out a small plastic box and slid it across the table. Balthazar opened it. The SIM card was there. He jammed it deep inside his trouser pocket. ‘What’s the trade?’

  Eniko said, ‘We both want to know what’s on the card.’

  ‘I’m a policeman. We have people for that.’

  Eniko glared at him. ‘Of course you do. You can get the numbers on the card, the text messages and a record of all the calls they have made. But you would have to put in a request, and even if you didn’t and someone did it for you as a favour, it would still leave a data trail on their computer.’

  ‘So?’

  She stared at him, held his eyes. ‘I think you are working under the radar.’

  ‘Why?’

  She sipped her Diet Coke, put her glass down. ‘There are procedures for handling evidence, especially in a murder enquiry. Something tells me they don’t involve stuffing it in a bag, putting it in your trouser pocket, and taking it home.’

  She was completely correct, of course, although he would not admit it. And he could not use a police technician to strip the SIM card as he was not officially on the case, Sandor Takacs had made that clear. ‘Why were you going through my trouser pockets?’

  ‘Actually, I wasn’t. I was folding your clothes while you were asleep. It was half out. I saw it was an evidence bag, and naturally, wanted to see what was in it.’

  ‘And then you stole it.’

  ‘Borrowed it, Tazi. You have it back.’

  ‘Thanks. Your suggestion is?’

  ‘We work together,’ she said, her voice brisk and businesslike. ‘Partners.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  Eniko reached inside her bag, took out several printed sheets that were stapled together. She handed the papers to Balthazar, who flicked through them. The first section listed all the numbers on the SIM card, the second, outgoing calls, and the third, incoming calls. A fourth section included several incoming and outgoing SMS messages. The messages, he guessed, were in a kind of code, talking about a ‘birthday party’.

  Balthazar put the sheets down on the table. ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘I got them.’ Eniko had asked Arpi, the Keleti activist, to help her. Arpi was an expert hacker, able to get into any electronic system including high-security government networks. ‘Does it matter how?’

  ‘I guess not. Thank you. This is very useful. Well done. I’ll keep this.’

  Eniko shrugged. ‘Fine. I have a copy.’ Balthazar’s telephone bleeped. He looked down at the screen. A text message from Alex:

  Hey Dad – what’s the plan? Can’t wait to see you

  Balthazar smiled, tapped out a reply.

  PBF

  He planned to take Alex to his favourite playground on Freedom Square, then walk up Oktober 6th Street to a new burger bar and watch a film at home in the evening. Balthazar glanced at Eniko while he waited for the reply. ‘Alex.’

  ‘How is he doing?’ she asked, a wistful look on her face.

  ‘Fine, thanks. I’m seeing him later.’

  ‘Im sorry...’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘... that I never met him.’ She looked up, paused for a moment. ‘Will I?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m quite careful who I introduce to him. His life is turbulent enough, without new people walking in, then...’

  ‘Walking out?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he replied, when his telephone beeped again.

  Park, burger, film?

  He tapped out ‘yes x 3’, then put his telephone down.

  Eniko sighed. ‘OK. So what do we do next?’

  ‘We don’t do anything. I will continue with my investigation. And you don’t do anything else illegal.’

  Eniko tapped the papers. ‘This is just the start. We have the numbers but we need to know whose they are, build up a network of contacts.’

  She was right. But that was going to be Anastasia Ferenczy, not Eniko Szalay. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  Just as he answered, Eniko’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen. It showed ‘number unknown’. She placed the handset on the table and let it ring several more times before it stopped.

  ‘Why don’t you answer it?’ asked Balthazar.

  Eniko shrugged. ‘I never answer unknown numbers on the first call. If it’s important they will call back or leave a voicemail. The phone tells me when they do.’ She waited several seconds then looked down. ‘Nothing.’

  The handset began to trill again. This time she picked it up, said hallo. Balthazar could hear a female voice ask for Eniko Szalay. The voice sounded vaguely familiar but was too distant and tinny for him to properly recognise.

  ‘Who is this?’ asked Eniko. Her eyes widened when she heard the reply. She quickly stood up and backed away from the table, her phone now pressed hard against her ear. ‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’

  Balthazar heard nothing of the reply, but could see that it satisfied Eniko. She glanced at him and mouthed ‘Excuse me’, now completely possessed by the call. Her face was set and determined, her eyes focused, her shoulders jutting forward in the mix of excitement that she was on the trail of a story and her determination to get it. He watched her walk to the other side of the room and turn her back on him. There she listened briefly and said two more words. ‘Where?’ and ‘When?’. She hung up and walked back over to the table, no longer apologetic, but calm and confident.

  ‘Who was it?’ asked Balthazar.

  ‘Are we working together?’

  ‘I told you. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Let me know when you decide,’ said Eniko as she gathered up her bag. ‘Then I’ll think about telling you who I’m meeting.’ She turned and walked out.

  Prime minister’s office, Parliament, 2.30 p.m.

  Pal Palkovics pressed the pause button on the browser window. The screen showed a frozen image of the man who had tried to kill Reka, lying face-down by the castle rampart. His eyes stared sightlessly while blood oozed from the hole in the side of his neck. ‘That worked out well,’ said Palkovics, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He turned to Attila Ungar. ‘Plan B?’

  Ungar was sitting next to him, behind the large oak desk in the prime minister’s office. The Gendarme commander shrugged. ‘Same as Plan A. But this time I’ll take care of it myself.’

  Palkovics exhaled hard, stood up and walked over to the windows overlooking the Danube. The river sparkled merrily in the bright sunshine, its rushing waters for once almost blue. A ferry boat filled with tourists taking selfies chugged towards the Pest embankment. His back to the room, he clenched his fist, banged it hard against the bulletproof window, and his face split into a broad grin. Ungar jumped, looked around for an intruder. ‘Relax, Attila, it’s just me,’ said Palkovics.

  He watched the tourists disembark, clambering down from the boat to the walkway near Parliament. He had hit the window in celebration. She was still alive. And she had killed the man Ungar had sent to kill her. Palkovics had known
Reka since childhood. They had grown up together in the privileged world of the Communist elite. The party had promised equality for all, but as George Orwell had noted, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ The Palkovics and Bardossy children had enjoyed the greatest inequality that the workers’ and peasants’ state could provide: an education in London and Paris, a childhood in pre-war villas whose lounges were bigger than many family apartments, summer houses almost as large on the shore of Lake Balaton, residences staffed with live-in housekeepers and servants, a Volga limousine with a driver permanently on call, highly paid sinecures in government ministries for their parents.

  Palkovics trusted nobody, which was how he had survived at the top of Hungarian politics for so long, but Reka was the nearest thing he had to an ally. Part of him had always admired her, although he was careful never to let that slip. On top of that, she was very good-looking and voracious in bed. Now she had despatched a would-be assassin with a part of a shoe. The more dangerous she was, the more alluring. He closed his eyes for a moment – seeing Reka on her back on the ground, the dead man’s hands around her throat, her arm whipping up into his neck – feeling a familiar hunger surge.

  Ungar said, ‘Prime Minister, we really need to get her out of the way as soon as possible.’

  Palkovics closed his eyes for a second, banished the images of Reka in various states of undress that were pouring into his mind, forced himself to focus, and turned around. ‘Try and think things through, Attila. If she didn’t do it before, by now she will have deposited copies of all her files, all the evidence about the passports and the money. Almost certainly with her lawyer, with instructions to release them if anything happens to her. That’s what I would do. There are probably copies somewhere on the dark web as well. We won’t be able to find them. Do you want that information to be released? Who do you think is paying for your nice new uniforms and equipment and vehicles? The national budget?’

  ‘It was your idea to do her at the castle,’ said Ungar, sulkily.

  Actually, it wasn’t, Palkovics almost said. It was the Librarian’s. Instead he replied, ‘And it was your job to execute it. Which you failed to do.’

  ‘I lost a man.’

  Palkovics snorted with derision. ‘To a woman. A woman armed with a pair of high heels.’

  ‘She got lucky.’ ,

  ‘Yes. Lucky that your man was an amateur.’

  ‘We don’t even know where his body is.’

  ‘Boo-hoo. Try the gravel pit in Budaors.’ He looked at Ungar. ‘I believe you know where that is?’ he asked, his voice sardonic. Ungar said nothing.

  Palkovics walked over to his desk and pressed the play button on the browser. The rest of the footage showed Reka standing up, calling Antal, the appearance of Akos Feher, the arrival of the clean-up crew, Reka and Akos Feher leaving. ‘We have this, at least,’ said Palkovics. He gestured to Ungar to leave. ‘Now let me think about how to use it. We need to bring her in, make her cooperate. But we need her alive.’

  Ungar stood up, pointed at the black Nexus 6 phone on Palkovics’s desk. ‘Is that the journalist’s?’

  Palkovics nodded. ‘At least you managed to do that properly.’

  ‘Thanks. Anything useful?’

  ‘Nothing yet. She bricked it remotely.’ Palkovics picked up the handset, pondered the black screen. ‘The technicians will try again this afternoon. She’s served her purpose, but she’s getting in the way, asking a lot of questions.’

  Ungar smiled. ‘Journalists do that.’

  ‘Until they realise it’s in their best interest to stop.’ He looked at Ungar. ‘I think it’s time she realised that. Don’t you?’

  Ungar nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good. And use your brain this time, not your fists. We want her scared. Not dead. And not on YouTube, showing off her bruises.’

  ‘Of course. What about the Gypsy?’

  ‘Keleti didn’t work. He met someone from the ABS this morning.’

  ‘Who?’

  Palkovics knew about Anastasia Ferenczy. He had a mole inside the security service. Several, in fact. But he was certainly not going to share that information with Attila Ungar. He would move against her too, when the time was right. But not yet. ‘Someone. It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that you get rid of him. Make it look like an accident. Use a knife. They like knives. Everyone will think it’s some kind of Gypsy feud.’ He gestured at the door. Ungar stood up to leave. Palk-ovics said, ‘Get going. You have a busy afternoon.’

  THIRTEEN

  Rakoczi Square, 2.45 p.m.

  Rakoczi Square had once been the epicentre of Budapest’s red-light district, avoided at night by everyone except locals and the prostitutes’ customers. It now looked like a spread from an urban design magazine. The front of the space opened onto the Grand Boulevard. It was flanked on both sides by rows of newly restored grand nineteenth-century apartment buildings, each with a shop on the ground floor. The metro station entrance in the centre of the square was marked by an ultra-modern steel-and-glass pavilion with a sloping roof. The square itself was covered with grey granite tiles. The central area, where prostitutes had once strolled back and forth, now housed a fountain and a modern playground in bright colours. Stallholders sold artisan cheese and organic fruit at a small market on one side of the metro entrance. The dank bars were gone, replaced by trendy cafés. Only Balthazar’s destination, the Tito Grill, sandwiched at the back of the square between an ABC grocery store and a used clothing shop, was holding out.

  Balthazar paused for a moment, watching the children running around the playground, climbing in and out of the toy cars and ships as their parents on the side watched indulgently. The people too, had changed. When Balthazar was growing up nearby on Jozsef Street, this part of District VIII was largely Roma, with a smattering of poor locals and a small Jewish community. Now that District VII was pricing itself out of the market for locals on modest incomes, District VIII was becoming a popular place for young families. A 100-square-metre apartment here could still be had for 80,000 euros, considerably cheaper than across the Grand Boulevard.

  Balthazar checked his watch. He needed to hurry up. He was scheduled to pick up Alex at 4.00 p.m. Sarah’s apartment in District XIII was fifteen minutes away on the tram. He had an afternoon and the whole evening and night with his son, which would fly by. Eva neni had invited them both down for Sunday breakfast. She doted on the boy, and he loved her pancakes.

  Balthazar sat for a moment on a bench, suddenly hit by a wave of fatigue. The weather did not help. The sky was blue and clear with a few wisps of white cloud. The sun was hot on his face and it was warm enough for him to feel the heat rising off the ground. He wore a white T-shirt and light canvas jeans and black wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses. The T-shirt was already sticking to his back. Balthazar knew he should be resting; his body and brain had taken a sustained shock. Both needed time to recover. Instead, he had been on the move much of yesterday evening and all this morning. Thankfully, the iron bar in his head had shrunk and almost vanished. He opened his mouth, stretched his jaw, could open it a little wider today. The paracetamol took the edge off, but he knew there was a week of stiffness and discomfort ahead, especially as the bruises came out. His back and shoulders felt as though a herd of elephants had thundered over them.

  Balthazar rolled his shoulders, trying to ease out some of the tension. He had returned home after meeting Eniko, and hidden the SIM card and the list of telephone numbers under a floorboard in the lounge. After Balthazar had been targeted by Hazifiu.hu, the extreme right-wing website, Sandor Takacs had insisted that a proper security system be installed in his flat, with a camera that was connected to the Budapest police headquarters. Most of the time he did not bother activating it, unless he was overnighting somewhere else. He had very few valuables, and most of those were of sentimental rather than monetary value. In any case Eva , who kept a sharp eye on all visitors, was far more effective than an el
ectronic system. Takacs had called Balthazar on the way home. He had seen the YouTube footage of the attack at Keleti. Takacs had ordered Balthazar to be checked over by a police doctor and move out and stay with him. Balthazar had managed to talk him out of both demands. But he had agreed to activate the flat’s security system.

  He shut his eyes, and took his Ray-Bans off. Who was Eniko going to meet later? Clearly a source of some kind, and almost certainly connected to the migrant crisis. Balthazar had watched Eniko work with interest in the few months they had been together. Journalists, like policemen, needed information and a network of contacts to provide it. But policemen, unlike journalists, could use the threat of criminal proceedings to make unwilling sources talk. Journalists had to use their wits and powers of persuasion to cajole their contacts, sometimes to reveal information that was not flattering or helpful. Which made Eniko’s people skills all the more impressive. He smiled as he remembered his grandfather’s advice about girls, ‘don’t reheat the toltott kaposzta, stuffed cabbage’. But the problem was, that reheated stuffed cabbage was even tastier the next day. He shut his eyes for a moment, Eva’s voice resounding in his head: ‘Any woman who brings you home in that state and looks after you is either your girlfriend or your wife, or wants to be.’ Did she? Maybe. For now though, there were other things to focus on, such as the Gendarmes covering for an Islamist terrorist murdering refugees on his beat.

  For a few moments he tried to clear his mind, listening to the soundtrack of District VIII: the happy shouts of the children playing nearby, the trundle of the tram as it rolled along the main boulevard, a siren wailing in the distance.

  Balthazar was well-travelled. He had spent two weeks attached to the Metropolitan Police, had met colleagues and attended conferences in Vienna, Berlin and Brussels, marvelled at their mix of cultures. Budapest was not as cosmopolitan as western cities, but the Hungarian capital too had its hidden outposts where immigrants and foreigners gathered among their own. Arab moneychangers met in the Cairo restaurant on Garay Square, behind Keleti Station, to compare exchange rates and smoke fruit-flavoured tobacco in brass and gold shisha pipes. African students and the handful of African refugees who had been allowed to stay congregated at the Lagos bufe, behind Blaha Lujza Square. The Russians, especially the newly rich who were buying up prime properties downtown and in the Buda hills, favoured the ritzy bars and restaurants of the five-star hotels along Budapest’s riverbank. The latest influx, of Chinese investors, was also spread out in Buda, near the British and American schools. The city’s several hundred Israeli medical, dentistry and veterinary science students favoured, naturally enough, the old Jewish quarter in District VII.