The Budapest Protocol (32 page)

“Good afternoon, Alex,” said Isabelle, as they kissed hallo.

“Over there?” he asked, gesturing at a quiet table in the corner.

“Not there, come with me,” she said, as she led him to the very centre of the café.

He winced as she held his left arm. It was healing steadily, but was still very sore. Isabelle usually chose a discreet spot, far from other customers, for their occasional meetings. Now she led him right to the centre, visible to everyone. But she was often full of surprises. Isabelle was in her early thirties, he guessed, an appealing mix of English rose from her mother’s side and vivacious Hungarian from her father’s. The Balassy family had fled Hungary in 1956 for London, where her parents had met and where she was born, and then moved to New York. Her parents divorced when she was sixteen and she opted to stay in Manhattan with her father. Her long, wavy, auburn hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, highlighting her large brown eyes and wide, full mouth. She wore a black turtle neck jumper under a close-fitting burgundy jacket and skirt that highlighted her slim but curvaceous figure.

A few months earlier, at the end of a wine-sodden dinner at the ambassador’s residence, Alex and Isabelle had found themselves alone in a deserted cloakroom. After several minutes of memorably erotic kissing, she had broken away from him, claiming that she never mixed business with pleasure. Now they met for a drink and dinner once a month or so. They subsumed any lingering attraction in trying to extract information from each other while giving as little as possible in return. Alex had experienced similar probing questions from various British ‘liaison’ officers in the Balkans, and was fairly sure Isabelle worked for MI6.

A pale, earnest looking young man sat at the table behind, reading
Ébredjetek Magyarok!.
As Alex and Isabelle sat down he put his newspaper aside, and took out a notebook.

Isabelle called the waitress over and ordered two coffees, before looking at Alex. “Ask me, in a loud clear voice please, what will happen if you are expelled from Hungary?” she said, in her mid-Atlantic accent.

Alex looked puzzled. She smiled encouragingly. “Go on, just as I told you. Loud and clear.”

“Miss Balassy,” said Alex, in his best BBC newsreader voice. “Can you please tell me what will happen if I am expelled from Hungary.”

The young man began scribbling. The waitress brought his coffee, which he ignored.

“Certainly, Mr Farkas. Her Majesty’s Government will regard this as a grave breach of diplomatic practice. The London correspondents of
Ébredjetek Magyarok!
, Hungarian Television and the Hungarian state news agency will all be immediately declared
persona non grata
. They will barely have enough time to pack.”

The eavesdropper scribbled frantically in his notebook. She spoke again. “Let me be crystal clear about this. They will be expelled, and their operations closed down by special government order. And we will encourage our allies both within and outside Europe to follow suit. Including the United States. Now ask me what will the consequences be if something, let us say, untoward, should happen to you?”

Alex leaned back in his chair, so that the scribbler could hear better. “Could you please explain what would occur if I met an unfortunate accident?”

The eavesdropper sat poised and listening, pen resting on his notebook.

“Her Majesty’s government is most concerned that members of her press corps be able to function freely and without hindrance. Especially British citizens. We know that figures closely allied to Attila Hunkalffy are behind
Ébredjetek Magyarok!.
We are also in possession of certain
personal
information about Prime Minister Hunkalffy and Mr Frank Sanzlermann, that we have not released.”

She paused, to give the eavesdropper time to take his notes. “But should anything unpleasant occur to you, or any other foreign correspondent, we would immediately release that
personal
information to the world’s, and, I emphasise, the world’s press.”

Isabelle leaned over the table to the young man taking notes. “Did you get that all down?”

The note-taker looked startled, then alarmed. He packed up his notebook, threw a thousand forint note on the table, and bolted.

Alex turned round to watch him scuttle out of the door. He grinned. “What personal information?” he asked, remembering Laci the waiter at Sotto Voce.

“I can’t tell you that. Unless you sign the Official Secret Act, and I don’t think that would help your career. But they know what we are talking about. There is something else.”

“What?” asked Alex.

“Istvan Matonhely.”

“The Pannonia Brigade leader. What about him?”

“Matonhely has just opened a bank account with one million euros. Paid in cash.”

* * *

Crusoe’s private dining room was a glass-walled peninsula jutting over the artificial lake around the Vajdahunyad Castle, in the City Park. The water glimmered in the night, reflecting the candles on the table, and the full moon. Soft lamps cast a yellow light on the castle’s ornate towers and balustrades. It was almost midnight, and Ronald’s leaving party was in full swing. There were eight of them sitting around the table: Alex, Kitty, Natasha, Edina, Euan Braithwaite, and a couple of advertising sales staff.

Alex sat next to Edina Draskovitz and Euan Braithwaite. She wore a dark blue Mandarin silk top and matching silk trousers and looked surprisingly feminine. Flush with success over his new job as a sports reporter for Reuters, Euan was recounting how, as an enthusiastic novice journalist, he had travelled to Albania after the NATO air strikes. He had promptly been kidnapped by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA fighters had marched him through the mountains to their hideout, before threatening to shoot him as a Serb spy.

“How did you escape?” asked Edina, her face resting on her hand as she stared up at him.

“We talked about football. I interviewed Maradona years ago. They wanted to shake the hand that once shook Maradona’s hand. After that, they said I was free to go,” said Braithwaite, turning pink under her gaze. He took a long swig from his beer. “The commander even drove me back to the nearest NATO checkpoint.”

Their laughter resounded around the room when the background jazz faded away and the lights dimmed. Four skinny Romany men carried an enormous woman in on a Sedan chair, lined with purple brocade, and golden tassels that swung from side to side. She emerged and glided forward into Crusoe’s private dining room like a ship setting out to sea. All conversation stopped as she looked around the room. Glasses just raised were held in mid-air. Lit cigarettes were left unsmoked. She was wrapped in a voluminous dress of purple velvet, her neck adorned with gold chains. A single dark red rose was perched behind her ear, its colour perfectly matching her lipstick. Her deep set black eyes were almost oriental, set above high cheekbones. It was a strong and handsome face, with a generous, curved nose and thick lips above several rolls of flesh that flowed from her chin to her abundant neck. She stared imperiously at the diners and the handful of waiters, as though everything was to her satisfaction.

Kitty Kovacs slid onto the seat next to Alex. “That is a whole lot of woman,” he said, reaching for another bottle of wine.

“Too much for you. Too much even for me, I think,” she said, laughing.

Alex smiled. “Where’s Esmerelda?”

“Back in Barcelona.” Kitty looked in Natasha’s direction. She was deep in conversation with Ronald Worthington. He loudly promised to make her ‘chief barmaid-in-chief’, once he opened his new pub. “Why don’t you go and talk to Natasha?”

Alex drank his wine. “I don’t think so, Kitty. She can see where I’m sitting.”
If an old man can give you a bit of advice, she was looking at you in a certain way...

Kitty smiled. “So you have learnt to be a little bit Hungarian.”

A hiss and howl of feedback echoed around the room, followed by Ronald Worthington’s booming voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention.”

Ronald was dressed in a cream linen suit, a maroon fez perched on his head, which kept slipping down the side of his pate. The four Romany sedan-chair bearers set up their instruments behind him: an accordion player, two violinists and a trumpeter. He pushed the fez back into place, as he took the microphone:

“Jamila, the Gypsy Queen of the Night, and her miniorchestra.”

A cheer and clapping. The musicians looked around and bowed. Ronald offered Jamila the microphone, which she waved away with a look of disdain.

She looked out over the room, sang a long, single note that filled the room. Even the waiters stopped in their work and stood still, listening.

“Shine my star,” she sang, “Shine my star, for you are the light of my heart.”

The first violinist slowly teased a tune from his instrument, jammed under his neck, and the second soon joined him. Alex watched the hairs on his arm stand to attention. A powerful feeling, poignant and intense, rippled through him. The wind whistled through the shack in Novy Marek. He saw Natasha looking at him in the dark as Teresa sang. He turned to Ronald.

“I heard that you liked this song, old chap,” said Ronald, wiping the sweat from his forehead, “so I asked her to sing it especially for you.”

Alex looked up. Natasha briefly glanced at him, and turned away, mouthing the words in time with the singer. The trumpeter took up the tune, and the accordionist joined in. Jamila reached behind her ear, and threw him the rose, which he caught with a flourish.

Kitty turned to him. “Why don’t you go outside on the balcony?”

“Why? It’s cold out there,” he said, handing her the rose.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but that’s for someone else. Go. Outside. Alex,” she ordered.

He put the rose on the table and walked onto the terrace. He leaned against the fence, staring at the water. Fractured shapes formed and broke on the surface as it rippled in the breeze. The night air was cool and refreshing. The door opened.

She was standing next to him, lighting a cigarette. “You didn’t reply to my email.”

“I knew I would see you here tonight.”

She smiled. “I like Ronald. He’s helped me a lot,” she said, looking out over the pond.

“He has. And you’ve helped me, very much,” said Alex, moving nearer. His arm brushed against hers. “At least tonight there aren’t any policemen around. We won’t get arrested.”

“That depends,” Natasha replied.

He turned to face her. “On what?”

She stared at him. “On what we do.”

Alex watched the breeze shape her dress against the curve of her waist and the rise of her breasts. He took the cigarette and flicked it into the lake. It sparked briefly when it hit the water, hissed and floated away. Her eyes were huge in the dark. She licked her lips, once, lightly.

“You shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for your health,” he said, moving closer to her. She stood still, and seemed to lean towards him. Alex continued: “Exercise is better. Running is the best. Plenty of fresh air on Margaret Island.”

A half-smile played on her lips. “And girls.”

He touched her face and she turned to him, her eyes shining. Alex drew her closer, her arms snaking around his neck as she opened her mouth to his.

They sat up in bed, watching the sun rise over the city. His every sense was fine-tuned. A trail of tangled clothes led from the flat’s entrance: his coat, her coat, his shirt and trousers, her dress, brassiere and knickers tangled in his underwear. They had fallen on each other. Urgently at first, as if to make up for all the time they had spent on the journey. She met him, push for push, her nails raking his back, her legs locked around him until she cried out his name. He felt her ripple inside, felt his pleasure grow, spreading through him until it erupted, and he moaned hers in reply. They had rested for a while, tracing patterns in each others’ sweat, whispering shy confidences, and made love again, more slowly, savouring every touch and taste.

The sky slowly lightened, turning from black to maroon to blue as the hum of early morning traffic sounded in the distance.

“What if I am imagining the whole thing?” asked Alex, biting his lower lip. “Maybe there is no conspiracy, just the rough and tumble of politics in hard times. Why shouldn’t Hunkalffy be Prime Minister? He is an elected MP.”

He bit down harder. “Or Sanzlermann be President of Europe if people want to vote for him? That’s democracy. People can choose their leaders. I’m obsessed. Like Hillary Clinton, and her ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’, out to get Bill.”

Natasha leaned closer and touched his mouth. “Stop. Then who killed your grandfather?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. Robbers.”

“Robbers with a paint-brush and a pig’s head?”

“Robbers who wanted to make the robbery look like something else. Who knows why?”

“And Vince Szatmari?” she asked, pulling the quilt up around them.

“It was a hit and run. They happen. People get killed on the roads every day.”

“Yes. Like Anton,” she said, swallowing hard.

Alex drew her to him. “Don’t. That wasn’t your fault.”

“I jumped aside. I saved myself first,” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes filled with tears. “Maybe I could have pulled him out of the way. And my mother....” she said, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Everybody would do what you did. We escape from danger. It’s a natural reflex.”

He let her cry silently for several minutes until she raised her head. He handed her a tissue and she loudly blew her nose, smiling bravely.

“I’m sorry. It’s OK. Really. I just torture myself thinking about it. I can’t help it. I was there.” She turned and looked at him, her eyes wet. “You’re breaching all my defences. I’m not used to this.”

Alex smiled and squeezed her hand. “I’m glad.”

“Are you?” she asked, her voice intense, her eyes holding his.

“Yes. Very.”

“So am I.” She kissed his cheek. “What were we talking about? Your fertile imagination. But what about the burglars at my mother’s flat? The burglars who didn’t steal anything. And Captain Hermann? He obviously thinks something is happening. And your
friend
Isabelle,” she continued, digging a fingernail into Alex’s leg.