The Budapest Protocol (5 page)

In theory, Cassandra had instant access to whatever information she needed, either from her employer, which dealt with domestic national security issues; the foreign intelligence service which operated abroad, or the police. In practice, the police’s response for information had recently been increasingly sluggish. There had always been a rivalry between the police and state security, but at least they cooperated. Now reports arrived late, or incomplete, sometimes not at all. Numerous senior police officers had transferred to the Gendarmerie, tempted by the salaries, more than double their previous wages, and a direct line to the Prime Minister’s office, which made them virtually untouchable.

She opened Miklos’ file and winced at the picture of his body, attached to a copy of the scene of crime report. This one at least was detailed and accurate. The District VII police chief was an old friend of hers, from their time together in the Communist Young Pioneers. The report told her some of what had happened, but not why. For what reason had an elderly, apparently harmless man been brutally killed and ‘AVO’ painted on the wall? Miklos Farkas had never even joined the Communist Party, let alone the secret police. Who was his grandson, and what was he doing here? Cassandra began reading.

Ten minutes walk away, in the
Budapest News
office on the Great Boulevard, Alex stood staring out of the window. The sky was still grey and dark, the passersby bundled up against the rain. The office looked out at the wrought iron façade of the Nyugati, western railway station. The Art Nouveau waiting room was now a McDonald’s. Alex could see the commuters inside lining up for their take-away coffees. A tram trundled by, covered in election posters of Sanzlermann’s grinning, chiselled features.

Alex picked a greasy Big Mac box off his chaotic desk and threw it into the nearby dustbin. Old press releases, back issues of the
International Herald Tribune
and
The Economist
, cold cups of coffee, half a banana and recent editions of
Magyar Tribün
and
Ébredjetek Magyarok!
all competed for space. The only tiny patch of order was around the three framed photographs in one corner: Alex holding hands with Miklos and Ruth; a formal portrait of his parents; and a blurry snapshot of Alex and a gang of foreign correspondents in the bar of the Holiday Inn Sarajevo, wearing flak jackets and helmets, bottles raised to their lips. He bit into the banana but couldn’t swallow. Ronald Worthington, the editor, had called and told Alex not to come in for the rest of the week. But he couldn’t sleep and the last thing he wanted was to sit at home on his own. He felt very alone.

Alex’s father, Edward, and mother, Caroline, had been killed in a car crash on the way home from a dinner party when Alex was eight. He had grown up in boarding schools, and was sent to Hungary every summer, to stay with Miklos and Ruth, where he had learnt fluent Hungarian. They were the only family he knew – both his parents were only children and his mother had been estranged from her family. He picked up the photograph of him with Miklos and Ruth. Summer at Lake Balaton. The lake shimmered turquoise in the heat, and yachts sailed past in the distance. Miklos held one of his hands, Ruth the other, as the three of them stood on the shore, squinting into the sun. He remembered the day very clearly: chocolate ice-cream and
langos
, a deep-fried Hungarian doughnut, greasy and delicious; the cool grass under his feet, the clean smell of the water, and his ninth birthday present, a red kite.

He wiped his eyes, put the picture down and switched on the television. CNN showed Russian tanks lumbering down a bombdamaged street. Another former Soviet republic finding out the hard way that where Moscow was concerned, independence was just a word. Alex had never been there, but he did not need to witness the carnage to know its reality.

The smell of cordite, and the way the buildings shake and tremble. Nothing feels permanent or solid. His second day in Sarajevo. On the surface he tries to be like the other reporters: nonchalant, cynical, but the fear twists inside him like a living thing. He has already seen three of his colleagues wounded: one shot in the face, another in the leg, a third covered with blood from glass splinters. He does not want to die here. He is walking up Martial Tito Street when a window shatters in the next building. As one the crowd rushes for the entrance of an apartment building. He flattens himself against the wall. The old lady sits in the middle of the street, moaning with fear. The bullet smacks into the tarmac, a few feet in front of her. Another shot, this time nearer. The sniper takes his time, playing, taking out the nearby windows one by one, raining glass on to the street, on to her. She wriggles and flails as each bullet comes a bit closer. The sound of the glass as it shattered and tinkled onto the pavement. The ripe, stale-sweat smell of the crowd. It was surprising how loudly an old lady could scream.

He still remembered the headline: “Under Fire on the Streets of Sarajevo.” It took up most of the front-page, complete with a photo by-line. He had watched and taken notes as two men had dashed out into the middle of the road to rescue the woman, while a soldier had opened fire on the sniper’s position. He had travelled with her in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She had not been hit, but died of shock.

Journalism had been an obvious career choice for someone who always felt an outsider, looking in. In Hungary, he missed Britain: its stability, moderation, and basic assumption of reasonableness. In Britain, he missed Hungary: its passionate, exuberant people, with their wild mood swings from elation to despair and back again. Studying History at the University of Manchester, he spent most of his time working on the student newspaper. He posed as an illegal immigrant and worked as a cleaner, and won a student journalism award for his exposé of the exploitation of migrant workers. That got him a coveted place on the
Daily Sentinel’s
graduate trainee scheme. He quickly specialised in human interest articles. He instinctively knew how to listen, when to probe further and when to keep silent, teasing out often startling confidences.

Alex was twenty-three when he was first despatched in the early 1990s to Vukovar and Sarajevo for the
Daily Sentinel
, burning with righteous indignation to tell the world the human cost of war. Older hands scoffed that he was too young, but his despatches were vivid, capturing potent images: a Croat farmhouse abandoned in mid-meal, the soup still steaming on the kitchen table; a teenage Muslim fighter wide-eyed with shock after his best friend had been shot dead beside him; the charred remains of a Serb icon in a demolished Orthodox church. After Bosnia came Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan. He learnt to draw out the details of a massacre from a single survivor or negotiate safe passage with the warlord whose men had carried it out, to memorise a scene of carnage with a single mental snapshot, to drive slaloming under fire. The countries changed but everything else remained the same: the envious looks from the home news reporters before he flew out, the fat wad of dollars in his money belt, the airplane to the nearest capital, briefings from aid organisations and diplomats, nights in dingy ‘hotels’ with no hot water or heating in a hamlet unmentioned on most maps, the frantic front-line couplings.

By the time he realised that the world didn’t care about the horrors he chronicled, he was addicted. The rush kicked in at the S-shaped curve of mines, sandbags and tank traps that marked the start of no man’s land. Then came the drive into the killing zone, the very air thick with menace, adrenalin pumping so hard his senses were on fire. He could taste the gun smoke curling skywards a kilometre away, hear the bullets sliding up into a Kalashnikov’s barrel, see the soldiers crumple as the shells exploded. Getting in, and getting out with the story was the greatest high, better than sex. Part of him even came to love the stink of war: wood smoke and decay, cordite and sweat. Best of all was the camaraderie. No-one lived like they did. Anywhere that buildings burned and people were killing each other, he would find his friends and colleagues, half-crazy, passionate and generous, ready to share everything, from the notes of their interviews, to their final drop of whiskey. It almost felt like a family; especially at the funerals.

After the fourth, he stopped. He refused Iraq and asked for a transfer from the foreign department to the home news desk. He had taken six months sabbatical, spent most of it lazing on a small Greek island, before starting in Westminster as a political reporter. Once he would have relished being on the inside track to Parliament’s intrigues. But the Byzantine, self-interested manoeuvrings left him cold, and his workaday reports reflected that. One afternoon he realised that he had spent three hours silently staring out of the office window at the River Thames. The managing editor had refused his resignation and called him in for a talk. The
Daily Sentinel
had just bought a newspaper in Hungary, the
Budapest News
. The staff needed training and the paper needed a makeover. Alex’s Hungarian background made him a natural choice for secondment. He offered Alex a year’s contract on his London salary. Alex accepted. The work was easy, but what reason was there to stay now that his grandfather was dead?

His phone bleeped. An SMS: My deepest condolences. Come at four. M.

*  *  *

Natasha Hatvani sat down at her desk, a cup of coffee in one hand, a large manila envelope in the other. She rested the coffee on top of a bulky report on money-laundering in eastern Europe, put the envelope aside, and checked her email. She immediately deleted six long missives, all from the same address, and added “
[email protected]
” to her blocked sender list. All six would now be bounced back, marked “address unknown”. There was only one person on the blocked list, but he already had twenty-two email addresses. Every few days Gabor Urban opened another webmail account with a new pseudonym and continued his cyber bombardment. Changing her email address was pointless, as reporters’ contact details were listed on the paper’s website. She clicked on the spam filter button. A new window opened, entitled “block keywords”. She quickly tapped in “heartbroken Hungarian”, and “I beg you to come back”. She sat back, sipped her coffee and ate half a chocolate bar she found next to her telephone. Any email containing those phrases would automatically bounce back. And nobody else was likely to be writing such declarations.

Natasha had started work at the
Budapest News
a year earlier as a receptionist, on the understanding that she would be considered for a reporter’s job. She was first into the office at 9.00am, and last out, at 7.00pm or later. She never complained and her work was fast and accurate. Nor did she socialise at the paper’s frequent parties, although lately she had become friendly with Kitty Kovacs, the advertising manager. Tall and slender, her bob of black hair framed luminous grey eyes, while angular cheekbones gave her the appearance of a Slavic Nefertiti, a legacy of her Russian grandfather. Fluent Russian and decent Slovak and Polish helped get her a trial as a researcher, working on an investigation into a Moscow mobster who had set up in Budapest. She proved talented at extracting information from both cops and
biznissmen
, none of whom took her seriously because of her looks, and revealed all kinds of information in the erroneous hope of first impressing, then bedding her. She was soon promoted.

Natasha checked the news websites. “Former dissident found dead at home: Murder suspected” announced
Magyar Tribün
, “Pig’s head horror at home of dead ex-dissident” screamed the tabloids. She read the details of how Miklos’ body had been found, and that the police had launched a murder investigation. She stood up, shocked and dismayed. Natasha remembered meeting Alex’s grandfather once in the office, a courteous gentleman with an old-world charm. She picked up the envelope and walked over to Alex’s room.

“I just heard. Alex, I’m so sorry. What happened?” She hesitated at the door.

“Thanks. I don’t know exactly. I suppose the post-mortem will tell us,” Alex said, feeling once again the glass granules under his fingers, seeing his grandfather motionless under the red letters spelling out AVO. He turned down the television and gestured for her to come in.

After Natasha was promoted Alex had taken her for a coffee. He had learned almost nothing about her personal life, except that she lived at home with her mother. Intrigued, he had invited her for lunch twice more. After two refusals he gave up and made sure to be as businesslike as she always was. The other reporters dressed in casual clothes, unless they had a major interview, but from her first day at work Natasha had always worn trouser suits. She only had two, Alex had noticed, one dark blue and the other black. Today’s was the black, a well cut jacket, and slightly flared trousers. Its repairs were sewn skilfully enough to be almost invisible.

“Do you need anything, Alex? Can I help at all?” she asked, standing away from his desk.

Alex cleared a pile of newspapers off a nearby chair and gestured for her to sit down. She sat on the edge of the chair, her back straight and her knees together, as if waiting for instructions.

“Thanks, I’m managing,” Alex said. After several seconds of awkward silence, Alex asked: “What’s in the envelope?”

She reached inside and unfolded a sheet of A3 paper. An election poster showed Attila Hunkalffy, leader of the Hungarian National Front, and Frank Sanzlermann standing together, staring resolutely forward. A slogan proclaimed: “Family, Work, Unity.” She handed it to Alex.

He leaned forward and looked at Natasha. “How did you get this?”

“You told me to develop contacts. So I did.”

“Well done. This is a story,” said Alex, sitting back in his chair. Focus, he thought, perhaps work could dull the pain. So Sanzlermann would be campaigning with Attila Hunkalffy. Where did that leave Csintori? Out of a job soon, probably. Istvan Kiraly had kept that quiet. Hunkalffy was an ardent nationalist, a handsome, charismatic professor of Hungarian poetry in his early fifties, scion of a famous literary family. His ponytail of long black hair, now streaked with grey, was the only reminder of his bohemian past. Hunkalffy had personally introduced the parliamentary vote of no-confidence that almost brought down the government. Several of Csintori’s MPs had already defected to his party, including the powerful Interior Minister.