The Trinity Six (27 page)

Chapter 46

The train hummed and sighed on the tracks. Gaddis walked into a carriage halfway down the platform and saw that only a handful of empty seats remained. He looked for somebody young, as Eva had advised, spotting a crew-cut Hungarian with tattooed biceps seated at a table opposite a bottle-blonde woman in her early twenties who was staring moodily out of the window. Their legs were entwined beneath the table. There was a spare seat beside the girl. Gaddis nodded at it and the Hungarian indicated that it was free with a flick of his eyes, nothing more. Gaddis thanked him with a nod, swung his bag up on to the rack and sat down.

The train began to pull away from the station. An old woman stared at Gaddis as he settled into his seat, but when he caught her eye she looked away. Across the aisle, a young teenager was listening to an MP3 player on headphones which were covered in pink and yellow stickers. Beside her was a middle-aged businessman in a brown suit who was fast asleep, his mouth hung open, a blob of spittle pooling on his chin. It didn’t look as though anybody was going to start making polite conversation. People appeared to be minding their own business.

On the table in front of him was an open can of Coca-Cola and a crumpled copy of a Hungarian daily newspaper. Gaddis wanted to get a look at the front page, even though he knew that there was no chance of Wilkinson’s murder having made it into the early-morning editions. A female passenger across the aisle was reading an Austrian gossip magazine with a picture of Katarina Witt on the cover, skating in a red dress. Gaddis was feeling fidgety and needed something to do with his hands. He remembered the paperback books in his bag, yet did not want to draw attention to himself by reaching up on to the rack so early in the journey. So he stared out of the window. He absorbed the roads and the fields and the woods of the quiet Hungarian countryside, conscious of every tic and movement in his facial expression. It was impossible to relax. How many times in his life had he sat on trains, staring out of windows, his mind successfully and unself-consciously blank? Thousands. Yet today he was aware even of his own breathing.

Fifteen minutes passed. A ticket inspector appeared at the rear of the carriage and began making his way down the aisle, checking passengers who had joined at Hegyeshalom. It took the inspector what felt like an age to reach the block of seats around Gaddis, to request his ticket and to return it with a brisk nod. Gaddis watched with relief as he moved on. Buoyed by this first successful brush with authority, he stood up, nodded at his tattooed companion and walked in the direction of the dining car.

It was deserted. There were rows of tables, set for four, laid out with red tablecloths and leather-bound menus advertising goulash and five ways with chicken. Gaddis could not recall whether or not Eva had advised him to move around the train, yet he had felt so static in his seat, so trapped, that the walk had seemed essential to his wellbeing.

He went to the bar. A young man in an ill-fitting jacket was serving a customer with a few precious strands of greasy hair combed neatly across his scalp. Gaddis bought a cup of white-hot coffee and a sticky pastry filled with glutinous yellow custard. It would do his gut no good, but he was still hungry and felt that the caffeine might sharpen his wits. He sat on a stool beneath the logo of a ‘No Smoking’ sign, chewing on the pastry and slowly sipping his coffee. Everything about the train was clean and smooth but debilitatingly slow. It felt as though they were travelling at walking pace, stopping every half-mile; even the air-conditioning was sluggish. When he had finished eating, Gaddis walked back to his table, passing through carriages where the seating was divided into compartments accessed by sliding doors. The curtains were closed on certain booths; others were occupied by weary businessmen and old-age pensioners who, lacking something better to do, stared at Gaddis as he walked by.

He returned to his seat. The crew-cut Hungarian was slumped asleep against the window, his girlfriend checking her make-up in a compact. She looked up at him, then slid her gaze back to the smudged mirror. Across the aisle, the teenage girl was still listening to her MP3 player and Gaddis thought that he could hear the melody of a Beatles song coming through the headphones. The businessman beside her had now woken up, wiped his chin, and was busily inputting data into a laptop. Gaddis sat down and returned the smile of a woman whom he had not noticed before; a red-haired executive in a black pin-striped jacket who must have boarded at the last station. There was nothing to occupy him. He grew bored and wanted something to read. It would be interesting to see what books Eva had found for him.

Gaddis stood up. He was about to reach for the bag when the train came to a sudden halt. He would have thought nothing of it, but from his standing position in the carriage he could see through a window towards the front of the train. It had stopped at a level crossing. Two police cars were parked on a deserted country road, blue lights revolving noiselessly. Gaddis felt a caving sense of dread as the mute sirens pulsed against the late-morning sky; he had a sure sense that the train had been stopped by the Hungarian police, in co-operation with their Austrian colleagues, as part of a co-ordinated search for the murderer of Robert Wilkinson.

He sat down without a book. This in itself seemed a reckless act. Why stand, only to sit down again without unzipping his bag? He felt a dozen eyes upon him, as if his guilt was as plain to his fellow passengers as some mark on his body. He was being blamed for what was happening, for the delay to the journey. The tattooed man, his girlfriend, the teenager with the MP3, the red-haired executive with the smile and the pin-stripe suit – all of them knew that he was on the run from Vienna.

Then the engine of the train shut off, like a definitive signal of the hopelessness of his predicament. There was a moan of frustration throughout the carriage as the suspension shuddered and then fell silent, all power stripped from the train. There were shared looks of annoyance from the seats around him; Gaddis tried to join in by frowning and shaking his head.
I’m one of you
, he was saying.
None of this has anything to do with the Kleines Café.
The red-haired executive caught his eye and he produced what he hoped was a look of friendly camaraderie; instead, she frowned, as if Gaddis had in some way offended her. She looked past him at the far end of the carriage. Somebody was coming through the door.

Gaddis turned. There were two uniformed policemen ten metres from his seat. Was it his imagination, or did the taller of them immediately double-take, as if he had recognized him? Gaddis looked across the aisle at the teenage girl, who was bobbing her head to ‘Eleanor Rigby’. He felt a rush of panic involuntarily turn his face scarlet. He began to imagine a scenario whereby he would be arrested not by the police, but by the executive, who was again staring at him, and whom he was now certain was a plain-clothes Austrian law enforcement official positioned close by in order to facilitate his capture.

Calm down
, he told himself.
Take it easy
. The train could have stopped for any number of reasons. There could be illegal immigrants on board, a smuggler taking drugs or cigarettes into Budapest. Behind him, Gaddis could hear the policemen working their way through the carriage, as slow as the ticket inspector, as thorough and as sinister as jackbooted thugs in the Waffen SS.

‘Tickets please.’

The taller of the two policemen, the one who appeared to have recognized him at the door, was standing above the table. Gaddis fumbled in his jacket for the ticket Eva had handed to him at Hegyeshalom. He could not remember any of the advice that she had given him. Why had she not joined him on the train? Had he been set up? Why had Tanya not arranged for a second MI6 agent to accompany him to Budapest?

‘Thank you,’ said the policeman, as Gaddis passed him the ticket. He made a deliberate point of looking the policeman in the eye, trying to seem bored, trying to seem indifferent. For a wild moment, he was convinced that he was the same man who had tailed his cab from the UN.

‘You are English?’

Gaddis had not spoken. How had the policemen managed to establish his nationality? The game was up. They knew who he was, where he was from, what he was doing. For a split second he considered responding to the question in Russian, but if the police had seen his face on CCTV at the Kleines Café, any attempt at subterfuge would simply convince them of his guilt.

‘Yes. From London. How did you know?’

Though he had asked his question in English, the policeman did not appear to understand the reply. Gaddis looked behind him, at the second officer, who was busily checking tickets on the opposite side of the carriage. This, in itself, gave him a glimmer of hope: why would they carry on with their search if they knew that they had found Wilkinson’s companion? The girl with the pink-and-yellow headphones was reaching into the pocket of her jeans; she had not even bothered to take off the headphones. Gaddis was staggered by her sense of calm. But what was she looking for? A ticket or an identity card? If the police asked Gaddis to produce a passport, he was finished. Across the table, the crew-cut Hungarian had woken up. One of the tattoos on his arm was a caricature of Elvis.

‘So you are going to Budapest?’

‘Just for the night, yes.’ Gaddis remembered what Eva had told him.
You are coming back tomorrow. A one-way journey always looks more suspicious.
He cursed her for not providing him with a passport, a driving licence, some kind of photo ID with which to bluff his way through. What kind of tourist crossed an international border without a passport? What kind of intelligence agency left a man to fend for himself on a train crawling with cops?

‘Enjoy yourself,’ said the policeman.

Gaddis wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly. Was he imagining it? But the officer had turned his attention to the Hungarian and his girlfriend, both of whom flashed tickets at him with complete indifference to his authority. Perhaps these kind of searches were commonplace. Just then, a radio crackled on the jacket of the second officer. He responded instantly to the message, walking directly out of the carriage and down on to the track.

‘What happened?’ Gaddis asked.

‘They find him,’ said the Hungarian.

Both men stood in their seats and craned to look at the police cars parked at the level crossing. Through the cluster of passengers trying to see the same thing, Gaddis made out a young man who was being bundled into the back seat of the furthest car. A policewoman pushed his head downwards with the flat of her hand, and there were handcuffs on his wrists, secured behind his back.

‘Any idea what that was?’ Gaddis asked.

The Hungarian shook his head. ‘No. I do not,’ he said, and leaned over to kiss his girlfriend.

Chapter 47

An hour later, the train was pulling through the ghost town suburbs of Budapest, past abandoned freight cars on sidings, clusters of wild poppies and weeds. Gaddis saw the entrance to Keleti station opening up ahead in a delta of gleaming tracks. It felt like a cause for celebration. It was now surely just a question of meeting Eva’s contact and of being driven out to the airport.

He stepped down on to the platform and was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of local men and women offering him a room for the night, a taxi into town, a meal at a local restaurant.

‘Car?’ they said as he shook his head. ‘Where you like go, sir?’

He ignored them and stuck to Eva’s instructions, walking towards the great glassed roof of the station in search of Miklós. There was a bench fifty metres along the platform, positioned just a few feet from the ticket inspectors. Sitting on it, exactly as she had described, was a man with a beard wearing a green jacket. Gaddis could see a bottle of Vittel in the man’s left hand. At that moment, Miklós looked up and caught Gaddis’s eye, smiling broadly. Gaddis knew immediately that he would like him: the Hungarian, who was about fifty, had quick, lively eyes, mischief in his face and the aura of a man who was lucky and self-assured.

‘Mr Sam?’ he said, reaching to shake his hand.

Gaddis took it. Miklós was wearing brown leather gloves. The palm was sticky and cold against his own.

‘Will you forgive me if I ask who sent you here?’ Gaddis asked.

‘Of course I will forgive you.’ Miklós was still smiling, still pumping his hand. ‘It is important to be certain about these things, no? My name is Miklós. I was sent to meet you by our mutual friend, Eva, in Vienna, who was in turn acting for the woman you once knew as Josephine Warner.’

Gaddis felt a wave of relief. Miklós took his bag, against Gaddis’s protestations, and walked past the ticket inspectors without a glance. They went outside to a four-door Seat parked just a block from the station.

‘We go to my apartment first,’ Miklós explained. Gaddis thought that there was nothing unusual about this. ‘Your aeroplane, it does not leave for a few hours.’

He had opened the rear door of the car, as if hiring a taxi, but realized his mistake and moved to the passenger seat. Outside, Budapest felt a world away from Vienna, churning and chaotic and still touched by the faded grandeur of Communism. Gaddis was reminded of the grey, dirty light in Moscow; there was that same blanket smell of bitumen and diesel on the air and he felt the kinship of a world with which he was far more familiar. Miklós drove quickly, swerving and leaning on the horn, down film noir boulevards that, to Gaddis’s romantic eye, were full of all the bustle and wonder and threat that had been scoured clean from modern Vienna. For a blessed instant he felt free. Then he thought of Wilkinson and the screaming crowds in the Kleines Café and knew that he was far from safe.

‘So I am to understand that you have been through a very difficult trauma,’ Miklós said.

The word ‘trauma’ sounded excessive, even melodramatic, but Gaddis found himself replying: ‘Yes.’

‘Well, do not worry. It is all right now. You are in good hands. I take you to my apartment quickly. My wife, she fix you the soup. I will hand you your new passport, also some money. By sunset you are back in London.’

‘You’re very kind.’ He wanted to ask the same questions that he had tried to put to Eva.
How did you come to be working for MI6? How often do you do this kind of thing?
But he knew now that it was best to allow these angels of the secret world the privilege of their anonymity.

‘Are you from Budapest?’ he asked instead. It was an unimaginative question, but a little conversation seemed important.

‘I am,’ Miklós replied. ‘I give you the language lesson, OK? Quick guide to Hungarian.’

‘All right.’

They were turning down a narrow street, heavy brown-stone buildings weighing down on all sides. Gaddis was amazed to see a small branch of Tesco on one corner.

‘You order cheeseburger, you say “Shiteburger”.’ Miklós was laughing. It occurred to Gaddis that he must have used the same line on every foreigner who crossed his path. ‘Is funny, no?’

‘It’s funny.’

‘And the nipple we call the “mellbimbo”. Male bimbo. Crazy language, Hungarian. You like it? Crazy.’

Soon they had parked on a wide avenue beside a pile of neatly chopped wood, around which had been thrown a makeshift fence of orange plastic. Miklós retrieved Gaddis’s bag from the boot and led him down a passageway which ran between an electrical shop and a small restaurant. They emerged into the large internal courtyard of a nineteenth-century apartment building. A creaking lift carried them to the third floor.

‘I live just down here,’ Miklós said, steering Gaddis down a corridor which was open to the courtyard on the eastern side. He took out a set of keys and opened the door of his flat.

Inside, there was a large, modern kitchen with a staircase at one end, unprotected by banisters. A woman was standing at the stove, chopping mushrooms.

‘Let me introduce you to my wife,’ said Miklós.

‘Viki.’ Viki was an attractive woman, at least fifteen years younger than her husband, with long, dark hair and a slim figure partly concealed by a navy-blue apron. Gaddis raised a hand in greeting but did not approach her; she had indicated that her hands were dirty from cooking and it did not seem appropriate to kiss her on the cheek. He felt as though he had popped round to a neighbour’s house for lunch; there was no sense of anxiety in the room, no undercurrent of alarm. Was Viki in on the situation? Was she another Hungarian on the MI6 payroll? Miklós spoke to her briefly in their native tongue then offered Gaddis a stool at a breakfast bar in the centre of the room.

‘You have a beautiful place,’ he said, setting his bag on the floor.

‘Thank you. The building is very typical, but we make some adjustments. You will take a coffee? A shower?’

‘At the same time?’

Viki laughed, turning to catch her husband’s eye. There were expensive pots and pans on butcher’s hooks above the stove, black-and-white prints in frames, an iPod hooked up to some Bose speakers on a shelf adorned with paperback novels. A dog wandered into the kitchen, glided past Viki’s legs and settled beneath a deep ceramic sink.

‘Bazarov,’ said Miklós. ‘Our best friend.’

‘After Turgenev?’

His face lit up. ‘You know
Fathers and Sons
? You are an educated man, Mr Sam.’

Gaddis explained that he was a lecturer in Russian History and, before long, he had a cup of coffee in front of him and was knee-deep in a conversation about nineteenth-century Russian literature. Viki produced some bread and a bowl of soup and they sat together, at the breakfast bar, pinging opinions about Tolstoy back and forth while Gaddis wondered why he felt so relaxed.

An hour after he had first sat down, he was offered ‘a good hot shower and a nice change of clothes’. He duly went upstairs, armed with a white towel which smelled of chemical pine, and stood under the torrent of a steaming shower, cleaning away all the sweat and the worry and the rage of his long night in Vienna. Miklós had laid out a shirt and a jumper in a small bedroom nearby, as well as a pair of blue jeans which appeared never to have been worn. All three items fitted him perfectly; it occurred to Gaddis that MI6 even knew his sizes. He shaved and changed in front of a faded poster of Steven Gerrard brandishing the European Cup. The bedroom presumably belonged to Miklós and Viki’s son.

By half-past twelve Gaddis had made his way downstairs. Viki complimented him on his appearance and helped to pack his dirty clothes in the bag given to him by Eva. Miklós advised him to change his jacket – ‘in case a witness from the Kleines Café has described it to the police’ – and in its place provided a long black overcoat which was slightly tight at the shoulders. Gaddis found a tweed cap in the pocket, but did not want to put it on, arguing that it would draw unnecessary attention to him at the airport.

‘You are probably correct,’ Miklós replied, rolling the first jacket into a ball and stuffing it into the bag. ‘You look good anyway, Mr Sam. You look normal.’

They went into a sitting room cluttered with books and lamps. Viki did not follow them. There was a chess board on a low coffee table in the centre of the room, the black king toppled over. Beside the board, resting on a copy of the
Economist
, was a battered British passport and 40,000 Hungarian florints, the equivalent of about £200. Miklós handed them to Gaddis.

The passport seemed a perfect fake. There were stamps from Hong Kong, a stamp from JFK, even an exact copy of the photograph which appeared in Gaddis’s regular passport, taken eight years earlier. How had Tanya acted so quickly? Where the hell had the passport been printed? The British Embassy in Budapest must have been involved. He flicked through the watermarked pages and looked up at Miklós.

‘Astonishing,’ he said.

‘I have seen better.’

The Hungarian now produced a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it across the chess board. A number by which he could reach Miklós was listed under the name ‘Mike’. Gaddis knew now that the hard part was to come. The long journey home was ahead of him.

‘So.’ Miklós had also sensed the change in mood. ‘You now have what you need. I suggest we make our way downstairs to the car.’ Viki appeared in the doorway of the sitting room and came towards Gaddis, kissing him on both cheeks. He assumed that she had been listening all the time.

‘Good luck,’ she whispered, the smell of her skin like a strange memory of Holly. ‘Miklós will take good care of you.’

‘Thank you for all your kindness,’ he told her, and they stepped outside into the corridor.

Miklós’s car was still parked outside the entrance to the apartment building, close to the pile of wood. A tram chimed past, almost knocking over a stooped, elderly lady pulling a shopping basket across the street. Gaddis tried to catch Miklós’s eye but saw that his attitude was now altogether more serious. They placed his bag in the boot, stepped into the car and fastened the seatbelts.

It was a measure of the extent to which Gaddis trusted the Hungarian that he had not checked the contents of his bag before zipping it up. Had he done so, he would have discovered that Viki had placed a small package inside it, wedged between his jacket and dirty clothes.

It had been decided that Dr Sam Gaddis was going to act as a courier.