The Budapest Protocol (10 page)

Natasha handed him an envelope and he peeked inside. “Thanks. Let’s go.”

He slipped the envelope into his shoulder bag and they walked across the square. Natasha had visited Miklos’ building earlier that evening. The apartment door was sealed with printed paper strips announcing ‘Police – scene of crime: entry forbidden’. She had taken numerous close-up photographs of the seals with her digital camera. Back at the office she had scanned the photographs onto a computer. Alex could email and use the internet, but that was about it. Natasha’s computer skills were far more advanced. Using a photographic software programme she then manipulated the digital images to reproduce the exact colour, typeface and lettering of the police seals onto a template the same size as the original. It was then simple to print out the copies and cut them to size. The result: several forged police scene of crime seals, identical to the real thing.

The door to Miklos’ building was open as usual, the staircase unlit. Alex had copied the set of keys he had borrowed from Erzsebet, the neighbour, on the night of Miklos’ death. The only tricky moments, he anticipated, would be actually getting in and out of Miklos’ apartment. Most of the inhabitants were elderly, and even nosy Erzsebet went to bed about 10.00pm, so there was little danger of bumping into someone. Luckily Miklos had lived on the top floor. Natasha kept watch over the stairs, while Alex put on a pair of thin black leather gloves, cut the seals and opened the door. As soon as he closed it behind him, Natasha began to paste the new strips in place. Less than a minute later, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. Only a very scrupulous professional could ever tell that the door had ever been tampered with, she thought, as she waited on the staircase.

*  *  *

Miklos’ flat was spacious and airy, with high ceilings, two bedrooms, a massive walk-through lounge, and a large balcony that looked over Klauzal Square. But over the years he had retreated, sleeping on a fold-down sofa in the lounge where he spent most of the day. The room was still in chaos, with books hurled all over the floor. Thankfully his body, together with the pig’s head and the plate, had been taken away. The painted slogan ‘AVO’ remained on the wall.

Alex damped down the anger and grief that once again surged through him as he walked back inside. He began his search methodically, starting in the room that his grandfather had slept in while his wife Ruth was still alive. A large bed, a dressing table and two mahogany wardrobes, one still full of her clothes, suits and dresses from the 1940s, a hat, huge, pink with a giant ostrich feather stuck jauntily in the band. The clothes smelt of mothballs. The faintest hint of perfume? Then his grandfather’s closet: rows of suits, sharply cut, with wide double-breasts and oxford trousers. They must have been, in their day, quite a stylish couple. A picture of Ruth at the beach, posing demurely in a 1950s swim-suit, was stuck on the inside of the door.

Nothing there, the boxes on top of the cupboards filled with old bills and letters from various ministries. Under the bed only a few pairs of shoes. The next room had served as a sort of office, and an ancient handsome desk stood by the window. Alex sat down on a Beidermeyer chair, and opened the drawers, one by one, rummaging through the detritus of two long and turbulent lives. There were photographs, sepia tinted, of young men and women grinning happily at a camera. At the beach by Lake Balaton, at a party in a smoky night-club, a dark-haired girl pulling a silly face at the camera as she held tightly onto the arm of the proud-looking young man sitting next to her.

Like several of the people in the pictures, the happy couple looked vaguely familiar, and he supposed them to be distant relatives who had died in the war, for he had never met any of them. He pocketed several photographs and the bundles of letters. The bottom drawer of the desk was locked. There was no key in sight, so he went to look for a sturdy knife in the kitchen. He slipped the knife between the top of the drawer and the cupboard and levered it upwards. The knife bent, but the drawer refused to give way. This was craftsman’s work, handbuilt by artisans, of aged hardwood, solid brass and not about to surrender to some mass-produced socialist blade.

The problem was, he realised, as he tried to force the desk open, that he was getting in deep here. Now it would be obvious to even the most dull-witted policeman that someone had tampered with the crime scene. Well, he thought, it’s too late to go back now. The drawer creaked, groaned in protest and eventually splintered. The lock had come loose in its setting, and with the remnants of the kitchen knife he managed to lever it out, and the drawer opened.

Inside lay a pile of yellowing letters, carefully wrapped in a rubber band. Perhaps here then. The envelopes were old, with wartime stamps, and they crackled as he took off the rubber band. He opened one, and read an account of Ruth’s trip to see her aunt in the summer of 1943 in the southern town of Pecs, and how worried she was that all her male cousins had been drafted for forced labour in Transylvania, and hadn’t written home for three months. It was carefully written, in an educated cursive script, and filled with loving endearments. He scanned the rest of the envelopes, all written in the same hand, and put them in his bag before returning to the lounge.

Books were scattered everywhere, works in German, French, Hungarian, Russian, even a couple of Sherlock Holmes novels in English. Alex sat down in the chrome and leather chair and scanned the titles, spread across the carpet. An intellectual’s books, and there were times in eastern Europe when that had been a dangerous thing to be. He started sorting through the books – perhaps Miklos had hidden something inside one of them, or why would they be strewn all over the floor –
Madame Bovary
,
Crime and Punishment
, a collection of verses by Hungarian poets, works by Camus and Sartre, a history of the Soviet Union, a biography of Janos Kadar, Hungary’s longest serving Communist leader, a copy of the Talmud. Alex picked up a leather-bound edition of the
Karma Sutra
, well read by the look of it, and the telephone rang. He sat up with a jerk and grabbed his mobile phone, but this was the flat telephone ringing.

Alex looked at his watch. It was 1.10am. Who rang a dead man in the middle of the night? Perhaps it was Natasha. Maybe there was a problem with his mobile and someone was coming. The phone was an ancient contraption, black and curving with a loud, piercing bell that resounded through the flat. His heart began to beat faster. Desperate to stop the noise, he grabbed the Bakelite earpiece and said hallo. There was no reply, only silence.

“Hallo, hallo. Who do you want to speak to?”

He tried again, in both Hungarian and English. No reply came. Alex waited a few seconds and put the telephone down, feeling very rattled. He decided to leave in a few minutes, whether or not he found anything. You could push your luck so far, he knew. It had been a stupid mistake, he realised, to pick up the receiver. He had just confirmed that someone was in the flat.

He flicked through a pile of newspaper clippings on Miklos’ desk. Some of the yellowed strips of paper dated back to the 1950s: Nazi judges appointed to the German supreme court; Nazi doctors appointed professors at universities; Major General Reinhard Gehlen, former chief of Nazi military intelligence on the eastern front, setting up the West German intelligence service with the help of the CIA; the relentless growth of KZX Industries through the 1970s; a picture of the Berlin Wall coming down with a question-mark drawn over it. There was also more recent material on the Volkstern Corporation’s expansion into eastern European, and a cutting from the
New York Times
, about legislation compensating Holocaust survivors for lost properties. Alex gathered the clippings and put them in his bag.

He glanced around the floor for the last time. A thick red book lay by the sofa:
Seventy Years of Progress
:
The Achievements of the Soviet Union
. Miklos had showed him it on a previous visit. In fact he had made a point of explaining that it was a family heirloom, and should always be taken care of as it held ‘special, and precious memories’. He thought that his grandfather, a famous anti-communist, was being ironic. But what if he was telling him something else? Alex picked the book up. Colour photographs of tractors ploughing the fields of Kazakhstan, grinning Muscovites skating on the ice-rink at Gorky Park, rockets, missiles, astronauts. A vanished world. The covers felt odd, bumpy and too thick. There was a ridge running along the edge of the inside leaf that was stuck to the red hardboard, on both the front and the back. He pulled at the corners, tentatively at first, then quickly. They tore, and then both came away easily.

Underneath lay a clump of thin grey paper, held together by rusty paper clips, hand-written in the faded blue-grey ink of an ancient fountain pen. Alex’s heart thumped as he held the papers, and read the first line:
The Ghetto Diary of Miklos Farkas
. His mobile phone rang in his pocket.

“Hurry up, I can hear voices downstairs, I think it’s the police,” Natasha whispered urgently. “Get out of there.”

He grabbed the papers, stuffed them in his shoulder bag, together with the book. He turned at the front door, and dashed backed into the lounge. He snatched Miklos’ boxing gloves, stuffed them into his bag and left as fast as he could. Natasha was outside. He closed the door gently behind him. She pulled off the torn police seals, quickly replaced them with a new pair. Alex scrunched up the paper strips and stuffed them into his trouser pocket.

He showed her the book and the grey papers, gesturing at her to keep silent as they descended the stairs. A blue light spun around the walls and entrance on the ground floor.

“Shit,” exclaimed Alex, “Now what?”

“Shut up and come here,” Natasha said, grabbing Alex. She pushed him against the wall, her hands snaking around his neck. Alex looked at her in amazement.

“Just shut up and let me do the talking now,” she hissed as a torch was shined on them.

“Hey, you two lovebirds, what’s going on up there? No home to go to?” They broke apart as the policeman approached. He was burly and overweight, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Natasha smiled, holding Alex’s arm as she spoke. “I’m sorry Captain, we were out walking, and we just stepped in out of the wind, and then we, well, you know, started to get carried away. You must know how that can happen, so easily, sir.”

The policeman looked doubtful. “You both stay there. Have you seen anyone else here tonight? We had a report that someone was inside that flat where that Jew was murdered. Someone heard someone moving about, or so they said. Have you seen anything suspicious? Perhaps I should wake up the housemistress to see what she knows.”

“No sir, nobody at all. We’ve only been here a couple of minutes,” said Natasha, her eyes wide and innocent.

Alex prayed the policeman would not follow his instinct, for the prospect of dealing with Erzsebet Kovacs at this time of night, and explaining to her what he and Natasha were doing there was too awful to contemplate. Especially as she would almost certainly, even if inadvertently, give his identity away.

“Identity card,” the policeman ordered Natasha. “Who is he?”

“He’s British. We met at a bar tonight. He doesn’t speak any Hungarian,” said Natasha as she handed over her card. The policeman turned it over, checking her face against the photograph.

“You met at a bar tonight and you’re kissing him already,” he grunted.

“Passport,” the policeman demanded of Alex. Natasha caught Alex’s eye. He shook his head imperceptibly. Now they had a problem. If he showed the policeman an ID, and he saw that he had the same family name as Miklos, he would radio into headquarters for instructions. He would certainly ask Alex to open his bag and order him to empty his pockets. They could make a run for it but how far would they get?

Alex shrugged and showed his empty hands. The policeman stared at him, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“This is a problem. A very big problem,” said the policeman. “You must come with me. You too,” he added, looking at Natasha. But he did not move towards the car, where his partner sat reading a tabloid newspaper.

Natasha smiled at the policeman. “Perhaps we could sort things out here, sir.”

The cop shook his head. “It is a very serious problem. This is a crime scene, he is a foreigner and he does not have any papers.”

“Surely we can
arrange
things here?” persisted Natasha.

“What kind of arrangement were you thinking of?”

“This kind,” said Natasha. She reached inside her handbag and took out a 10,000 forint note.

The policeman shook his head and put the money in his pocket. “This is a very big problem.”

She handed over another 10,000 forint note. The policeman took it, but still shook his head.

“How big is this problem exactly, do you think?” asked Natasha.

“Fifty thousand forints big.”

“Thirty.”

“Forty. And quickly,” the policeman grunted, holding out his hand.

Natasha reached into Alex’s jeans and took out his wallet. She opened it up and removed two 10,000 forint notes, handing them to the policeman, who swiftly pocketed them.

“Wait here. And don’t try any funny business,” he ordered.

He clomped up the stairs to the top floor, his heavy boots echoing through the entry hall. Alex looked at her in amazement, bursting with questions, but she put her fingers on her lips. Back in his war correspondent days, he and his colleagues judged their fellow journalists with the SUF test. SUF stood for Steady Under Fire, someone who could be trusted not to freak out in extreme circumstances. Not everybody passed, but Natasha was certainly SUF. He had chosen the right accomplice. She had forged the police seals, taken his word that it was worth committing a crime to get into his grandfather’s flat and was handling the policeman superbly.

The policeman reappeared. He walked over to the car and told his partner that there was nothing happening here. The flat was closed and sealed, there was nobody around except these two lovebirds, he grumbled, and it was nearly 2.00am, almost the end of their shift. He radioed into headquarters that everything seemed to be in order.