The Budapest Protocol (31 page)

Natasha turned to Alex and the priest. “So far we haven’t hacked KZX, just looked at their website through a proxy computer. That’s public information. The hacking part is when we illegally enter KZX’s
internal
computer system. Once an unknown machine tries to enter, it will trigger an alert, and attempt to trace the intruder.”

Father Fischer nodded. “You said theoretically nobody can trace us. But if we are online long enough...”

Natasha said: “Nothing is 100 per certain. The proxy server relay has vulnerabilities and a company like KZX will have high security, and links with law-enforcement agencies. We have the passwords, so that should buy quite a lot of time. But once we get to the really restricted material, there will be super-strict controls. The KZX mainframe may be able to sense that someone is in and using a proxy server, which will almost certainly trigger an alarm. At that stage we won’t have very long. Ready? Because now we’re going to break the law.”

“Please start,” said Father Fischer.

The cursor moved to the log-in window, which asked for a user name and password. Natasha typed ‘KlindernD2009’, followed by a series of numbers and letters. The screen showed: “Welcome Dieter Klindern.” A row of folders appeared entitled ‘Internal Document Directory’.

Alex read through the folder titles. “Acquisitions and holdings.”

Natasha directed the cursor to the list.

“Please enter your second-level password,” the screen flashed up.

Natasha tapped in ‘walterfunk’.

“Access permitted. Please enter your third-level password. The security department has been alerted.”

“We are in, but they are investigating who we are,” said Natasha. She typed in ‘Savoy1944’. “So we had better be fast.”

The screen pulsed and flashed: “The security department requires that you re-validate your identity, using your fourth-level password. You have fifteen seconds.”

Natasha looked round at Alex, her hands in the air. “I don’t have a fourth-level password.”

“Type ‘heinrichvautker’,” said Alex.

“Who?” asked Natasha.

Alex pushed Natasha’s hands out of the way. The clock showed nine seconds. He tapped out the letters. Two seconds left. The screen flashed up: “You have now entered the Directorate restricted archive. Your connection is being monitored by the security department.”

The screen filled with industries, companies, banks, agricultural combines, newspapers and radio stations, across central and eastern Europe. A sub-menu offered ‘governments’.

“Go to governments. Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania,” said Alex. Natasha moved the cursor, highlighted the four and clicked. The download bar crept forward painfully slowly.

“That’s the proxy server. It slows the connection,” said Natasha. A police siren howled in the distance. The download bar crept forward.

“One more, Natasha, please. Back to ‘Acquisitions and Holdings’. Try KZX pharmaceuticals,” he said.

“Please enter your sector-specific password” a new window requested.

Natasha typed in ‘novymarek’.

The screen filled with a picture of Romany children, playing in the dirt of an unpaved street, entitled ‘The Poraymus Project’. A list of files appeared, dated by decade.

“The what project?” asked Natasha.

“Poraymus. It’s a Romany word. It means the ‘great devouring’, the Gypsy Holocaust. How much can you get?” asked Alex.

Natasha looked worried. The siren sounded louder by the second. “I don’t know, three or four at the most. I don’t think we have much time. They shouldn’t have traced us this quickly.”

“So let’s speed up. Take 1940s, 1980s and 2000–2008.”

Natasha’s hands flew across the keyboards. The download bar slowly filled. The police siren stopped. A pulsing blue light revolved through the windows. A knocking at the church’s door sounded through the church, polite, but insistent.

Father Fischer rose. “I can only delay them for a minute or two. Hurry. Hide somewhere.”

More knocks sounded, louder now. The file bar approached the half-way mark.

Alex stared at the download bar, digging his nails into his palms, willing it to go faster. It crawled along to the seventy-five per cent mark. Natasha sat tensed and hunched. “Come on, come on,” Alex muttered, looking repeatedly at the door. He could hear Father Fischer greeting the policemen.

“Sorry to bother you, Father. This is very awkward, I know,” a voice explained. “But we are looking for Natasha Hatvani and Alex Farkas and I think they are here.”

Father Fischer began to protest when the officer cut him off. “With all respect, before you say anything, Father, I
know
that they are here.” Rapid footsteps echoed through the church.

Natasha looked up at Alex. “We could try and make a run for it,” he said, knowing it was hopeless. The download bar reached 100 per cent.

“Where?” Natasha asked, as she frantically copied the KZX files onto a USB stick.

“You wouldn’t get very far,” said a half-familiar voice. A dapper figure with short blond hair and designer glasses walked in.

“Good evening, Captain Hermann. How did you find us?” asked Natasha, smiling brightly as she scratched her neck and dropped the USB stick down the back of her t-shirt.

He pointed at her handbag. “Good evening. It wasn’t difficult. Empty it, please.” She tipped the bag up over the table. The Magyar Mobile handset tumbled out.

Natasha covered her face with her hands. “I don’t believe it. It’s been in my bag all the time. I completely forgot about it. It even has GPS. I’m really sorry, Alex. We may as well have put marker beacons on our heads.”

Captain Hermann picked up the handset. “I’ll keep this. And the USB stick, please,” he said, holding out his hand.

Natasha blushed, scrabbled around behind her waist and handed it to him.

“Thanks. Now pack up your laptop and get out before the Gendarmes get here.” He sat down and reached for the game controller in front of the priest’s desktop computer. “Father Fischer and I have cars to race.”

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Good morning. Sorry about last night. It makes a change for me to almost get us arrested... Interesting how our friend keeps turning up. Otherwise, see below URL. V. funny.

The other material I’ll print out for you.

Alex sat up in bed, his laptop resting on his knees. He clicked on the link and opened a video on You Tube. Someone calling themselves ‘Cosmopolitan’ had uploaded three video clips. The first one spliced together news clips of the Gendarmes and the Pannonia Brigade jerkily marching forward and then backwards to the Bangles’ song, ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’. The second showed Frank Sanzlermann speaking at his Budapest election rally morphing into Charlie Chaplin’s Hinkel in the ‘Great Dictator’, as Chaplin-Sanzlermann strutted up and down, spitting, waving his arms and gesticulating. The third was the funniest: Hunkalffy’s face had been dropped onto the singer in Mel Brooks’ ‘The Producers’. Cosmopolitan had even re-recorded the song with a new chorus. Instead of “Springtime for Hitler and Germany”, Hunkalffy sang: “Springtime for Hunkalffy and Hungary,
Magyars
are happy and gay” as he danced across the stage. It was 8.30am and the clip had already been viewed more than 4,000 times. Alex laughed out loud at Hunkalffy’s prancing, still chuckling as his mobile rang.

“What’s so funny?” asked David Jones.

“I’ll send it to you. It’s a video mash-up. It’s brilliant.”

“Good. You do know you are famous now? Or maybe infamous is a better word.”

“What do you mean?” asked Alex, sipping his coffee.

“Let me read you the front-page story of today’s
Ébredjetek
Magyarok!
by your friend Balazs Noludi: ‘Who is Alex Farkas?’ he asks, although you would think he would know by now. Anyway, I quote: ‘This so-called journalist writes the foulest lies about Hungary, claiming that racism is rising against Roma and Jews and portrays us as puppets of Frank Sanzlermann. We true Hungarians ask – why do we allow this rootless cosmopolitan to live among us and abuse our goodwill and hospitality? We call on true patriots to closely monitor this intruder and to inform us of his latest offences, our patriots’ understandable outrage may have consequences,’ and so forth.”

Alex laughed out loud. “Thanks for the heads-up. I must be doing something right then. I’ll take a look on the website,” he said, and hung up.

He logged onto the
Ébredjetek Magyarok!
website. Just as David had said. There was a photograph of him with the caption: ‘Alex Farkas/Wolf: An enemy of Hungary?’ The name change was a classic smear tactic, a coded suggestion that his real ancestry was Jewish. Why didn’t they just write: “Alex Farkas: Jew” – at least that would have some intellectual honesty. A separate long article by Balazs Noludi again reheated the false allegations – which Noludi himself had invented – that Miklos had been an AVO agent. It was pathetic, thought Alex. The thought-crime of being ‘anti-Hungarian’, smearing the dead and barely coded anti-Semitism – Noludi and his cohorts had proved most diligent students of communist propaganda techniques.

A separate story trumpeted the Pannonia Brigade’s new duties as auxiliary police. Brigade members were now training to ‘monitor traitors, anti-Magyar elements and national enemies’. The brigade was launching a new website, where supporters could send in information about Israeli investors and their business activities. Alex opened the other email in his inbox.

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Ha! There is no escape. I have your new email address. Just checking you are coming to Ronald’s leaving dinner tonight. EVERYONE will be there.

K xxx

Ronald Worthington had hired a private room at Crusoe’s, an upmarket restaurant, for the ‘mother of all leaving dinners’, to blow the paper’s secret slush fund. Alex typed a brief one-line reply that he would be there, and looked forward to seeing EVERYONE.

Alex sat back in his bed and replayed the previous night in his mind. What was Captain Hermann’s part in this? He had been at Keleti station when Alex and Natasha travelled to Slovakia, and Natasha had told him that the policeman had been at her mother’s flat after the burglary, but had refused to say why or what he was looking for. He was clearly very intelligent, and spoke perfect English. And had every reason to arrest them last night but let them go. His new mobile rang again. It was Isabelle Balassy, the press secretary at the British Embassy. He had last seen her at his grandfather’s funeral. And how did she know his new number?

“Alex, how are you? You’ll have seen the papers this morning?” she asked.

“Isabelle. Thanks for calling. Yes, I have.”

“Can we meet this afternoon? The Muvesz Café at 4.00pm?”

“Fine with me,” Alex replied.

“Where did we say again, Alex?”

Alex frowned, puzzled. “The Muvesz Café, at 4.00pm. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Perfect,” said Isabelle. “See you there.”

* * *

Cassandra Orczy read through Voter’s latest report. It was shorter than his previous one, but in line with his other despatches. The Hunkalffy/Sanzlermann plan was going to schedule. Numerous opposition MPs had been arrested on spurious charges of tax avoidance, after emergency legislation had been rammed through Parliament removing their immunity. The headquarters of the Liberals had been seized under a compulsory purchase order. An obscure law firm had suddenly produced documents that the entire block had once been owned by a pre-war subsidiary of KZX. The building, next door to the Hotel Bristol, was now tipped to be the regional headquarters of KZX Industries. The Pannonia Brigade was planning to march through Budapest’s Gypsy quarter in District VIII to protest against ‘Gypsy Crime’ and call for apartheid between Roma and non-Roma.

The Hungarian Patriot Bond, launched the previous week, was a runaway success. ‘Hot money’, cash chasing short-term economic growth, was pouring in from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, buying up government bonds, residential and commercial property. Plans were far-advanced to simultaneously launch the ‘Patriot Bond’ in Croatia, Romania and Slovakia within the next month. According to Voter, the next stage of the plan would focus on the media, especially during the run-up to voting in the Presidential election. The government had re-employed technicians trained under communism to jam the BBC and Voice of America. Foreign stations would not be openly blocked. Instead cable satellite and internet providers would suffer a series of ‘technical problems’. Hunkalffy was also pushing for arson attacks on newspaper print works – to be blamed on criminals – and criminal prosecutions against troublesome journalists for not yet-legislated offences such as ‘defaming the head of state’, and ‘making false accusations’. Hunkalffy’s ideas were meeting internal opposition, Voter reported. There were mutterings that Hunkalffy was too personally and emotionally involved to see the ‘big picture’. His decision to legalise the Arrow Cross flag, described as “a propaganda gift”, had caused particular anger.

Orczy sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette. It was frightening, depressing and valuable information. But what was she going to do with it? She picked up the one paragraph memo that had been circulated that morning.

From: Director, Hungarian State Security Service

To: All department chiefs

All four branches of the HSSS: Intelligence gathering, Operations, Counter-Intelligence and Analysis are to be merged into the new National Security Department of the Gendarmerie. This will take affect within one week. I regret that no jobs or positions currently held can be guaranteed, but all employees are welcome to apply for positions with the NSD.

The decision itself was not unexpected, but she was still shaken by the speed of the announcement. She thought she had a day or two at the most. She reached for the telephone.

* * *

Alex looked around for Isabelle as he stood in front of the Art-Deco cake display case at the Muvesz Café. The café, on Andrassy Avenue, was a Budapest institution. Powdered dowagers perched on Beidermeyer chairs gossiped under a gilded ceiling, as white-booted waitresses glided back and forth, balancing trays of drinks and cakes. The smell of burnt coffee, chocolate and tobacco was a comforting mix. He saw Isabelle at the door and stepped forward, nearly bumping into a buxom waitress. She deftly raised her tray and stepped around him as Isabelle walked in.