The Budapest Protocol (37 page)

What was lost was gone forever, except, it seemed, this villa. Why? Alex wondered. And quite how Cassandra was in a position to give it to Alex was unclear, but the deeds were proof enough. It was all there, in black and white, with the requisite stamps. He picked up the photograph she had given him, and stared at the grandiose entranceway, its path curving through landscaped gardens. The house must be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. What was he going to do with it?

He imagined himself as a gentleman of leisure, cultivating the grounds, while Natasha spent her days having dresses fitted and her hair styled. It was a pleasurable if unlikely vision. Why would she ever want to see him again, when she found out he was alive? The prospect was profoundly depressing. He chewed his lip so hard it almost bled, determined not to think about her, when he heard a knock on the door. It opened slightly, and he saw Isabelle Balassy peeking around, holding a large bunch of purple tulips.

“Are you receiving visitors yet?” she asked.

“Of course. How many of you are there?” asked Alex, his spirits brightening.

She walked in, followed by a wiry olive-skinned man, carrying a bottle of
szilva palinka
. He had a shaved head, a pierced nose and a smile that lit up a room.

“Just two. It’s only a flying one to see if you are still in one piece. I’m glad to see you are. I’ll find you a vase for the flowers,” she said, kissing his cheek, her hair brushing against his skin.

“
Shalom
,
habibi
,” said Ehud, shaking his hand. “How are you feeling? We were very worried about you.”

Alex stared at the Israeli. “Much better, thanks. Ehud, what are you doing here?” he asked, although the answer was already forming in his mind.

“Kultura has been closed by the tax police, so I have some free time. I’ll be back in a couple of days.” Ehud put the bottle of
szilva palinka
down on the bedside table. “Get better.”

* * *

He was locked inside a filthy train at Keleti station, and she ran alongside as it pulled out, waving frantically at him. He tried to open the door but it was jammed shut. She was crying and shouting his name, banging on the window, as he pulled harder and harder on the handle. But the door wouldn’t open, the train speeded up and she disappeared into the distance. Alex awoke suddenly, possessed by a longing so powerful it was physical. His head was full of his dream, his hands were clenched tight, and this time he could not wish his yearning away. He ached to see Natasha, and knowing that she was probably not far away made it even worse. Guilt and longing surged inside him. He saw her grieving over him, yearned to wipe away her tears, to tell her he was still alive. He tried to remember her smell, her taste, the feel of her skin against his.

After three days in the safe house Alex’s body was recovering well but his mind was in turmoil. He slept poorly, agonising if he was doing the right thing. He knew he had fallen in love with Natasha, but then why had he sacrificed her so easily? He had already visualised their reunion countless times. He would knock on her door, she would open it, too stunned to say anything. Or he stood there silently, just staring at her beauty. Every version ended the same way, in a hurricane of clothes and passion. He could walk out of the safe house whenever he wanted. So why didn’t he? Partly, he told himself, because of his moral obligations, and the simple desire for revenge: for the deaths of Miklos, Vince Szatmari, Teresa, Virgil and Mario. Partly because he wanted to blow open the Directorate, stop the Poraymus Project and even, if he could, bring down KZX and the Volkstern Corporation. But there was something else that drove him, he admitted in the long sleepless hours, perhaps the most powerful hunger of all, the same yearning that had driven him to risk his life in Bosnia and Chechnya: to break the story and see it published under his by-line. And this time he would actually make the news, instead of just reporting it.

He switched on the television news to break his chain of thought. The morning anchor on CNN, an ebullient gay man, was about to interview the US Secretary of State about the European Presidential election. A knock on the door sounded and he turned down the volume.

Ehud walked in, carrying a tray of humus, kebabs, salads and pita bread. The smell was mouth-watering. “Breakfast,
habibi
,” he said, in his strong Israeli accent. He put the tray down on the table next to the bed. Alex thanked him, smiling with pleasurable anticipation. The food at the safe house was quite as bad as at any Hungarian hospital.

“It’s from your favourite restaurant. I saw your friend Mubarak there,” said Ehud.

“You know each other?” asked Alex, as he filled a pita bread with humus.

“Of course. For many years. He’s very angry and upset that you were killed,” Ehud said, trying not to laugh. “We get on very well. We are one of his best customers.”

“Who’s we?” asked Alex.

Ehud ignored the question. He turned up the volume. The Secretary of State, a former ambassador to the European Union, was outlining the United States’ strong concerns about what he called “sustained human rights abuses against the Romany minority” across eastern Europe.

“If they are so concerned then why don’t they do something about it?” asked Alex.

“Maybe they are.” Ehud stared at Alex for several seconds while he chewed, looking first at his left side, then his right. He shook his head and exhaled through his nose. “I don’t know. You are an amateur. We have no time to train you properly. The security will be extremely high. The worst thing is you have a personal stake in this. I don’t see how it can work.”

“Then make it work,” said Alex.

“You know why they are letting you do this?” asked Ehud, taking a piece of pita bread and wrapping it around a large piece of kebab.

“Because I’m clever and brave?” Alex said, sardonically.

“No,
habibi
. Because for them you are disposable,” he said, eating the morsel in one bite. He poured some
szilva palinka
into two tea cups. “
L’chaim
,” he said, as they clinked cups. “So let’s make sure you are not.”

Alex switched channels to state television news. The screen showed a muddy village in eastern Hungary. Motorcyclists rode up and down the pot-holed main street, Arrow Cross flags streaming from the back of their machines, while the residents looked on nervously. Alex and Ehud watched silently as the reporter explained how the village’s Gypsy quarter had been sealed off by the Gendarmes, while they searched for a “notorious gang of criminals”.

The camera showed frightened Romany families huddling together, while the Gendarmes turned their homes inside out, hurling their meagre possessions into the street. A biker roared up and conferred with the Gendarmes. They pointed to a breeze-block shack with a tin roof. The biker rode to the gate and carefully reversed his motorbike into the open entrance. He revved his engine harder and harder, and huge plumes of exhaust fumes billowed into the shack. A teenage Romany boy staggered out, holding his younger sister in his arms. Both were coughing and crying. The Gendarmes grabbed the girl, beat the boy to the ground and threw him into their van.

Alex was filled with a cold rage. He squeezed the cup in his hand so hard the handle broke off. The cup fell to the floor, shattering into tiny shards. Ehud gripped his shoulder, his voice tight and determined. “Their day will come. Soon, Alex. I promise you.”

They spent hours rehearsing Alex’s legend, his fake biography, its details supplied by Cassandra. Ehud asked him the same questions again and again until the answers came automatically. He was Jozsef Zenta, forty-eight, born in Szeged, southern Hungary. He had a genuine identity number, tax number and address card. He was a waiter, divorced. He liked to cook, eat and drink and go fishing on the river Tisza. He was grey-haired, overweight, wore glasses and walked with a mild stoop. A make-up artist came in to dye Alex’s hair and fit a fake moustache. A prosthetics expert fitted him with a rubber stomach. His long eyelashes were trimmed. He had brown contact lenses and removable cheek implants to make his face look fatter and rounder. Lifts in his shoes altered his posture, making him lean forward slightly. An optician brought a selection of low diopter glasses that would not alter his eye-sight too much.

“By the way, what do you think of the Hunkalffy government?” Ehud asked.

“It’s part of a conspiracy to establish economic hegemony through puppet governments.”

Ehud drummed his fingers on the table. “Economic hegemony and puppet governments. Is that what they are talking about in Szeged?”

Alex blushed. “Well, between you and me, this lot are just as bad as the last one, ain’t they. All they do is line their own pockets and steal as much as they can. Still that’s what politics is about isn’t it? Got to look after yourself and your family, that’s the most important – whoever wins it won’t make any difference,” he said, blurring his words and running them together.

“OK. Walk please,” instructed Ehud.

Alex strolled across the room, confident and alert, taking in his surroundings.

“No. Slump a little. Act the part.”

Alex curved his shoulders and shuffled slightly. “Better,” said Ehud.

At the end of the day Alex looked in the bathroom mirror. A grey-haired, overweight middle-aged man, with old-fashioned tortoiseshell glasses and bad posture, stared back.

“
Tov
. There’s one thing that will help you,” said Ehud.

“What?”

“Psychology. People see what they expect. You’ll see tomorrow. We are going to a funeral.”

“Whose?” asked Alex.

“Yours, habibi,” said Ehud, smiling broadly as he slapped Alex on his back.

Bandi Polgar stood on the roof of the Art-Deco apartment block on the corner of Kossuth Lajos Street and Ferenciek Square and studied the streets below with a practised eye. The Hotel Savoy, on the other side of the road, was built on a corner and occupied half a city block. The famous corner café, on the ground floor, looked out onto Kossuth Lajos Street and Ferenciek Square. The Gendarmes had erected three lines of fences to seal off the area. The first, in front of the pavement, stretched around the hotel’s two sides. The second line, forty metres away, ran parallel with the first. A single television crew from the state channel, Gendarmes and security guards milled around in the empty space in the middle.

A third set of fences sealed off Kossuth Lajos Street from the north, Free Press Street, which led to the Elizabeth Bridge from the south, and all the side streets. Gendarmes controlled the checkpoints in each cordon. The crossroads, usually one of the city’s busiest intersections, was now eerily empty and quiet. The fences were made of sections, twelve feet high and ten feet wide, built of grey metal rods welded to a steel frame. They had wide feet, long sliders on the right side and metal sleeves on the left. The international press milled around in the area between the second and third cordon. Bandi spotted CNN and BBC camera crews. The journalists wore green vests marked ‘Press’ and many carried helmets and gas-masks. A tall American photographer was even wearing a flak jacket. Smart guy, he thought to himself. If all went well, they were about to get the story of a lifetime. Either way, it was going to be a night to remember.

It was 7.00pm, a chilly winter evening, with a sharp breeze blowing in from the Danube. Thankfully, it was dry. The roof had an excellent view. Large crowds were pouring down Kossuth Lajos Street and up Free Press Street and the side streets – all to be blocked by the fences and Gendarmes. The Elizabeth Bridge was so jammed with protestors no traffic could get through. So far the crowd’s mood was spirited but determined. They waved excitedly at the helicopter circling overhead. The fences were bedecked with Hungarian flags, ribbons and flowers. Bandi rested his mobile telephone on the balcony railing. He took numerous pictures and uploaded them to a secure photo-sharing website.

He lit a cigarette while he waited for confirmation that the pictures had arrived. All he wanted nowadays was a quiet life, to run his chain of non-stop flower shops. But fate, it seemed, kept conspiring against him. Bandi was a powerfully-built ethnic Hungarian from Vukovar in Croatia, with wiry red hair, strong features and unusually large hands. Back in 1991, he had fought in the Croatian army trying to hold his hometown against the invading Serbs, escaping with minutes to spare before it fell. After further service in Croatia and Bosnia, he then went AWOL, smuggling his fiery Serbian wife Vesna and their three children across the border into Hungary and applying for refugee status. Bandi’s military experience made him of special interest. After two weeks of debriefing, all five were made Hungarian citizens. He received a substantial soft ‘loan’ to start his business and buy a house. There was a price, the glamorous blonde female official at the concrete office block on Falk Miksa Street had explained: every now and then Bandi would be available for ‘special assignments’. If not, he could return to the front. Bandi paid willingly.

His last mission was in Belgrade in October 2000. If Slobodan Miloševič was to be overthrown by the CIA, MI6 and their new Serbian ‘friends’, then Budapest needed to know as much as possible. When, after several attempts, the Belgrade crowd had successfully stormed the Parliament, Bandi was in the first wave. He still had a crooked nose and scar on his left eyebrow to prove it. Many valuable lessons about urban street fighting had been learnt that day. He drew deeply on his cigarette and watched, alert now, as a paunchy, middle-aged man in a light brown overcoat walked towards the first Gendarmerie checkpoint. If he got through and made it inside the Savoy he would probably last two hours, perhaps longer if he was lucky, according to their gaming scenarios. Bandi wished him well, whoever he was, for as far as he could judge it was little better than a suicide mission. Maybe not, he hoped, if the plans worked. The Gendarmes’ security looked tough and efficient. But so was his team.

* * *

Alex waited for the denunciations, the shrieks of outrage, as he walked towards the checkpoint. His heart thumped and he wiped his hands on the thin raincoat Ehud had given him. “Him, officer, that one over there,” someone would surely scream, “He’s wearing a disguise. A spy! An infiltrator!” He waited for the Gendarmes to rush over and club him to the ground, pull off his moustache, rip open his shirt. He felt someone tap him lightly on the shoulder. Not yet, please, he said to himself, not yet, I haven’t even got inside the hotel. He turned around.