The Trinity Six (2011)

by Charles Cumming

  Finally the answer came to him, as simple as taking a breath. She was referencing The Third Man. They had even talked about the film at dinner in London. Orson Welles at the Prater, delivering his famous speech to Joseph Cotten:

  ‘In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’

  Gaddis grinned, admiring her conceit. She was paying homage to the most famous Viennese film of them all. She was telling Gaddis to go to the Ferris Wheel.

  Chapter 45

  But why Dizzy Mouse?

  Gaddis rode the U1 subway, clean and plastic, north-east to Praterstern station. The last half of Tanya’s message made no sense to him. He tried blending the words and re-working them as an anagram, attempted to think of nicknames or word associations with ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Mouse’, but nothing materialized. He could only conclude that it was a phrase or codeword he would have at some point later in the morning.

  It was quarter to six by the time the train pulled into the platform. Gaddis took an escalator up into a low-roofed indoor shopping mall, deserted in the air-conditioned chill of a Sunday morning. He passed a shuttered newsagent, a cafe serving a single customer, his every move tracked by banks of surveillance cameras. Walking outside through a set of automatic doors, he emerged into a wide pedestrianized square. Three hundred metres to the north-east was the Ferris Wheel, her red booths stilled above a line of chestnut trees, ancient radiating spokes almost invisible against the pale morning sky. He quickened his pace and crossed a main road which ran alongside the square, joining a path towards the Wheel. To his right was a broad, well-maintained park, dotted with picnic tables; to his left, a Shell garage surrounded by parked cars. A group of migrants were crouched at the base of a tree and they stared at Gaddis as he walked by. He passed a line of ice-cream booths and was soon walking beneath a low bridge which led into a deserted square lined with mock-Regency buildings. This was plainly the entrance of the amusement park, a mini-Disneyland overlooked by distant rollercoasters, death slides and dodgem circuits. Gaddis had only a few vagrants and cleaners for company as he walked towards the base of the Ferris Wheel, wondering if he had even come to the right place.

  He saw immediately that he had, because no more than thirty metres away was a cut-out of a huge cartoon cat with bared teeth beneath a pair of gleaming yellow eyes. A child-size rollercoaster track was disappearing into its open mouth. Above the cat was a technicolor sign: ‘DIZZY MOUSE’.

  ‘Sam?’

  Gaddis turned quickly to find a stocky, matronly woman in blue jeans and a cream sweater emerging from the shadows beneath the Ferris Wheel. Her hair was dyed black, her face pale and round. She extended a gloved hand which he shook, coming to terms with his surprise.

  ‘I’m Sam, yes.’ He was amazed that Tanya had worked so quickly, amazed that anybody should have found him in such a place.

  ‘I was sent by your friend. You knew her as Josephine Warner. This is something that she told me she regrets. Her real name is Tanya Acocella. Does that reassure you about my identity?’

  ‘Yes it does, yes it does.’ Gaddis looked up at the Wheel, half-expecting to see a crowd of smiling onlookers observing their conversation.

  ‘My name is Eva.’

  ‘Sam,’ Gaddis replied, pointlessly. He acknowledged his mistake with a smile. ‘Are you with the Embassy?’

  She ignored the question. ‘I understand that I am to take you to Hungary.’

  ‘Hungary?’ Here, if he needed it, was final validation of the seriousness of his predicament.

  ‘I have a car nearby,’ she added, noting his surprise. Eva’s voice was clipped but heavily accented. Gaddis noticed her gaze shifting to various corners of the park. It was clear that she was concerned about surveillance and wanted to leave as quickly as possible. ‘Won’t you come with me please? The message that Tanya sent to you was not secure. It was not as complex as we would have preferred. Many of us have seen The Third Man, Doctor Gaddis.’

  ‘Of course.’

  So he followed Eva, a half-step behind, feeling like a child in the company of a stranger whose decency he has no reason to doubt. They walked back beneath the low bridge and headed for the forecourt of the Shell garage. The migrants were still sitting under their tree, but did not look up this time as Gaddis passed them. Entering a small area for parked cars, he heard the double sonics of an infra-red lock and looked up to see the rear lights on a grey Volkswagen saloon blinking briefly. Eva opened the passenger door, walked around to the driver’s side and switched on the engine. The car smelled of Deep Heat and Gaddis turned to see a muddied football boot, a pair of shorts and some shin pads lying on the back seat. He assumed that they belonged to Eva’s son, but their appearance was as incongruous to him as it was surprising. Was she a soccer mum with a parallel life? Were people like Eva the footsoldiers of the secret world, ordinary men and women with families and jobs who just happened to moonlight as spies? He was fastening his seatbelt when she began to ask him a series of questions about his life in London. Do you have children? What work do you do? Is London very expensive? It was plainly a pre-arranged tactic designed to put him at ease. No mention was made of the Wilkinson killing, nor of the reasons for Gaddis’s flight from Vienna. Eva kept things very light, very ordered. They were already fifteen minutes outside the city before he was able to turn the conversation around and to get some answers.

  ‘So, you never told me. Do you work for the British Embassy?’

  She smiled, in the way that one might smile at an impertinent stranger. She had been driving, he noticed, at precisely five kilometres beneath the Austrian speed limit. The last thing she needed was a traffic cop pulling them over.

  ‘Oh no. I am a schoolteacher.’ She turned and saw that Gaddis looked confused. ‘But I help your friends when the telephone call comes through. It is a good arrangement.’

  It was one of the strangest remarks he had ever heard. How did such an ‘arrangement’ come about in the first place?

  ‘So you know what happened to me last night?’ he asked. ‘You know about the shooting?’

  This time Eva did not smile. ‘The details of your situation are not my direct concern, Doctor Gaddis. My only job is to make sure that I deliver you safely to your destination. If, on the way, I can help to allay any concerns you might have, or to answer any questions, I am also happy to do this.’

  Gaddis looked out of the window. The pale, flat countryside was sliding past like a dream. He craved a cigarette but remembered that he had finished his packet in the park.

  ‘So where are we going?’ he asked. The ashtray in the car was clean and there was no sign of any cigarettes. ‘What’s the plan?’

  Eva took a satisfied intake of breath. The conversation was developing along lines that she had predicted.

  ‘It’s very simple.’ She overtook a lorry travelling slowly in the lane ahead of them. ‘I am taking you into Hungary where we will stop at Hegyeshalom station. There you will board the train to Budapest. I will return to Austria.’

  ‘You’re not coming with me?’

  He felt embarrassed to have asked the question, to have sounded alarmed. It was as if he had revealed some evidence of cowardice.

  ‘I am afraid not.’

  ‘You don’t normally take people all the way?’

  Eva raised a matronly eyebrow. ‘Every case is different.’ The response had a tone of censure. ‘Because of a prior arrangement, I need to be back in Vienna before lunchtime. These arrangements were made only in the last few hours. If I had been given more warning, I might have been able to accompany you to the Budapest airport. But it is often the way.’

  ‘So I just get on a train? How do I get home? Has Tanya planned that far ahead?’

  He realized that he sounded rude, but he was ti
red and fractious. He should have been more grateful to this woman who, after all, had left her home in response to an emergency call in the small hours of the morning. She was putting her life at risk by helping him. But the shock of the night’s events was still vivid to him; he was allowing basic courtesies to slip.

  ‘Tanya has planned everything,’ Eva said. ‘You simply stay on the train until it terminates in Budapest Keleti. On the platform, you will walk and find a man sitting on a bench wearing a green jacket. He is the next link in your chain. His name is Miklos. He has a beard and will be drinking from a bottle of Vittel water. He has seen your photograph so he will recognize you, even if you do not recognize him. Miklos will then take you to the airport and see that you are flown safely back to London.’

  ‘That’s extraordinary.’ Gaddis marvelled at the speed at which Tanya had worked, the favours she had called in, the networks she had activated. ‘And if I’m stopped at any point? If the Russians are on to me?’

  ‘It is a good question.’ Eva conveyed how seriously she was taking it by slowing down slightly and rubbing the back of her neck. ‘I have to tell you that there is very little possibility you will be stopped or asked questions at any point in your journey. Austria is not a police state, Doctor Gaddis. Hungary is not a police state. I have been following the news reports of the incident at Kleines Cafe and no mention has been made of a man fitting your description. Nevertheless, it is possible that the police are buying time and that they have a closed-circuit image of you from the bar. Is this possible?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Gaddis was suddenly concerned. It was the one angle that he hadn’t considered. He thought of the Goth at Meisner’s apartment and tried to remember if he had seen a camera bolted to the wall of the cafe. Surely the blanket surveillance of CCTV cameras in public spaces was a uniquely British disease? ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But a member of staff or a customer may have spoken to the police. Again, we cannot be sure. Now, there is no formal customs at the border because of Schengen. If, however, we are stopped by a guard for some reason, you are to say that you are my friend from England and that we are going to Budapest for a few days. You have been staying at my apartment in Vienna since Thursday.’ There was a slight pause. ‘If necessary, we will give the impression that my husband and your wife would rather not know about this.’

  It was Eva who blushed, not Gaddis, and he was relieved to see this calm, resourceful woman succumbing to a momentary embarrassment. It brought them closer together.

  ‘Do I stick to my own name?’

  ‘At this stage, yes. A new identity has been prepared for you by Miklos. You will leave Hungary using a false passport.’

  Gaddis felt so reassured by the arrangements that he allowed himself to close his eyes and to relax briefly as the car sped towards the border. He thought that he saw an army of wind turbines stretching from horizon to horizon but could not be sure if he had been dreaming. The next thing he knew, Eva was pulling into a Soviet-era railway station on the Hungarian side, having crossed the border without need of disturbing him. They were in Hegyeshalom.

  ‘Wait here, please,’ she said when she saw that he had woken up. By the clock on the dashboard of the car, it was just before nine o’clock in the morning.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I buy ticket.’

  He was alone in the deserted car park. A starved cat was scratching around in a small pile of rubbish. Some blue plastic tarpaulins had been piled up next to an old truck which looked as though it hadn’t been driven since the Cold War. Gaddis felt that he had woken up in Russia: a world of crumbling, Communist-era apartment blocks, of railway carriages abandoned on weed-thick sidings, of tangles of loose wire in overhead cables. Everything less neat, everything less manicured. He caught the smell of his own breath and craved some water. Falling asleep had been a mistake. The brief respite had left him feeling more, not less tired.

  Eva returned five minutes later armed with a cheese sandwich, a half-litre bottle of water and a ticket to Budapest.

  ‘You got a return,’ Gaddis pointed out, devouring the sandwich and drinking the water until it was almost finished.

  ‘You are coming back tomorrow,’ she replied, with a knowing smile. ‘A one-way journey always looks more suspicious. Which reminds me …’

  She stepped out of the car and opened the boot, returning with a faded leather bag which contained some toiletries, a couple of paperback books and a T-shirt.

  ‘This is for your journey.’ She closed the door of the car. ‘A foreigner who gets on to a train without a bag may look suspicious. Try to find a seat next to a young person, if you do not wish to be disturbed. They are less likely to bother you with conversation. Within an hour you will be in Budapest. There is absolutely nothing to worry about. I am just sorry that I cannot come with you.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Gaddis replied.

  ‘Could I have your mobile phone please?’ He was not surprised that she had asked. ‘I will take it back to Austria and switch it on in a park near my house. It may distract the people who are following you. They may believe that you are still in Vienna. On the other hand, they may assume that it is a trick. Either way, it is not safe for you to be carrying it. Do you have any further questions?’

  There were hundreds more, of course, but Gaddis could not think of them. Probably better that way. There was no need to complicate things further. After all, how hard could it be? All he had to do was get on a train and meet a man called Miklos. He looked up to see the Budapest train sliding into the station. Eva had timed things perfectly. He stepped out of the car.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind. I don’t suppose we’ll get the chance to meet again.’

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ Eva replied. Gaddis gave her the phone and the battery. ‘You will be fine, Doctor Gaddis, you will be fine. I wish you the very best of luck.’

  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 t
icket 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.