‘What’s my job?’ Gaddis asked. He knew that it was incumbent upon him to seem alert and professional, to ask the right kind of questions, though in truth his mind was scrambled by doubts.
‘Good thinking.’ Miklos made a left turn on to a single-lane highway and sounded his horn as a man riding a moped cut them up on the inside lane. ‘You have the same job. You teach history at the University College in London. This has not changed. Nothing has changed except your address, your surname and your passport number. We always try to keep things simple.’
Always try. Gaddis looked out of the window at an ordinary day in Budapest. Who else had been through this process? What kind of people and under what circumstances? How different would things have been, say, thirty years earlier, with informants in every apartment block and the secret police on every corner? The car was held at a set of traffic lights and, for the first time, Gaddis experienced a burst of panic, as if he was about to be surrounded by gunmen or pulled over to the side of the road. But the moment passed. He put it down to nerves and sleeplessness and reminded himself to buy cigarettes at the airport. The traffic lights turned green and Miklos pulled away, past a second-hand car dealership and faded billboards advertising Samsung televisions, whisky, brands of Hungarian lingerie.
The airport appeared sooner than he had anticipated, a brand-new building finished in the style favoured by architects looking to save time and money: the Departures terminal resembled an aircraft hangar shaped from moulded plastic. Gaddis had been expecting something akin to the chaos of Sheremetyevo, but the interior reminded him of a branch of Homebase. It was spotless and gleaming, with hard plastic seats the colour of terracotta and white walls which amplified the harsh artificial light in the terminal. Miklos chatted amiably as they strolled towards the Departures board, saying, ‘Very good, excellent,’ when he saw that the Easyjet was on time. After queuing only briefly, Gaddis checked his bag into the hold, received a boarding pass and then sat with Miklos at a branch of Caffe Ritazza, drinking espressos and occasionally scoping the building for any sign that he had been recognized. It was an utterly mundane environment, seemingly entirely without threat. Miklos, continuing to put Gaddis at ease, revived their earlier conversation about Russian literature and encouraged him to talk at length on the subject of Tolstoy’s childhood. By the time they had drunk a second round of coffee and picked their way through a brace of tasteless muffins, it was time to catch the plane.
The two men walked towards the security area. There were no cops at the entrance, no sniffer dogs, no heavy-set Russians lingering in the shadows brandishing black-and-white surveil-lance photographs of Dr Samuel Gaddis. It was just a regular afternoon at a regular budget-flight airport. Gaddis could not imagine that any problem was going to befall him.
‘So,’ Miklos placed a hand on his back, ‘we are old friends, OK? You have been to stay with me for a few days. We have done nothing but get drunk.’
Gaddis suddenly felt alarmed. He realized why Miklos had left it this late to furnish him with the final details of his cover. He had obviously been concerned that he would forget them.
‘We met on a stag weekend in Budapest five years ago.’ Miklos grinned and rubbed his beard, as if recalling the sordid details. ‘So now you must go, Mr Tait. Now you must have a safe journey.’
Gaddis managed to smile, though his gut was churning with nerves.
‘Thank you for everything,’ he said, and reached to shake the Hungarian’s hand. But Miklos had other ideas, seizing him in a bear hug which punched the wind out of his stomach.
‘We are friends, remember?’ he said, growling into Gaddis’s ear. He pulled away, still holding him by the arms. His grip was very strong. ‘If you have a serious problem, you call the British Embassy. By law, Sam, you are entitled to seek representation from your government. An official will come to you, an official who is aware of your situation. Does that make sense?’
‘It makes sense.’ He brushed away what felt like a bead of sweat above his temple and tried to arrange his face so that he would look more courageous. ‘You’ve been extraordinarily kind to me. I wish there was some way that I could thank you.’
‘There is nothing to thank me for,’ Miklos replied quickly, and Gaddis saw the sparkle in his eyes, the mischief he had noticed at Keleti. ‘It has been an interesting day to spend with you. Such interesting conversations. I wish you a very happy and safe journey home.’ There was a slight pause as Miklos set himself up for a cruel joke. ‘If they ask you if anybody could have interfered with your bags, you know what to say.’
Gaddis laughed and walked towards the security check. He felt as though he was in a room in which all the pictures had been tilted to one side. What if the passport was recognized as a fake? What happened then? Would Miklos wait for him, come forward and help? Would he ensure that he made it through to Departures, or was the Englishman now on his own?
He was held in a queue behind a young Polish couple and a man carrying what looked like a guitar in a brown leather case. He turned to aim one final wave at Miklos.
But he was gone.
Chapter 49
It was like Berlin all over again, only this time Gaddis was alone. This time there was no Tanya for company.
He made it through the X-ray and metal detectors, removing his shoes, removing his belt. Miklos had bought him a Guardian Weekly and a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Gaddis had put them in a plastic bag along with a packet of cigarettes and a slab of Toblerone. He put his shoes back on, threaded the belt through his jeans and took the plastic bag from the container in which it had passed through the scanner. It was soon time to queue again. Passport control was just a stone’s throw from security.
He picked the closest of two queues and found himself standing behind an elderly British couple and a young man with dreadlocked hair who was shouldering a canvas satchel which had been attacked by a plague of moths. He was in the shortest line, but as he looked ahead at the border guard, felt that he had chosen badly. There was a woman operating the adjacent desk who looked easygoing; his own guard had the stern, officious look of a dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat. Just the sort of person who might get a kick out of making a British tourist sweat.
Gaddis was summoned forward with a flick of the wrist. He had the counterfeit passport ready and passed it underneath a thick glass screen. The guard did not take it but instead let him rest it on the shelf, as if checking to see if his hand was shaking. Gaddis could feel the guard’s gaze tracking upwards towards his face and made a point of looking at him directly and of making eye contact. The guard’s expression was utterly cold. He snapped open the passport with what Gaddis took to be an almost contemptuous sense of suspicion and said: ‘What is your name, please?’
‘Tait,’ said Gaddis, trying out the pseudonym for the first time. ‘Sam Tait.’
The guard had already flicked to the back of the passport and was studying the photograph. It was almost as if he knew that it had been secured there by an MI6 forger just a few hours earlier.
‘Why were you in Budapest, please?’
Gaddis experienced a system-debilitating fear. He was sure that he was on the point of being arrested. Was this the final double-cross of Tanya Acocella? Had Miklos deliberately tipped him into the arms of the Hungarian police?
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I asked you, what was the purpose of your visit to Budapest?’
‘Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you properly.’ Somehow, Gaddis remembered how to lie. ‘I was visiting a friend. Pleasure, not business.’
The guard seemed momentarily satisfied by the speed and concision of this reply but soon returned his gaze to the photograph. He looked up at Gaddis’s face. He looked back down at the photograph. He looked up again, obliging Gaddis to stand slightly straighter at the desk. Then, to Gaddis’s horror, he took out a magnifying glass and began studying the photograph, like a diamond dealer examining a stone for flaws. His right eye was pressed up against
the passport, roaming across the page, checking every watermark, every cross-hatch, every pixel of the forgery. Gaddis switched the plastic bag from his left hand to his right and looked beyond the desk at the safety of the Departures area, trying to appear calm. It was like an oasis that he would never reach. At any moment he was expecting to be asked to step aside and to accompany the guard into an interrogation room.
‘Thank you, Mr Tait. Enjoy your flight.’
Gaddis managed not to snatch back the passport in wild relief. Moments later he was standing in an area reserved for smokers, drawing deeply on a cigarette and silently giving thanks for the brilliance of Tanya Acocella. He felt now that, unless he was profoundly unlucky, there was no threat to him, either from the airport police or from Russian surveillance.
Within two hours, the easyJet had landed at Gatwick. Gaddis had managed to close his eyes for twenty minutes during the flight, snatching some much-needed sleep at a window seat. Yet he felt no sense of joy as the plane landed in a drizzly England, no welcome glow of homecoming. If anything, it felt as though he was walking back into a trap from which he had just escaped. It was as though he knew that his problems had not come to an end; they were only now beginning.
Everything was fine until he was ready to pass through customs. He had collected his bag from the carousel, been effusively thanked by an elderly couple whom he had helped with their suitcases, and carried his own luggage towards the green channel at the far end of the hall. He was no more than ten feet from freedom when a customs officer stepped across his path, pointed at the leather case and indicated to Gaddis that he should move to one side.
‘Could I just take a look at that, please, sir?’
Gaddis felt a wretched sense of disappointment. As he moved towards a row of low, steel tables at the side of the hall, he was convinced he was the victim of a set-up. In years gone by, he had passed through Customs a dozen times with more than his fair share of Camels and Glenlivet; now his luck was up. He knew, in the way that you know of a sickness coming, that somebody had tampered with his bag. It was the only probable outcome. Ahead of him was a greyed-out mirror, smudged and scratched, on the other side of which he could imagine a line-up of grinning MI6 officers, Tanya among them, observing his final moments. Had she betrayed him, or did he look so strung-out that the officer had no choice but to question him? Gaddis put the leather case and the plastic bag on the counter. The customs officer was in his mid-forties and slightly overweight, with pale, indoor skin and a short-sleeved shirt which fitted him too loosely. He peered into the plastic bag, inspected the bar of Toblerone, picked up the copies of The Tipping Point and the Guardian Weekly, then replaced them. It was as though he was deliberately killing time until he went for the case.
‘Could you just open this up for me, please, sir?’
It was the politeness of the request that grated on Gaddis, the sense of procedure being followed, of sticking to the letter of the law. They make you open the bag yourself so that you can’t later accuse them of planting evidence. They make you open the bag yourself so that they can watch your hand shaking as it pulls on the zip. He felt a great rush of heat pulling up through his body and suspected that the customs guard was merely toying with him. Perhaps he should just come clean? Perhaps he should just tell him the whole story? Look, I’m being exfiltrated by MI6. There was a murder last night. I’m travelling on a fake passport. But there was still the small chance that it was all just a mistake. In a couple of minutes he could be sent on his way. Gaddis told himself that he fitted a profile; he was a dishevelled-looking middle-aged man, travelling alone, returning from Eastern Europe. Customs were obliged to stop him.
He unzipped the case. Inside, he could see his so-called possessions: the paperback books given to him by Eva in Hegyeshalom, the can of Austrian shaving foam, the tube of Colgate toothpaste. His dirty clothes - the clothes he had worn at the Kleines Cafe - had been placed alongside the jacket that he had bought in Great Marlborough Street. Viki had rolled it up into a ball.
The officer pulled at the jacket. As he lifted it free, Gaddis saw to his horror that something had fallen loose inside the case. A package of some kind. A small parcel.
The guard immediately picked it up and showed it to him. ‘What is this, sir?’
The heat again. The electric fear of capture. Gaddis stared at the package. It was about the size of two paperback books, wrapped in brown paper and secured in a thick skin of sellotape. There were no markings on it, no address, no stamps. He was about to deny ever having seen it before, but a stubborn refusal to kow-tow in the face of authority convinced him to lie. Before Gaddis knew what he was saying, the words were coming out of his mouth:
‘It’s just a present for somebody.’
‘A present?’
‘Yes.’
It was a ridiculous thing to have said. The package could have contained narcotics planted by Miklos or Viki. Gaddis had that feeling again of a second man inhabiting his body and speaking on his behalf. He could sense a constant flow of passengers passing behind him, staring at his back and condemning him with their eyes. He even heard a child say: ‘What’s that man done, Mummy?’ and wanted to turn around to proclaim his innocence.
‘What sort of present, sir?’
The officer’s question was put in a way that sounded almost disengaged, but Gaddis saw that he was studying his reaction carefully.
‘I’m not precisely sure, to be honest,’ he said. ‘A friend wrapped it up. A friend put it in there for me.’
‘You’ve never seen this package before?’
Eye contact now. Gaddis’s gaze flicked involuntarily to one side. He pulled it back and smiled, as if to assure the officer of his good character.
‘No. I’ve seen it. But I left Budapest in a bit of a hurry. A friend packed my bag.’
‘Somebody else has interfered with your luggage?’
Gaddis felt that his words were being twisted, that his lies were being unravelled even before he had uttered them. Why hadn’t he simply told the officer the truth? Then he remembered Miklos’s final words to him, the joke they had shared. If they ask you if anybody could have interfered with your bags, you know what to say. He felt sick to have been so easily duped.
‘Not interfered,’ he replied, hardly remembering what had been said. ‘We were just in a bit of a hurry.’
The officer had heard enough. He placed the package on the counter, searched through the rest of the case, then reached for a box-cutter in the pocket of his trousers.
‘Let’s open it up, shall we?’
He immediately began slicing through the loops of sellotape. It’s drugs, Gaddis thought, it can only be coke or pills. The officer was removing the brown wrapping paper. A sniffer dog picked up the scent and they waited to see who collected my bag.
‘So here we go,’ said the officer. Gaddis was staring at a small dark plastic box which the officer was holding in his hand. ‘Let’s have a look inside.’
He had stubby fingers, the nails cut short and clean. The lid of the box clicked open on a hinge. Inside, concealed in a nest of tissue paper, was not a wrap of cocaine, not a block of hashish, nor a vial of pills, but a wristwatch with a worn metal strap. The officer took it out.
‘A present,’ he said.
If anything, he seemed more surprised than Gaddis. The two men looked at one another. Gaddis could only assume that the package had been in the leather bag all along and that Miklos and Viki had failed to notice it. Why else would they plant a watch in his luggage?
‘It must be Dan’s,’ he said, conjuring another lie.
‘Dan?’
‘A friend who was staying in Budapest last week. He must have left it there.’
‘Where?’
‘In the apartment where I was staying.’
‘Ah.’
Gaddis had no sense of where the lies were coming from, only that they appeared to be having the desired effect. The officer was beginning to look bored. He had plainly been
expecting a greater haul.
‘I see. Well, sorry to take up your time.’
‘Not a problem.’
If there had been a sofa in the customs hall, Gaddis would gladly have collapsed into it and lit a triumphant cigarette. Instead, he picked up his bags and walked towards a set of automatic doors. Tanya was waiting for him on the other side. She was standing beside a pillar in the same beige raincoat she had been wearing when he last saw her outside UCL. She looked tired and he realized that she had most probably been awake since his first, panicked phone call from Vienna. All those plans, all those contingencies, orchestrated from Vauxhall Cross within the last few hours.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ he said, though he was still mystified by the watch. They did not embrace, nor did they shake hands. It was like meeting a lover many months after an affair has ended: the atmosphere between them was charged, the mood civilized.
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said.
‘I had some trouble at Customs.’
She looked at him quickly, concern in her eyes. ‘Trouble?’
‘There was something in my bag. A package. Your friends may have put it there without telling me.’ Gaddis looked back in the direction of the customs hall. ‘A guard pulled me over and went through my case. Do you know what that’s about?’
Tanya swore under her breath, steering Gaddis away from the arrivals area. ‘Fucking Miklos.’
‘What about him?’
‘I told him not to complicate things. I told him to find another way of sending the watch.’
‘So you know about it?’
Tanya nodded. ‘Sure.’ She looked as irritated as he had ever seen her. ‘I’m sorry he got you involved.’
Gaddis looked around, half-expecting to see Des coming out of a branch of WH Smith with some Murray Mints and a copy of the News of the World. ‘We seem to be making a habit of spending quality time together at Gatwick Airport,’ he said, trying to ease the tension. ‘I have no idea how you did what you did, but I feel as though I’ve been carried here, watched all the way.’
The Trinity Six (2011) Page 30