The Appraisal

by Anna Porter

  The secretary looked aggressively indifferent.

  “His name is Ivan Dalchev,” Attila said. “He came to Budapest with Mr. Grigoriev. Perhaps you remember sitting with him on Mr. Grigoriev’s plane?”

  “No,” the secretary said.

  “You don’t remember him?”

  “No.”

  “I expect Mr. Grigoriev will remember him. And Mr. Grigoriev could be stuck with paying to return the body to Mrs. Dalchev — after all, Ivan was working for him when he was killed.”

  The secretary stared straight ahead. His putty face registered not the slightest expression. “It must have taken years of training to perfect your look,” Attila said. “FSB?”

  The man’s eyes shifted for a moment, before repeating his earlier statement that Grigoriev would not be available for a meeting. Then he turned and marched into the elevator.

  Zoltán couldn’t quite suppress a smile.

  “Faszfej,” Attila said. Dickhead.

  He looked around for the girls and found them at a corner table in the cafe, near the display of desserts. They were eating chocolate ice cream, arranged with blue violets on gold-edged plates. The waiter was lingering nearby, in case “the young ladies had more requests.”

  Attila asked for the bill and took a deep breath before examining it.

  Alexander’s call came as he was stacking his remaining forints on the silver tray.

  “Lófasz a seggedbe,” Alexander said.

  “Good afternoon, Alex,” Attila said.

  “Lófasz a seggedbe,” Alexander repeated. Roughly, that meant that he wished a horse would screw Attila in the ass, a physical impossibility at the best of times, but especially so in the Gresham, where randy stallions were not welcome. That was what Attila told Alexander, but then he congratulated him on learning yet another Hungarian curse. Alexander had always been a keen student of colourful swearing and had offered to teach Attila a cornucopia of similar expressions in Russian.

  “Why did you go and bother Piotr Denisovich after I told you he would speak only with me and I would keep you informed? Now he thinks I am incompetent. I couldn’t even stave off a fake police inquiry. You passed yourself off as a policeman. Dumb bastard. How long do you think it took him to find out you’re not?”

  “You’re done?” Attila inquired.

  “What the lófasz were you thinking?”

  “Doing my job. It’s what I was hired to do, and I don’t recognize that your guy has some sort of diplomatic immunity. Nor that he can get away with murder.”

  “We can’t be having this conversation,” Alexander said.

  “Right.”

  “I will meet you tonight. Same time and place as last night. Okay?”

  “What was that about a horse, Dad?” Anna asked.

  CHAPTER 22

  The exchange of The Last Judgement for a briefcase full of dollars was relatively simple. Vladimir seemed surly at first, but ended up laughing that his FSB-graduate driver had been so easily taken down by a sixty-year-old Romanian woman, all without a shot being fired. The driver had been transferred to a private clinic, where a surgeon could reattach the dangling fingers of his right hand. Vladimir said it had been thoughtful of Marcia to call the ambulance. Helena’s fee was a low ten per cent, and she left Marcia with the balance in the briefcase to work out her own deal with the Braunschweigers.

  They would think they owed her their lives.

  Helena had planned to phone Kis from Debrecen, but the Romanian phone she’d bought became unusable long before it was due to expire. She had to rent another car, and she was concerned about the Steinbrunner passport and credit cards. Now that both countries were in the European Union, she had thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. The Hungarian border guard spent too long looking at the passport and back up at her. He called over a colleague, they talked in Hungarian, then he asked her what business she had in Hungary.

  She had said tourism, but they seemed genuinely puzzled by the smallness of her bag. She said her suitcase had been stolen in Cluj, which made both men giggle. Apparently, suitcase theft was a regular occurence in Cluj. Then they’d let her through.

  She decided it would be safer to wait till she reached Budapest before she called Kis. As soon as she got there, she dropped the car at the airport, changed her hair in the women’s washroom, and took a limousine to the Gresham. She checked in as Marianne Lewis and assured the clerk on the front desk that her suitcases would follow, and that, in the meanwhile, she would shop for a new outfit at the boutiques along Váci Street. Yes, she had been here before and knew the city.

  She was on her way to the staircase (yes, she preferred to walk) when she saw the sturdy ex-policeman, now perhaps a private detective, with two young girls, leaving through the revolving door. Broad shouldered, tall for a Hungarian, with cropped sandy hair, turning grey. The girls were determined to go around several times, and the elegant doorman was looking on, as elegant doormen usually do, with a mix of indulgence and disapproval. The former policeman was trying to arrest the spinning door without stepping into it and seemed to be begging the kids to stop. She admired his self-control. Most fathers would have just yelled. He finally grabbed them by one arm each and propelled them down the driveway, pursued by the doorman, who must have had the car keys and was, doubtless, waiting for his tip.

  She spent a couple of minutes looking at the Budapest News, and when she was sure no one was watching, she retrieved her gun from the potted plant.

  Helena used the first of the four new disposable phones she had bought at the airport, no sense alerting them to her presence in the hotel. This time, Grigoriev’s secretary was sure he would wish to speak with her. In fact, he had been expecting her call since yesterday.

  She switched from English to Russian the moment he took the phone:

  “Zdrastvuyte, gospodin, Grigoriev. I assume you have received the letter from Mr. Matamoros.”

  “Da. I have.”

  “I assume Dr. Krestin’s price will be adjusted accordingly.”

  “If the painting is a fake, I no longer want it,” Grigoriev said. “But you were wrong about De Hory.”

  “I knew it was not a Titian. Just a matter of finding out who did it and when.”

  “Why did you take the trouble to warn me, madame?” Except for the “madame,” he spoke only Russian. When did this antique form of address make its way into eastern Europe? Krestin had also called her madame, and in his mouth the word had taken on an unsavoury connotation. With Grigoriev it merely seemed like affectation.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Helena asked.

  “Our history back when you worked at the Hermitage . . .”

  “Ah yes, Mr. Grigoriev, you were not interested in my findings then. But that’s ancient history. I am still in the art-validation business, and you are still a collector. Perhaps our paths will cross again. I wouldn’t want you to hold a low opinion of me.”

  After a cheerful chuckle, Grigoriev said, “Are you staying at the Gellért Hotel?”

  Helena laughed. “Not after I met your messenger.”

  “My messenger?”

  She hung up.

  She decided to see Kis in person. A walk to the gallery would do her good. With Grigoriev and Azarov out of the picture, there was no reason for Kis to hesitate.

  Because there was always a chance that her call to Grigoriev would have been traced, even one made on a disposable phone, she took the phone apart as she walked, dropping the battery and the back piece into a drain at Vigado Square, and the screen and the SIM card into a garbage bin near the entrance of the Hyatt.

  Seeing Kis meant she had to make some minor adjustments to her appearance, and in the washroom off the Hyatt’s lobby, she changed into the linen jacket, but she didn’t bother with the full makeup. She just applied a touch of eyeshadow and the red lipstick she had worn the firs
t time she met him. She thought they were close enough to a deal now that her appearance would not spoil her plan.

  The gallery was quiet, and there was no sign of Kis’s assistant. A couple of new paintings were on easels in the windows, and a rough wooden statue of a Madonna stood near the desk at the back. It was made to look like it had been rescued from a nineteenth-century church, but whoever did the work should have aged a few details, like the newly distressed wood on the sides and the fresh paint around her eyes.

  Kis was talking with a woman wearing a pair of red Blahniks, skinny leather pants, a loose white silk T-shirt, a red cut-away jacket, and a long silk scarf. The whole outfit looked like she had ordered it from a Prada catalogue. Her face was meticulously made up.

  “You could ship it to me in London,” she said in a husky voice. She spoke French with an overlay of American.

  “I do not think that will be possible,” Kis said in French.

  “Why is that, monsieur?” She ran her fingers through her short, stylishly cut hair, or tried to, but it had been lacquered and didn’t budge. There was something about that movement with her hand (red nails) that seemed familiar to Helena, but the ensemble and the face didn’t match the memory.

  Kis noticed her and tried to excuse himself, but the woman didn’t want her conversation interrupted and followed him. “You were in France,” Kis said to Helena in English. “In Nice, I believe. We didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  “I would like to pick up the painting tomorrow,” Helena said.

  “The price? As we agreed?” Kis whispered.

  The woman was still at his elbow, now looking at Helena with overt annoyance. “You are interrupting,” she said. “Dr. Kis and I will be finished our business in a little while. You can wait.”

  “Je regrette, madame, but that is not possible,” Helena said. “My business with Dr. Kis precedes yours by several days and will be concluded today.”

  “The painting —” Kis began.

  “Yes. My clients will transfer the amount you suggested earlier —”

  “How much earlier?”

  “— less a reasonable discount. I suggest only forty per cent, since not being sure of the artist is disappointing. I think that is a fair price. Better than fair, under the circumstances.”

  “This is intolerable,” the woman said. There was something familiar about the voice, too. “We have not finished our business. Dr. Kis, I will give you an hour — no more than two hours — to let me know whether my offer is acceptable.”

  “But we will see each other later tonight,” Kis said with an ingratiating smile that the woman didn’t reciprocate. “At eight. My wife has gone to such trouble for the occasion . . .”

  “I’ll be there,” she said, and with that she flounced out of the gallery.

  Sylvie Hoffman. Helena hadn’t set eyes on her for more than twenty years. The last time, she had long lank hair that she wore loose and she had favoured black jeans, cotton shirts, and no makeup. During the intervening years, she had done something quite drastic to her face: the high cheekbones, the pouty lips, the aquiline nose. She had a diploma in art history from the Ecole du Louvre. Specialized in European art. She, too, had worked at Christie’s, in sales promotion. She had thought she was better than that and, as her present appearance professed, she had been right.

  “Given Mr. Matamoros’s judgement of the painting,” Helena continued, “the price must be discounted. The other buyers have vanished. Since two art experts have now alerted you to the fact that you are peddling a fake, I assume you will be happy with forty per cent off the original price.”

  Kis managed to look both uncomfortable and defiant, a feat Helena found impressive. “Two?” he asked.

  “You already had my opinion, but chose to ignore it. As did your client. Now, I assume you will be pleased that Márton is still interested, when others are not.”

  “There may be a complication,” Kis said. “Dr. Krestin . . .”

  Yet again, a complication. “Yes?”

  “I have been unable to talk with him. He is not answering his phone, and he does not seem to be at home. I went to visit him this morning, and no one came to the door.”

  “Was he planning a trip?”

  “No, no. We were to meet today to finalize the sale.”

  “Did you talk with his wife?”

  “His wife?” Either he didn’t know Krestin had a wife or his enquiries hadn’t been very thorough. “His office said Dr. Krestin had not come in today. They were expecting him, and his secretary said she would put him on the phone the moment he arrived. That was at noon.” Kis examined his watch, glanced at the big oval clock on his gallery’s back wall, then shrugged to make sure Helena noted his utter helplessness in face of these unforeseen problems.

  They both looked at the door and watched the big, stocky man enter, his collar undone, his tie askew, his suit rumpled.

  “Mr. Fehér,” Kis said with a small bow. “This must be my lucky day.”

  The ex-cop seemed a whole lot more tired than before. The kids. She liked him better this way. For some reason, she had always liked men who paid scant attention to their appearance. She smiled at him as he came toward them.

  “Fehér,” he said as he took her hand for an over-the-top handshake.

  “Hello,” she said, ignoring local protocol by not mentioning her name.

  “Miss Marsh,” he said a bit uncertainly, in English. “I have been trying to find you.”

  “Why?” Helena asked, eyebrows up, all ingenuous.

  “There are some questions I need to ask you,” Attila said.

  “Oh?”

  “A man in your hotel, on your floor actually. He was murdered.”

  “How very unfortunate.”

  “You are no longer at the Gellért.”

  “No.”

  If Attila was surprised to meet her like this, he didn’t show it. During the past couple of days, he had assumed that she had given up on the painting and left. Tóth had even remarked on her absence and there were a few moments when he had seemed pleased with Attila’s work.

  Close up, she was a little harder than that first time at the Gerbeaud, or crossing the Liberty Bridge, her cotton skirt fanning out around her slim legs. There was a thin line running up from the bridge of her nose, and fine lines framing her mouth, her eyes were green with just a touch of blue, soft light-brown eyebrows. He thought she looked lovely, even when her smile was mocking.

  “Perhaps you saw the man on your floor at the Gellért,” Attila said. “He was short and wide and had some gold teeth.”

  Helena shook her head.

  “You are welcome to have this conversation here, if you like,” Kis said, “but I am very, very busy today and simply can’t stay.” He repeated the same in Hungarian for Attila’s benefit, turned his back, and started for the door to the courtyard.

  Attila said, “I think you may want to stay, Mr. Kis. This concerns you as much as it concerns Ms. Marsh. In fact, now I think about it, perhaps more. I will show you both the photographs.” He took them out of his breast pocket and spread them on a low table.

  They were creased copies of the photos of the dead Ivan Dalchev that Dr. Bayer had given him. One was of the body, as they had found it, slumped forward in the chair. There was some blood on his chin and down the front of his shirt. His face filled the next picture: hair slicked down, jug ears, his eyes wide open, and his jaw slack with some teeth showing between the darkened lips. Another photo, a side view of his head and shoulders on a slab, showed a thin, deep cut and some smeared blood in the area just under his ear. He had not bled much, Bayer had told Attila, testifying to the skill of his assailant. A close-up of his open mouth showed more blood and the gold teeth.

  “Mr. Dalchev,” Attila said, turning to face the two of them.

  He had always thought it int
eresting to observe how different people reacted to the sight of the dead.

  Kis backed up a step and spread his hands in front of his belly as if to defend himself. “I have never seen him before,” he said.

  Helena leaned in for a closer look. She examined the photos one by one. “No,” she said, “he does not seem familiar. He is certainly no beauty. On the other hand, people look different when they’re dead, don’t they?”

  “You’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, then?” Attila asked.

  “Relatives, mostly,” Helena said, lightly. “And I am quite sure he is no relation. As far as I know there are no Hungarians in my family.”

  Of all the odd reactions to seeing a dead body, this, Attila thought, would have to be one of the strangest.

  Helena was enjoying his scrutiny and was now fairly sure there was nothing that could connect her to the killing. She had been very careful not to leave fingerprints. Nor did she think of it as murder, it was an act of self-defence. One of the two of them was going to die that day, and she preferred it not to be herself.

  “What did you say his name was?” she asked.

  “Ivan Dalchev. Perhaps you saw him in the restaurant, or in the lobby, or in one of the pools. I gather you went for a swim the day you checked out of the Gellért. That was, coincidentally, the same day Mr. Dalchev was killed.”

  She shook her head. “I never went to the restaurant. I didn’t like the menu. The pool . . .” she paused to give the impression of thinking this over, then she said, “Yes, I did go for a swim. It’s good exercise. I didn’t see Mr. Dalchev, though.”

  “You talked with someone there.”

  “I may have,” she said. “I don’t remember. Those pools are always full, and Hungarians are so friendly, it’s hard to avoid a discussion.”