by Adam LeBor
Antal had worked for the operations division, whose staff were out on the streets, bending the law when necessary. Most of Antal’s career had been spent in counter-intelligence, finding and monitoring foreign agents operating in Hungary and their sources, and disrupting those relationships. Antal’s file was surprisingly sparse on details. Anastasia was fairly sure she had seen him once or twice at Keleti Station that spring and in the first part of summer, and in the side streets around the area. That would be natural. The mass influx of refugees was top of the ABS’s agenda and of great interest to its partner services. Anastasia and her colleague knew each other by sight, of course, but had never acknowledged one another. After twenty years’ service or so in the ABS, a few months ago Antal had left quite suddenly and had joined the Ministry of Justice, while Reka was in charge, as a ‘security adviser’, in effect her personal chief of security, a position he still held now that Reka was prime minister. Most of the staff who had worked for Pal Dezeffy, especially at high levels, or those involved in policy development, had now been sacked. The concept of an impartial civil service, serving whoever won an election, had not taken root in Hungary, at least at higher levels. Reka Bardossy was right, Anastasia thought, not to trust Pal’s people to guard her political or personal wellbeing. Plus, the migrants were still coming, there were surely more revelations about Reka’s connections to the passport scam yet to be revealed and now there was this extraordinary video footage of her despatching her would-be killer with the heel of her shoe. It was only a matter of time, Anastasia was sure, before the footage appeared on YouTube.
Anastasia’s instinct – and Antal’s CV – told her that whatever was unfolding in her homeland, Antal was a player. But what, exactly, was he up to? She needed to know more. Anastasia read through the sparse personal details once again then called up more information about him. The screen flashed: ‘Access denied – you have insufficient security clearance.’ She sat back for a moment, reading the words again. Maybe there was a mistake, a glitch in the system. She tried for the second time to access Antal’s file. The same message flashed up. This was unusual. Anastasia was cleared for everything but the highest level of security, which was reserved for the director and his two deputies. She could ask to see the files, she supposed, but that would be a loud and clear signal of her interest in Antal. Her request for access would already be logged. Something told her to hold fire on making an official request. One thing she did know about Antal was that he was a crack shot with a pistol and had almost made Hungary’s Olympic team. There had been rumours – never substantiated or, as far as she knew, properly investigated – that between university and joining the ABS Antal had served as a mercenary in the Yugoslav wars, enlisting in a Croatian army battalion for foreign volunteers that was implicated in war crimes against civilians.
Anastasia opened the video clip of Reka killing her would-be assassin at the Buda Castle again. This was a new, longer version circulating around the ABS, one that showed not just the killing but its aftermath. She fast-forwarded through the action until the end, when the dead man lay in the dirt, a dark stain leaking from the heel in the side of his neck. Akos Feher appeared, holding some kind of rod or bar in his hand. He and Reka spoke, then he pulled the heel from the side of the dead man’s neck. Reka made a call. Anastasia fast-forwarded through the next few minutes, which showed Reka and Akos dragging the dead man out of sight, then sitting waiting. Soon afterwards, a tall, broad-shouldered man appeared. He wore black clothes, a hooded top and a dark baseball cap which he kept pulled low over his head. He removed a pistol, fitted with a long suppressor, from his pocket. He carefully aimed and fired. The CCTV feed shook for a second then turned black. All of the CCTV cameras along the castle walls had been quickly destroyed soon after the first. She rewound the footage, watching again. It was Antal, she was sure.
Anastasia sat back, closed her eyes for a moment, stretched and yawned. She had put through the cocaine and Viagra Balthazar had given her as a top priority and the forensics results should be back by the end of the day. There was a chance that they might come up clean, but her instinct told her that al-Nuri had been murdered. His death and the hack of the brothel’s CCTV system in the same hour were too much of a coincidence. And after ten years’ service in the ABS, she no longer believed in coincidences, especially in the middle of the migrant crisis. To her surprise, she suddenly found herself missing Keleti Station. Despite the squalor and the human misery, at least there she had been in the centre of the action, among human beings. There were real people to watch, to talk to, a sense that she was doing her duty for her country. She felt a pang of regret, almost grief for the death of Simon Nazir, an innocent Syrian who had come here with his wife to make a better life for both of them and was then brutally murdered. Here she was stuck inside her office, a small, narrow room at the end of a long corridor on the fifth floor of the ABS headquarters. It was a dreary space, barely lightened by her attempts to humanise it: light-grey walls, a pot plant by the window whose leaves, she saw, were once again sagging in the thick heat of the Indian summer, a couple of posters by Picasso and Mondrian.
From the outside, the building was a fine example of late Communist-era functionalism: a main block covered with narrow grey concrete window frames, a car park in the front and a small rotunda where the security guards sat. Anastasia had once visited the headquarters of the British SIS on the corner of Vauxhall Bridge Road, marvelling at how hard it was to enter the building. Visitors had to walk through a round cylinder to get in, an armoured, high-security version of the kind of revolving doors used by hotels. The whole building was protected by high walls. Here, the ABS headquarters had a wire fence, painted an incongruous shade of turquoise, and two metal barriers.
She walked over to the window and looked out. An elderly lady was feeding the stray cats who lived in the front car park, her hand passing titbits through the wire fence. A few yards away a homeless man with a bandaged leg sat talking to a smiling teenage boy, who handed him a bag of groceries. For a moment Anastasia was back in the CIA safe house on Filler Street the previous Saturday evening, sitting with Celeste Johnson, the MI6 Budapest station chief, and Brad Miller, the CIA station chief, as they demanded that Reka Bardossy hand over everything she knew or could find out about her husband’s involvement in the passport scheme. Reka had agreed, of course. But then she had not been prime minister, just a minister under threat of imprisonment or extradition.
Would she survive? It was now Friday lunchtime and she had until Monday morning to hand over the details. The terms of the agreement still stood. Anastasia, too, had played hardball. All three of them had threatened to go public with what they knew about her involvement in the passport scandal, followed by arrest and even extradition. Hungary’s anti-terrorism legislation had a wide latitude for interpretation. Reka had protested that she knew nothing about the terrorist connections to Hejazi, which may even have been true. But her husband certainly did and there was enough on Reka to bring her down as well. Reka could perhaps survive the footage of her fighting and killing the man sent to murder her. Any half-decent lawyer could make a case for self-defence. The new footage, showing the aftermath, was something else. Instead of calling the police, Reka, Akos Feher and Antal Kondor had run an illegal clean-up operation and disposed of a dead body.
Anastasia watched the elderly lady gather up her bags and wave goodbye to her feline flock. The cats looked indignant at her departure, then quickly dispersed across the car park. One ran under the director’s Audi. Anastasia took a piece of chewing gum from a packet in her pocket and crunched into the white coating while she considered her next move, the mint flavour flooding her mouth. The political situation was still febrile but had stabilised somewhat over the last few days, at least compared to the weekend and Monday when Pal had resigned. Reka had almost made it through her first week in office. She was planning to appoint her first cabinet next week. She had received messages of support from London, Paris, Berlin and Wash
ington, among others. Western leaders knew that the migrant crisis was not over. Hundreds of refugees were still pouring in across Hungary’s non-existent southern borders. Hungary’s allies needed stability in central Europe. That was the big picture.
The smaller one, being considered in Anastasia’s drab office, was that her agenda was not the same as Celeste Johnson’s and Brad Miller’s. They were British and American intelligence officers. They were in the information business, especially information about terrorism and terrorist connections. They cared little where it came from or what the consequences of withholding would be. After 9/11, 7/7, and the other terrorist attacks in London and Europe, that was entirely understandable. But Anastasia was Hungarian. Yes, terrorists had passed through Hungary en route to the west, disguising themselves as refugees. Yes, corrupt officials in the Ministry of Justice had sold passports which had ended up in the hands of Islamic radicals trying to enter Britain and the USA. Reka had argued that her involvement in the passport scam had been a sting operation, to draw out the traffickers’ and Islamists’ networks. And she was certainly spinning the media like a veteran – thanks in part to Eniko Szalay’s reporting, even the international press were buying that line. But there was certainly enough evidence to bring her down and send her to prison.
Now though there was a new question to consider. Did Anastasia really want to depose Reka Bardossy, just a few days after she had taken office? And send her to be arrested, even put on an airplane to the US? Democracy here was barely twenty-five years old. There were still plenty of powerful and influential people, many in Parliament and one or two even in her building, who longed for the firm hand and certainties of the old regime. Pal was out of public life. For the moment he was down, but he was definitely not out. He was a street fighter behind the scenes and would be working hard to depose Reka, ready to step in the moment she was out of power. There were broader issues to consider, of political stability and national security. Reka might have won her battle with Pal Dezeffy for now, but she lacked a political base and a cohort of loyal staff. Anastasia was not sure that Hungary could afford to lose two prime ministers in less than two weeks and still keep functioning. And who would be the most likely beneficiary of the subsequent chaos? Pal Dezeffy. Behind the scenes, Pal’s komcsik still had powerful networks.
Beyond that, there was the question of Mahmoud Hejazi’s companions. Hejazi was dead but his two associates had disappeared. They may have gone west in the chaotic mass exodus last weekend. Or they may still be in Budapest. Perhaps they were hiding out nearby. It was impossible to know. The two men, both known Islamic radicals, had disappeared. The CCTV footage had been checked but there was no sign of them in the crowd as it poured down Rakoczi Way, over Elizabeth Bridge and out of the city towards the Austrian border. That did not necessarily mean anything – wrap-around sunglasses and baseball caps pulled down over the faces would be enough of a disguise. But what if they were still here? And plotting revenge for the death of Hejazi? That was possible, perhaps even probable. Anastasia picked up the telephone on her desk and buzzed her assistant, told him to bring the files on Hejazi’s companions and anything new on them.
A minute later a knock on the door sounded. Szilard Dudas poked his head around. Anastasia beckoned him in and gestured for him to sit down. Szilard was in his mid-twenties, pale, tall and lanky with short brown hair, and almost stooped from years sitting at a desk in front of a monitor. He wore a black T-shirt with a gothic dragon and black stove-pipe jeans and was carrying two files and a memory stick. Szilard was a computer expert, who spent too much of his spare time playing complex multi-player fantasy games. He was unusually animated, Anastasia could see. ‘So what have we got?’
‘A lot. None of it good. Let’s start with this,’ he said, handing the memory stick to Anastasia. ‘Security found it in your car.’
‘The Opel?’ asked Anastasia, puzzled. She had checked the car only that morning after meeting Balthazar. There had been nothing there.
‘No, it was in the taxi. The one you never drove at Keleti. In an envelope in the driver’s side pocket.’
Anastasia frowned for a moment, thought back to the last time she had seen the vehicle. It was last Friday morning, a week ago, just before she had tried to tail Simon Nazir. She realised that she had not driven it since, had forgotten about the vehicle completely in the excitement of the previous weekend. Luckily someone in the ABS had remembered it and brought it back to the service’s vehicle pound.
‘What’s on it?’ asked Anastasia.
‘Open it. IT security has already checked it. You’ll see.’
Anastasia plugged the stick into her computer and opened the video file. The clip lasted around ninety seconds. Her day, she realised, had suddenly become even more complicated. ‘Is it genuine?’ she asked.
Szilard nodded. ‘As far as IT can tell. It hasn’t been doctored or edited. It’s raw footage.’
She exhaled. ‘For a dead man, Mahmoud Hejazi is causing a lot of complications.’
Szilard slid two brown folders across Anastasia’s desk. ‘Indeed. And it only gets worse. The two other men with him…’
Anastasia held up a hand for a second, signalling that Szilard should wait. ‘Hold on a moment. Let me catch up myself.’ She picked up the top file and leafed through the first file. A photo showed a stocky man with brown eyes, his round, pudgy face topped by curly grey hair. She rapidly skimmed the first couple of pages, reminding herself of the details. ‘Adnan Bashari. Born in Baghdad in 1968. Former member of Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard. Fought against the Americans in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sacked from the Iraqi army, joined the resistance and eventually signed up with Islamic State, before heading west. Last seen at Keleti Station, a week ago.’
There was other background material on his work and life history, but nothing new since she had last looked a couple of days previously. She picked up the second file and skimmed the first couple of pages. Omar Aswan, born in Basra, southern Iraq, in 1958, was thinner, with black eyes, sharp features, grey hair and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. Like Adnan he had been a Saddam loyalist, then transferred his allegiance to the Islamic State. Anastasia looked at Szilard. ‘The new stuff?’
‘It’s not collated yet, so there’s nothing written yet. The analysts are still working on it. But you need to hear this. It seems Adnan is Omar’s bodyguard.’
‘Why does he need a bodyguard?’
‘Omar is a scientist. An expert in his field.’
‘Which is?’
‘Chemical and nerve agents. He was part of the planning group for the Halabja attack.’
Anastasia grimaced with distaste. The Halabja attack in 1988 was one of the worst atrocities of the Iran–Iraq war. The Iraqi air force attacked the city in Kurdistan with chemical and nerve agents, killing and injuring thousands of civilians. She could still remember the grim television footage of the civilians lying in the street, the dead mothers still holding on to the bodies of their children, their faces frozen in pain and terror as they tried to flee the deadly mist.
Szilard said, ‘It gets worse.’
‘How much worse?’
‘Considerably. There is a very strong Hungarian connection. That may be why they were, or are, here. They both studied in Budapest – chemical engineering at the Technical University. Omar Aswan in the late 1970s, Adnan Bashari ten years later. They were part of an exchange programme run by the Ministry of Education. They both speak Hungarian. The course was taught in Hungarian, so they had to become fluent, at least in the technical stuff.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Can I try and find them?’
Anastasia smiled. After months of steady, sustained pressure, Szilard had finally had his transfer from analysis to operations authorised. He had just finished his basic training in surveillance and counter-surveillance. His computer expertise meant he was allowed to skip the classes on data research and cybersecurity. Instead he had extra firearms training, at which, to everyone’s surpri
se, including his, he had excelled. Years of video games had sharpened his reflexes to a level far above the average, especially facing multiple opponents in a confined space. ‘No, Szili. We need you here for this. But you’ll be out in the field soon, I promise.’ She looked down again at the photographs from Halabja. ‘We taught them how to gas people?’
Szilard raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe. Part of the course was run by the military then. It was restricted to a handful of specially chosen students and highly classified. We were in the Warsaw Pact, and Moscow had an extensive biological and chemical weapons programme.’
‘Let’s get the records. Maybe there’s something there about these two. Ask the Ministry of Defence for access.’
‘I already did.’
‘Great. What did they say?’
‘First they said there was no such programme. Then I pushed harder and they said all the records were destroyed. Back in the 1990s. Before we joined NATO.’