District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  A row of portraits of Palkovics’s predecessors was hung on the walls’ upper sections, each topped by a brass lamp, polished till it shone. Just one was missing: that of Gyorgy Kiss, minister of the interior in the early 1950s, when Hungary languished under a home-grown Stalinist terror, then prime minister for six months before even Moscow tired of his brutality. Soon, Palkovics told himself, Nagyapa, Grandad, would be back in his rightful place. Kiss, who had ended so many of his countrymen’s existences, was now himself a non-person, universally reviled. But that too could be fixed, Palkovics knew, with tame historians promised lucrative jobs at a new think tank, sponsored television documentaries and lavishly funded commissions of enquiry guided in the right direction.

  Palkovics glanced out of the window. A police launch roared downriver towards Parliament, bouncing on the waves it made, white spray soaring in its wake. He watched the boat as it came nearer, a small part of him wondering if this might be ... was the day, when they... he banished the thought. There was no possibility of that while he remained in this office – and especially while the woman waiting outside was in charge of the ministry of justice. Nor would there be any trouble from the new minister of the interior, after Bela Balogh had been so publicly humiliated.

  With the news off, the only sound in the room was the steady ticking of an antique grandfather clock. The parquet floor gleamed in the sunlight. Palkovics’s favourite antique silk Persian carpet took up much of the floor space in front of his desk: a delicate pattern of blue and pink roses. An antique coffee set by Zsolnay, Hungary’s most renowned ceramics firm, sat on a silver tray, the cups and jug a deep navy topped with immaculate gold trim, next to a manila file and a black mobile phone.

  Palkovics picked up the Nexus 6 again, pressed the power button on the side. The screen stayed black. He tapped it gently on the green leather panel in the middle of his heavy wooden desk. The sharp edge indented the leather but the screen stayed dead. The phone had been dead since it had been handed to him an hour ago. It had been bricked, on purpose, he was sure. The technicians were due to pick it up in half an hour, but he was not optimistic that they would recover anything of interest. The owner, he knew, was adept with computers and highly security conscious. Palkovics put the handset down and glanced at the grandfather clock: it was ten minutes past three. The minister of justice had been waiting outside for fifteen minutes. Perhaps it was time to let her in.

  His desktop computer pinged, indicating an internal email from his assistant. His PA had forwarded a message from Celeste Johnson. The British diplomat – if that was all she was – was requesting an urgent meeting. Palkovics knew very well what she wanted to talk about.

  Palkovics sighed loudly, pressed a button on the double telephone set on his desk. ‘Send her in,’ he ordered.

  He watched the minister of justice walk in, barely suppressing her evident annoyance at being kept waiting. She glared at Palkovics and sat down in front of his desk, her slender figure carefully showcased in a fitted white silk blouse that was open to the top of her cleavage. She had a model’s posture and wore a grey Max Mara trouser suit. Her body language was brisk and confident as she slid one long, shapely leg over another, knowing she had Palkovics’s full attention. He could see the red soles of her black Christian Louboutin shoes and the thin spiky heel.

  The French designer’s shoes cost hundreds of euros a pair. Palkovics knew that she had a wardrobe full of Louboutins with heels of different heights. She had started out on seventy millimetres but these were clearly taller than that. ‘How high?’

  Bardossy glanced at her feet, smiled with self-satisfaction. ‘I’m up to ninety. But I’m thinking about a hundred for the reception tonight.’

  ‘That should get you plenty of attention. How do you keep your balance?’

  ‘Practice. But did you call me here to talk about high heels, Pali?’ Reka asked, her voice barbed. ‘I cancelled my Krav Maga lesson for this. What’s going on?’

  ‘We have a problem, Madame Minister.’

  Hungarians loved diminutives. Outside his family, Reka was the only person who called Palkovics ‘Pali’. He sometimes called her ‘Doshi’, but not today, it seemed. She brushed her shoulder-length blonde hair away from her cheeks. ‘We?’ she replied, supremely unconcerned. ‘You’re the prime minister. You’ll solve it. That’s what prime ministers do.’

  Reka Bardossy seemed to have all the necessary credentials for minister of justice: law degrees from Budapest and Harvard Universities, a successful career as a partner in an international law firm with an office in Budapest, a husband who was a prominent businessman and philanthropist, a silver Olympic medal for sabre. As the daughter of a former Communist dynasty – now of course loyal Social Democrats -she boasted solid political lineage and excellent connections. Her good looks were extremely useful. Whenever the European Commission issued another press release expressing its ‘strong concern’ about the centralisation of political and economic power under Palkovics’s government, Reka was on the next aeroplane to Brussels, her large blue eyes open and honest in their gaze as her lightly glossed lips explained why, really, there was nothing to be concerned about. After eight years of right-wing rule, the Hungarian government had a clear mandate for change, and was indeed implementing it, she explained. Eurocrats melted. The politics were easy to fix. Less so was something Palkovics had not anticipated: the extent of her greed.

  ‘Clear your afternoon,’ said Palkovics.

  Reka slowly crossed her legs, then glanced at his desk. ‘Here?’

  Palkovics closed his eyes for a moment, forced himself to look away from her legs and focus. ‘No. Not here. Not anywhere.’ He paused. ‘Not today.’

  She shrugged, glanced down at her wedding ring, a two-carat diamond housed in a white gold band. ‘Suit yourself.’ She glanced at her watch, an oblong gold Patek Philippe. ‘Anyway, I have to be somewhere else in twenty minutes.’

  This was too much, Palkovics told himself. He was the prime minister. He slammed his fist down on the table. Reka jumped.

  ‘Do I have your attention now, Minister?’

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister, absolutely,’ Reka agreed, suddenly businesslike.

  ‘Good. Then look at these. And explain them to me.’ Palkovics handed her the manila file. She opened the folder and leafed through several photographs of Akos Feher entering and leaving the British embassy, each stamped with a date and time.

  ‘That is one of your senior officials, is it not?’ asked Palkovics.

  Reka nodded. Palkovics was right. This was a problem. A potentially major one. ‘Akos Feher. Deputy secretary of state.’

  ‘What’s he doing at the British embassy?’ asked the prime minister.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I can find out. But what’s the problem? My officials often meet with foreign diplomats.’ ‘Not in an embassy’s secure room.’

  Reka put the photographs down. This was getting worse by the minute. She really would have to clear her afternoon. ‘How do you know he was there?’

  Palkovics leaned forward, his shoulders tense, his voice tight. ‘Because the reception rooms for receiving guests have windows onto Harmincad Street or Elizabeth Square. The Brits like to show off the view. We have them all under surveillance. But we cannot watch the secure room in the basement. Your colleague,’ he said, his voice strained, ‘went into the building but did not appear anywhere again until he left, forty minutes later. Why?’

  Reka closed the file, the sinking feeling in her stomach growing heavier. There was no point dissembling. ‘He is the contact man. For the passports.’

  ‘I see. How much do you get for each passport?’

  ‘Between 30,000 and 40,000 euros.’

  ‘Of which how much ends up in your Cayman Islands account?’

  Reka turned pink. But there was no point prevaricating. ‘Maybe a third, depending on the timeframe, any other potential complications.’ She glanced at the closed double door on the other side of the room. ‘Pal,
I’m not really comfortable with this conversation.’ Especially as Palkovics only had part of the picture. He knew about the passport-selling scam but not where the documents later ended up. Reka was also running a separate operation, providing cover for the Gypsies who were working around Keleti and disguising refugees as Roma people, by ensuring they crossed the Hungarian border with no problems. As far as she knew, he had no idea about that. Reka looked back at Palkovics. He was staring at her, and not with lust.

  Palkovics said, ‘I’m not concerned about your comfort level. Who does Akos Feher sell the passports to?’

  Her unease deepened. Why did he want to know that now? Someone neither you nor I would ever want to meet, she thought, even with our security levels. ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘You’re not comfortable, you’re not concerned. You would rather not say. Madame Minister, I decide the parameters of this conversation. Not you.’

  Reka held his gaze this time, her eyes cold. ‘OK. We can keep talking. Perhaps your name will come up as well. At least twenty-five per cent of the time.’

  Palkovics paused. They both knew it was an effective gambit, no less so for being very obvious. His cut was washed through two companies and three straw men, but if this blew up, went public, some of the mud would stick. In the age of WikiLeaks and the Panama papers, nothing was truly secure any more.

  Reka asked, ‘What’s Britain’s interest here?’

  ‘The Hungarian passports you are selling to the traffickers are ending up in the hands of known Islamic militants. Who are using them to take flights on budget airlines to Luton airport. Where, it turns out, they cannot speak Hungarian and barely know where the country is.’ He paused. ‘You told me this... arrangement was safe, locked down. That you were dealing with business people. Not running a travel agency for ISIS.’

  She blanched. Terrorism? This brought things to a new, and much more dangerous, level. Not least for herself. Corruption, bribes, dirty money, that was her world. She could handle that. But Islamic militants? The CIA, MI6 taking an interest in her business dealings? The potential blowback terrified her. ‘How do you know?’

  Palkovics’s voice softened. There was no point going to war with Reka; they had too much history and she knew too much about him – far too much – to make an enemy of her. ‘Because the British border force has arrested at least three trying to enter the country on passports that they have traced back to your ministry. Celeste Johnson has informed us. She wants a meeting. As soon as possible. Today is Friday. I can stall her over the weekend perhaps, but no longer. What shall I tell her, Madame Minister?’

  Feher had told Reka enough about his conversation with Celeste Johnson to know that this mess needed sorting out quickly. In cases like this, she followed Stalin’s motto: no person, no problem. Feher would not be killed, of course, but simply removed from the scene, skilfully, she hoped, in a way that both defused the issue and dumped the blame on him. But before that, she needed to talk to him. How had MI6 traced the passports back to her ministry?

  She stood up. ‘Tell her that I’m working on it. That I’m clearing my calendar and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  Palkovics nodded. ‘By tonight. Before the reception.’

  Reka gathered her papers and her bag and walked out.

  Palkovics put the Nexus 6 into a drawer in his desk. He pressed another button on the telephone handset on his worktop. The double doors at the far end of the office opened, revealing a small annex. A man who looked to be in his early sixties walked into Palkovics’s office. He was balding, with straggly grey hair combed over his shiny, flaking scalp, a pasty complexion and red-rimmed, blue eyes. He wore thick black glasses, one arm of which was secured by tape, scuffed black shoes, flared beige trousers and a brown suit jacket with wide, unfashionable lapels that slid off his narrow shoulders. He held a slim digital recorder in his right hand, a printout in the left. Both hands were mottled with liver spots. A cigarette burned slowly between two thin, damp lips.

  Palkovics glanced nervously at the machine. The greyhaired man pressed a button on the side of the recorder.

  ‘How much do you get for a passport?’

  ‘Between 30,000 and 40,000 euros.’

  ‘Of which how much ends up in your Cayman Islands account?’

  ‘Maybe a third, depending on the timeframe, any other potential complications.’

  Palkovics asked: ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘Add it to her file, of course.’

  And to who else’s file? Palkovics wanted to ask. But to that question he already knew the answer.

  The grey-haired man slipped the recorder into his trouser pocket and placed the paper on Palkovics’s desk. ‘The latest private poll results, correlated to people-flow and coverage of Keleti Station.’

  Palkovics put on his reading glasses, scanned the paper for several seconds. ‘Each time state television runs a report about hundreds of refugees living in squalor and dirt, support for the government goes up.’

  The grey-haired man nodded, took a drag on his cigarette, blew out a stream of pungent smoke. ‘So your proposal that we install more toilets, a washing area for laundry, double the number of taps with drinking water, set up a rota for medical staff...’

  Palkovics coughed, was about to wave the smoke away, stopped himself. ‘Is not going to be implemented, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’ The grey-haired man looked down Palkovics’s coffee cup. ‘Keleti is under control. But your poll ratings are not. These new billboards, with you at the centre of a komcsi spider’s web, are proving very effective. The terms of our deal were very clear. If your voter base keeps draining away, so will our support.’

  The billboards are effective because they are true, thought Palkovics. Almost all of his political allies and financial backers dated back to his time in the Communist Party or its youth organisations. The party had surrendered political power in 1989 to the opposition, but the price of the peaceful ‘handshake transition’, as it was known, was that the Communists, now reborn as Social Democrats, kept control of their extensive business interests. These had only grown over the subsequent decades, generously funded by EU subsidies. Palkovics asked: ‘What do you suggest?’

  The grey-haired man stepped closer, fixed Palkovics with his watery eyes. ‘I suggest you fix it. Meanwhile, we have another, more pressing problem.’ He paused, dropped the butt into the black liquid. It fizzed for a moment then floated on the remains of the drink. ‘Which needs solving. Immediately.’

  Palkovics replied, ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘One, the dead man in Republic Square.’

  ‘The body is gone. A unit of Gendarmes took it away.’ ‘Where?’

  ‘A gravel pit, outside the city.’

  ‘The cop who was snooping around? The Gypsy?’ Palkovics beckoned the grey-haired man to his desk, pressed down on his computer keyboard. A window opened, showing a video feed: Balthazar surrounded, fighting, eventually overwhelmed, his assailants leaving him unconscious on the ground.

  ‘I’ll think he’ll get the message,’ said Palkovics.

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘The next time he will be out for more than a couple of seconds.’

  ‘OK. The third problem is the most pressing. Your minister of justice. This is no longer a money issue. Your government’s incompetence has drawn the attention of the British secret intelligence service. What they know will be shared with the Americans, possibly the Germans and the French. The USA already knows. You can expect an email from the Americans soon.’

  The grey-haired man stepped forward, his fingers grasping Palkovics’s arm. His grip was surprisingly strong. Palkovics winced, glanced down at the brown nails, stained with nicotine, digging into his skin. The man’s breath stank of tobacco. ‘We warned you about Bardossy. But you wouldn’t listen.’ He released his grip on Palkovics’s arm. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t think with this,’ he said, pushing an outstretched finger against Palkovi
cs’s temple, ‘instead of this,’ he continued, dropping his hand and poking Palkovics in his groin.

  Palkovics gasped as rods of pain shot around his lower body, his breath coming fast and shallow. He made no move to defend himself.

  The grey-haired man looked Palkovics up and down, like a naturalist on an expedition who has just discovered a moderately noteworthy species of beetle, then removed his finger. ‘We thought you had potential. But obviously, we were wrong. Never mind. You can be easily replaced. There is too much at stake here.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong. I promise. What,’ Palkovics panted, ‘should I do?’

  The grey-haired man removed his finger. Palkovics collapsed back into his chair.

  ‘Solve your Bardossy problem. For good.’

  Pest side of the embankment, near the Ministry of Justice, 3.30 p.m.

  A quarter of a mile away, Akos Feher sat on an iron bench and watched the Danube flow under the Chain Bridge. The man sitting next to him said, ‘That’s everything that happened? The whole conversation you had with the British woman?’

  Everything apart from the ‘request’ that I spy on my colleagues, Feher almost said. Instead he answered, ‘Yes. They know the passports are connected to the justice ministry. They know they are genuine, not forged or stolen. And they know the people carrying them have no connection to Hungary whatsoever.’

  The man next to him nodded, thought for a moment before he began to talk. Once he had finished, he sat back. ‘We’ve made you a decent offer. You should consider it carefully.’