The Budapest Protocol, page 15
“Because I love her, more than the children we would have had, than the sons and the daughters we will never have. They have done something to my wife. They have damaged her inside.” Virgil’s voice began to crack. He poured the whisky into the cups, and passed the drinks round, leant over and briefly murmured to Mike.
“Of course you can,” he said. “It’s your house.”
Virgil reached up to the shelf and brought down his violin.
“It is a love song. A cigany melody. I play it for all of you.”
A single chord filled the room, rising and falling. Virgil’s eyes were closed shut as he teased and cajoled the violin, his bow caressing then attacking the strings before once again soothing them. It was the sound of longing, of poignant, doomed love. Alex thought it was the most haunting music he had ever heard. Goose-pimples rippled down the back of his neck, and the hairs on his arms stood on end.
Teresa sang softly as her husband played. Mario stirred on her shoulder, burrowing further into her neck. The candle sputtered and flickered. Natasha took up the second verse. The two women sang, one verse after another and embraced when the song was finished. Alex stared at Natasha, transfixed. Her eyes were luminous in the dark. She looked straight back at him, unblinking as she sang. Virgil leaned forward and grasped Alex’s hand in an iron grip. His fingers were worn and calloused. Virgil spoke in a low, urgent voice.
“Write about what is happening to us, to the Roma. Tell the world. They stop us from having children. They try to finish what Hitler started. Not with the killing rooms, but with pills.”
Virgil reached under the bed and handed two medicine boxes to Alex. Each held two empty blister packs, embossed with the name ‘Czigex’. Alex examined the pill packaging. Inside the box tiny printed letters announced: ‘Birkauchen Pharma.’ He slipped a blister pack and a box in his pocket and took out his digital camera.
“Can I take some photographs?” he asked Virgil. Virgil smiled and pulled his wife and son closer to him. Alex stepped back and took a dozen shots from different angles.
The hovel’s door suddenly swung open as an enormously obese man lumbered in. A gust of night air, sharp and cold filled the room. Virgil and Teresa looked alarmed and stood up. The fat man patted Mario’s cheek with one hand, and snatched the remaining box and Czigex blister pack with the other. Considering his bulk, he moved with surprising grace and speed.
“Where are the rest?” he demanded of Virgil. Virgil shrugged. “In the river.”
The fat man sat down on the bed and stared suspiciously at the visitors. He was dressed in a purple and white sports suit, and wore two thick gold rope chains around his neck. His face was sallow and sweaty, and the whites of his eyes were almost pink. Mario woke up and began to cry.
“I am Mihaly Lataki,” he wheezed. “Chief of this clan. I heard that we had visitors.”
He picked up the bottle of whisky, poured himself a generous measure and drank it down in one. He leaned back and burped with satisfaction. He glanced at Todorova, looked Natasha up and down, ignored Mike and stared at Alex.
“What do you want here, gadje?” he asked, using the Romany word for non-Gypsy. He made a hissing sound as he spoke, as though air was escaping from a puncture.
“We are journalists,” said Alex, handing him his business card. Lataki peered at the card. Alex saw that he was holding it upside down. Lataki put the card in his pocket, and lit a cigar.
“More journalists. Coming in our houses, asking questions, day and night. We are not animals in the zoo. How about if I ask you so many questions?” He turned towards Natasha, puffing out clouds of smoke. “Are you married? How many children?”
“It’s none of your business,” she snapped, waving away the fumes. Mario began to cough.
“It is very much my business. You are here in my village. My son needs a wife. You are too skinny, but we can fix that. And it is a Romany tradition that the wives of sons must also keep fathers happy.”
“What tradition is that?” asked Mike.
Lataki looked at him with disdain. “Who asked you, gadje-lover? I think I will call my son,” he said, reaching into his tracksuit pocket and pulling out an ultra-modern mobile telephone.
“Wait, hold on a minute,” said Alex. “We are investigating why Romany women in this area cannot have children. We are trying to help your people.”
Lataki guffawed: “We don’t need your help. We are sick of reporters. We are sick of all the do-gooders destroying our traditions, giving our women ideas.”
He pointed at Virgil. “Look at him, and you can see why his wife can’t get pregnant again. He makes one son, and cries and moans like a woman about how hard things are. But maybe not hard enough. Too much drinking and not enough of this,” he said, making an obscene gesture with his hand and forefinger.
“Poor Teresa. I will have to come and visit you,” he said, patting her behind. Her face froze as his hand slid down her backside.
Lataki waved for more whisky. “And get some more candles. I can’t see a thing in here.”
Virgil brought a pack of candles and placed several on the table, lighting them with a shaking hand. Lataki took out his mobile phone, holding it still for several seconds before he put the handset down and reached into his bag. He pulled out a carved wooden Madonna and placed it on the table.
“Handmade. By our Romany artisans,” he said, slurping some more whisky.
Alex picked it up. It was a crude rendition, but possessed of a simple, graceful, power.
“Our craftsmen should be better known. That’s what you should write about,” said Lataki.
“Very nice,” Alex replied, his voice bland and neutral, as he examined the Madonna.
“Two hundred euros. A bargain,” said Lataki. The others watched silently.
Alex sighed. “I don’t think we have enough cash with us to buy this today, Mr Lataki. Maybe next time,” he said, putting the statue back down on the table.
Lataki’s eyes glittered. “That is unfortunate. Then I will sing a song for you, a real Gypsy lament. For nothing. The song wakes the dead from their graves, they say. The way I sing, it will be heard across the valley.”
Alex quelled his rising anger. There was nothing he could do. They had their interviews, and the priority now was to get out as quickly and quietly as possible. He reached into his wallet and handed the Romany chief a 100 euro note. Lataki examined it in the candlelight and flicked it twice with his fingers. Small puffs of smoke escaped from his nostrils as he drew on his cigar.
“A good start,” said Lataki, looking at Alex expectantly. He drained the last of his whisky and crumpled the Birkauchen box and blister packaging into a ball, dropping it into his glass.
Alex handed over another 100 euro note. He showed Lataki his wallet, now empty. Lataki lit a match. He dropped the match into the glass with the packaging. The plastic popped and melted, sending out foul-smelling smoke.
Lataki opened the door and threw the glass into the stream that ran by the house. “Goodbye, gadje,” he said.
TWELVE
Alex swallowed a deep draught of Ronald Worthington’s Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, hoping it might kick-start his brain. It was 3.00pm on Wednesday, half an hour into a special editorial meeting. Alex, Ronald Worthington, Edina Draskovitz and George Smith, the surprise new deputy editor just seconded from the Daily Sentinel, were discussing Vince Szatmari’s information. That week’s edition was already at the printers. Ronald had decided to publish a day earlier than usual, splashing on Natasha’s interview with Sanzlermann and his plans for compulsory DNA testing for every European citizen. Alex had sent a copy of her story to David Jones, together with the transcript, under strict embargo until they both went up on the Budapest News website early on Thursday morning.
Alex stifled a yawn and tried to concentrate. The journey home from Novy Marek had passed without incident. Mike had driven them to a little-used border post that was technically closed after 8.00pm. They had simply lifted up the red pole across the road, and crossed into Hungary. Mike had dropped them at the eastern city of Miskolc. From there they caught a dawn train back to Budapest. Natasha had slept most of the way. He had dozed on and off, his head full of images: the poverty and squalor of Lunik IX and Novy Marek; Maria’s family and the laughing children; Virgil and Teresa’s shack, where there would be no more children; the way Natasha had stared at him while she sang with Teresa. And why had Lataki, the clan leader, been so keen to ensure that all the Czigex packaging was destroyed? Alex checked his jacket pocket: the box and the plastic wrapping were still there.
Alex considered Smith’s corpulent form with distaste. Smith had been imposed from above, a sudden, unwanted gift from the Sentinel’s London management. He had flown in that morning, and checked into a suite at the Hotel Bristol, the city’s most luxurious. Smith was soft, pink and chubby, an over-upholstered man in his early fifties with small, perpetually wet lips, who spoke with a pronounced lisp. A cherubic mop of blond curls, now streaked with grey, and two small but alert blue eyes, made for an apparently friendly manner. But Alex knew him of old. The Bunteresque appearance concealed a Machiavelli. Smith had briefly served on the foreign desk while Alex had been in Bosnia. He urged him on to the most dangerous places, so he could boast in editorial conference about how expertly his staff were deployed. The most perilous thing he had ever done was pad his expenses.
“Szatmari sounds like he’s flying a kite to me,” said Smith. “When I was business editor on the Sentinel we wouldn’t have let someone like him past the front door, let alone granted him half an hour with the editor to spin out his fantasies.”
“I thought you were night business editor,” said Alex.
“I was in charge of what went into the paper on the business pages while it was going to press, which is the same as being business editor,” snapped Smith.
“Yes, OK, I see your point. But you did only edit the business pages at night,” said Alex, careful to keep a straight face as he took another slurp from his coffee.
“I’ll have you know, that I decided...” said Smith, leaning forward, giving Alex a good blast of stale wine breath.
Ronald Worthington tapped the table twice. “I don’t think this approach is very productive, Alex. Let’s return to Szatmari. He works in the privatisation department of the National Bank. He says he saw bank documents, secret guidelines on responding to tenders, that every bid is to be rejected on spurious technical or legal grounds, unless it comes from a company on a short, classified list. Remember the opposition made a huge fuss about KZX Industries buying up the pharmaceutical firm in Miskolc. There were claims that perfectly good bids were rejected on very dodgy grounds. If what Szatmari says is true, then this is a major story.”
“If it’s true, and Szatmari can prove it,” said Smith. “Where’s this so-called secret list? We can’t run this on the word of one disgruntled employee.”
“He said he will bring it as soon as he can. Then we will have a story.”
Smith scribbled in his notebook. Alex noticed that he drew several rings around Szatmari’s name.
“Szatmari also said that the National Bank is planning to issue a new thirty day security. It will be called the ‘Patriot Bond’ and will pay fifteen per cent interest a year.”
“Fifteen per cent is pretty high,” said Edina, polishing a long telephoto lens. “I’m sure there will be a big rush to buy. We could get some great pictures of the launch, and the scramble.”
“I can check that out,” said Alex. “It should be fairly straightforward.”
“So we are agreed. We will wait for more confirmation from Szatmari, and check the Patriot Bond,” said Ronald, looking around the table. Alex and Draskovitz nodded, and Smith eventually did as well. “Now Alex, could you please update us on the Presidential election campaign.”
Alex flicked forward through several pages in his notebook and summarised the current state of play. In an effort to make Europeans feel more involved in the political process, the EU had decided that each member state would hold a nationwide poll for President. The results would be collated over the next three months. The winner would be calculated by a complicated weighting procedure based on the population of each EU member state. Over a dozen candidates had managed to gather the necessary million signatures to enter the race, but only two counted: Sanzlermann, and Edith Leclerc, of the Social Democratic Alliance. Sanzlermann was leading the polls in Germany, Austria, Belgium, northern and eastern Europe. Leclerc was ahead in France, Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean basin and was expected to arrive in Budapest in the next day or so, having delayed her trip after a severe bout of food poisoning. Most analysts agreed that the eastern member states would prove crucial. The Hungarian polls gave Sanzlermann thirty-nine per cent, and Leclerc thirty-six per cent, but with over forty per cent of voters saying they were undecided, there was still everything to play for.
Ronald sat back in his chair which creaked alarmingly. “Thanks. I also have some news, all bad. Firstly, my sources tell me that the Information Minister is about to announce that all state advertising will now only appear in certain newspapers, basically pro-government ones. We are not among them. So we are going to lose a massive amount of recruitment advertising, and those full page government ads encouraging foreign companies to invest in Hungary. That’s thirty per cent of our advertising budget. We need to think about how to replace that lost revenue.”
“Maybe we should invest in some Patriot Bonds,” quipped Alex.
Smith frowned. “Or maybe we should just be a little more balanced in our reporting. I think that the Hunkalffy government could be just what this country needs to get up and running properly. And we might get the advertising back.”
Ronald looked annoyed. “Well, we’ll have to agree to differ on that, George. Secondly, I received this registered letter this morning,” he said, unfolding a notification from the newly formed Financial and Economic Police Force, a subdivision of the Gendarmerie.
“At some unspecified time next week, inspection teams will arrive at the office for a full audit of the last year’s books. They want to check all VAT receipts since we launched. They want to see the customs importation documents for every computer, or an official VAT receipt if we brought the machines here, and an individual licence for every software programme that we are using. I’m starting to think that someone doesn’t like us,” said Ronald.
“But this is ridiculous,” said Edina. “Nobody can produce all that documentation.”
“Where did you get your Photoshop software from, Edina?” asked Smith. She resumed her lens polishing and mumbled something unintelligible.
He looked concerned. “Is it the case, Ronald, that this newspaper is produced using pirated software?”
Ronald sighed. “It’s not all pirated. We do have some legal copies.”
“How many?”
“Er, one copy of Microsoft Word, circa 1996.”
* * *
Cassandra Orczy swung her RX-7 through a tiny gap between two cars, sped down the wrong side of the road, and turned into an eighteenth century courtyard. The Museum of Catering and Domestic Science, on the far side of the Castle district, was obscure enough to be discreet. He was waiting for her, leaning against the window in the first room, as agreed, reading the Financial Times. The paper’s Budapest correspondent had filed a detailed story about the steady slide in value of the Hungarian currency, run next to similar reports from its correspondents in Zagreb, Bratislava and Bucharest. The forint had recently dropped from 240 to the euro to almost 400. The Croatian kuna, Slovak koruna and the Romanian lei were also plunging in value, while the Polish zloty and the Czech koruna were starting to slip. The reports from the security service economics section were increasingly alarming. Foreign money was pouring in, buying up commercial property, as the region turned into a bargain basement for those paying in euros.
She greeted him, and they kissed each other on the cheeks. “Why are you wearing sunglasses?” she asked. “It’s November. And we are indoors.”
“I’ll tell you soon,” he replied. They walked up to a glass display case. Inside was a curiously shaped pair of small tongs. He bent over to read the caption. “It’s for curling your moustache.”
“I don’t have a moustache. At least I hope not.”
He pretended to check. She brushed him away, laughing. “Doesn’t this remind you of our student days?” he asked. “All these pots and pans, and recipes.”
“You know, I don’t remember that either of us cooked very much. We lived on cheese and salami. When we remembered to buy anything to eat.”
“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thee. Omar Khayyam said it best. You still look as youthful and as beautiful as ever,” he said, reaching for her hand. She blushed, and gave his hand a long squeeze before extricating hers. She looked around the room before she spoke. “Tell me what you are hearing. The economy is going haywire.”
He took off his sunglasses. Cassandra gasped. She leaned forward to touch Mubarak’s face, but he jerked back. His right eye was a slit in a brown and green mound of bruised puffy flesh.
“A doctor told me that with luck I will eventually be able to see out of it.”
“Who did it?”
“The Gendarmes raided the Sphinx last night. I thought it would be the usual routine, a quick trip to the station, pay off the captain and I would be back at the Sphinx for dessert. Not this time. They held a telephone book to the side of my head and hit me with a truncheon. Then they removed the book.”
* * *
It was a bracing winter afternoon; the kind that Budapest did well. The Habsburg apartment blocks looked stately and majestic, the Danube grand and sweeping. The sun shone brightly, white cotton-wool clouds scudding across a turquoise sky. The wind was clean and sharp. Alex’s cheeks tingled as he walked down the Grand Boulevard to the Margaret Patisserie. He passed a legless man sitting in his wheelchair, holding out a battered hat to the passersby. One or two dropped him a few coins. Alex gave him 200 forints. A crowd had gathered around a nearby stall, its walls plastered with posters of Sanzlermann and Hunkalffy shaking hands. It was less than two weeks to the start of the Presidential election. Alex walked over to the stall. Well-dressed young men and women were handing out campaign baubles: badges, canvas bags and coffee mugs. Many of those walking away stared at their wrists, now proudly bearing a plastic Sanzlermann campaign wristwatch.
