The Budapest Protocol (9 page)

Natasha was waiting by the door. A weathered red plastic sign showed a postman tucking into an enormous plate of schnitzel and chips. A smell of frying wafted out.

“
Szia
. You go first,” she said, ushering him in front of her.

Alex looked at her questioningly. “
Szia
. In Britain, it’s ladies first.”

“We’re not in Britain. Here the man goes first. If there is a fight, he can protect the woman.”

“Are there usually many fights in the Hungry Postman?” he asked.

“Why don’t we take a look?” asked Natasha, her voice brisk. Alex walked in, Natasha following him.

The Hungry Postman was dimly lit, with a dozen rickety wooden tables covered in red and white plastic tablecloths, and a glass display case full of questionable cakes. A short, elderly man with grey hair and sloping shoulders, wrapped in a grubby waiter’s apron, was leaning at the aluminium counter, reading that day’s sports newspaper. There were no other customers.

Alex turned round. “We’re safe, no fights at the moment,” he said, beckoning Natasha inside.

The waiter came over and greeted her by name. She kissed him on each cheek.”Sani, this is my colleague Alex. Sani is an old family friend,” she told Alex.

Sani shook hands with Alex, looking him up and down suspiciously. He turned to Natasha: “How is Irina?”

“My mother is,” Natasha paused, “the same. She’ll be glad you asked after her.”

Sani directed Alex and Natasha to a window table where they sat opposite each other. He brushed down the tablecloth with a great show of ceremony, and they ordered coffees. Natasha also asked for a
meleg szendvics
, a toasted sandwich covered in cheese, ground meat and tomato ketchup. She passed Alex that day’s
Magyar Tribün
.

Social Democrat and Liberal MPs are to table a motion in Parliament this week calling for a full inquiry into the growing holdings in Hungary of the giant German industrial and pharmaceutical company KZX Industries and its allied media conglomerate the Volkstern Corporation.

Following its purchase of the joint Hungarian-Slovak company Mediconpex, near Kosice, in Slovakia, KZX Industries recently completed a controversial acquisition of a pharmaceutical works outside Miskolc in the east of the country, and has immediately announced that fifty per cent of the staff are to be made redundant with no compensation. Rival bidders for the formerly state-owned company complained that they were not properly informed of the terms of the tender, and their bids were rejected on obscure technical grounds.

The Volkstern Corporation, which shares several board members with KZX Industries, and is also based in Munich, has recently bought numerous local television stations, and is launching a new mobile telephone network, ‘Magyar Mobile’, promising tariffs twenty per cent lower than its rivals. The Volkstern Corporation is also believed to be lobbying for Hungarian state television to be privatised. It also has extensive holdings in Slovakia, Croatia and Romania. Liberal chairman Peter Herzog said: “KZX Industries and the Volkstern Corporation are taking controlling interests in several important sectors of the Hungarian economy. They are completely unaccountable.”

A Volkstern Corporation spokesman told
Magyar Tribün
: “We are committed to maintaining editorial freedom for our new acquisitions, within the confines of market realities.” KZX spokesmen were not available for comment.

Alex read the article and put the paper down. “Interesting. But the
Budapest News
comes out at the end of next week. When they table the motion in Parliament we’ll put it on the website. So what’s the big rush? It’s Saturday afternoon.”

Sani brought the coffees and set them on the table. Natasha thanked him and turned to Alex: “When I was promoted to reporter, you told me that journalism was a vacation.”

He laughed, not unkindly. “A vo-cation. A profession, which takes over your life. A vacation is a holiday.”

“Excuse me for my bad English. It is not my first language,” Natasha said defensively.

“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with your English,” Alex protested.

“A
vo
-cation. Not a Monday to Friday, nine to five job. ‘News knows no office hours,’ you said. ‘Otherwise get a job as an accountant.’”

Alex sipped his coffee. It was thick and bitter. She had no sense of humour at all. And had he really been that pompous? He looked at her. “OK. We’re here. What have you got?”

Natasha took out a notebook from her bag and flicked through to the middle. “One: last year KZX buys Mediconpex. Two: in July this year, KZX buys another drugs factory in eastern Hungary, near the Slovak-Hungarian border. Three: in September this year KZX Industries is fined for dumping out-of-date drugs in eastern Slovakia. They were bribing doctors to prescribe them for completely inappropriate illnesses. In one case in the village of Novy Marek, five members of the same Romany family died after being given anti-cancer drugs for a throat infection.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Alex, drinking more coffee. “It was a huge scandal because the doctor was fined 200 euros and suspended for a month. KZX only had to pay 10,000 euros.” The room wobbled and his skin prickled. Alex put his hands on the table to steady himself. He had eaten nothing all day and the coffee, heavy with caffeine, had gone straight to his head.

Natasha looked alarmed at Alex’s pale face. “Are you OK?” she asked, pouring him a glass of water from the jug on the table.

Alex drank the water slowly, breathing carefully. “I think I need to eat something.”

Sani reappeared and placed a foot-long slice of toasted bread, covered in grilled meat and cheese, and a bottle of ketchup, on the table in front of Natasha. She pushed the
meleg szendvics
across to Alex and ordered another one, ignoring his protests. “Take it,” she said. She took out a packet of Marlboro Lights. “Do you mind?” she asked. Alex shook his head as she lit up, blowing smoke to his side.

He bit into the crispy bread. It was surprisingly tasty, and he suddenly realised how hungry he was. “Thanks,” he said, squirting ketchup along the length of the sandwich. The food began to revive him. “What’s point four?”

“Wait,” said Natasha. “I am interested in KZX and the Roma, so I made several calls. I found out that Slovak health workers have recently been reporting a substantial increase in the number of Romany women either suffering miscarriages or having stillborn babies. There were two in 2006, five in 2007, nine in 2008 and fifteen this year. And many other Gypsy women are complaining of infertility, even though they usually have many children. I don’t have those statistics yet. “

“Five, nine and fifteen aren’t very big numbers,” said Alex.

Natasha put her cigarette down and leaned forward, her voice intense. “They are all in the
same village
. Less than two thousand people live there, about half are Gypsies. The corresponding figures for neighbouring settlements of the same size are about one or two miscarriages or stillbirths a year.”

Alex put his sandwich down. A familiar tingling coursed through him. “Novy Marek.”

Natasha nodded, triumphant. “Yes. Which is just outside Kosice, site of the Mediconpex pharmaceutical plant. That’s point four.”

“I need a memo from you, outlining everything you just told me, and where you think this story could go. I’ll talk to Ronald.” Alex knew Natasha was sharp when he recommended her for promotion. Now she was turning into the best reporter on the paper. But could he trust her to help with what he needed to do that evening?

Sani arrived with another sandwich. Natasha stubbed out her cigarette and took a hearty bite, sending butter and ketchup down her chin. Alex handed her a napkin. She wiped her face and smiled. “Thanks. Tell me, what do you see out there?” she asked, gesturing at the underpass.

Alex looked out of the café’s window. Four tunnels radiated out in different directions, their shabby orange tiling covered with graffiti. Strip lights flickered on and off. Kiosks sold cheap t-shirts, greasy kebabs and doughnuts. Bolivian musicians were setting up in one corner, while two policemen watched and smoked cigarettes. The homeless woman selling newspapers had fallen asleep, her mouth wide open. Several wiry, dark-skinned young men stood at the row of public telephones.

“The usual flow of shoppers. Young guys hanging around, homeless people. A western man, well-dressed in a long green coat, maybe German or Austrian, waiting to use the telephone.”

“That’s a start. See over there?” Natasha pointed at the telephones. Alex turned to look.

“Those young guys are Romanian male prostitutes. They are here in the same place every day. If a cop appears they pay him off. Mr Green Coat is deciding which of them to take to his hotel. That’s why he keeps looking over at them. If he is staying in a five star hotel he will have to give the doorman 100 euros to get the boy to his room, fifty euros in a three-star place. Different groups of homeless people control each entry and exit, because they are the best begging points. They also keep an eye for the cops, and when one turns up, they signal to the Romanian boys so they can disappear. The homeless people get a cut of the rent boys’ deals in exchange.”

“I’m impressed.” He took a gamble, relying on his gut instinct. She was smart, hard-working and reliable. And most of all, professional. “Natasha, are you free tonight?” he asked.

She blushed, and sat up straight. “Alex, I asked to meet you to talk about work, not...”

Alex interrupted. “This is about work. Well, sort of. But don’t misunderstand me.” He watched the man in the green coat beckon over a short, black haired youth and press something into his palm. The boy smiled, zipped up his leather jacket and followed him out of the underpass.

Natasha looked at him coolly, as if calculating possibilities. “I could be. If it’s really important.”

“It is,” said Alex, leaning forward to outline his plan. He removed the battery from his mobile telephone and gestured for her to do the same.

Natasha put her battery aside and listened carefully as he spoke. “I’ll help you, Alex.’ She paused. “If I’m covering Sanzlermann’s campaign rally on Sunday.”

Alex smiled. “It’s a deal.”

Peter Feher was dozing off at home in front of the Saturday evening arts and culture programme on Hungarian state television. Like Miklos, he was a widower. He lived alone on the first floor of a once grand villa in the Buda hills that the communists had chopped into numerous small flats. The lounge was lined with history books, and a large flat screen television dominated one wall. He awoke to see Aniko Kovacs, the presenter, praising a new biography of Admiral Miklos Horthy, entitled ‘
Horthy: A True Hungarian Hero
.’ The backdrop to the studio was a life-size photograph of Horthy shaking hands with Hitler. The book’s author, Laszlo Munnich, was a columnist at
Ébredjetek Magyarok!
. Munnich had no previous teaching experience but had just been appointed Professor of Modern Hungarian History at Budapest University, sitting in the office formerly occupied by Peter’s friend, Eduard Szigeti.

“Congratulation, Professor Munnich. This is a major work of scholarship,” trilled Aniko, holding the book’s cover up to the camera. “We could even call it a rehabilitation.”

Munnich, a cadaverous man in a baggy grey suit, nodded. “Absolutely. The liberals and neo-communists have maligned Admiral Horthy for far too long. That’s why the Ministry of Education has just ordered 250,000 copies.”

“Finally, our history will be correctly taught!” exclaimed Aniko.

Feher shook his head wearily when a mobile telephone began ringing. He scrambled to pick it up before he realised he had the wrong handset. He grabbed the second one, which was larger and heavier, and punched a code into the blue plastic keyboard. The screen flashed.

“He’s on his way,” a distant, metallic voice said. “You must have hooked him yesterday.”

“It wasn’t difficult. He loved his grandfather.” Feher held the telephone away from his head and looked at it. “You sound strange. Are you sure it’s safe to talk on this?”

“It’s scrambled. It’s completely secure,” the voice said, exasperated but affectionate.

“Is he alone?” he asked, watching film footage of Horthy triumphantly riding a white horse into Budapest in 1920, after the Romanian army returned home. There was no mention of the pogrom that had followed, when two of his uncles had been killed.

“No, he should be meeting the girl. She was there earlier.”

“Good,” said Feher and hung up. He sat back and switched to Eurosport.

*  *  *

Klauzal Square was the heart of Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, flanked on four sides by run-down Habsburg-era apartment blocks and a market. Even at eleven o’clock on a freezing Saturday night it was crowded with revellers bar-hopping from Kultura, five minutes walk away, to the numerous nearby clubs and cafés. Light and music spilled out from Groove, a groundfloor jazz café on the facing corner of the square. Alex watched two young men, arm in arm, laughing loudly as they walked across Kisdiofa Street to a new sushi bar. The row of facing buildings was covered in scaffolding and green builders’ sheeting. However thoroughly the developers scrubbed and repainted Klauzal Square they could never wash away its history. After the Nazis invaded in March 1944, Budapest’s Jews were forced into two ghettos. Much of District VII was walled off, and tens of thousands of people jammed into its narrow streets. Others were moved to the ‘International Ghetto’ in the riverside District XIII, across the Great Boulevard, where they were protected by the Swedish, Swiss and Spanish embassies. In the winter of 1944, as the Russians advanced, Klauzal Square was an open mass grave, the frozen bodies stacked up in piles. A children’s playground now stood in the centre.

Alex walked over to the young woman sitting on a swing, smoking a cigarette. “I used to come here as a kid,” Natasha said, rocking back and forth.

He looked at the serious young woman sitting in front of him, her head wrapped in a black scarf that highlighted her grey eyes and austere beauty. “Me too. I still do, sometimes, when I need to think,” he said, his voice wistful. He felt his grandfather’s hand on his back, pushing him forward as he held tightly onto the chains holding the swing, his legs tucked under the seat as he flew into the air, the memories triggering the now familiar ache.