He had been coming to the Gerbeaud for thirty years, but he never tired of it. During the summer he liked to sit under its wide, grey umbrellas on Vörösmarty Square, enjoying snippets of conversation at adjoining tables and watching life go by. It was a cozy respite from the nastiness of work. He didn’t much care whether the service was slow, the chrome tabletop wiped clean, or his espresso lukewarm, he loved the tangy black coffee oozing across his tongue and the reassuring normalcy of unfolding the daily paper on its wooden holder. He savoured the familiarity.
Although pretty much everything in Hungary had changed since the advent of the “market economy,” the Gerbeaud’s sole concession to the winds of capitalism had been a steady increase in prices. The new owners had left the rest of it alone. He could still sit here as long as he wished, nursing the single espresso that cost him a quarter of a good day’s wages, and the waitresses never pushed him to reorder.
There had been a time when the manager, sleek as a young trout in her fitted black dress, had refilled his delicate china cup and hadn’t charged for it, but she had long gone to greater fortunes in the States. Her name was Klari, now probably changed to Claire, or maybe Clara to preserve a touch of the Continent. She would have discovered by now that it cost a damned sight more than an occasional refill of coffee to buy a policeman in the so-called home of the free. Even in Budapest, bribery was no longer a bargain.
At the table beside his, a young man wearing Gucci wraparound sunglasses, a gold Tissot watch, a collarless white shirt, and beige calf-leather pants was reading the Wall Street Journal. He was sucking on a split of champagne, surreptitiously checking his watch. Someone was keeping him waiting. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to betray any anxiety. A man in Gucci wraparound glasses couldn’t admit to being kept waiting. He seemed familiar. A long-ago police lineup? Judging from his attire, his career had blossomed since then.
It didn’t matter. The real target of Attila’s interest was near the first wide window, her back to the pastries counter and across from a frothy-haired man who also looked vaguely familiar. Her elbows were on the table and her long blond hair was dangling over an open blue file folder placed between them. Sheets of paper dropped so fast from her fingers, he presumed she was speed-reading until she came to the last sheet, which she stared at for several minutes. She closed the folder, pushed it toward her companion, and leaned forward as she talked. He listened, then produced something from his breast pocket. A picture? A passport? It was small, dark, and oblong. She palmed it so quickly that had Attila not been watching he would have missed the movement.
He scanned the room, pretending to pay equal attention to all the customers. He was pleased that neither the woman nor her companion had once looked at him.
The waitress, a country girl with short henna-red hair, was asking the Wall Street Journal man if she could take his spare chair. A group of German tourists was next in line for a table with not enough chairs. She asked in Hungarian, her hand on the chair, her meaning fairly clear, but he pretended not to understand. Playing for time, Attila thought, time to decide whether to reveal he had been waiting for someone. Without relinquishing her hold on the chair, the waitress — he must find out her name — asked, “Okay?” For emphasis, she jiggled the back of the chair, clattering its metal legs on the asphalt.
The fellow nodded without enthusiasm, swivelling his head toward the group of tourists. One of them waved and shouted “Vielen Dank.” The Habsburg Empire had self-destructed some ninety years ago, but German speakers still viewed Budapest as an anachronistic piece of Austrian territory.
At the table behind Attila’s, three elderly Hungarian women were debating the relative merits of the chestnut purée — sweet, traditional, brandy-basted — and the kugel loaf — historically more interesting, but less tasty. In the centre of the square, under the seated bronze statue of Mihály Vörösmarty, Hungary’s beloved poet, three young men in faded blue jeans were making a small drug deal. Vörösmarty was looking down as if observing the activities of the young men. The vendor pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and offered a taste. Hardly worth the effort, it was no more than ten ounces. “Be faithful to your land forever, oh Hungarian . . .” The great poet’s words ran around the pedestal, where a bronze phalanx of fellow Hungarians formed Vörösmarty’s adoring public. The buyer finger-tasted the coke and nodded to his companion, who would be carrying the cash. Street value of maybe a couple of thousand dollars. Small-time dealer. Attila assumed he worked the hotels on the Pest side and some of the classy apartments along the tramline. A couple of years ago Attila would have been bearing down on them. But back then they’d have already spotted him for a cop and moved the trade somewhere else. What was it about him that had changed so much in only two years?
Attila had been hunched over his table, a broad-shouldered, greying man, balding on top, overweight, ham-fisted, thick-necked, his shirt collar and jacket both too tight. He straightened his back when the young dealer glanced at him, mildly suspicious, but then the dealer palmed the money and handed over the merchandise without a second look at Attila.
The man with the Wall Street Journal examined his bill, counted some forints into the tray, and stood up to leave. His pants, caught in the wedge of his ass, stuck to his thighs. He must have gained weight since he bought them, Attila thought with some satisfaction. Anyway, it was too warm for leather pants.
His attention was caught by a young woman, her red hair flying, her light-blue summer dress swinging, and her slender white heels flying over the paving stones as she ran toward the Gerbeaud. She lifted her long legs over the silk rope barrier, straddling it for a second, her cotton skirt billowing around her, offering a glimpse of her white cotton panties, then she was wrapping her arms around the sweaty young man with the calf skin caught between his buttocks. “Jancsi,” she called him, her voice soft as the inside of her thighs.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. Obviously, although the days of swooning over Westerners were long gone, he still thought it stylish to sound foreign.
The woman by the window glanced at the gilt-framed mirror above her companion’s head. She adjusted her silk scarf, flicked her hair over her shoulder, then made that little moue that some women make when they are checking their makeup. She stood up with her weight on her palms flat against the table. Attila figured she was probably still exhausted from her flight and the long drive from Vienna, but she recovered quickly and walked out fast, her dress clinging to her legs, a leather handbag dangling from her arm. She was pretty, although a little older than pretty warranted, and her bare arms and long legs showed the kind of muscle earned by regular workouts. Her erstwhile companion stayed at the table, sipping coffee and digging into the large serving of chestnut purée that had sat there ignored for the past twenty minutes. He was no longer only vaguely familiar. The narrow forehead under the froth of hair. He ran a posh art shop on Váci Street. Attila had paid him a visit about ten years ago. The man had been caught with some stolen primitive art. Indian. He couldn’t remember what the outcome was, except that this man had somehow got away with it.
Attila laid his change on the tray and followed her across the square, past Vörösmarty’s statue, the McCafé, the Hard Rock Café, the exorbitantly expensive clothing stores, down to the Danube, where his quarry was marching past the souvenir vendors with only an occasional glance at the river. Although she did pause for a moment to survey Gellért Hill in all its spring glory, she was not behaving like a tourist. A tourist would have stopped at the Shakespeare statue outside the Marriot Hotel and read the words on the brass plaque.
He kept at a distance as she crossed to Buda over the Szabadság Bridge and walked around the periphery of a small square (why the hell was it under construction again?) to the Gellért Hotel.