Attila had been vaguely aware of the man bearing down on him, but had not recognized the imminent danger. He had spent a few hours on the internet looking for Gyula Németh, G. Németh, and a variety of other Némeths. It was amazing how many Némeths there were in this small country, particularly as the name meant German in Hungarian, and neither Germans nor Hungarians were held in high regard in this part of the world. As he could not afford to hire help, he had no option but to phone every one of them until a G & M Németh in Bratislava — specialists in karate, lessons at reasonable prices — agreed that at least one of them was called Gyula and that he knew a Mr. Krestin in Budapest.
Had Attila left it at that, he would never have seen the formidable bulk of Gyula Németh hurtling toward him along Sedlárska Street while he was checking street numbers for the karate studio.
Instinct took over. Attila fended off Németh’s upraised arm, kicked the gun out of the way as he dropped to his knees, then twisted his arms behind his back, ready to handcuff him. Except, of course, he had no cuffs with him, so he waited with the shocked crowd for a policeman to arrive. All the time, Németh was screaming that he was the victim here.
The two young Slovak policemen who showed up had little interest in Attila’s explanation of his quest to identify who had killed someone in Budapest, but they did agree that this was likely some crazy Hungarian case, since both the victim and Attila were Hungarians, and so was Attila’s boss, the man he called on his cell phone when the Slovak police attempted to arrest him.
“Does anybody here speak Slovak?” Attila heard Tóth shouting at the other end of the phone. “Anyone?”
It would have been insanity to admit to any such thing in Budapest, as it was equally risky to admit to understanding Hungarian if you wished to keep your police job in Bratislava, but everyone agreed to speak enough English that Attila was not charged with an offence, not even after a knife — a long blade with a polished wooden handle — was found embedded in the unfortunate Németh’s upper thigh. One of the policemen suggested he needed medical attention. No one seemed to know how the knife got there, although some bystanders were sure it could not have been Attila’s.
The policemen confiscated the gun and the knife after the laborious work of dislodging the latter from Németh’s bleeding thigh. “Evidence,” one of them said, admiring the knife’s sharp point against his thumb. He asked Attila to stop by the central Bratislava police station the next day before he went on his way back to where he had come from. Attila had only the faintest idea what Németh had said to them in Slovak, but they seemed to have no further interest in the big man or in his reason for attacking Attila, other than in helping him to stand up.
Attila used his shirt to staunch the blood spurting out of Németh’s wound but he didn’t take off the man’s pants, so the blood soaked both the shirt and the pant leg and ran in thin rivulets into his blue Nikes.
The ambulance took them both to Hospital Ružinov, neither the closest, nor the newest, of Bratislava’s medical centres, but the one named on Németh’s medical ID card. Attila travelled in the front with the driver, who assured him that “his friend” would be fixed up very quickly. The ambulance service was not free and not covered by Németh’s policy, according to the driver, but it was by no means the most expensive service in the city, and there would be a small discount if Attila paid cash.
As Németh’s card was for the geriatric wing of this old city hospital, it was safe to assume the doctors there would have very few knife-wounds to deal with. The unusualness of this case alone was likely to guarantee immediate attention.
They had been in the waiting room for maybe fifteen minutes before Attila decided to sit next to Németh and try to find out whether the man had been in Budapest the day Krestin was killed. His “Bika” nickname made sense. The man looked like someone who could inflict serious damage on an opponent. His broad forehead was set in deep frown lines, and there were scars along his wide jaw and down from the corner of one eye. Its eyelid drooped.
He refused to look up at Attila but he did answer the question. “I was there to see János,” he drawled in deep south-country Hungarian, the sort of accent Attila used when he was bent on irritating someone with class pretensions.
“The day before yesterday?” Attila said.
“He is my oldest friend.”
“What time did you visit?”
“What’s it to you?”
When one of the emergency doctors took Németh into a curtained-off area, Attila followed. He watched as the doctor stitched and bandaged the knife wound. Attila couldn’t understand a word of their conversation but he was pretty sure Németh was accusing him of the attack, but, as he had brought the man into the hospital and had given him his own shirt, the doctor seemed prepared to offer Attila the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible that Németh had a nasty reputation at the hospital. Or the doctor was just eager to leave the small, stuffy area. In any event, he left.
“Why were you trying to kill me?” Attila said.
“I thought you were going after me,” Németh protested. “You called. You asked whether I knew János Krestin. You told me he was dead. You didn’t explain what you wanted from me. It’s your own damned fault. You could have said you were with the Hungarian police. I’ve never had any trouble with them. Ever. And János, he was friends with the police chief. And the prime minister. All the prime ministers. He knew everybody.” Németh was examining the bandage on his leg. The blood had oozed through it and was trickling down his leg again. When the nurse came back with the release papers, his blood had soaked through the sheets on the narrow slab of a bed and began to pool under its wheels.
She didn’t bother with the doctor this time. She just changed the bandage, gave him a spare wad of gauze, a packet of pills, some tape, and written instructions.
“I gotta keep my leg up,” Németh said after glancing at the instructions. “My lucky day today! My friend dies. Some chick knifes my leg, and you turn out to be a policeman.”
“Chick?”
“I saw her sitting outside the restaurant before I saw you.”
“A woman?”
Németh didn’t bother to answer that. “She was working with you.”
A woman? What kind of woman would have done that? And why?
“She wasn’t working with me,” Attila said. “I didn’t even see her. What did she look like?”
“Thin, brown hair, glasses, blue raincoat.”
Attila shook his head. “I have no idea who she is. Maybe something to do with Krestin . . .”
“More like someone who killed him.”
“Someone like you, for example?”
“I would never have hurt János,” Németh said. “I loved him. Like I said, he was my oldest friend.”
“Since Vorkuta?”
“Since Vorkuta.”
“Where you were known as Bika?”
“What difference does that make now? It’s more than sixty years ago. Who even remembers those camps?”
Attila nodded. Not many did. Most were now dead. “But people still remember the state security men. That’s only twenty-some years ago. Guys in the ÁVO and AVH, like you and Krestin. He’d be remembered for that.”
“There were a lot of us in the service,” Németh said. “There was only one man I know of who was killed for it. And you guys never figured it out. You put it down to a simple robbery gone wrong.” He snorted with derision, sounding like his nickname.
“Who would want to kill Krestin?”
“Some guy jealous of his success. A couple of days ago he had a call from this little guy who was in Vorkuta with us,” Németh said. “Guy was nursing nasty memories.”
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t say, but János hadn’t liked his tone. He thought the guy could have been looking for a bribe.”
“So you threatened him.”
“Not threatened. I just told him to stop harassing János. He was one of János’s men in the camp. Not too willing at first, but he came around when he saw what was in it for him.”
“And that was?”
“More food. It’s what we all wanted. Enough to stay alive.”
“You mean Gábor Nagy?”
“That little squirrel . . .”
“And what did he do for Janos?”
“Whatever it took to stay alive.”
He looked out the grimy window, as if the answer was somewhere out there. “You’ve seen the photos,” he said.
“Like you said, sixty years ago,” Attila said. “So what could Nagy have on János that he thought would be worth a bribe?”
“A lot of bad stuff in those camps.”
“Like being a kapo?”
Bika shrugged.
“Or something before the war? He was Arrow Cross, wasn’t he?” Attila was taking a stab in the dark, relying on the bit of information in Krestin’s file that had him emerge from jail, while other members of the Communist Party languished for years behind bars.
“As if that matters now he is dead.”
They made their way out of the hospital, Bika leaning hard on Attila, almost pushing him over. The man must have weighed more than a hundred kilos. “And then there is that bastard,” Németh said.
“What bastard?” Attila asked.
“The son of a bitch his mother bore before she left János.”
“Bastard? You mean Jenci is not Krestin’s son?”
“I tried to tell János that the kid was a bastard, but he wouldn’t go along with me. He thought his little lady was not interested in other men.” Németh’s laugh was like a bark, loud and angry. “Last month I got the proof!”
“Last month? How?”
“I took the little bastard out for a drink. Got his DNA.”
***
Attila left another message for Helena at the Gresham. “If you happen to be talking with your client in Canada, please try to find out about a numbered company that made an investment in a big deal of Krestin’s that went sour.”