Her room looked undisturbed.
Helena closed the curtains, undressed, pulled on her bathing suit, and slipped her arms into the large hotel terry bathrobe (obviously made for a much bigger person). She slid her thin-bladed knife into one pocket, rearranged the wig, the pillows, the shoes, and took the cage elevator down to the baths. The bathrobe and slippers identified her as a guest to the old woman who operated the elevator as part of the hotel’s effort to seem friendly to guests. She walked under the baths’ mosaic-inlaid arches, past the massage areas, to the “champagne” swimming pool in the atrium. The room was luminous in the late afternoon gloom, with flickering sconce lights mirrored and fracturing on the green tile walls and light from the art nouveau glass roof dancing on the pale green water, the bubbles barely reaching the surface before they popped.
There were two children at the shallow end, their mother sitting on the steps, supervising their splashing. A man wearing a Gellért Baths’ plastic bathing cap was swimming a vigorous crawl along the side near the showers. Two men in similar caps sat on the edge on the same side, dangling their feet in the pool. One of them was drinking from a cardboard cup, the other was smoking something, cupping his hand to hide the cigarette. They both glanced up as she entered but didn’t interrupt their conversation.
There was no attendant.
She lowered herself slowly into the pool, shuddering when the cool water reached her hips. She swam with measured breast strokes, keeping her head well out of the water and staying close to the side farthest from the men. She didn’t slow when she reached the shallow end where the kids were playing, just turned and swam back the way she had come, her leg muscles stretching with each kick. It felt good. The long flight, the drive, the jog up the Buda hill, her anxiety about the painting, and the lack of adequate time to study it had taken their toll. She was out of practice, and maybe out of patience, with this sort of venture. She wasn’t going to be able to take the painting out of the country legally, even if she paid its worth and even if she was re-patriating it to its original owner. There were too many laws around taking art out of the country. So she was forced once again to utilize her father’s noxious legacy.
The big clockface showed 5 p.m. when the man she had been expecting came to the side of the pool, executed a perfect shallow dive (despite the “No Diving” sign), and began to swim to the far end, now abandoned by the children, whom she’d overheard agitating to go to the outdoor wave pool.
Miroslav stopped in the middle, trod water, and smiled at her. He was about her height, narrow-shouldered, and the sinews on his neck stood out, as did his Adam’s apple. He had a wide forehead, sparse hair under the transparent shower cap, and long earlobes. The hotel’s compulsory shower caps flattered no one but were particularly unkind for men with prominent ears.
“How are you enjoying Budapest?” he asked, his voice cracking and his Slavic accent a bit less obvious than the last time she had met him.
“Pleasant enough,” she said. “You?”
“I prefer warmer weather,” he said.
She swam closer and waited, also treading water.
“We could go to the café?” he said. “They make good espresso here. Just as you like it.”
“Here is fine.”
“You know you can’t leave with it, don’t you?” he said. He had very bad breath. “This is not Bratislava.”
“Obviously.”
She had first met him in Bratislava. She had been trying to recover a prized Raphael taken by a city official as payment for allowing a family to depart for France in the 1960s. In 1993, the family wanted the painting back. The former official had become a senior functionary in Robert Fico’s quasi-democratic government and showed great reluctance to hand it over.
“And there is no reason we should both chase the same prize again, now, is there?” he added. He had been trying to buy the Raphael from the functionary at about the same time Helena was hoping to retrieve it for the family. They were both agents for others, but she had felt righteous about her cause. A dangerous sentiment when you need a clear head.
She had lost. The family had to pay a ransom for the painting, and Helena had cancelled her own fee.
“You were satisfied with our deal the last time. Fair. Fast. Safe. Why change horses now?”
“Not entirely,” she said.
“Vladimir sends his regards.”
Vladimir Azarov was one of the less violent Ukrainian oligarchs. Sensibly, he had shown little interest in politics until the demonstrations started in 2013, and then he took no sides except to suggest to the new president and to the press that violence was not a solution to the country’s east–west divide. During the Yanukovych years, he had kept his nose clean and the price of gas constant, and he had not tried to liberate anyone from jail.
“Fifty thousand dollars to walk away and no questions asked,” he said. “We don’t know what your take-home is on this deal, but I assume your clients are one-timers, not like us. Fifty thousand is good money.”
“Or vice versa?”
He chuckled. “Vladimir doesn’t need the money. And you can’t hope for a better deal,” he said. “It’s easier to keep old clients happy than to find new ones every time. It’s all about mutual trust. With trust, business is easier, more predictable.”
Not to mention that it was easier not to go through his middlemen, she thought. The last time she had dealt with Azarov directly, he had commissioned her to buy him a Renoir from a secretive collector in Croatia.
“Is he still collecting Renoirs?”
He looked down his flat nose at her and sniffed. “Renoir? Not this time.”
“A pity,” she said. Then she told him she needed to finish her lengths. “Exercise is good for the mind.”
“You need to watch your health,” he said. “Things happen.”
He emerged from the pool near the entrance to the four other pools, wrapped himself in his bathrobe, crossed his arms in front of his belly, and smiled at her.
She swam back and forth, now stretched out in a full American crawl, barely turning her face for a short breath every third stroke. Her body cut through the water, softly, like a knife. Miroslav waited while she swam her fifty lengths. “Not bad,” he said. “Working out a lot, are you?”
Then he watched her climb out at the other end of the pool and whistled appreciatively. “Nice ass,” he said. His voice echoed in the shimmering green dome. “Still,” he added, “who knows how long that will last. You need to think about the future, my lady.”
She wrapped a white towel over her head and waved at him as she left, her Gellért slippers slapping on the mosaic tiles. She considered Miroslav to be one of Vladimir Azarov’s least objectionable men. She had never known him to be overtly violent, at least not with her, although, as with men of his profession, there was always a first time.
“You still enjoy music?” he asked her retreating back. “Vladimir likes opera.”
She turned to look at him.
“Especially Puccini,” he said.
***
The man standing at her door rattled the change in his pockets, pretending to look for the key, which, of course, he didn’t have. He was playing for time, waiting for her to disappear into one of the other rooms or to pass him. She did neither.
Obviously, he didn’t know what she looked like, or he had a different mental picture of the woman he saw coming down the corridor, absently rummaging in her pocket.
He wore an ill-fitting brown suit, a blue-and-white striped shirt, black lace-ups. His hair was cut short, and he looked almost bald. Mid-thirties. About 230 pounds. He was watching her with a lopsided grin that revealed a gold tooth, maybe two gold teeth. He stopped jangling his loose change and faced her, still uncertain but beginning to think about her size, shape, height. Helena could read it in his face. She kept going toward him till she was close enough to reach him with an outstretched arm. Then she stopped, took a deep breath, planted her feet wider, and waited. Perhaps he would turn away. Perhaps . . .
Still grinning, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a handgun with a silencer. She waited for a moment, in case he wanted to ask her something. He didn’t. The gun was almost at her chest-level. She kicked him in the gut with the side of her right foot, in the back of his knees with her left, then hit his temple with her fist as he fell. He rolled onto his back, an expert roll, showing no reaction to the pain, and raised the gun with both hands. He was not nearly quick enough. She ducked. The bullet whizzed by her neck and lodged in the wall. She hit him hard across the nose with her heel and again in the gut. She spun, kicked the gun out of the way and smacked him in the neck under the chin with her other foot. He grabbed her ankle and twisted, his hands slippery with the blood from his nose. She yanked her leg up and out of his reach, her fingers already closing on the hilt of her knife. She dropped to her knees and slid the point in just under his ear. He stopped thrashing for a second then tried to grab the knife, but his fingers slid off it. He reached to where he must have thought his gun was, but he was wrong. She slid the knife in farther. He lay very still, his breathing shallow. Then he stopped breathing. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, as if he was licking his lips.
“What the hell?” she whispered, pulling out the knife. “Why would you do that? Why? I didn’t want to kill you. I didn’t. Damned stupid kid.” She was still panting from the exertion. Fear, her father had said, was a great motivator. If you’re scared enough, you’ll have more strength than you imagined possible. You would be more focused. Damned dumb kid.
She yanked off the slippers and pressed them against the knife wound to slow the blood leakage. She wound her towel tightly around his neck and draped his right arm over her shoulder, pulled him upright, and dragged him to the chintz chair at the end of the corridor, close to the elevators. He fell into its plush gold pillows, his chin on his chest.
He seemed younger now than before. Dark, thin skin under his eyes. Bruised knuckles on his right hand. Uneven teeth. The gold incisors, probably extracted and replaced for effect. She quickly rifled through his suit. Five hundred Euros in his breast pocket. No ID. Car keys. A single, large door key. The gun was a Glock 21, a model Swiss & Wesson had stopped selling a couple years ago.
She crossed his arms, wrists over his testicles, legs out in front. Balanced. She wiped the gun with the damp end of her robe and shoved it, barrel down, into his belt. “Sorry,” she whispered, as she took four hundred from his stack of euros and the door key. “You needn’t have died. Stupid waste. Whatever they paid you, it wasn’t worth it.”
Whoever had sent him had not told him about her reputation, which she had worked hard to acquire to avoid such a situation. Or he was just too cocky, too determined, to give up.
Using her airplane handy-wipes, she cleaned up the blood she had been unable to staunch as best she could. But it would show if anyone was really looking. No one came along the corridor. It was a few weeks before the tourist season, so there were not many people booked into the rooms at the rear of the hotel, and it was close to lunchtime. As long as no one discovered him or the blood in the next ten minutes, she would be fine.
As she opened the door to her room, a man and a woman emerged from the elevator, talking in Croatian. They said hello in English to the motionless young man in the armchair. Coincidence? Or did they know him? They kept walking and talking. They hadn’t noticed he was dead.
She threw her stuff into the holdall, changed into the black pants, running shoes, sweater, hoodie, and paid her bill with one of her American Express cards via the hotel’s TV channel. On the way to the elevator she had another look at the man in the armchair. Such a bloody waste.
What she needed to know was who had sent him and why. Azarov knew she was here, but he wouldn’t have booked a seat for her at the opera if he wanted her dead. Had Kis alerted other collectors? If so, how many of them would want to have her killed? Kis had mentioned there could be some Russian interest in the painting, but she had thought that he was inventing the extra competition to raise the stakes, and the price. Even if there were interested Russians, would Kis have let a Russian know she was here?
She checked with her office for messages, but there were only two relevant ones: no threats, no warnings, no explanation for the attack. Her secretary, Louise, sounded bored. She liked to be busy, and there was never enough to do when Helena was away. One message was from János Krestin suggesting they meet for a meal in a Budapest restaurant. The other was from James at Christie’s. Would she look at an 1872 Corot? The owner claimed to have inherited it, but authenticity was hard to establish with Corot.
Why would James choose her for this? Had he found out something about her father?
Simon had been fond of Corots. Jean-Baptiste, he had told her, was so careless about his work, so happy to have his paintings copied by his students, so obliging, or greedy, he even signed them all. What, then, was the harm in continuing his practice? There was such confusion over which ones were really painted by Corot that few buyers bothered to check authenticity.
She left by the front door, declined the doorman’s offer of one of the hotel taxis. Long after the doorman had lost interest in her, she boarded a tram at the stop in front of the Gellért and rode it across the river to Pest.
This time, the sturdy policeman (if her guess was correct about him) was not waiting outside.