Balthazar forced a path through the crowd, ignoring their protests and the pain in his head as he sprinted after Pal. He held his Glock in his right hand and with his left he wiped away the trickle of blood that ran from his forehead into his eyes. Pal, he could see, was about twenty yards ahead. The black SUVs were still parked in clusters on the square but there was no sign of the Gendarmes themselves, although in the distance, on the left side, he could see some figures in black uniforms walking past the statue of Ferenc Rakoczi on his horse, in the direction of the Ministry of Justice. There was no sign of Attila or Anastasia but there were thousands of people here, so they could be anywhere. There were some police officers walking around, though, the first he had seen since the crisis started. One was female, with red hair. It was the officer he had seen yesterday, on nearby Szalay Street, giving the Gendarmes the finger, he realised. She was already following the commotion, had registered Balthazar’s presence and that he was in pursuit of somebody.
‘Vera,’ shouted Balthazar. ‘It’s Pal, stop him.’
Vera whirled around as Pal approached. She looked at Balthazar, then at Pal, and tried to grab him. He lashed out, caught her on the side of her head with a lucky blow and she staggered backwards. A tall, well-built man was standing by the tents, wearing a Hungarian Freedom Movement T-shirt and holding a walkie-talkie to his ear. A voice crackled from the handset as he scanned the crowd. He nodded and replied. When he saw Pal advancing through the crowd, he lowered the walkie-talkie and started moving towards him. A few yards later, the two men’s hands brushed past each other. Pal slipped something into his trouser pocket. The man with the walkie-talkie raised the handset to his mouth again and spoke quickly before moving back into the crowd.
By now Balthazar was just a few yards away. Pal turned around, quickly smacked his palm against his broken nose. He gasped at the pain, tried to ignore it as his nose immediately started bleeding again, and shouted, ‘Help, help, this man is attacking me. He’s beaten me up. Help me. I am Pal Dezeffy. He is beating me.’
The protestors nearby turned, trying hard to see what was happening. Pal started yelling again, shrinking back in fear from his pursuer. Some in the crowd recognised Pal and began to form a protective ring around him. Balthazar took out his police ID, pushed forward. ‘Make way. This man is under arrest.’
Pal smiled for a moment, turned to the spectators, pointing at his nose, proclaiming, ‘What kind of policeman does this? Please, I beg you, protect me. I am the rightful prime minister. This criminal and his associates kidnapped me and assaulted me. They are organising a coup against us, against our democracy.’
The protestors looked at each other uncertainly. The mood of the crowd was already tense, almost febrile. It could turn in a second, Balthazar sensed. Law and order was collapsing. The fear had gone, both of the Gendarmes and of the regular police. Plus he was a Gypsy. Some of the protestors advanced towards him. ‘Look at him,’ said one lady in her fifties with purple dyed hair, waving her hand dismissively at Balthazar. ‘How can he be a policeman? We know his kind. They break the law, they don’t enforce it.’
A thin, bald man with thick horn-rimmed glasses nodded in agreement, his companions gathering around him, starting to circle around Balthazar. None of them were particularly dangerous or even fit-looking, but they could crowd him in, certainly delay him. He thought back for a moment to what he had just seen. Or thought he had seen. Had the man in the Hungarian Freedom Movement T-shirt handed something to Pal? The radio controller? He thought so, but it was impossible to be sure. Pal was moving off now, Balthazar could see, and another thick-set man, also in a Hungarian Freedom Movement T-shirt, was helping him. Balthazar looked back at his immediate surrounds to see that around twenty people had gathered around him. The atmosphere was turning hostile.
Balthazar pulled out the Glock 17 and fired twice into the air. The crowd scattered instantly. The sound of the gunshot resounded over the square. The protestors started running in all directions. Pal too was running, towards the Ferenc Rakoczi statue on the far side of the square, trying to escape. Now the red-haired police officer was in pursuit, sprinting after him, her pistol in her hand, shouting at him to stop. At that moment the bulky man in the HFM T-shirt stepped out in her way, barged into her and she went flying. Her gun skidded across the damp flagstones, towards Pal. He picked it up and pointed it at Balthazar, then swept it back and forth across the square. The bulky man put Vera in a bear hug from behind, above her elbows, trapping her arms, or so he thought. She grabbed his hands with her left hand to hold them in place, stepped sideways, slid her right hand up towards her left shoulder then out of his bearhug, pivoted on her left foot and slammed her open palm down into his groin. He groaned in pain. Just as his grip loosened, she delivered the same blow again, even harder. He staggered backwards and she stepped away.
Balthazar watched as Vera advanced on Pal from a side angle, out of his line of sight.
‘You are going to let me go, Detective Kovacs,’ said Pal. ‘I’m not a good shot. If I miss you, I might hit anyone. You don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death, do you? Think of that nice photo your son sent you. He’s having such fun with Henrik.’
For a second Balthazar was back on the firing range. The chest offered the biggest and most lethal target. He aimed the gun at Pal’s leg and fired. Pal quickly stepped sideways, dropped the gun down. The bullet went wide and smashed into the base of the Rakoczi statue. Pal raised the gun and took aim again. At that moment Vera launched herself onto Pal, grabbing his gun. He let go of the weapon and started running again, in a straight line towards the end of the square.
Balthazar lowered his Glock and aimed at Pal’s legs. He fired once. Pal flew forward, landed face-down on the grass.
Balthazar ran over to him and turned his prone body over. The bullet had passed through his leg, and the exit wound was clearly visible. It was only a flesh wound, the kind that healed quite rapidly. But the shock of the wound, after the waterboarding and beating, was too much for Pal. He was semi-conscious now, his eyes rolling back in his head, his eyeballs fluttering.
Balthazar shouted at the nearest protestors, ‘Find an ambulance.’ He quickly slid his hands through each of Pal’s pockets, simultaneously glancing at his watch. It was 11.43 a.m. The pockets were empty. There was no radio controller. He looked around, scouring the surrounds in case it had fallen out. There were cigarette ends, sandwich wrappers, empty bottles of mineral water. But no small black box with a keypad. He shook Pal, tried to wake him, asking urgently, ‘Where is the controller? Where is the box?’ But Pal had slipped into unconsciousness.
Balthazar closed his eyes for a second, forced himself to think. Heart pounding, he checked the pockets again. They were still empty. He ran his two hands up and down Pal’s body, as though he were a suspect who had just been arrested. Arms, legs, armpits, waist, small of the back. Nothing. Until he reached his ankles. There was something inside his left sock, square and hard. Balthazar pulled out a small black box, perhaps two inches long, his hands sweating so much that he almost dropped it, looked again at his watch – 11.44 a.m. – forced himself to control his breathing, tapped in the numbers 2006. Nearby, he saw that several small metal grilles embedded in the flagstones were now sliding open. Had he entered the numbers incorrectly? Balthazar tapped in 2–0–0–6 again, slowly and carefully, glanced sideways. The metal grilles stayed open. Small black nozzles were slowly moving upwards.
Then it came to him. He could hear Pal’s voice again. ‘The year I first took power, Detective Kovacs, the year our revolution started. You remember when that was.’ Pal had lied. But he had also given Balthazar a hint. He was not talking about his election victory. He had first taken power not in 2006 but in 1995, when he took over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party, disposing of the old guard who had made him their protégé. The year that was seared into Balthazar’s brain. The year that Virag had died.
Balthazar prayed, for the first time in many years, then tapped in 1–9–9–5.
The nozzles moved back down and the grilles slid shut.
He collapsed onto the grass, closed his eyes and took great gulps of air, until he felt a shadow move across his face.
He looked up to see Alex and Sarah standing over him. Alex said, ‘Hi, Dad. We were on the other side of the square, then we heard the shooting, so we hid behind the Kossuth statue till it stopped. It was scary but kind of exciting as well. What are you doing down there?’