Charles Cumming - The Trinity Six

Calm down, he told himself. Take it easy. The train could have stopped for any number of reasons. There could be illegal immigrants on board, a smuggler taking drugs or cigarettes into Budapest. Behind him, Gaddis could hear the policemen working their way through the carriage, as slow as the ticket inspector, as thorough and as sinister as jackbooted thugs in the Waffen SS.

‘Tickets please.’

The taller of the two policemen, the one who appeared to have recognized him at the door, was standing above the table. Gaddis fumbled in his jacket for the ticket Eva had handed to him at Hegyeshalom. He could not remember any of the advice that she had given him. Why had she not joined him on the train? Had he been set up? Why had Tanya not arranged for a second MI6 agent to accompany him to Budapest?

‘Thank you,’ said the policeman, as Gaddis passed him the ticket. He made a deliberate point of looking the policeman in the eye, trying to seem bored, trying to seem indifferent. For a wild moment, he was convinced that he was the same man who had tailed his cab from the UN.

‘You are English?’

Gaddis had not spoken. How had the policemen managed to establish his nationality? The game was up. They knew who he was, where he was from, what he was doing. For a split second he considered responding to the question in Russian, but if the police had seen his face on CCTV at the Kleines Cafe, any attempt at subterfuge would simply convince them of his guilt.

‘Yes. From London. How did you know?’

Though he had asked his question in English, the policeman did not appear to understand the reply. Gaddis looked behind him, at the second officer, who was busily checking tickets on the opposite side of the carriage. This, in itself, gave him a glimmer of hope: why would they carry on with their search if they knew that they had found Wilkinson’s companion? The girl with the pink-and-yellow headphones was reaching into the pocket of her jeans; she had not even bothered to take off the headphones. Gaddis was staggered by her sense of calm. But what was she looking for? A ticket or an identity card? If the police asked Gaddis to produce a passport, he was finished. Across the table, the crew-cut Hungarian had woken up. One of the tattoos on his arm was a caricature of Elvis.

‘So you are going to Budapest?’

‘Just for the night, yes.’ Gaddis remembered what Eva had told him. You are coming back tomorrow. A one-way journey always looks more suspicious. He cursed her for not providing him with a passport, a driving licence, some kind of photo ID with which to bluff his way through. What kind of tourist crossed an international border without a passport? What kind of intelligence agency left a man to fend for himself on a train crawling with cops?

‘Enjoy yourself,’ said the policeman.

Gaddis wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly. Was he imagining it? But the officer had turned his attention to the Hungarian and his girlfriend, both of whom flashed tickets at him with complete indifference to his authority. Perhaps these kind of searches were commonplace. Just then, a radio crackled on the jacket of the second officer. He responded instantly to the message, walking directly out of the carriage and down on to the track.

‘What happened?’ Gaddis asked.

‘They find him,’ said the Hungarian.

Both men stood in their seats and craned to look at the police cars parked at the level crossing. Through the cluster of passengers trying to see the same thing, Gaddis made out a young man who was being bundled into the back seat of the furthest car. A policewoman pushed his head downwards with the flat of her hand, and there were handcuffs on his wrists, secured behind his back.

‘Any idea what that was?’ Gaddis asked.

The Hungarian shook his head. ‘No. I do not,’ he said, and leaned over to kiss his girlfriend.

An hour later, the train was pulling through the ghost town suburbs of Budapest, past abandoned freight cars on sidings, clusters of wild poppies and weeds. Gaddis saw the entrance to Keleti station opening up ahead in a delta of gleaming tracks. It felt like a cause for celebration. It was now surely just a question of meeting Eva’s contact and of being driven out to the airport.

He stepped down on to the platform and was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of local men and women offering him a room for the night, a taxi into town, a meal at a local restaurant.

‘Car?’ they said as he shook his head. ‘Where you like go, sir?’

He ignored them and stuck to Eva’s instructions, walking towards the great glassed roof of the station in search of Miklos. There was a bench fifty metres along the platform, positioned just a few feet from the ticket inspectors. Sitting on it, exactly as she had described, was a man with a beard wearing a green jacket. Gaddis could see a bottle of Vittel in the man’s left hand. At that moment, Miklos looked up and caught Gaddis’s eye, smiling broadly. Gaddis knew immediately that he would like him: the Hungarian, who was about fifty, had quick, lively eyes, mischief in his face and the aura of a man who was lucky and self-assured.

‘Mr Sam?’ he said, reaching to shake his hand.

Gaddis took it. Miklos was wearing brown leather gloves. The palm was sticky and cold against his own.

‘Will you forgive me if I ask who sent you here?’ Gaddis asked.

‘Of course I will forgive you.’ Miklos was still smiling, still pumping his hand. ‘It is important to be certain about these things, no? My name is Miklos. I was sent to meet you by our mutual friend, Eva, in Vienna, who was in turn acting for the woman you once knew as Josephine Warner.’

Gaddis felt a wave of relief. Miklos took his bag, against Gaddis’s protestations, and walked past the ticket inspectors without a glance. They went outside to a four-door Seat parked just a block from the station.

‘We go to my apartment first,’ Miklos explained. Gaddis thought that there was nothing unusual about this. ‘Your aeroplane, it does not leave for a few hours.’

He had opened the rear door of the car, as if hiring a taxi, but realized his mistake and moved to the passenger seat. Outside, Budapest felt a world away from Vienna, churning and chaotic and still touched by the faded grandeur of Communism. Gaddis was reminded of the grey, dirty light in Moscow; there was that same blanket smell of bitumen and diesel on the air and he felt the kinship of a world with which he was far more familiar. Miklos drove quickly, swerving and leaning on the horn, down film noir boulevards that, to Gaddis’s romantic eye, were full of all the bustle and wonder and threat that had been scoured clean from modern Vienna. For a blessed instant he felt free. Then he thought of Wilkinson and the screaming crowds in the Kleines Cafe and knew that he was far from safe.

‘So I am to understand that you have been through a very difficult trauma,’ Miklos said.

The word ‘trauma’ sounded excessive, even melodramatic, but Gaddis found himself replying: ‘Yes.’

‘Well, do not worry. It is all right now. You are in good hands. I take you to my apartment quickly. My wife, she fix you the soup. I will hand you your new passport, also some money. By sunset you are back in London.’

‘You’re very kind.’ He wanted to ask the same questions that he had tried to put to Eva. How did you come to be working for MI6? How often do you do this kind of thing? But he knew now that it was best to allow these angels of the secret world the privilege of their anonymity.

‘Are you from Budapest?’ he asked instead. It was an unimaginative question, but a little conversation seemed important.

‘I am,’ Miklos replied. ‘I give you the language lesson, OK? Quick guide to Hungarian.’