Deceptions Anna Porter (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

minutes later, she arrived at a corridor with a series of doors leading off in both directions. Three of them displayed thin metal signs with names. She used her cellphone to take photos of the nearest of them: two to the left, one to the right. All of them had “Dr.” before their names — a wonderful middle European prefix to indicate that the individual was of considerable importance. None of the doctors she had met in the east had medical degrees, though a couple of them in Poland had offered to examine her.

She checked her watch, retraced her steps, and took the stairs two at a time, to estimate how long it took her. She descended and tried one more time to make sure her estimate of his timing was right: just under two minutes. That was how long it had taken the man to get down these stairs, out the security door, and over to the guard booth. She was satisfied that he would have come out of one of these offices. She dumped her stack of brochures on a windowsill, hurried down to the entrance, waved and smiled at the guard again, called out a cheery “Szia,” and left.

Outside, the pimply-faced guard in the small booth looked at her, surprised but not in the least concerned. She waved again and jumped over the streetcar tracks and the barrier, made it to Alkotmány Street and ran down Honvéd Street to Szabadság Square, where there was usually a crowd to be lost in. At the far end of the square some people with placards shouted something about liberty — a nice touch, since the translation of the square’s name was liberty. She pulled up her hoodie and joined them.

She waited an hour, allowing for plenty of time for her group of tourists to leave the parliament building. Still no police siren and no one in pursuit. The French guide had not noticed her absence.

It was almost dusk when she returned to Kossuth Square to smell the roses again.

Chapter Thirteen

It was not a long walk downhill from the Ruszwurm to Tibor Szelley’s remarkably pretty condominium on the Buda side of the Danube, but Attila didn’t like to leave his elderly car in the Castle area in the late afternoon when the Romanian thugs started to worry about their stolen car quotas. Attila had arrested two of their mob bosses when he was still with the police, but, as it turned out, they were not prosecuted. Back then, the castle elite loved getting deals on Mercs. And back then, the Romanians would never have lifted a Škoda of any vintage. Now, Czech-made Škodas were becoming collectibles since the factory moved to India as part of Volkswagen’s “rationalization” program.

Tibor shared the apartment with his mother and two white, long-haired Persian cats with a tendency to wind themselves around visitors’ legs and shed. Attila was a dog lover, but he tolerated the cats because Tibor was his oldest friend and Tibor’s mother plied Attila with J&B and strudel when he visited. Fortunately, in addition to the strudel, she was rarely without a tempting round of Ruszwurm Dobos torte, and Anna and Sofi loved Dobos torte as much as they loved the cats. Otherwise, after their adventure at the park, it would have been a challenge to bring them here. There had been a long lineup at the Ruszwurm with no hope of getting a table in less than half an hour.

Tibor had always been Attila’s most reliable source of inside information. He had been blessed with a grandfather who was proud of his occupation as a bus conductor, his Party membership, and his ability to get Tibor’s father a pleasant desk job and his grandson the best education that the “workers’ paradise” could offer. As a result, Tibor spoke four languages (none of them well), excelled at maths, and made a smooth transition to the post-Communist world as a banker. He had maintained exemplary connections in the Gothic castle.

On the other hand, Attila’s grandfather’s pre-war occupation as a shoe factory owner proved to be a challenge in the nasty 1950s. That the factory was still turning out quality waterproof boots for the Hungarian army did not help. When the Communist government nationalized the factory and installed a politically acceptable manager, the new boots were no longer waterproof and tended to fall apart after only a few days’ use, so the factory closed. Attila’s grandfather had found work as a sheep wrangler. He had not been very good at it, but no one else was either because the experienced sheep wranglers had been relocated to work in factories.

Being classified as bourgeois counted against the entire family, so Attila’s father found work in a leather goods factory as a machinist, and Attila could make it only to a vocational school, ideal for future factory workers. Had it not been for Tibor, Attila would not have been accepted into the police academy.

Tibor was waiting for them on the landing. He looked much younger than Attila — “all those years of healthy living,” he had told Attila. As usual, he wore a cashmere sweater and light wool pants, his idea of loungewear. Entertaining guests on the landing was his opportunity to smoke one of his heavily scented Turkish cigarettes. His mother admonished him for smoking in the apartment unless he was smoking menthols, and Tibor hated menthols.

He hugged the girls and shooed them in to talk with the cats and try the Dobos torte in the kitchen. “An unexpected pleasure,” he said to Attila. “Does this mean you are cancelling our afternoon at the Király?” They met most Fridays at Király Bath for Scotch, chess, and a soak in the warm pool.

“No. We’ll still have lots to talk about tomorrow,” Attila said. “Just a simple bit of information today.”

“No information is ever simple,” Tibor said, offering Attila a cigarette and the second glass of J&B he had carried out in anticipation of his friend’s arrival.

Attila