Spies of the Balkans

“Excuse me, but did you not say on the train that you were attending the funeral of your wife’s mother, in Vienna?”

Herr Gruen flinched. Why had this terrifying woman, cheeks flushed, arms folded across her chest, suddenly attacked him? He did not answer, looking like a schoolboy caught out by a teacher, said, “Well,” to gain time, then “I did, meine Frau, say that. I’m afraid I did not tell the truth.”

“Oh?” This was a threat.

“I did not mean to trouble you, meine Frau, but I felt I could not honorably respond to your question.”

“And why not?” The admission had not appeased her; the prospect of a really nasty confrontation apparently provoking her to a sort of sexual excitement.

“Because we are married, but not to each other.”

The woman’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

“We are in love, meine Frau, so much in love, we are.” He paused, then said, “Tragically.”

Now she went scarlet, and stuttered an apology.

For her, he thought, just as good as a fight. Humiliation. Possibly better. It wasn’t until he was back inside the cabin that he realized his shirt was soaked with sweat.

27 December. In the sunless light of a winter morning, the Gypsy musicians on the Danube dock seemed oddly out of place, as though they’d become lost on their way to a nightclub. Still, they sawed away on their violins and strummed their guitars as the passengers disembarked from the Leverkusen. Holding hands as they walked down the gangplank, the Gruens were as close to peace of mind as they’d been for a long, long time. True, their train to Belgrade didn’t leave until the morning of the twenty-ninth, so they would have to spend two nights in a hotel. This didn’t bother them at all-they were no longer on German soil, and the hotel would be luxurious. A Hungarian officer stamped their passports in the ship’s dining room, and they’d begun to feel like normal travelers as they headed for the line of taxis waiting at the pier.

But they were, just then, intercepted.

By a strange creature, small and dark and vaguely threatening, who wore a narrow-brim brown hat with a card stuck in the hatband that said Hotel Astoria. Not a bad hotel, but not where they were going. “Hello, hello,” said the creature.

“Good morning,” said Herr Gruen. “We’re not at the Astoria, we’re booked at the Danube Palace.”

The Gruens started to walk away, but the creature held up a hand, stop. “No,” he said, “you can’t go there.” His German was rough but functional.

“Excuse us, please,” Herr Gruen said, perhaps less courteous now.

The creature seemed puzzled. “You’re the Hartmanns, right? Green tie, green hat?”

Herr Gruen’s eyes widened. Frau Gruen said, “Yes, we are. And?”

“I’m called Akos, it means ‘white falcon.’ I’m sent by your friend in Salonika, and I’m here to tell you that if you set foot in the Palace, well, that’s the end of you.”

Herr Gruen said, “It is?”

“A big fancy hotel, Herr Hartmann, so Germans all over the place, and they’ve bribed every waiter, every porter, every maid. You won’t last an hour because they know, they know fugitives when they see them.”

“So it will be the Astoria?”

“What? Oh, I forgot.” Akos took off his hat, slipped the card from the hatband and put it in his pocket. “No, I got this just for the dock. It’s not so nice where I’m taking you, but you’ll be safe.” He glanced sideways, at something that had caught his attention, something he didn’t like. “Let’s go,” he said. “And let’s make it look good,” he added, taking the valise from Herr Gruen. They walked to the line of taxis, then past it, to a taxi parked in a side street just off the waterfront. Akos opened the door for the Gruens, then stared toward the dock as they settled themselves in the backseat.

The taxi sped away, cornering through side streets as Akos, from time to time, turned the rearview mirror so he could see out the back window. The driver said something in Hungarian, Akos answered him briefly. They crossed a bridge, then drove for a few minutes more, entering a narrow street with dead neon signs over nightclub doors. “It gets busy here at night,” Akos explained. Midway down the block they stopped in front of a hotel-an old building two windows wide, brick stained black with a century of soot. “Here we are,” Akos said. The Gruens peered out the window-here? “Don’t worry,” Akos said. “You’ll survive. Wait till you get to Serbia!”

The smell inside was strong: smoke, drains, garlic, God only knew what else. There was no clerk-a bell on the desk, a limp curtain over a doorway-and Akos led them upstairs, up three flights past silent corridors. The room was narrow, so was the bed, with a blanket over a mattress, and the paint had been peeling off the walls for years. “If you want food,” Akos said, “just go downstairs and ring the bell, somebody will get you something, but you don’t leave the hotel.” He stood to one side of the window, moved the curtain an inch with his index finger, and muttered to himself in Hungarian. It sounded like an oath. To the Gruens he said, “I’ll be back. Something I have to take care of.”

Gus wanted these people kept safe, and Akos was proud that he’d been chosen for the job. But now he had a problem. A man he’d spotted at the dock had stared at every passenger leaving the Leverkusen, then a taxi followed his own through a maze of back streets, and now the hotel was being watched by the same man. Not young, with the sort of head that looks like it’s been squeezed flat, a brush mustache and waxy complexion, he wore a grimy pearl-gray overcoat. Who was he? A policeman? Akos didn’t think so. The guy definitely didn’t act like a detective; he was furtive, and he was alone. He was, more likely, some miserable little sneak who sold fugitives for cash-cash from the Budapest cops, or even from the Germans.

These people he’d hidden in the hotel were on the run, surely using false papers. And how did the sneak know that? Because when people ran from the Nazis they ran through Budapest, and when you see something often enough you learn to recognize it; you can smell it. And if the guy was wrong, so what? He was still some cop’s lapdog, next time he’d get it right. Cops lived off informers; that was how they did their work. They’d tried it with Akos, but only once: he shrugged, he didn’t know anything, I’m the dumbest guy in town. In the gang Gus ran, no rats allowed, there were stories, bad stories, better to be loyal. Akos left the hotel, made a sharp turn away from the man in the doorway of an abandoned store, then, head down, in a hurry, he walked around the block, coming up on the man from behind.

Akos carried a little knife, simple thing, a cheap wood handle and a three-inch blade. But that was all you needed, if you knew what you were doing. Only a three-inch blade but he kept it sharp as a razor, so it had to be protected by a leather sheath. As he neared the man, he took the knife out of its sheath and held it behind his leg. What to do? Slide it in and out? That would be that. Put it in the right place and the victim never made a sound, just fell down, as though the air had been let out of him. But now you had a corpse, now you had a murder, so there would be cops on the street, sniffing around. They would search the hotel.

Akos dropped his hand on the man’s left shoulder and, as he turned in that direction, circled around on his blind side. Startled, the man opened his mouth, ready to tell some tale but he never got it out. What an ugly tie, Akos thought. Maroon, with a gray knight-on-horseback in the middle. Who would wear such a thing? He took the bottom of the tie between thumb and forefinger as though to study it, then the knife flashed, so fast the guy never saw it, just below the knot. Ah, but maybe Akos wasn’t as deft as he thought, because the blade not only sliced off the tie but took a shirt button as well, which flew up in the air, landed with a click on the pavement, and rolled away. Still holding the bottom of the tie, Akos folded it in half and stuck it in the pocket of the man’s shirt. The man whinnied with fear.

“Could’ve been an ear,” Akos said. “I think maybe you should go back wherever you came from. And forget what happened. Because if you don’t …” Akos put the knife away.

The man said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” turned, and hurried off.

29 December.

The train was classified as an express, but it never sped up, just chugged slowly south across the Hungarian plain, past snow-covered fields where crows waited on the bare branches of the trees, through mist and fog, like a