Red Rabbit

the embassy canteen opened. He looked at the phone by his bed and thought about calling home, but he didn’t know how to dial out on this phone system, and he probably needed Hudson’s permission—and assistance—to accomplish the mission. Damn. He’d awakened at three in the morning, thinking to roll over and give Cathy a kiss on the cheek—it was something Jack liked to do, even though she never had any memory of it. The good news was that she always kissed back. She really did love him. Otherwise, the return kiss would not have come. People can’t dissimulate while asleep. It was an important fact in Ryan’s personal universe.

There was no use turning on the bedside radio. Hungarian—actually Magyar—was a language probably found on the planet Mars. For damned sure, it didn’t belong on Planet Earth. He’d not heard one, not even one, word that he recognized from English, German, or Latin, the three languages he’d studied at one time or another in his life. The locals also spoke as quickly as a machine gun, adding to the difficulty on his part. Had Hudson dropped him off anywhere in this city, he would have been unable to find his way back to the British Embassy, and that was a feeling of vulnerability he hadn’t had since he was four years old. He might as well have been on an alien planet, and having a diplomatic passport wouldn’t help, since he was accredited by the wrong country to this alien world. Somehow he’d not fully considered that on the way in. Like most Americans, he figured that with a passport and an American Express card he could safely travel the entire world in his shorts, but that world was only the capitalist world, where somebody would speak enough English to point him to a building with the American flag on the roof and U.S. Marines in the lobby. Not in this alien city. He didn’t know enough to find the men’s room—well, he’d found one in a bar the previous day, Ryan admitted to himself. The feeling of helplessness was hovering at the border of his consciousness like the proverbial monster under the bed, but he was a grown-up American male citizen, over thirty, formerly a commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. It wasn’t the way he usually felt about things. And so he watched the numbers change on his digital clock radio, bringing him closer to his personal date with destiny, whatever the hell that was going to be, one red-lit number at a time.

* * *

Andy Hudson was already up and about. Istvan Kovacs was preparing for one of his normal smuggling runs, this time bringing Reebok running shoes into Budapest from Yugoslavia. His hard cash was in a steel box under his bed, and he was drinking his morning coffee and listening to music on the radio when a knock on the door made him look up. He walked to answer it in his underwear.

“Andy!” he said in surprise.

“Did I wake you, Istvan?”

Kovacs waved him inside. “No, I’ve been up for half an hour. What brings you here?”

“We need to move our package tonight,” Hudson replied.

“When, exactly?”

“Oh, about two in the morning.” Hudson reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of banknotes. “Here is half of the agreed sum.” There was no point in paying this Hungarian what they were really worth. It would alter the whole equation.

“Excellent. Can I get you some coffee, Andy?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Kovacs waved him to the kitchen table and poured a cup. “How do you want to go about it?”

“I will drive our package to near the border, and you will take them across. I presume you know the border guards at the crossing point.”

“Yes, it will be Captain Budai Laszlo. I’ve done business with him for years. And Sergeant Kerekes Mihaly, good lad, wants to go to university and be an engineer. They do twelve-hour shifts at the crossing point, midnight to noon. They will already be bored, Andy, and open to negotiation.” He held up his hand and rubbed a thumb over his forefinger.

“What is the usual rate?”

“For four people?”

“Do they need to know our package is people?” Hudson asked in return.

Kovacs shrugged. “No, I suppose not. Then some pairs of shoes. The Reeboks are very popular, you know, and some Western movie tapes. They already have all the tape-player machines they need,” Kovacs explained.

“Be generous,” Hudson suggested, “but not too generous.” Mustn’t make them suspicious, he didn’t have to add. “If they are married, perhaps something for their wives and children…”

“I know Budai’s family well, Andy. That will not be a problem.” Budai had a young daughter, and giving something for little Zsoka would cause no problems for the smuggler.

Hudson made a calculation for distance. Two and a half hours to the Yugoslav border should be about right at that time of night. They’d be using a small truck for the first part of the journey. Istvan would handle the rest in his larger truck. And if anything went wrong, Istvan would expect to be shot by the British Secret Service officer. That was one benefit of the world-famous James Bond movies. But, more to the point, five thousand d-mark went a very long way in Hungary.

“I will be driving to what destination?”

“I will tell you tonight,” Hudson answered.

“Very well. I shall meet you at Csurgo at two tomorrow morning without fail.”

“That is very good, Istvan.” Hudson finished his coffee and stood. “It is good to have such a reliable friend.”

“You pay me well,” Kovacs observed, defining their relationship.

Hudson was tempted to say how much he trusted his agent, but that wasn’t strictly true. Like most field spooks, he didn’t trust anybody—not until after the job was completed. Might Istvan be in the pay of the AVH? Probably not. No way they could afford five thousand West German marks on anything approaching a regular basis, and Kovacs liked the good life too much. If the communist government of this country ever fell, he’d be among the first to become a millionaire, with a nice house in the hills of Pest on the other side of the Danube, overlooking Buda.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Hudson found Ryan at the front of the line in the embassy canteen.

“Like your eggs, I see,” the COS observed.

“Local, or do you truck it in from Austria?”

“The eggs are local. The farm products here are actually quite good. But we like our English bacon.”

“Developed a taste for it myself,” Jack reported. “What’s happening?” he asked. Andy’s eyes had a certain excitement in them.

“It’s tonight. First we go to the concert hall, and then we make our pickup.”

“Giving him a heads-up?”

Hudson shook his head. “No. He might act differently. I prefer to avoid that complication.”

“What if he’s not ready? What if he has second thoughts?” Jack worried.

“In that case, it’s a blown mission. And we disappear into the mists of Budapest, and come tomorrow morning many faces will be red in London, Washington, and Moscow.”

“You’re pretty cool about this, buddy.”

“In this job, you take things as they come. Getting excited about them doesn’t help at all.” He managed a smile. “So long as I take the Queen’s shilling and eat the Queen’s biscuit, I shall do the Queen’s work.”

“Semper fi, man,” Jack observed. He added cream to his coffee and took a sip. Not great, but good enough for the moment.

* * *

So was the food in the state-run cafeteria next door to the Hotel Astoria. Svetlana had chosen and positively inhaled a cherry Danish pastry, along with a glass of whole milk.

“The concert is tonight,” Oleg told his wife. “Excited?”

“You know how long it has been since I’ve been to a proper concert?” she retorted. “Oleg, I shall never forget this kindness on your part.” She was surprised by the look on his face, but made no comment on it.

“Well, my dear, today we have more shopping to do. Ladies’ things. You will have to handle that for me.”

“Anything for myself?”

“To that end, we have eight hundred and fifty Comecon rubles, just for you to spend,” Oleg Ivan’ch told her,