Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(48)

Carey gave him her very best hard stare.

“Now,” he went on, “the item you were attempting to transport out of Hungary – and it was very well-hidden, I congratulate your associates on that – is not, in and of itself, illegal. Nor, as it turns out, is it illegal in Croatia, which I admit does confuse me slightly. However, Hungary operates a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the activity of smugglers, and in particular the organisation of which you claim not to have heard. There are other nations, I am aware, which are more... um, enlightened, but we are not. We view the organisation of which you claim not to have heard as a hostile intelligence agency, and for many years we have dealt with them accordingly. This has not deterred them in the slightest. We find them quite tiresome and, if you’ll forgive me, charmlessly amateur.”

Carey sat where she was, hands folded in her lap.

“What we could do, here and now, you and I, is come to some kind of accord,” Martón went on. “The situation is not unsalvageable, from your point of view. All you have to do is indicate the individual or organisation which retained your services.”

Carey thought about this. She sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “I am a Texan citizen, visiting your country for the purposes of work. All my permits are in order.”

“Yes,” Martón agreed, “they certainly are. Your permits, your passport, your travel documents. Everything in order.”

“I hired the car from the Hertz desk at Szolnok railway station,” she went on. “If there was something wrong with it, you should be speaking to them.”

“Oh, we have,” Martón said brightly. “We still are.”

“Then they’ll tell you I have nothing to do with this.”

“Well, no,” said Martón. “That’s not what they’re telling us at all.”

“I can’t help you, then.”

Martón regarded her sadly. “This is not a game of chicken,” he told her. “I am not going to blink first.”

She shrugged.

Martón sighed. “You may need some time to think about the situation,” he said. He took out his phone, speed-dialled a number, spoke quietly to the person who answered, and hung up. He blinked at her.

A moment later, the undertaker opened the door. Carey stood up, and he took hold of her arm again. It felt as if his fingertips fitted into grooves they had previously made there. He led her towards the door.

“We will speak again, Ms Tews,” said Martón.

The undertaker led her back down the corridor to the stairwell, and down the stairs to the courtyard. A small, scruffy car was waiting, its driver perched on the bonnet smoking a cigar and chatting to another man. The undertaker and the driver took out their phones and swapped data. They both checked their screens, nodded to each other, then the undertaker put Carey into the back seat. The car smelled of tobacco and fried food. The driver got in, and the other man got in the back with Carey, and they drove off, pausing only to wait for a tall wooden gate at the courtyard entrance to roll out of the way.

They turned left into traffic. The man sitting with Carey said, “Anyone?”

The driver checked his mirror. “No.”

The man turned to Carey. He was tall and bulky, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and an American-style pea jacket. “My name is Balász,” he told her. “Were you mistreated?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She sat thinking for a while. She said, “You’re not the police, are you.”

Balász chuckled. “Oh my word no.”

“Not the authorities at all.”

Balász smiled happily and shook his head. “The people who were supposed to be transporting you to detention had a little mishap,” he said. “We’re their replacements, aren’t we, Levente?” The driver grunted.

Carey looked out of the passenger window at the unfamiliar streets. She noted that the door on her side was locked. “What town is this?”

“Kaposvár,” said Balász.

“Where are we going?”

“To see my boss.” Balász looked at her. “Perhaps we should stop along the way and get you a change of clothes.”





THEY DROVE FOR about three hours. Balász and the driver seemed genial enough company, but neither was a sparkling conversationalist, and she was mostly left alone with her thoughts.

“Am I being kidnapped?” she asked, an hour or so into the journey.

“No, you’re being stolen,” Balász said, and he and the driver laughed.

For a while, the road ran along the banks of Lake Balaton, and from the road signs she thought they must be heading for Budapest, but the road turned north fifteen or twenty kilometres from the capital.

They stopped at a little out-of-town mall and Balász went shopping with her. She selected jeans, underwear, a T-shirt and a hoodie, and he paid for them. She had as good a wash as she could manage in one of the mall’s public restrooms, and changed her clothes, and afterward she and Balász visited a fast-food outlet and bought a bucket of fried chicken. They sat in the car, out in the vast car park, and ate the chicken. It was the first halfway decent meal Carey had had since leaving Szolnok about a thousand years ago, and she had to fight the urge to just eat her way to the bottom of the bucket without leaving anything for the others.