Cold Warriors Page 9

  Tomas kept his worries to himself, chewing the problem over and finding nothing digestible in it, while Belle and Anya ordered dobostorte from their apple-cheeked young waiter.

  Five minutes later, the cakes arrived, along with two silver teapots and some delicate china cups with the slightly faded picture of a rose on each of them.

  A minute after that, Tomas was still staring at one undrunk, slowly cooling cup of tea. "Where's Morgan gone?" he said.

  The weather had finally broken its oppressive heat as grey storm clouds moved in to glower over the city, but Morgan was still drenched with sweat. His heart raced, pounding against his chest with every beat.

  He had to get a grip. He knew what he'd just done was extremely stupid. Best case scenario he'd be out of a job - worst case he'd become the Division's next target. But there was no way, just no way, that he was letting this book go before he found out what it meant. If it was written by his real father...

  After his adopted mother had shown him his birth certificate, and before that day five weeks later when she'd taken him to the care home and told him he wouldn't be coming back, she'd let him ask her about his real parents.

  Dead, she'd told him and he'd felt relieved. At least they didn't give him away because they didn't want him. He'd asked his mum to tell him everything she knew about them, these people he'd never heard of who turned out to be the most important people in his life.

  "Your dad was an engineer," she'd said. "With BT, I think."

  "And my mum?" he'd asked eagerly, but she'd just shrugged.

  Had she been lying, or was she lied to herself? Why had no one ever told him what his father really did? Tomas hadn't said anything about Nicholson having any children. But then he hadn't said very much about him at all. Maybe Tomas had known who Morgan was all along.

  Morgan couldn't stop snatching glances behind him to see if Tomas or the other two had followed. But he'd twisted and turned through side street after side street, and unless they already knew where he was going, they'd have a hard time catching up.

  He took another look at the sheet of paper he'd lifted from Anya's file. It told him Karamov had made three calls to a Professor Raphael in the Faculty of Ancient Languages at Eotvos Lorand University. Morgan could only see one reason for a man like Karamov to be contacting this Raphael: he had hoped the professor would be able to translate Nicholson's book.

  Morgan was hoping the same thing. The tourist map he'd bought from a street-corner vendor told him the Faculty of Ancient Languages was located behind Baha Lujza Square. He walked briskly across the wide space through crowds of locals weaving in and out of its tacky shops and smarter department stores. Most of the faces surrounding him bore the distinctive sharp cheekbones of Eastern Europe and all of them were white. He felt unpleasantly conspicuous.

  Finally, on a narrow street behind a bank, he found the faculty. It was a marble-fronted building that might have looked grand if it hadn't been caked in grime, the black residue of the square's gridlocked traffic. A red-faced security guard lounging behind a low table stopped him just inside the entrance.

  "I'm here to see Professor Raphael," Morgan told him.

  The guard grunted something in Hungarian. Morgan mimed incomprehension and the man sighed and pointed up the stairs to his right, then held up three fingers.

  Third floor, Morgan guessed, but when he reached it the place was a warren, narrow green-painted corridors snaking off in every direction. He wandered for a full ten minutes before he found Raphael's door, his name written on a small bronze plaque beneath two others.

  Morgan froze, staring at the door. Was he really going to do this? But he'd already stolen the book. Tomas was unlikely to be any less pissed off if he backed out now. He took a deep breath, then knocked.

  They'd spent a fruitless half hour hunting for Morgan in the busy streets surrounding the café. It had started to rain while they searched, warm, fat drops of it. When Tomas met up with the others again beside the café's elegant façade, Anya's long red hair was plastered to her scalp, two shades darker than it had been before.

  "Well, this just gets better and better," she said grimly.

  Even Belle was looking less perky, her white blouse almost see-through with moisture and the shine gone from her black patent shoes. "He seemed like such a nice boy," she said. "What the heck does he think he's doing?"

  "Taking it back to Karamov?" Anya suggested.

  Tomas shook his head. "He's no traitor. I don't know what he's playing at, but it isn't that."

  "I don't care about the purity of his motives, we have to find him," Anya said. She looked like she was going to say something else, or maybe the same thing again, but then she broke off to reach inside her jacket, which was just the wrong shade of green to match her hair. When she pulled out one of those small portable phones, Tomas realised the grating pop song he'd heard was its ring tone.

  "Yes!" she snapped. She listened a moment, then said, "OK, and where's he going?" There was another pause before she clicked the phone closed without saying goodbye.

  "Someone's seen Morgan?" Tomas asked.

  She shook her head. "Karamov. He's left the hotel, but it doesn't look like he's heading for the airport."

  "Could he be going to meet Morgan?" Belle asked.

  Anya shrugged. "Or maybe he's meeting the buyer, or just picking up some groceries. There's only one way to find out for sure."

  Tomas hesitated. Following Karamov would mean giving up on Morgan. He pictured Morgan's face, soft-eyed and scared, and then the image in his head morphed into a different one, a little older, skin paler, hair a sandy brown. If this had been Richard, what would he have done?

  Everyone knows the risks, he could hear Richard saying. We're not doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. We've all got some reason to be here.

  Tomas found himself smiling, because Richard was the most cynical idealist he'd ever met. But he was also right.

  "We go after Karamov," he said to Anya. "Morgan will have to wait."

  Professor Raphael was so old, Morgan was afraid to take his offered hand, worried even the softest grip would crush the fragile bones inside it. After a moment's hesitation, he touched it with his fingertips, seeing the way the flesh gave beneath them and didn't spring back, all the elasticity of youth gone.

  The man's face was bright with life, though. He had a surprisingly full mop of pure white hair, and his eyes glittered blue beneath the rheum.

  He said something in Hungarian and then, when Morgan looked blank, "English, is it?"

  Morgan nodded. Raphael spoke with almost no accent, and what there was Morgan didn't think was Hungarian.

  "And what can I do for you, young man?" He sat back down at his desk, disappearing behind the stacks of books and paper piled high on top of it. The whole office was almost comically cluttered, every shelf overflowing with junk which had spilled over onto the floor, barely leaving Morgan room to stand. It was hard to imagine what some of the stuff was for - the half-finished child's jigsaw puzzle, a set of lace doilies, torn and grimy with age, a jar of what appeared to be rock salt, some of it spilling out onto the desk.

  Morgan pulled his attention back to Raphael. "Karamov sent me. About the matter you discussed."

  "Did he?" Raphael said, which told Morgan absolutely nothing.

  Ignoring the voice inside him - probably Tomas's - hissing at him not to do it, Morgan pulled Nicholson's book from the waistband of his jeans. "He thought you'd be able to help us translate this."

  The professor peered at the book for a moment before reaching one of his blue-veined hands to take it. There was a second while they both had hold of it, Morgan suddenly reluctant to let the thing out of his grasp. Then he relinquished it to Raphael.

  "So this is the book he spoke of." Raphael riffled slowly through the pages. "It's not as I imagined."

  Morgan leaned forward eagerly. "But can you translate it?"

  "Hmm." Raphael's head cocked to one side, birdlike. "
It is not any currently spoken language, I can tell you that. Not Roman script, either, though it bears similarities."

  "Are you saying you can't help?"

  "No, no, let us not be hasty. It isn't a modern language, but I believe it has its roots in one. Tell me, what do you know about Hungarian?"

  "That I can't speak it?"

  Raphael smiled very slightly. "Unsurprising. It is one of Europe's most mysterious tongues, famously without roots in any nearby language."

  "So this is a form of Hungarian?"

  "A very ancient one, I think, yes - written in a long-forgotten runic alphabet."

  "And there's, what, a dictionary for it somewhere?"

  Raphael nodded. "With any luck, we should have the relevant texts in the library downstairs. I can take you there, if you'd like. It isn't normally open to non-students, but for a friend of Mr Karamov's I believe we can make an exception." He rose shakily to his feet, leaning a hand on the desk to steady himself.

  "Did you know," he said, as Morgan held the door open for him, "there is an ancient Jewish legend which purports to explain the origin of Hungarian? It claims it was the language of Lilith, the demonic first wife of Adam. When God drove her from Eden to make room for Eve, he told her to take her tainted language with her. But to spite the Creator, who had first chosen her and then discarded her, Lilith went to secret corners of the earth, and whispered the language to Adam's children. And some of them, at least, have never forgotten it. It is an amusing story, is it not?"

  Morgan smiled politely as he followed the professor down the gloomy corridor.

  Margaret Island lay ahead of them, over a bridge that spanned the Danube in a series of squat arcs. It was their best guess for where Karamov was heading - and if they arrived ahead of him, there was less chance he'd notice the tail. Tomas would still have to keep out of sight, but Anya at least could stay in the open.

  She mentally cursed the British operative for the thousandth time since she'd heard about his little stunt in the restaurant. Anger came so easily to her these days. She remembered a time when it hadn't been her first response to everything, but she couldn't seem to recapture it.

  The bridge was long, the river broad and sluggish at this point, and the walk gave Anya too much time to think. She'd been sickening of the work for a while now, afraid it was changing her in ways she couldn't change back. She could even pinpoint the time when the transformation began, that trip to Japan chasing down a lead who turned out to be a phantom. It had been a trap, though she'd managed to escape it. But she'd come back a different woman - less trusting, and less happy. How would this mission change her? How long before she ceased to know herself at all?

  "Which way?" Tomas asked when they stood on the shore, the island stretching out verdant in front of them, an oasis in the urban sprawl which lay on both sides of the river.

  "No real way of knowing till he gets here," Belle said.

  Anya frowned, thinking. "This is Karamov's first trip to Budapest."

  "OK," Tomas said. "And..?"

  "Do you have a tourist guide to the city?"

  He shook his head, but Belle handed over a dog-eared copy of the Rough Guide, and Anya flicked through to the section on Margaret Island.

  "I hardly think he's come here sightseeing," Tomas said.

  Anya sighed, still looking down at the book. "But we think he's here to meet someone, maybe someone local. Karamov has probably never been to the island before. They'll have to pick a rendezvous point that's easy for a visitor to find."

  The grim lines of Tomas's face relaxed. "You're right. So what are the options?"

  "The Alfred Hajos swimming pool," Anya said, reading from the book.

  Tomas and Belle shook their heads simultaneously. "Too busy," he said.

  "There are some ruins at one end, an old Franciscan Priory."

  Tomas took the book from her and peered at the photo, a small maze of low stone walls. "Maybe. But where exactly would they meet?" Then he spotted something on the facing page. "The water tower. That's in the park, isn't it?"

  Anya read the description of the tall octagonal building that lay near the centre of the island. "Yes," she said. "That has to be it."

  "But what if we're wrong?" Belle asked. "We could lose Karamov entirely."

  Tomas smiled wryly. "What's life without a little risk?"

  "Exactly the attitude," Anya said sourly, "which got us in this mess in the first place."

  The library seemed to be buried deep in the bowels of the faculty building. Raphael walked more quickly than Morgan would have expected, leading him confidently through the maze of corridors, down four flights of stairs, across two large vaulted rooms and then into another dark warren until he had absolutely no idea where he was.

  "It's a confusing place," he said as Raphael took them into another stairwell, dimly lit and dripping with rank-smelling water.

  Raphael raised an eyebrow at him. "In a hurry? Don't worry - we've arrived." He unlocked the steel door in front of him with a rusty key, then swung it open onto blackness, stepping aside to beckon Morgan through.

  "In there?" Morgan asked dubiously.

  Raphael smiled, wrinkling his face into a thousand shallow crevices. "We are very security conscious here - some of our books are worth a great deal of money. After you, Morgan."

  It was only when he heard the door slam shut behind him that Morgan remembered he'd never told the professor his name.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The life of the park went on around her: women walking children, men walking dogs, a group of students tossing a Frisbee, languid in the humid heat now that the rain had passed. Anya kept her gaze on them and not on Karamov as the big Russian walked towards her.

  Was he - yes, he was going to sit on the bench right beside her, the one she'd deliberately picked because it was nearest to the water tower.

  Both Tom and Belle were elsewhere, out of sight of Karamov and the protection he'd brought with him. The bodyguards were keeping their distance - probably part of the agreement with whoever Karamov was meeting - but Anya was crawlingly aware of their presence. The slightest hint that she wasn't just an innocent tourist, and they'd come swarming. Damn Tomas anyway, for landing her in this on her own!

  Beside her, she felt Karamov shift then shift again, probably unable to get his bulk comfortable on the wooden bench. Or maybe he was nervous. He'd been sweating like a pig as he approached, dark patches of moisture in the armpits of his ugly blue-and-yellow shirt and in the crotch of his cotton trousers, and a sour cloud of body odour had engulfed her as he sat down. Anya eased herself away from him, so that his flabby, moist thigh was no longer resting against hers.

  He shot her an irritated look. She pretended she hadn't seen it, that she was engrossed in the tinny music blaring out of her iPod headphones. It was a nice little device, a recent invention. The music fed out, audible only to those around her. It was amazing how easy people found it to ignore someone with a personal stereo, as if they were inhabiting a slightly different world. The headphones' real input, meanwhile, came from the directional mic in one of her blouse's buttons. If Karamov stayed within her sightline, she should be able to hear what he said.

  He shifted again, glanced at her one last time, then settled back with a sigh. It looked like he hadn't rumbled her. Typical of his kind of Russian, she'd found. It never occurred to them that a woman might be anything more threatening than arm candy.

  Who was he here to meet, though? She leaned back casually and glanced around her.

  Coming up the path to the left was a very tall man leading a tiny, fluffy dog with a big blue bow in its tail. He looked absurd, and from his face she could see that he knew it. Probably not him.

  Further out, sitting on the grass, a group of three young people sunbathed. One of them was reading, book held over her eyes to shield them from the newly emerged sun. Definitely not them.

  From the right this time, a small, pinch-faced young woman approached. She was pretty but
pale, and her eyes squinted as if she wasn't used to daylight. Anya looked away - not her either.

  Except then she felt a shadow fall across her, and when she allowed herself to glance upwards she saw that the girl had stopped right in front of Karamov.

  "Hello, Mr Karamov," she said. Her Russian was heavily accented. Anya's own wasn't good enough to know its origin, but she guessed somewhere rural and remote.

  Karamov's eyebrows rose in amused recognition. "Natasha!"

  She nodded sharply. "If you like."

  Karamov leered, stretching his fleshy jowls wide. "It's lovely to see you, darling, but I really am very busy. Maybe we can have some more fun together later."

  "You're busy meeting me," Natasha said. "I summoned you here."

  Anya could hear in the woman's voice that she liked saying summoned, that she enjoyed its suggestion of control.

  Karamov seemed too shocked by her words to protest them. "You?"

  "Me. You've fucked up, Karamov." Natasha's voice was acrid with hatred. Could he hear how much this woman despised him?

  "Not here," he hissed. "Walk with me." He levered himself out of the bench, leaving a sweat stain on the wood. Then he grabbed Natasha's arm and pulled her towards the water tower.

  Now the voices were only coming to Anya through the headphones. "So our mutual friend has been watching me a while, eh?" Karamov said. "I guess I should have expected it. But this is his fuck-up, not mine. He was the one who arranged the transfer point."

  Natasha shrugged, a twitch of her bony shoulders towards her ears. "And it was your bodyguards who were supposed to secure the venue."