‘And was there any truth in it?’ Kirov asked.
‘Why do you ask that now?’ Grishin answered sharply.
‘Curiosity.’
‘Well, there wasn’t any truth in it, not a shred and nobody cared, because that’s the way that business was done. Remember that.’ He stood up abruptly and said they should press on back to the house. Kirov followed him. On the way he asked if Grishin had ever come across a GRU case-officer named Heltai. Grishin said he didn’t know him and asked where Kirov had come across the name.
CHAPTER NINE
In those days adults called him Petya. He was a boy on holiday with Uncle Kolya in Riga on the Baltic coast. They were at their hotel whiling away a dreary day moodily sipping lime tea in a sheltered spot on the terrace while behind them in the dining room, viewed dimly through a French window, the waiters played cards.
The stranger was a fat man. He came from the direction of the sea, bare-footed with a pair of two-tone shoes hanging by their laces around his neck. His face was hidden by the broad rim of his straw hat, the jacket from a grey double-breasted suit flopped open over a striped pullover, and a pair of trousers from another suit were rolled at the bottom to display his white feet. His strange glamour was readily apparent.
He approached them, taking the steps two at a time, sheltering his hat under a newspaper, his other hand carefully holding a box tied with string. He placed the box on their table, shook the newspaper out onto the paving slabs, then took a seat.
‘Hope you don’t mind if I sit with you?’ he addressed Uncle Kolya, and, offering a hand, he announced himself. ‘Heltai — Ferenc Heltai.’ Then he looked away back to the sea where the cold rain blew from the rolling mass of cloud.
On removing his hat he showed a round pallid face. His red hair was cut to a stubble and, like many red-haired men, he appeared to have neither eyebrows nor eyelashes, which with the round blandness of his features gave his face an open fascination. He caught the boy staring at him, but, thinking he was interested in the contents of his box, asked, ‘What do you think it is, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Petya answered.
‘Guess.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Go on, make a guess,’ he repeated, but when the boy couldn’t he lost interest and the boy was left to look at the enigmatic box while the stranger engaged Uncle Kolya in conversation, occasionally casting an eye at the waiters who casually returned his glance and continued their card game.
Petya did not know how old this newcomer was; he was himself of an age when the age of other people was a mystery to him. Thinking of him later, he supposed the stranger was in his late twenties, made older in appearance by his weight. He spoke Russian with a Hungarian accent and in an odd dialect of his own making which seemed to consist of stilted official phraseology mixed with the coarsest of abuse, of which he was apparently unconscious since he delivered oaths with perfect coolness. He had the habit of laughing at the end of each remark as if it must necessarily be funny.
Because Petya had become embarrassed by staring at him, he tried to follow the conversation without looking in the other’s direction. So his view drifted over the roadway where raindrops were bouncing from the cobblestones, and he saw two girls also coming, like the stranger, from the direction of the sea. Their printed cotton dresses were soaked and they giggled with discomfort. They too came up the steps onto the hotel terrace where they took the table next to the two men and the boy, and the elder of the pair began to shout for a waiter and finally went over to the French window and rattled on the glass. The waiter came and took their order, and Ferenc Heltai also ordered a beer. That action and the direction they had come from gave Petya the idea that he and the girls were in some way linked. He was a stranger and they were other strangers who fitted inside him like a doll. Take the girls apart and they would reveal more strangers.
Uncle Kolya dealt with the other man cautiously. The Hungarian was more open — indeed he seemed anxious to talk. He was attracted to the older man; his manner and his authority inspired confidence, and the Colonel (as he then was) eased him along with small prompts and murmurs of sympathy. Petya could not understand what they were talking about, but as the conversation developed he realised that Uncle Kolya was subtly interrogating the other man, drawing out his story; and he admired then and often later the skill and power his uncle displayed. He wanted to acquire that ability, that power to take a stranger and reveal his secrets and strangeness.
The girls meantime were making themselves comfortable. The elder one had taken off her headscarf and was shaking her hair and wringing the moisture out of the scarf. Her companion was sitting back in her chair and seemed to be looking longingly out towards the sea. This was what attracted Petya’s attention to her; he wanted to understand what was out there, somewhere beyond her sight. Occasionally her hand passed over her dress, smoothing out the lines and picking out the damp folds. The pattern on the dress was of primroses. The wet material clung to her. She wore no brassière, but her breasts were covered by a cloth tied halter-fashion about her neck so that they fell in a natural line. The boy was, of course, intensely interested, but he endeavoured to cover his interest. He leaned forward on the table, resting his chin on his hand with his eyes peering above the splayed fingers and the fingers stroking the down on his lip and chin.
Having stirred the waiters into action, Uncle Kolya kept their new companion supplied with beer. Heltai, mistaking this interest for friendliness, continued to be forthcoming, but, probably in recognition that the boy’s attitude was less complicated, less dangerous than that of Uncle Kolya, he drew Petya into the conversation.
‘It’s a cake,’ he said. ‘In the box — a cake, a Ruslan and Ludmila cake.’ By way of explanation why he was carrying the cake about in the rain, he went on: ‘I bought it in Leningrad. A speciality. Hard to come by. I daren’t leave it in my room or the hotel staff would steal it, so I have to take it everywhere. Last night I went to the cinema. The night before I went dancing. Both times I took the cake.’ He swore and laughed. ‘Did you guess it was a cake?’
Petya shook his head.
‘Ah —’ The red-haired man smiled at him. ‘Then you’ll never grow up to be a good policeman.’
There was a message for the Colonel in this last remark since Heltai began to talk of police matters, but he continued to treat the boy as entitled to listen. It was his first introduction to the secret life, and although the details were lost on him he understood immediately its fascination. The stranger spoke of people Petya didn’t know. He mentioned in particular a man called Laszlo Rajk, an enemy of the people who came to a suitably nasty end.
But was he an enemy of the people? Heltai wondered. In 1950 — yes. In 1956 — no: because Imre Nagy and the gang of Fascists who had taken over the country had rehabilitated Laszlo Rajk.
Heltai was amused by this paradox. He continued to talk about AVH and a building at 60 Andrassy Street in Budapest where he and his colleagues in AVH had wrestled like theologians with the soul of Laszlo Rajk. His mood was alternately swept by laughter and sadness as he puzzled over this old problem, and he ended by staring at the beer bottles he had accumulated on the table and fiddled with the string tying the box which held the Ruslan and Ludmila cake.
And the girls, they drank glasses of tisane and continued to unfold their skirts, trying to get each panel to dry. The prettier of the two caught Petya’s shy glances, and, pausing over her drying exercise, studied him coolly. In the street a black limousine with curtains at the windows pulled up. The rain had stopped and steam rose from the bonnet.