He knocked once. “Mrs. Kusin?”
The door opened immediately. “I am Mara Kusin.”
Hradetsky nodded. The photo he’d seen in her police file matched the woman in front of him: a young-looking, thickly built woman with two teenage children.
He saw no point in hiding his identity. “I am Colonel Hradetsky, of the National Police.”
Kusin’s wife blanched, then steeled herself. She nodded quietly, guardedly. She must be used to trouble.
“May I come in?”
For an instant, a surprised look flickered across her face. Policemen were rarely so polite. She stepped back into the dingy apartment and stood waiting, her arms folded across her chest.
Hradetsky stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind him. He didn’t want prying ears to hear what he had to say.
He did not bother asking her where her husband was. Even if she did know, the last person she would tell was a police colonel. “I am not here in an official capacity. But I do have a message and important information for Vladimir Kusin. It is essential that I speak with him.”
“But I don’t know…”
“Of course you don’t.” Hradetsky shook his head. “All I ask is that you get this to him — wherever he is.”
He handed the woman an envelope containing a brief summary of the information he’d been given by Bela Silvanus, along with a schedule of public places where he would wait for contact over the next three days. When she took it, he felt his neck muscles tightening. He’d done it. He was committed now. Going to Solicitor Bartha with his concerns could be passed off as misguided bureaucratic maneuvering. Contacting an active member of Hungary’s banned political opposition could not.
Hradetsky sat on a park bench with his eyes slitted against the welcome spring sunshine, trying hard not to let his nerves get to him. That wasn’t easy. This noontime rendezvous outside the sprawling, neoclassical Museum of Fine Arts was the last of the three options he’d given Mara Kusin. Had the opposition decided to ignore him as a possible agent provocateur?
Or worse, had his message fallen into the wrong hands? The European Confederation’s German liaison, Rehling, and his Hungarian subordinates were strengthening the nation’s internal security apparatus with every passing day. They might have been paying more attention to his activities than he’d imagined.
He studied the office workers crowding the square more closely, wondering if any of them were agents assigned to watch him. Then he shrugged, almost amused at his own developing paranoia. How could he tell? There had to be several thousand people eating lunch in the vast open space dominated by the winged statue of the archangel Gabriel mounted atop a thirty-six-meter-high column. When he’d picked this spot as a possible rendezvous, he’d been thinking too much like a policeman and not enough like a conspirator. Mentally he was still on the other side of the surveillance camera.
He was on the edge of rising to go when a young, powerfully built man with blond hair sat down next to him. Without looking up, he opened a lunch pail and laid something on the bench between them. “I think you dropped this, Colonel.”
Hradetsky glanced down. It was the manila envelope he’d given Kusin’s wife. He picked it up. “Yes, I did.”
“Good.” The young man smiled thinly and offered him an apple. “Then let us begin.”
Hradetsky took a bite and listened intently as his nameless companion started asking a series of difficult questions. What were his attitudes toward the various regimes that had ruled Hungary? What had he done in past assignments? What did his current job entail? And most important of all, why did he want to see Vladimir Kusin?
To anyone passing by, they were just two friends sharing a rare treat of fruit on a delightful spring day. The police colonel knew differently. He was being vetted — checked — by the opposition before they let him get close to Kusin.
Hradetsky had conducted enough interrogations to know what the man was looking for, and why he wanted it. His questioner was intelligent and suspicious. The only way to deal with him was to answer every question as quickly and plainly as possible.
Although interrogators often revealed much about themselves by the kinds of questions they asked, these were so limited, or so straightforward, that Hradetsky learned little about the man or his group. From his build, his haircut, and some of the expressions he used, the colonel suspected the younger man might be an ex-army officer.
Abruptly the man closed his lunch pail, stood up, and said, “That’s enough for now. I must report to my superiors.”
Hradetsky stood also and they strolled casually toward the nearest Metro stop, mingling with the other workers streaming back to their offices. He had questions of his own, but he knew this man would not answer them. Still, he volunteered, “Please tell Kus — ”
The other man gave him a sharp look, and shushed him sharply.
Hradetsky corrected himself. “Please tell your superiors that there is not much time.”
The younger man smiled grimly. “We have been trying to tell you and your kind that for a long time.” Then he seemed to loosen up a little. “If you are what you claim to be, you can be a great help to us, Colonel. Still, a man can say anything and sound sincere. Actions always speak louder than words.”
He handed Hradetsky a piece of paper with a single name written on it. “Obtain the police file on this person and then come to the Central Etterem Cafeteria in two days’ time. At noon again. Is that sufficient?”
Momentarily nonplussed, Hradetsky muttered an affirmative.
“Good.” The man stood still for a moment, watching the crowds pouring down the stairs to the underground subway line. Then he glanced back at Hradetsky. “And be more careful in the future. I followed you all the way from your ministry as easily as a wolf tracking a wounded deer. Next time it might not be someone so friendly.” He showed his teeth at his own small joke.
Hradetsky flushed but nodded. However obnoxious the younger man’s manner, his warning was valid. He would have to learn the caution so necessary to those living outside the law.
Two days later, he sat at a table in the packed Central Etterem Cafeteria sipping a cup of strong black espresso. His elbow rested on the same manila envelope, this time containing the police file his contact had requested.
Hradetsky frowned. Copying the confidential file had proved almost ludicrously easy. An overworked staff and sloppy office procedures saw to that. After all, any ranking police official had routine access to that kind of information. The trick had been to do it without attracting attention or leaving a paper trail.
Now that he had the file, he had the time to wonder why exactly Kusin’s people wanted it. From what he’d seen, the man they were interested in was a democratic activist — a longtime opponent of both the old communist regime and the current military government. Perhaps they needed to know how closely the police were watching the fellow. Or maybe the opposition already had a copy of this particular file and only wanted to see if he brought them the right one.
Whatever else it was, this job was certainly a test of his loyalty and resourcefulness. Until he delivered the information they’d asked him for, Kusin and his allies would view him as little more than a big talker. If he delivered the wrong information, they’d write him off as a police plant. And if he’d been caught while trying to get it, they’d have known he wasn’t cut out for covert work.