The Double Game (33 page)

“Mr. Szondi?” I said, without even a clue as to whether he spoke English.

“Béla or Ferenc?”

“Whoever’s in charge.”

“Neither. Ferenc was until he became too ill. Béla took over a few years ago, but he sold the store to me last month. I am sorry if you have been inconvenienced.”

He folded away the crank handle, then squinted into the sun to observe me better.

“I am Andris László. And your name, sir?”

“Bill Cage. I’ve come over from the States.”

A look of mild concern flitted across his features.

“I was not expecting you so soon, although I suppose nothing should surprise me after what has been happening lately.”

“You were expecting me?”

He looked up and down the sidewalk, then back at me.

“Please come inside. I have something for you.”

He went behind the register and reached beneath it for a small parcel, book-sized, wrapped in butcher paper. Just like the good old days, although this fellow didn’t seem familiar with his role. There was no writing on the outside except the price, which was about the same as I’d paid in Vienna once you converted it to forints.

“It’s the way old Ferenc used to wrap everything,” László said. He seemed to be watching me closely. “They stopped using paper like that years ago.”

I paid the amount. He seemed reluctant to take the bills.

“Can you tell me how this reached you?” I asked.

He gave me a long look, then called out toward the back of the store.

“Lukács!”

A harried-looking teen scurried out from the back, pushing curls out of his eyes. László barked an order in Hungarian, handed Lukács the register key, and came out from behind the counter.

“Apologies for my rudeness, Mr. Cage, but this has been a strange business altogether, and I have been uncertain as to how I should deal with you when the time came.” He held out his hand in greeting, an American sort of proffer. I shook it firmly. “We should go somewhere to talk, especially if you intend to meet with the Szondis. No one should do that unawares.”

“More trouble than they’re worth?”

“The older one, Ferenc, no longer has his wits about him. His son, Béla—well, that is not a topic to discuss here.”

László said something more in Hungarian to the younger man, then led me outdoors, where he again looked in both directions.

“You have come here alone?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Others have been inquiring about you. It started a few days ago. Three different men, each acting as if he was your friend. But …” He shrugged, uncertain.

“Three? Was one of them a scruffy-looking German, maybe a few years older than you? Floppy hat, carries a cane?”

“No. But if I didn’t know better I would say you are describing the book scout Lothar Heinemann. I am told he was once a regular at this store.”

“Once?”

“He was banned by the Szondis, but I do not know why. If you see him, you must tell him he is again welcome at Antikvarium Szondi.”

“I doubt he knows the store has changed hands. He certainly didn’t mention it to me.”

“You have seen him?”

“Just yesterday, in Prague. He sent me.”

Lázsló shook his head, more confused than ever. He said nothing further until we reached our destination a few blocks later, the elegant Café Central, with windows facing onto both sides of a fashionable corner. Its chandeliers, high ceilings, and L-shaped floor plan stirred a memory from a long-ago Saturday with my father—him with his coffee, me with hot chocolate, both of us sipping to a morning serenade of chuffing espresso machines and the rustle of foreign newspapers.

It was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, and there were few customers. We took a corner table in the smaller wing.

“My dad used to bring me here, but I don’t remember it being this fancy.”

“They have done many things to make it look nicer. Some of the older customers do not like it as much now. It feels too prosperous, too safe.”

“Too safe?”

“Look around. You can tell the ones who came in the older days. See how they bend so low across the table that their heads nearly touch? This was where you would come to talk about things that could not be said in other places, as if you could hide the words in your cigarette smoke, or in the milk on top of your coffee. Secret policemen were here, of course, watching from behind their newspapers. They would be the only ones daring to read some banned periodical, hoping you might ask to borrow it so they could note your name and face. Maybe that is why I brought you here, because I am not yet certain I should help you. Not yet certain I should even be talking about these things.” He smiled uneasily. “Could it be that you are like those policeman, offering something I shouldn’t accept?”

“I hope not.”

A waiter took our order. When he’d gone, Lázsló fretted with his hands, as if unsure where to begin.

“You mentioned your father. Was his Christian name Warfield?”

“Yes. He lives in Vienna now. We were here from sixty-four to sixty-seven. We moved away when I was eleven.”

“I was nineteen then. My uncle used to talk about him. Your father, I mean.” He seemed to choose his next words with care. “He said your father was … a grand figure, a special man.”

“That’s kind of him.”

I wondered what Dad could have done to inspire such a description, but Lázsló didn’t elaborate. He again looked down at his hands, then put them in his lap.

“You were going to tell me about the Szondis,” I said. “Where would I find Béla?”

“They have a very fine house on Corvin Square, near where their shop used to be. It has an elevator, even from the old times. The house with blue trim. It will be easy to find.”

“I take it they’ve done well for themselves.”

“They are the kind of people who always do, no matter who is in power.”

“You don’t like them.”

He shrugged and took out a pack of cigarettes.

“It is not a matter of like or dislike. It is a matter of trust or mistrust. The transaction with the store, it seemed very regular. Friends advised me against it, but the price was fair, the terms reasonable. A week after I moved in I began noticing that many of the better items had been removed, including an entire locked bookcase that I am sure had been there during the sales inspection. I complained, of course, but what could I do? One can only deal with people like the Szondis from a position of advantage.”

“They’re well connected?”

He smiled grimly, cheeks puckering as he inhaled aggressively on his cigarette.

“Connections, money, muscle. You will see. Unless you approach them from a position of greater leverage, they will either shrug you off or find a way to make use of you. May I ask what your business is with them?”

“I’m not sure I know. I want to ask about things that took place a long time ago. Book deliveries, like this one.” I held up the wrapped parcel. “My father was an old customer.”

“From sixty-four to sixty-seven, you said?”

“Yes.”

He thought about this for a second, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

“That’s when they began to make their fortune, or so I am told. I was only a boy, but my uncle was in the business. Perhaps I should explain how things worked for booksellers then, and how things worked for the Szondis.”

“I’d be grateful for that.”

“The mid-sixties was a time of reform, of hope. After fifty-six it sank in that the Americans were never going to come to our rescue, so people settled in as best they could. As people accepted this reality, production improved. So did the economy. We called it peaceful coexistence.”

“My father used to say Budapest was the best posting in the East Bloc. Americans from Warsaw and Bucharest used to come here to relax.”

“You still had to be careful here, but even in the arts things began to ease up. In literature, important works were finally being translated into Hungarian—Kafka, Sartre, Beckett. Of course, if you wanted to buy new books, there were only the state stores. But some antiquarian shops were still privately owned, like Ferenc Szondi’s shop on Corvin Square.

“People then were always looking for ways to raise cash, and he offered to buy their old books. His son Béla became an appraiser, and it was a gold mine for them. People had no choice but to take the prices they offered. They built up a huge private library. That is when they bought their house, with its elevator and rooftop terrace.”

“I gather they knew a lot of embassy people.”

László nodded.

“Ferenc took up the bourgeois sport of golf, so that he could meet the diplomats of all nations. They played on a small course in the Buda hills. Béla played tennis on Margits Island, even though he was known mostly for hitting the ball over the fence.”

“Dad used to go there. Both places.”

“And of course diplomats could buy the kinds of books that the state stores weren’t even allowed to display. So could well-connected people from the Party. The Szondis could sell those books because they had friends in high places.”

“They were collaborators?”

“There has always been talk that they were informants. In the early eighties, Ferenc was caught smuggling fifteenth-century manuscripts to West Germany. But instead of his being punished, it was hushed up. What does that tell you?”

“Didn’t that hurt them when everything finally changed?”

László smiled ruefully.

“With enough money you can avoid the trouble that others are susceptible to. The Szondis rebranded themselves as businessmen who had craftily outlasted Communism. Béla became a patron of the arts, a donor to charities. If you have a cause, Béla will lend his name. But if you run afoul of one of his business concerns …” László shrugged.

“So their past has never caught up to them?”

“A few people have tried to hold them accountable. But apparently the Szondis have seen to it that nothing remained on paper. The last person who dared to question their earlier conduct ended up with a million-forint judgment lodged against him in the courts.”

So this was the family my father had let me run errands for, errands that had been part of Ed Lemaster’s courier network. Now here I was preparing to meet Béla, with no idea of what he might be willing to tell me. Not much, according to László, unless I could come up with some sort of incentive.

“You think I am exaggerating,” László said. “I can read it in your eyes.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that, well, I work in Washington public relations. I’m used to dealing with the lowest of the low, if you know what I mean.”

“So your clients in Washington, they often send enforcers around? To make threats, or to slash the tires on your car? Or worse, perhaps?”

“Well, no. I thought you said they filed lawsuits?”

“That is one of their methods. Those three men I mentioned, who came asking for you. One of them works for the Szondis. A handyman.”

“A leg breaker?”

“Here, I will show you.”

László put his cell phone on the table and punched in a few commands. A newspaper website popped onto the screen, with a photo of Béla Szondi at a ribbon cutting for a new children’s health center.

“The man to Béla’s right.”

The shot was in profile. The fellow indeed looked like a rough customer—a human bowling ball draped in a black wool coat, with close-cropped hair, the unsparing eyes of a shark. The kind of man you’d instinctively give a wide berth to in the street.

“Would you like to see pictures of the other two men as well?”

“They were also in the paper?”

“No. But when they came into the store I had Lukács come and wait on them while I pretended to make phone calls. I took their photos with my phone.”

“You’re very good at this, Mr. László.”

László took the compliment in stride, then clicked to the photos. The first was a shot of Ron Curtin, mullet and all. The second was his apparent new ally, the old KGB man whom I knew only by his nickname of Hammerhead.

“You know them?” he asked.

“Somewhat. And they’re not friends, in case they come asking for me again. When were they here?”

“Five days ago. One came in the morning, the other in late afternoon.”

So, not only had they been following me, at times they’d been a step ahead of me.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been a huge help.”

He waved away the praise.

“I will erase these now. I kept them for you to see, but I do not wish to keep them any longer.”

“Understandable. You said you also know about Lothar Heinemann. I was wondering, though, if you’d ever come across his book. It would be in the form of a galley from a small press in Frankfurt. An Advance Reader Edition, I believe they call them now.”

“Lothar is an author?”

“This would’ve been years ago. Early to mid-seventies.”

László shook his head.

“I only know him as a collector, a procurer, and quite an outstanding one. He has a nose for these things. I was not aware he was ever a writer. This book, it would be of great value?”

“Not to most people. But it would be to me.”

I handed him one of my Ealing Wharton business cards. I considered scribbling the number for my new cell phone, then thought better of it.

“Shoot me an email if you spot it.”

“Of course.”

László seemed relieved to be back on the more familiar ground of bookselling. It reminded me of the parcel, and I put it on the table.

“How did you end up with this?” I asked.

His face darkened. He reached for his cigarette.

“Someone dropped it through my mail slot last Sunday. I found it early Monday. A small note was attached saying to hold it for you. There was no name, no address, no number. I didn’t know if you would be here in days or months. Or ever. Then, when all those men came calling, asking about you, well, I didn’t know
what
to think. Do you know what is inside?”

“A book, if it’s like the others. Probably with a message. Should I open it now?”

László waved away the idea.

“I think my involvement has gone as far as I would like. In fact …” He checked his watch. “Nothing personally against you, of course. But I should return to my store.”