“There are a lot of churches,” Ryan observed. He’d counted six or seven on the way to this park.
“That’s the other thing that gives them a sense of political identity. The government doesn’t like it, but it’s too big and too dangerous a thing to destroy, and so there’s rather an uneasy peace between the two.”
“If I had to bet, I’d put my money down on the church.”
Hudson turned. “As would I, Sir John.”
Ryan looked around. “Hell of a big square.” It looked like more than a square mile of pavement.
“That goes back to 1956,” Hudson explained. “The Sovs wanted this to be large enough to bring in troop carriers. You can land an AN-ten Cub right here, which makes it quicker to bring in airborne troops if the locals ever revolt again. You could bring, oh, say ten or twelve Cubs, a hundred and fifty soldiers each, and they would defend the center of the city against the counterrevolutionaries and wait for the tanks coming in from the east. It’s not a brilliant plan, but that is how they think.”
“But what if you park two city buses here and shoot the tires out?”
“I didn’t say it was perfect, Jack,” Hudson replied. “Even better, a few land mines. Might as well kill a few of the bastards and start a nice little fire. No way a pilot would be able to see them on his approach. And transport pilots are the blindest and dumbest lot going.”
And Ivan figures he’d insert his troops before things really got out of hand. Yeah, it made sense, Ryan thought.
“You know who the Soviet ambassador was in ‘fifty-six?”
“No—wait a minute, I do… wasn’t it Andropov?”
Hudson nodded. “Yuriy Vladimirovich himself. It explains why he is so beloved of the locals. A bloody great lot of people lost their lives in that adventure.”
Ryan remembered being in grammar school then—too young to appreciate the complications: It was the fall of a presidential election year, and at the same time Britain and France had decided to invade Egypt to protect their rights with the Suez Canal. Eisenhower had been hamstrung by two simultaneous crises, and had perforce been unable to do much of anything. But America had gotten a good bunch of immigrants out of it. Not a total loss.
“And the local Secret Police?”
“Just down Andrassy Utca from here, Number sixty. It’s an ordinary-looking building that positively drips with blood. Not as bad now as it used to be. The original lot there were devotees of Iron Feliks, more ruthless than Hitler’s Gestapo. But after the failed rebellion, they moderated somewhat and changed their name from Allamvedelmi Osztaly to Allavedelmi Hivatal. State Security Bureau instead of State Security Section. The former boss was replaced, and they got gentler. Formerly, they had a deserved reputation for torture. Supposedly, that is a thing of the past. The reputation alone is enough to make a suspect crumble. Good thing to have a diplomatic passport,” Andy concluded.
“How good are they?” Jack asked next.
“Oafish. Perhaps they recruited competent people once, but that is well in the past. Probably a lingering effect of how evil they were in the forties and fifties. Good people don’t want to work there and there’s no real benefit from doing so, of the kind that KGB can offer its recruits. In fact, this country has some superb universities. They turn out remarkably good engineers and people in the sciences. And the Semmelweis medical school is first-rate.”
“Hell, half the guys in the Manhattan Project were Hungarians, weren’t they?”
Hudson nodded. “Indeed they were, and many of them Hungarian Jews. Not too many of those left, though in the big war the Hungarians saved about half of theirs. The Chief of State, Admiral Horthy, was probably killed over that—he died under what are euphemistically called ‘mysterious circumstances.’ Hard to say what sort of chap he actually was, but there is a school of thought that says he was a rabid anti-Communist, but decidedly not a pro-Nazi. Perhaps just a man who picked a bad place and time to be born. We may never know for sure.” Hudson enjoyed being a tour guide for a change. Not a bad change of pace from being a king—well, maybe prince—spook.
But it was time to get back to business. “Okay, how are we going to do this?” Jack asked. He was looking around for a tail, but if there was one about, it was invisible to him, unless there was a team of the ubiquitous—dirty—Lada automobiles following them about. He’d have to trust Hudson to scan for that possibility.
“Back to the car. We’ll go see the hotel.” It was just a few minutes of driving time down Andrassy Utca, a route of remarkably French-style architecture. Ryan had never been to Paris, but, closing his eyes, he thought he might well have been.
“There, that’s it,” Hudson said, pulling over. One nice thing about communist countries: It wasn’t hard to find a parking space.
“Nobody watching us?” Ryan wondered, trying not to look too obvious in his turning around.
“If so, he’s being very clever about it. Now, right there across the street is the local KGB station. The Soviet Cultural and Friendship House, sadly lacking in culture or friendship, but we reckon thirty or forty KGB types there—none interested in us,” Hudson added. “The average Hungarian would probably rather catch gonorrhea than go inside. Hard to tell you how detested the Soviets are in this country. The locals will take their money and perhaps even shake hands after the money is exchanged, but not much more than that. They remember 1956 here, Jack.”
The hotel struck Ryan as something from what H. L. Mencken had called the gilded age—champagne ambition on a beer budget.
“I’ve stayed in better,” Jack observed. It wasn’t the Plaza in New York or London’s Savoy.
“Our Russian friends probably have not.”
Damn. If we get them to America, they’re going to be in hog heaven, Jack thought at once.
“Let’s go inside. There’s a rather nice bar,” Hudson told him.
And so there was, off to the right and down some steps, almost like a New York City disco bar, though not quite as noisy. The band wasn’t there yet, just some records playing, and not too loudly. The music, Jack noted, was American. How odd. Hudson ordered a couple glasses of Tokaji.
Ryan sipped his. It wasn’t bad.
“It’s bottled in California, too, I think. Your chaps call it Tokay, the national drink of Hungary. It’s an acquired taste, but better than grappa.”
Ryan chuckled. “I know. That’s Italian for ‘lighter fluid.’ My uncle Mario used to love it. De gustibus, as they say.” He looked around. There was nobody within twenty feet. “Can we talk?”
“Better just to look about. I’ll come here tonight. This bar closes after midnight, and I need to see what the staff is like. Our Rabbit is in Room 307. Third floor, corner. Easy access via the fire stairs. Three entrances, front and either side. If, as I expect, there’s only a single clerk at the desk, it’s just a matter of distracting him to get our packages up and the Rabbit family out.”
“Packages up?”
Hudson turned. “Didn’t they tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Bloody hell, Hudson thought, they never get the necessary information out to everyone who needs it. Never changes.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he told Ryan.
Uh-oh, Ryan thought at once. Something was up that he wouldn’t like. Sure as hell. Maybe he should have brought his Browning with him. Oh, shit. He finished his drink and went looking for the men’s room. The symbology helped. The room had not been recently scrubbed, and it was a good thing he didn’t need to sit down. He emerged to find Andy waiting for him, and followed him back outside. Soon they were back in his car.
“Okay, can we discuss that little problem now?” Jack asked.
“Later,” Hudson told him. It just made Ryan worry a little more.
THE PACKAGES WERE just arriving at the airport—three rather large boxes with diplomatic stickers on them—and an official from the embassy was at the ramp to make sure they weren’t tampered with. Someone had made sure to put them in identifying boxes from an electronics company—the German company Siemens, in this case—thus making it seem that they were coding machines or something else bulky and sensitive. They were duly loaded in the embassy’s own light truck and driven downtown with nothing more than curiosity in their wake. The presence of an embassy officer had prevented their being x-rayed, and that was important. That might have damaged the microchips inside, of course, the customs people at the airport thought, and so made up their official report to the Belügyminisztérium. Soon it would be reported to everyone interested, including the KGB, that the U.K. Budapest Embassy had taken on some new encryption gear. The information would be duly filed and forgotten.