Deceptions by Anna Porter (pride and prejudice read .txt) 📕

Alexander grinned. “Perfect. You’ve been talking with that imbecile, Tóth. What else did he tell you?”

“That you’re flying the damaged FSB thug back to Moscow.”

“Careful, my friend, not all FSB men are thugs. I, for one, . . .”

The maître d’ served the boeuf with a Gallic flourish, checked the bottle of wine, raised an eyebrow to Alexander, who nodded, then tactfully departed.

“Okay, noted,” Attila said. “I assume you’re flying him back because you don’t want him to talk to us?”

“Mr. Grigoriev wants him to get the best care and that would not be in Budapest. Our hospitals are not what they should be, but yours, my friend, defy reason. They are filthy, overcrowded, understaffed, and brutish. Mr. Grigoriev would not send his dog to one of them, he said, and I am sure he said the same thing to your minister of health if you still have one.” Alexander dug into his food with the enthusiasm of a man long deprived and made small appreciative sounds.

“There would be no point in his talking to either Tóth or you. It’s the kind of conversation that could deteriorate into a diplomatic incident, and we all know that your pocket dictator has been cozying up to our czar every chance he gets. The czar appreciates it, of course he does, someone in the European Union can have influence, but don’t believe for a minute that he wouldn’t squash your little fellows — kicsi emberek — if he was irritated. And this sort of nastiness could irritate him.”

The second bottle of Pomerol arrived. Alexander sniffed the cork, swirled the wine around in his glass, tasted, and gestured to the waiter to pour. The thought of Alexander’s childhood flashed through Attila’s mind. He would have had to learn all this ostentation after he left his one-room home with its outdoor privy and single stove for cooking and heating, but he had learned it much better than Attila had.

“Can you say what he was doing in front of our minister’s house?” Attila asked.

“He was waiting for the archery expert to show up.”

“At that house?”

“That house was one of the options. Yes.”

“The other?”

“Another house belonging to another minister down the street from this one. And before you ask, no, he was not planning a friendly chat with him.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because Mr. Grigoriev was not pleased about the murder of the lawyer and wished to find out who ordered it and why. A simple inquiry, but he didn’t get his answer because your beloved decided to shoot off one of his man’s balls.”

“Grigoriev didn’t hire the shooter?”

“Obviously not. Hence his interest in finding out who did.” Alexander finished his wine, poured some more into Attila’s glass, pushed away his empty plate, and fished a gold-tipped, black cigarette from his breast pocket. A Sobranie, his preferred brand, increasingly hard to find despite its nod to the cancer scare: only 7 milligrams of tar.

“There is a no smoking sign,” the maître d’ protested.

“I know,” Alexander said. “And there are no diners here except for me and my friend, and we will leave in two minutes. With the cigarette and without the brandy, if you insist.”

The maître d’ didn’t insist.

“I assume your lover is interested in the same thing,” Alexander said.

“She is not my lover,” Attila said.

“Your once and future lover, then,” Alexander said. “Or did you think we didn’t know? That would be unusually simple of you. We like to know where you are and what you are doing, even when you think you are alone.”

“Why in lófasz would I be of interest to the Russian government? I am not even of interest to my own government.”

“Never mind that, Attila, I was only answering your earlier question: how I knew you were here. And it didn’t take much effort to know gospozha Marsh was here too; the local police have the videos. She chased the shooter. She almost caught up with him along Rue de Dôme. Did you know she signed up for archery classes in Colmar? No? She doesn’t share much, does she? I assume you saw her in Budapest yesterday? Did you know what she was doing there?”

Attila stared at the CCTV camera in the corner by the door.

“You can relax,” Alexander said. “I took care of that already.”

“I assume she was chasing the same man,” Attila said. “She must have known he was in Budapest.”

“Interesting,” Alexander said. “If she knows his name by now, that puts her ahead of our Grigoriev and his highly paid staff. They know some of his connections but still don’t have a name. And one more question: does she still think she is working for Madame Vaszary?”

Chapter Twenty

“Adam Biro,” James said when he finally succeeded in reaching Helena. He had been trying her cellphone (leaving messages), the Hôtel Cathédrale (“Sorry, she checked out”), and Louise (“She will call you as soon as she can”) to no avail. “An interesting post-Communist case. He seems to have done well in every era, but capitalism was particularly kind to Mr. Biro.”

“Did he have a lot of paintings?”

“According to my source in Vienna, he had more than a hundred. He even managed to sell a few to legitimate galleries. A Verrocchio Virgin in Stockholm, a Corot and a Renoir in Vienna, a Rippl-Rónai in Prague, some Rembrandt drawings in New York. I assume there were more.”

“Didn’t the government wonder how he got his loot?”

“I’ve no idea. But we know that in recent years he continued to sell more paintings through a guy called Kis in Budapest.”

“Ferenc Kis?”

“You know him?”

“Met him a year or so ago. He was involved in the sale of a Titian that had been traded for a crust of bread in the Gulag. I wouldn’t trust anything he says.”

“In this case, that would have been wise advice to give Biro. One day he just disappeared, no one’s seen him again.”

“And the collection?”

“I assume it’s still there. A few pieces are sold every year and, eventually, much like the man