Deceptions by Anna Porter (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📗

Helena shook her head. “My friend,” she said, “just came in here.” She pointed to the side door.

He shook his head. “Only staff,” he said.

“Oh.” Helena affected a worried look. “He left his credit card on the table where we met, and I want to return it to him.”

He shook his head again. “No.” He motioned to the other guard at the barrier a few metres away and, when he approached, started talking to him in rapid Hungarian.

This man was older but no more comfortable with English than the first man. “You leave card,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Helena said rapidly. “Not safe to leave credit cards lying around and especially not safe here with you guys, whom I don’t know and will not get to know in the few hours I plan to spend in your country. . . .”

Her fast talk had the desired effect. They both nodded, as if in agreement, although neither of them understood what she had said. “I will phone,” she added, still smiling, as she turned to saunter across Kossuth Square. She crossed the streetcar tracks, jumped over the orange railing, and walked across to the Ministry of Agriculture’s imposing colonnade. The two guards were still smiling and watching. Good to know that her ass still had that effect on men.

She stepped behind one of the columns and watched as the younger guard reached for his phone, dialled, and they all waited for the thin-lipped man to appear. Helena checked her watch. He appeared in less than two minutes. His office, if he had one, would have to be at this end of the building, and on the ground floor, or close to it.

Chapter Twelve

The tour of the Hungarian Parliament building was scheduled for 4 p.m. Helena bought her ticket at the Balassi Street ticket booth, returned to the square, and bent over the rose-filled flower bed near Lajos Kossuth’s large bronze statue, sniffed the petals appreciatively, and planted her knife next to the nearest rose bush. The tour would take about forty-five minutes, and tourists had eight languages to choose from. Helena picked French because there was a large, boisterous French-speaking group from one of the cruise ships, and she expected the guide would be busy keeping them under control. A few of them had already expressed a desire to find a toilet but did not want to lose their places in line. They were confident there would be toilets inside.

After a long introductory speech — well-rehearsed but in appalling French — about the Gothic revival architecture, the façcade, the central dome, the statues of Hungarian and Transylvanian leaders, military figures, and coats of arms, the guide led the way past the ornate gates and the two bored-looking stone lions into the wide entrance.

They shuffled through the security check and up the red-carpeted grand staircase. “Le piste à splendour,” the guide announced, and when all the tourists laughed, she changed it to “La route de splendour,” but it was too late: “piste” had reminded some of them of their bodily needs. Still, they managed to look at the hundreds of small statues and heroic frescoes along the walls with due appreciation and made it to the magnificently Gothic, red-carpeted Dome Hall. There everyone circled the bejewelled gold double crown under its glass dome and its two immobile uniformed guards. There were other, less grandiose guards around the walls and near the exits. After a requisite time of open-mouthed admiration (the French could always be moved by jewellery), the group proceeded to the Old Upper House Hall with more statuary, ornate tapestries, and fewer guards.

Two of the French women began to grouse about the lack of toilets, and when five more joined the loud demands for a pee break, the guide acceded and said she would take them to the nearest washroom while everyone else waited. There were five elegant red-and-gold settees along the corridor, and they would be allowed to sit while they waited. It was Helena’s chance to slip through a door leading to the back of the building. Her problem was that, as the guide said, there were 691 rooms, 10 courtyards, and 29 staircases. There were also 27 gates or entrances. She calculated that most of them would not be used and the one that interested her would be two floors down and close to the Danube. If she kept the Kossuth Square–side windows to her left, she would likely arrive at her destination before someone noticed her absence. Since the representatives’ hall was lower than the hall open to the public, she had to go down one of the numerous staircases or take the elevator. The advantage, she thought, of the elevator was that no one would expect an intruder to take an elevator. What she needed was a file folder or a stack of papers. She found both on an unguarded table. All the papers were tourist information sheets, and the folder contained lists of booked tours for the next day.

She shoved them under her arm and pushed the down button for the elevator. It opened on a man with an equally large stack of papers. He said something but, luckily, it didn’t sound like a question. Helena nodded agreement, and they descended the rest of the way in silence.

It took her ten minutes to arrive at the building’s entrance that the man she had followed from Biro’s had used. She could see the guard booth through the leaded window. The guard at the door seemed less focused on his job than on the men at the tourist entrance, and she assumed he would be much more interested in those entering than those leaving. In any event, she gave him one of her friendliest smiles and went up the short staircase just past him. She hurried up a flight of stairs, officiously and in close imitation of how the man would have moved when he arrived an hour ago.

Two