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

at €1.2 million a year ago when he thought he would leave Budapest to be closer to her. He had thought he could get some work from various Hungarians in Paris and that the local police might use him. He’d had the crazy notion that Helena would want him near and that Bea would agree to his commuting once a month to Budapest or, better still, the girls spending some time with him in Paris. But both Bea and Helena preferred he should stay where he was.

Bea had made her preference known by suggesting that they review the proposed divorce agreement with the lawyers and adjust them to occasional visits without sharing custody. If all he wanted of his daughters was a couple of days a month, “he obviously didn’t wish to share their lives in any significant way.” He thought Bea’s reaction was so venomous, she must have been jealous of what she called his “liaison.” Anna and Sofi declared they had not been consulted about the prospect and, frankly, loved the idea of Paris with their father. Cruise on the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame — Anna had read his copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. That their notion of Paris didn’t include Helena was more understandable than Bea’s reaction had been. They been separated for a while, and Bea had found a new man who was much more suitable to her needs than he had been.

He had presented the idea to Helena early one morning in Budapest over coffee and croissants. They had spent the night before in his apartment. She had still been asleep when he went out to buy the coffee and croissants from the little shop around the corner where he went most mornings because they had the best coffee in the Eighth District. She had been awake when he returned; she had drawn the curtains and sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms around her legs, as if she were expecting an attack of bedbugs. The place did look like it had been abandoned, books in boxes, open pizza containers on the coffee table, dishes piled up in the kitchen where Gustav was standing expectantly by his plate.

Perhaps it had not been the best time to suggest that he could move to Paris.

“Why don’t we try half a million,” Vaszary said.

“Euros?” Attila asked. What kind of information could possibly be worth that much to Iván Vaszary?

Chapter Nineteen

When Attila called Alexander’s cellphone, he thought he knew what to expect. Alexander had told him early in their friendship that a few influential Russians would remain, generally, off their list of conversational topics. Billionaires were in that category and influential billionaires — “they are all influential, or they couldn’t be billionaires” — were never to be discussed. Piotr Denisovich Grigoriev was definitely in that small elite group. And, as Attila knew first-hand, he could be dangerous. Grigoriev had a nasty habit of eliminating his enemies, often using FSB or former FSB operatives to assassinate them. He lived well. He had a twenty-two-year-old wife, an eighteen-year-old girlfriend, a bunch of racehorses, a private jet, a massive boat with a helicopter pad, and a dacha close to the president’s. Alexander assumed these men talked over vodka and cigars, planning how the world would be shaped when the Yanks were out of the business of thinking they still ran things and the Kremlin would finally rule. It was not a newly hatched plan. It had been centuries in the making, and wasn’t it time, really, Alexander said, that somebody else had a shot at it.

Attila had anticipated a pause while Alexander switched phones — he rarely wanted to talk on his official phones — but he hadn’t expected the enthusiasm Alexander exuded when he heard Attila’s voice. After the usual clicking as he switched phones, he said he was amazed and delighted with Attila’s timing.

“How did you know I was in Strasbourg?”

“I didn’t. You are?”

“Arrived yesterday,” Alexander said in Hungarian. He was obsessively proud of having learned Hungarian in only five years. It was an impossible language for an outsider, unnecessarily complicated, with a dictionary of forbiddingly unpronounceable words that were often used incorrectly or with their endings cut off. Naturally, there were some attractive incentives for FSB guys to learn the languages of countries where they were stationed, but no one, as far as Attila knew, had ever mastered Hungarian. Although, officially, Alexander was undersecretary for government relations at the Russian embassy, he had never pretended to be anything other than what he was. A spy and a fixer when something affecting Russians or Russian interests needed fixing.

“Such a grand city,” Alexander continued. “Lucky for you to be sent here, my friend; there are many other much less attractive places that could use your services. Alma-Ata, for example, where your esteemed prime minister is about to deliver a speech about co-operation among the Turkic peoples. Did you even know that Hungarians are Turkic?”

“We are not Turkic,” Attila said, rising to the occasion. “And it’s not been so cushy these last several days.”

“I knew that . . .”

“Have you been transferred?”

“Luckily, no. I love Budapest and the Hungarians, and I don’t like the French, except when it comes to their wine.” Alexander had an abiding interest in fine wines. “Can we meet?”

“If you haven’t been transferred, what are you doing here?”

“I walked through the French Quarter today. Very pretty in a chocolate box kind of way. I thought Au Petit Tonnelier looked like something we could try. Très français, they claim, and it’s a walk from where you are . . .”

“I thought you didn’t like the French.”

“This is about food, not national preferences.”

“And how do you know where I am?”

“Attila, you keep forgetting that I am in the spying business. And I always do my research. Shall we say at three? A civilized time for a late lunch in France, I am told.”

Attila extracted one of his Helikons from its flattened