The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [123]
Eva returned five minutes later armed with a cheese sandwich, a half-litre bottle of water and a ticket to Budapest.
‘You got a return,’ Gaddis pointed out, devouring the sandwich and drinking the water until it was almost finished.
‘You are coming back tomorrow,’ she replied, with a knowing smile. ‘A one-way journey always looks more suspicious. Which reminds me . . .’
She stepped out of the car and opened the boot, returning with a faded leather bag which contained some toiletries, a couple of paperback books and a T-shirt.
‘This is for your journey.’ She closed the door of the car. ‘A foreigner who gets on to a train without a bag may look suspicious. Try to find a seat next to a young person, if you do not wish to be disturbed. They are less likely to bother you with conversation. Within an hour you will be in Budapest. There is absolutely nothing to worry about. I am just sorry that I cannot come with you.’
‘It’s fine,’ Gaddis replied.
‘Could I have your mobile phone please?’ He was not surprised that she had asked. ‘I will take it back to Austria and switch it on in a park near my house. It may distract the people who are following you. They may believe that you are still in Vienna. On the other hand, they may assume that it is a trick. Either way, it is not safe for you to be carrying it. Do you have any further questions?’
There were hundreds more, of course, but Gaddis could not think of them. Probably better that way. There was no need to complicate things further. After all, how hard could it be? All he had to do was get on a train and meet a man called Miklós. He looked up to see the Budapest train sliding into the station. Eva had timed things perfectly. He stepped out of the car.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind. I don’t suppose we’ll get the chance to meet again.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ Eva replied. Gaddis gave her the phone and the battery. ‘You will be fine, Doctor Gaddis, you will be fine. I wish you the very best of luck.’
Chapter 46
The train hummed and sighed on the tracks. Gaddis walked into a carriage halfway down the platform and saw that only a handful of empty seats remained. He looked for somebody young, as Eva had advised, spotting a crew-cut Hungarian with tattooed biceps seated at a table opposite a bottle-blonde woman in her early twenties who was staring moodily out of the window. Their legs were entwined beneath the table. There was a spare seat beside the girl. Gaddis nodded at it and the Hungarian indicated that it was free with a flick of his eyes, nothing more. Gaddis thanked him with a nod, swung his bag up on to the rack and sat down.
The train began to pull away from the station. An old woman stared at Gaddis as he settled into his seat, but when he caught her eye she looked away. Across the aisle, a young teenager was listening to an MP3 player on headphones which were covered in pink and yellow stickers. Beside her was a middle-aged businessman in a brown suit who was fast asleep, his mouth hung open, a blob of spittle pooling on his chin. It didn’t look as though anybody was going to start making polite conversation. People appeared to be minding their own business.
On the table in front of him was an open can of Coca-Cola and a crumpled copy of a Hungarian daily newspaper. Gaddis wanted to get a look at the front page, even though he knew that there was no chance of Wilkinson’s murder having made it into the early-morning editions. A female passenger across the aisle was reading an Austrian gossip magazine with a picture of Katarina Witt on the cover, skating in a red dress. Gaddis was feeling fidgety and needed something to do with his hands. He remembered the paperback books in his bag, yet did