The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [130]
Gaddis managed to smile, though his gut was churning with nerves.
‘Thank you for everything,’ he said, and reached to shake the Hungarian’s hand. But Miklós had other ideas, seizing him in a bear hug which punched the wind out of his stomach.
‘We are friends, remember?’ he said, growling into Gaddis’s ear. He pulled away, still holding him by the arms. His grip was very strong. ‘If you have a serious problem, you call the British Embassy. By law, Sam, you are entitled to seek representation from your government. An official will come to you, an official who is aware of your situation. Does that make sense?’
‘It makes sense.’ He brushed away what felt like a bead of sweat above his temple and tried to arrange his face so that he would look more courageous. ‘You’ve been extraordinarily kind to me. I wish there was some way that I could thank you.’
‘There is nothing to thank me for,’ Miklós replied quickly, and Gaddis saw the sparkle in his eyes, the mischief he had noticed at Keleti. ‘It has been an interesting day to spend with you. Such interesting conversations. I wish you a very happy and safe journey home.’ There was a slight pause as Miklós set himself up for a cruel joke. ‘If they ask you if anybody could have interfered with your bags, you know what to say.’
Gaddis laughed and walked towards the security check. He felt as though he was in a room in which all the pictures had been tilted to one side. What if the passport was recognized as a fake? What happened then? Would Miklós wait for him, come forward and help? Would he ensure that he made it through to Departures, or was the Englishman now on his own?
He was held in a queue behind a young Polish couple and a man carrying what looked like a guitar in a brown leather case. He turned to aim one final wave at Miklós.
But he was gone.
Chapter 49
It was like Berlin all over again, only this time Gaddis was alone. This time there was no Tanya for company.
He made it through the X-ray and metal detectors, removing his shoes, removing his belt. Miklós had bought him a Guardian Weekly and a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Gaddis had put them in a plastic bag along with a packet of cigarettes and a slab of Toblerone. He put his shoes back on, threaded the belt through his jeans and took the plastic bag from the container in which it had passed through the scanner. It was soon time to queue again. Passport control was just a stone’s throw from security.
He picked the closest of two queues and found himself standing behind an elderly British couple and a young man with dreadlocked hair who was shouldering a canvas satchel which had been attacked by a plague of moths. He was in the shortest line, but as he looked ahead at the border guard, felt that he had chosen badly. There was a woman operating the adjacent desk who looked easygoing; his own guard had the stern, officious look of a dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat. Just the sort of person who might get a kick out of making a British tourist sweat.
Gaddis was summoned forward with a flick of the wrist. He had the counterfeit passport ready and passed it underneath a thick glass screen. The guard did not take it but instead let him rest it on the shelf, as if checking to see if his hand was shaking. Gaddis could feel the guard’s gaze tracking upwards towards his face and made a point of looking at him directly and of making eye contact. The guard’s expression was utterly cold. He snapped open the passport with what Gaddis took to be an almost contemptuous sense of suspicion and said: ‘What is your name, please?’
‘Tait,’ said Gaddis, trying out the pseudonym for the first time. ‘Sam Tait.’
The guard had already flicked to the back of the passport and was studying the photograph. It was almost as if he knew that it had been secured there by an MI6 forger just a few hours earlier.
‘Why were you in Budapest, please?’
Gaddis experienced a system-debilitating fear. He was sure that he was on the point