The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [132]
He unzipped the case. Inside, he could see his so-called possessions: the paperback books given to him by Eva in Hegyeshalom, the can of Austrian shaving foam, the tube of Colgate toothpaste. His dirty clothes – the clothes he had worn at the Kleines Café – had been placed alongside the jacket that he had bought in Great Marlborough Street. Viki had rolled it up into a ball.
The officer pulled at the jacket. As he lifted it free, Gaddis saw to his horror that something had fallen loose inside the case. A package of some kind. A small parcel.
The guard immediately picked it up and showed it to him. ‘What is this, sir?’
The heat again. The electric fear of capture. Gaddis stared at the package. It was about the size of two paperback books, wrapped in brown paper and secured in a thick skin of sellotape. There were no markings on it, no address, no stamps. He was about to deny ever having seen it before, but a stubborn refusal to kow-tow in the face of authority convinced him to lie. Before Gaddis knew what he was saying, the words were coming out of his mouth:
‘It’s just a present for somebody.’
‘A present?’
‘Yes.’
It was a ridiculous thing to have said. The package could have contained narcotics planted by Miklós or Viki. Gaddis had that feeling again of a second man inhabiting his body and speaking on his behalf. He could sense a constant flow of passengers passing behind him, staring at his back and condemning him with their eyes. He even heard a child say: ‘What’s that man done, Mummy?’ and wanted to turn around to proclaim his innocence.
‘What sort of present, sir?’
The officer’s question was put in a way that sounded almost disengaged, but Gaddis saw that he was studying his reaction carefully.
‘I’m not precisely sure, to be honest,’ he said. ‘A friend wrapped it up. A friend put it in there for me.’
‘You’ve never seen this package before?’
Eye contact now. Gaddis’s gaze flicked involuntarily to one side. He pulled it back and smiled, as if to assure the officer of his good character.
‘No. I’ve seen it. But I left Budapest in a bit of a hurry. A friend packed my bag.’
‘Somebody else has interfered with your luggage?’
Gaddis felt that his words were being twisted, that his lies were being unravelled even before he had uttered them. Why hadn’t he simply told the officer the truth? Then he remembered Miklós’s final words to him, the joke they had shared. If they ask you if anybody could have interfered with your bags, you know what to say. He felt sick to have been so easily duped.
‘Not interfered,’ he replied, hardly remembering what had been said. ‘We were just in a bit of a hurry.’
The officer had heard enough. He placed the package on the counter, searched through the rest of the case, then reached for a box-cutter in the pocket of his trousers.
‘Let’s open it up, shall we?’
He immediately began slicing through the loops of sellotape. It’s drugs, Gaddis thought, it can only be coke or pills. The officer was removing the brown wrapping paper. A sniffer dog picked up the scent and they waited to see who collected my bag.
‘So here we go,’ said the officer. Gaddis was staring at a small dark plastic box which the officer was holding in his hand. ‘Let’s have a look inside.’
He had stubby fingers, the nails cut short and clean. The lid of the box clicked open on a hinge. Inside, concealed in a nest of tissue paper, was not a wrap of cocaine,