The Budapest Coup

By Robert Kocsis

The world is at the brink of a nuclear war. - Greedy businessmen and corrupt ex KGB agents intend to hold the world to ransom

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9783849577384

Book preview

Chapter 1

The file passed from one briefcase into the other. The two men shook hands as it was customary when saying good-bye and parted in opposite directions.

No suspicion would have been raised had this incident happened in one of the coffee-houses established all around down-town since the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. But taking place at a children’s playground in the vicinity of the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest it made a peculiar impression on Yana.

She sat on a bench and eyed her two boys throwing sand at each other when the exchange of the documents had been accomplished. Trained to notice everything unusual, Yana memorized the appearances of the two men and her brain immediately started to rattle and browse through the faces in her mind. One could have been a match. But then the face belonged to a man she had known in another life. Igor died years ago when he tried to ambush the arms supply organized by the CIA to the Afghan Mujahidin at the Pakistan border. - No, it cannot be him, she decided, and dismissed all thoughts about the two figures and guided her attention to the two boys as one of them insisted on his brother to eat the sand cake he had made for him.

Yana bent down to separate the two little rascals and the sand cake dissolved into the material it was made of. As she stood up the two figures were just leaving the playground. One walked towards the Parliament, and one took his way towards the Danube, which was all but blue as water pollution was not viewed as a crime neither by the Slovakians nor by the Hungarians.

She made herself comfortable on the bench again and found that her mind had returned to the incident she had witnessed. Pictures of her past loomed up in her brain like on a TV-screen.

Yana Philipovna Prokov had been her maiden name given to her by her former superior officer, colonel Levtushenko of the infamous KGB. Of course she had valid papers for her new name. ‘Katharina Alexandrovna Romanov’ is far too bourgeois a name for a KGB agent, comrade. her colonel had quipped referring to the name of the last Czar of Russia. Well, she had thought at that time, remembering her classes in English Literature ‘What’s a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’

Indeed, she thought, in those days things like that did not matter. - Names. - What are names? - Just a tag on somebody like ‘LaCoste’ on a T-shirt, or ‘Mercedes’ on a car. She giggled inwardly as she visualized Mercedes Benz the daughter of the famous car manufacturer as being a real buxom like the big, hefty cars named after her.

Her second husband did not even know her real name. She did not bother to apply at the authorities to give back her real name after the KGB was dissolved. For her Katharina Alexandrovna Romanov died when she entered the services of the Soviet secret service back in 1981. She was even thankful to her colonel for the new tag, as almost ten years of duty at the KGB demanded a high toll on her self-respect. Sleeping with her boss – a career officer and a bootlicker who had been emphatically dubbed ‘the little Rasputin’ for his notorious sex-maniac behaviour and his moralising overtones – and other influential apparatchiks to get a flat, decent food and some fashionable clothes and her husband No. 1 out of Lefortovo, the high security prison of the KGB, was just a very small part of what she had to undergo. Her parents never learned what she did for a living, so their name never got stained.

An ear-deafening shriek awakened her from her day-dreaming. Péter, the older of her two boys finally had managed to shove a handful of sand-cake into his brother’s mouth. The poor little boy chuckled and almost suffocated. Yana got up and took Pál in her arms for comfort. While she held her younger son she scolded the elder. Péter bent his head in shame got up from his knees and went to the swing. Pál sobbed a little longer than necessary as it was very nice to sit in his mother’s lap. Yana rocked him and fell in day-dreaming again.

It had been on the eve of her twentieth birthday when a gloomy figure stopped her on her way out of the Academy of Applied Sciences building in Moscow. He had looped his arm into hers and had drawn her away from the stream of students entering and leaving the halls of knowledge. She had not liked the way she was manhandled so she had wiggled herself free and had faced the man with a furious expression on her pretty face. He had reached in his coat pocket and had produced a badge identifying him as a lieutenant of the KGB. Fear had immediately flickered in her eyes – which the lieutenant acknowledged with a sadistic grin – but with an effort she had managed to keep control over her emotions and could even stop herself from trembling with fear. The man had then ordered her to walk with him and had put his arm on her shoulders appear like a couple in love. Yana had stiffened the very moment the agent’s arm had touched her body but she had had to endure it. – One did not argue with a KGB agent.

The lieutenant had turned out to be a recruiting officer and Yana had been one of their most promising prospects as she was such a bright comrade, the agent explained holding her tight and leaning closer to her face just as he was about to kiss her. Yana had winced at the closeness and the false compliments delivered by such a thug. – She had been top of her class whatever school she had attended as absorbing knowledge came easily to her. ‘Katinka,’ as her father used to call her lovingly, ‘you’ll become Russia’s most famous scientist’. She might have, had her path through life not been crossed by the KGB villains. – It had been pointed out that it would be her duty to answer the call of the Rodina, the glorious Soviet Union, her very Motherland, without hesitation and that she should feel honoured by the vocation proposed. She had shuddered at the thought of working as a secret agent – which, again, did not go unnoticed and thus the lieutenant had to tell her that they might as well pay her parents a visit and tell them how ungrateful their daughter would be when it came to her duties as a citizen of the glorious Soviet Union the paradise of workers and farmers. – Fear returned to her eyes and the lieutenant knew that he had her on the hook. The recruiter had forbidden her to mention to anybody their little encounter. Yana had promised to remain silent.

Two weeks after the first meeting she had been picked up again by the same lieutenant and had been delivered to colonel Levtushenko. The colonel had dismissed all personnel from his office to be alone with Yana. She had been standing in the middle of the room – in a dress, provided by the KGB lieutenant, that revealed too much of her shapely body – and the colonel, at least four inches shorter than Yana, had been circling around her like a shark around a raft. He did not say a word but had scrutinized her from every angle. She did not dare to move. As he had come into Yana’s view she had seen the lecherous look in his eyes, which would prevail for the time of their acquaintance. The colonel had eventually stopped in front of her – his vodka reddened, thick nose almost touched her throat – and had caressed her face with the back of his hand and had taken a deep look into her V-shaped blouse complementing her on her beauty. She had tried a weak smile but it had resulted in a grimace. She had felt sick and the room had begun to turn around her. Her condition must have showed as the colonel had offered her a seat.

This first meeting with Levtushenko had lasted two hours. She had been told what was expected of her and what the KGB offered her as compensation. On this day in late October 1981 Katharina Alexandrovna Romanov died and Yana Philipovna Prokov rose from the heinous fantasy of the KGB.

Yana felt a tear rolling down her face and heard the distant voice of an infant calling for his mother. Pál asked her for the third or fourth time why she was crying. She hugged him and told him it was nothing, put him down and beckoned Péter to come. As soon as her eldest arrived she crouched and embraced both of them, held them tight and told them not to quarrel and to behave decently. She scrambled to her feet, took the boys by their hands each at one side and walked off towards their flat over viewing the Danube on the Pest side of Budapest. They had to cross Akadémia utca, Academy street, leading from the Parliament to Roosevelt tér, Roosevelt Square, which was not an easy task to undertake with two small children. Hungarian car drivers do not much care about pedestrians. They seldom stopped to let them cross the street safely. Zebra crossings were nothing much more for most of them but some simple street paintings, absolutely useless and unnecessary.

Despite of these minor inconveniences she enjoyed living in the capital of Hungary. The town was beautiful and the shops were always filled with goods, as they had been even during the socialist era. The apartment they called their own was cosy and she and her husband had enough money and taste to furnish it in a Western style way. It was neither big nor small. They had a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. They could have afforded a house on the Rózsadomb, Rose-Hill, as the posh area of Budapest overlooking – and sometimes looking down on – the city was called, but they would be far too much exposed to criminals burglarizing their house, stealing their car, kidnapping their children and so on. It was better not to show that one was better off than the rest of the population.

She fed the boys and put them to bed for their afternoon nap. When they were fast asleep she did the dishes and made herself a cup of tea – a custom not only prevailing in England. She sat on the settee, took a magazine but got bored at the news about the hapless love-life of Claudia Schiffer and David Copperfield, put it on the marble table and stretched herself on the settee. She closed her eyes. - Love. - She was once in love, in very deep, emotional love.

Andrei used to be a writer and what they call an intellectual. He got himself more often into prison than any petty thief. The KGB bugged his flat and he had a shadow following him even to the public lavatories. - Andrei was bright, eloquent and a very emotional lover. - Her second husband, Zoltán, was exactly Andrei’s opposite. - She had to marry Zoltán otherwise she would have been expelled from Hungary after the communist government gave in to new elections and the troops of the Red Army left Hungary. - Zoltán used to be a member of the Hungarian Socialist and Labour Party and was a secret agent too. They first met in Afghanistan. Her fellow-countrymen and some devoted soldiers from the Warsaw Pact countries tried to win the horrible war against the Mujahidin. Yana had the impression at that time that Zoltán was not in Afghanistan to help the Soviets but to make business with them and the locals. He was a spineless creature, Yana reflected, he always run with the hares but hunted with the dogs. But his charm had caught Yana’s attention. He had courted her for a long time by bringing her flowers which could not be found in the mountains they were, Swiss chocolate, French wine and other things Yana had to ask herself how he could get hold of them.

The buzzing of the phone interrupted her dwelling into the past. She jumped to her feet and reached the apparatus in a few quick paces and picked up the receiver to stop the unnerving noise that could awake her napping children.

Yes? she whispered.

Hello, its me, Zoltán. I shall be late tonight as we have a board meeting about the future of the company. So do not wait for me, just go to bed, but take the keys off otherwise I can’t get in. O.K.?

Sure, but don’t be too long, will you?

No, I won’t. I’m fed up with these lunatics, they haven’t got a clue about doing serious business. - Anyway, I don’t want to bother you. - How are my two big boys? They’re asleep.

Oh, I’m sorry, I hope the phone didn’t wake them up.

No, it didn’t. But let’s hang up, ‘cause they had a rather rough time and need their sleep.

Did something happen I should know about? Zoltán asked casually.

No, nothing. Yana shook her head. Well, maybe, but it is actually absolutely impossible, but I might have seen Igor today.

Silence.

Igor, Zoltán whispered incredulously, that cannot be, he died, I saw it myself.

Yes, I know, but the man I saw today at the children’s playground resembled him very much. - But don’t bother, darling, I’m certainly mistaken.

Let’s hope you are. Zoltán said annoyed about the unnecessary bothering. I wouldn’t like to meet him after what happened. - Anyway, I try to escape the meeting as soon as possible, then we can discuss what you saw. Bye-bye, dear, and take care.

Zoltán hung up before Yana could say good-bye to him. She replaced the receiver and pulled the wire from its socket to prevent any other disturbances. She went into the kitchen and prepared herself an other cup of tea. Although she had left Russia for more than a decade she could not get accustomed to coffee. Her husband drank it by the gallons. She was convinced that that was the reason why he had suffered a heart-attack last year. - She took the tea cup in both hands to absorb the comforting heat. She sipped it very carefully and sat on a kitchen chair.

Her husband has been corrupt as far as she remembered. The ambush back in Afghanistan would have been a success did not he give away vital information to the Americans for money. - How could the Soviets be that stupid, that they trusted Hungarians, Czechs, Poles and Bulgarians to be faithful allies to their suppressers? - Even though they claimed to be true communists and the best of comrades. She has never believed in the loyalty of the Warsaw Pact countries as the peoples loathed the Soviet jackboots marching on the soil of their respective countries.

Well, Igor Sergejevitsh Cassov was certainly a devoted communist. He really believed in the high-flying theory of being equal and that the capitalists are nothing but blood-sucking leaches on the backs of the honest-working proletariat. He had the rank of a captain in the special branch of the KGB at that time. He was entrusted with almost everything. Nothing was too secret for his eyes. No wonder that he was sent immediately to Afghanistan after the glorious Red Army started to liberate the country of the peace loving Afghans from the evil suppression of the capitalist-imperialists. - Yana grimaced at the thought, what a nonsense they had been fed in those days. - Igor had a nickname which fitted him very well: ‘Igor the Vigour’. He never slept, he was never tired, and his mind was as sharp as a razor-blade. Yana got acquainted to some of his concubines. They confirmed that Igor was vigorous in other things as well.

Igor was dreaded but awed. He did not have any friends as he refused to rely on anybody. Never the less it had been a shock to everybody when the ambush failed and he got shot. Igor always prepared a coup meticulously into its tiniest details. He had never failed before. - Yana was sure that Igor would knew who had betrayed him and would kill him when he were alive. But he was dead, Yana was sure, she had seen him lying on the ground, face to a side, his eyes wide open starring into nothingness. Nobody had got time to examine him, as they had to run for their lives, but he had looked quite dead to her. Besides, Igor was almost forty at that time, over ten years ago. The man she had seen today might have been in his mid forties. - Enough of the past! she declared, finished her tea, set the cup on the table and returned to the living room. She picked up the magazine she had laid aside and started to read an article about horticulture. The flowers were just beautiful, maybe they should move into a house with a little garden so she could have flowers too.

She could hear the boys stir in the adjacent room. So it would not be long until they woke up, Yana smiled. She would play with them a bit indoors and than start to prepare dinner. They rarely eat all together as Zoltán came usually home late. That had to stop sooner or later. She wanted to have a whole family including the husband and father. She had no intentions to be a single parent.

Dinner was always a problem. What should she cook? She browsed through the magazine till she found the page with the recipes. She would prepare one of the six possibilities suggested for dinner. Her mouth watered at the sight of the dishes. She got up with the magazine in her hand and left towards the kitchen.

*

The exchange of the merchandise was accomplished according to schedule. A male voice announced through the intercom.

That’s no reason to disturb me! another male voice thundered back and continued annoyed Usually the exchanges we organize succeed. What do you want? - And make it short.

Sorry, sir, for the disturbance, but one of the businessman wishes to place an order, and…

Which one and what kind of an order? the second voice cut in briskly.

It’s Mr. Mordashov and he’d like to have a history book about the time after the Russian October Revolution. the first voice answered.

The second voice remained silent for a while. Strange things happen these days, the man thought and glanced at his Patek Philippe attached to his left wrist without noticing the time. His mind was on something else and the peek to his watch was customary.

O.K., but charge him double the regular fee and ask for 50% down-payment. He cut off the conversation by pressing a button. The man who had given the order leaned back in his leather armchair and clasped his hands behind his head. His face showed a content smile as he mused. The Russians spy on each other and I make the big bucks.

Many businessmen in East and West, North and South used his agency to gather indepth information about customers and suppliers, allies and enemies, wives and husbands, oppositions and governments, and many other things. He was proud of his achievements in the last seven years. For him the dismantling of the Iron Curtain brought the biggest business success of his life. As a former agent of the Hungarian Secret Service he was hunted by the police after the Socialists toppled at the first free elections. - But he had not been dumb. With a couple of his colleagues he photocopied the most interesting files and offered them to the subjects of the records. Small minded people would call it blackmail, he termed it ‘info-trade’. They were inundated with money as real culprits and those who out of pure egotism whished to have incriminating files about themselves came in droves and paid what ever amount of money he asked for. After about five years all of his business partners had sold their shares to him and lived now in the Caribbean or another nice place where they did not have to work but could enjoy the fruits of their labour. - That would not suit him. - He was addicted to power. - His organization operated world wide. Former members of the espionage task forces of the other ex-socialist countries, like Poland, The Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Rumania and so on, had taken also an interest in his ‘info-trade’ business. With the accrued information they could ‘convince’ top-ranking chiefs of counter-espionage departments all over the world to cooperate in the ‘info-trade’ business. Therefore he was one of the most powerful man on earth. He could influence elections, business deals and everything else where information was vital. And was there any field where it wasn’t?

The money he earned went to a Swiss bank account, or a number account to be more precise, therefore not even the bank knew whose money they handled. He was glad, he had opened his account before the US attacked the Swiss banks because of their relationship to Nazi-Germany. Nowadays even he would face difficulties opening a bank account. - The balance of his account was an eight digit figure in Swiss Franks, about the same amount in US Dollars slumbered in an account on the Cayman Islands and a seven digit figure in Pound Stirling lay in an account in Jersey. He had no special use for the money, but it felt real good having it.

The phone rang on his desk and interrupted his daydreaming. He picked it up in the hope it would be a new customer. Maybe the president of a country?

Chapter 2

The facsimile machine beeped and started to spit out the paper on Bertalan Lugossy’s desk in his office near the Hungarian Parliament. He automatically glanced at the machine, but returned his attention to the papers in front of him.

Bert, as his friends called him, Lugossy was Special Branch. Very Special. He had almost unlimited funds, the most advanced technical equipment, the best trained personnel and a master-key with which almost all forces in Hungary could be put on full alert and to his beck and call. His main tasks were fighting organized crime within Hungary and counter-espionage. The department he headed, his rank was that of a colonel, but he never used it, held eight agents and three secretaries. This department was on duty 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

After the socialist government had toppled the Hungarian Democratic Forum won the first free elections. The HDF consisted mostly of historians, writers and poets, who believed that they were also responsible for their countrymen living outside the borders of Hungary. Especially the ones in Rumania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia. Approximately four million ethnic Hungarians lived and still live in these countries. - After World War One it was decided in Versailles that Hungary had to lose two thirds of its territories to the aforementioned countries as they had been wise enough to change sides – contrary to Hungary, which staid on till the bitter end – before the defeat of the German Empire. This decision, however, crippled the infrastructure and the economy of the country and sent it on a slow slide down the drain. Momentum picked up, but the direction did not change, when the communist took power after World War Two. When Hungary got rid off its Soviet oppressor back in 1990 everybody was sure that the climb out of the pit had started.

When the HDF announced their responsibility for their countrymen abroad unofficial threats were delivered by the governments of the mentioned countries to the members of the Hungarian government. The Minister of National Security established a very special department and put Lugossy in charge. – Albert Lugossy, Bert’s father, used to be a freedom fighter back in 1956 when the Hungarians rose against their oppressors. The family lore had it that his father had rescued his mother from a Russian soldier who was about to rape her. Albert had cut off the assailants head with a Hungarian Hussar’s sabre, which had been used in a freedom fight before. – Back in 1848 when the Hungarians drove out the Austrians – although only for a short period of time. – The sabre had belong to Ignac Lugossy, the great-great grandfather of Albert and had remained in the family ever since. Even Albert managed to take it with him when he had to flee his native country when the Russians wiped out every resistance in Hungary with brute force in mid November 1956. England had been his destination from where he wanted to move on to the USA because he hoped that Dwight D. Eisenhower would keep his promise and send troops to aid the freedom fighters in their struggle against the communist superpower. Soon Albert discovered that the American president had no intentions whatsoever to send troops as he claimed to be tied down by the British-French escapade in Egypt in the same year. – The Hungarians had never forgot that they have been left alone by the West.

Back in 1994 the HDF lost the elections to the Hungarian Socialist Party, HSP. As the HDF had foreseen such an event the very first task Lugossy received in 1990 was to gather juicy information about leading politicians of the HSP. Lugossy, educated in England, despised the new Hungarian government for this task although he had all reason to bear ill will against the socialists. – As Gyula Horn, the chairman of the HSP and new Prime Minister, took power after the second free elections he ordered his new Minister of National Security to terminate the department headed by Lugossy. The Minister after having talked to Lugossy for two hours, briefed his Premier. Gyula Horn, not much loved by the Hungarians for his atrocities during