But Sándor couldn’t say a thing. His tongue was just a lump of flesh, his jaw was so tight he might as well have had lockjaw. The officers cuffed his wrists with plastic cable ties and bundled him across the street and into their squad car. He didn’t put up any resistance.
“Sándor!” Of course it was Lujza who was yelling. “We’ll file a complaint. Don’t let them do this to you. There must be someone we can complain to.…”
“Call 1-475-7100,” the older of the two officers said placidly. “It’s toll-free.”
ONCE WHEN HIS stepfather Elvis went to record a CD with a band called Chavale, Sándor had been allowed to tag along. That was back when they were playing enough gigs to actually earn a little money, and his stepfather still believed firmly in his Big Break, as he called it. It was also before Tamás was born, so his stepfather would sometimes take him places without referring to him as “Valeria’s kid from before we got married.” Sándor could still remember the feeling of sitting quiet as a mouse on a chair that could spin around, but squeaked when you did it, so you couldn’t. He could remember the men’s concentration and laughter, the smell of their cigarettes, the multitude of buttons on the mixing board, and the pane of glass between the studio and the recording equipment.
The memory popped into his head now because the room they put him in reminded him of that studio. The gray, insulated walls, the pane of glass facing the hallway, and then of course the fact that they were recording everything he said.
“Where were you born, Sándor?” said the man who had introduced himself only as Gábor.
“Galbeno. It’s a village near Miskolc.”
“And your parents?”
Did he mean who were they or where were they born? Sándor’s brain felt as thick as porridge.
“My father was born in Miskolc.”
“Name?”
“Gusztáv Horváth. He’s dead now.” Gusztáv Horváth had keeled over in front of twenty-seven dumbstruck physics students at the Béla Uitz School on a warm day in September almost three years ago.
“And your mother?”
There was that stiffness in his jaws again, as if all his chewing muscles were in spasms. He was having a hard time opening his mouth, and every last bit of spit had evaporated. He didn’t dare lie. This was the NBH. Nemzetbiztonsági Hivatal, Hungary’s National Security Service. These days, they might have a fancy home page and a press secretary and even several ombudsmen who were supposed to keep tabs on things and ensure openness and protect the legal rights of the individual, but they were still the NBH.
“Ágnes Horváth.”
The man whose name might be Gábor sat quietly, calmly, and expectantly, and the silence somehow forced Sándor to add the correction. “Or … well, she’s my stepmother.”
Gábor didn’t reveal in any way whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied with the response. He was still waiting. A man in his late forties with light, amber-colored eyes and graying, short-cropped dark hair. Shirt and tie. Strong, rounded shoulders, neck slightly too thick. His broad, calm face was almost gentle, and it wasn’t physical violence that Sándor feared. This was not a man who would push people’s heads into water-logged plastic bags.
“My biological mother’s name is Valeria Rézmüves.” The words tumbled out of his mouth one by one, oddly disjointed. It sound like one of those computerized phone voices, he thought. You have. Selected. Zero four. Zero eight. Nineteen. Eight five.
“Gypsy?”
“Yes.”
Rézmüves was a typical Roma name, so it didn’t take any secret archives or supernatural abilities to guess that. Still, Sándor felt exposed. Poorer by one secret.
There’s no reason for people to know about that, Ágnes always said. You’re mine now. That other thing—we don’t talk about that. Do you understand?
He wasn’t even nine yet, but he had already learned that silence was the only reasonably safe response, so he didn’t say anything. And she had just nodded, as if that was precisely what she wanted from him. A child who could keep his mouth shut.
Gábor stood up.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said politely. “We’ll continue in a little while.”
And then he left.
Sándor sat there on the gray, plastic chair with his elbows resting on the table. It was warm in the room, but not as hot as in his overheated room in the Eighth District. The temperature in here was not governed by such variables as sunlight and outside air. It was warm because a dial had been set to make it so.
Sándor felt strangely weightless. An astronaut with a severed lifeline, floating above the Earth. He could see it, could see life down there, knew there were people laughing, talking, working, making love, taking baths, arguing, living normal lives. He knew they were there, but he couldn’t reach them. Just a few hours before he had believed he could be like them, but now he knew that would never happen.
He still hadn’t asked them why he was here. Hadn’t said a word that wasn’t in response to their questions. He knew that wasn’t normal. That if it had been Lujza sitting here, or Ferenc, or Mihály, they would have protested, kicked up a fuss, demanded lawyers and explanations. He also knew that if he wanted to seem like a normal person, he should do the same.
But he couldn’t.
WELL OVER HALF an hour passed before Gábor came back. He had a piece of paper with him that he placed on the table in front of Sándor.
“Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.
It was a list of URLs. Some were Hungarian, others were various dot-com sites: unitednuclear.com, fegyver.net, attila.forum.hu, hospitalequip.org. He didn’t recognize any of them.
“No,” he said.
“That’s strange,” Gábor said. “Because we can tell from your computer that you’ve visited all of them and spent rather a long time at each.”
It took one long, freezing cold instant. Then the realization hit him like a bomb blast. Tamás. Tamás must have done it, that night when he was pretending there was a girl he was desperate to contact. Sándor looked down at the list again. United Nuclear? Fegyver.net? That must be some kind of gun site. Attila Forum sounded like one of those right-wing extremist pages Lujza would get so worked up over. But hospitalequip.org? What on earth was the connection there? And why had Tamás come all the way from Galbeno to Budapest to mess around with stuff like that?
“I … I don’t really remember,” Sándor said desperately. “I’ve been studying for exams lately. I use the web when I’m studying.” It sounded pathetic and evasive, even to his own ears.
“I see. And which class are you trying to contact Hizb ut-Tahrir for?”
“What?”
“You also spent a fair amount of time on hizbuttahrir.org.”
“Oh … that.…” It stopped him in his tracks.
He knew that Hizb ut-Tahrir was an Islamic organization. But a connection between them and Tamás? They were hardly in the same galaxy, ideologically speaking. He wasn’t even sure Tamás had an ideology, aside from a certain penchant for life’s pleasures. Hedonism. Isn’t that what it was called?
Gábor leaned in as if he were confiding something, in a way that also made Sándor’s torso instinctively tip forward a couple of degrees.
“Sándor, listen up. I’m not one of those idiots who believe that the Jews and the Gypsies have teamed up to destroy Hungary. And yet I have to wonder a little when a bright, young law student with a Gypsy mother starts researching right-wing nationalist and Islamist websites at the same time. That seems a little odd. And when that same bright young man suddenly becomes extremely interested in weapons and other potentially destructive items … well, a couple of alarm bells start going off, you know? But I’m sure we just don’t understand. There must be an obvious, natural explanation. So, would you please be so kind as to set my mind at ease?”