Yet his bliss was not entirely unalloyed, for he was subconsciously a little lonely. He would have given a lot to have had Erika there or Sabine. A mental picture of the latter, as she had once sat beside him not many yards from where he was lying now, flashed into his mind. Only the more intimate parts of her slender golden brown body had been encased in a white satin swimsuit, and she had been sitting with her hands clasped round her bent knees, from time to time shaking the dark hair which fell to her shoulders, because its ends had got a little wet under the bathing cap she had just taken off.
As he thought idly of the fun they had had together he wondered where she was now, and if he would run into her. Then, with a little shock, he realized that such a meeting could prove highly dangerous. She knew him to be an Englishman, and her country was at war with Britain. She knew, too, that he had acted as Sir Pellinore's secret agent in getting to the bottom of at least one conspiracy to sabotage British interests; so she would immediately jump to the conclusion that he had come to Budapest as a spy. Women who have parted with their lovers as good friends are, he knew, more prone to be ruled by pleasant memories than patriotic considerations; so he thought the odds were that she would not turn him over to the police, but one could never tell. There was, too, the nasty possibility that should they suddenly come face to face in the presence of other people she might, from astonishment at seeing him, give him away inadvertently.
Much as he would have liked to spend a few hours with her again and hear from her what she had made of her life, he decided that he must keep a sharp lookout for her and, should he see her, beat a quick retreat before she had a chance to recognize him.
While in the pool he had seen that there were many more women than men bathing and among them quite a number of pretty girls, some of whom had looked at him more than once with the sort of glance which invites conversation. But he had no intention of becoming involved in anything of that kind, even temporarily. It was just such dalliance with young women about whom one knew nothing which could have the most unexpected repercussions and, at times, lead men employed on his sort of work to an extremely sticky end.
In due course he dressed, drank a baratsch at the pool bar, then had himself driven to the Corso. Sitting down at one of the tables in front of the Cafe Mignon, he ordered himself a stein of dark lager, and soon afterwards saw Levianski coming towards him.
With a wave of his hand and a smile he called out as if to an old acquaintance, 'Wei geht es Ihnen Was wollen Sie irinken?'
The broad shouldered little Jew returned his greeting, said that he too would like a dark lager, then, sitting down, added in a lower voice, 'So you do speak German?'
Gregory answered in an equally low tone, 'My pretending not to was only a ruse aimed at getting your assistant to fetch, someone who spoke French or English. I hoped it might be you; and I was lucky. But we will speak German together from now on, so as not to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves.'
Nodding agreement, Levianski said, 'Now tell me, please, how you came to see my letters, and what you want with me.'
That he could not be expected to talk freely, unless he was trusted to some extent, was obvious. But Gregory did not mean to reveal his true identity. With disarming candour he replied:
'My name is Etienne Tavenier, and I am a retired Major of the French Army. For some time I have been living in Switzerland. I am not a de Gaullist but my sympathies are with the Allies. Naturally they have an information centre there. I have an English friend who works in it, and he asked me if I would make this visit to Budapest. I agreed, but I do not come as a spy, to pry into military matters. I assure you of that. Although I have been a soldier I am at heart a man of peace; and my one wish is to help in any way I can to stop this terrible war before it destroys all Europe.'
Having paused to light a cigarette, he went on, 'Evidently the letters you wrote to your cousin were passed on by him, as I feel sure you must have intended them to be. Anyhow, copies of them were sent to the Middle Europe Section of the Allies' information centre in Switzerland. That is how your name came to be given to me as a man I could trust, and one who might be able to help me with the answers to certain questions that I have come here to investigate.'
Levianski's dark eyes were quite expressionless as he asked, 'What are those questions?'
'They can really all be embodied in one. What is the attitude of the Hungarian people towards the war?'
'That is not simple to answer. The fact that I am a Jew does not make me any the less a Hungarian; but my attitude is very different from that of the average Catholic priest, big landowner or peasant.'
'Naturally. But what I mean is, do you believe that the bulk of the people are convinced of the Tightness of the cause for which they are fighting?'
'I can only repeat that the views of the main elements which make up our population vary greatly. You see, Hungary is quite different from most other nations. Her classes are not integrated in the same way. By that I do not mean that we are torn by class warfare. In fact, in peace time, we suffer very little from labour troubles, and in all classes there is a high degree of patriotism. But, where international relations are concerned, there is no unity of opinion to bind us together; as, for example, the mutual hatred of the French and the Germans which is common to all classes in both countries.'
'Please go on, and tell me about these conflicting interests.'
'Well, to start with, Hungary has not yet really emerged from feudalism. The greater part of the land is still divided into vast estates which are owned by a hundred or so families. They lost them after the First World War, but the Bolshevik revolution led here by Beia Khun lasted only six months. That was not long enough to destroy the attitude of mind of the peasants, which had been engrained into them through many centuries. When the magnates returned from temporary exile their peasants received them joyfully, restored their lands and went back to work for them.
'By the Treaty of Trianon the size of Hungary was reduced by half. In that way many of these great magnates lost some of their estates; but most of them retained enough land and wealth for their way of life to remain almost unaltered. In their great country houses they keep staffs of up to fifty servants, and as many more outside to run their stables and their shooting parties. Up there, opposite to us, on the hill of Buda the great stone buildings that you can see are their town palaces. All of them hold priceless art treasures and fine libraries, for the Hungarian aristocracy is a highly cultured one; but it has the faults as well as the virtues of all feudal aristocracies.
'The Magyar nobility is brave, open handed and casually kind to those who are dependent upon it, but it is also proud, cynical and immoral. They despised the Austrian aristocracy because in most cases Austrian family trees do not go back, by several hundred years, as far as theirs. They regard Hitler and his Nazi Gauleiters as the scum of the gutters. Yet, for their own ends, they received the Austrians as equals and treat these jumped-up Germans with most considerate politeness. As for their morals, those of cats are better. The tittle-tattle of their servants on that aspect of their lives is so consistent that it cannot be doubted. Within their own small circle husbands, wives and even unmarried girls take and exchange paramours with a freedom which would be considered utterly shameful did they occupy a less exalted station.