4.4 Spotted in Budapest

A housekeeping woman in a traditional costume guided them up the staircase. He chose the stairs instead of the lift. Since the hotel stood sandwiched between two buildings, corridors lay by the perimeters of the floors so that the windows of the rooms open to the midsection, or the courtyard of a hotel, but not in this case because a roof lay below. An elegant restaurant and a Turkish bath were the highlights of the hotel. Two rooms by the façade with windows open to the road and no balconies. Room 401 stood by the north corner and 416 by the south on the corridor before the stairwell on the fourth floor.

The room was spacious and neat, white shades and brown curtains, carpeted in grey. Well supplied with amenities and a minibar. The window lock he noticed was something ‘manageable’. Tyler Friesen was satisfied with the room. He looked out of the window. Alexey was staying in Room 316, one floor below by the south corner.

“Szar!” cried Hajnal as she came out of the hotel under the tarp, “Empty! Can we go to a dohánybolt to buy a cigarette?”

“Is it really your birthday today?” he asked and she sniggered.

“We buy a fag and go to the hotel. You go home, grab some clothes and come back quickly. Don’t tell Sasa we’re coming here because I want to leave my stuff there. We are not checking out from that hotel.”

Two hours later, Tyler and Hajnal checked in at Hotel Nemzeti. The restaurant with white walls and cube-shaped pillars stood behind the reception. A ceiling lying horizontally over the midsection adorned with lead-glass and lit up. Built in 1896, with central heating, electricity, running water and bathroom in each room, even to go with a lift, the hotel remained intact from any harm. She still portrayed the city’s rich artistic heritage.

As the tables were allocated to the rooms, it left a reservation plate with the room number on every table. That told him where Alexey would sit in the depths and not far from his table.

Her lie over a cake helped Tyler that evening to burn his synchronised flash bulbs and twelve seconds to recharge taking photographs around the dining tables at the restaurant celebrating Hajnal’s birthday. He was able to capture Alexey on his Nikon F camera.

Alexey was a big guy, looked like a mafia boss or a jewel thief, clapping hands along with the audience and burning his cigars, with a slightly bald white head, in his late sixties. He was staying here since 1957.

In the morning of 10^th Wednesday, he pulled his gun, Colt .45 government model, which he smuggled into the country hidden inside the typewriter amongst other things.

“What is that?” cried Hajnal.

“A shoulder holster,” he replied.

“American!”

“Yes, we are going after Alexey,” he said, “Listen! We go to have breakfast and if we see Alexey go out, you sit at the lobby while I take a look at his room. You will carry this little pageboy and watch for him. If you see him come, press this red button like this,” he demonstrated and the device on his belt began to beep. “This is a pager, Motorola’s answer to Detroit Police Department’s paging devices. It is a security alert system. A beeper.”

“Wow! It is a cute little thing!”

“They’re going to make it cuter and littler.”

“Who is this man?”

“He is a mafia boss. Let’s go!”

“Hey! Why don’t you take me to America?”

Alexey was already in the restaurant having his breakfast. There was one way of entry from József körút to the hotel and cross the lobby floor to the stairs or the lift. When Alexey left the hotel, Tyler placed Hajnal by a coffee table by the corner on the remote floor.

“Hajni! Don’t miss him!” he warned.

Hajnal wore a tight red outfit with an open back and black high heels. She sat down and lit a long stick.

The architectural stonework on the façade wall projected cornices and grooves for grip but at his age he did not want to risk a foothold. He left the window open and the door unlocked. Dropped his coat and picked his camera and climbed out of the window. The scaffolding reached almost to the bottom of his window and stood four feet from the wall. He leaped hanging on the window and grabbed an elbow on a scaffold instantly ripping a shoulder muscle driving him into agony.

Tyler climbed down to the next floor level and by the other corner across, tried the window to Room 316 which was left unbolted from the inside. The scaffolding shook from top to bottom as he leaned to open the window and climb in.

It was a large room, twice bigger than his, with a lobby area and a bedroom linked through a large arched doorway. A suite room with sheer white drapes and smell of tobacco hung in air. Wasting no time, he began to dig into the files on the worktable. He picked a TAM file – a thick Tbilisi file. Shuffled it and took some random shots of the pages and its cover. Dropped it and picked a MAC file – a thin Skopje file.