4.5 Spotted in Budapest

Suddenly, he heard the door lock. He darted into the bedroom under the arch and dropped beside the big box bed. There was no way he could hide under it. He lay on the floor with his gun drawn in his right hand and his left hand searched for the pager to switch it off before she beeped.

Alexey entered the room and reached the table. He opened a drawer and picked a key wallet. He closed a folder left open on the table and walked out of the room locking the door behind.

It was a close shave. Tyler lay with a firm grip on his firearm and sweating like hell. He was terrified.

The girl sat at the lobby, smoking and watching prudently for Alexey. In a spectacle, Hajnal caught Alexey coming down the red-carpeted staircase. She stared with her big eyes open as he turned around the stairs jiggling an open wallet of keys to enter the restaurant. She didn’t see him come in. She couldn’t see the road because of the canopy. There was no way he could go up the stairs without crossing the lobby floor.

She remembered to press the button. Hajnal did awkwardly drop it on the table but pressed the button. She stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray, picked her coat and bag, and went after him into the restaurant where he disappeared.

She crossed the entire restaurant floor towards the doors that led to the kitchen and pantry. A guy there wiping the silverware with a bedsheet cloth saw this girl with big black hair in a long-sleeved red top and in high heels peek through the door. He gestured to her pointing to a door on the opposite wall. The walls were white.

Hajnal crossed that floor to the door where she found a booth with a staircase leading to the basement.

Tyler got on his feet and reached the table. He’d not risk wasting more time. He did not replace any folder but he noticed an address card holder. He grabbed it and quickly made way to his room out through the door. He dropped the address card holder and the camera on his bed, pulled on his coat and scampered down the stairs. Hajnal wasn’t at the lobby. She left a cigarette burning in the ashtray.

“Where is the girl?” he asked the receptionist.

“I didn’t see her. She was there a while ago,” said Ilma at the reception.

Tyler was stuck by the entrance but no time to waste, he dashed back to his room to take photographs of the address book and return it to Alexey’s room while the door was left unlocked.

Hajnal paused inside the dark tunnel, 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. She heard faint jiggles coming from the tunnel and decided to continue. She reached into her bag and took her lighter. She entered the dark narrow shaft and came to a passage lying across. She turned right and continued through this wider tunnel until she reached a flight of steps. Then she could hear loud echoes of noises going on. Hajnal climbed the stairs and opened a door to walk out from a closet of a very large wardrobe. On the next turn she was on a horseshoe corridor of the dressing room. Noises were loud coming from the basement. She came out of the empty wardrobe to come across workers drilling and hammering the walls and columns installing dynamite for the blow up. She was in the theatre.

The service departments of the theatre, such as water systems, stage decoration, carpentry, tailoring, etc. were located in the water tower area and an underground tunnel was laid to connect with the theatre, pass József körút and the hotel. Technical apparatuses of the theatre were also in the service area like hydraulic machines for the backdrop curtains and the iron curtain. Formerly, the hotel was called Rémi Szálló. With the construction of the theatre in the Blaha Lujza tér made it change its name to Nemzeti along with the understanding among partners of the businesses.

Actors of the former national theatre used this tunnel to reach the hotel restaurant or a discrete room to spend their evening meals with friends, acquaintances or mistresses in secret. Citizens took refuge in the tunnel underground during the Second World War and in the days of the 1956 revolution.

Tyler ran down the stairs to the lower floor and swung the door open to 316. In order to accomplish a job done neatly, he locked the door behind, dropped the card holder on the table and climbed out of the window. He entered his room through the window and Hajnal entered from the door simultaneously with her coat and bag on her arm. “Where have you been?” he asked.

“He went underground through a tunnel. I lost him. I didn’t see him enter the hotel. I followed him down the tunnel to the theatre.”

“Jesus! We have been very careless. I can’t afford to make this mistake for a second time.”

That same day Tyler and Hajnal checked out of the hotel and returned to Nyolc. Tyler secretly developed the negatives because he wanted to hide one photograph from the girl. He studied its contents. Those names and addresses in the card holder could hold vital clues but he could not figure out.

On 15^th March, Monday, they returned to Blaha Lujza tér to watch the old national theatre demolition. It was literally blown up. That day they blew the basement. The main structure collapsed in a final blow up that took place on 23^rd April 1965.