He drank two cups of coffee (too weak), ate half a grapefruit (not bad), and returned to his room, where he brushed and flossed his teeth. He had been booked in for three nights, with an option to extend, though please God it would all be over before then. There was nothing to do now but wait, and he hated waiting. He lay back on the bed, massaging his chest and thinking of the hundred and one things that might go wrong. Then he buttoned his shirt, put on his blue Nino Danieli jacket, checked himself in the mirror, scowled, and fled into the streets.

Emil was right, of course: the place had not changed much in six years. There was more traffic, more of the brand names one would expect in Paris or New York. More bars and casinos and sex clubs (their neon boasts – ‘Beautiful Nude Girls Inside!’ – almost erased by the glare of the sun). More tourists too, gangs of them with floppy hats and brightly coloured knapsacks, peering at buildings, staring at menus, vying with each other, it seemed, to be most like a tourist. But on the broad pavements of Andrássy ut the young women still walked arm in arm with just the right degree of sexual boldness, and in the gloom of the street corners the men still smoked and gossiped like amiable shades in the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno. The same air of indulgent melancholy, the wry humour. It was still Budapest.