I am in Budapest, only it does not look like Budapest because I have been there; so maybe I am in Prague because I have not been there.
I am in a deserted apartment, more like a bunker, but real high up, above the cityscape. And even though the bunker has only two main rooms, the rooms have strange angles and steps up to the lookout posts. Like a bunker the rooms have grey white walls and the windows are glassless but have metal grills.
The spies were just with me, a man and woman drinking whisky from crystal glasses. They poured it from a pear shaped decanter with a glass stopper.
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And once they left, they put the glasses on a mantelpiece.
Then an agent came through the door and said, “They were here weren’t they?” But I didn’t answer and he went room to room looking for evidence.
There was nothing in the rooms but he found the decanter and holding it by the neck said, “Yes, the evidence is here,” He lifted it up for me to see.
“You should have worn gloves then,” I pointed out, “as you’ve just destroyed the evidence.”
I thought he was an idiot but he left with the decanter, and the couple returned.
Through curlicue bars on the windows I am trying to point my camera at the view of the city, the way the buildings slope down below me and then back up the other side of the valley high up above.
At the bottom of the valley is a nest of residential houses tightly packed, but in front are ugly white warehouses and I’m trying to angle the camera to avoid the warehouses and focus on the houses, with the remaining buildings on the opposite slope as a background. I would do a panoramic shot, except the bars would show up fuzzy in the foreground.
We walk outside and down to a balcony in front of the bunker.
“You have to see the nightly spectacle,” the woman tells me. Sure enough, a huge aircraft with multiple stories, like a space ship, five layers of oval windows pinpricks of light on black walls, comes up from the right side of the valley, against the dusky sky. Up over the balcony it flies, slowly, mere meters away, angled torchlights scanning the valley. It is followed by a white F-2, a familiar pointed nose. The plane slow rolls for show, and then is followed by the chopping sound of a Chinook.
“The city has this every night!” the man says.
I want to get a better photo and follow the couple alongside a stream that curves through the balcony. A black iron grinder crosses the stream and the man goes first, the woman hangs back. He steps onto the girder but then changes his mind and steps into the water. Ankle deep in clear water, he sploshes over to the other side.
I follow but want to stay on the girder, so I step gingerly onto it.
The girder is shiny, and I want to keep going, but it is slippery and I don’t want to look like a fool in front of the planes and the crowds watching.
Photo from Piqsels
