FILIPP BROKE THE BREAD, studying the way in which the still-warm dough pulled apart, stretching it briefly before tearing it into ragged strips. He dug out a chunk and placed it on his tongue, chewing slowly. The loaf was perfect, which meant the batch was perfect. He wanted to gorge himself, spreading a thick layer of butter that would soften and melt. Yet he was unable to swallow even this modest mouthful. Standing over the bin, he spat out the sticky ball of dough. The waste of food appalled him but he had no choice. Despite being a baker, one of the best in the city, forty-seven-year-old Filipp could only consume liquids. Persistent and untreatable stomach ulcers had plagued him for the past ten years. His gut was pockmarked with acid-filled craters — the hidden scars of Stalin’s rule, testimony to nights lying awake worrying about whether he’d been too stern to the men and women working under him. He was a perfectionist. When mistakes were made he lost his temper. Disgruntled workers might have written a report naming him and citing bourgeois, elitist tendencies. Even today, the memory caused his gut to burn. He hurried to his table, mixing a chalk solution and gulping down the white, foul-tasting water, reminding himself that these worries belonged in the past. There were no more midnight arrests. His family was safe and he had denounced no one. His conscience was clear. The price had been the lining of his stomach. All things considered, even for a baker and a lover of food, that price was not so high.
The chalk water soothed his gut and he berated himself for dwelling on the past. The future was bright. The State was recognizing his talents. The bakery was expanding, taking over the entire building. Previously he’d been limited to two floors with the top floor designated as a button factory, a cover for a secret government ministry. Locating it above a bakery had never made sense to him: the rooms were filled with flour dust and roasted by the heat from the ovens. In truth, he wanted them gone not because he needed the space. He’d never liked the look of the people who’d worked there. Their uniforms and cagey demeanor aggravated his stomach.
Making his way to the communal stairway, he peered up at the top floor. The previous occupants had spent the past two days clearing out filing cabinets and office furniture. Reaching the landing, he paused by the door, noting the series of heavy locks. He tried the handle. It clicked open. Pushing on the door, he studied the gloomy space. The rooms were empty. Emboldened, he entered his new premises. Fumbling for the light switch, he saw a man slumped against the far wall.
Leo sat up, blinking at the bulb overhead. The baker came into focus, a man as thin as wire. Leo’s throat was dry. He coughed, getting to his feet, brushing himself down and surveying the gutted offices of the homicide department. The classified case files, evidence of the crimes he and Timur had solved, had been removed. They were being incinerated, every trace of the work he’d done these past three years destroyed. The baker, whose name he didn’t know, stood awkwardly — the embarrassment of a compassionate man witnessing the misfortune of a fellow citizen. Leo said:
— Three years of passing each other on the stairs and I never asked your name. I didn’t want to…
— Worry me?
— Would it have?
— Honestly, yes.
— My name is Leo.
The baker offered his hand. Leo shook it.
— My name is Filipp. Three years, and I never offered you a loaf of bread.
Leaving the homicide office for the last time, Leo glanced back before shutting the door. Feeling an awful kind of lightheadedness, he followed Filipp downstairs where he was handed a round loaf — still warm, the crust golden. He broke the bread, biting into it. Filipp studied his reaction carefully. Realizing his opinion was being sought, Leo finished the mouthful and said:
— This is the best bread I’ve ever eaten.
And it was true. Filipp smiled. He asked:
— What did you do up there? Why all the secrecy?
Before Leo had a chance to reply, the question was retracted:
— Ignore me. I should mind my own business.
Still eating, Leo ignored the retraction:
— I was in charge of a specialist division of the militia, a homicide department.
Filipp was silent. He didn’t understand. Leo added:
— We investigated murders.
— Was there much work?
Leo gave a small nod:
— More than you might think.
Accepting another loaf to take home, as well as the remains of the one he’d started, Leo turned to leave. Filipp called out, trying to end on a positive note:
— It gets hot here in the summer. You must be pleased to be moving to another location?
Leo looked down, studying the pattern of flour footprints:
— The department isn’t moving. It’s closing down.
— What about you?
Leo looked up:
— I’m to join the KGB.
THE SERBSKY INSTITUTE WAS A MODEST-SIZED building with curved steel balconies around the top-floor windows, more like a block of attractive apartments than a hospital. Raisa paused, as she always did at this point, fifty meters away, asking herself if she was doing the right thing. She glanced down at Elena, standing by her side, holding her hand. Her skin was supernaturally pale, as though her body were fading. She’d lost weight and was unwell with such regularity that sickness had become her usual state. Noticing Elena’s scarf had come loose, Raisa crouched down, fussing over her:
— We can go home. We can go home at any time.
Elena remained silent, her face blank, as if no longer a real girl but a replica created with tissue-paper skin and green pebble eyes, emitting no energy of her own. Or was it the other way round? Was Raisa the replica, fussing and caring in an imitation of the things a real mother would do?
Raisa kissed Elena on the cheek and, garnering no response, felt her stomach knot. She had no resilience to this indifference, indifference that had begun when she’d knelt down, her eyes filled with tears, and whispered into Elena’s ear:
Zoya is dead.
Raisa had expected an outburst of grief, but Elena hadn’t reacted. Five months later, she still hadn’t reacted, not in any ordinary, outward sense.
Raisa stood up, checking on the traffic, crossing the road and approaching the main entrance. The Serbsky Institute was a desperate measure, but she was desperate. Love wasn’t going to save them. Love simply wasn’t enough.
Inside — stone floors, bare walls — nurses in crisp uniforms pushed steel trolleys equipped with leather restraints. Doors were bolted. Windows were barred. There could be no doubt that the institute’s reputation as the city’s foremost psychiatric center was a point of notoriety rather than acclaim. A treatment center for dissidents, political opponents were admitted for insulin-induced comas and the latest in pyrogenic and shock therapy. It was an improbable place to seek assistance for a seven-year-old girl.
In their discussions Leo had repeatedly stated his opposition to psychiatric help. Many of those he’d arrested for political crimes had been sent into a psikhushka, a hospital such as this. While Leo agreed, as indeed he had to, that there might be good doctors working within a brutal system, he didn’t believe that the risk in searching for those men and women warranted the potential gain from their expertise. Declaring yourself unwell was tantamount to positioning yourself in the fringes of society, not a place any parent or guardian would want for their child. Yet his stance seemed less like caution and more like mulish stubbornness — a blind determination to be the one that fixed his family even as it crumbled in his hands. Raisa was no doctor, but she understood that Elena’s sickness was as threatening as a physical aliment. She was dying. It was primitive to hope the problem would merely pass.
The woman behind the front desk glanced up, recognizing them from previous visits.
— I’m here to see Doctor Stavsky.
Working behind Leo’s back, talking to friends, colleagues, she’d secured an introduction with Stavsky. Despite a career in treating dissidents, with all that entailed, Stavsky believed in the value of psychiatry beyond the political sphere and disapproved of the excesses of punitive treatments. He was motivated by a desire to heal and he’d agreed to examine Elena without making any official record. Raisa trusted him much as a person lost at sea would put their faith in a drifting plank of wood. She had little choice.
Upstairs, summoned in, Doctor Stavsky crouched down in front of Elena:
— Elena? How are you?
Elena didn’t reply.
— Do you remember my name?
Elena didn’t reply. Stavsky stood up, addressing Raisa in a whisper:
— This week?
— No change, not a word.
Stavsky directed Elena to the scales:
— Please take off your shoes.
Elena didn’t respond. Raisa knelt down, taking her shoes off, guiding Elena onto the scales. Stavsky peered at the display, noting her weight. He tapped his pen against his pad, running his eyes across the numbers accumulated these past weeks. He stepped back, perching on his desk. Raisa moved forward to help Elena off the scales but Stavsky stopped her, indicating that she leave Elena where she was. They waited. Elena remained on the scales, facing the wall, doing nothing. Two minutes became five minutes became ten minutes and Elena still hadn’t moved. Finally, Stavsky indicated that Raisa should help Elena off the scales.
Fighting back tears, Raisa finished tying Elena’s laces and stood up, about to ask a question, only to see Stavsky on the telephone. He hung up, placing his pad on the desk. She didn’t know how or why but she knew she’d been betrayed. Before she could react, he said:
— You came to me for help. It is my view that Elena needs professional, full-time supervision.
Two male orderlies entered the room, closing the door behind them like a trap slamming shut. Raisa wrapped her arms around Elena. Stavsky slowly approached:
— I have arranged for her to be admitted to a hospital in the city of Kazan. I know the staff at the hospital well.
Raisa shook her head, in disbelief as much to rebut his proposal:
— This is no longer up to you, Raisa. The decision has been made in the interest of this young girl. You are not her mother. The State has appointed you her guardian. The State is taking back guardianship.
— Doctor…
She spat the word out with contempt.
— You are not taking her.
Stavsky moved closer, whispering:
— I will tell Elena that she is going with these nurses to Kazan. I will tell her that she will not see you again. I am quite certain that she will not react. She will walk out of this room, with those two strangers, and she won’t even look back. If she does, will you then believe that you cannot help her?
— I refuse to accept that test.
Ignoring Raisa, Stavsky crouched down, speaking slowly and clearly:
— Elena, you are going to be taken to a special hospital. They will try and make you better. It is possible that you may never see Raisa again. However, I will make sure that you are well looked after. These men will help you. If you do not wish to go, if you wish to stay, if you wish to remain here with Raisa, all you have to do is say so. All you have to do is say no. Elena? Do you hear me? All you have to say is no.
Elena did not reply.
INESSA, TIMUR’S WIDOW, opened the door. Leo entered the apartment. For several months after returning from Kolyma he’d expected that Timur would appear from the kitchen, explaining that he hadn’t been killed, he’d survived and found a way home. It was simply impossible to imagine this home without Timur. He’d been his happiest here, surrounded by his family. However, the designation of accommodation was a process without compassion. According to the system’s calculations Timur’s death meant, quite inarguably, that the family needed less space. Furthermore, their modern apartment had been a perk of his job. Inessa worked in a textile factory and the men and women she worked alongside made do with far more modest living arrangements. Using his blat, his influence, Leo had fought to keep the family where they were, requesting that Frol Panin intervene. Perhaps feeling a sense of responsibility for Timur’s death, Panin had agreed. Yet to Leo’s surprise Inessa had been tempted by the prospect of moving out. Every room was steeped in memories of her husband. They left her breathless, so sad she could barely function. Only when Leo had shown her the apartment block where she would be relocated to, a single room, shared facilities, thin walls, did she relent, and only then because of her two sons. Had she been alone, she would’ve moved out that same day.
Leo gave Inessa a hug. Separating, she accepted the loaf of bread:
— Where did this come from?
— The bakery underneath our offices.
— Timur never brought home bread.
— The people who worked there were too scared to talk to us.
— But not now?
— No.
Like the movement of a shadow, sadness passed across Inessa’s face. The homicide department had been Timur’s too. It was gone.
Her two sons, Efim, ten years old, and Vadim, eight, hurried out of their bedroom to greet Leo. Though Timur had died working for Leo, his sons bore him no ill will. On the contrary, they were pleased by his visits. They understood that Leo had loved Timur and that their father had loved Leo. All the same, for Leo, their affection was a fragile pleasure, certain one day to break. They did not yet know the details of what had happened. They did not yet know their father had died trying to put right the wrongs of Leo’s past.
Inessa ran her hand through Efim’s hair as he spoke excitedly about his schoolwork, the sports teams he was playing for. As the elder son, Timur’s watch would be given to him when he turned eighteen. Leo had replaced the cracked glass and the interior mechanism, which he’d kept for himself, unable to throw it away, occasionally taking it out and resting it on the palm of his hand. Inessa had not yet decided what story she would tell Efim about the watch’s origins, whether to lie about it being a treasured family heirloom. That decision was for another day. Addressing Leo she said:
— Will you eat with us?
Leo was comfortable here. He shook his head:
— I have to go home.
ARRIVING BACK AT HIS APARTMENT, he discovered that Raisa and Elena weren’t home. The security officers on duty remarked that the pair had left for school in the morning, observing nothing out of the ordinary. Unaware of any plans, he couldn’t imagine what Raisa was doing out at this time of night with Elena. No clothes had been packed: no bags had been taken. Phoning his parents, they didn’t have any answers. His fear wasn’t that Fraera was involved. Zoya’s murder had been her last act of revenge against State Security personnel. After a five-month absence he doubted Fraera would return. There was no need. Leo had been hurt exactly as she desired.
Hearing the noise of someone approach he rushed to the hallway, throwing open the door. Raisa staggered forward, catching the door-frame as if drunk. Leo supported her, taking her weight. He checked the corridor. It was empty.
— Where’s Elena?
— She’s… gone.
Her eyes rolled, her head slumped. Leo carried her into the bathroom, placing her under the shower, running it cold.
— Why are you drunk?
Raisa gasped, shaken awake by the shock of the water:
— Not drunk… drugged.
Leo turned the shower off, wiping Raisa’s hair out of her eyes, sitting her on the side of the bath. Her bloodshot eyes were no longer rolling shut. She stared at the puddles forming around her shoes, her speech no longer slurred:
— I knew you’d disagree.
— You took her to see a doctor?
— Leo, when someone you love is sick, you seek help. He said it would be unofficial, no paperwork.
— Where?
— Serbsky.
At the sound of the name—Serbsky—Leo went numb. Many of the men and women he’d arrested had been sent there for treatment. Raisa began to cry:
— Leo, he sent her away.
Dumb incomprehension, then rage:
— What is the doctor’s name?
Raisa shook her head:
— You can’t save her, Leo.
— What is his name!
— You can’t save her!
Leo raised his hand, arching it back, ready to strike her across the face. In a flash, diverting his anger, he grabbed the mirror from the wall and smashed it in the sink. The shards cut his skin, drawing blood, red lines rolling around his wrists, down his arms. Leo dropped to the floor, bloody mirror fragments scattered around him.
Taking a towel, Raisa sat beside Leo, pressing it against his injured hand:
— You think I didn’t fight? You think I didn’t try and stop them? They sedated me. When I woke up Elena was gone.
Leo turned the defeat over in his mind. It was complete. His hopes of a family had been destroyed. He’d failed to save Zoya’s life and failed to persuade Elena that life was worth living. Three years of honesty and trust between himself and Raisa had been wiped out. He’d lied to her, a lie forever preserved by the calamities that had followed from it. He didn’t feel any anger at Raisa for accepting Fraera’s offer, for agreeing to leave him. Raisa claimed it was tactical and nothing more, a desperate bid to save Zoya. She’d taken their family’s well-being into her own hands. The only mistake she’d made was waiting too long.
The three-year pretense had come to an end. He was no father, no husband, and certainly no hero. He would join the KGB. Raisa would leave him. How could she not? There would be nothing between them except a sense of loss. Each day he’d know that Fraera had been right about him: he was a man of the State. He had changed, but far more importantly he’d changed back. He remarked:
— There was a moment when I thought we had a chance.
Raisa nodded:
— I thought so too.
LEO WASN’T SURE HOW MUCH TIME had passed. They hadn’t moved — Raisa by his side, the two of them on the floor, leaning against the bathtub, the tap dripping behind them. He heard the front door open yet still he couldn’t stand up. Stepan and Anna appeared at the bathroom doorway. No doubt concerned by Leo’s earlier phone call, his parents had traveled over. They took in the room, seeing the blood, the smashed mirror:
— What happened?
Raisa squeezed his hand. He answered:
— They took Elena.
Neither Stepan nor Anna said a word. Stepan helped Raisa to her feet, wrapping a towel around her, guiding her to the kitchen. Anna took Leo into the bedroom, examining the cut. She dressed the wound, behaving as she had done when he’d been a boy and had hurt himself. Finished, she sat beside Leo. He kissed her on the cheek, stood up, walked into the kitchen, stretching out his hand to Raisa:
— I need your help.
FROL PANIN WAS LEO’S MOST INFLUENTIAL ALLY, but he was unavailable, out of the city. Although they weren’t friends, three years ago Major Grachev had supported Leo’s proposal to create an autonomous homicide department. Leo had reported to him directly for the first two years until Grachev had stepped aside, making way for Panin. Since then Leo had seen the major infrequently. However, a proponent of change, Grachev believed that the only way to govern was by making amends, seeking to admit and readdress, in moderation, the wrongs perpetrated by the State.
With Raisa by his side, Leo knocked on Grachev’s apartment door, instinctively checking the length of the communal corridor. It was late but they couldn’t wait until morning, fearful that if their efforts lost momentum a sense of crushing despondency would return. The door opened. Accustomed to seeing the major in a pristine uniform, it was a shock to see him scruffily dressed, his glasses smudged with finger-prints, his hair wild. Normally formal and restrained, he embraced Leo affectionately, as though reunited with a lost brother. He bowed affectionately before Raisa:
— Come in!
Inside there were boxes on the floor, items being packed. Leo asked:
— You’re moving?
Grachev shook his head:
— No. I’m being moved. Out of the city, far away, I couldn’t even tell you where, really I couldn’t. They did tell me. But I’d never heard of the place. Somewhere north, I think, north and cold and dark, just to make the point even clearer.
His sentences were tumbling one after the other. Leo tried to focus him:
— What point is that?
— That I am no longer a man in favor, no longer the man for the job, any job it seems, other than running a small office in a small town. You remember this punishment, Leo? Raisa? Exile. You both suffered it yourself.
Raisa asked:
— Where is your wife?
— She left me.
Preempting their condolences, Grachev added:
— By mutual agreement. We have a son. He has ambitions. My relocation would ruin his chances. We have to be practical.
Grachev stuffed his hands into his pockets:
— If you came for my help, I am afraid my situation has deteriorated.
Raisa glanced at Leo, her eyes asking whether it was worth explaining their predicament. Grachev spotted her reaction:
— Talk to me, if not because I can help, then as conversation between like-minded friends.
Embarrassed, Raisa blushed:
— I am sorry.
— Think nothing of it.
She quickly explained:
— Elena, our adopted daughter, has been taken from us and admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kazan. She never recovered from the murder of her sister. I had arranged for her to see a doctor on an unofficial basis.
Grachev shook his head, interjecting:
— Nothing is unofficial.
Raisa tensed:
— The doctor promised not to make any records of her treatment. I believed him. When she didn’t respond to his treatment…
— He committed her in order to protect himself?
Raisa nodded. Grachev considered, before adding, as an afterthought:
— I fear none of us will recover from Zoya’s murder.
Surprised by this comment, Leo sought an explanation:
— None of us? I don’t understand.
— Forgive me. It is unfair to compare the wider consequences to the grief you must feel.
— What wider consequences?
— We needn’t go into that now. You’re here to help Elena—
Leo interrupted:
— No, tell me, what wider consequences?
The major perched atop a box. He looked at Raisa, then Leo:
— Zoya’s death changed everything.
Leo stared at him blankly. Grachev continued:
— The murder of a young girl to punish a former State Security officer, along with some fifteen or more retired officers hunted down and executed, several tortured. These events shook the authorities. They’d released this vory woman from the Gulags. What was her name?
Leo and Raisa replied at the same time:
— Fraera.
— Who else might they have released? Many hundreds of thousands of prisoners are coming home; how will we govern if even a fraction of their number behave like her? Will her revenge start a chain reaction culminating in the collapse of rule and order? There will be civil war once more. Our country will be ripped down the middle. This is the new fear. Steps have been taken to prevent this from happening.
— What steps?
— An air of permissiveness has crept into our society. Did you know there are authors writing satirical prose? Dudintsev has written a novel— Not by Bread Alone. The State and officials are openly mocked, in print. What follows next? We allow people to criticize. We allow people to oppose our rule. We allow people to take revenge. Authority that once was strong suddenly seems fragile.
— Have there been similar reprisals across the country?
— When I spoke about wider consequences I wasn’t merely referring to incidents within our country. There are reprisals across all the territories under our rule. Look at what happened in Poland. Riots were precipitated by Khrushchev’s speech. Anti-Soviet sentiment is stirring throughout Eastern Europe, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia…
Leo was shocked:
— The speech has traveled?
— The Americans have it. They have printed it in their newspapers. It has become a weapon against us. It is perceived that we have dealt ourselves a terrible blow. How are we to continue the global revolution when we confess to such murderous acts against our own people? Who would want to join our cause? Who would want to become our comrades?
The major paused, wiping the sweat from his brow. Leo and Raisa were now crouching before him, like children captivated by a story. He continued:
— After Zoya’s murder everyone who argued for reform, including myself, was silenced. Even Khrushchev was forced to retract many of the criticisms he made in his speech.
— I didn’t know that.
— You were grieving, Leo. You buried your daughter. You buried your friend. You were not paying attention to the world around you. While you mourned, a revised speech was written.
— Revised how?
— The admissions of summary executions and torture were cut. This document was published one month after Zoya’s murder. I’m not claiming Fraera’s revenge was the only contributing factor. But those murders were important. They made a graphic case for the traditionalists. Khrushchev had no choice: a Central Committee resolution rewrote his speech. Stalin was no longer a murderer: he merely made errors. The system wasn’t at fault. Any minor mistakes were Stalin’s alone. It was the Secret Speech, without the secrets.
His mind turning these facts over, Leo remarked:
— My department’s failure to stop these murders was the reason they closed us down.
— No. That’s an excuse. They never approved of the homicide department. They never liked me for helping to create it. Your department was part of the creeping culture of permissiveness. Leo, we moved too quickly. Freedoms are won slowly, bit by bit — they have to be fought for. The forces that desire change, myself included, marched too far and too fast. We were arrogant. We overreached ourselves. We underestimated those who want to protect and preserve power as it was.
— They’ve ordered me to rejoin the KGB.
— That would be a potent symbol. The reformed MGB agent folded back into the traditional power structures. They’re using you. You must allow yourself to be used. If I were you, Leo, I would be very careful. Do not believe that they will behave any more kindly than Stalin. His spirit lives on, not in one person, but diffused, in many people. It’s harder to see but make no mistake: it is there.
OUTSIDE THE APARTMENT Leo took hold of Raisa’s hands:
— I’ve been blind.
THIS WAS FROL PANIN’S SECOND VISIT to Blizhnya Dacha, one of Stalin’s former residences, now open to families of the ruling elite as a retreat. The decision had been taken that the residence was not to be closed down or turned into a museum. The dacha was to remain filled with children playing, staff cooking, and the ruling elite slouched on creaking leather chairs, ice cubes clanking as they sipped their drinks. Upon Stalin’s death it had been discovered that the liquor cabinet contained bottles filled with imitation alcohol, weak tea instead of scotch, water for vodka, so that Stalin might remain sober while his ministers lost control of their tongues. No longer needed, the imitation alcohol had been poured away. Times had changed.
Having eaten sparingly from a five-course meal, picking at three types of bloody meat, ignoring three wines, Frol’s social duties were finished for the night. He climbed the stairs, listening to the heavy rain. Loosening his shirt, he entered his suite. His young sons were in the room next door, put to bed by a maid. His wife was getting undressed, having excused herself from the end of the meal, as was expected of the wives, enabling husbands to talk of weighty matters, an excruciating routine since most were drunk with nothing to say. Entering the living room and, shutting the door, he felt relief. The evening was over. He hated coming here, particularly with his children. To his mind the dacha was a place where people lost their lives. No matter how many children now played in the grounds, no matter how loudly they laughed — those ghosts remained.
Frol turned off the living room lights, heading toward the bedroom and calling out to his wife:
— Nina?
Nina was on the edge of the bed. Seated beside her was Leo. Soaked by rain, his trousers were mud-stained, his hand was bandaged and the bandages were soaked too. Dirty water seeping from his clothes had formed a circular stain on the bedsheets. In Leo’s face Frol observed stillness belying an enormous kinetic force inside, tremendous anger bubbling under a thin sheet of glass.
Frol calculated quickly:
— Why don’t I sit beside you, Leo, instead of my wife?
Without waiting for a reply, Frol gestured for Nina to approach. She tentatively stood up, moving slowly. Leo didn’t stop her. She whispered to Frol:
— What is going on?
Frol replied, making sure Leo could also hear:
— You have to understand that Leo has experienced a terrible shock. He’s grief-stricken and not thinking straight. To break into a dacha could result in his execution. I’m going to work very hard to see that doesn’t happen.
He paused, addressing Leo directly:
— May my wife check on my children?
Leo’s eyes sparked:
— Your children are safe. You have some nerve asking me that.
— You’re right, Leo, I apologize.
— Your wife stays here.
— Very well.
Nina sat on a chair in the corner. Frol continued:
— This is concerning Elena, I take it? You could have come to my office, made an appointment, I would’ve arranged for her release. I had nothing to do with her admission to hospital. I was appalled to hear about it. Completely unnecessary, the doctor was acting on his own authority. He believed he was doing the right thing.
Frol paused:
— Why don’t we call for some drinks?
Leo emptied his pockets:
— I pose no threat to you. I haven’t brought a gun. If you called for your guards, they’d arrest me.
Nina stood up, about to shout for help. Frol indicated that she remain silent. He asked:
— Tell me then, Leo, what do you want?
— Was Fraera working for you?
— No.
Frol sat down beside him:
— We were working together.
LEO HAD EXPECTED FROL PANIN to deny it. But there was no reason for him to lie. Powerless, Leo could do as little with the truth as he could do with a denial. Panin stood up, taking off his suit jacket, unbuttoning some of his shirt buttons:
— Fraera came to me. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t have any knowledge of vory in Moscow. They’d always been an irrelevance. She broke into my apartment and was waiting for me. She knew everything about you. Not only that, she knew about the struggle between the traditionalists in the Party and the reformists. She proposed that we work together and claimed that our aims overlapped. She would be granted the freedom needed to take revenge on those involved in her arrest. In exchange, we could exploit that series of murders, using it for our own purposes, creating a sense of fear.
— She never cared about Lazar?
Panin shook his head:
— She saw Lazar as someone from her former life, nothing more. He was a pretext. She wanted you to go to the Gulag as a punishment, to force you to see the world you sent so many people to. From our point of view, we needed you out of the way. The homicide department was the only independent investigative force. Fraera required a free hand. Once you and Timur were gone, she could kill as she pleased.
— The KGB never looked for her?
— We made sure they never got close.
— The officers you appointed to run the homicide department in my absence?
— Were our men, they did as they were told. Leo, you almost managed to stop the murder of the patriarch. That murder was a vital part of our plan. His death shocked the entire regime. Had you remained in the city Fraera would have been forced to kill you. For her own reasons, she didn’t want to. She preferred to send you away, to stretch out your punishment into something altogether more awful.
— And you agreed?
Panin seemed puzzled by that statement of the obvious:
— Yes. I agreed. I removed Major Grachev and positioned myself as your closest advisor in order to help you make the right decisions, the decisions we wanted you to make. I arranged the paperwork that enabled you to break into Gulag 57.
— You and Fraera planned this?
— We were waiting for the right moment. When I heard Khrushchev’s speech, I knew it was time. We had to act. The changes were going too far.
Leo stood up, walking toward Nina. Concerned, Panin also stood up, tense. Leo put his hand on her shoulder:
— Isn’t this how we used to interrogate our suspects? A loved one present, the implications clear, if the suspect failed to give the correct answer, the loved one would be punished?
— I’m answering your questions, Leo.
— You authorized the murder of men and women who served the State?
— Many of them were murderers themselves. In my position, they would have done the same thing.
— What position is that?
— Leo, these hasty reforms, more than Stalin’s crimes, more even than the West, pose the greatest threat to our nation. Fraera’s murders were an illustration of the future. The millions we as a ruling party have wronged would revolt, just as the prisoners on board the Stary Bolshevik rose up, just as they did in that Gulag. Those scenes would be repeated in every city in every province. You haven’t noticed, Leo, but we are engaged in a silent battle for our nation’s survival. It has nothing to do with whether or not Stalin went too far. He did. Of course he did. But we cannot change the past. And our authority is based on the past. We must behave as we have always behaved: with an iron rule. We cannot admit mistakes and hope our citizens will love us all the same. It is unlikely we will ever be loved, so we must be feared.
Leo removed his hand from Nina’s shoulder:
— You have what you wanted. The Secret Speech has been retracted. You don’t need Fraera anymore. Let me have her. Give me my revenge as you gave it to her. You should have no compunction about betraying her. You’ve betrayed everyone else.
— Leo, I understand that you have no reason to trust me. But my advice is this: forget Fraera. Forget that she exists. Let me arrange for Elena to be released from hospital. You and Raisa can move out of the city, away from all these memories. I’ll find you another job. Whatever you want.
Leo turned face-to-face with Panin:
— She’s still working for you?
— Yes, she is.
— On what?
— That speech weakened us domestically and internationally. In response, we need a clear show of our strength. For this reason we’re working to manufacture an uprising abroad, in parts of the Soviet Bloc, small, symbolic uprisings which we will crush mercilessly. The KGB has established a series of foreign cells attempting to stimulate disorder, scattered across Eastern Europe. Fraera is in charge of one of those cells.
— Where?
— Take my advice, Leo, this is not a fight you can win.
— Where is she?
— You cannot beat her.
— How could she hurt me more?
— Because, Leo, your daughter, Zoya, is alive.
ZOYA WALKED AS FAST as she could, on her way to the Operaház, the drop point for her illicit cargo. Her pockets were brimming with bullets, one hundred rounds in total, each tip etched with a cross to ensure the bullet quartered upon entering the body. Though it was a cold night she felt hot and flustered. Wearing a knee-length coat tied at the waist, a black beret slanted across her forehead, she looked older than fourteen, more like a Hungarian student than a Russian orphan. Nervous, clammy with perspiration, she snatched the beret off her head, pressing it into her pocket, atop the bullets, muffling their telltale jingle.
Reaching the main boulevard Sztalin ut, not far from the Operaház, Zoya paused, checking that no one was following. Taking her by surprise, someone grabbed her shoulders. She turned around, finding herself surrounded by a group of men, convinced that they were the Hungarian secret police. One man kissed her cheek, pressing a sheet of paper into her hand. It was a poster of some kind. The men were talking in rapid bursts. Having been in the city for four months she’d picked up only a handful of Hungarian phrases. Judging by their attire, the men were students or artisans, not officers, and she relaxed. Even so, she had to be careful: if they realized she was Russian there was no knowing how they’d behave. She smiled meekly, hoping they’d consider her shy and let her go. They were hardly interested in her anyway, unraveling another poster and plastering it to the front of a shop window. Zoya pulled away, hurrying to her destination.
Arriving at the Operaház, climbing the stone stairs, she hid behind the pillars, out of view from the street. She checked her watch, a gift from Fraera. She was early and she pulled back into the shadows, nervously waiting for her contact to show up. This was the first task she’d handled alone. Normally she worked with Malysh. They were a team — a partnership forged in Moscow five months ago.
Taken from her cell that night, Zoya had been certain Fraera was going to execute her in order to punish Leo. Facing death, as she had done only days earlier, she had discovered that she was no longer indifferent to the prospect. She’d cried out:
— Malysh!
Fraera had set her down on the ground:
— Why did you call his name?
— Because I… like him.
Fraera had smiled, a smile turning into a laugh, slowly at first, then getting louder, her vory laughing beside her, a chorus of scorn. Zoya had blushed, her face burning with shame. Humiliated, she’d run at Fraera, arms raised, fists clenched. Before she’d landed a blow Fraera had caught hold of her hand:
— I will give you a chance, one chance. If you fail, I will kill you. If you succeed, you will become one of us. You and Malysh can remain together.
Driven to the middle of Bolshoy Krasnokholmskiy Bridge, that night had unfolded as Fraera predicted. Leo and Raisa had been waiting on the bridge. Soaked by the rain, they had climbed into the front of the car. Separated by a steel grate, Zoya had witnessed Raisa’s face crumple with distress. In that moment Zoya had experienced doubts. But it had been too late to change her mind. Pressing her hands against the grate, she’d bidden farewell to her unhappy life: a decision that necessitated leaving her little sister behind. She’d feigned resistance as she’d been dragged out of the car. Out of sight, she’d voluntarily climbed into the sack. Already inside, Malysh had been waiting for her.
The sack had been carried to the edge of the bridge while Zoya had continued to make a show of struggling until the vory had struck her, entirely unexpected. She’d collapsed. The sack had been zipped shut. In the darkness Malysh had wrapped his arms around her, supporting her as they’d been dropped. Briefly midair, in each other’s arms, in the darkness — then they’d crashed into the water.
Steel weights had carried the sack straight down. The waterproof, waxed canvas had shrouded them in a minute’s worth of air. The steel had thudded against the riverbed, toppling Malysh and Zoya to the side. Working blind, Malysh had flicked open his knife and cut through the material. Freezing water had rushed in as he’d sliced a gash, filling the sack in an instant. Malysh had helped Zoya out. Holding hands, they’d kicked their way back up to the surface. Swimming to the riverbank, they’d watched the final moments on the bridge as Leo and Raisa had jumped, mistakenly believing that they were going to save her.
Struggling upstream against the torrent, Zoya and Malysh had pulled themselves along the high stone sides of the riverbank. Reaching the timber jetty, they’d been reunited with Fraera as she listened to Raisa’s and Leo’s distant, desperate cries, savoring their grief for a child they thought was lost.
THERE WAS A MAN LINGERING at the bottom of the Operaház steps. Zoya emerged from her hiding place. The man checked up and down Sztalin ut before moving toward her. Zoya emptied her pockets, filling his satchel with the customized bullets. He pulled out a handgun, loading the chamber. The bullets were a match. He filled the other chambers while Zoya continued to transfer the bullets from her pockets to his bag. Finished, the man hid his gun, dropping his head in a gesture of thanks before hurrying down the steps. Zoya counted to twenty before setting off again, making her way back home.
It was odd to think of this city as home. Five months ago Zoya had known nothing of Hungary except that it was a loyal ally of the Soviet Union, part of a brotherhood of nations, a frontline state in the global revolution. Fraera had corrected this classroom propaganda, explaining that Hungary had never been given any choice. Liberated from Fascist forces, it had been occupied and placed under Soviet rule. Hungary was a sovereign nation with no sovereignty. The leader for many years, Matyas Rakosi, had been appointed by Stalin and had imitated his master exactly, torturing and executing citizens. He’d created the AVH — the Hungarian secret police — modeled on the Soviet secret police. The language and location was different but the terror had been the same. With Stalin’s death, the struggle had begun for reform, electrified by dreams of independence. Zoya was a foreigner here, an outsider, yet not since her parents had died had she felt more at home here, in a country that, like her, had been adopted against its will.
Relieved that the night was almost over and that she was no longer carrying bullets, Zoya swung down Nagymezo ut. Directly ahead, a small crowd had gathered. At its center were the same men she’d bumped into previously, sitting on each other’s shoulders in order to transform the entire height of a streetlight into a totem pole of postered text. A woman in the crowd saw Zoya approach. In her thirties, stout and stocky, the woman was drunk — her cheeks were red. Wrapped around her, like an enormous shawl, was the Hungarian flag. Zoya glanced at the streetlight and pulled the same crumpled poster from her pocket as if to say—I know, I know! Not content with this gesture, the woman pulled her into the throng, talking good-naturedly, nothing of which Zoya could understand. The woman began to dance and sing. The others joined in, all of them knowing the words, except for Zoya. She could only laugh and smile in the hope that they would eventually let her go. Keen to leave before they noticed she wasn’t speaking, she attempted to extricate herself from the stranger’s affections. But the woman was no longer flushed with happiness. A van had swung off the main boulevard and was accelerating toward them. It skidded to a halt. Two AVH officers jumped out.
The crowd closed ranks around the streetlight as though it were territory to be defended. One of the officers grabbed the flag, which was wrapped around Zoya, pulling it free, holding it up contemptuously. It was only now that Zoya noticed the Communist hammer and sickle in the center had been cut out, a gaping hole in the middle of the material. The AVH officer sounded like a barking dog, Zoya unable to understand a word he was saying. He searched Zoya’s pockets, infuriated by her silence. Finding nothing apart from the beret he threw it back at her. A single bullet trapped inside the material fell to the street.
The officer picked up the bullet, staring directly at Zoya. Before he could speak the drunk woman reached down and grabbed the beret from the street, placing it proudly on her head. It looked ridiculous, too small for her. The officer turned to the woman and Zoya didn’t need to speak Hungarian to understand that he was asking if the beret belonged to her. The officer raised the bullet to the woman’s face. Did this also belong to her? he must have asked. In reply, she spat in his face. While the officer wiped the glob of phlegm from his cheek, the woman flicked Zoya a glance: run!
Cutting a diagonal across the street, Zoya ran. Mid-sprint, she turned around, peering over her shoulder. She saw the AVH officer swing a punch, connecting with the side of the woman’s face. As if the punch had connected with her own face, Zoya’s legs crumbled and she collapsed, her hands scraping across the ground. Rolling onto her back, looking over the tips of her shoes, she saw the woman fall. A man jumped forward, grabbing the officer. A second man joined the fray. Scrambling to her feet, Zoya lurched into another run, this time reaching the side street. Out of sight, she didn’t stop. She had to get help. Fraera would know what to do.
Fraera and her vory occupied several apartments within a small courtyard set back from Rakoczi ut. Accessed by a narrow passageway, the apartments couldn’t be seen or spied upon from the main street. Reaching them, Zoya stopped running. No one was following her. In the unlit passageway, relieved to be off the street, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Malysh. They hugged. He said:
— Are you okay?
She shook her head.
They entered the courtyard. There were six floors of apartments. Fraera had occupied several apartments, spread across various floors, each put to a different use. There was a small printing press, producing leaflets and posters. In another apartment there were stocks of guns and munitions. A third apartment served as a meeting place, to eat and sleep and discuss. Entering the communal apartment, Zoya was surprised by the number of people — far more than usual. On one side were Hungarian men and women, most aged in their twenties, arguing passionately. On the other side were the vory. Most had not made the journey from Moscow to Budapest, remaining behind, preferring the certainty of the criminal underworld. They didn’t understand the deal Fraera had made with Panin. They couldn’t conceive of a life outside of Russia. Only a small number of her most ardent supports had followed her, partly out of loyalty, mostly because they knew no other vory gang in Moscow would want them. From fifteen, only four remained.
Fraera was in the middle of the room, in between the two groups, listening even when Hungarian was being spoken, sensitive to body language and gestures. She saw Zoya immediately, spotting her distress:
— What happened?
Zoya explained. Fraera’s eyes came alive, turning around, addressing her translator, a Hungarian student named Zsolt Polgar:
— Find as many Hungarian flags as you can. Cut the hammer and sickle out of them, so that there is a hole in the middle. This is the symbol we’ve been waiting for!
Fraera had no interest in the woman who’d risked her life to save Zoya. Upset, Zoya left the apartment. She leaned against the balcony rail. Malysh joined her. He lit a cigarette, a habit he’d copied from the other vory. She took the cigarette from his lips, stubbing it out under her foot:
— It makes you smell.
She regretted her words. The smoke did make him smell: it made him smell like all the other vory. But she hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Hurt, he slid off the rail, sulking back inside the apartment. She needed to remember that he was not her little sister to boss around.
At the memory of Elena guilt clutched her throat like a hand. She’d contemplated her decision countless times — had she not joined Fraera, she would’ve been killed. Yet the truth was that she had wanted to leave, to run away, and had there been a free choice, had Fraera offered her a chance to go home or come with her — she would’ve left her little sister behind.
— You’re angry?
Startled, she faced Fraera. Although they’d lived together for five months, Fraera remained intimidating and inaccessible, more like a source of energy than a person. Zoya composed herself:
— The woman with the flag saved me. There’s a chance she’ll die for it.
— Zoya, you should prepare yourself… many innocent people are about to lose their lives.
DESCENDING THE STAIRWAY AND LEAVING the courtyard, Fraera checked that no one had seen her. It was late at night. The streets were empty. There was no sign of the AVH officers that Zoya had described. Fraera set off, frequently stopping with calculated abruptness, turning around and making sure that she wasn’t being followed. She trusted no one: including her supporters. The workers, students, and representatives of various underground anti-Soviet resistance movements were indulgent and impractical, preoccupied with irrelevant theoretical debates. It would be easy for the AVH to infiltrate their ranks. They’d be too self-absorbed to notice the signals, putting all of them in danger. Despite Fraera being here under Frol Panin’s instructions, the AVH knew nothing of her operations. If she were caught she would be shot. No one outside of the conspirators in Moscow had been trusted with information regarding the plans to trigger an uprising. If her dissident supporters found out that she was simultaneously working with Soviet ministers, they’d kill her.
Bending down, Fraera scooped up a leaflet fluttering in the gutter — a copy of the revised sixteen points, sixteen demands for change. The points had been formulated yesterday afternoon in a crowded meeting at the Technological University. Unable to pass for a student, Fraera had loitered outside. When she’d heard that the intention of the meeting was to debate whether the students should leave DISZ, the campus Communist Party organization, as a protest against their Soviet rulers, she’d decried their lack of ambition, encouraging her student acquaintances to divert the discussion onto bolder issues. Fraera had been working in this fashion for the past four months, applying pressure, offering material support, and stoking resentment against the occupation as best she could. While the anger was real and deep, she’d struggled to convert sentiment into direct action. There was only so much she could do herself. Her role was to professionalize amateur dissident. Yesterday, finally, there’d been success. With a determination and clarity that surprised Fraera, the students had distilled their debate into sixteen points:
We demand the immediate withdrawal of all Soviet troops, in accordance with the declaration of the peace treaty.
On the scruffy handwritten notes carried out from the hall, that demand had been ranked fourth. Fraera had hurried back to her apartment, transcribing the notes and making one amendment: placing the demand for Soviet troop withdrawal at the top. Within hours her vory were handing out revised copies interlaced with the most provocative extracts from the Secret Speech.
Outside of the few vory, the remnants of her gang, Fraera’s closest associate was Zsolt Polgar, her translator, an engineering student she’d met in a revolutionary underground bar, located in a factory basement. With low ceilings that were never visible because of the thick haze of cigarette smoke, Fraera had found the venue’s population rich in ambition. Zsolt — the son of a wealthy Hungarian diplomat, destined for power and money were he only to conform to the Soviet occupation and find his place within it — spoke fluent Russian and Hungarian and had quickly become Fraera’s most valued intermediary. She humored him, slept with him, beguiling him with stories of her ruthlessness. Appreciating his skills, she flattered him as a libertarian and revolutionary. In reality, she saw him as little more than a rebellious young man, kicking out against his father whom he despised as a sycophantic Soviet appeaser. Regardless of his motivation, he was brave and idealistic, easy to manipulate. He had suggested a demonstration in support of the sixteen points — an inspired notion. As it happened, the idea had been duplicated around the city and Fraera wondered if that might be the work of one of Panin’s other cells. Either way, the result was that tomorrow two marches would set out at the same time, one from either side of the city, joining at Palffy Square. There had been previous shows of disquiet in the capital, none of which had amounted to anything. Fraera was certain that only when people were standing side by side, feeding off each other, was there any chance that the underbelly of anger would transform, like a pupa to a butterfly, from bitter obedience into glorious violence.
Reaching the Astoria Hotel, several blocks from her apartments, Fraera took a moment to observe the crossroads before glancing up at the hotel’s top-floor window. In the last window along, on the corner, a red candle was burning, the quaint signal that she’d devised. In this context it meant she was to come upstairs. Moving around to the back of the hotel, entering through the deserted kitchens, she climbed to the top floor, walking to the room at the far end of the corridor. She knocked. A guard opened the door, gun drawn. There was a second guard behind him. She stepped into the suite, frisked before being ushered next door. Seated at a table, glancing out the window like a contemplative poet, was Frol Panin.
An alliance with Panin, or any man like him, had never been part of Fraera’s plans. Arriving in Moscow, she’d accepted that unless she was content with merely plunging a knife in Leo’s back, she needed assistance. Similarly, Budapest had never been part of her plans. It was another improvisation. With the illusion of Zoya’s death, her original ambition — to bring ruin down on Leo’s hopes of happiness — had been achieved. Leo was tortured as she’d been tortured: the loss of a son paid for with the loss of a daughter. He was broken, forced to live with grief, and not even allowed the fire of righteous indignation that had sustained her through those same emotions. Her revenge complete, she’d been faced with the decision of what to do next. It had become apparent that she couldn’t untangle herself from Panin and melt away. If she stopped being useful to him he would order her death. If she escaped it would be a life of wealth and growing old, a life she had no interest in. Hearing of his international operations, his attempts to agitate disturbances within the Soviet Bloc, she’d volunteered herself and her men. Panin had been skeptical but Fraera had pointed out that she was likely to make a far more convincing agitator against Soviet Russia than the loyal KGB agents he was using.
Panin offered his hand — a polite, formal gesture that she found absurd. Nevertheless she shook it. He smiled:
— I’ve flown over to monitor progress. Our troops are in position on the border. They have been for some time. Yet there is nothing for them to do.
— You’ll get your uprising.
— It needs to happen now. It is of no use to me a year from now.
— We’re on the brink.
— My other cells have had considerably more success than you. Poland, for example…
— The riots you instigated in Poznan were crushed with no serious loss of face for Khrushchev. They did not have the impact you required, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering with Budapest.
Panin nodded, admiring Fraera’s gift for weighing up situations exactly. She was right. Khrushchev’s plans to scale back the conventional military had not been derailed. They were a central platform of his reforms. He had argued that the Soviet Union no longer needed so many tanks and troops. Instead, they had a nuclear deterent and were building an experimental missile delivery system that required no more than a handful of engineers and scientists, not millions of soldiers.
Panin considered the policy foolhardiness of the most dangerous kind. Aside from the inadequacies of the missiles, Khrushchev had fundamentally misunderstood the importance of the military, just as he’d misunderstood the impact of his Secret Speech. The military existed not solely to protect against external aggressors; its purpose was to hold the Soviet Union together. The glue between the nations of the Soviet Bloc wasn’t ideology but tanks and troops and planes. His proposed cuts, combined with the reckless sabotage inflicted by his speech, were putting their nation in peril. Panin and his allies were arguing that not only must they maintain the size of the conventional army but they must also extend and rearm it. They must increase spending, not decrease it. A disturbance in Budapest, or indeed in any other East European city, would prove that the entire fabric of the revolution depended upon its conventional military might, not merely its nuclear arsenal. Several million men with rifles were useful in reminding the population, at home and abroad, who was in control.
Panin said:
— What news do you have for me?
Fraera handed him the leaflet printed with the sixteen points:
— There’s going to be a demonstration tomorrow.
Panin glanced at the sheet of paper:
— What does it say?
— The first demand is for Soviet troops to leave the country. It is a call for freedom.
— And we can trace the inspiration back to the speech?
— Certainly. But the demonstration won’t be enough.
— What else do you need?
— A guarantee that you will fire upon the crowd.
Panin placed the leaflet on the desk:
— I’ll see what I can do.
— You must succeed. Despite everything these people have been through, the arrests, the executions, they will not become violent unless provoked. They are not like…
— Us?
Ready to leave, Fraera hesitated by the door, turning back to face Panin:
— Was there anything else?
Panin shook his head.
— No. Nothing else.
THE TRAIN WAS CROWDED with Soviet soldiers, raucous conversations crisscrossing the carriage. They were being mobilized in preparation for the planned uprising, of which they knew nothing. There was no sense of anxiety or trepidation, their jovial mood contrasting starkly with Leo and Raisa, the only civilians on board.
When Leo had heard the news—Zoya is alive—relief had been muddled with pain. In disbelief he’d listened to Panin’s explanation: the retelling of events on the bridge, including Zoya’s calculated pretense and her willing collaboration with a woman who wanted nothing other than to make Leo suffer. Zoya was alive. It was a miracle, but a cruel one, perhaps the cruelest good news Leo had ever experienced.
In explaining events to Raisa, he’d witnessed the same shift from relief to anguish. He’d knelt before her, apologizing repeatedly. He’d brought this upon them. She was being punished because she loved him. Raisa had controlled her response, concentrating on the details of what had happened and what it revealed about Zoya’s state of mind. There was only one question in her mind: how were they going to bring their daughter home?
Raisa had no difficulty in accepting that Panin had betrayed them. She understood the logic of Fraera’s cooperation with him in order to enact her revenge in Moscow. However, Panin’s attempts to initiate uprisings within the Soviet Bloc was political maneuvering of the most cynical kind, condemning thousands to death in order to consolidate the position of Kremlin hardliners. Raisa couldn’t understand what part of this appealed to Fraera. She was siding with the Stalinists, men and women who thought nothing of her imprisonment or the loss of her child, or indeed the loss of any child. As for Zoya’s defection, if that was the right way of looking at it, defecting from one dysfunctional family to another, Raisa was less puzzled. It was easy to imagine Fraera’s intoxicating appeal to an unhappy teenager.
Leo had made no attempt to talk Raisa out of accompanying him to Budapest. The opposite was true: he needed her. Raisa stood a much better chance of getting through to Zoya. Raisa had asked Leo whether they were prepared to use force if Zoya refused to come, confronting Leo with the grim prospect of kidnapping his daughter. He nodded.
Since neither Leo nor Raisa spoke Hungarian, Frol Panin had arranged for them to be accompanied by forty-five-year-old Karoly Teglas. Karoly had worked as an undercover operative in Budapest. Hungarian by birth, he’d been recruited by the KGB after the war, serving under the hated leader Rakosi. Karoly had recently been in Moscow on a temporary basis, advising them on the potential crisis in Hungary. He’d agreed to act as a guide and translator, accompanying Leo and Raisa.
Returning from the toilet, Karoly wiped his hands on his trousers, taking his seat opposite Leo and Raisa. With a portly stomach, plump cheeks, and round glasses, there was hardly a straight line anywhere in his appearance. A collection of curves, he appeared, at a glance, an unlikely operative, definitively nonlethal.
The train slowed, nearing the town of Berehowe on the Soviet side of the heavily fortified border. Raisa leaned forward, addressing Karoly directly:
— Why has Panin allowed us to go to Budapest when Fraera is working for him?
Karoly shrugged:
— You would have to ask Panin himself. It is not for me to say. If you want to turn back, that is up to you. I have no power over your movements.
Karoly looked out the window, remarking:
— The troops are not crossing the border. From here on, we behave like civilians. Where we are going, Russians are not loved.
He turned to Raisa:
— They won’t make any distinction between you and your husband. It doesn’t matter that you’re a teacher and he’s an officer. You’ll be hated just the same.
Raisa prickled at being spoken down to:
— I understand hatred.
AT THE BORDER, Karoly handed over the papers. He glanced back, watching Leo and Raisa, in conversation, seated in the back of the car — paying careful attention not to glance at him, a giveaway that they were debating how far they could trust him. They would be wise not to trust him in any way. His orders were simple. He was to delay bringing Leo and Raisa into the city until an uprising had begun. Once Fraera had served her purpose, Leo, a man reported to be of great tenacity and zeal, a trained killer, could be allowed his revenge.
EXHILARATED, ZOYA CLUTCHED Malysh’s hand, not wanting to lose him among the thousands of people pooling into Parliament Square from every street and junction. Having spent so many years romanticizing death, certain it was the only answer to her loneliness, she now felt like jumping up and down, as if she owed the world an apology, shouting out—I am alive!
The march had far exceeded expectations, no longer merely made up of students and dissidents. The whole city seemed to be gathering in the square, drawn out of their apartments, offices, factories, unable to resist the demonstration’s gravitational pull, which grew stronger with each new person joining. Zoya understood the significance of their location. A parliament should be the center of power, the place where a nation’s destiny was decided. In reality, the building was irrelevant, an ornate, majestic front for Soviet authority. Its beauty somehow made the insult worse.
The sun had set. Yet the night didn’t diminish the excitement. More and more people were arriving, disregarding habits of prudence and caution, the influx continuing even though the square was already full, the new arrivals forcing the crowd closer together. Far from claustrophobic, the atmosphere was affectionate. Strangers talked and laughed and hugged each other. Zoya had never been caught up in a public assembly like this before. She’d been compelled to attend May Day celebrations in Moscow, but this was different. It wasn’t the scale. It was the disorder, the absence of authority. No officers stood in the corner. No formations of tanks rolled by. No troops clicked heels as they passed rows of handpicked children waving flags. A fearless protest, an act of defiance: everyone was free to do as they pleased, to sing and clap and chant:
Russkik haza! Russkik haza! Russkik haza!
Hundreds of feet stamped the three-beat-rhythm and Zoya joined in, fists clenched, punching the air, overcome with an indignation that was, considering her nationality, absurd.
Russians go home!
She didn’t care if she was Russian. Home was here, among people who had suffered as she’d suffered and who understood oppression as she understood it.
Shorter than the men and women around her, Zoya strained on tiptoes. Suddenly she felt two hands clasp her waist as Fraera lifted her up, placing her onto her shoulders, giving her a view of the entire square. The crowd was larger than she’d supposed, stretching up to the Parliament building and the river behind it. There were people across roads and lawns, tram tracks, clambering onto pillars and statues.
Without warning the Parliament lights shut off, plunging the square into darkness. There was confusion among the crowd. There was power in the side streets. It must be a deliberate act against them, an attempt to drive them away, to break their resolve with darkness as a weapon. A cheer sounded out. Zoya saw a single burning torch, a newspaper rolled up. Quickly, more spots of fire appeared, improvised torches. They would make their own light! Fraera handed Zoya a rolled-up copy of the daily journal A Free People. A vory lit the end, turning it slowly, until the flame spread. Zoya held it above her head, the flames tinted blue-green by the ink. She waved it from side to side and a thousand burning torches waved back.
As Fraera lowered her to the ground, flush with emotion, Zoya strained forward and kissed her on the cheek. Fraera froze. Even though Zoya’s feet were on the ground, Fraera’s hands remained tight around her waist, not letting go. Zoya waited, holding her breath, fearful that she’d made a terrible mistake. In the darkness she was unable to see Fraera’s reaction until a nearby man lit a newspaper. The flickering red light revealed Fraera’s expression, shaken as if by the sight of a ghost.
FRAERA FELT THE KISS LINGERING ON HER CHEEK, burning hot. She pushed Zoya aside, touching the place where she’d been kissed. It had been a mistake to place Zoya on her shoulders. Unwittingly she’d allowed Anisya to return, her former self, mother and wife. Tenderness, affection, characteristics that she’d exorcised, had crept back. Drawing her knife, she raised the blade to the side of her face and pulled down, scraping the skin, shaving off the remains of the kiss. Feeling relieved, she wiped the edge of the blade and put the knife away.
Having regained her composure, she stared at the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, furious with Panin for failing to post snipers. Zsolt Polgar followed her glance, asking:
— What are you looking for?
— Where are the AVH?
Zsolt replied:
— You’re worried about our safety?
Fraera hid her scorn at his naiveté, replying:
— There’s no one to fight against.
— At the radio station students are trying to broadcast the sixteen points. Rumor is that the station management is refusing. The AVH is protecting the building to make sure it remains under Soviet control.
Fraera took hold of his shoulders:
— That’s it! That is where we will make our fight!
Elbowing through the crowd, Fraera worked her way free from the peaceful assembly, suffocated by their passivity. Farther away from Parliament Square the mood changed. Along Muzeum korut, toward the Nemzeti Muzeum, people were running in a chaos of directions, some scared, others angry, carrying slabs of rock, ripped-up paving stones. The focus of their activity was the radio station, situated along Brody Sandor ut, a narrow street that ran beside the museum. Whatever peaceful protest might have begun here had evolved into a violent mob — the radio station’s windows were smashed, glass shards on the street crunching underfoot like frozen puddles. A van lay overturned in the middle of the road, wheels spinning, the front crumpled. The radio station doors were shut and secure.
Zsolt questioned the nearby men and women and returned to Fraera, switching from Hungarian to Russian, speaking in hushed tones:
— The students demanded to read the sixteen points. The woman running the station—
Fraera interrupted:
— Who is she?
— Her name is Benke, a loyal Communist, but not too smart it seems. She proposed a compromise. They couldn’t have access to the station but she’d give them a mobile broadcasting van. The van arrived. The students read the points.
Fraera was already ahead of him:
— It was a trick?
— The van wasn’t transmitting. Instead, the station continued to broadcast orders for everyone to go home, condemning the disruption. The students flipped the van over and rammed it against the doors. Now they want the station, nothing less, they say it’s the national station and it belongs to them, not the Soviets.
Fraera glanced around, assessing the mob’s strength:
— Where are the AVH?
— Inside.
Fraera glanced up. Figures appeared at the top-floor windows— officers. There was a hissing noise, plumes of smoke unraveled within the confines of the street. Tear gas was twisting out of steel canisters like vengeful genies released from bottles, swelling in shape and size, rising up. Fraera pulled her men back, checking on Zoya and Malysh, retreating, clambering over the rails, toward the museum as the gas chased them, carpeting the grass like morning mist. Reaching the top of the museum steps, they turned. White wisps swirled around their ankles but posed no danger. The bulk of the tear gas had been funneled down the street, spewing onto the main road. Out of the chemical fog emerged men and women, dropping to their knees, retching.
As the gas began to thin Fraera moved closer, surveying the empty street. A gloomy stillness prevailed. The mob was broken. The fight had been extinguished. Fraera shook her head. If tonight passed without serious incident the authorities would regain initiative, control would be reasserted. Fraera strode toward the station:
— Follow me.
The gas hadn’t cleared. Fraera wasn’t going to wait, climbing the rails, walking into the middle of the street, plumes of gas hugging her. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand. Almost immediately she began to cough but she continued, staggering toward the radio station entrance, her eyes streaming.
Zoya grabbed Malysh’s arm:
— We have to follow her!
Malysh ripped his shirt, fashioning a mask for himself and Zoya. Climbing over the rails, they entered the street, the two of them standing beside her. The gas was lifting, circulating into the broken windows of the radio station, making it easier to breathe on the street and forcing the figures back from the windows. Slowly the mob reassembled around the nucleus of Zoya, Malysh, and Fraera. The vory returned with steel bars. They took to the doors, trying to splinter them open.
Zoya looked up. AVH officers were at the windows, this time armed with rifles. She grabbed Malysh, rushing forward. They pressed themselves flat against the wall just as a volley of shots rang out. Everyone in the street ducked, stooping, checking to see who’d been hit. No one had been hurt. The shots had been fired above their heads into the walls of the building opposite. The volley had been intended to cower them, timed exactly as the front doors to the station opened.
Puffed up with resolve, AVH officers stepped out, rifles ready, a Roman phalanx protecting the radio station. The officers divided into two lines, back to back — one line moving up the street, the other moving down, cutting the mob in half. With bayonets fixed to the end of the rifles they advanced. Malysh and Zoya were being pushed down, toward the museum, as the officers jabbed with their bayonets. Zoya looked at the young girl next to her, perhaps eighteen years old. Far from being scared, she grinned triumphantly at Zoya, locking arms with her. They’d stand together. She called out at the officers, cursing them. Inspired by the girl’s defiance, Zoya bent down, scooping up a rock no larger than her palm and throwing it, striking an officer on the cheek. Elated, she was still smiling when he swung his rifle in her direction.
There was a flash. Zoya’s legs buckled, she fell. Breathless, unsure whether she was hit, she rolled onto her side, staring into the eyes of the girl who’d linked arms with her. The bullet had struck the girl in the neck.
The officers continued advancing. Zoya couldn’t move, unable to pull herself away. She had to get up. The officers would trample her underfoot. They would kill her. Yet she couldn’t leave this girl. Suddenly Fraera crouched down, scooping up the dead girl in her arms. Malysh helped Zoya up — the two of them running. Behind them, the officers stopped their advance, holding position.
Fraera laid the girl down, crying out in raw anger, as if she were her mother, as if she loved this girl. Zoya stood back, watching as men and women knelt beside the young victim, drawn in by the sound of Fraera’s cries. Was this grief a performance? Before Zoya could think about it further, Fraera stood up, drawing a gun and firing at the line of officers. It was the cue her vory had been waiting for. From both sides of the street, they drew their guns, opening fire. The formation of officers began to break up, retreating to the station, no longer certain that they could maintain control. The officers had presumed, like men fighting beasts, that they’d been the only ones armed with guns. Under attack, they hastened back to the safety of the radio station.
Zoya remained by the dead girl’s body, staring at her lifeless eyes. Fraera pulled her aside, offering her a gun:
— Now we fight.
Zoya replied:
— I killed her.
Fraera slapped her across the face:
— No guilt. Just anger. They shot her. What are you going to do about it? Cry like a child! You’ve been crying all your life! It’s time to act!
Zoya grabbed the gun and charged toward the radio station, aiming at the figures in the windows, pulling the trigger and firing all six shots.
DAWN, AND ZOYA HADN’T SLEPT. Far from being dulled by fatigue, her senses seemed heightened, her eyes picking up every detail of her surroundings. To her side, broken coffee cups, hundreds cracked and chipped, were inexplicably heaped in the gutter, piled knee-high as if marking a burial spot. In front, the remains of a fire composed entirely of charred books, copies of Marx and Lenin, looted from bookstores. Fragile flakes of gray ash rose up toward the sky in a reverse of snowfall. Cobblestones were missing, wrenched out of the ground to serve as missiles, gaps in the street’s teeth. It was as if the city itself had been in a fight and Zoya had fought on its side. Her clothes smelled of smoke: her fingertips were black, her tongue tasted metallic. Her ears were ringing. Underneath her shirt, pressed against her stomach, was her gun.
The radio station had fallen shortly before sunrise: smoke bellowing from the windows. The timber doors had finally been broken open. The resistance inside had weakened while the attack outside had consolidated with a supply of weapons, rifles from the military academy, fired by cadets from the same academy. Fraera had found Zoya and Malysh and ordered them not to take part in storming the building. She didn’t want them caught in a pitched battle, fighting in smoke-filled corridors where desperate AVH officers lurked behind doors. She’d given them a different objective:
Find Stalin.
ARRIVING AT THE END OF GORKII FASOR, a street that led out onto the city’s main park, the Varosliget, Malysh and Zoya were shocked by the absence of its landmark. At the center of Heroes Square the vast statue of Stalin — a bronze colossus as tall as four men with a mustache as wide as an arm — was gone. There was the stone plinth but no statue on top of it. Malysh and Zoya approached the mutilated monument. Two steel boots remained: the Generalissimo had been cut off near the knees, a twisted steel support jutting out of his right boot. His body and head was missing, his statue had been murdered and the corpse stolen. Two men were busy on the plinth trying to affix a modified Hungarian flag into Stalin’s hollow boot.
Zoya began to laugh. She pointed at the space where Stalin had once been:
— He’s dead! He’s dead! The bastard’s dead!
Malysh pounced, slamming his hand over her mouth. She’d shouted out in Russian. The two men on the plinth stopped and turned. Malysh raised his arm, punching the air:
— Russkik haza!
The men nodded halfheartedly, distracted as their flag fell over.
Malysh led Zoya away, whispering:
— Remember who we are.
In reply Zoya kissed him on the lips — a quick, impulsive kiss. She pulled back and before he could react she pretended that nothing had happened, pointing at the deep scratches in the street:
— That’s the direction they dragged the body!
She set off, heart pounding, following the marks where the bronze had rubbed against the cobblestones:
— They must have dragged it with a van or a truck.
Malysh didn’t reply and, unable to play it cool any longer, Zoya stopped:
— Are you annoyed?
He slowly shook his head. Her cheeks began to burn.
Changing the subject, she gestured at the scratches:
— I’ll race you. First to Stalin’s body! On the count of three…
Before a single number had been uttered, they both broke into a run, cheating in perfect synchronization.
Malysh tore ahead but stopped as he lost track of the scratches in the street, forced to run back, searching for clues as to which direction the bronze corpse had been dragged. Like hounds hunting, they paused at the first intersection, heads down, circling the possible turning points. Zoya found the trail, setting off, Malysh now behind. They were heading south and turned down toward Blaha Lujza Square, a large crossroads, a junction lined with shops.
Up ahead they saw the bronze body, lying flat on its belly, as wide and as long as a tramcar. Both of them accelerated, running flat-out. But Zoya had more in reserve, having paced herself, exploiting Malysh’s earlier miscalculation about how far they’d have to run. She was ahead of him but only barely, she strained forward, stretching — her fingertips touching Stalin’s bronze calf. Panting, smiling, she glanced at Malysh and saw that he was genuinely annoyed. He hated to lose and was trying to think of some reason to annul the race.
To seal her victory Zoya climbed the statue, her flat-soled shoes slipping over Stalin’s smooth bronze thighs until she wedged her toes into the imitation folds of his coat and pushed herself up. Standing on top she saw that Stalin’s head was missing, severed at the neck, a crude decapitation. She walked the line of his back, one foot carefully in front of the other — a trapeze artist pacing a tightrope. Malysh remained on the street, hands in pockets. She smiled at him, expecting him to blush. Instead, he returned her smile. A burst of pleasure exploded inside her chest, and in her mind she performed celebratory cartwheels along Stalin’s spine.
Reaching the bronze neck, she ran her fingers over the rough edge where the head appeared to have been chipped and smashed and blowtorched off. Standing up, hands on hips, conqueror, giant slayer, she surveyed the square. There was a small crowd on the opposite side near Jozsef korut. As they moved she caught a glimpse of Stalin’s head. Supported on the remains of his zigzag neck, he seemed to be staring at her, stupefied at his humiliation. A hole had been smashed in his forehead, buckling his hairline, out of which protruded a street sign: 15KM. The truck that had dragged the statue into the district had also dragged the head from the body. There were chains still attached. Zoya lowered herself to the street, peeking into Stalin’s dark stomach — hollow and black and cold, just as she suspected — before hurrying to the assembled crowd.
Malysh caught up with her, grabbing her hand:
— Let’s go back.
— Not yet.
Zoya pulled free, passing through the crowd, walking straight up to Stalin’s face and spitting at his huge, smooth eye. After having run so fast her mouth was dry and very little spit came out. It didn’t matter. There was laughter. Pleased, she was ready to leave. But before she could retreat Zoya was lifted up and placed on top of Stalin’s head, mounted on his bronze hair. A discussion broke out in the crowd. They addressed her directly. Without any idea what they were saying she nodded. Two men hurried to the truck, talking to the driver while another man handed her the newly modified Hungarian flag. The truck started its engine, slowly driving forward. The slack chains running from the back of the truck to Stalin’s head rose up from the street. As soon as the chains were taut the head shifted position, rotating round, as though it were coming to life. Zoya grabbed the protruding 15KM sign, steadying herself. Everyone was talking at once: she understood they were asking if she was okay. She nodded. They signaled to the driver. He accelerated. Stalin’s head lurched forward, bumping over the tramlines.
Trying to figure out how to stop the giant head from bucking her off, she positioned her feet wide, riding the crest of Stalin’s hair, hands clasped around the protruding street sign. Zoya gained confidence, standing up straight. Spotting Malysh’s concerned face, she smiled to reassure him, ushering him forward, wanting him to join her, but he refused, crossing his arms, staying back, annoyed at her recklessness. Ignoring his grumpiness, she played to the crowd, pointing forward like an empress atop her chariot. The truck was moving at a steady pace: Stalin’s head dragged at walking speed, the Hungarian flag lank behind her, trailing along the ground. She gestured to the driver — faster.
The truck accelerated. Sparks crackled from the bottom of Stalin’s jaw. Zoya’s hair was flapping. Picking up enough speed, the flag began to flap as well, spreading out behind her. In that second, she became an emblem of their defiance, Stalin’s head under her feet, the new Hungarian flag sweeping out. She looked around, hoping to see admiration in the crowd’s eyes, hoping a camera might capture this moment.
Her audience had disappeared.
At the end of Jozsef korut there was a tank, turret pointed directly at them, caterpillar tracks grinding over the street, advancing at speed. The truck braked. The chains fell slack. Stalin’s head stopped so suddenly it flipped forward, nose hitting the street, throwing Zoya off. Dazed, winded, she lay sprawled in the middle of the square.
Malysh grabbed her. She sat up, winded, bruised, seeing the tank rolling straight toward them, only a couple of hundred meters away. Leaning on Malysh, she stood up, staggering away. Trying to find cover, they hurried toward the nearest shop. She looked back. The tank fired: a burst of yellow, a whistling noise. The shell hit the street behind them — a cloud of smoke, fragments of stone, streaks of fire. Zoya and Malysh were smashed down.
Appearing out of the cloud, Stalin’s giant head appeared, blasted off the ground and swinging like a ball at the end of a chain, arching toward them, as if taking revenge for its desecration. Zoya pushed Malysh flat just as Stalin’s head passed over, his jagged neck only centimeters above them before crashing through the shop window, showering them with glass. Where the head traveled, the truck followed, dragged by the chains, flipped over onto its back, rotating round, crunching into the street, the driver hanging upside down.
Before they could get up, the tank appeared out of the smoke, a metallic monster. They crawled backward, reaching the devastated pharmacy window. There was nowhere to go, no way to escape. But the tank didn’t fire. The hatch was opened. A soldier appeared, taking up control of the mounted machine gun. Paralyzed by fear, they remained stationary. As the soldier spun the machine gun toward them a bullet struck his jaw. More bullets struck the tank, fired from every side of the square. Under bombardment the dead soldier was pulled down into the compartment. Before he could close the hatch two men ran at the tank arms raised high, holding glass bottles, a rag burning in each. They tossed them inside, filling the tank with fire.
Malysh grabbed Zoya:
— We have to go.
For once, Zoya didn’t disagree.
LEO HAD BECOME FRUSTRATED at their guide’s apparent lack of urgency. They had been making slow progress. It had taken two days to travel a thousand kilometers to the Hungarian border and yet three days to travel the remaining three hundred kilometers to Budapest. Not until Karoly had heard radio broadcasts announcing that disturbances were breaking out in Budapest had he seemed to pick up the pace. Quizzed, Karoly could offer no more than a translation of the radio reports—minor civil unrest perpetrated by bands of fascists. From those words it was impossible to judge the scale of the unrest. The radio broadcasts were censored and almost certainly underplaying the disruption. The request for the troublemakers to go home suggested the authorities were no longer in control. With insufficient information, Karoly decided it was too dangerous to enter the city directly, driving in a circular route, avoiding several Soviet army blockades. They’d looped around to the residential Buda district, bypassing the center, the civic buildings, and Communist headquarters — flashpoints for an insurgency.
It was sunrise by the time Karoly parked the car on the vantage point of Buda Hill, several hundred meters above the city. The adjacent streets were deserted. At the bottom of the hills the Danube passed through the city, dividing it into two halves — Buda and Pest. While the Buda half remained largely quiet, on the other side of the river there was the crackle of gunfire. Thin wisps of smoke rose from several buildings. Leo asked:
— Have Soviet troops stormed the city yet? Is the insurgency beaten?
Karoly shrugged:
— I know as much as you.
Raisa turned to Karoly:
— This is your home. These are your people. Panin is using both to settle a political dispute. How can you work for him?
Karoly became annoyed:
— My people would be wise to put aside dreams of freedom. They will only get us killed. If this flushes those troublemakers out, so much the better for the rest of us… Whatever you may think of me, I wish only to live in peace.
Abandoning the car, Karoly set off down the hill:
— First, we go to my apartment.
Karoly’s apartment was nearby, just below the castle on the slopes overlooking the Danube. Climbing the stairs to the top floor, Leo asked:
— Do you live alone?
— I live with my son.
Karoly had made no previous mention of his family and offered nothing more, entering the apartment, pacing from room to room. Finally, he called out:
— Victor?
Raisa asked:
— How old is your son?
— He’s twenty-three.
Raisa offered:
— I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for where he might be.
Leo added:
— What does he do?
Karoly hesitated before replying:
— He recently joined the AVH.
Leo and Raisa remained silent, belatedly understanding their guide’s apprehension. Karoly stared out the window, speaking more to himself than Leo or Raisa:
— There’s nothing to worry about. The AVH would have called all officers into their headquarters at the onset of the uprising. He is there, for sure.
The apartment was stocked with food, paraffin, candles, and a selection of weapons. Karoly had been carrying a gun since they’d crossed the border. He suggested that Leo and Raisa follow his example since being unarmed offered no guarantee that they’d be treated as non-combatants. Leo selected the TT-33, a slim, robust Soviet-made pistol. Raisa reluctantly held it in her hands. Concentrating on the danger poised by Fraera, she forced herself to become familiar with it.
They left the apartment, heading downhill, intending to cross the Danube and enter the other side of town where it was likely that Zoya would be working alongside Fraera, at the center of the uprising. Passing through Szena ter they picked their way through the square’s improvised fortifications. Young men sat, smoking in doorways, ready-made Molotov cocktails stockpiled. Tramcars had been toppled, creating a perimeter, blocking access to the streets. From the rooftops, snipers followed their movements. Trying not to arouse suspicions, the three of them moved slowly, edging toward the river.
Karoly led them across Margit-hid, a wide bridge that connected to a small island in the middle of the Danube before reaching Pest. Nearing the middle, Karoly gestured for them to stop. He crouched, pointing at the opposite bridge. There were tanks stationed on it. Heavy armor could be glimpsed around Parliament Square. Soviet troops were evidently engaged, but not in control, judging from the insurgents’ fortifications. Exposed on all sides, Karoly hunched low, hurrying. Leo and Raisa followed, blasted by the cold winds, greatly relieved when they finally reached the other side.
The city was in a schizophrenic state, neither a war zone nor anything like normality, but both at the same time, switching between the two over small distances. Zoya could be anywhere. Leo had brought two photographs, one of Zoya, a portrait they’d had taken as a family recently. She looked wretched and miserable, pale with hate. The other was the arrest photograph taken of Fraera. She’d changed almost to the point where the photograph was useless. Karoly offered them to passersby, all of whom wanted to help. There were, no doubt, many families doing exactly the same, searching for missing relatives. The photos were returned with an apologetic shake of the head.
Pressing onward, they entered a narrow street entirely untouched by fighting. It was midmorning and there was a small café open for business. Customers were sipping coffee as though nothing were out of the ordinary. The only sign that something was amiss were the mass-produced leaflets piled in the gutter. Leo bent down, taking a clutch of the thin papers, cleaning off the dirt. On the top there was a stamp, an emblem — an Orthodox crucifix. Underneath, the text was Hungarian, but he recognized the name: Nikita SergeyevichKhrushchev. This was Fraera’s work. Excited at the confirmation of her presence in the city, he took the leaflet to Karoly.
Karoly was standing, transfixed upon a distant point. Leo’s eyes followed his gaze to the end of the street. It opened out into a small square. In it there was a single leafless tree. Sunlight filled the space, contrasting with the shadows where they were standing. As his eyes adjusted, Leo focused on the trunk of the tree. The trunk appeared to be swaying.
Karoly broke into a run. Leo and Raisa caught up with him, hurrying past the café, attracting the attention of those seated at the window. Reaching the end of the street on the brink of sunlight, they stopped. From the thickest branch of the tree, the body of a man hung upside down. His feet were lashed with rope. His arms swayed back and forth like a ghoulish wind charm. A fire had been lit under his body. His head was burnt clean of hair: his skin, flesh, features unrecognizable. He’d been stripped naked, but only to his waist, his trousers left in an act of modesty incongruous with the savagery of his murder. The fire had burnt his shoulders, blackening his torso. The untouched skin revealed the man’s age. He’d been young. His uniform, jacket, his shirt and cap, were in the ashes below. He’d been burnt to death with his own uniform. As if she were whispering in his ear, Leo could hear Fraera’s voice:
This is what they’ll do to you.
The man had been a member of the AVH, the Hungarian secret police.
Leo turned to see Karoly clawing at his scalp, as though his hair were infested with lice, muttering:
— I don’t…
Karoly edged closer, stretching his hand out to touch the charred face before pulling back, circling the body:
— I don’t know…
He turned to Leo:
— How can I know if this is my son?
He dropped to his knees, falling into the cold fire, a puff of ash rising. A crowd gathered, watching the scene. Leo turned to see their expressions — hostility, anger at this display of grief being shown to the enemy, anger at their justice being rebuked. Leo sank down beside Karoly, putting an arm around him:
— We have to go.
— I’m his father. I should know.
— It’s not your son. Your son is alive. We’ll find him. We have to go.
— Yes, he’s alive. Isn’t he?
Leo helped Karoly up. But the crowd wouldn’t allow them to pass.
Leo saw Raisa’s hand move closer to her gun, concealed in the top of her trousers. She was right. They were in danger. Several of the crowd began talking — one man had a strap of finger-thick bullets wrapped around his neck. They were accusatory. With tears still in his eyes, Karoly pulled out the photos of Zoya and Fraera. Upon seeing the photos the man with the bullets relaxed, putting a hand on Karoly’s shoulder. They spoke for some time. The crowd began to part. Once everyone was gone, Karoly whispered to Leo and Raisa:
— Your daughter just saved our lives.
— That man had seen her?
— Fighting near the Corvin cinema.
— What else did he say?
Karoly paused:
— That you should be proud. She’s killed many Russians.
THE APPROACHING SOVIET personnel carrier caused panic among the crowd, as surely as an explosion detonating in their midst, every citizen propelled in different directions, desperate to get off the street. Raisa ran as fast as she could, men and women and children beside her, their positions interchanging. An elderly man fell. A woman tried to help him, tugging his coat, straining to get him clear of the road. The armored personnel carrier either didn’t see the man or didn’t care: prepared to ride over the couple as though they were rubble. Raisa hurried back, heaving the man out of the way as the carrier crunched past — the tracks so close Raisa felt a rush of metallic air.
Raisa checked the street. There was no sight of Leo or Karoly but they were close. Exploiting the confusion created by the personnel carrier, she turned down a side street — any street — running until, exhausted, she stopped. She waited, catching her breath. She’d been separated from Leo. She was now free to search for Zoya by herself.
The idea had occurred to her in Moscow more or less as soon as she’d heard that Zoya was alive. Zoya could imagine a life with Raisa. She’d said so. She could not imagine one with Leo. Over these five months Raisa was unable to see how that point of view would’ve changed. If anything Zoya’s position was likely to have become more entrenched. On the train into Hungary her resolve had strengthened as she’d watched Karoly interact with Leo — two former agents, suspicious of each other, yet connected like members of a secret society. Zoya would ask: two KGB agents sent to rescue me? She’d spit at the idea. How little they understood her, the exact sentiment Fraera had no doubt exploited, claiming to emphathize with Zoya’s sense of isolation.
Raisa doubted that Leo would accept that her disappearance was deliberate. Karoly might guess her true intention. Leo would deny it. That delay gave her a slim advantage. Karoly had provided them with a map of the city, marking his apartment in case they should get separated. She estimated her position to be somewhere near Stahly ut. She needed to travel directly south, keeping off the most obvious routes to the Corvin cinema where Zoya had been sighted.
Making slow progress, forced to keep her map hidden, she reached Ulloi ut. The district had seen intense fighting: there were spent tank shells scattered on the broken cobblestones. Despite the street’s size Raisa could see very few people, figures darting between doorways and then nothing — eerie stillness for such a key thoroughfare. Remaining close to the edge of the buildings, tentatively advancing, she scooped up a broken brick, ready to duck into a doorway or smash a window and climb through should she need to take cover. As her fingers handled the brick she noticed the underneath was wet. Perplexed, looking down, she saw the street was coated in some kind of slime.
Material had been carpeted across the width of the street. It was silk, rolls and rolls of precious silk. Yet it was soaked in a soapy lather. Bemused, Raisa tentatively stepped forward, her smooth-soled shoes slipping this way and that. Progress was only possible by keeping one hand on the wall. As though she’d tripped an alarm, shouting bellowed out from the windows above. There were people on both sides, in the windows, on the roof, heavily armed men and women. Hearing a rumbling, feeling the vibrations, Raisa turned. A tank pulled onto the street, it circled, surveying both directions before spinning toward her, pivoting on its tracks and accelerating. Everyone in the windows and on the roof disappeared, pulling back, out of sight. This was a trap. She was in the middle of it.
Raisa hurried across the wet silk, falling over, scrambling up and reaching the nearest shop. The door was locked. The tank was close behind. She swung the brick, smashed the window — large shards falling around her. She clambered inside just as the tank reached the beginning of the frothy silk. Raisa looked back, convinced the tank would ride across this unsophisticated obstacle with ease. But it immediately lurched to the side, no longer gripping, chomping up the slippery silk. There was no traction, no control. Looking up at the rooftop, Raisa saw the waiting forces amassing — a volley of Molotov cocktails crashed down around the tank, streaking it with fire. The tank angled its turret toward the tops of the building, firing a shell. Unable to control its position, the shell missed, racing into the sky.
Raisa hurried farther into the shop. The walls began to shake. She turned around. Through the smashed window she saw the tank veering toward her. She dived to the floor as the tank crashed into the shop front, the turret spiking through the ceiling above her, walls crumbling. The tank was wedged to a standstill.
In the smoke and dust, Raisa picked herself up, stumbling toward the back of the ruined shop, reaching the stairs only to hear the insurgents coming down from their rooftop positions. Caught between the tank and the descending force, she retreated behind the shop counter, drawing her own gun. With her eye level just above the counter, she saw a Soviet soldier open the tank’s hatch.
The insurgents arrived. Raisa caught sight of a machine gun carried by a young woman wearing a beret. The woman cocked her gun, raising it toward the Russian soldier, ready to fire. The young woman was Zoya.
Raisa stood up. Reacting to the movement, Zoya swung around, aiming the gun at her. Face-to-face after five months, surrounded by swirling brick dust and smoke, the machine gun sagged in Zoya’s hands as though it had become impossibly heavy. She stood dumb, mouth open. In the background the grimy-faced Russian soldier, perhaps no more than twenty years old, exploited the opportunity. He pointed his gun at Zoya. Reacting instinctively, Raisa aimed her TT-33, pulled the trigger, firing several shots; one hit to the young man’s head, flicking it back.
In disbelief at what she’d done, Raisa stared at the soldier’s body, her gun still pointing. Pulling herself together, aware that there was very little time, she looked back at Zoya. Stepping forward, she took hold of her daughter’s hands:
— Zoya, we have to go. Please, you trusted me before, trust me again.
There was conflict in Zoya’s expression. Raisa was pleased — there was something to work with. About to make her case, Raisa paused. Fraera had appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Raisa pulled Zoya aside, taking aim. Caught unaware, Fraera didn’t defend herself. Raisa had a clear shot. She hesitated. In that moment she felt the barrel of a gun pressed against her back. Zoya was pointing the gun directly at her heart.
HAVING SPENT SEVERAL HOURS looking for Raisa, fearing that she might be hurt, Leo finally understood that she must have left him in order to find Zoya. She didn’t believe Zoya would come home with him. Running in an attempt to catch up with her, he arrived at the Corvin cinema, the place where Zoya had been sighted. The cinema was a defensible oval building set back from the street, connected by a pedestrian walkway that had been blocked off and fortified. A fighter approached. Karoly had been left far behind, unable to keep up. Without his translator, Leo was saved from questioning by the arrival of a Soviet T-34 tank, now in the insurgents’ hands, a Hungarian flag hanging from the turret. The fighters surrounded it, cheering. Pushing through the crowd, Leo raised the photograph of Zoya. After examining the photograph one man pointed down the boulevard.
Leo set off running again. The boulevard was empty. He stopped, bending down — the entire street was covered in ripped silk. Patches of the silk were burnt through, smoldering, while others were soaking wet. He saw where the captured tank had veered off the street and smashed into a shop front. The corpses of four Soviet soldiers were heaped on the ground. None of them was much older than twenty.
There was no one else around.
RAISA CLOSED HER EYES, concentrating on the noises in the surrounding rooms — people running, shouting, items being dragged, orders being barked in Russian and Hungarian. Injured men and women cried out in pain. One room was being used to carry out crude treatments for injuries sustained in the fighting; another served as a mess hall for Fraera’s band of insurgents — the smell of antiseptic mingling with the smells of cooking, fried meat and animal fat.
Escorted from the tank at gunpoint, Raisa had barely paid attention to where she was being led, focused entirely on Zoya as she’d marched ahead, striding like a soldier, gun over her shoulder — the gun that she’d just pointed at Raisa’s heart. Arriving at an apartment block set back from the street and accessed through a passageway, Raisa had been taken to the top floor, hustled into a small room that had been hastily stripped bare and improvised as a cell.
The walls began to shake. Heavy armor was passing close by. Raisa peered through the small window. There were skirmishes in the street below. Directly above her head was the sound of feet on tiles, snipers moving into position. Raisa crouched by the wall farthest from the window, exhausted, hands over her ears. She thought about Zoya. She thought about the young Soviet soldier she’d killed. Finally, she allowed herself to cry.
HEARING FOOTSTEPS OUTSIDE THE ROOM and a key in the lock, Raisa stood up. Fraera entered. Whereas before, in Moscow, she’d been unruffled and in control, she now appeared tired, strained by the pressures of her operation.
— So, you found me…
Raisa’s words trembled with anger:
— I’m here for Zoya.
— Where’s Leo?
— I’m alone.
— You’re lying. But we’ll find him soon enough. This is not a large city.
— Let Zoya go.
— You speak as though I stole her. The truth is I rescued her from you.
— Whatever problems we had as a family, we love her. You don’t.
Fraera hardly seemed to register the observation:
— Zoya wanted to join me, so I allowed her to. She is free to do whatever she likes. If she wishes to go home with you, she can. I won’t stop her.
— It’s easy to win a child’s favor by allowing them to do whatever they want and telling them whatever they want to hear. Give her a machine gun; tell her she’s a revolutionary. It’s a seductive lie. I don’t believe she loves you for it.
— I don’t ask her to. You and Leo, on the other hand, you demand love. You’re both obsessed with it. And the truth is that she was miserable living with you, whereas she’s happy with me.
Over Fraera’s shoulder, at the end of the corridor, Raisa could see an injured man spread on the kitchen table. There were no doctors, little equipment to speak of, bloody rags and pots of boiling water.
— If you stay here, you are going to die. Zoya is going to die with you. Fraera shook her head:
— Concern for her well-being is no proof that you’re a parent. The fact is, you’re no more her mother than I am.
RAISA AWOKE. The room was dark and cold and she shivered, pulling the thin bedding around her. It was night. The city was quiet. She hadn’t expected to sleep but as soon as she’d lain down her eyes had closed. There was a plate of meat and potatoes on the floor, deposited while she’d been asleep. She reached out, pulling the plate closer. Only now did she notice the door was open.
Standing up, walking forward, she glanced into the hallway. The corridors were empty. To escape would be a matter of leaving the apartment, descending the stairway, then exiting to the street. Was it possible that Zoya had opened the door and broken the lock, wanting to help while at the same time concealing her involvement? The enterprise demonstrated stealth and skill, yet it was based upon a false assumption. Raisa wasn’t here to escape: she was here to bring Zoya home. Zoya would understand that. The method was inconsistent with her character, circumspect while she was bold and brash.
Uneasy, Raisa stepped away. At the same time a shadowy outline appeared in the door. It was the figure of a young boy. He spoke in a whisper:
— Why don’t you escape?
— Not without Zoya.
He sprang forward, wrapping a leg around hers, uprooting it and forcing her to the floor, her cry stifled by his hand. She was on her back, pinned down. Raisa felt a knife against her throat. He whispered:
— You should’ve run.
She repeated, speaking through his fingers:
— Not without Zoya.
At the mention of Zoya’s name she felt his body tense, the blade press against her neck. Raisa asked:
— You… like her?
There was a shift in his position. His grip around her mouth loosened. She was right. This was about Zoya: the boy was worried about losing her. Raisa said:
— Listen to me. She’s in danger. You are too. Come with us.
— She’s not yours!
— You’re right. She’s not mine. But I care about her a great deal. And if you do too you’ll find a way to get her out of here. You hear the difference between my voice and Fraera’s voice, don’t you? You hear that I care? You know that she doesn’t.
The boy removed the knife from her neck. He seemed uncertain. Raisa guessed his thoughts:
— Come back with us. You’re the reason she’s happy, not Fraera.
The boy got to his feet, hurrying out, shutting the door and then opening it again. Remembering the lock was broken, he whispered:
— Pretend you were trying to break out. If you don’t they’ll kill me.
The boy disappeared. Raisa called out:
— Wait!
The boy reappeared:
— What’s your name?
He hesitated:
— Malysh.
LEO COUNTED AT LEAST THIRTY TANKS, a column advancing along the main boulevard into the city. A deployment of this size, mobilizing at six in the morning, meant a full-scale Soviet invasion was imminent. The insurgency was about to be wiped out.
Leo hastened down the hill, running back to Karoly’s apartment. Climbing the stairs, two at a time, he reached the top floor landing, pushing open the door. Karoly was seated at the table, reading a leaflet. Leo explained:
— The Soviets have mobilized over thirty tanks. They’re entering the city. We have to find Zoya and Raisa immediately.
Karoly handed him the leaflet. Impatient, Leo glanced at it. At the top there was a photograph. It was of Leo. Karoly translated the text:
— This man is a Soviet spy. He is disguised as one of us. Report his whereabouts to the nearest revolutionary stronghold.
Leo placed the leaflet down:
— If Fraera’s looking for me, it’s proof that Raisa has been captured.
Karoly remarked:
— Leo, it’s no longer safe for you to go outside.
Leo opened the door, ready to go:
— No one is going to care about one Russian spy when there are Russian tanks on every street corner.
The door to the apartment opposite was ajar. A slice of the neighbor’s face was visible. They held eye contact. Then the neighbor shut the door.
TWO VORY ENTERED RAISA’S ROOM, grabbing her by the arms, leading her into the hallway, out the front door, and onto the balcony. The courtyard below was crowded. Fraera stood at the center. Seeing Raisa arrive she waved her men aside. They parted, revealing Leo and Karoly on their knees, their arms bound in front of them like slaves ready for sale. Zoya was in among the crowd of onlookers.
Leo stood up. Guns were directed at him. Fraera gestured for them to be put away:
— Let him speak.
— Fraera, we don’t have much time. There are over thirty T-34s in the city right now. The Soviets are going to crush this resistance. They’re going to kill every man and woman and child holding a gun. There is no chance of victory.
— I disagree.
— Frol Panin is laughing at you. This uprising is a sham. This isn’t about the future of Hungary. You’re being exploited.
— Maxim, you see everything upside down. I am not being exploited: I am exploiting Panin. I could never have done this on my own. My revenge would have finished in Moscow. Instead of merely being able to take revenge on the men and women involved in my arrest, as I originally planned, he has presented me with an opportunity to take revenge upon the very State that destroyed my life. Here, I am hurting Russia.
— No, you’re not. The Soviet forces can lose a hundred tanks and a thousand soldiers and it won’t matter. They won’t care.
— Panin has underestimated the depth of hatred here.
— Hatred isn’t enough.
Fraera turned her attention to Karoly:
— You’re his translator? An appointment arranged by Frol Panin?
— Yes.
— You have instructions to kill me?
Karoly considered, then replied:
— Either myself or Leo was supposed to kill you. Once the uprising began.
Leo was shocked. Fraera shook her head dismissively:
— Did you not realize your true purpose, Leo? You are an unwitting assassin. You are working for Panin, not me.
— I didn’t know.
— That is your answer to everything… You didn’t know. Let me explain. I didn’t start this uprising. All I did was to encourage it. You could kill me. It wouldn’t make any difference.
Leo turned to Zoya. She had a gun over her shoulder, grenades on her belt. Her clothes were torn; her hands were scratched. She held his glance, an expression rigid with hatred as if fearful any other emotion might creep through. The boy who’d murdered the patriarch was beside her. He was holding her hand.
— If you fight, you will die.
Fraera addressed Zoya:
— Zoya? What do you say? Leo is speaking to you.
Zoya punched the air with her gun:
— We fight!
THOUGH RAISA WANTED TO TALK, Leo’s body language was set against it. He’d not spoken since being manhandled into the cell. On the other side of the room, Karoly lay sprawled on the bedding, his eyes closed. His leg had been injured during his capture. Breaking the silence, Raisa said:
— Leo, I’m sorry.
Leo looked up at her:
— I made one mistake, Raisa. I should’ve told you about Zoya. I should’ve told you about her holding the knife over me.
Still lying down, his eyes closed, Karoly interjected:
— The daughter we’re trying to rescue, she stands over you with a knife?
Karoly opened an eye, looking at Raisa, then at Leo.
Leo lowered his voice, trying to cut Karoly out of the conversation:
— The only way we’re going to escape is if we trust each other.
Raisa nodded:
— Trust is not going to break us out of this room.
Leo asked:
— Do you have any idea how we’re going to get Zoya out of here?
— She’s in love.
Leo pulled back in surprise:
— In love with who?
— A vory, he’s young — the same age as her, his name is Malysh.
— That boy is a murderer. I watched him kill the patriarch. He decapitated a seventy-five-year-old man with a length of wire.
Karoly sat up:
— They sound like a good match.
Raisa took hold of Leo’s hands:
— Malysh might be our only hope.
ZOYA LAY AT THE CRUMBLING EDGE of the house. Damaged by shellfire, the entire front had collapsed. Flat on her stomach, with the rifle stretched out before her, Zoya’s eye was pressed up against the scope. There were two tanks at the mouth of the Kossuth-hid, the bridge near Parliament, no doubt waiting for orders to advance into the city as Leo had predicted.
She’d never expected to see Leo again. She couldn’t concentrate, seeing his face. Restless, she needed to pee. Checking on the tanks, seeing no movement, she left her rifle and examined the remains of the bedroom. Since the entire front of the house had fallen down the room was exposed. The wardrobe offered the only privacy without going too far from her post. She slipped inside and shut the doors, squatting. She felt guilty about dabbing dry with the sleeve of a coat, an odd kind of guilt considering she was about to shoot a man. She’d fired her gun on numerous occasions and it was possible she’d already killed, although she hadn’t seen anyone die or fall down. Without warning, grabbing a nearby shoe, she threw up, filling the shoe to the toe.
Unsteady, she stepped out of the wardrobe, shutting the doors. The rifle was as she’d left it, lying across the bricks. Shaking, she slowly returned to her position. A Soviet soldier was staggering toward the two tanks. Zoya lined up the injured officer in her crosshairs. She couldn’t see his face, only his back — his brown hair. The other officers might come to his aid. Fraera had taught her that these were the officers to shoot, the real prize, before finishing off the injured man.
The wounded soldier fell ten paces from the tank, unable to walk any farther. Zoya moved the crosshairs toward the hatch, waiting to see if they’d take the bait. The tank came to life, edging forward, moving as close to the wounded man as possible. They were going to save him. The hatch opened. A soldier cautiously lifted the steel lid, peering out, waiting to see if he’d be shot, ready to duck back down. After a pause, he climbed out, hurrying to the aid of his injured comrade. Zoya had the man in her sights. If she didn’t pull the trigger he would help his comrade back into the tank, then they would advance into the city and kill more innocent families and what good would her guilt be then? She was here to fight. They were the enemy. They’d killed children and mothers and fathers.
As she was about to pull the trigger, a hand pushed the gun down. It was Malysh. He lay beside her, their faces close together. She was trembling. He took hold of her rifle, checking on the tanks. She peered over the rubble. The tanks were moving again. But they weren’t advancing into the city: they were heading in the opposite direction, back across the bridge. Zoya asked:
— Where are they going?
Malysh shook his head:
— I don’t know.
LEO EXAMINED THE ROOM, searching for a way out. Engrossed in his study of the door, the window, the floorboards, he noticed the relative quiet. The sound of explosions and gunfire had stopped. There were footsteps outside the cell. The door opened. Fraera strode in:
— Listen!
A radio in the adjacent room was turned up to full volume. The announcer was speaking in Hungarian. Leo turned to Karoly. He listened for several seconds. Impatient, Fraera called out:
— Translate!
Karoly glanced up at Leo:
— A cease-fire has been declared. Soviet forces are pulling out of the city.
SENSING SKEPTICISM, FRAERA INSISTED on a victory tour. They set out, Leo, Raisa, and Karoly, surrounded by insurgents and the remains of her gang. Leo counted only four vory excluding Fraera and Malysh, far fewer than there had been in Moscow. Some might have been killed. Others must have abandoned her cause: the life of a revolutionary was not the life of a professional criminal. Fraera didn’t seem to care, leading them down the central thoroughfare of Sztalin ut as proudly as if she were marching on Stalin’s tomb. Raisa was beside Leo, Karoly just behind, dragging his injured leg. Through the ring of armed men, Leo caught glimpses of Zoya orbiting the group. She walked beside Malysh. Though Zoya ignored Leo completely, from time to time Malysh would flick a hostile glance in his direction. Raisa was correct. They were, unquestionably, in love.
Leo didn’t see how a Hungarian triumph was even a theoretical possibility. He’d observed the insurgents armed with bricks and gasoline-filled bottles. They fought fearlessly, fighting for their homes, the ground on which they stood. But as a former soldier he saw no strategy. Their campaign was haphazard and improvised. In contrast, the Red Army was the most powerful military force in the world, numerically and technologically. Panin and his coconspirators intended to keep it that way. The loss of Hungary would never be tolerated, no matter how bloody the conflict became. Yet pacing the streets Leo was forced to accept that there was no longer any Soviet presence in the city. There were no tanks or troops. Many of the Hungarian fighters had abandoned their positions.
Fraera stopped walking. They’d arrived at an office, a medium-sized, unremarkable building. There was a commotion at the front doors, a great number of people entering and exiting. Karoly dragged himself forward, catching up with Leo:
— This is the headquarters of the AVH.
Leo replied:
— Your son?
— This is where he works. The officers must have fled as soon as the uprising began.
Fraera noticed their exchange. She moved through the line of her men, asking:
— You’re familiar with this building? It is the home of the Hungarian secret police. They’ve abandoned it and are now hiding somewhere. But we will find them.
Karoly managed to conceal his concerns. Fraera continued:
— Now that the city is free, the building is open to the public. The secrets held here are secrets no longer.
Most of the insurgents remained outside. The building was too busy to accommodate the entire gang. Fraera led a smaller group through the doors, entering an internal courtyard. Sheets of paper, typed and stamped, the bureaucracy of terror, fluttered down from the balconies. It was dusk. Electricity was spotty. To compensate, candles were lit, spread across the balconies and floors. The offices were filled with citizens searching through files. Reading by candlelight, men and women thumbed through the information stored about them. Watching many of them cry, Leo didn’t need the documents translated. The files contained the names of family and friends who’d denounced them, the words spoken against them. Like a hundred mirrors dropped on the floor, all around he saw faith in mankind shattering. Fraera whispered:
— Downstairs.
Whereas the offices had been crowded, the stairs leading to the basement were empty. Taking a candle each, they descended. The air was damp and cold. Just as Leo knew the words in those files, he knew what they’d find downstairs — the cells where suspects had been questioned and tortured.
Water dripped onto cracked concrete floors. All the cell doors had been opened. In the first, there was a table and two chairs. In the second, there was a drain in the center of the room and nothing more. Leo watched Zoya’s face, desperate to pick her up and carry her out of this place. She took hold of Malysh’s hand. Leo scrunched his fingers into a tight fist, wondering how long Fraera would make them stay down here. To his surprise, Fraera, apparently fearless, seemed shaken by this place. He thought upon the tortures she must have gone through after her arrest. She sighed:
— Let’s drink to the end of all this.
And briefly, in the darkness, she was human again.
TAKING PLACE IN THE COURTYARD of her apartment complex, Fraera intended to host the first victory celebration. Open to all, she provided crates of alcohol, spirits, liqueurs, and champagne — the preserve of the elite, drinks many had never tasted before, secreted away for exactly this moment. Leo noted these preparations: proof that she always believed victory was possible. To offset the cold, a fire was built in the center of the courtyard with timber stacked as tall as a man, flames reaching high into the night sky. Crude effigies of Stalin and his Hungarian equivalent, Rakosi, were dressed in uniforms stripped from the corpses of Soviet soldiers. Leo noted that Fraera, standing on the top-floor balcony, photographed the flaming figures, taking care over the shots before putting her camera away.
As the burning uniforms turned to ash, a cigány band arrived clutching hand-painted instruments. After a timid start, as if worried that their violins would draw a barrage of Soviet shells, they gradually forgot their anxieties. The music became louder and faster and the fighters began to dance.
Leo and Raisa were sat back from the party, under armed guard, spectators as Zoya became drunk, sipping champagne, her cheeks turning red. Fraera drank from a bottle, which she did not share, always in control. Catching Leo’s eye, she joined them:
— You can dance if you want.
Leo asked:
— What are you going to do with us now?
— The truth is, I haven’t decided.
Zoya was trying to persuade Malysh to dance. Unsuccessful, she grabbed Malysh’s hand, pulling him into the ring of people circling the fire. Though she’d seen him clamber up drainpipes, nimble as a cat, he was awkward. Zoya whispered:
— Pretend it’s just you and me.
Under the pretense that they were alone, they spun around the fire, the world becoming a blur, the fire hot on their faces, dancing faster and faster until the music stopped and everyone clapped. But, for them, the world continued to spin and they had only each other to hold on to.
THE FIRE HAD BURNT DOWN to a mound of red embers and charred stubs. The cigány band was no longer playing. The revelers had returned home, those who hadn’t passed out. Malysh and Zoya were curled up under a blanket, close to the remains of the fire. Karoly was humming an indistinguishable tune, drunk after having pleaded for alcohol to numb the pain of his leg. As energetic as if she’d rested the entire night, Fraera declared:
— Why sleep in cramped apartments?
Forced to take part in Fraera’s expedition, they left the courtyard, crossing the Danube, treading wearily toward their destination — the ministerial villas on the lush Buda slopes. Malysh and Zoya accompanied them, along with the vory and her Hungarian interpreter. From the top of Rose Hill, they watched dawn rise on the city. Fraera observed:
— For the first time in over ten years, the city will wake up to freedom.
Arriving at a gated villa with high walls, there were, remarkably, guards stationed at the perimeter. Fraera turned to her interpreter:
— Tell them to go home. Tell them this is now the property of the people.
The translator approached the gate, repeating her words in Hungarian. Perhaps having watched the fighting the guards had already come to a similar decision. They were protecting the privileges of a fallen regime. They lifted up the gate, took their things, and left. The interpreter returned, excited:
— The guards say this villa belonged to Rakosi.
Slurring his words, Karoly remarked to Leo:
— The play-place of my former boss, the once glorious leader of my country. This is where we used to phone him and ask: Do you want us to piss in the suspect’s mouth, sir? Do you want to listen while we do it? Yes, he would say, I want to hear it all.
They entered the immaculately landscaped grounds.
Fraera was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. From the smell Leo guessed it contained stimulants. Amphetamines would explain how she maintained her ferocious energy level. Her eyes appeared completely black, pupils that were like puddles of oil. Leo had used her drug during the all-night arrests and interrogations he’d performed as an officer of the MGB. It would exacerbate aggression. It would make reasoning impossible, skewing her mind toward violence while sealing every decision in unshakable confidence.
With the keys from the security guard’s hut, Fraera ran up the stairs, unlocked the doors, and threw them wide open. She bowed to Malysh and Zoya:
— A new couple should have a new home!
Malysh blushed. Zoya smiled as she entered the house, her exclamation of amazement echoing around the grand reception hall:
— There’s a pool!
The swimming pool was covered in a protective plastic sheet, spotted with dead leaves. Zoya dipped her finger in the water:
— It’s cold.
The heaters had stopped working. The teak chairs had been stacked in the corner. A deflated brightly colored beach ball was nudged this way and that by the wind.
Inside the house, luxury had decayed. The kitchen was covered with dust, unused since Rakosi was forced to leave Hungary, exiled to the Soviet Union after the Secret Speech. Built to the highest specifications, the appliances were foreign. Crystal and fine porcelain filled the cupboards. Bottles of French wine were unopened. Fascinated by the contents of the fridge, trying to identify items turned patchy with mold, Leo and Zoya chanced across each other. Side by side, it was the closest they’d been since his capture.
— Zoya…
Before he could finish, Fraera called out:
— Zoya!
Zoya ran off, obeying the call of her new master.
Following behind, entering the living room, Leo came face-to-face with Stalin. A vast oil portrait hung from the wall, staring down, a god keeping watch over his subjects. Fraera drew a knife, offering it to Zoya:
— There’s no one to denounce you now.
Knife in hand, Zoya stepped up onto a chair, her eyes coming level to Stalin’s neck. In the perfect position to mutiliate his face, she did nothing. Fraera called out:
— Gouge out his eyes! Blind him! Shave off his mustache!
Zoya stepped down, offering the knife to Fraera:
— I don’t… feel like it.
Fraera’s mood switched from elation to irritation:
— You don’t feel like it? Anger doesn’t come and go. Anger isn’t fickle. Anger isn’t like love. It isn’t something you feel one minute but not the next. Anger stays with you forever. He murdered your parents.
Zoya raised her voice in reply:
— I don’t want to think about that all the time!
Fraera slapped her. Leo stepped forward. Fraera drew her gun, pointing it at Leo’s chest but continuing to speak to Zoya:
— You forget your parents? Is it that easy? What has changed? Malysh has kissed you? Is that it?
Fraera walked toward him, grabbing Malysh and kissing him. He struggled but she held him fast. Finished, she pulled back:
— Nice, but I’m still angry.
She fired a shot between Stalin’s eyes and then another and another, emptying her gun into the oil portrait, the canvas shaking with each bullet. With no bullets left, the trigger clicked against the chamber. Fraera threw the gun at his face, the weapon bouncing off, clattering to the ground. She wiped her brow before laughing:
— Bedtime…
The statement was loaded with innuendo. She pushed Zoya and Malysh together.
STARTLED, LEO WOKE, shaken by one of the vory:
— We’re leaving.
Without any explanation Leo, Raisa, and Karoly were rushed to their feet. They’d been locked in the marble bathroom, using towels to make a bed. They couldn’t have snatched more than a couple of hours of sleep. Fraera was outside by the gate. Malysh and Zoya were beside her, everyone exhausted, except for Fraera, jittery with chemical energy. She pointed downhill, toward the center of town:
— Word is that they have found the missing AVH officers. They’ve been hiding in the Communist Party headquarters all along.
Karoly’s expression changed. His exhaustion disappeared.
It took an hour to descend the hills and return across the river, approaching Republic Square where the Communist headquarters were located. There was gunfire and smoke. The headquarters was under siege. Tanks under insurgent control shelled the outer walls. Two trucks were on fire. Windows were smashed: chunks of concrete and brick were falling to the ground.
Fraera advanced into the square, taking cover behind a statue as bullets whistled overhead, fired from the rooftops. Held back by the crossfire, they waited. Abruptly the gunfire stopped. A man with a handmade white flag stepped out from the headquarters, petitioning for his life. He was shot. As he collapsed, the foremost insurgents rushed forward, storming the premises.
In the safety of the lull, Fraera led them from behind the statue across the square. A crowd of fighters gathered at the entrance beside the smoldering trucks. Fraera joined them, Leo and the others around her. Under the truck were the blackened bodies of soldiers. The crowd waited for the captured AVH officers to be fed out to them. Leo observed that not all of the crowd were fighters: there were photographers and members of the international press, cameras hanging around their necks. Leo turned to see Karoly. His earlier expression of hope that he might find his son had transformed into dread, longing for his son to be anywhere but here.
The first of the AVH officers was pulled out, a young man. As he raised his hands he was shot. A second man was pulled out. Leo didn’t understand what he was saying but it was obvious the man was pleading for his life. Mid-plea, he was shot. A third officer ran out and, seeing his dead friends on the ground, tried to run back into the building. Leo saw Karoly step forward. This young man was his son.
Infuriated at his attempt to run from justice, the fighters grabbed the officer, beating him as he clung to the doors. Karoly pushed forward, shrugging Leo off, breaking through the fighters and wrapping his arms around his son. Startled by the reunion, his son was crying, hoping somehow that his father could protect him. Karoly was shouting at the mob. They were together, father and son, for less than a couple of seconds before Karoly was pulled away, pinned down, forced to watch as his son’s uniform was ripped off, buttons popping, the shirt shredded. The boy was turned upside down, rope lashed around his ankles, carried toward the trees in the square.
Leo turned to Fraera, to petition for the boy’s life, only to see Zoya had already grabbed hold of her arms, saying:
— Stop them. Please.
Fraera crouched down, as a parent might when explaining the world to a child:
— This is anger.
With that, Fraera took out a camera of her own.
Karoly broke free, staggering lamely after his son, weeping as he saw him strung up, hanging upside down from the tree, still alive — his face bright red, veins bulging. Karoly grabbed his son’s shoulders, supporting his weight only for the butt of a rifle to be smashed in his face. He fell backward. Gasoline was poured over his son.
Moving quickly, Leo strode up to one of the vory, a man distracted by the execution. He punched him in the throat, winding him, taking his rifle. Dropping to one knee, Leo lined up a shot through the crowd. He’d get one chance, one shot. The gas was lit. The son was on fire, shaking, screaming. Leo closed an eye, waiting for the crowd to part. He fired. The bullet struck the young man in the head. Still burning, his body hung still. The fighters turned, regarding Leo. Fraera already had a gun pointed at him:
— Put it down.
Leo dropped the rifle.
Karoly got up, clutching his son’s body, trying to smother the flames, as if he could still be saved. He was now burning too, the skin of his hands bubbling red. He didn’t care, holding on to his son even as his own clothes caught alight. The fighters watched the man grieve and burn, no longer boisterous in their hate. Leo wanted to call out for someone to help, to do something. Finally a middle-aged man raised his gun and shot Karoly in the back of the head. His body fell on top of the fire, underneath his son. As they burned together, many in the crowd were already hastening away.
BACK IN THE APARTMENT, among the hungover vory and joyous Hungarian students, Malysh tried to find some space, retreating to the kitchen, making a bed under the table. He took hold of Zoya’s hands. As if rescued from a freezing sea she could not stop shaking. When Fraera entered the room he could feel Zoya’s body tense, as if a predator were nearby. Fraera had a gun in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She crouched down, her eyes bloodshot, her lips cracked:
— There’s a party in one of the squares tonight, thousands of people will be there. Farmers from the country are bringing in food. Pigs will be roasted whole.
Malysh replied:
— Zoya isn’t feeling well.
Fraera reached out, touching Zoya’s forehead.
— There will be no police, no State, just the citizens of a free nation, and all of us without fear. We must be there, all of us.
As soon as she left the room Zoya began to shake again, having contained her emotions during their conversation. The soldiers who lay on the streets, bodies coated in lime, were uniforms more than they were men, symbols of an invading force. The dead Hungarians, flowers thrown over their graves, were symbols of a noble resistance. Everyone, dead or alive, was a symbol of something. Yet Karoly had been first and foremost a father and the officer strung up had been his son.
Malysh whispered to Zoya:
— We’re going to run away, tonight. I don’t know where we’ll go. But 0we’ll survive. I’m good at surviving: it’s the only thing I am good at, except maybe killing.
Zoya considered for a moment, asking:
— Fraera?
— We can’t tell her. We wait until everyone is at the party and then we go. What do you say? Will you come with me?
ZOYA DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF SLEEP. In her dreams she imagined the place where they’d live, somewhere far away, a remote farm, in a free country, hidden by forests. They didn’t have much land: just enough to feed themselves. There was a river, not too wide or fast or deep, where they swam and fished. She opened her eyes. The apartment was dark. Unsure how long she’d been asleep, she looked at Malysh. He raised a finger to his lips. She noticed the bundle he’d prepared and guessed that it contained clothes, food, and money. He must have readied it while she was sleeping. Leaving the kitchen, they saw no one in the main room. Everyone was at the party. They hurried out, down the stairs, into the courtyard. Zoya lingered, remembering Leo and Raisa, locked in the top-floor apartment.
A voice called out from the dark passageway:
— They’ll be touched when I tell them how you hesitated, sparing them a thought, before running away.
Fraera stepped out from the shadows. Quick-witted, Zoya lied:
— We’re coming to the party.
— So what’s in the bundle?
Fraera shook her head. Malysh stepped forward:
— You don’t need us anymore.
Zoya added:
— You talk about freedom. Then allow us to go.
Fraera nodded:
— Freedoms are fought for. I will give you that chance. Draw blood and I’ll let you both go — a single graze, a cut, a knick, nothing more. Spill a drop of blood.
Malysh hesitated, unsure. Fraera began walking toward them:
— You can’t cut me without a knife.
Malysh drew his knife, ushering Zoya back. Unarmed, Fraera continued walking toward them. Malysh crouched low, ready to strike.
— Malysh, I thought you understood. Relationships are a weakness. Look at how nervous you are. Why? Because there’s too much at stake, her life and your life — your dream of being together, it makes you fearful. It makes you vulnerable.
Malysh attacked. Fraera sidestepped his blade, grabbing his wrist and punching him in the face. He fell to the ground, the knife now in her hand. She stood over him:
— You’re such a disappointment to me.
LEO TURNED TO THE DOOR. Malysh entered first, Zoya followed, a knife pressed against her neck. Fraera lowered the blade, pushing Zoya inside:
— I wouldn’t get too excited. I caught them trying to run off together, happy to leave you behind without so much as a good-bye.
Raisa stepped forward:
— Nothing you say makes any difference to the way we feel about Zoya.
Fraera retorted with mock sincerity:
— That does seem to be true. No matter what Zoya does, whether she holds a knife over your bed, whether she runs away, pretends to be dead, you still believe there’s a chance she’ll love you. It’s a kind of sentimental fanaticism. You’re right: there’s nothing I can say. However, there might be something I can say which will change the way you feel about Malysh.
She paused:
— Raisa, he is your son.
LEO WAITED FOR RAISA TO DISMISS the notion. When Raisa finally spoke her voice was subdued:
— My son is dead.
Fraera turned to Leo, smug with secrets, gesturing with her knife:
— Raisa gave birth to a son. Conceived during the war, the result of soldiers rewarded for risking their lives and being allowed to take whomever they pleased. They took her, over and over, producing a bastard child of the Soviet army.
Raisa’s words were washed out, drained, but they were steady and calm:
— I didn’t care who the father was. The child was mine, not his. I swore I would love him even though he’d been conceived in the most hateful circumstances.
— Except that you then abandoned the boy in an orphanage.
— I was sick and homeless. I had nothing. I couldn’t feed myself.
Raisa had not yet made eye contact with Malysh. Fraera shook her head in disgust:
— I would never have given up my child, no matter how dire my circumstances. They had to take my son from me while I was sleeping.
Raisa seemed exhausted, unable to defend herself:
— I vowed to go back. Once I was well, once the war was over, once I had a home.
— When you returned to the orphanage they told you that your son had died. And like a fool, you believed them. Typhus, they told you?
— Yes.
— Having had some experience of the lies told by orphanages, I double-checked their story. A typhus epidemic killed a large number of children. However, many survived by running away. Those escapees had been covered up as fatalities. Children who run away from orphanages often become pickpockets in train stations.
His past rewritten with every word, Malysh reacted for the first time:
— When I stole money from you, in the station that time?
Fraera nodded:
— I’d been looking for you. I wanted you to believe our meeting was accidental. I had planned to use you in my revenge, against the woman who’d fallen in love with the man I hated. However, I grew fond of you. I quickly came to see you as a son. I adapted my plans. I would keep you as my own. In the same way, I grew fond of Zoya and decided to keep her by my side. Today both of you threw that love away. With only the thinnest of provocations, you drew a knife on me. The truth is that had you refused to draw that knife, I would’ve allowed both of you to go free.
Fraera moved to the door, pausing, turning back to face Leo:
— You always wanted a family, Leo. Now you have one. You’re welcome to it. They are a crueler revenge than anything I could have imagined.
RAISA TURNED AND FACED THE ROOM. Malysh was standing before her, his chest and arms covered in tattoos. His expression was cautious, defensive, guarded against denial or disinterest. Zoya spoke first:
— It doesn’t matter if he’s your son. Because he’s not, not really, not anymore, you gave him up, which means you’re not his mother. And I’m not your daughter. There’s nothing to talk about. We’re not a family.
Malysh touched her arm. Zoya understood it as a reproach:
— But she’s not your mother.
Zoya was close to tears:
— We can still escape.
Malysh nodded:
— Nothing has changed.
— You promise?
— I promise.
Malysh stepped toward Raisa, keeping his eyes on the ground:
— I don’t care either way. I just want to know.
His question was offhand, childlike in its attempt to conceal the vulnerability. He didn’t wait for Raisa to answer, adding:
— At the orphanage I was called Feliks. But the orphanage gave me that name. They renamed everyone, names they could remember. I don’t know my real name.
Malysh counted on his fingers:
— I’m fourteen years old. Or I might be thirteen. I don’t know when I was born. So, am I your son, or not?
Raisa asked:
— What do you remember of your orphanage?
— There was a tree in the courtyard. We used to play in it. The orphanage was near Leningrad, not in the town, in the country. Was that the place, with the tree in the courtyard? Was that where you took your son?
Raisa replied:
— Yes.
Raisa stepped closer to Malysh:
— What did the orphanage tell you about your parents?
— That they were dead. You’ve always been dead to me.
Zoya added by way of conclusion:
— There’s nothing more to talk about.
Zoya guided Malysh into the far corner, sitting him down. Raisa and Leo remained standing near the window. Leo didn’t press for information, allowing Raisa to take her time. Finally, she whispered, turning her face away from Malysh’s view:
— Leo, I gave up my child. It is the greatest shame in my life. I never wanted to speak about it again, although I think about it almost every day.
Leo paused:
— Is Malysh…?
Raisa lowered her voice even further:
— Fraera was right. There was a typhus epidemic. Many children had died. But when I went back my son was still there. He was dying. He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know who I was. But I stayed with him until he died. I buried him. Leo, Malysh is not my son.
Raisa crossed her arms, lost in her thoughts. Working through the events, she speculated:
— Fraera must have gone back, looking for my son in 1953 or 1954, after she was released. The records would have been shambolic. There was no way she could have found the truth about my son. She wouldn’t have known I was there when he died. She found someone close in age to him: maybe she planned to use him against me. Maybe she didn’t because she did love Malysh. Maybe she didn’t because she couldn’t be sure I’d believe her lie.
— It might be nothing more than a desperate attempt to hurt us?
— And him.
Leo considered:
— Why not tell Malysh the truth? Fraera is playing with him too.
— What will the truth sound like? He might not take it as a matter of fact. He might feel that I’m rejecting him, devising reasons why he couldn’t be my son. Leo, if he wants me to love him, if he’s looking for a mother…
WITH HER CHARACTERISTIC KNACK for manipulation, Fraera brought a single, oversized plate of hot stew. There was no option but to sit around, cross-legged, eating together. Zoya refused, at first, to join in, remaining apart. However, the food was turning cold, and heat being its sole redeeming quality, reluctantly she joined in, eating with them side by side, metal forks clattering as they spiked chunks of vegetable and meat. Malysh asked:
— Zoya told me that you’re a teacher.
Raisa nodded:
— Yes.
— I can’t read or write. I’d like to, though.
— I’ll help you learn, if you want.
Zoya shook her head, ignoring Raisa and addressing Malysh:
— I can teach you. You don’t need her.
The plate of food was nearly finished. Soon they’d split off and return to their separate corners of the room. Exploiting the moment, Leo said to Zoya:
— Elena wants you to come home.
Zoya stopped eating. She said nothing. Leo continued:
— I don’t want to upset you. Elena loves you. She wants you to come home.
Leo added no more details, softening the truth.
Zoya stood up, dropping her fork, walking away. She remained standing, facing the wall, before lying down on the bedding, in the corner, her back to the room. Malysh followed, sitting beside her, resting his arm on her back.
LEO AWOKE, SHIVERING. It was early in the morning. He and Raisa were huddled on one side of the room, Malysh and Zoya on the other side. Yesterday Fraera had been absent: food had been brought by a Hungarian freedom fighter. Leo had noticed a change. A solemnity had fallen across the apartment. There were no more drunk cheers and no more celebrations.
Standing up, he approached the small window. He rubbed a patch of condensation from the glass. Outside, snow was falling. What should have sealed the impression of a city at peace, clean white and tranquil, only compounded Leo’s sense of unease. He could see no children playing, no snowball fights. The year’s first snowfall, in a liberated city, but there was no excitement and no delight. There was no one on the streets at all.
SOMEWHERE IN THE SKY above the apartment a faint whining noise climaxed in a high-pitched boom. A jet plane had flown overhead. Leo sat bolt upright. The room was dark. He stood, walking to the window. Raisa woke immediately, asking:
— What is it?
Before Leo could answer, explosions sounded out across the city, several in rapid sequence, in many locations. In an instant Raisa, Malysh, and Zoya were up, by his side, peering out the window. Addressing them, Leo said:
— They’re back.
There was panic in the adjacent rooms, footsteps on the roof, insurgents caught off guard, scrambling into position. Leo could see a tank on the street. Its turret pointed this way and that, before aiming directly at the rooftop snipers.
— Move away!
Shooing the others to the far side of the room, there was a split second of stillness, then an explosion. They were knocked off their feet, the roof collapsed, and the back wall fell away, beams tumbling down. Only a small portion of the room remained, closed by the sloping wreckage. Leo covered his face with the bottom of his shirt, struggling to breathe, checking on the others.
Raisa grabbed the remains of a smashed timber beam, battering at the door. Leo joined her, trying to break out. Malysh called out:
— This way!
There was a gap ripped through the base of the wall into the adjoining room. Flat on their stomachs, with the danger of the roof collapsing completely, they crawled through, tunneling out of the debris, reaching the corridor. There were no guards, no vory. The apartment was empty. Opening the door to the courtyard balcony, they saw occupants fleeing their homes, many huddled, unable to decide whether to brave the streets or whether they were safer staying where they were.
Malysh bolted back inside. Leo shouted:
— Malysh!
He returned, holding a belt of ammunition, grenades, and a gun. Raisa tried to disarm him, shaking her head:
— They’ll kill you.
— They’ll kill us anyway.
— I don’t want you to take them.
— If we’re going to get out of the city, we need them.
Raisa looked to Leo. He said:
— Give me the gun.
Malysh reluctantly handed it to him. A nearby explosion ended the debate:
— We don’t have much time.
Leo looked up at the dark sky. Hearing the drone of jet engines, he hurried them toward the stairs. There was no sign of any vory: he reasoned they must be fighting or they’d fled. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, moving through the terrified crowd, toward the passageway:
— Maxim!
Leo turned, looking up. Fraera was standing on the roof, machine gun in her arms. Trapped in the middle of the courtyard, they had no chance of reaching the passageway before she gunned them down. He called out:
— It’s over, Fraera! This was never a fight you could win!
— Maxim, I’ve already won!
— Look around you!
— I didn’t win it with a gun. I won it with this.
Around her neck was a camera.
— Panin was always going to use the full force of his army. I wanted him to. I want him to smash this city to rubble and fill it with dead citizens! I want the world to see the true nature of our country. No more secrets! No one is ever going to believe in the benevolence of our motherland again! That’s my revenge.
— Let us go.
— Maxim, you still don’t understand. I could’ve killed you a hundred times. Your life is more of a punishment than death. Go back to Moscow, the four of you, with a son wanted for murder, in love with a hate-filled daughter. Just try and be a family.
Leo separated from the group:
— Fraera, I am sorry for what I did to you.
— The truth is, Maxim… I was nothing until I hated you.
Leo turned around, facing the passageway, expecting a bullet in the back. No bullets were fired. At the exit onto the street he paused, looking back. Fraera was gone.
INSIDE THE REMAINS of an abandoned café with tablecloths wrapped around his hands to protect himself from the glass, Leo lay flat, waiting for the tanks to pass. He lifted his head, peering out of the broken window. There were three tanks, their turrets swiveling from side to side, examining the buildings — searching out targets. The Red Army was no longer deploying isolated units of clumsy, vulnerable T-34s. These were the larger, heavily armored T-54s. From what Leo had seen so far, the Soviet strategy had changed. Deployed in columns, they responded with disproportionate force — a single bullet would be answered with the destruction of the entire building. The tanks moved on only after the devastation was complete.
It had taken two hours to travel less than one kilometer, forced to seek refuge at almost every junction. Now, at dawn, they were no longer sheltered by darkness and their progress had slowed yet further, trapped in a city being systematically destroyed. Staying indoors was no longer any guarantee of safety. The tanks were equipped with armor-piercing shells that traveled three rooms deep before detonating in the very center of the house, causing the structure to collapse.
Witnessing the display of military might, Leo could only speculate as to whether the initial failure to regain control had been deliberate. Not only did it undercut the moderate position of restraint, it illustrated the ineffectiveness of the older armor, defeated by a mere mob. Now the latest hardware strutted on the streets of Budapest like a military propaganda reel. A Moscow audience could draw only one conclusion: plans to scale back the conventional army were flawed. More money was needed, not less, more weapons development — the strength of the Union depended upon it.
Out of the corner of his eye Leo saw a flicker of bright orange, startling among the gray stone rubble and gray morning light. Three young men across the street were readying Molotov cocktails. Leo tried to get their attention, waving at them. The homemade bombs wouldn’t work since the cooling units on the T-54s didn’t suffer from the same weakness as the T-34s. They were fighting an entirely different generation of weapons. Their crude devices were useless. One of the men saw him and, misunderstanding his wave, made a defiant fist.
The three men stood up, running at the rear tank — they threw the bombs, perfect shots, all three hitting their target, covering the rear of the T-54 with burning fuel. Flames soared. They fled, glancing over their shoulders, expecting an explosion that would never come. The fire roaring on the tank’s armor was irrelevant. The men increased their pace, running to shelter. Leo ducked. The tank turned and fired. The café shook, the remaining glass shards in the window fell to the ground, smashing all around. Dust and smoke rolled in through the window. Shielded by the cloud, Leo pulled back, coughing, crawling through the smashed crockery to the kitchen where Raisa, Zoya, and Malysh were crouched behind the steel units:
— The streets are impassable.
Pointing to the roof, Malysh remarked:
— What about the roofs? We can crawl across them.
Leo considered:
— If they see us, or hear us, they will still fire. Up there it will be much harder to escape. We’d be trapped.
Raisa remarked:
— We’re trapped down here.
On the top-floor landing there were two windows: one onto the main boulevard, the other onto a narrow back street, not large enough for a T-54. Leo opened the back window, studying the climb. There was no drainpipe, no foothold, no easy way of reaching the roof. Malysh tapped his leg:
— Let me look.
Leo allowed Malysh onto the ledge. Briefly assessing the gap, he jumped up, his legs dangling as he hung from the edge. Leo moved to support him, but he said:
— I’m okay.
He pulled himself up, swinging a foot onto the edge, then the other foot. He said:
— Zoya next.
Raisa glanced down at the drop, some fifteen meters:
— Wait.
Raisa picked up the tablecloths that Leo had tied around his hands, knotting them together. She wrapped them round Zoya’s waist. Zoya was annoyed:
— I survived for months without you.
Raisa kissed her on the cheek, commenting:
— Which is why it would be particularly embarrassing if you died now.
Zoya suppressed a smile, squashing it into a frown.
Standing on the window ledge, Leo lifted her up. She took hold of the roof:
— You have to let go so I can swing my legs!
Reluctantly Leo let go, watching as she swung her leg up onto the roof. Malysh caught her, pulling her up. The tablecloth safety cord was at full stretch.
— I’m up.
Raisa released the cloths, allowing Zoya to pull up her improvised safety line. Raisa was next. Leo was the last to make the climb.
The roof rose to a narrow ridge, on which Malysh and Zoya were straddled. Raisa was behind, forming a single file. Clambering up, Leo’s feet slipped on the tiles, dislodging one — it rattled down the roof before falling off the edge. There was a pause before the tile could be heard smashing on the back street. The four of them froze, remaining flat against the roof. If a tile fell on the other side, onto the boulevard, their position would be given away to the patrolling tanks.
Leo took in the view. Across the city, smoke rose in thick lines. Rooftops were smashed. There were gaps where buildings had once stood. Fighter jets — MIGs — cut low over the city, dropping into attack position, strafing targets. Even on the roof they were exposed. Leo commented:
— We need to hurry.
Crawling on all fours, bypassing the dangers below, they were, at last, able to make progress.
Up ahead the houses came to an end: they’d reached the end of the block. Malysh commented:
— We have to climb down, cross the street, and then climb back up on the other side.
The tiles began to rattle. Leo moved to the edge of the roof, peering down at the main boulevard. Four tanks were passing directly underneath. One by one they turned off the boulevard. To Leo’s dismay the fourth tank stopped. It seemed to be guarding the crossroads. They were going to have to sneak around it.
About to return with the bad news, Leo caught sight of movement in the apartment window directly below him. He craned his neck over the edge, watching as two women hung the modified Hungarian flag, the flag with the hammer and sickle cut out, from the top-floor window. The tank had seen the protestors. Leo bolted up the roof, gesturing to the others:
— Move! Now!
They scrambled as far from the boulevard as they could.
The section of roof behind them mushroomed into the air, debris showering down. The shockwave caused all the tiles to slide. Malysh, closest to the edge, lost his foothold, slipping down, everything giving way beneath him. Zoya threw him the end of the tablecloth. He caught it just as the matrix of tiles avalanched off the roof, taking him with them.
As Malysh fell Zoya was pulled down; she tried to grab on to something and found nothing. Leo reached out, missing her hand but snatching the trail of tablecloths. He managed to steady them — Zoya was on the edge, Malysh was hanging off. If the tank saw Malysh it would fire, killing them all. Leo heaved the sheets up. Raisa reached down:
— Give me your hand!
Grabbing Malysh’s hand, she pulled him up, the two of them lying side by side. Leo rolled over to the edge, glancing down at the tank. The turret was swinging toward them.
— Get up!
On their feet, they ran back across the roof, toward the collapsed apartment on the other side. The shell impacted behind them, at the spot where Malysh had slipped — the corner of the building. All four of them were thrown up and forward, landing on their hands and knees. Ears ringing, coughing in the dust, they studied the devastation in front and now behind them: two gaping holes as if a giant monster had taken two bites out of the building.
Leo surveyed the shelled-out apartment in front of them. The first shell had hit high, causing the roof to crumble and fall, compressing the top floor with the floor below. They could climb down through the splintered roof beams. He took the lead, hoping the tank would presume them dead. Reaching the layer of ceiling that had crashed down, he saw the dust-covered hand of the woman who’d hung the flag. No time to linger, he searched for a way out. The stairway was at the back. He pulled at the remains of a door, trying to get access, but it was filled with rubble.
At the front of the damaged apartment, looking out at the boulevard, Raisa said:
— They’re coming around!
The tank was returning. Trapped, they had nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.
Leo doubled his efforts, trying to clear the stairs, the only way out. Zoya and Raisa joined him. Malysh was gone. He’d fled, saved himself — a vory to the end. Leo looked over his shoulder. The tank was taking up position directly outside, lining up a third shot. It would fire again and again, until both houses were rubble. Boxed into the shelled-out apartment, brick walls on either side, the stairway blocked, the only chance of escape was to jump down to the street below.
Leo grabbed Zoya and Raisa, running straight toward the tank. At the edge he stopped. Malysh had already scampered down the broken building onto the street. He was making a beeline for the tank. There was a grenade in his hand.
Malysh pulled the pin, nimbly scaling the front of the tank, clambering up. The tank lifted its turret toward the sky in an attempt to stop him from reaching the opening. But Malysh was too quick, too skilled, wrapping his legs around the gun barrel, pushing his way up. The hatch opened, an officer was going to shoot Malysh before he could drop the grenade.
Leo drew his gun, firing at the emerging officer, bullets pinging off the armor. The officer was forced to retreat, closing the hatch. Malysh reached the end of the barrel, dropping the grenade down it. He let go, falling to the street.
The grenade exploded, then a fraction later, the shell inside the turret exploded, a much larger blast — the force ripping through the tank. Malysh was picked off his feet and slammed down onto the street. Smoke rose from the tank. No one emerged from inside.
Zoya had already climbed down the building, rushing forward, helping Malysh up. She smiled. Also climbing down and catching up with Zoya, Leo said:
— We need to get off the street…
Malysh’s shirt turned dark red, a stain forming in the center.
Leo dropped to his knees, ripping open Malysh’s shirt. There was a cut as long as his thumb, a slash across his stomach, a black line — two bloody lips. Checking the boy’s back, Leo could find no exit wound.
WITH MALYSH IN HIS ARMS, Leo rushed into the Second Medical Clinic, Zoya and Raisa by his side. They’d reached the hospital, hurrying along the streets, risking the patrolling tanks. Several turrets had tracked them but none had opened fire. The hospital entrance was filled with injured people, some leaning on friends and family, others lying on the floor. There was blood on the walls, blood on the floor. Searching for a doctor or nurse, Leo saw a flutter of a white coat. He pushed forward. The doctor was surrounded by patients, unable to give each more than a couple of seconds of his time, examining the wounds, issuing orders as to where they needed to be sent, ushering only the most needy into the hospital. The rest remained in the corridor.
Leo waited in the circle for the doctor’s judgment. Finally arriving at him, the doctor touched Malysh’s face, feeling his brow. The boy’s breathing had become faint. His skin was pale. Leo had used Malysh’s shirt to press against the wound, the material now soaked with blood. Removing the shirt, the doctor leaned close. His fingers touched the lip of the gash, opening it — blood seeping out. He checked the boy’s back, finding no exit wound. For the first time the doctor glanced at Leo. He said nothing, giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head. With that, he moved on.
Zoya grabbed Leo’s arm:
— Why aren’t they helping him?
Leo, a soldier, had seen injuries like this before. The blood was black: shrapnel had penetrated Malysh’s liver. On the battlefield there was no hope of survival. Conditions in this hospital were little better than that. There was nothing they could do.
— Why aren’t they treating him!
There was nothing Leo could say.
Zoya barged through the crowd, grabbing the doctor’s arm, attempting to pull him back toward Malysh. The other people scolded her. But she wouldn’t let go until eventually she was pushed back and shouted at. She tumbled to the floor, lost among their legs. Raisa lifted Zoya off the hospital floor.
— Why aren’t they helping him?
Zoya began to cry, putting her hands on Malysh’s face. She stared up at Leo, her eyes red, imploring:
— Please, Leo, please, I’ll do anything you want, I’ll be your daughter, I’ll be happy. Don’t let him die.
Malysh’s lips moved. Leo lowered his head, listening.
— Not… in… here.
Leo carried Malysh to the entrance, through the blood-soaked arrivals, out of the main doors, away from the reception area, finding a place where they could be alone. In the flowerbeds, where the plants had died back and the earth was frozen, Leo sat down, propping Malysh against his legs. Zoya sat beside him. She took hold of Malysh’s hand. Raisa remained standing, restless, pacing:
— Maybe I can find something for the pain?
Leo looked up, shaking his head. Twelve days into the conflict— there’d be nothing left in the clinic.
Malysh was calm, sleepy, his eyes shutting and opening. He regarded Raisa:
— I know that…
His voice was faint. Unable to hear, Raisa sat beside him. Malysh continued:
— Fraera lied… I know… you’re not… my mother.
— I would’ve wanted nothing more than to be your mother.
— I would have liked to… have been your son.
Malysh shut his eyes, turning his head, resting it against Zoya. She lay beside him, her head close to his, as if they were both about to go to sleep. She wrapped her arm around him, whispering:
— Did I tell you about the farm we’re going to live on?
Malysh didn’t reply. He didn’t open his eyes.
— It’s near a forest, that’s full of berries and mushrooms. There’s a river and in the summer, we’ll swim… We’re going to be very happy together.
STANDING ON THE REMAINS of the roof, Fraera was no longer holding a gun but a camera, photographing the destruction: images that would soon be printed around the world. If this, her last reel of film, didn’t survive, it didn’t matter. She’d already accumulated many hundreds of photographs, smuggling them out of the city, using the families of the dissidents and insurgents as well as the international press. Her images of dead citizens, buildings destroyed, would be published for years to come under the title: source anonymous.
Perhaps for the first time since her son had been taken from her nearly seven years ago, she was alone, no Malysh by her side, no men ready when she called. The gang that she’d spent years putting together had broken apart. The few remaining vory had fled. The band of insurgents had been broken. In the first wave of attacks this morning many had died. She’d photographed their bodies. Zsolt Polgar, her translator, had remained by her side. She’d been wrong about him. He’d died for his cause. As he lay dying, she’d photographed him with particular care.
She had only three photographs left. In the distance a fighter jet circled, coming toward her. She raised the camera, bringing the jet into focus. The MIG dropped into an attack position. Tiles around her began to shatter. She waited until the jet was almost directly overhead. As the roof exploded, fragments of slate burning into her arms and face, she had no doubt her last photograph would be her greatest of all.