The Company: A Novel of the CIA (52 page)

In an inside room under the roof, Ebby scratched out another message for Vienna on a blank page torn from a manual on close order drill and passed it to Zoltan, who tuned the radio to the weak carrier signal. The car battery was running down and the gypsy radioman figured this would be their last dispatch. In any case it was clear that Kilian—completely ringed by Russian paratroopers, pounded by tank cannon, raked by machine gun fire— could not hold out much longer. Zoltan began working the Morse key: situation no longer desperate now hopeless scraping barrel bottom for food ammunition pain killers russian loudspeakers promising amnesty for those who lay down arms survivors debating whether to fight to finish or negotiate surrender everyone agrees russians after betrayal of nagy maleter not trustable but options narrowing if they surrender I plan to pass myself off—"

The power indicator on Zoltan's transceiver flickered for a moment and then blinked out; the battery had run dry. The gypsy picked it up and shook it and tightened the contacts, and then tried the Morse key again. He shook his head grimly. "Goddamn battery gone dead on us, okay," he announced.

From the avenue outside came the whine of a single high-powered sniper bullet. On the hour, the nine tanks facing the barracks fired off two rounds each at the thick walls and then, backing and filling in the wide avenue, ceded their places to another line of tanks; given the thickness of the barrack walls, the Russians had long since abandoned the idea of bringing the structure down on the heads of the defenders but they wanted to make sure that none of them got any sleep. Which was why, when they weren't shooting, they continued broadcasting appeals to surrender from a loudspeaker mounted on one of the tanks.

While sharpshooters kept the Russian paratroopers at bay by firing at anything that moved in the street, most of the survivors, including the walking wounded, assembled in the courtyard outside the chapel. His thick hair matted, his eyes receding into his skull with fatigue, Arpad passed out cigarettes to those who wanted a smoke, and rolled one for himself with the last of his tobacco. Lighting up, he hoisted himself onto a railing and searched the anxious faces. Then, speaking quietly in Hungarian, he summarized the situation.

"He is telling them that the Corvin Cinema fell to the Russians last "tglit," Elizabet translated for Ebby. "Firing can be heard in the city, which suggests that hit-and-run squads are still operating out of basements, though with each passing hour there seems to be less shooting. He says to us falls the honor of being the last pocket of organized resistance in the city. We have run out of food. We have hundreds of Molotov cocktails left but only twelve rounds of ammunition for each fighter. The inevitable question can no longer be put off. With the tunnels flooded, escape is cut off. Which narrows the choices down to fighting to the end or taking the Russians at their word and seeking amnesty."

There was an angry exchange between several of the young soldiers which Elizabet didn't bother translating—it was clear from the tone that some of them thought the time had come to lay down their arms while the others wanted to go on fighting. Two of the soldiers almost came to blows and had to be separated. Arpad kept his own council, watching the young fighters through the haunted eyes of someone who had made tragic miscalculations. Finally he signaled for quiet. "He is calling for a show of hands," Elizabet explained. By twos and threes the hands went up. Arpad concentrated on his cigarette; he was obviously against surrendering. Elizabet kept her hands tightly at her sides; she had no illusions about the Russians and preferred a fight to the finish to a Communist prison.

Arpad looked over at Ebby. "You have earned the right to vote here," he said.

Ebby raised his hand. "I belong to the live-to-fight-another-day school." One of the young soldiers climbed onto a crate and counted the votes. "The majority wants to test the Russians," Elizabet told Ebby; it was clear that she was bitterly disappointed. "Arpad will go out under a white flag and negotiate the terms of the amnesty. Then he'll take out the wounded. If all passes well the rest of us will surrender tomorrow."

From the far corners of the enormous barracks, the wounded were brought to the arched entrance leading to the narrow passageway with the steel door set in a bend, back from the street. Many limped along on makeshift crutches. Those who could walk aided those who couldn't. Arpad attached a soiled white undershirt to a pole. Several of the freedom fighters, blinded by tears, turned away as Arpad, with a last ferocious glance at Elizabet, threw the bolts on the armor-plated door and slipped around the bend in the passageway, out into the street.

Ebby and Elizabet hurried up to the third floor to watch through a narrow slit in the wall. A Russian officer wearing a long gray greatcoat with gold glittering on the shoulder boards stepped out from behind a tank and met Arpad halfway. The Russian offered the poet a cigarette, then shrugged when he refused. The two men talked for several minutes, with the Russian shaking his head again and again; he obviously wasn't giving ground. Finally the poet nodded his assent. The Russian held out his hand. Arpad looked at it for a long moment in disgust, then, thrusting his own hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, turned on a heel and made his way back to the barracks. Moments later he emerged into the street again, this time at the head of a straggly procession of wounded fighters, some of them carried on chairs, others dragging their feet as comrades pulled them toward the line of Russian tanks. The gray-bearded priest, his head swathed in bloody bandages leaned on a girl wearing a Red Cross armband. Halfway to the line of tanks Arpad stopped in his tracks and the others drew up behind him. Several sank to the pavement in exhaustion. From the slit in the wall, Ebby could see Arpad angrily stabbing the air in the direction of the Russians on the roofs across the avenue; several dozen of them could be seen steadying rifles fitted with telescopic sights on the parapets. Arpad shook his head violently, as if he were awakening from a deep sleep. He tugged the heavy naval pistol from a jacket pocket and stepped forward and pressed the tip of the long barrel to his forehead. "Eljen!" he cried out hoarsely. "Long life!"And he jerked the trigger. A hollow shot rang out, blowing away the lobe of the poet's brain where speech originated. Arpad sprawled backward into the gutter, one ankle folded under his body at a grotesque angle, blood gushing from the massive wound in his head. The wounded milling around him started to back away from the body. From the roof across the street a whistle shrilled. Then a sharp volley of sniper fire cut them all down. The several who were sitting on chairs were knocked over backward. It was over in a moment. Elizabet, too stunned to utter a word, turned away from the slit and stood with her back pressed against the wall, white and trembling. There was a moment of deathly silence. Then a primal animal howl emerged from the slits and windows of the barracks. Several of the young Hungarians began shooting at the snipers on the roof until someone yelled for them not to waste ammunition.

"But why?" Elizabet breathed. "Where is the logic to all this death?"

"The Russians must have panicked when they heard the shot," Ebby guessed grimly.

Hugging herself tightly, Elizabet stared out at the body of Arpad lying on the gutter in a pool of blood. She recalled the line of Persian poetry that had inspired one of his early poems, and sought what comfort was to be had in the words. "The rose blooms reddest where some buried Caesar bled," she murmured. She pulled the ancient Webley-Fosbery from her belt and spun the cylinder. "I have four bullets left—three are for the Russians, the last is for me. I could not face torture again..."

Ebby went over to a body covered with pages of newspaper and retrieved the rifle next to it. He batted away flies as he searched the pockets of the dead soldier for bullets. He found two, inserted one and, working the bolt, drove it home. "I will fight alongside you," he said.

From somewhere above their heads came the melancholy moan of al gypsy violin; it was Zoltan, summoning the Hungarian freedom fighters in the Kilian Barracks to the last stand against the invading Mongols.

Somewhere around two forty-five in the morning Ebby, dozing fitfully with his back against a wall and the rifle across his thighs, felt a hand gently shake his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he discovered Zoltan crouching next to him.

"There is a way to escape," the gypsy whispered excitedly. "Through the tunnels."

Curled up in a blanket on the cement floor next to Ebby, Elizabet came awake with a start. "Why do you wake us?" she said angrily. "The tanks haven't fired off their three o'clock rounds."

"Zoltan thinks we can get out," Ebby whispered.

"The boys and me, we been working with crowbars for hours," Zoltan said. His white teeth flashed in a proud grin. "We broke through the bricks at the lowest point in one of the narrow back tunnels and drained off most of the sewage into the basements, okay. In a quarter of an hour it will be possible to pass through. Everyone is getting ready to slip away in the night. How did you say it when we voted, Mr. Ebbitt? We will all live to fight a different day, right? Don't make noise. Follow me."

Feeling his way in the darkness, Zoltan led them down a series of winding steel staircases into the bowels of the barracks, and then through a hatch and down a wooden ladder into what had been the Kilian magazine when the barracks was first constructed. The cavernous hall, illuminated by several railroad kerosene lamps, was bare except for wooden crates once used to transport cannon powder. The brick walls were green with moisture. Gradually the last of the Kilian defenders made their way down to the magazine. Twelve Russian deserters who had been hiding in an oubliette used for prisoners at the turn of the century were brought over; each had been given civilian clothing stripped from dead fighters, Hungarian identity cards and money, along with road maps marked with routes to the Yugoslav frontier. The Russians, their eyes dark with dread, leapt at the chance to make a run for Yugoslavia; they would certainly be put before firing squads if they were captured alive.

Dividing into groups of five and moving at five-minute intervals, the surviving fighters and the Russian deserters climbed down what looked like a brick-walled well at one end of the magazine. From the avenue outside the barracks came the dull crump of the Russians firing off their three A.M. rounds. Zoltan, Ebby, Elizabet and two deserters made up the next-to-last group. Descending hand over hand into the well, Zoltan came out into a runnel awash with thick ankle-deep sewage that reeked of feces. Elizabet, sandwiched between Zoltan and Ebby, covered her mouth and nose with her forearm but the stench made her dizzy. Ebby noticed her reeling from side to side, her shoulders slamming into the brick walls, and took a firm grip on her belt to steady her. Zoltan, up ahead with a kerosene lamp, the curved knife tucked into his belt, the violin case slung across his back on a rope, continued on. They must have gone a hundred and fifty meters when the level of the sewage began mounting. Elizabet cried out in fear. Zoltan quickened the pace, wading through the slop that had now risen to his knees. From behind them came the panicky gasps of the last group pushing through the rising waters.

The sewage had risen to their waists by the time the tunnel curled to the right and a steel ladder appeared in the sallow beams of Zoltan's kerosene lamp. The rungs, driven individually into the bricks of the wall, disappeared into the darkness high above their heads. Zoltan threw himself onto the ladder and reached back to tug Elizabet onto the first rung visible above the water level in the tunnel. One by one the five of them began to claw their way up the ladder. Every time they came to a rung that had rusted away, Zoltan reached back to pull Elizabet over the gap. From far below came the spluttering gasps of other escapees struggling through the sewage, and then frantic splashing and sounds of choking.

Resting on a rung, Zoltan hollered down in Hungarian. A rasping voice shouted back. Zoltan said, "Only two made it out," then turned and continued climbing.

Above their heads, a light flickered and soft voices called encouragement in Hungarian. Strong arms reached down and pulled them over the top and they collapsed onto a dirt floor. The two young Russian deserters—so young it was impossible to tell they hadn't shaved in weeks—settled down next to them. Around the room the surviving freedom fighters who had arrived before them from the Kilian Barracks rested with their backs against the walls. "Where are we?" Ebby asked.

One of the fighters who spoke some English said, "We come out to subbasement of old building converted to industrial bakery. Listen."

Sure enough, from above came the low rumble of machinery. Zoltan consulted with several of the fighters, then returned to sit with Ebby and Elizabet. "They say we have two and a half hours left of darkness, okay. We going to catch our breath for a minute, then split up into small groups and put space between us and Kilian before the Russians figure out we are escaped. Students who know Pest will guide us out."

"Where are we going?" Elizabet asked.

Zoltan grinned. "Austria."

She turned to Ebby. "Surely you can take refuge in the American embassy."

He shook his head. "The Russians will have circled it with troops to prevent Hungarians from seeking asylum there." He smiled at her. "My best bet is to go with you to Austria."

The twelve Russian deserters, who had the most to lose if they were captured, started out first. One of them turned back at the door to deliver a quick speech in Russian. Bowing from the waist to the freedom fighters, he managed a brave half-smile before turning away and disappearing up a wooden staircase. Minutes later Ebby and Elizabet and Zoltan joined a group and made their way out a loading ramp, then climbed over a wall into a soccer field behind a school. A cold dry wind was blowing in from the Danube, and Elizabet angled her face toward it, inhaling in deep gulps. In the distance flames licked at the night sky over the city. The National Archives building across the river on Castle Hill in Buda was ablaze. The Rokus Hospital was a smoldering ruins. Fires raged over Csepel, Ujpest and Kobanya. The student leading their group, a thin-faced bespectacled young man with an old rifle slung over a bony shoulder, led them through a maze of back alleys toward the southern suburbs of Pest. The trek took them across well-kept gardens behind mansions, over brick walls and chain-link fences, through warehouses filled with silent women and children, down narrow streets. At one point they came to the main avenue leading, further up, to a square. As far as the eye could see apartment houses on both sides of the avenue had been reduced to heaps of rubble. The pavement underfoot was strewn with debris and dry yellow autumn leaves. Peering around the corner of a building, they could make out Russian paratroopers in short capes warming their hands around a fire blazing in the middle of the street near the square. Close by, the branches of trees were stark against the matte red of the blistering sky.