Assignment - Budapest (17 page)

Maria paused at a small entranceway painted a faded green, and pulled on a small cord that vanished through a hole in the wooden fence. Somewhere a bell tinkled faintly. Nobody came to the gate. She pulled on the bell cord a second time, and then a door opened somewhere and then the gate was pulled open, too.

“Maria Stryzyk ...” A small gray-haired woman huddled in an old pull-over sweater stood facing them. Her face was round and sweet, her eyes a dark gray in which quick fear flamed as her glance touched Durell’s tall figure behind the woman.

“May we come in?” Maria asked quickly.

“Why do you come this way? What do you want?” “We do not wish to attract attention. This man wants to talk to you.”

The woman’s mouth trembled and her hand crept to her throat. “The police? But—”

“Not the police,” Durell said. “Please. We can’t wait here.” Durell pushed open the gate and Maria slid quickly inside the little garden area. The woman stood to one side, an air of helplessness in the way she carried herself. Her face was very white.

“We have done nothing. Nothing at all,” she said quickly. “You have no need to trouble us, we are good citizens—”

“It’s all right, Eva,” Maria said gently. “There is nothing to fear. But it is better if we go inside.”

They crossed a small brick path between the bare tangle of shrubbery into a back door. The white-haired woman closed and locked the door behind them, told them to follow her, and they crossed a large, clean kitchen and went down a hallway to the front of the house.

“It is a long time since you have visited us, Maria.”

“This man wants to talk to you. Is Janos at home?”

“He is upstairs in bed. He has a very bad cold.”

“And no one else is here?” Maria asked.

“Who else is there?”

Durell said: “I am looking for your husband, Mrs. Tagy.” The woman halted in the middle of the front room of the house. A strange little animal sound came from her, but she did not turn to face Durell. Her whole posture was one as if he had suddenly struck at her with a knife. He could not see her face, since she stood with her back to him, but he saw the way her shoulders stiffened and he wondered how she had managed to dissemble and hide her secret as long as now, her nerves being what they were. He disliked frightening her, and he was not even sure that he was using the right approach, since if she distrusted him she could prove stubborn and waste time that was too precious to lose. He walked up to her and took her shoulders gently in his hands.

“It’s all right. I am not of the police. Believe me. I wish no harm to you or your husband. I’ve come here to help him. I’ve come a long way to find him and talk and help him do what he came here to do. Do you understand me?”

'‘No. Dr. Tagy is not here. He has been gone three years. You know that. Why do you ask about him now?”

“Because he is here. We know he is in Budapest. Perhaps he is hiding in this house. He will be safe with me. You will all be safe. I’ll help him get you out of the country. That's what he came back for, isn’t that so?”

He was not quite ready for her reaction. He did not know where she had hidden the knife. But she slipped away suddenly from his hands on her shoulders, and from somewhere inside her bulky sweater, the sweet-faced little woman took the knife and slashed violently at Durell. The blade flickered wickedly in the sunlight coming through the front bay windows. She was transformed, her face convulsed with despair and fear and rage, and a shrill screaming sound came from her open mouth. Durell parried the blow easily. He heard Maria shout something and from the tail of his eye he saw her jump forward, but he twisted the elderly woman’s wrist easily, not wanting to hurt her, and although she struggled on for another moment, still screaming in Hungarian some words he could not understand, he forced the knife from her grip and when it fell to the bare wooden floor, he kicked it aside.

“Please, Mrs. Tagy,” he said. “Believe me. I wish you no harm.”

Her breathing was wild and tumultuous. She stood before him with her eyes closed, her throat moving as she swallowed. “You can kill me, but I will never tell you anything.”

“I will not kill you. I won’t hurt you.”

“You are the police. This woman brought you here. How much did you pay her for the information? Or did you threaten her with your horrible prisons to make her bring you to me?”

“Neither one. Listen to me. Sit down. Didn’t you understand what I said. I know Dr. Tagy came back to Budapest to help you. He was working for us—for America, the same as I do. Now do you understand? I came back here because he did not return with you. I don’t know why he failed, I don’t even know if he was lucky enough to reach you. But I must find him, before the AVO gets on his trail. They sent a man to the United States to kidnap or kill him, whichever suited them best. They didn’t know he had come back here. But they will know soon. They will come here for you, for him and for your son—”

“Get away from my mother!”

It was a boy’s voice, directed at Durell’s back, but there was something in the tone and the words that made him stand quite still. The white-haired woman sank down on a chair and covered her face. Her breath made a tortured sound in the sudden stillness.

“Janos?” Durell said.

“Turn around. Easily. Or you are a dead man.”

The boy stood in the doorway, near the foot of the stairs that led to the upper floor of the house. He was thin and spindly, not more than fifteen, all arms and legs and bony wrists. The snubby-barreled “Russian guitar” in his hands was held competently, and there was on his narrow face a blazing look of furious hatred that left Durell no doubt that he stood dangerously close to death.

Maria whispered, “Janos, don’t!”

“Get away, Maria. I’m going to finish him,” the boy whispered.

“Did you hear what I told your mother?” Durell asked.

“I heard. You are a liar, like all the rest of them.”

“Put down that gun,” Durell said. “I’m a friend.”

“That’s what the Russians said, before they turned their tanks on us and crushed us under the treads. Do you know something? I, myself, blew up two of their tanks. When they came up Castle Hill, we lured them into a dead-end street and we filled the hollows of the street with gasoline and when the tanks splashed through we gave them a grenade or two. That finished them. That’s how I got this gun. I took it off a Russian I killed. A man like you.”

Durell wanted the boy to keep talking, but the mother murmured something and he broke off abruptly, his pale eyes suddenly uncertain. Maria said something in Hungarian that Durell did not understand. He felt a cool sweat on his face and he knew he was afraid of this boy who had killed Russian tanks. There was a wildness in Janos Tagy that was beyond any reason. Only his mother’s voice kept his finger quiet on the trigger.

“I believe him, Janos,” Mrs. Tagy whispered. “Even if he lies, it must come to this end. If he tells the truth, then we must decide now, once and for all, what to do about your father.”

“Is he here?” Durell asked.

The woman looked at him with round, dead eyes. “Yes.” 

“Alive?”

“He almost died. He was sick and wounded. He was wounded by a border guard when he came through. And then he became feverish and the wound was infected and we hid him here. It was only by the grace of God that he found strength to make his way to this house. He came in the night, and nobody saw him, and we have been hiding him here ever since.”

“Take me to him,” Durell said. “Janos?”

The boy still hesitated, but the muzzle of his gun was lowered now. His mouth shook uncertainly as he looked from his mother to Durell. Then he shrugged his thin shoulders. His eyes were still wild.

“I will take him, if you say so, mother. But I will kill him if he touches you again.”

“It was not his fault,” the woman said wearily. “Come, we will all go. He must have heard my screaming. He will be worried.”

Durell moved ahead at a gesture from the boy’s gun. To his surprise, they did not go upstairs, where the boy had come from. They returned to the kitchen, where the woman opened a cellar door and Durell was forced to lead the way down. The cellar felt warmer than the upper floors of the house. The walls were of massive stone, the floor of earth, and a huge coal furnace stood silent and black in one corner. Durell felt Maria touch his arm in what was meant to be reassurance, but he saw that her face was drawn tight, the skin shiny over her prominent cheekbones, her mouth set in an uncompromising line. The thought flashed through his mind that she may well have led him here to his death. Yet he did not seriously doubt her. He felt the boy, Janos, prod him again with the muzzle of the Russian gun.

“Go ahead. Into the furnace.”

“The furnace?”

“There is a trap door inside. A long time ago, a hundred years ago, we Hungarians rebelled against tyranny, too.” The boy’s voice was thin and proud. “Those were the days of Petoefi, and General Bems. There were heroes in the land then, and there will be more heroes again.” He paused. “In those days there was fighting here, too. They built tunnels to get from one house to another, and most of them are forgotten today. But I found this one, years ago, and we fixed it up with the furnace to hide the entrance.”

“Then you have no heat in the house?” Durell asked. “We can build a fire quickly on the steel plate inside, if we have to. It is the same plate that acts as the trap door. Go ahead, climb inside. And be careful, I will be directly behind you. I don’t care if I have to die, too.”

Durell believed him. There was a brave, wild immaturity in Janos Tagy, but there was also a grim sense of responsibility beyond his years. Durell opened the wide furnace door. There was easily enough room for him to climb inside, and he saw the steel plate clearly on the floor of the furnace, with a ring-bolt set in it that lifted easily when he pulled it up. A dark opening and the top rungs of a wooden ladder were revealed. He squeezed inside and climbed down.

Light flickered downward over him, and he looked back and saw that Janos had taken a flashlight to guide the way. There were more than a dozen rungs to the ladder, and then he had to drop three feet to a brick floor. The tunnel stretched in both directions, brick-walled, with a vaulted ceiling. Water dripped somewhere, but it was not as cold as the outer air.

“To your right,” the boy whispered. “And do not make a sound for fifty paces. We will be going under the neighbors’ cellars, and they do not know about this passage. But they might hear. So be careful.”

Durell led the way. He heard Maria climb down after him, and then Mrs. Tagy, and he wondered suddenly what would happen to them all if Roger Wyman’s tip to the AVO should lead the secret police to this place now. The thought gave him a renewed sense of urgency, of time slipping by that could never be regained. He went ahead, a sense of excitement and anxiety mixed in him that he always felt when he was near a goal in his mission. The light flickered erratically, then focused on a wide area of the tunnel ahead. He saw a cot, a heap of blankets, a small table and an oil lamp, and quickened his stride to look down at the man who lay with his face to the damp, brick tunnel walls.

It was Dr. Tagy.

How long has he been like this?” Durell asked. He spoke to Janos Tagy. “He looks as if he’s under drugs.”

“Yes. To make him sleep. He should wake up soon.” “Can he walk?”

“Yes, a little. But he is not strong enough yet to try to cross the frontier with us.”

“You planned to leave with him?”

“He came back for us,” the boy said proudly. “He could not take Mama and me the first time. But when all the fighting began, he came back to rescue us.” The thin shoulders slumped in despair. “But he was wounded and sick. We had to hide him down here. Every now and then the police come and look through the house. So far, they have not taken Mama or me to the cellar prisons. They search, and find nothing, and go away.”

“When was the last time they were here?”

“Two days ago.”

“Do you expect them soon?”

The boy shrugged again. “One never knows with those animals. They show up at any time, at any hour.”

“And you kept your father down here all this time?” “Yes. All this time. Mama and I nursed him. He’s much better, actually. We thought perhaps we could try for the frontier in another week or so.”

“You had no friends who could help you before this?” “There is no one to trust,” Janos said simply.

“And now your time has run out,” Durell said. “Until now, the AVO had no real reason to believe your father was back in Budapest. But they know now. In an hour, perhaps sooner, they will come back and this time they will get the truth from you, Janos.”

“Not from me,” the boy said tightly. His smile was grim. “They may kill me, but they will not make me talk.”

“And your mother?” Durell asked. His voice was quiet.

- “Would you be silent if you were forced to watch them torture your mother?”

Janos’s gaze faltered. He bit his lip. The gun he carried sagged, and he looked uncertainly at the small, white-haired woman, at Maria, and then at the sleeping man on the cot. His mouth shook.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Perhaps not—I couldn’t stand—”

“Then you have to trust me,” Durell said flatly. “There isn’t time for you to think about it. All of you will have to come with me.”

“Now?” Mrs. Tagy asked faintly.

“At once. Maria, will you take the risk of hiding these people in your apartment until tonight?”

The dark-haired girl nodded. “If we can get them there.” “Janos, is there another way out of this tunnel?” Durell asked.

“Yes, but I left so many things in the house—”

“Leave them there and forget them. It will be better if it looks to the police as if you just walked out and expect to return any moment. Come on, help me get your father awake.”

There were several precious minutes lost while the wife and son shook and talked to the sick man. Dr. Tagy had a round face like his wife’s, but there were deep lines etched at the mouth and an unhealthy color to his cheeks. He was unshaven, and his beard glinted silvery-gray in the light of the lantern. Durell walked carefully back down the tunnel to the trap in the coal furnace by which they had entered. Listening for a moment, he heard no sound, and then climbed the ladder and returned to the cellar above. He ^checked the back door, went out into the glare of sunlight in the garden to lock the gate; then he returned, closing the cellar door, climbed back through the huge furnace door and carefully drew the steel plate shut over his head.