Kingdom of Shadows

Sombor smiled. “Can’t have this sort of thing happening to our friends. Any idea what they’re after?”

“Not really.”

Sombor looked around the office for a moment, then he stood, walked to the window, and stared out at the street. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” he said.

Morath waited.

“This job I have,” Sombor said, “seems to grow bigger every day.” He turned back toward Morath. “Europe is changing. It’s a new world, we’re part of it, whether we want to be or not, and we can win or lose, depending how we play our cards. The Czechs, for instance, have lost. They trusted the wrong people. You’ll agree to that, I think.”

“Yes.”

“Now look, Morath, I have to be frank with you. I understand who you are and what you think-Kossuth, civil liberty, democracy, all that Shadow Front idealism. Perhaps I don’t agree, but who cares. You know the old saying, ‘Let the horse worry about politics, his head is bigger.’ Right?”

“Right.”

“I have to see the world in a practical way, I don’t have time to be a philosopher. Now I have the greatest respect for Count Polanyi, he too is a realist, perhaps more than you know. He does what he needs to do, and you’ve helped him do it. You’re not a virgin, is what I mean.”

Sombor waited for a response. “And so?” Morath said it quietly.

“Just as I’ve come to help you, I would like you to help me. Help your country. That, I trust, would not be against your principles.”

“Not at all.”

“You will have to get your hands dirty, my friend. If not today, tomorrow, whether you like the idea or don’t like it. Believe me, the time has come.”

“And if I say no?”

Sombor shrugged. “We will have to accept your decision.”

It didn’t end there.

Morath lay on the wet straw and stared into the darkness. Outside, a truck rumbled past, driving slowly around the square. A few minutes later it returned, paused briefly in front of the station, then drove off.

Sombor had gone on at length-whatever light there’d been in his eyes had blown out like a candle but his voice never changed. Getting you out may not be so easy. But don’t you worry. Do our best. The prison at Iasi. The prison at Sinaia. Forced to stand with his nose touching the wall for seventy-two hours.

For supper, they’d brought him another salt herring. He broke off a tiny piece, just to see what it tasted like. Ate the bread, drank the cold tea. They’d taken his cigarettes and matches when they put him back in the cell.

I flew right over when I heard about it. Said casually enough. The legation in Paris had two Fiesler Storch airplanes, sold to Hungary by the Germans after endless, agonizing negotiation and God only knew what favors. I’m more important than you think, Sombor meant. I command the use of the legation airplane.

When Sombor got up to leave, Morath said, “You’ll let Count Polanyi know what’s happened.”

“Naturally.”

Polanyi would never know. Nacht und Nebel, Adolf Hitler’s phrase, night and fog. A man left his home in the morning and was never heard of again. Morath worked hard, think only of the next hour, but despair rose in his heart and he could not make it go away. Petofi, Hungary’s national poet, said that dogs were always well looked after and wolves starved, but only wolves were free. So here, in this cell or those to come, was freedom.

They came for him at dawn.

The door opened and two guards took him under the arms, ran him down the hall, and hauled him up the staircase. It was barely daylight, but even the soft gloom hurt his eyes. They gave him back his shoes, then shackled him at the wrists and ankles, and he shuffled out the front door to a waiting truck. There were two other prisoners in there, one a Gypsy, the other perhaps a Russian, tall, with sheared white hair and blue tears tattooed at the corners of his eyes.

Only the women who swept the street saw him leave. They paused for a bare moment, their brooms, made of bundles of reeds, resting on the ground. Poor boys. God help you. Morath never forgot it.

The truck bounced on the cobbles. The Gypsy caught Morath’s eye and sniffed the air-they’d driven past a bakery. It wasn’t a long ride, maybe fifteen minutes. Then they were at the railroad station where trains, Morath understood perfectly, left for towns like Iasi, or Sinaia.

Three men in chains and six policemen. That was something worth looking at when your train stopped in Bistrita. Passengers lowered the tops of their windows to see the show. A commercial traveler, from the look of him, peeling an orange and throwing the rind on the station platform. A woman in a pillbox hat, the dark veil hiding her eyes, white hands resting atop the window. Other faces, pale in the early light. A man made a joke, his friend laughed. A child, who watched Morath with wide eyes, knowing she was allowed to stare. A man in an overcoat with a velvet collar, stern, elegant, who nodded to Morath as though he knew him.

Then, chaos. Who were they? For slow-motion moments the question raced through Morath’s mind. They came from nowhere. Moving too fast to count, shouting in-was it Russian? Polish? The policeman at Morath’s side was hit. Morath heard the impact, then a yelp, then he staggered off somewhere, groping at his holster. A man in a soft hat stepped from a cloud of steam vented by the locomotive. A cool, frosty morning, he’d wrapped a muffler around his throat, tucked the ends inside his jacket, and turned up the collar. He studied Morath carefully, for what seemed like a long time, then swung his shotgun a little to one side and fired both barrels. Several passengers gasped, the sound, to Morath, was clear as a bell.

The Russian prisoner knew. Maybe too much, Morath thought later. He stretched out full length on the platform and covered his head with his shackled hands. A lifelong convict, perhaps, who knew that this business was, sadly, not for him, his gods weren’t that powerful. The Gypsy cried out to a man with a handkerchief tied over his face and extended his wrists. Free me! But the man pushed him aside. He almost fell, then tried to run away, taking tiny steps, his ankle chain scraping along the concrete.

In the killing, they almost forgot Morath. He stood alone at the center of it. A detective, at least a man in a suit holding a revolver, ran past, then turned toward Morath, his face anxious, uncertain, the right thing must be done. He hesitated, started to raise his pistol, closed his eyes, bit his lip, and sat down. Now he knew what to do but it was too late. The pistol moved only a few inches, a red gash opened in his forehead, and, very slowly, he collapsed. A few yards away, the train conductor was lying back against a wheel of the coal car. In his eyes, a look Morath knew. He was dying.

Now a black car came driving, very slowly, along the platform. Driven by a young boy, no more than thirteen, hands white on the wheel, face knotted with concentration. He stopped the car while the man in the soft hat dragged another man by the back of his jacket, sliding him up to the rear door of the car. He opened the door and threw him in the backseat. In the middle of it all, screams and shots, Morath could hardly believe that anybody could be that strong.

“Move, dumb ox!” The words in German, the Slavic accent so thick it took Morath a moment to understand. The man gripped his arm like a steel claw. A hook nose, dark face, an unlit cigarette in his lips. “To the truck, yes?” he said. “Yes?”

Morath walked as fast as he could. Behind him, from the train, a cry in Hungarian. A woman, cursing, enraged, screaming, telling them all, brutes, devils, to cease this fouling of the world and go and burn in hell. The man at Morath’s side lost all patience-the rise and fall of distant sirens coming nearer-and dragged Morath toward the truck. The driver reached over and helped him and he sprawled across the passenger seat, then fought his way upright.

The driver was an old man with a beard and a scar that cut across his lips. He pressed the gas pedal, gingerly, the engine raced, then died back. “Very good,” he said.

“Hungarian?”

The man shook his head. “I learn in war.”

He pressed the clutch pedal to the floor as the man in the soft hat ran toward the truck and violently waved