The Secret Speech

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.

SOVIET-CONTROLLED EASTERN EUROPE HUNGARY

BUDAPEST

SAME DAY

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