world mired in what seemed a perpetual recession, work of any kind was hard to get. And with work came ration cards for heat and food. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to survive a winter that had been the worst in decades. Subzero temperatures and the food shortages produced by autumn crop failures made life almost unbearable for all Hungarians. Those who were unemployed were even worse off. Priority for scarce foodstuffs went to those who still had jobs.
Of course, Zoltan Hradetsky had another important reason for staying at his post. An old-fashioned reason. Duty. He’d sworn an oath to uphold the law and to protect his fellow countrymen. And even though his superiors seemed determined to chain him down inside the Interior Ministry’s idle bureaucracy, the oath remained.
So, torn between his anger, his duty, and the need to eat, he’d rotted uselessly at his desk, watching his poor country endure the winter’s bitter cold like a man in a threadbare coat. Draconian security measures and international relief efforts had kept mass starvation at bay, but the past few months had been one long, dark nightmare. Curfews, rationing, and peremptory curbside executions for thieves and looters made it feel like wartime, even if the only obvious enemies were hunger and cold.
Those were bad enough. The very old, the very young, and the sick all suffered as rations were cut and cut again. Despair was spreading as parents saw their children’s faces pinched by the cold and malnutrition. Deaths from bronchitis, pneumonia, and influenza stood at all-time highs. So did public unrest.
Hradetsky frowned. You wouldn’t know that from reading the tightly controlled government press. But he’d seen enough unvarnished crime statistics to know that only very careful juggling could make them sound good. Murder, muggings, and child abuse were all up. And, for the first time since the fall of the nation’s post-communist democracy, there were signs of organized political resistance to military rule. “Subversive” newspapers were beginning to appear on Budapest’s streets — taped to lampposts or slipped under doors. Some of the civilians who had led the old government were said to be forming clandestine opposition groups.
Hungarians were angry, and they were looking for a focus for their anger.
Hradetsky knew where his countrymen should look.
French and German emergency aid shipments were keeping Hungary afloat, but only by a narrow margin. And every shipment carried a price tag in lost national sovereignty. With every passing week, Hradetsky saw his country sliding closer to being a wholly owned French and German client state.
He had several old friends in the building, some of whom would still talk to him, despite his pariah status. Certainly his job left him with plenty of time to read and think, and to listen and learn. Even from his lowly post the Interior Ministry was still a good place to pick up information that contradicted the “official” line.
Or to see interesting things. Like the nameless, arrogant visitors who dropped by the minister’s private office. They came, stayed for a few hours, and then flew back to Paris or Berlin. Rumor had it that they were checking up on police activities, reporting to their governments on the “behavior” of Hungary’s law enforcement apparatus.
If that were true, their visits were having an unsettling effect. From Major General Racz on down, high-level ministry officials were taking an increasing interest in routine personnel assignments — even in the outlying police districts. To limit contact with the “free trade” states, border crossings were being either closed or put under army control. Every report had to be forwarded to Budapest for approval. Racz, Dozsa, and their cronies were also aggressively collecting information on anyone even remotely connected with what passed for the political opposition. It didn’t matter if it was a food riot, a labor demonstration, or just a coffeehouse gathering. The generals wanted to know who “the troublemakers” were.
As support for the military Government of National Salvation sagged, old tyrannical habits were gaining new strength.
Hradetsky found this renewed emphasis on political intelligence-gathering especially troubling. During Hungary’s first heady years of freedom, he and other junior officers had worked hard to make the National Police a professional crime-fighting force. One that was free of the corruption, inefficiency, and brutal misconduct so common under communism.
Now, with foreign backing, his country’s rulers were reversing course, undoing reforms that had made Hradetsky proud to wear his police uniform. Toadyism and unquestioning deference to French and German interests were valued more than competence.
He grimaced. There wasn’t much chance that would change any time soon. The generals were in too deep to back out now. Like their counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe, they were signing any agreement the two European superpowers put before them. Treaties to adopt a single currency. Treaties to blend existing national legal systems and economic regulation into a continent-wide monolith. Arms sales and joint military exercises. And on and on and on. The pace was dizzying — deliberately so, he suspected.
Hradetsky could read the handwriting on the wall. If the generals were allowed free reign, Hungary would be absorbed. She would be swallowed whole by bigger nations that preached the common interest while working for their own selfish ends. He bit his lip. The prospect of working under orders issued in Paris or Berlin made him feel sick.
Running lights outlined several huge ships moored several miles off the windswept Baltic coast — oil and liquid natural gas tankers waiting their turn to off-load at Gdansk’s overcrowded docks. Snatches of music and canned laughter rose above the steady slap of small waves against steel hulls. Sounds carried far across the sea at night.
Five miles outside the offshore anchorage, a rusting’, storm-battered fishing trawler drifted silently with the tide and currents. Crewmen in winter coats and gloves clustered on the tiny vessel’s stern, grunting softly as they wrestled a heavy Zodiac inflatable raft back on board.
Four shivering men stood near the trawler’s darkened wheelhouse, stripping off dry suits and scuba gear. Their features were almost invisible under layers of black camouflage paint, but all of them were young men in perfect physical condition.
The trawler’s short, fair-haired captain, older but just as fit, stepped down out of the wheelhouse. “Any problems?”
One of the divers shook his head. “None. Everything went just as planned.”
The captain clapped him on the shoulder and leaned back inside to speak to the helmsman. “Right. Let’s get out of here. All ahead one-quarter.”
“All ahead one-quarter. Aye, sir.”
The fishing vessel’s diesel engine coughed to life with a stuttering, muffled roar and its single screw started turning, churning the sea to foam. Still sailing without lights, the trawler headed west, hugging the Polish coastline.
The
Captain Frank Calabrese leaned on the bridge railing, his hands cupped around a steaming coffee mug for warmth. His ship, an LNG tanker, stretched forward almost as far as his eyes could see. Nine hundred and fifty feet long and with a 140-foot beam, she was as big as an aircraft carrier and almost as massive. The top halves of four heavily insulated domes rose above
“You wanted to see me, Skipper?” Charles MacLeod, his first officer, stepped out onto the open bridge wing.
Calabrese sipped his coffee and then nodded. “Sure do, Charlie. I just got the word from the harbormaster. We’re cleared to off-load starting at 0900 hours tomorrow.”
“About bloody time.”
“Amen to that.” The American tanker captain chuckled, amused by his first officer’s impatience.
He could also understand the younger man’s irritation. MacLeod had a pregnant wife waiting for him in Stavanger,
So far they’d been anchored off the Polish port for more than forty-eight hours, kept waiting while other tankers pumped their precious cargoes ashore. Despite working around the clock, Gdansk’s refinery teams and pipeline crews were falling further and further behind. Trying to funnel all the oil and gas Poland needed through one medium-sized port facility was like trying to irrigate the Sahara through a single garden hose.
Calabrese stood up straight, taking his weight off the railing. “The Poles are sending a harbor pilot aboard at
