you.”
Silvanus waved a hand. “Never mind. I am owed enough favors.”
Hradetsky frowned. “Still, giving me this information is dangerous…”
“I’ve already decided to take an ‘early retirement,’ my friend. The Germans have been sniffing around too much, and I’m getting tired of being Rehling’s stooge.” Silvanus grinned. “So I’m going to strike my own blow for Hungarian independence by letting them try to run this place without me!”
Hradetsky had to smile at that. “When do you leave?”
“My letter will be on the generals’ desks tomorrow morning, and by dawn my wife and I will be halfway to a little place we have northeast of here — up in the Matra Mountains. No television, no telephone. Just a little fishing and a little reading. You see, that’s the other reason I wanted to see you. We just held my going-away party.” The administrator’s grin faded. “I have a feeling that Budapest could become a very unhealthy place to live in the near future.”
The colonel nodded. “You’re probably right.” He shook the other man’s outstretched hand and turned away.
“Oh, Zoltan?”
Hradetsky paused with his hand on the door.
Silvanus reached into one of his desk drawers and tossed him an armband — one dyed in Hungary’s red, white, and green national colors. “Tell your friends to be a bit more careful when handing these out. After all, some of the people in this building still work for the generals.”
Hradetsky nodded somberly and stuffed the armband in a coat pocket. “I will remind them of that.”
Evidently Kusin and the others were casting their nets further and faster than he had imagined.
They were lucky in the weather. May was usually one of the wettest months in Hungary’s capital, but this day dawned clear and sunny with the promise of moderate temperatures later on.
Hradetsky stood with Kusin and Kiraly, watching his countrymen streaming in from every direction — tens of thousands of them, maybe more. The general strike they’d called was holding. Most businesses and factories were shut down, either voluntarily by patriotic owners or because all their employees were on their way here. The only parts of the public transit system still operating were the buses and Metro subway trains ferrying people to the march. As they arrived, opposition workers assigned as parade marshals shepherded the men, women, and children into places along the wide, tree-lined avenue. Others circulated through the crowds, handing out flags and placards.
Hradetsky idly fingered the armband around his blue uniform jacket. Appearing like this, in full uniform and at the head of the march, had been Kusin’s suggestion. It was one way to show the people they were not alone — that some of the government’s own officials were turning against it. Of course, if the military regime stood firm against the combination of this march and the general strike, showing up among the demonstrators would make him a hunted man.
He shrugged. So be it. He was tired of playing a double game.
The colonel ran his eyes over the swelling crowd. At least he would have plenty of company on the run. There were several other policemen and even a few army officers scattered in the front ranks — all of them in uniform. Most of them looked very nervous. Well, that was understandable. He’d had more time to come to terms with betraying an oath for the love of his country.
They weren’t the only uniformed men present. Small groups of patrolmen were stationed at nearby intersections, hanging well back. From time to time, demonstrators walked right up to them, trying to talk them into joining the march. Sometimes it worked. Hradetsky could see several police squads already wearing the tricolored armbands that showed they were siding with the opposition.
There were still no signs of the government’s riot control troops or Duroc’s French security men, though. They had to be further ahead — hidden somewhere among the buildings lining the avenue. Waiting for a signal. But waiting for a signal to do what?
He turned to Kusin. “I’ll say it again, sir. If you must march, at least march further back in the column. Let Oskar and me and more of his men go first.”
Kiraly nodded. “The colonel is right, Vladimir. This insistence on staying so close to the front is not sound. It’s too…”
“Dangerous?” Kusin finished for him. “Perhaps it is.” He nodded toward the milling crowds behind them. “But it is dangerous for all of us. And the people have a right to see those who would lead them taking the biggest risks.”
He saw their frustrated looks and laughed gently. “Come, my friends. You cannot protect me from myself or others forever. Besides, I’ve already agreed to carry more than my fair weight today, eh?” He patted his shirtfront.
At Kiraly’s insistence, Kusin was wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit. With luck it might stop a shot fired by a sniper or other assassin. But that was the only compromise Hradetsky and the security chief had been able to persuade him to make. When they’d pressed him on the need to play it safer, he’d only smiled and clapped them both on the shoulder. “When you match your strength against a foe, gentlemen, you can’t afford a show of weakness. We go forward, not back.”
To Hradetsky, this march was taking on a whole new aspect. It was changing rapidly from a “test of strength” to the kind of crazy game called Chicken he’d seen played out in American movies. The kind of game where two automobiles raced straight toward each other — with each driver betting the other would flinch first.
Kusin looked at his watch, took a deep breath, and looked up with a confident smile on his careworn face. “It’s time, gentlemen. Oskar? Will you do the honors?”
Kiraly nodded. He started relaying orders to the marshals scattered up and down the still-growing crowd, using a handheld portable phone. The phones and dedicated cellular circuits were the gift of opposition sympathizers inside the city’s telephone center.
Slowly, with several fits and starts, their march got under way — picking up speed and support as they tramped down the avenue. Within minutes, more than 100,000 Hungarians were heading for the Danube and the government offices around the Parliament building. Thousands of colorful banners and flags waved above the crowd, streaming proudly in a light, westerly breeze.
They were led by a thin line of Kiraly’s toughest men, all army or National Police veterans, holding large Hungarian flags spread out on poles between them. Kusin, Kiraly, Hradetsky, and other opposition leaders followed right behind. Many sought actively by the security services wore placards that said simply, “Outlawed — For Loving Hungary.”
Rank after rank of Budapest’s citizens came after them, sometimes organized and sometimes not organized at all. Men in business suits mingled with laborers in hard hats and dungarees. Policemen, some wearing opposition armbands, paced them. Mothers pushing infants in strollers walked side by side with their next-door neighbors or with people they’d never seen before. Bands deployed at regular intervals played a mix of stirring marching songs that set a brisk, purposeful pace and lifted people’s hearts.
Striding along beside Kusin, Hradetsky carefully scanned the faces of his fellows. He saw determination, fierce joy, and very little uncontrolled anger. They were off to a good start.
Another watcher saw the same crowd, but with a very different set of emotions.
Major Paul Duroc leaned forward, almost touching the glass window in a third-floor office overlooking the Radial Avenue. He’d “borrowed” the office from the aging, homesick manager of a French-owned firm. Now it served as his command post.
The command post was small, just himself, a radioman, and one assistant to answer the phones and run any errands. That was enough, though, to manage the platoons of Hungarian riot police and French security agents under his immediate control. And if he needed more men, he could get them with a single phone call. The head of the DGSE had made it clear that the Hungarian government itself would answer to Duroc’s orders if he wished it. Dismayed by their own inability to control events, the generals were ready to grasp at straws.
He would have preferred making a preemptive strike by arresting Kusin and the other opposition leaders before they could organize this protest march. Unfortunately the Hungarian regime’s incompetence and sloth had
