As they shoved and clubbed their way toward safety, Duroc’s men were forced to fight through an ever- thickening crowd. More and more Hungarians were swinging wide around the tiny phalanx of security agents to block their path and slow them down. The colonel saw his countrymen surrounding the Frenchmen linking arms, trying to form a barrier to movement. Wherever the two groups came in contact, they fought tooth and nail — clawing and tearing at each other in a mindless fury.
Hradetsky was only meters away now, dodging through the ring surrounding Duroc’s men. Several of the Frenchmen raised their arms, frantically beckoning for help from the riot police waiting barely a block away. The Hungarian colonel could sense their growing desperation. Although their goal was in sight, they were now too weak and too few in number to reach it.
One of Kiraly’s biggest men, a burly, bearlike ex-army sergeant, bulled his way deep into the French phalanx. He backhanded one of the men holding Kusin and reached for the other, shouting aloud in triumph.
Hradetsky, just a few steps behind, saw everything that followed as though it happened in slow motion.
Instead of backing away from his attacker or dropping Kusin, the Frenchman’s hand darted inside his windbreaker and reappeared holding a weapon. As the barrel cleared his jacket, he fired twice, pumping two rounds into the ex-sergeant’s chest. The big man flew backward, punched off his feet in a spray of blood.
“Down! Down! Everybody down!” Hradetsky clawed for the pistol holstered at his side.
Other Frenchmen, also sensing defeat, were pulling their own weapons. The colonel recognized them as German-made MP5K submachine guns — special, shortened variants designed to be carried concealed under clothing.
Without warning they opened fire, carefully aiming into the crowd in front of them. They weren’t shooting to frighten. They were shooting to kill, deliberately clearing a path with bullets. People went down in droves under the hail of gunfire — either ripped open by 9mm rounds or throwing themselves prone behind the dead and dying to escape the slaughter.
Hradetsky dropped to one knee, with his service automatic extended in his right hand and braced by his left. He aimed quickly at the security agent who had fired first, and squeezed off two shots. The first caught the Frenchman in the shoulder and spun him around. The second blew a red-rimmed hole in his forehead.
The colonel searched rapidly for another target, cursing under his breath as panicked demonstrators stumbled into his line of fire. He swiveled back and forth, still holding his pistol braced. A clear space opened up in front of him. He had only a split second to decide. Should he fire at one of the men dragging Kusin toward the riot police? Or take out a Frenchman murdering his compatriots?
One of Duroc’s men leveled his submachine gun and fired a series of walking bursts into the screaming men and women ahead of him. More people crumpled, cut down by bullets fired at point-blank range.
Hradetsky squeezed off another shot. Blood spurted from the gunman’s back as he staggered and fell facedown onto the street.
The dead man’s comrades were already on the move, stepping over bodies while they fired at anyone still standing ahead of them. Two turned and began shooting at the crowds pouring into Kodaly Circle from the Radial Avenue to hold them back.
Bullets whipcracked through the air over Hradetsky’s head. He threw himself flat, taking cover behind one of the Frenchmen he had killed. High-pitched screams and low, muffled groans rose from the people behind him.
He raised his head, risking a quick glance ahead. Duroc’s agents were close to safety — a line of helmeted riot troops, most of them ashen at the butchery they were seeing, and rows of trucks and armored cars waiting to carry them away. The Frenchmen were too far away for him to risk another shot. At this range, he could easily hit Kusin or one of the policemen by accident.
Hradetsky wanted to roar in anger and frustration. They’d been beaten.
In that instant, the universe turned upside down.
Captain Ferenc Miklos watched in stunned disbelief as the Frenchmen approached with their handful of battered and bruised prisoners. Did they really think he would shelter them after what he had seen? After watching them massacre his own people?
He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Kodaly Circle looked like a slaughterhouse. The dead and wounded lay heaped where bullets or clubs had thrown them. He could hear a baby wailing inside a stroller lying on its side next to a young woman who stared up at the sky with open, unmoving eyes.
The captain could also hear the outraged murmurs rising from the formed ranks of his own men. None of them had signed on for something like this. Nor had he. As a young police cadet, he’d sworn to uphold law and order, but whose law and which order? Those of Hungary? Or those of France and Germany? The laws that made a simple protest march illegal? Or those that made outright murder a crime?
The French agents came closer, dragging or shoving their captives along at gunpoint. One of those in the lead, a tall, hard-faced man, arrogantly waved Miklos and his men out of the way with his snub-nosed submachine gun.
Something snapped inside the short, black-haired police officer. He had to do something — even if that meant taking Kusin and the other opposition prisoners into his own custody. He stepped into the French security agent’s path. “Halt!”
Miklos saw the taller man’s arrogance change to fear. He had only a second to feel satisfied by that before the Frenchman stuck the submachine gun in his stomach and pulled the trigger.
The young Hungarian captain died a martyr without ever really deciding whose side he was on.
Hradetsky scrambled to his feet before the echoes of the latest shots faded. Had Duroc’s men gone mad?
Fifty meters ahead of him, the policemen stared from the group of French agents to their captain’s sprawled corpse and back again. Then they charged. More submachine guns stuttered, spreading chaos and carnage. Uniformed Hungarians went down, torn in half by concentrated bursts. But Frenchmen were falling, too, beaten to the ground by flailing nightsticks and Plexiglas shields.
As Hradetsky sprinted toward the battle he could see other police units moving into the circle, closing in on the French. They were ignoring the demonstrators.
The surviving agents were retreating, hobbling away from the trucks that were supposed to ferry them to safety. Instead, they were falling back toward a small, three-story stone office building overlooking Kodaly Circle. Still carrying Kusin, they disappeared inside.
Several helmeted riot troopers followed them all the way to the door and then crumpled suddenly, mowed down by automatic weapons fire from inside. Other policemen close by scattered for cover behind the armored cars and trucks parked next to the building. Protesters raced to join them.
Bent low to stay out of the line of fire, Hradetsky worked his way through the crouching men, looking for the highest-ranking officer he could find. He came face-to face with a major kneeling beside a badly wounded police corporal. “Are these your men?”
The man looked up, staring at him with shocked and wild eyes. “Yes, they are, damn you!” Then he saw Hradetsky’s shoulder boards. “Sir.”
“Will you obey my orders, Major?”
The man’s eyes focused and slid down to the red, white, and green band over Hradetsky’s uniform jacket. He stiffened instinctively, then glanced down at the injured man gasping for air by his side. When the major looked up again, his expression had changed. It was harder and more determined. “Yes, Colonel, I will. And so will my men.”
“Good.”
“Colonel?”
Hradetsky turned to see Oskar Kiraly limping toward him. The big, blond-haired man looked dazed and in tremendous pain. Blood streaked the side of his face, dripping from an open gash over one cheekbone.
“Where is Kusin?”
Hradetsky nodded toward the office building. “In there. The French have him.”
“No! Oh, God.” Kiraly slammed his fist against the steel side of a truck. Tears mingled with the blood running down his face. “I failed him. I couldn’t stop them!”
The colonel grabbed his wrist before he could pound the truck again. When Hradetsky spoke, he kept his voice low. “None of us could stop them. But this isn’t over. Not yet. Fall apart later, when it doesn’t matter. Right
