by Allan Topol
“Correct. My father, Lajos, was seventeen then. Although he didn’t know Zoltan or Peter, he was very much involved in our fight for freedom. It would help you to hear from him what really happened.”
For Elizabeth, this was a great offer. “I would love that.”
“Good. Let’s do it over dinner. We’ll pick you up at the Four Seasons at eight.”
“Don’t you have to see if your father’s available?”
Gyorgy smiled. “Since my mother died last year, my dad doesn’t go out much. His mind is sharp, and he loves talking about his ‘contribution to history,’ as he describes it.”
The restaurant, Café Kor, was five blocks from the Four Seasons and close to the magnificent St. Stephen’s Basilica. Walking through the door behind Gyorgy and his father, Lajos, Elizabeth’s eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior. Gyorgy must have been a regular patron because the maître d’, a young man with black curly hair dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, gave him a warm greeting.
The restaurant was crowded. As they walked to their table, Elizabeth was struck by the resemblance of Gyorgy to his father. Both were tall at six foot two with thick gray hair and an old world look enhanced by their white shirts and dark blue blazers. Father and son stood ramrod straight as they moved through the restaurant.
Once they were seated and had perused the menus, a waiter came over to take their order.
“What would you recommend?” Elizabeth asked Gyorgy.
“I’m having the goose liver pâté and the grilled duck breast.”
“That sounds great, I’ll have the same.”
When the waiter had departed Lajos said, “I’m a beer man myself, but my son’s a bit of a wine snob so when I’m with him, I’m forced to go over to the other side.”
Gyorgy smiled. “You always say that, Dad, but you have to admit Hungarian wines have gotten a lot better in the last ten or so years.”
“Everything’s gotten better since the Russians left.”
The waiter rushed back with the wine Gyorgy had ordered. It really was quite good, with a gorgeous deep red color and enticing aroma. Speaking of wine snobs, Elizabeth thought, this one might even suit Craig. “What’s the grape?” Elizabeth asked.
“The wine’s called Sauska Cuvee 7. It’s a blend of several grapes including merlot and cabernet and is produced in the south of Hungary.”
Lajos turned to Elizabeth. “Gyorgy said you wanted to hear about our ’56 revolt against the Russians and my contribution to history.”
“I would like that very much, if you don’t mind talking about it.”
“He loves talking about it,” Gyorgy interjected. “It was his day in the sun.”
Ignoring Gyorgy, Lajos shook his head, his face somber. “I don’t get many chances to describe what happened,” he began. “Some Hungarians still recall those events vividly, and we have days of remembrance on October 23, since the fall of Communism, but much of our population has a collective amnesia about what happened in 1956. Young people only know the post-Soviet world that began in 1989 when the Russians left. And to be fair to them, during the period from 1956 to 1989, the events of ’56 weren’t taught in schools. The Russians pretended our revolt never happened or treated it as a Western imperialist-inspired putsch. For many people of my generation, guilt makes them bury the events of that time in the backs of their minds.”
“Guilt?” Elizabeth asked.
“For sure, if they hadn’t been intimidated by the Russians and had the courage to act instead of hiding in their houses, we might have prevailed.”
“How did you happen to get involved?”
Their first courses came and Lajos paused to eat before responding. The pâté was quite good, Elizabeth thought.
Lajos put down his fork and replied, “I was a first-year student at the Technical University in Buda on October 23. It was a beautiful fall day, lots of sunshine, crisp air, blue skies. My two best friends, Ferenc and Gabor, and I joined thousands of other students in a peaceful march. We were heading toward Bem Square. At the beginning of the march we didn’t have a clear objective. Young people in Poland had recently demonstrated against Communist rule and we were calling for solidarity with Poland.” He shrugged. “Maybe we were just students rebelling against authority, the way students always do. Or letting off steam on a nice fall day.
“But then a strange thing occurred. As we marched first to Bem Square in Buda and then across the Danube to the parliament in Pest through the business and commercial heart of the city, huge numbers of people joined us. You have to realize none of this was planned. Workers left their offices and factory jobs and marched with us. Gradually, we became more than two hundred thousand strong. Nothing like this had ever happened. It was a spontaneous mass of people lacking organization and leaders. But now we now had an objective. The marchers were crying out, ‘Russians go home.’
“At first the Communist regime in Budapest, comprised of puppets who took their orders from Moscow, was uncertain how to respond to the protestors. I suspect at that point uncertainty reigned among Khrushchev and the other Russian officials in Moscow as well. They had never seen anything like this.”
“What happened when you got to the parliament?” Elizabeth asked.
“It was already evening. Gero, the Communist Party boss, used a radio broadcast to tell everyone to go home. That only inflamed the crowd. Some of the protestors tried to seize the radio station. At this point Ferenc, Gabor, and I ran over to Heroes’ Square. We joined others who were struggling to pull down a giant bronze statue of Stalin. We viewed this as a symbol of Russian enslavement. The Hungarian army couldn’t stop us, or perhaps they didn’t want to. Though we heard that AVH, those cruel and sadistic bastards in the Hungarian secret police, were shooting protestors in front of the parliament. In Heroes’ Square we struggled for hours until some protestors brought large construction equipment to help. We cheered wildly when Stalin fell to the ground and only his boots remained.”
Elizabeth was mesmerized by Lajos’s words. “What happened then?”
“At around 2:00 a.m. the Russians decided to send in their own troops and tanks, which had been stationed outside of town, to break up the protests. We weren’t organized, but many of us came to the same conclusion: We had to fight the Russian army to achieve our freedom. We managed to get rifles from sympathetic Hungarian soldiers, and we made Molotov cocktails. We may have been the most ragtag group ever to fight the Russian army, but fight we did. Once we spotted their troops, we opened fire on them, then raced into alleyways to escape. We tossed Molotov cocktails at tanks and ran. We began calling ourselves freedom fighters and declared this was a revolution.
“Ferenc, Gabor, and I joined other fighters in the Corvin Cinema in central Pest. This was one of the largest cinemas in the city. Strategically located, we could hit the Russian troops as they made their way into the city. When the troops arrived, we fired at them and then raced into the cinema to hide. We also threw grenades in the turrets of their tanks. Gabor was killed in the fighting, hit by a Russian tank. Ferenc and I had to pull his body out of the street while the battle continued to rage.” Tears welled up in Lajos’s eyes as he spoke.
“Even though our average age was about eighteen,” he continued, “we refused to quit. Then we got lucky. Some of the Hungarian troops came over to our side along with their tanks and antitank guns. Once we had that support, we were able to hold the Corvin Cinema. The Russians pulled back. We took turns sleeping, waiting for their next attack.
“It came on October 25 when the Russian troops mounted a new attack aided by AVH troops. In front of parliament, they massacred three hundred protestors. At the Corvin Cinema we managed to drive their forces off, and we even captured some of their equipment. Ferenc and I took charge of one of their antitank guns and turned it on their T-54s.”
Gyorgy interjected, “I never knew you did those things.”
Lajos laughed. “Well you never asked.” He looked at Elizabeth. “What do
es your father do?”
“He’s a retired New York City policeman.”
“I’ll bet you don’t know much about some of the operations he conducted.”
“That’s true,” she admitted.
As Lajos excused himself to go to the bathroom, the waiter came to clear their first courses.
Elizabeth turned to Gyorgy. “Your dad has amazing recall,” she remarked. “That must have happened more than sixty years ago.”
“I guess if you live with your memories the way he does, you don’t forget.”
“Did your dad work in business or finance as you do?”
Gyorgy shook his head. “He was a chemical engineer, working in a plastics plant.”
Lajos returned to the table, and a few minutes later their main courses arrived. For several moments, they ate in silence, enjoying the perfectly cooked food. Then Lajos turned to Elizabeth, “What happened next in our battle with the Russians was very particular,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“While we were fighting their troops to a standoff during these three days, we heard rumors that they were increasing their military strength in the country. We were anticipating a vicious attack, but it didn’t come. Instead they drew back their troops, tanks, and planes. Incredibly, they negotiated a cease-fire on October 28 with the Hungarian government. It appeared as if they wanted a political solution. During the next two days the cease-fire held, and Russia started pulling its troops and tanks out of Budapest. Those of us in the Corvin Cinema were afraid to believe the fighting was over. We held our breaths and remained vigilant, guns in hand.
“Finally on the thirty-first, all the Russian troops had left the city. At long last, we put down our guns. That evening, exhausted, we left the Corvin Cinema and made our way to Kossuth Square, where the Hungarian Parliament Building is located, the scene of a wild celebration. A gypsy band was playing national songs. People were dancing. They were cracking open bottles of champagne and passing them around.”
Lajos paused for a moment and closed his eyes. Elizabeth guessed he was recalling the scene.
He opened them again and continued, “We exchanged stories about the battles. We laughed and we cried for our dead comrades like Gabor. It was a miracle. We had defeated the Russian army. Ferenc and I got drunk that night. Close to dawn we staggered back to the Corvin Cinema, which had become our home in Budapest, and fell asleep on the floor.
“And then?” Elizabeth said.
“Those bastards . . .” Lajos cursed. “They do it every time. We were stupid not to realize it. That’s the one constant in Moscow’s military playbook.”
Elizabeth realized what was coming next. She listened while Lajos explained.
“Russia never enters into a cease-fire to arrive at a political solution. It’s always to rearm and reinforce their military, and to plan for the next round of fighting.”
Elizabeth nodded. “The events in Syria in 2016 certainly support what you’re saying. Two days after Secretary of State John Kerry entered into a cease-fire with Russia, they and their Syrian allies unleashed a horrendous bombardment on the unarmed civilians in Aleppo, even targeting hospitals.”
But Lajos looked like he was seeing something from the past. She sensed that he hadn’t even heard what she had said, that his mind was back in 1956.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “When I woke up around noon, I heard one of my comrades cry out. He had just heard reports that Russian troops and tanks were crossing the Soviet border from Ukraine. They had entered Hungary close to the Czechoslovak border and had occupied the towns in the east, which control the rail lines into Budapest. Many of the residents in these towns had no involvement in the revolution. They regarded it as an uprising of the intelligentsia in Budapest. Once we heard about the Russian troop movements, we knew the cease-fire was a ploy. As soon as they choked off Budapest, they would act against us with such a massive show of force that we would have no chance to resist.”
Lajos paused to take a breath. “In response to this dire news, someone else said that Chairman of the Council of Ministers Imre Nagy, who had replaced the Communist András Hegedüs on October 24, had sent a representative named Zoltan Toth to the United States. Gyorgy worked for Zoltan’s son, Peter, for many years. Did you know that?” Elizabeth nodded and Lajos continued, “Well anyhow, Zoltan was supposed to get help either from the US or the UN.”
“Did you believe he would succeed?” Elizabeth asked.
“Some of my colleagues were convinced the US would help us. After all, their Radio Free Europe and the CIA had been encouraging us to revolt and throw off the yoke of Soviet oppression for years. Even Ferenc thought the US would help, but I didn’t believe it. Not for a second.
“Growing up in Budapest I had a Jewish friend who told me how Catholic farmers in a small town in rural Hungary had hid his parents on their farm when the Nazis were rounding up Jews and sending them to the death camps. He said this was late in the war. The allies had control of the skies and could have bombed the railroad tracks leading to the death camps, but President Roosevelt refused to do that. As I recalled his story, I was certain that President Eisenhower wouldn’t lift a finger to help the Hungarian people, despite all of their urging for us to revolt, and despite the arguments of Zoltan Toth.”
“And you were right,” Elizabeth said sadly. “Unfortunately, in the last seventy-five years, the United States has often disappointed those who it promised to help.”
“Yes. Well, the Russians weren’t taking any chances,” Lajos continued. “They brought 150,000 troops, 2,500 modern tanks, and lots of bombers to provide air support. Early in the morning on Sunday, November 4, they began indiscriminately bombing and shelling practically every building in Budapest. They wreaked destruction even if they didn’t see freedom fighters and even if the buildings didn’t have military significance. It was cruel and barbaric, leveling block after block.”
“Were you in the Corvin Cinema at the time of the bombardment?”
He nodded. “From November 4 to November 6. Fortunately we were able to access a series of underground tunnels in which we could hide. My friend Ferenc began to become unglued mentally from the constant shelling. I tried to calm him down, but he snapped. He eluded me and ran out into the street, shooting wildly at Russian soldiers. He killed two before they mowed him down.”
“How did you survive?”
“When it was only six of us left, the commander told us it was hopeless and that we should try to escape individually. He said that way we’d have a better chance of surviving and being able to tell the story of what happened. I used the tunnels as far as I could. When I surfaced, I was next to the deserted barracks of a Hungarian army installation. I found a uniform in a closet, which I put on. Then I hotwired a military transport and headed toward the Austrian border. Driving through what was left of Budapest, I saw nothing but dead bodies and rubble. It was a horrific scene, with the stench of human flesh and death in the air. Limbs were severed from bodies, children, even babies. It was the ultimate example of man’s inhumanity to his own race.
“When I reached the Austrian border, I found a point at which the guards were letting refugees slip across in return for money. There were so many that in the confusion I managed to join in with a large group of several families. One of them was going from Austria to Italy. When I told one of the men, Tibor Esterhazy, I had fought at the Corvin Cinema, he regarded me as a hero and offered to take me to Italy with them. Tibor had owned a chemical company in Budapest, and he had a relationship with a company based in Torino. Once I told him I had been a student at the Technical University studying chemical engineering, he offered to pay for my education. I would treat it as a loan and work with him after I graduated. He was a wonderful man.”
Elizabeth took a sip of her wine before asking, “How long did you stay in Italy?”
“Until the Russians left Hungary in 1989. The following year, I persuaded my wife, Lucia, who was Ita
lian, and son, Gyorgy, to move to Budapest. So we returned here and began a new life.”
Gyorgy interjected, “I had gotten a degree in business from the University in Bologna and was working in Torino at the time. I wasn’t married, so I decided to move with my parents. I figured there would be opportunities when Hungary shifted from Communism to the free market. That proved to be true. I met Peter Toth a year after we arrived in Budapest, and he hired me. You know the rest.”
When Gyorgy went up front to pay the bill, Elizabeth thanked Lajos for providing such valuable information.
“We all suffered so much at the hands of the Russians,” he said. “Not only in 1956, but afterwards too. In Budapest on Andrássy Avenue is a museum called the House of Terror. You should go there if you have time. It will help you appreciate what happened at the time and what the secret police did to us. But the irony is that the Hungarian people fought so hard for our freedom in 1956, and now we have elected Szabo, this neofascist megalomaniac who’s on his way to converting our democracy into a dictatorship. He needs to be stopped.”
Rome and Paris
Giuseppe was waiting for Craig in his office when he arrived. Once Craig had walked through the door, Giuseppe called to his secretary for two double espressos.
“What happened to your blood pressure?” Craig asked.
“Ah, the hell with it,” Giuseppe grumbled. “If I can’t drink coffee and red wine, what’s the point of living?”
Craig laughed. “That’s how I feel.”
“Besides, dealing with you always elevates my blood pressure, regardless of what I drink.”
As they sat down at a conference table, Giuseppe said, “Tell me what happened with Moshe.”
Craig reported in detail on his dinner meeting with Moshe and Gideon. As Craig spoke, Giuseppe looked increasingly worried and heavy creases appeared on his forehead.
“We already have scores of terrorist groups operating in Europe,” he growled when Craig had finished. “We definitely do not need Chechen radicals as well.”
