by Neil Maresca
Horthy, however, was far too popular to assassinate, so Hitler let him stay as the titular head of the government under tight security and occasionally, he paraded Horthy around in public so the Hungarians could pretend that they were not an occupied nation. That is how, one day in April, 1944, he happened to be sitting in the back seat of an open touring car passing under the balcony of Count Milán Károlyi at 45 Andrássey Út.
But the Germans had erred. Horthy’s arrest had not stopped the secret negotiations because government officials were not conducting them—Milán Károlyi was. London had as many spies as Budapest, and what the Germans knew, the Russians knew. In fact, the Russians knew more than the Germans. They knew the details of the proposed pact and they knew that negotiations were being conducted through secret, back door channels. Stalin was furious. He had no intention of allowing Hungary to become an independent nation after the war. The negotiations had to be stopped. He turned to the NKVD.
Colonel Vasely Dunayevsky was the Kremlin’s top NKVD operative in Budapest. He happened to be standing across the street from 45 Andrássey Út when Hitler and Horthy drove by and he noticed Horthy’s brief, involuntary glance up to the balcony where Count Milán Károlyi, his wife Sasha, and his son, Lukas stood. And standing behind them, slightly to the side, he could just discern the dark-haired László Farkas.
Chapter 8
May, 1957
Landstuhl Army Medical Center
Frankfurt, Germany
“Tell me about your father.”
“Harold? He’s a good man.”
“No, I mean your biological father, the Count.”
When Lucas didn’t answer, Rosenfeld changed the subject.
“Does Harold know you are the titular Count Lucas Mihal Károlyi de NagyKárolyi ?”
“No,” Lukas chuckled. “It would come as a very great surprise.”
“How do you think he would react?”
“I think at first he would find it amusing, and then he would comfort mother on her loss—as I said he is a good man.”
“Do you feel badly that you have deceived him?”
“Actually, I do. But it was necessary. We have enemies.”
“Who are those enemies?”
“The communists.”
“The Nazis are not your enemies?”
“They were, but they are gone. The communists remain.”
Lucas stopped talking. Doctor Rosenfeld wrote in his notebook. The hospital room remained silent for some time before Lucas spoke again.
“My father was a very highly respected man, both for his intellect and for his character. The Károlyi family name was important in Hungary. Had he been alive to lead the October Revolution, I’m not sure that even Soviet tanks would have been sufficient to crush it.”
“You admired your father?”
“I respected and loved him.”
Rosenfeld had learned not to press Lucas. When directly questioned or challenged, he closed up. When left to his own thoughts, he gradually revealed himself. It took patience. Rosenfeld was bursting with questions, but he repressed them. “Self control” he thought to himself. “It is Lucas’ weapon against a hostile world, and I must learn it if I am to understand him.” So he waited for the seed he had planted to grow—waited and watched as a gentle spring rain fell on the streets outside the hospital.
When Lucas finally spoke, it startled the doctor who had almost dozed off.
“The Communists had good reasons to want my father dead. There was the question of the secret negotiations. Stalin couldn’t accept the idea of an Independent Hungary aligned with the Western powers. The hot war with Germany was still going on, but the Cold War had already begun.”
“You said reasons. What were the others.”
“Only one more I guess, but it was more than enough.”
“Please don’t make me beg, Lucas.”
Lucas smiled. He almost laughed. It was the first time Rosenfeld had seen the young man smile. “Progress,” he thought, but he said nothing.
‘My father—Count Mihal Károlyi de NagyKárolyi—was the closest thing to royalty still living in Hungary. Horthy was from a noble family, but he was an outsider. The Károlyi were related to the last Habsburg King, Charles IV. In that sense, my father posed the same threat to the Hungarian Communists in1944 as Czar Nicholas did to the Bolsheviks in 1918. He had to die—and all his family had to die with him.”
“You discovered his body.”
“No! Is that what the file says? I didn’t discover it. I was there!”
Chapter 9
May, 1944
The King’s Treasure
Budapest, Hungary
László Farkas hurried along the narrow, twisting alleys of the old city of Budapest, anxious to attend his meeting with Vasely Dunayevsky. Budapest was filled with exciting rumors—Germany was collapsing on every front, the Allies were advancing in Italy and preparing to invade France, the Russians were in Poland and advancing on Hungary. Dunayevsky, he thought, will have news. Perhaps it is time for us to do something to help our Comrades. Farkas longed to do something—to be somebody. He had seen his parents and grandparents spend their lives in service to the Count. They called it service, but to Farkas it always felt like slavery. Serfs, they were dependent on the Count for everything; they gave thanks to the Count for every morsel of bread they ate; they asked God to bless the Count and his family, but they asked for nothing for themselves, and the God to whom they prayed gave them nothing. They lived, died and were buried within fifty feet of the hovel in which they were born. László wanted more. A smart child, he learned the alphabet and how to read; he could do simple sums. He could be charming, and he soon caught the attention of the old Countess, Milán’s mother, when she made her rounds of the cottages at Christmas time, passing out baskets of bread and treats. She saw that László would be wasted on the farm and brought him into the manor house, cleaned him up and trained him in household service. At first this delighted him. He had escaped serfdom. He was clean, warm in winter and well fed. He was grateful to the Countess and loyal to her family. He rose quickly through the ranks, and soon was head man in the house. But after a time, with no more ladders to climb, his life grew stale, and he began to see that he had not escaped as he had thought, but only exchanged one form of slavery for another. When the old Countess passed, László buried his loyalty to the family along with her. He continued to serve—what else could he do? But he dreamed of a better life, one in which he would not have to wear Károlyi livery and bow to the Count. But that’s all it was, a dream—until he met Vasely Dunayevsky.
Of course László knew about Communism before he met Dunayevsky. He was eight years old when the Bolsheviks killed Tzar Nicholas and his entire family in a basement room in Yakaterinburg. The act sent shock waves throughout Europe. The Communist party was outlawed in most countries, and Communists, if caught, were rarely heard from again. László sympathized with their cause, but he was no idealist. He didn’t like his subservient position, that was true, but it was comfortable enough and he had no desire to exchange it for life as a hunted fugitive, so he avoided contact with known Communists.
He may not have been an idealist, but he was an opportunist. The world was changing—anyone could see that. The old aristocracy, weakened by two world wars, was crumbling. Communists were on the rise everywhere—especially in Eastern Europe. And László remembered well that when the Bolsheviks killed the Romanovs, they also killed all the servants that had gone into exile with them. He had no love for the Károlyi family and certainly had no plans to die alongside them when and if the time should come. He considered the servants, Alexei Trupp, Ivan Karitonov and the others who had continued to serve the Romanovs, and had paid for their loyalty with their lives. “Fools, stupid fools,” he thought, “To give your life for people who wouldn’t give two figs for yours. Did they think that the Tsar would take a bullet for them?” which is why he was so anxious to attend this meeting with Dunayevsky. With
the Communists coming so close to Budapest, he wanted to make sure he had friends on what he believed would be the winning side. “No sense sticking with losers,” he thought.
Getting to the meeting wasn’t easy. First he had to make up an excuse and almost beg to get the evening off. Then he had to make his way through the street, past the watchful eyes of the SS who were always on the lookout for Jews masquerading as ordinary citizens. When Hitler had ousted the Horthy government, he brought in Adolf Eichmann to oversee the process of ‘relocating’ the Jewish population. Hitler was furious that Horthy had not done enough, and so the pressure was on Eichmann and the SS to produce results. Consequently, more than 400,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in the first two months of Eichmann’s arrival. There were patrols on every street.
“Papers.” The word was spoken perfunctorily, without emotion, without a “please” —but then it was not a request.
László handed over his papers without comment and waited stoically while the soldier looked at them and then up at him, comparing the image on the paper with the man standing before him. Farkas wasn’t a Jewish name, so László should have had nothing to worry about, but the SS was under so much pressure to deport people that sometimes, to meet their quota, they grabbed anybody who happened to come along.
“Romanian?”
“Yes.”
At this time Romania was Germany’s ally. That would change, but for the time being it worked in László’s favor.
“Pass.”
The ritual was repeated several times during László’s journey. On one occasion, as he was being inspected, an apartment door burst open and a family of Jews—a man, a woman and a child of undetermined gender—were being rudely pushed and prodded to the curb where a truck was waiting. The family was piled into the truck, which was already crowded with Jews, and driven off. László watched without emotion while the German soldier watched him to gauge his reaction to the event unfolding in front of him. László showed no sympathy for the family. He didn’t like Jews, and he didn’t care what happened to them. He didn’t like the Germans very much either, but as far as he was concerned they could kill all the Jews they wanted to. Although he couldn’t understand why, with the Allies on the West and the Russians on the East, the Germans spent so much time and resources on the Jews, who, everybody knew, wouldn’t fight no matter what you did to them.
László’s path took him out of the bourgeois residential area of central Budapest into the industrial sector that bordered the Danube River. Here there were fewer German patrols. By tacit agreement, this sector was run by the Arrow Cross. His middle-class apparel, which had served him well in the center city, was a detriment here in an area populated by vagabonds, laborers and ruffians. He stuck to the shadows as he made his way through the dark, narrow lanes, avoiding eye contact on those occasions when he passed nervously by a group of dangerous-looking men. He was out of place here, an easy mark for petty thieves and thugs. A prostitute stepped out of a doorway and grabbed his arm, frightening him near to death. When he realized that he was only being solicited and not assaulted, he pushed her angrily away and increased his pace, more anxious than ever to keep his appointed rendezvous.
László Farkas was a bitter, angry man. He hated anybody who was better off than he was, but he looked down on those worse off. He liked sex, but despised women, craved wealth, but avoided work. He considered the clergy hypocrites and liars, feeding their claptrap promises of a better world after death to the peasants while they lived the good life here on Earth.
He made his way through a dark arcaded alleyway, and encountered a cold, blustery, wind rising off the Danube. He wrapped his scarf more tightly around his throat and hurried along the embankment until he came to a dilapidated wooden building whose windows caste a feeble light into the darkness. As he approached the run-down shack, he saw that it was a tavern. A sign above the door proclaimed it to be “The King’s Treasure.” More like ‘The Whore’s Pisspot,’ he thought. He tried to peer through the two small windows that fronted the street, but they were so grimy that he couldn’t make out anything more than a few shadows. He hesitated. This was not promising. He knew that Dunayevsky was a Communist and that the Communist party had been outlawed, but he had hoped for better than this. Like it or not, his life in the Count’s service had made him accustomed to better. He didn’t want to go down with the Károlyi ship when the revolution came, but neither did he want to jump into a leaky lifeboat. But, he reasoned, “I’ve come this far.” He slowly pushed the door open only to be greeted by the smell of sweat, stale beer and urine. He gagged and pulled his scarf up over his nose to try to stifle the stench.
He looked around. About a dozen men sat at tables in groups of two or three; a lone drinker slouched over the bar. All the men—with the exception of the man at the bar—looked up at Farkas as he entered, but quickly returned to their conversations. László walked up to the bar and ordered vodka.
“We have no vodka here,” was the curt reply.
“Where can I find vodka?” László asked, feeling foolish at this game of passwords and counter passwords.
“Are you willing to pay?” the bartender countered, while rubbing his thumb and middle finger together.
“In Ruples,” László replied.
“Come with me,” the bartender said.
László followed the bartender through the tavern, into a hallway. He didn’t notice that the slouching man followed. The bartender motioned toward the door and walked away. As László’ s eyes followed the bartender, he saw the slouching man, no longer slouching, but upright—and huge—blocking his exit.
“Go in,” the huge man said. “He’s waiting.”
Shaking with fear, László opened the door, afraid that he had been lured here to be killed, but he could think of no reason why Dunayevsky would want him dead. On the other hand, he knew there didn’t have to be a reason. There was a war going on—people died every day without reason. What was one death more?
Dunayevsky was seated behind a small wooden desk in the middle of a poorly lit room. When he saw Farkas standing in the doorway, he stood up, smiled broadly and waved him in.
“Come. Come. Don’t just stand there. Slava, stop scaring our guest. Get him a chair.”
Slava did as he was told. He fetched a chair and placed it in front of the desk. László, still wary, inched forward until he was across the desk from Dunayevsky who had remained standing while László was getting situated.
“Welcome Comrade Farkas,” Dunayevsky said, extending his hand to László who clasped it with both of his.
“Sit, Sit. Please be comfortable. You have nothing to fear here. Slava will stand guard outside and give us ample warning if the Arrow Cross pay us a visit.” He nodded and Slava left the room.
“You’re not afraid of the Gestapo?”
“No, not at all. They never come to this part of Budapest. The Arrow Cross is supposed to be in charge here, but they are a bunch of thugs—and stupid besides. Sometimes they come in and break a few chairs and bottles, steal some beer and go to some alleyway to drink it, but that’s about it. Usually, they take one look at Slava and leave.”
The room was stark. What little light there was fell from the side onto Dunayevsky’s face, highlighting his high cheekbones, thin, knife-like nose and deep-set serpent’s eyes. László had never seen a secret police interrogation room, but he had heard stories. That is what this room felt like, and, sitting there on a hard wooden chair looking across the desk at Vasely Dunayevsky’s skeletal face, he was frightened.
Dunayevsky opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk and slowly drew out a bottle. “Vodka?” he asked, offering the bottle to László. When he hesitated, Dunayevsky broke into laughter. “Go ahead,” he said. “Drink it, it won’t kill you.” And to prove his point, he pulled the Vodka back and took a long, deep drink. He offered the bottle once again to László, who this time drank, although not so deeply as Dunayevsky. László placed the bottle down on t
he table and watched as Dunayevsky opened the drawer beneath the one from which he had extracted the Vodka and pulled out a Walther P-38 and placed it on the desk in front of him. “Now,” Dunayevsky said, “This can kill you.”
László thought about running, but his legs wouldn’t move; besides, where would he run? Into the hallway where, he was sure, the huge Slava would be waiting for him? So he sat—and watched as Dunayevsky placed an empty clip and eight nine millimeter bullets on the desktop.
“What do you want, László Farkas? Dunayevsky asked as he carefully selected one bullet after another and inserted them into the clip.
“To live,” László replied.
“As a slave?” Dunayevsky said, and slammed the clip into the pistol, cocked it and turned it on Farkas.
“No, not as a slave.” László was sweating. Sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes, stinging, making him squint.
“But you are a slave. Look at you! You wear the Count’s clothes, eat the Count’s food, do the Count’s bidding!”
“What choice do I have!” he shouted, half-rising from his chair.
Dunayevsky turned the gun away from László’s head. “What do you see here?” he asked.
“A pistol—a German pistol.”
“This is not a pistol. This is the key to your new life. The question is: Do you have the courage to embrace it? He pushed the pistol across the desk so that it lay in front of Farkas, who stared at it, uncomprehending.
“Take it. Use it to buy your freedom.”
