One Day In Budapest

by J. F. Penn

  She walked on through the gallery and Morgan followed, their footsteps echoing in the deserted space. The museum was a small collection of religious relics, mainly ritual items for the Shabbat. Morgan glanced into one case at an ornate silver Torah crown, placed on top of the scroll to symbolize its royalty and prestige. She paused to look in at the matching rimmonim, or decorative finials, that were etched with tiny pomegranates, reminiscent of the ruby fruit carved into the pillars of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. There were also a number of Kiddush cups, embossed with petals and tiny images of the tablets of the Law, used to drink the cup of wine on Shabbat.

  “They’re beautiful,” Morgan said to Anna, feeling a thrill of recognition at the objects, for they were similar to the items that her father had taught her about, reciting scripture as the nights drew in. He would throw his prayer shawl around his shoulders and draw her under it, so that she could settle into the crook of his arm as the Hebrew words thrummed inside her, resonating in his deep voice. She had watched him read from the Torah in the synagogue, using a similar yad to this one, the tiny hand with pointed finger tracing the words on the page so that the sacred text was never touched. She couldn’t help but smile at the memory.

  “That set was saved and kept hidden in the basement of one of the houses designated as Swedish territory in 1944,” Anna commented. Seeing the question in Morgan’s gaze, she explained further. “The Swedish diplomat and architect Raoul Wallenberg rescued tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews when he was Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest. He issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings he claimed as Swedish.”

  “Did he survive the war?” Morgan asked.

  Anna shook her head. “He was detained by the Soviets during the Siege of Budapest in 1945 and is thought to have died at the Moscow Lubyanka at the hands of the Secret Police. He is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, a non-Jew who gave everything for the persecuted Jewish people. We honor him here within the synagogue grounds with the Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial. I’ll show you once we’ve secured these items.”

  Morgan looked into another display case nearby, containing a silver breastplate decorated with birds, fruit and leaves in an ornate pattern. Worn by the High Priest in the Temple, it hung around the neck of the Torah, protecting the holy words. If only it could have protected Raoul and those who died during that time, Morgan thought, clutching tightly at the handle of the case she carried. It contained so little, but was still important as a symbol of restitution, and she knew that her father would be proud that she was part of this.

  “I’ve got a place for them here,” Anna called from further down the museum’s long hallway where she was putting on a pair of white gloves. Morgan rested the briefcase on a corner table nearby, finally unlocking the wrist-cuff and opening the case. Anna lifted the Torah carefully and laid it into the padded display case. Her eyes grew wider as she took out the painting and unrolled it, revealing a portrait of a young girl.

  “I just wanted to see it,” Anna whispered. “But I’m planning an official unveiling and a special exhibition about the Gold Train, so for now, they will just rest here, secure and safe, back where they belong.” Anna closed the case gently. “Thank you.” She turned and grasped Morgan’s hand. “Now let me give you a tour of the grounds. At least it will be quiet now the tourists have gone. Come Ilona.”

  The little girl skipped ahead of them as Morgan and Anna walked back out of the museum and along a covered stone walkway towards the back of the synagogue precinct. On their left was a garden, mature trees with graceful branches hanging down towards gravestones propped against rectangular bases.

  “Of course, it’s not customary to have graves within the grounds of a synagogue,” Anna explained. “But this area is a mass grave for over two thousand Jewish people who died from hunger and cold within the Ghetto. Perhaps they were lucky to die here, close to home, with those who loved them.” Anna continued in a soft voice. “My grandfather was sent to the camps and never seen again, along with so many other Hungarian Jews.”

  Morgan felt the overwhelming sadness of the place seep into her as they stood in silence for a moment. Where the massive numbers of dead in the concentration camps were difficult to visualize, this intimate graveyard brought home the reality of that time. The names of the dead were engraved in marble and she silently read some of them, the Hungarian pronunciation hard in her mouth, a long way from her father’s Spanish ancestry.

  The grave backed onto one of the roads at the side of the synagogue grounds and as Morgan and Anna stood there, a rattle and a shout interrupted them. A group of young men loitered outside, their hands on the bars protecting the synagogue’s land. A couple of others dragged metal pipes across the fencing, the hollow metallic clang a barely concealed threat, their eyes a challenge of violence.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Ilona, come now,” Anna said, stepping away and walking quickly into the shelter of the stone corridor, out of sight. But Morgan remained, watching the youths as they began chanting something in Hungarian, no doubt some kind of racial slur. She stepped closer to the bars, smiling at them.

  “What do you want here, boys?” she asked, her voice unthreatening, her posture open. They looked confused by her advance, obviously expecting her to be cowed and frightened by their threats. “Should I come out there and see if you want to play up close?”

  Perhaps they didn’t understand her words but Morgan knew they could sense that she was unafraid. She felt a rising outrage and a need to challenge their behavior. Although she wasn’t Hungarian, these were her people and this was her land, even though she had never been here before. She would fight, even in a country that wasn’t her own, because of the shared history of suffering. This group of boys probably didn’t even know what they were chanting about. They were merely repeating slogans heard at the football pitch, or spouted by their parents, racial slurs that were indoctrinated without thought.

  Morgan stood close to the fence. They could strike her from where they stood, but she felt strongly that they wouldn’t, that as yet their actions were just bravado. One of the boys looked at her, and she saw fear in his eyes, not of her, but of what the group might do. She tried to send him some strength, for it was individuals like him who could sometimes halt the violence of a group.

  The cacophony of a police siren broke the moment and the boys looked around, then scattered. Some turned and shouted back as they ran off, making obscene gestures as they disappeared down the street.

  “You have a way with these vandals,” a deep voice said, and Morgan turned to see a man in a tight brown leather jacket approaching her. He wasn’t tall, perhaps the same height as her, but he was stocky, and she recognized the power of a trained fighter packed into his taut muscles. Morgan sensed in him a reflection of her own tendency to favor action over retreat and she smiled in welcome.

  “I’m Morgan Sierra,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m here returning some of the artifacts from the Gold Train.”

  The man returned the smile, flashing white teeth, his jawline emphasized by a line of close-cropped facial hair. He wore a silver star of David as an earring in his left ear and his right cheek up towards his temple was scarred, a pitted surface of puckered flesh. Morgan had seen enough wounds in the Israeli Defense Force to know it was a grenade injury, and she wondered what his story was.

  “I’m Zoltan Fischer. You could call me a security consultant for the Jewish community.” Zoltan’s grip was just a second longer than was necessary, flirtation in his gaze.

  The sound of shouting and sirens suddenly intensified and drew their attention back to the entrance.

  “You’ve picked a hell of a day to visit. But come,” Zoltan said, “I’ll finish the tour with you and let Anna take Ilona inside.”

  Anna waved to Morgan and hurried with her little girl back towards the Museum. She was clearly grateful to retreat from the noise and stress of what could touch them out here, preferring to conserve the t
reasures of the past than face the potential conflict of the present. But that had been the attitude of the community back in the 1940s, Morgan thought, before the Nazis shut them into the Ghetto. She thought of recent news reports in Eastern Europe, the rise of right-wing parties fueled by anti-Semitic slander. There was even a poll in Austria showing that the Nazi party could be re-elected if the ban against it was lifted. Worrying times indeed, and while Israel focused on the threat from Muslim fundamentalists, it seemed that European Jews had as much to fear from their own countrymen.

  Zoltan led the way into a courtyard behind the main synagogue. A tree made of metal in the shape of a weeping willow shone silver in the sun, metallic leaves reflecting the light. Around the tree were small piles of stones, placed there in memory of the dead.

  “Each leaf on this tree is inscribed with a name,” Zoltan explained. “In remembrance of the Hungarian Jewish martyrs. This park is a memorial to all who died in the Shoah, the Holocaust.”

  “Are any of your family here?” Morgan asked. Zoltan’s eyes darkened and he reached forward to touch a leaf with gentle fingers, caressing the inscribed name. He nodded.

  “You can read some of their names on the plaque by the mass grave, and there are many more in the lists of those who died at the camps.” He turned back to her. “This will always be my fight, Morgan, but what about you? Why did you choose to return our memories to us?”

  Morgan closed her eyes for a second, but the light from the tree had seared the names of the victims onto her eyelids, and she opened them again to meet his intense gaze.

  “My father was Jewish and I was brought up in Israel. He was Sephardi, from Spain originally, and secular for much of my childhood, but he found his God later in life. I never converted, but when I defend Judaism, as I did in the Israeli Defense Force, I defend him and the right to exist and believe as he did.”

  Zoltan’s eyes were piercing. “So you are a warrior, then?”

  Morgan felt the pulsing of her blood against the scars on her body, sustained in fighting against evil. The demon in the bone chapel of Sedlec, the assassins that hunted the Ark of the Covenant, these were battles she would carry forever.

  “I thought I could be just a scholar,” she replied, “but it seems that I am still called to fight.”

  The chanting outside was growing louder and more cohesive now, increasing in volume as if the crowd had become a mob. The edge of the harsh words cut through the air, and even though Morgan didn’t understand the language, she could discern hatred and destruction in their tone.

  “Then I may need your help today,” Zoltan said quietly. “I fear that the rabble will bring violence before the truth of the Basilica murder is uncovered.”

  At that moment, two security guards ran into the square, shouting to Zoltan. He spun and conversed with them quickly, then beckoned for her to follow.

  “We are gathering everyone into the main synagogue building. The gates are barred and locked and we’ve called the police but I fear there will be bloodshed if any Jews are caught outside.”

  Morgan raced with Zoltan back towards the front of the building in the wake of the security guards. The noise of shouting became deafening as they reached the metal gates that only a little while earlier had opened to a line of interested tourists. Now a mob of around fifty people jeered and roared their anger, faces contorted by hate, shouting for revenge in the wake of the Basilica crimes, rattling the gates as they tried to force their way in.

  CHAPTER 3

  Zoltan pulled Morgan back against the wall as a glass bottle exploded on the ground in front of them.

  “Our community has been preparing for this day,” he said. “We knew it would come. We just need to get inside the synagogue and we’ll be safe there.”

  “What about the other people in this area?” Morgan asked, worried for the community.

  “They will have locked their doors and pulled down their shutters as soon as the news came out this morning,” Zoltan said. “Now we must run across the front to the entrance. Stay close to me.”

  Morgan smiled at his chivalry, and together they ran the few meters across the front of the synagogue. Bottles and cans were hurled over the fence, and the screaming of the crowd tore the air around them. Morgan could smell rubbish and the stink of feces as offensive projectiles burst on the ground. The doors of the synagogue opened as they approached and then shut firmly behind them. The shouting became a dull roar, but still, Morgan thought with a shudder, the sound of an angry mob intent on violence was enough to make even a veteran soldier afraid.

  Zoltan strode into the nave, where a small group of people huddled, some already swaying in prayer. He had a compelling air of authority, clearly ex-military, although he was younger than most of those present. While he gave instructions to those within, Morgan’s heart rate began to calm and she became more aware of her surroundings.

  The synagogue was immense and fashioned almost like a Christian basilica, with a mix of Byzantine and Gothic elements. Richly colored frescoes of geometric shapes were picked out in gold and red, dominating the ceiling, and tall arches framed the upper balconies. The Torah ark was surrounded by a towering white structure topped with a crown and, unusually for a synagogue, an organ continued the design upwards. It was a beautiful space, strangely decorative for a Jewish place of worship but, Morgan thought to herself, the people here had tried their best to fit in, even with their architecture.

  Morgan watched Zoltan as he organized the group, offering words of comfort along with his authority. One old woman sat to the side on a bench, her face expressionless, lips unmoving, staring into the distance. In the blankness of her eyes, Morgan saw that she had been through this experience before, that she was reliving some earlier terror.

  She caught Zoltan’s eye and moved to join him, speaking in a hushed tone so as not to alarm those present.

  “We have to get out of here,” she said. “We need to find the Holy Right and return it to the Basilica, because if this continues into the night, I fear for these people.”

  Zoltan’s eyes were hard. “And who are you, Morgan Sierra, to be of any use to me in this place?”

  Morgan met his gaze without flinching. “I know you must have a way out, and you need a partner who can operate in the field. You have to leave your security guards on duty here to protect these people and I can be useful, so put me to work.” She paused, laying her hand on his arm. “This is what I do, Zoltan. I find religious objects and I fight bad guys.”

  A glimmer of humor shone in his eyes. “And today, Budapest harbors these bad guys?”

  Morgan nodded. “Do you have weapons here?”

  Zoltan hesitated, looking back at the group. They were mainly academics and older people who volunteered at the synagogue. Morgan saw Anna comforting one woman, rocking her in her arms and stroking her hair as Ilona sat close by, eyes wide with fear.

  He shook his head slowly, and Morgan saw resignation in his eyes.

  “Follow me.”

  In one corner of the synagogue was an ornate screen. Zoltan stepped behind it and tapped into a keypad on the wall. The heavy door clicked and he pushed it open to reveal a smaller courtyard outside protected by high walls but still open to the sky. A large metal storage container loomed in the shadows.

  “This area is just outside the holy ground of the synagogue,” Zoltan explained. “But we keep the store close just in case.”

  He tapped in another code and pulled open the door, gesturing for Morgan to enter. There were several racks of guns, old but clean, and clearly well serviced. Morgan picked up a Glock 17 handgun.

  “Austrian,” Zoltan said. “Military issue.”

  “Thinking about it, I’m not sure that we should take weapons,” Morgan said. “We need to stay out of sight as much as possible. If we get stopped, carrying guns will get us arrested, which won’t help anyone here.”

  “Agreed,” Zoltan said, picking up a tire iron from a pile of tools, hefting its weight in his
hand. “This will have to do.” He put it into a backpack with a couple of torches and some other basic equipment. “Our only chance to stop a riot tonight is to find the Hand.” He picked up a protective vest. “But will you wear this, just in case? It’s a spare.”

  Morgan nodded, reaching for it. Zoltan stripped off his own jacket and shirt, revealing a trim, muscled torso clad in a tight, white t-shirt, a criss-cross of white scars emerging from his right sleeve and continuing down his arm. Morgan watched for a second, resisting the urge to touch him, before pulling off her own coat and sweater, feeling the tension in her muscles. It felt good to move, the adrenalin pulsing through her. She claimed to be an academic, but this life of action suited her. By his eyes on her toned body, it was clear Zoltan thought so too. Their eyes met, danger sparking an attraction, then Zoltan broke the gaze as he zipped up the small backpack and they stepped from the lock-up.

  “There’s a tunnel we can use to get out of here,” he said, re-entering the code to secure the container. “It emerges a few streets away in the basement of a bar where we have friends.”

  A wailing scream came from the main synagogue and Zoltan dashed back inside. Morgan followed after him to find that the old woman who had sat in catatonic silence had broken down in hysterical weeping.

  “We must go now,” Zoltan said, his face stony, fists clenched. “I will not allow my people to go through this again.”

  He led Morgan to a corridor that ran behind the aron ha-kodesh, the Holy Ark that held the Torah scrolls, and then into a small square room lined with books.

  “Now we go down,” Zoltan said, pulling aside a rug that concealed a trapdoor. He tugged it up revealing a dark and narrow hole. Morgan’s thoughts flashed to the mass grave outside, the bodies of those starved to death lowered into pits like this. Zoltan stepped down onto the ladder and then passed her up a head torch. “It’s not too far. My men have orders to bring the others this way if the synagogue wall is breached, but I fear that the elderly would struggle to escape down here.”