by Derek Hansen
Tibor sat in the unlit offices of a leather goods factory which would have gone broke if he hadn’t been able to provide the owner with hides. The owner asked no questions and simply provided the keys when Tibor made his request. The office had an uninterrupted view over the old textile warehouse, the rail spur and the road approaches. Downstairs in the garage, Pal Szarbo and three henchmen armed with German machine pistols sat in a Zim awaiting instructions. Tibor’s driver waited in a second Zim.
Tibor stared out into the night, mentally reviewing arrangements. If everything went according to plan, Benke’s men would have him in Austria by the following morning, with a new identity and enough cash to start a new life. Milos and Gabriella also featured in his scheme: he planned to arrange their escape and transportation to whichever country took him in, once he’d set himself up in business. But even Tibor was reluctant to look that far ahead. There were too many hurdles to jump first, too many things to go wrong, and too many people knowing too many details.
Movement on the distant rail line caught his attention. He raised his German Zeiss military binoculars and counted the wagons as they passed beneath the lights at a road crossing. The train wasn’t his. Within the next ten minutes he expected to see his wagons pass by, pushed from behind by a shunting locomotive onto the rail spur and into the warehouse. He turned his attention to the front of the warehouse, checking the road for any signs of movement. Betrayal now could only mean that somebody in the railways had talked. He waited and watched, oblivious to the seeping cold in the unheated office.
He watched the roadway for eight minutes before alternating his attention between the road and the railway. Another five minutes passed with no movement in either place. He kept up his vigil as the minutes continued to tick past. His train was ten minutes late but that was no cause for alarm. The delay could be explained a dozen different ways. What was gratifying was the lack of activity on the road. The longer he watched the more certain he was that none of the railwaymen had been pressured by the AVO to betray him.
Twenty minutes after the scheduled arrival time, Tibor saw his wagons pass under the lights at the level crossing. They moved slowly, the underpowered shunting locomotive straining under the load. Right there was the reason for the delay. Tibor swung the focus of his binoculars back to the front of the building. Nothing moved. He rose, flicked on his torch and descended two flights of stairs to the garage. Because it had no windows, Tibor had allowed his men to keep the garage light on. Some were dozing and all were clearly bored. That would change.
‘All clear.’ He handed Pal Szarbo the address of the textile warehouse and two keys. ‘This key opens the gate. This opens the warehouse. Get there as quickly as you can and park the car inside. The railwaymen have instructions to uncouple twelve wagons and shunt them into the warehouse. The time this takes will allow Benke’s men to arrive. Don’t unload until they have counted and inspected the wagons. I’ll keep watch. If I turn the light on in the office upstairs, get away as fast as you can. Understand?’
Pal Szarbo extended his hand from the car window and gripped Tibor’s. ‘You should not go alone. Understand? My wife agrees.’
Tibor stared hard at his deputy before nodding. So Pal had also decided to cross the border. Tibor found it hard to argue with his decision.
‘Where?’
‘The hills.’
Tibor nodded. ‘The hills’ referred to a safe house in Pest where Tibor could contact him and let him know where they could meet once he’d reached Austria. He gave his deputy’s hand a final squeeze, binding the agreement. ‘I’ll turn the lights out and open the door. Go quickly my friend.’
The garage plunged instantly into darkness. Tibor used his torch to find the door and open it. The driver had the good sense not to use his headlights until the car was well away from the building. Tibor closed the door and switched the light back on. He turned to his driver.
‘A little patience.’
The man nodded.
Tibor raced back upstairs and again scanned the road in front of the warehouse. Nothing had changed. He swung around to check the progress of the train and was relieved to see its red rear light disappearing up the spur. As he watched the rear light blinked out. Someone was thinking. Tibor directed the binoculars back to the front of the factory and watched as Pal Szarbo’s car turned in through the metal gates. It stopped and one of the men opened the door to the warehouse. When the lights disappeared inside, Tibor swung the binoculars back to the road. There was no movement. Nothing. He picked up the office phone and dialled. Nyers, Benke’s deputy, answered immediately. Without identifying himself, Tibor passed on the address, listened while it was repeated back to him and hung up. He took his Luger out of his coat pocket, made sure it was loaded and put it down on the desk alongside his torch. He still had a long wait and it would be a lot more comfortable without the weight of the pistol in his pocket.
Tibor once again picked up the binoculars, not expecting to see anything until Benke’s men arrived. They would be directed straight into the warehouse and the doors closed behind them. Again, there was nothing to cause alarm. He put down the glasses and rubbed his eyes. After months of careful planning everything was falling into place. His pockets were filled with the hard currency he’d been cautiously buying as he liquidated his assets. The coal was ready to be unloaded and Benke’s men were standing by with payment, new papers and an escort across the border. For the first time in his life, Tibor was putting his fate in the hands of others. In that instant he understood why he’d never done it before and never would again. He smiled grimly. Surviving in Hungary had been difficult, but leaving was far and away the most dangerous thing he’d ever attempted.
Benke’s deputy wrote the address on a piece of paper and called his three squad leaders over. Each had ten men under his command. They’d all holed up to wait in a bar that Benke owned midway between the eastern and southern stations. It had seemed the ideal location to prepare the men for the operation: they could enjoy a glass or two of beer or plum brandy in warmth while they smoked their cigarettes and steeled their nerves. Each of the squad leaders read the address silently, forbidden to read it aloud. Even so, Nyers had thought hard about revealing the address at all, preferring just to tell his squad leaders to follow behind his car in their trucks. But even at the dead of night with few vehicles on the road, there was no guarantee that one of the trucks wouldn’t stall and become separated. There was a lot of coal to unload and Nyers wanted it done quickly. He didn’t want to take the risk of losing a squad of men before the operation began.
‘Everyone out now,’ he ordered.
‘A quick piss,’ said Gyorgy, one of the squad leaders. Everyone laughed. Gyorgy’s weak bladder was the source of endless jokes.
Tibor watched the convoy of trucks arrive and held his breath as they passed through into the warehouse. The back of the trucks were filled with either Benke’s men or gendarmes and only time would tell. He was too far away to hear gunfire but his man on the gate had flares and instructions to ignite them at the first sign of trouble. He waited another half an hour until he spotted a brief spill of light at the rear of the warehouse and movement on the rail line. The first twelve wagons had been unloaded and taken to a siding. Tibor picked up his torch and his binoculars and slid his Luger pistol back into his coat pocket. It was business as usual, even though there was nothing usual about this last transaction.
He directed his driver away from the road that led to the warehouse entrance and towards the rail line instead. Just before the level crossing he instructed him to turn onto a disused service road that ran parallel to the tracks and to switch off his lights. A wire fence and gate enclosed the road. Tibor told his driver to stop while he unlocked the gate. The night was colder than he expected and the wind had died away. The city would awake to frozen puddles and heavy frost. In the stillness he could hear the sounds he’d lived with all his childhood: wagons coupling and uncoupling and locomotives huffing and wh
eezing under load. Tibor opened the gate and allowed the car to pass through before pushing it closed. He bound the chain around the gate and gatepost but closed the padlock around a single link, giving the impression that the gate was locked. The Zim was more economical than powerful but would have no trouble pushing through the gate in an emergency.
‘Drive slowly, lights off. Turn left along the side of the rail spur.’
For once Tibor sat in the front passenger seat. The overcast had begun to break up but the moon was long gone. He thought his driver might need an extra pair of eyes to find the service road by the spur and he also wanted to check for anomalies. They found the spur road and turned. Sparks flashed in the darkness ahead of them as steel wheels scraped on damaged track. Seventy metres from the rail entrance to the warehouse Tibor ordered his driver to turn off towards a straggly, stunted stand of privet.
‘Turn the car around in case we need to leave in a hurry. Park among the privet. Use the machine pistol only as a last resort and make sure it isn’t me you point it at.’
The driver grunted as though insulted. He had been one of Tibor’s first hirings and his courage and loyalty had been tested many times. Tibor slipped away and stole into the warehouse under the cover of the arriving train. He climbed a ladder into what had been a signal box when train arrivals and departures were a regular event. The box gave him an uninterrupted view over both sides of the train and warehouse. His first glance was reassuring. Benke’s men were well drilled and working hard at bagging coal. Pal Szarbo was supervising the unloading. Not satisfied with appearances, Tibor quartered the building and diligently checked distance, middleground and foreground for evidence of a trap. He spotted Benke’s deputy, Nyers, at the far end of the warehouse urging his men on. Tibor noted that he was carrying a small sub-machine gun. Business as usual.
Above the rail line was a gantry once used to support the crane that lifted the heavy rolls of fabric off the wagons. The crane had been dismantled and shipped to Russia but the walkway alongside the gantry remained. Instead of descending from the signal box, Tibor climbed on up to the walkway. He couldn’t help grinning ruefully as he strode above the hardworking men bagging coal, none of whom had any inkling of his presence. The sound of his footsteps was lost amid the clang of their shovels and the hiss from the steam engine.
‘You know, you could hide an entire company of AVO men up here and no one would be any wiser.’
Nyers spun around to see where the voice had come from. Only belatedly did he think to look up. He wasn’t amused.
‘I was expecting you half an hour ago. I was beginning to think you’d double-crossed us.’
‘My Luger against your sub-machine gun? I don’t think so.’ Tibor climbed to one of the gantry’s supports and slipped quickly down the ladder onto the warehouse floor.
‘Nobody’s unloading the remaining two wagons,’ he said.
‘I’m going to bring them in and unload them in here,’ said Nyers. ‘What kept you?’
‘A man can’t be too careful. Now, you’ve counted the wagons, you’ve seen the coal. Payment and papers.’
‘You know where to rendezvous?’
‘Yes. Payment and papers.’
The front doors had just opened to allow a loaded truck to leave when the warehouse filled with bright white light. Tibor grabbed Nyers by the front of his coat.
‘Why?’ he demanded fiercely.
‘Damn you! Who did you tell?’ Nyers grabbed Tibor’s hand and jerked it away from his throat.
‘Pal Szarbo. He came straight here. I watched him.’
‘No one else?’
‘No.’
Nyers’ eyes narrowed and scanned the men racing onto the trucks.
‘Gyorgy! Here! Everybody else onto the trucks. Now!’ One of Nyers’ squad leaders came running up towards them. ‘Boss?’
‘You just took your last piss,’ said Nyers. He raised his gun and fired a short burst which cut the squad leader in half.
Nyers turned to Tibor. ‘The AVO must have got to him. He was the only one I let out of my sight. The deal is off. No payment, no papers. Go! We’ll keep the AVO occupied. I owe you that much.’
‘Tell Benke I’ll give him the railways anyway.’
Any further exchange was made impossible by a burst of gunfire from the guards posted outside. Hard-revving trucks added to the commotion. Tibor scaled the ladder back up to the gantry. When he reached the walkway he ran and didn’t look back. Had the AVO covered both entrances? Had they had the time? They were the only questions that mattered. In the few minutes it took to reach the end of the walkway, Benke’s men had fled the warehouse but he could hear the sounds of battle raging out front in the street. Had his luck held this one last time? He dropped as much as climbed down the ladder to the signal box, descended another few steps and jumped the rest. He ran towards the last wagon, dropped down, rolled and slipped under it.
The locomotive was still puffing but he assumed the driver and fireman had run off at the first gunshot. He scanned the darkness left and right but saw no movement and no lights except for a glow from the firebox in the locomotive’s cabin. That was wrong. Why had the fireman left the firebox door open so the heat could escape? Tibor’s heart was pounding so hard the sound of it seemed to resonate inside his head. He tried to calm down so he could think clearly. Maybe the fireman had been topping up the firebox when the AVO arrived. Maybe he’d just dropped his shovel and run. He pulled his Luger out of his coat pocket and eased himself out from under the wagon and began to angle away. The moment he glanced at the locomotive cabin he realised his mistake. The floor and steps of the cabin were splattered with blood. If the firebox door had been closed he never would have noticed.
‘Halt! Throw down your weapon and raise your hands!’
A torch split the darkness, searching for him. Tibor needed a miracle; almost immediately he received one. The AVO hadn’t had time to search the surroundings properly. They’d missed his car! He heard the engine of the Zim burst into life. Tibor didn’t hesitate. He dug in his toes and sprinted. The darkness ahead of him erupted as his driver provided him with covering fire. He heard a scream above the gunfire and the torch went out. He zig-zagged while bullets ricocheted off the ground around him and hummed past his ears. When he’d shown his driver where to park, seventy metres had seemed uncomfortably close to the warehouse but now it was a gulf, so much further than the bridge over the Bodrog or the mined bridge in the Carpathians.
When his driver stopped firing Tibor assumed the man was simply obeying instructions not to shoot him by mistake. The engine of the Zim revved furiously, impatiently. Tibor charged into the privets, elated that he’d actually made it, and reached for the door. Instead he slammed up against the side of the car as though kicked there by a horse. He couldn’t work out where the bullet had hit him, only that it had and that he had marginal control over his left arm and shoulder. He opened the door with his right hand and slumped into the passenger seat.
‘Drive!’ he yelled. But his driver was beyond hearing. The entire back of his head was missing and Tibor realised he was sitting in what remained of the poor man’s brains. He reached across, opened the driver’s door, put both feet against the man’s body and pushed. As the driver flopped out onto the ground, the engine note died down. The driver’s foot had been jammed on the accelerator. Tibor had only had two driving lessons in his life and on both occasions they’d been in fields when he’d gone to check on his sows. He stabbed his foot onto the clutch, slammed the gear shift into first and floored the accelerator. Keeping his numb left arm on the wheel, he released the handbrake and began to ease his foot off the clutch. The windscreen shattered. Tibor ducked reflexively and as he did his foot slid off the clutch and the motor stalled. Desperately he depressed the clutch and pushed the starter button, the ignition barely audible above the bullets clanging against the car’s body. It was a sound he’d heard before, following behind the Russian tanks.
He released th
e clutch and the Zim lurched forward. He slammed the car into second gear. The doors swung violently either side of him but he ignored them. The cold night air made his eyes water and he couldn’t pick out the service road. With little choice he turned on the headlights, glanced in the mirror and saw two other sets of headlights light up and begin moving. The numbness in his left arm and shoulder gave way to the most searing and intense pain he’d ever experienced. It hurt just to hold the wheel while he used his right hand to crash the gear lever through the gates into third. In the nick of time he saw the road branch right to run parallel with the main train line, cried out in pain as he hauled down on the steering wheel with his left arm. Immediately he was confronted by a single bright light ahead. His luck had finally deserted him: the AVO were behind and ahead of him. But when he looked again, he noticed something familiar about the light, something which at any other time would have registered immediately. It was a train light. Yes! There was a train on the rail line heading towards him. He pinned the accelerator to the floor with every ounce of strength, willing the straining engine to crank up a few more revolutions. The railways had always been a friend to him. Now, at this most desperate moment of his life, they offered hope of escape.
Tibor ignored his pain and stared as hard as he could into the night, trying to remember the exact distance between the gate and the road, the road and the level crossing. He checked the mirror. The AVO were closing on him, their cars more powerful and their drivers infinitely more competent. He checked the train light. Was it too close? Or too distant? How could he tell? He searched the road ahead for the gate, hoping with all his might that the AVO had left it open so he wouldn’t have to crash through it. He saw it suddenly, pushed to the side, but his relief was only temporary. Flame spat at him from both sides of the road. The AVO had posted men at the gate.
