Tom Avitabile - The Hammer of God

“I’m going to check on Peter,” Anna Remo said as she went into the other room and found her little two-year-old son curled up and shivering in his brown snowsuit and mittens. She plucked the child from the crib and felt under the blanket for his bottle. It had been warm milk when she put him to bed, but it was now partially frozen. She brought the little boy into their bed and held him close to her body for warmth under the covers.

Tony came back to bed swearing he was going to kill that wop of a landlord. Although he was Italian, Tony Remo selectively used the term whenever anybody, whose name ended in a vowel, acted like a criminal. As he lay there, a faint whistle started and grew progressively more sibilant. It was the air valve on the steam radiator; the whistling would stop when the unit was hot. It took twenty minutes but the warm silence commenced. Tony had won tonight’s war with the pipes. Maybe the old wop was listening. For Tony and his family, that was life in the Northeast Bronx in 1956.

Suddenly, it was the horror of 1939 all over again. Hungarians were being arrested and others were being beaten into submission. Like then, many congregated secretly in the basements and tunnels trying to find a way out. Tonight seven men — seven scientists, who escaped the Nazis by luck, were huddled in the basement of a church awaiting their savior. He was a freedom fighter during the last war and had made a name for himself. He was fearless, striking the enemy silently and then disappearing. Now that the heel of the Soviet boot was on top of them, Hungarians only whispered the legends about him.

The group of men had only the warm clothes on their backs and one small suitcase each. The Monsignor who ran the church was a member of the newly formed Underground Railroad that sprung up as the Russians took more and more prisoners. Not just laborers, but also the intelligentsia. Those people whose fertile minds alone posed a threat to the great irrationalism of the Soviet State. The aim of the apparatchik was a “re-education” campaign to convert these Hungarian national treasures into right-thinking communists. The last lesson, if all else failed, was a bullet to the brain.

“Where is he?” Dr. Brodenchy asked.

“He cannot very well take the tram, Doctor,” the Monsignor said. “He must make his way through alleys and back roads. They know his face.”

Brodenchy’s hand was shaking. Not in anticipation of the dangers that lay ahead, but in concern for his father and sisters who he would be leaving behind. Surely, the Russians would treat his father, an Imam, with the respect due a member of the clergy. Still, the worry mounted, but he could not get past the army, back to his hometown. He was caught here when the Russians came. They will be all right. They will be all right.

There were two knocks, then three, then one at the storm cellar door to the church’s basement — the pre-arranged signal for Kasiko Halman, the one who would shepherd them from the red menace. The men were surprised when they saw him. He was smaller and dirtier than his legend and the Kalashnikov machine gun that was slung around his torso, was held there by a frayed rope.

“How many?” Kasiko asked curtly.

“Seven.”

He spun and turned to the Priest. “You said six.”

“Err, it’s my fault,” Dr. Brodenchy said, stepping forward. “My brother was caught staying with us when the tanks came…. I promised our father.”

Kasiko walked up to Dr. Brodenchy, his cold stare frosting the doctor’s graying temples.

It was as if Kasiko peered into his soul, “You. You are Muslim?”

“Yes.” He tried not to flinch, doing the best an academician could in the face of this hired killer.

Kasiko continued his stare. Suddenly the doctor realized there was a new calculus at work here. He could almost hear Kasiko deciding if risking his life for a Muslim was worth it. The fear of being left behind welled up inside the older brother. His mouth went dry and swallowing was hard. He stuttered and mumbled, “My broth…brother was away in school but suddenly he came….”

“Fine.” Kasiko’s contemplative mood seemed to switch off like an electric light. “All of you give me all your money!”

“What? Why?” a tall member of the group asked.

“You can stay,” was Kasiko’s icy response that stabbed at the stunned scientist, who instantly became very compliant.

In single file, they exited the cellar of the church. A small relief to the Brodenchy brothers, who wouldn’t want to be caught dead in a crusader’s church. Under cover of a moonless night, they made their way through dangerous countryside that had been friendly and serene only a week before. To a man, they wore the same kind of sensible shoe, an Oxford style appropriate for the halls of science and academia but ill suited for the terrain they now traversed.

They had only walked twenty minutes from the church when a small Soviet patrol crossed their path. Kasiko didn’t hesitate or delay. He opened fire and killed all three Soviets before they knew what hit them. The seven gentle scientists were horrified as he then took out a knife and stabbed each one in the heart without wasting precious ammunition.

Kasiko felt their looks. He went over to one of the Cossacks and pulled a radio from his dead hands. “With this he would have had half the Russian Army here looking to skin you alive. It’s my job to keep you safe and get you out of here. That is the only thing you should judge of me. I am going. If you are behind me, then you will be free. If not, it’s your life.”

The brothers Brodenchy were stunned but the younger observed to himself, “Strength, decisiveness, no mercy is the key to survival.” The young scientist-in-training had just learned a lesson he would never forget.

Kasiko’s plan was to travel by night on the back roads and forests that the Russians did not yet control; the group would then rest at two farms over two nights before finally crossing into the Alps on the third night by railcar. Kasiko’s uncle, a railroad foreman, had pre-arranged their meeting at a watering station.

Kasiko had little discussion with the men entrusted to him; he didn’t want to be distracted. Every sense he had was tuned to danger. He could almost smell the Soviets on the wind if they were close.

Kasiko’s arms waved downward in big sweeping arcs as the seven men behind him silently lowered themselves to hug the ground. After a minute, the freedom fighter came to the center of them and whispered, “There are Hungarian Home Guards up over that ridge. Wait here.”

As he scampered off in silence, the last thing the men saw was Kasiko reach inside his jacket. They could only imagine what type of terrible knife he was about to dispatch the Home Guard with. Each avoided the other’s stare, no doubt feeling guilty that their presence meant the death of more men. A minute passed and they saw Kasiko waving them on from the top of the rise. No one wanted to go first. They all feared the gore and blood surely awaiting their eyes. One more emphatic wave from Kasiko got them moving. As they reached the rise, the first to go over looked back in shock to the six straggling behind. Soon those six came across the same scene.

Kasiko was dolling out bread and wine from the guard shack to the scientists with the help of the Home Guards. Each man took a bottle and two loaves of bread. When the guard shack was well behind them, Dr. Ensiling asked, “Were those men partisans?”

“No, Doctor, just open to being bribed. What did you think I needed your money for?” Kasiko moved up front to his lead position.

Dr. Ensiling breathed his first deep breath that evening. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort, this Kasiko.