Tom Smith: The Secret Speech

Raisa doubted that Leo would accept that her disappearance was deliberate. Karoly might guess her true intention. Leo would deny it. That delay gave her a slim advantage. Karoly had provided them with a map of the city, marking his apartment in case they should get separated. She estimated her position to be somewhere near Stahly ut. She needed to travel directly south, keeping off the most obvious routes to the Corvin cinema where Zoya had been sighted.

Making slow progress, forced to keep her map hidden, she reached Ulloi ut. The district had seen intense fighting: there were spent tank shells scattered on the broken cobblestones. Despite the street’s size Raisa could see very few people, figures darting between doorways and then nothing — eerie stillness for such a key thoroughfare. Remaining close to the edge of the buildings, tentatively advancing, she scooped up a broken brick, ready to duck into a doorway or smash a window and climb through should she need to take cover. As her fingers handled the brick she noticed the underneath was wet. Perplexed, looking down, she saw the street was coated in some kind of slime.

Material had been carpeted across the width of the street. It was silk, rolls and rolls of precious silk. Yet it was soaked in a soapy lather. Bemused, Raisa tentatively stepped forward, her smooth-soled shoes slipping this way and that. Progress was only possible by keeping one hand on the wall. As though she’d tripped an alarm, shouting bellowed out from the windows above. There were people on both sides, in the windows, on the roof, heavily armed men and women. Hearing a rumbling, feeling the vibrations, Raisa turned. A tank pulled onto the street, it circled, surveying both directions before spinning toward her, pivoting on its tracks and accelerating. Everyone in the windows and on the roof disappeared, pulling back, out of sight. This was a trap. She was in the middle of it.

Raisa hurried across the wet silk, falling over, scrambling up and reaching the nearest shop. The door was locked. The tank was close behind. She swung the brick, smashed the window — large shards falling around her. She clambered inside just as the tank reached the beginning of the frothy silk. Raisa looked back, convinced the tank would ride across this unsophisticated obstacle with ease. But it immediately lurched to the side, no longer gripping, chomping up the slippery silk. There was no traction, no control. Looking up at the rooftop, Raisa saw the waiting forces amassing — a volley of Molotov cocktails crashed down around the tank, streaking it with fire. The tank angled its turret toward the tops of the building, firing a shell. Unable to control its position, the shell missed, racing into the sky.

Raisa hurried farther into the shop. The walls began to shake. She turned around. Through the smashed window she saw the tank veering toward her. She dived to the floor as the tank crashed into the shop front, the turret spiking through the ceiling above her, walls crumbling. The tank was wedged to a standstill.

In the smoke and dust, Raisa picked herself up, stumbling toward the back of the ruined shop, reaching the stairs only to hear the insurgents coming down from their rooftop positions. Caught between the tank and the descending force, she retreated behind the shop counter, drawing her own gun. With her eye level just above the counter, she saw a Soviet soldier open the tank’s hatch.

The insurgents arrived. Raisa caught sight of a machine gun carried by a young woman wearing a beret. The woman cocked her gun, raising it toward the Russian soldier, ready to fire. The young woman was Zoya.

Raisa stood up. Reacting to the movement, Zoya swung around, aiming the gun at her. Face-to-face after five months, surrounded by swirling brick dust and smoke, the machine gun sagged in Zoya’s hands as though it had become impossibly heavy. She stood dumb, mouth open. In the background the grimy-faced Russian soldier, perhaps no more than twenty years old, exploited the opportunity. He pointed his gun at Zoya. Reacting instinctively, Raisa aimed her TT-33, pulled the trigger, firing several shots; one hit to the young man’s head, flicking it back.

In disbelief at what she’d done, Raisa stared at the soldier’s body, her gun still pointing. Pulling herself together, aware that there was very little time, she looked back at Zoya. Stepping forward, she took hold of her daughter’s hands:

— Zoya, we have to go. Please, you trusted me before, trust me again.

There was conflict in Zoya’s expression. Raisa was pleased — there was something to work with. About to make her case, Raisa paused. Fraera had appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

Raisa pulled Zoya aside, taking aim. Caught unaware, Fraera didn’t defend herself. Raisa had a clear shot. She hesitated. In that moment she felt the barrel of a gun pressed against her back. Zoya was pointing the gun directly at her heart.

HAVING SPENT SEVERAL HOURS looking for Raisa, fearing that she might be hurt, Leo finally understood that she must have left him in order to find Zoya. She didn’t believe Zoya would come home with him. Running in an attempt to catch up with her, he arrived at the Corvin cinema, the place where Zoya had been sighted. The cinema was a defensible oval building set back from the street, connected by a pedestrian walkway that had been blocked off and fortified. A fighter approached. Karoly had been left far behind, unable to keep up. Without his translator, Leo was saved from questioning by the arrival of a Soviet T-34 tank, now in the insurgents’ hands, a Hungarian flag hanging from the turret. The fighters surrounded it, cheering. Pushing through the crowd, Leo raised the photograph of Zoya. After examining the photograph one man pointed down the boulevard.

Leo set off running again. The boulevard was empty. He stopped, bending down — the entire street was covered in ripped silk. Patches of the silk were burnt through, smoldering, while others were soaking wet. He saw where the captured tank had veered off the street and smashed into a shop front. The corpses of four Soviet soldiers were heaped on the ground. None of them was much older than twenty.

There was no one else around.

RAISA CLOSED HER EYES, concentrating on the noises in the surrounding rooms — people running, shouting, items being dragged, orders being barked in Russian and Hungarian. Injured men and women cried out in pain. One room was being used to carry out crude treatments for injuries sustained in the fighting; another served as a mess hall for Fraera’s band of insurgents — the smell of antiseptic mingling with the smells of cooking, fried meat and animal fat.

Escorted from the tank at gunpoint, Raisa had barely paid attention to where she was being led, focused entirely on Zoya as she’d marched ahead, striding like a soldier, gun over her shoulder — the gun that she’d just pointed at Raisa’s heart. Arriving at an apartment block set back from the street and accessed through a passageway, Raisa had been taken to the top floor, hustled into a small room that had been hastily stripped bare and improvised as a cell.

The walls began to shake. Heavy armor was passing close by. Raisa peered through the small window. There were skirmishes in the street below. Directly above her head was the sound of feet on tiles, snipers moving into position. Raisa crouched by the wall farthest from the window, exhausted, hands over her ears. She thought about Zoya. She thought about the young Soviet soldier she’d killed. Finally, she allowed herself to cry.

HEARING FOOTSTEPS OUTSIDE THE ROOM and a key in the lock, Raisa stood up. Fraera entered. Whereas before, in Moscow, she’d been unruffled and in control, she now appeared tired, strained by the pressures of her operation.