Tom Smith: Secret speech

Somewhere in the sky above the apartment a faint whining noise climaxed in a high-pitched boom. A jet plane had flown overhead. Leo sat bolt upright. The room was dark. He stood, walking to the window. Raisa woke immediately, asking:

– What is it?

Before Leo could answer, explosions sounded out across the city, several in rapid sequence, in many locations. In an instant Raisa, Malysh, and Zoya were up, by his side, peering out the window. Addressing them, Leo said:

– They’re back.

There was panic in the adjacent rooms, footsteps on the roof, insurgents caught off guard, scrambling into position. Leo could see a tank on the street. Its turret pointed this way and that, before aiming directly at the rooftop snipers.

– Move away!

Shooing the others to the far side of the room, there was a split second of stillness, then an explosion. They were knocked off their feet, the roof collapsed, and the back wall fell away, beams tumbling down. Only a small portion of the room remained, closed by the sloping wreckage. Leo covered his face with the bottom of his shirt, struggling to breathe, checking on the others.

Raisa grabbed the remains of a smashed timber beam, battering at the door. Leo joined her, trying to break out. Malysh called out:

– This way!

There was a gap ripped through the base of the wall into the adjoining room. Flat on their stomachs, with the danger of the roof collapsing completely, they crawled through, tunneling out of the debris, reaching the corridor. There were no guards, no vory. The apartment was empty. Opening the door to the courtyard balcony, they saw occupants fleeing their homes, many huddled, unable to decide whether to brave the streets or whether they were safer staying where they were.

Malysh bolted back inside. Leo shouted:

– Malysh!

He returned, holding a belt of ammunition, grenades, and a gun. Raisa tried to disarm him, shaking her head:

– They’ll kill you.

– They’ll kill us anyway.

– I don’t want you to take them.

– If we’re going to get out of the city, we need them.

Raisa looked to Leo. He said:

– Give me the gun.

Malysh reluctantly handed it to him. A nearby explosion ended the debate:

– We don’t have much time.

Leo looked up at the dark sky. Hearing the drone of jet engines, he hurried them toward the stairs. There was no sign of any vory: he reasoned they must be fighting or they’d fled. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, moving through the terrified crowd, toward the passageway:

– Maxim!

Leo turned, looking up. Fraera was standing on the roof, machine gun in her arms. Trapped in the middle of the courtyard, they had no chance of reaching the passageway before she gunned them down. He called out:

– It’s over, Fraera! This was never a fight you could win!

– Maxim, I’ve already won!

– Look around you!

– I didn’t win it with a gun. I won it with this.

Around her neck was a camera.

– Panin was always going to use the full force of his army. I wanted him to. I want him to smash this city to rubble and fill it with dead citizens! I want the world to see the true nature of our country. No more secrets! No one is ever going to believe in the benevolence of our motherland again! That’s my revenge.

– Let us go.

– Maxim, you still don’t understand. I could’ve killed you a hundred times. Your life is more of a punishment than death. Go back to Moscow, the four of you, with a son wanted for murder, in love with a hate-filled daughter. Just try and be a family.

Leo separated from the group:

– Fraera, I am sorry for what I did to you.

– The truth is, Maxim… I was nothing until I hated you.

Leo turned around, facing the passageway, expecting a bullet in the back. No bullets were fired. At the exit onto the street he paused, looking back. Fraera was gone.

Inside the remains of an abandoned cafe with tablecloths wrapped around his hands to protect himself from the glass, Leo lay flat, waiting for the tanks to pass. He lifted his head, peering out of the broken window. There were three tanks, their turrets swiveling from side to side, examining the buildings-searching out targets. The Red Army was no longer deploying isolated units of clumsy, vulnerable T-34s. These were the larger, heavily armored T-54s. From what Leo had seen so far, the Soviet strategy had changed. Deployed in columns, they responded with disproportionate force-a single bullet would be answered with the destruction of the entire building. The tanks moved on only after the devastation was complete.

It had taken two hours to travel less than one kilometer, forced to seek refuge at almost every junction. Now, at dawn, they were no longer sheltered by darkness and their progress had slowed yet further, trapped in a city being systematically destroyed. Staying indoors was no longer any guarantee of safety. The tanks were equipped with armor-piercing shells that traveled three rooms deep before detonating in the very center of the house, causing the structure to collapse.

Witnessing the display of military might, Leo could only speculate as to whether the initial failure to regain control had been deliberate. Not only did it undercut the moderate position of restraint, it illustrated the ineffectiveness of the older armor, defeated by a mere mob. Now the latest hardware strutted on the streets of Budapest like a military propaganda reel. A Moscow audience could draw only one conclusion: plans to scale back the conventional army were flawed. More money was needed, not less, more weapons development-the strength of the Union depended upon it.

Out of the corner of his eye Leo saw a flicker of bright orange, startling among the gray stone rubble and gray morning light. Three young men across the street were readying Molotov cocktails. Leo tried to get their attention, waving at them. The homemade bombs wouldn’t work since the cooling units on the T-54s didn’t suffer from the same weakness as the T-34s. They were fighting an entirely different generation of weapons. Their crude devices were useless. One of the men saw him and, misunderstanding his wave, made a defiant fist.

The three men stood up, running at the rear tank-they threw the bombs, perfect shots, all three hitting their target, covering the rear of the T-54 with burning fuel. Flames soared. They fled, glancing over their shoulders, expecting an explosion that would never come. The fire roaring on the tank’s armor was irrelevant. The men increased their pace, running to shelter. Leo ducked. The tank turned and fired. The cafe shook, the remaining glass shards in the window fell to the ground, smashing all around. Dust and smoke rolled in through the window. Shielded by the cloud, Leo pulled back, coughing, crawling through the smashed crockery to the kitchen where Raisa, Zoya, and Malysh were crouched behind the steel units:

– The streets are impassable.

Pointing to the roof, Malysh remarked:

– What about the roofs? We can crawl across them.

Leo considered:

– If they see us, or hear us, they will still fire. Up there it will be much harder to escape. We’d be trapped.

Raisa remarked:

– We’re trapped down here.

On the top-floor landing there were two windows: one onto the main boulevard, the other onto a narrow back street, not large enough for a T-54. Leo opened the back window, studying the climb. There was no drainpipe, no foothold, no easy way of reaching the roof. Malysh tapped his leg:

– Let me look.

Leo allowed Malysh onto the ledge. Briefly assessing the gap, he jumped up, his legs dangling as he hung from the edge. Leo moved to support him, but he said: