[2017] The Hungarian

by Victoria Dougherty

  Swiftly, he pulled Matvei Feodorov’s robe over his head and threw it down. It was a cumbersome thing to wear with street clothes on underneath, and Gulyas needed to be able to move. Especially with the added burden of his blubbery middle. Damn his wife’s cousin and his scrumptious meals.

  The Hungarian heard a crackle outside the rectory door, like a match being struck. Seconds later, the smell of gunpowder and burning wood hit his nostrils. Gulyas leapt away from the door. He darted over the nature bed Ivanov had made for Pasha Tarkhan, rushed past the alcove where Matvei Feodorov used to leave two bowls of hot borscht with brown bread and dove into the icy tub before the entryway of the rectory exploded.

  He held his breath for what felt like eternity, and when his head finally broke the surface of the water, Gulyas found himself staring into the point of a Shashka sword. He wanted to raise his gun and shoot the Russian square between the eyes, but knew better than to move until the man instructed him to do so. Only his heaving chest defied Fedot as he endeavored to get his panting under control.

  Fedot ran the blade over the Hungarian’s nose and chin, then down his neck, stopping at his jugular.

  With a slow, deliberate movement, Gulyas inhaled a lungful of smoky air. Not only was the atmosphere gray and thick, but it was getting hot. “This place is going to blow,” he said.

  Fedot didn’t even stir, but Gulyas hadn’t expected him to. He was just trying to buy time.

  “You’re going to crawl out of that tub feet first,” Fedot told him. “With your hands and your gun flat against the bottom and your head under the water.”

  Gulyas nodded. “Whatever you say.”

  Fedot’s sword followed the Hungarian’s head beneath the surface, and he waited as the man snaked his legs over the side of the tub. He then straddled the Hungarian and plunged his hand into the ice water, gripping Gulyas by the hair and pulling him out. The gun was still in the Hungarian’s hand when he thunked to the floor, but Fedot took advantage of his disorientation and kicked the weapon out of his palm.

  “God weeps at your existence,” Fedot told him. “You do not please him.”

  He said this as if it was the worst possible insult—as if he were calling the Hungarian a child-fucker, a defiled sphincter, a carcass.

  The Russian began to chant—a monk’s chant, Gulyas surmised—a sort of prelude to what the Hungarian imagined would be his gruesome end. He had read somewhere that Shashka swords were particularly good for goring when handled by an adept master.

  “I want to die standing up,” the Hungarian said. But Fedot Titov wasn’t taking requests. He continued to chant, swaying his upper body as his voice rose in decibel, filling the chapel.

  Gulyas looked to the ground as the monk’s rapture intensified. He couldn’t bear to watch a grown man sing—especially one who meant to slice him from head to foot. It was embarrassing. His eyes settled upon a wooden square stamped with gold cursive that read Grand Hotel Wien. His mark, Pasha Tarkhan, must have stayed there recently. Or maybe it was the American woman. Travelers like Tarkhan, the woman, himself; they were always picking up boxes of matches wherever they went. Gulyas had a coil pot filled with them in the studio apartment he kept in Bucharest. And a waterlogged book from the Hotel Rude lay in his hip pocket.

  “The Hotel Rude,” Gulyas said. “That’s where I’ve seen you before.”

  It was an observation of little consequence, but to a man who is accustomed to hiding his identity, such a comment could put him off balance, make him engage, concoct a lie—I’ve never been to the Hotel Rude. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

  “You were the man at the front desk,” Gulyas continued. “I asked for coffee, and you said there was none today. Only tea.”

  The Russian would not be distracted. He finished his prayer and held the Shashka sword askew, an arm’s length away from the Hungarian’s neck. He didn’t have time to inflict on the assassin the death he deserved. Gulyas would die quickly, his head plunging to the bottom of a cold bathtub.

  “And I don’t like tea,” the Hungarian said. “And it was you in the bar, too, wasn’t it? You’re a lot different here, I have to say.”

  The hay from Pasha Tarkhan’s bed began to hiss as a plume of black smoke floated to the pointed ceiling. The chapel, a tinder box, had not fared well from the makeshift stick of dynamite Fedot had employed against Gulyas. A spray of sparks from the blast had ignited a series of incidental fires, and the woolen bedding on top of the hay began to fry and curl, like human hair. In a single poof that resembled a trick in an illusionist’s show, the fire doubled in size, engulfing the fresco of St. Sergius, blackening his tranquil face.

  Fedot cared about none of it, not even the chapel and its remaining treasures: ancient, battered, yet still amenable to restoration. What drew his eyes to the pyre was the simple crucifix fashioned by Ivanov from his favorite birch. The holy man’s creation lay engulfed in the flames, and Fedot could feel its agony as if he were the one burning. The pain tore through his spine—a lit fuse that then consumed the Russian’s brain stem. His eyes began to bulge and tear.

  Fedot could withstand all manner of physical torment, but spiritual anguish was more demanding. Right then, he didn’t know if he had the ability to kill the Hungarian successfully—to thrust the sword deep into his abdominal cavity or slice his head clean off. Ivanov’s handmade crucifix was all that mattered to him—a holy relic made by a holy man. A thing of purity. It was as if Ivanov himself was speaking to him through his birch branch crucifix, saying, “Don’t be hasty, his time will come.”

  Fedot, with a single, fluid motion, swept the Shashka through the fire, depositing the crucifix onto a pile of bricks. Instantly, his pain abated and he was able to stand and breathe with his usual grace. He wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his cassock.

  Gulyas took his opportunity. He dove for his gun, aimed it squarely at Fedot’s head and fired, but the Russian was uncommonly fast. He had anticipated the Hungarian and dropped to his knees, rolling behind the metal tub.

  “Like a jackrabbit,” the Hungarian chuckled.

  He was out of cartridges. Gulyas hadn’t planned on firing his gun so generously. Monks, in his imagination, were creatures of fear and docility. He certainly hadn’t anticipated an adversary that could match his own skills. Russia, it was proving, was filled with all manner of professionals. It was no wonder that the men who called on Nicolai Ceausescu from Moscow had never demanded that the Romanian turn over his most prized assassin to them, the way they insisted upon a national tithe of rye, sugar beets and wine grapes.

  The Hungarian went to the brick pile and picked up the wood branch crucifix. It wasn’t charred too badly, considering, and was the sort of thing his Aunt Zuzanna would have lying around the house. Not as a symbol of piety, but as a charm meant to deter werewolves.

  He tucked his gun into the back of his trousers and held the crucifix high over his head.

  “If you drop your Shashka into the basin, this may not have to find its way back to the fire.”

  The fire in and of itself was fast becoming a concern. It had spread from the nature bed to a wooden beam and was licking its way up to the rafters. The flames were blocking a gap the explosion had created at the entry, and the best way out was past the Russian. Gulyas, although his clothes were still soaking wet, was beginning to perspire.

  “I’m going to drop it,” he repeated. “Unless you get rid of the sword and let me by.”

  The Russian said nothing. Did nothing. He remained behind the metal bath—as still as a reptile.

  Gulyas could feel the air around him changing. It was dense, blistering, but it was also hollow, like the tip of a bullet. It wouldn’t take long for the entire chapel to combust. And the Hungarian had always hated fire. To be burned at the stake, the way heretics used to be, had to be the worst manner of death.

  “Get up!” he shouted. But still, there was nothing. He could see the little Russian man’s foot peeking out from behind
the metal basin. It was tilted to the side, and appeared relaxed, as if he had all the time in the world.

  Gulyas looked past the metal washtub to the only free path out of the chapel. He contemplated jumping over the tub and making his way out, but he knew the little man could cut him off at the knees in one stroke. His eyes were beginning to water uncontrollably, and each breath made his lungs feel as if they were being massaged with sandpaper. Through the wall of fire where Pasha Tarkhan’s bed had lain was a broken stained glass window with only a few jagged teeth left in its frame. It was a large window. A grown man could easily fit through by tucking his head.

  The Hungarian threw the crucifix into the fire and took a running start. He ran through the wall of fire and lunged headfirst into the broken window, slicing a perfect straight line over the skin that covered his spine. Upon landing in the grass, he rolled to put out whatever fire might have caught his clothes. There was none. His shirt and trousers, which had been sopping wet before he ran through the flames, were now nearly dry. His hair and eyebrows were singed, but otherwise, he had escaped with only the cut.

  Something white flew past him, and then another, and another. For a moment Gulyas thought they were doves or pigeons that had taken his cue and escaped the chapel. But as his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw they were not birds, but papers flying out of the chapel window. As he ran to the fortress wall, the Hungarian picked up as many of the papers as he could along the way. There, he rolled them, stuffed them into his pants and climbed to the top. He stopped briefly to look at the chapel before he jumped and saw the Russian. He was still inside, still unhurried, and was holding the wooden crucifix up above his head, aiming it at Beryx Gulyas as if to say, “You belong to me.”

  Chapter 30

  When Rodki Semyonov stepped off the train in Sergei Posad, his stomach fluttered. The soles of his shoes seemed to sink into the concrete platform, and for a moment he merely stood there, bathing in the sensation of other: the smell of tulips, spring grass, chicken feathers, scalded coffee; the feel of sunshine, unhindered by pollution and dense architecture.

  He had not left the perimeter of Moscow in nearly two decades, and now here he was only a few dozen miles away, and it felt like another continent. All of this for just a traitor.

  In the first years of his urban confinement, he had chaffed at his master’s paranoia and felt limited in his ability to solve the very cases the Soviet State had mandated. Stalin in particular took great pleasure in asking the impossible, all the while waving an executioner’s mask as the consequence of failure.

  For years Rodki spent his nights tossing this way and that, dreaming of his mother and his wife Polina in their shallow grave. A grave he believed he would one day share. In his dreams, he would be digging for them until he found Polina’s fine hand—its skin gray and nail beds a shadowy blue. Still, it was a beautiful hand, and Rodki would take it in his and bend down to kiss it. As his lips brushed each of her knuckles, Polina’s hand would start to come alive and grip his, pulling him down into the soil to be with her.

  Part of him wanted to go, but only a part.

  And as Rodki Semyonov continued to unravel puzzle after puzzle, as if playing a game of chess without the privilege of looking at the board, Stalin became downright enchanted. He treated Rodki as a pet, though not necessarily a pampered one. The Great Leader never wanted his Great Detective to lose his edge, as so many of his ministers had done. Even the most ruthless of those had begun to grow soft the moment they indulged themselves in the very luxuries that used to be reserved for aristocrats but were now the exclusive domain of the politicians and their enforcers.

  Over time, Rodki had convinced himself that there was no better place for him than Moscow. That if he ever left the Russian capital—even for the provinces—his late wife Polina would be gone from him forever, as would his mother and the last remnants of his former self. It was only when he let the Hungarian go—when he had ever so slightly loosened the reins and the assassin, with his badly broken face and pain in every joint of his body, used whatever strength he had to run—that it occurred to Rodki that perhaps this instinct was at the very heart of humanity. And that he, too, was still human. Polina, he felt, would understand. He was not leaving her memory, her slender silhouette of a ghost that sat most mornings at his kitchen table, sharing his coffee. He was doing what was natural for someone who was still alive.

  “Taxi?” a bored young man offered, but Rodki waved him away.

  He could have requested a driver in Moscow but refused, as the monastery was only a kilometer or so from the station. Rodki wanted to see the village and its people—the babushkas with their baskets of fresh eggs, local workers riding decades old bicycles. Things he used to see daily before moving to the big city for opportunity.

  “Zdravstvuyte,” he said to the monk who greeted him at the entrance to the Lavra. The monk was frightened of him and held his head down, averting his eyes as he led Rodki through the courtyard. Rodki wanted to tell him he had nothing to fear, but then he didn’t know for certain that was true. He never knew what Moscow had in mind, after all. He was merely a detective.

  A tall row of fire bushes bowed as the wind blew over them; the same gust of warm air rode through Rodki’s hair like fingers. It felt so good that Rodki forgot himself. He reached out to a birch tree, caressing its smooth, white bark, and shuffled along a pathway of small, pink rocks that looked like tourmaline.

  “By His mercies, we have been kept from complete destruction,” the monk murmured.

  With a trembling finger, the monk pointed out where the intruder had entered, explained his murderous route, its seemingly random pattern, and his eventual escape after blowing up a small chapel with gunpowder. At the place where the chapel had stood was a section of blackened ground framed by parts of the structure’s foundation.

  “Perhaps he was a fanatic,” the monk offered. “And, you know, hated the church.”

  “You mean a Satanist?” Rodki asked.

  The monk nodded.

  “Interesting theory.”

  The monk guided him into a small office behind the Baroque bell tower. Three other monks sat in attendance, hands folded, heads down.

  “You see, that is all we know,” his monk informed him. “I wish I could tell you more of this diabolical deed.”

  Rodki nodded. “May I go to the chapel? The one ruined in the fire?”

  The monk looked to his brothers then back to the Great Detective.

  “But it’s destroyed,” he said. “You saw it on our walk here.”

  Rodki looked behind the monk to an old map of the Lavra that hung against the wall behind him. “Surely there’s something left,” he said.

  The monk swallowed and shook his head. “We were busy, you see. Tending to our wounded and our dead. We couldn’t save it.”

  The Great Detective cast a side glance at the three monks seated in a row to his left. They were there as witnesses, ready to be questioned and ready to answer exactly as his monk had.

  “Brother . . . ?”

  “Albert.”

  “Brother Albert, there’s not even a brick, a splinter, a candle holder, nothing, nothing left of this ancient chapel?”

  The monk shook his head again.

  “I see. May I speak to Mr. Ivanov then, please?”

  The monk looked up from his hands, his eyes wide, mouth open.

  “Mr. Ivanov is not here anymore,” he mumbled.

  “He was given permission by Moscow to leave?”

  One of the seated monks stood, removing the hood of his cassock and revealing a thick head of well-groomed salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Ivanov left this morning for his village. To be with his wife.”

  This monk looked the Great Detective straight in the eye. His hands were at his sides, and his voice was measured and definitive.

  “Naturally, as a Soviet citizen he’s free to do whatever he wishes, but I’m curious as to how he would return to his village without sec
uring the proper papers?”

  “The Holy One needs no papers,” the monk said.

  The Great Detective removed a bag of tobacco from his pocket and rolled a cigarette. He offered it to the gray-headed monk first, then lit it after his decline.

  “How about the American girl? Doesn’t she need papers to travel Russia?”

  The gray monk looked him up and down, but not in order to assess his character, it seemed. No, to the Great Detective it looked as if this monk was deciding whether or not he should kill him right there.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  The Great Detective smiled.

  “It’s nothing. Believe me. Just a person of interest. Worth a try, though. Everything’s worth a try.”

  With that, the Great Detective uttered the usual pleasantries and started to let himself out. He turned back at the doorway and pointed his finger at the gray-haired monk.

  “I was wondering, Brother, when will you be returning to your home country?”

  The monk cocked his head and stood back, as if offended by the question.

  “You are from Greece, are you not? At least judging by your accent. I would say you haven’t lived there in some time, however. Nor have you been living in Russia.”

  The Great Detective took a deep drag off his cigarette and exhaled.

  “Your Russian is excellent, though. You truly have a gift for languages.”

  The Great Detective left the Lavra alone. There was nothing else he needed there.

  Chapter 31

  Bucharest, Romania

  Nicolai Ceausescu thumbed through the crinkled white pages—nineteen of them—that Beryx Gulyas had discovered in the Lavra. There were many pages missing, and they were out of order, but their meaning was unmistakable.

  “A spaceship. Do you think it’s true, or merely Russian bravado?” the Hungarian asked.