The Hungarian

by Victoria Dougherty

  “Do you hear me?” Gulyas shouted.

  Fedot did not hear him. He was swimming underwater toward the cavern wall, trying to stay just ahead of the current.

  The Hungarian removed his gun from beneath his soaked Persian dress. The white muslin had kept his weapon firm in its place as he fell into the cistern, even as he struggled. He raised the barrel and shot methodically into the water, following a path he suspected Fedot Titov was pursuing. Gulyas had been unsuccessful with the knife, but the little Russian wouldn’t escape so easily now that a firearm was back in his hand.

  “Russian . . . Russian . . . Russian . . . dead Russian,” he droned, shooting with grace and precision as he monitored any undue wrinkle in the water’s facade.

  At the cavern wall, Fedot’s mouth broke the surface and he took in a deep breath before submerging again. The Hungarian didn’t see him take his air, and Fedot floated freely underwater as he contemplated his options. A bullet had pierced his thigh muscle, making it difficult to swim, and his only defense against the Hungarian’s superior marksmanship was the pension owner’s dagger. Fedot felt along the wall of the cavern in search of a divot, but it was smooth and water-worn. He dug the tip of the dagger into the cavern wall, working with a fury until he was able to chip away a large enough piece and could fit his boot heel into the cranny.

  From there, he fortified his position and dove out of the water, throwing the dagger in Gulyas’s direction. It landed firmly in the Hungarian’s right buttock, and while not the mortal wound Fedot had hoped to inflict, it was enough to destabilize him, making Gulyas drop the gun and sending him falling directly into the strongest part of the current. He sailed across the water as if he were sliding downhill and headed straight for the hole.

  Fedot gripped the side of one of the enormous columns for a moment, gathering strength and managing his pain. That moment would cost him. The Hungarian seized hold of his hair as he glided by, slamming Fedot’s head into the column. Slippery as an eel and able to get out from under his grip and plunge underwater, Fedot grasped Beryx around the waist and began to squeeze. The Hungarian swore and flailed his arms. He worked his knee up to his belly, pushing and kicking Fedot until the little Russian finally released him from his clutches. Gulyas looked around quickly, but Fedot was nowhere in sight.

  Behind him, Gulyas heard a loud slurp, and he pivoted. The gaping hole looked as if it had just consumed a meal. Water rushed into it, and it occurred to Gulyas that the hole was the only place Fedot Titov could have possibly gone. Gulyas must have kicked him straight into the current, and, as the Hungarian had experienced for himself only moments before, it was nearly impossible to extract oneself from that powerful stream of water.

  Clinging to the slick base of the column, Beryx Gulyas rested. He squinted up into the darkness in hopes of spotting a way out, but there was nothing. His eyes followed the shadowy gargoyles to the damp walls of the cistern, but they, too, were a dead end, as smooth as polished stone, with no ledges for gripping and climbing back up to where the ceiling had once been.

  “Kurva,” he said under his breath.

  But in a deep corner of the cistern, he noticed something. There, in the near dark, seeming to glitter up the far wall, was what looked like a staircase. He couldn’t see the actual steps, but it appeared as if a light refractor of a sort—a jewel perhaps—was mounted onto each slab to make them visible to whoever’s job it had been to care for these ancient wells. Slowly, Gulyas started moving toward those jewels. He was tired and he hurt all over, but his most recent wound—the one from the dagger in his buttocks—was feeling better.

  “The dagger!” he snarled as his hand darted down to where it had plunged into him. It was gone. It couldn’t have fallen out—even in his scuffle with the little Russian. The dagger had sunk far too deep into his gluteus muscle. Gulyas swam faster from one column to the next, avoiding the current, until he reached the jeweled stairs at last. The dagger couldn’t have fallen out, he said again to himself. That damned little Russian must have pulled . . .

  Before the Hungarian could finish thinking through this revelation, Fedot jumped from one of the stair ledges onto Gulyas. Whirling together through the chilly water, the two struggled, inching ever closer to the ferocious current. The Hungarian was a dirty fighter—biting wherever he could, pinching Fedot’s scrotum, scratching at any vulnerable part like an irate woman. For once, Gulyas’s weight was on his side; his extra fat made him buoyant in the water. He pushed and pressed into Fedot, trying to shove him into the current, and for a moment it appeared he was having some success. But like in the Lavra, the little Russian always had a surprise for him. Just as it seemed that exhaustion might get the better of him, Fedot Titov’s arm broke free from the water, and he plunged the pension owner’s dagger hard into the muscle behind the Hungarian’s shoulder blade. It was a horrifically painful injury to inflict—purposeful. Beryx Gulyas froze immediately, a look of shock distorting his features. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t swim—he could only submit to drifting into the waiting current.

  Fedot watched him disappear into the underground river stream. His leg aching and his lungs fatigued, Fedot swam to the column for a brief respite. He knew there was little time for self-indulgence and allowed himself only the reprieve he would need for what he would have to do. Slowly he moved along the wall, parallel to the rushing stream. Finding his divot once again, he used it to steady himself and then push off, pitching his body fully into the current in pursuit of the Hungarian. He doubted he could catch him—and there was no telling where or if he would find a pathway to the surface. But if he did, Fedot knew there was only one place the Hungarian would go after failing in his mission. And Fedot intended to see him there.

  Chapter 64

  Curiosity was both the powerful engine of Rodki Semyonov’s greatest skill and the reason he was alone and those he had loved were long dead. Rodki was, at times, powerless against the murmur of its seductive voice—the one that asked, “What is going on here apart from your task?”

  It was a dangerous question. As dangerous to Rodki as leaving Moscow had been. That question alone admitted that there was a voice he listened to other than his master’s; there was a story other than the one Moscow told.

  He had known all of this before, of course, but there had never been any reason to pursue this knowledge. What would he have gained, except an unmarked grave somewhere in the earth where his wife lay, her remains forever frozen in a desperate attempt to take a breath? Even his love didn’t extend that far.

  Rodki’s first taste of freedom had led to his second, and as intriguing as those tastes had been, he didn’t wish to be led. Not by Moscow; not by his own impulses. After all, a detective’s powers of deduction lay primarily in his ability to impose logic over chaos. And the Great Detective would have been dead long ago if he had been listening all these years to the incessant chatter in his brain that narrated every set of circumstances in which he found himself. The one he had to manipulate at times in order to stay alive.

  So, as the Great Detective surveyed the remains of the dwelling—the approximate section that had housed the very room where he had tied Pasha Tarkhan to the bedpost before going in search of Lilia Tassos—it occurred to him that fate, in this instance, had done his work for him. It had imposed logic over chaos and left Rodki Semyonov to close yet another case as The Great Detective.

  “General Pushkin,” he would say. “I’m afraid it appears your former comrade has met his destiny.” However the General might choose to interpret that, it was true. Also true was the fact that General Pushkin would be relieved to have this ugly chapter closed.

  Lily lay comfortably, dreamlessly on a small cot. The room was plain and little, with space enough only for the cot and a weaving nook with a few pillows. A poster depicting Mowlana, in the Poet of Life’s Dance, was pasted to the ceiling, its edges curling and parts of its golden hue blackened from candle smoke.

  She awakened slowly—it must have taken
her a quarter of an hour—confused as to her surroundings and nursing a headache that rivaled her worst hangover. It took her a moment to remember everything that had happened—the broken-faced detective, Beryx Gulyas, the strong hand that had pulled her down and out of the ruined second floor foyer. Lily reached up to the back of her head and touched her injured skull. The lesion itself was less than an inch long and mended by several stitches. Someone had taken very good care of her. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. The pain in her head throbbed. Lily closed her eyes again and fell into dreamless sleep. But not before she saw his face—it must have been a hallucination. Mansoor Nassa. He’d tiptoed into the room and leaned over her. Smiling, he put a cool cloth on Lily’s head before pulling the light blanket up to her chin.

  “There’s no hurry, Miss Lily,” he said. “None at all.”

  Lily did not sleep for long this time. Perhaps a couple of hours. The blanket was still pulled to her chin—she must’ve hardly moved during her nap, a sure sign of total fatigue. Mental. Physical. Lily hadn’t noticed until then that she was naked. Her clothes—or rather, Barnaby Pearce’s son’s attire—had been neatly folded and sat on the cushion of the weaving nook just to her left.

  “Nassa,” Lily said. Had he been part of a dream, the way Ivanov had entered her dreams when she was being torured by Gulyas in the baker’s apartment?

  “Would you like some apple tea?”

  The voice came from the doorway, and Lily turned her head.

  “Yes, I know,” the poet said. “I’m supposed to be in heaven.”

  “Not according to your beliefs,” Lily said. She still wasn’t sure he was real.

  “Oh, I believe in heaven,” Nassa said.

  Lily breathed in deeply. The smell of fresh-baked dough—in preparation for the approaching dawn—hung in the air as thick as the sand and sediment outside. Lily knew it was of Goli’s making. He’d brought her with him. Loyal Goli who had devoted her life to her master. Only Jalal would be left behind in Tehran. He had grandchildren to attend to.

  “Smells heavenly, doesn’t it?” Nassa said. “There’s that word again. But it is apt, and I like to use the correct word.” Nassa sat down at the edge of Lily’s cot and replaced the cloth at her forehead with a fresh one.

  “Pearce and Chandler,” Lily said. “They told me you were dead.”

  Mansoor Nassa smiled. “I am dead. At least to them. Crushed beyond recognition. You know I would have been dead had I not died first.”

  Lily shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the poet said. “It was time for me to leave Tehran. My mother’s gone, and I have another calling. Just like you, I think.”

  Lily blinked and endeavored to stretch. She felt creaky and rusted. “Ivanov?” she said.

  Mansoor Nassa smiled and nodded.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

  “I don’t. Not personally. But I’ve known of him for a long time. And now I’ll join him.”

  Somehow Mansoor Nassa and Derevo did not seem like such an odd combination to Lily.

  “I’d written him many times—poems and letters,” Nassa told her. “And I knew that when you came to my door, Ivanov had finally sent for me.” Nassa put his finger to his throat and touched a Star of David necklace he was wearing. Lily had never noticed it before and wondered if it was new. Perhaps a reminder of the star that presided over his living room in his beautiful house.

  “So, from Persia to Russia,” Lily said.

  “I’ll go wherever I’m needed.”

  Lily understood what Nassa meant. His life in Tehran could have only ended in his death, and there was magnificence in starting over and leaving every old thing behind. It was the sort of predicament a true poet would welcome, she reckoned. Imaginers were restless, and deep thinkers didn’t attach so easily to positions and possessions.

  “Will you miss your rose garden?” she asked. Lily didn’t know why his roses mattered to her, but they did.

  “No,” he said. “I can plant roses anywhere, or summon my memory of them.” He said it, wanted to believe it, but it wasn’t entirely true. He would most certainly miss his roses. “Sleep more,” he said. “You look tired. And I won’t be leaving for hours.”

  With that, Nassa left her bedside and walked to the door.

  “Thank you,” Lily said.

  “For what?”

  Lily rubbed the back of her head, where her stitches protruded.

  “Oh, I didn’t do that. He did. I only made you tea.”

  “He?” Lily said.

  “You know who,” Nassa said. “He took such excellent care of you.”

  He let himself out of the room, allowing the tapestry to fall back over the doorway. Another foot soldier for Porphyri Ivanov’s motley band of subversives—a poet, a diplomat, a monk, the daughter of a murdered arms dealer.

  Lily did not want to sleep anymore, even if her body was demanding it. She sat up, slipping her bum off the cot and crawling warily to her pile of clothes. Her head still throbbing, she dressed piece by piece, until all that was left was the jacket. In a sudden panic, Lily yanked the jacket off the cushion and dug her hand into the interior pocket. The Sputnik microfilm was there no more, and in its place was a folded piece of white paper smudged with large tawny fingerprints. Lily opened the paper, her eyes sweeping over the tight, neat cursive. It was the first stanza of a poem called “Tristia” by the Russian Osip Mandelstam, who was Pasha’s second favorite poet next to some revolutionary who had shot himself:

  I have studied the Science of departures,in night’s sorrows, when a woman’s hair falls down.The oxen chew, there’s the waiting, pure,in the last hours of vigil in the town,and I reverence night’s ritual cock-crowing,when reddened eyes lift sorrow’s load and choose to stare at distance, and a woman’s crying is mingled with the singing of the Muse.

  It was written in Pasha’s handwriting.

  Lily pinched the paper between her fingers and stumbled to the porthole window above her cot. She tore open the shutters, not knowing quite what to expect. She had no idea how long she’d been in and out of consciousness or what she would see in the predawn haze. Outside, a preternatural stillness was descending over Kandovan. Lily watched the final churn of the dust storm as it blew down the street, leaving behind a thick layer of residue and opening the sky to a sunrise ready to burst with an array of desert oranges. She bowed her head, a ribbon of her black hair tumbling over her face, and let her eyes fill with tears.

  Chapter 65

  What is it you Russians say?” Sandmore Chandler said. “Without torture, no science. A hell of way to look at things if you ask me—even if there’s some truth to it.”

  Pasha Tarkhan wondered if perhaps what Chandler meant was that he preferred to acquire his science from those with the stomach for torture, rather than have to get his hands dirty.

  “Looks like they did quite a number on you,” Chandler remarked.

  They hadn’t, but Pasha was in no mood for explaining. Even the two bullets Rodki Semyonov had pumped into him were meant to impede rather than kill him. The knot the Great Detective had tied around his wrists had been decidedly loose, as well. Not too loose—your average detainee wouldn’t be able to unravel his overhand knot at all, but Pasha could, given a little time and morphine.

  “Takes forever to get a long-distance line out of here,” Chandler grumbled. He picked up his phone and dialed the operator in Tabriz again. Pasha was surprised there was a phone line in Kandovan at all, but then, in his dealings with him Chandler had always been a resourceful fellow.

  “Yes, yes, of course I’ll wait,” Chandler said. “As if I have a bloody choice.” Chandler had picked up the word “bloody” during a stint in London and it had stuck. It sounded strange to Pasha when said in an American accent—like a turn of phrase badly translated.

  The operator rang.

  “Mmm hmm,” Chandler said. “Yes, the seasonal vegetables are excellent here. I’ll be sure to bring some back.”
Chandler picked up a bronze statuette of Kali that he used as a paperweight. He rubbed a smudge off her cheek, then tossed her from hand to hand as he spoke, cradling the receiver between his chin and shoulder. “The figs are especially good this time of year.”

  Pasha Tarkhan knew what Chandler had really been telling whoever was on the other end of the line—Tony Geiger’s replacement, he supposed. Roughly translated, Chandler was confirming Pasha’s defection and underscoring its secrecy. Pasha had made it clear he had no intention of becoming a high-profile traitor and mere instrument of anti-Soviet propaganda. His knowledge and experience were far more valuable if he remained in the cold—his name changed, his identity manipulated. Besides, the Americans were well aware of how easily Pasha Tarkhan could make himself disappear—along with all of his priceless insights and information.

  “Okay, then. Ciao,” Chandler said, using another phrase he’d assumed—this time from a stint in Rome. He hung up and put Kali back onto his desk.

  “We’ll certainly have a lot to talk about with you, Mr. Tarkhan,” Chandler said. “Here, of course, and back in Washington.”

  “I’m quite eager to talk about anything,” Pasha told him. “Especially the microfilm of the Sputnik.”

  “Right, yes. Especially that.” Chandler patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “Quite a revelation, that.”

  “Quite,” Pasha said.

  “And the American girl—we’ll have to find her, too.”

  Not too soon, Pasha hoped. And not here. He needed some time and distance, and then one day it might be all right to see Lily again. He’d never left a woman too soon before. By the time his relationships were nearing their end, he was relieved to be extricating himself—often from a very complex set of circumstances. But he didn’t feel that way about Lily. In fact, he felt as if he could have gone on a long time with her—much longer than with his wife or even his most beloved mistresses. He and Lily were two of a kind, and Pasha hoped—at least from afar—that he would be able to watch her grow further into the woman he knew she would become.