Irinyi went still. “One word. One simple word you could have delivered at the club.”
“Braintree insisted we be alone. At the club someone might overhear. Or be recorded.”
“Probably true.” Irinyi braced himself on the dresser and stood. “Time is short. As is trust. You must come with me as far as Budapest, little bird. Braintree tells you where to fly?”
“The British lie the same as the Russians, but in nicer suits. They have made a habit of abandoning Hungarians. Please, make them take me with you.”
Irinyi waved away the suggestion. He opened a closet, turned on its bare bulb and hefted out a suitcase. Age had robbed the devil of strength, the brandy of his balance. I would kill him with a lamp cord, a broken bottle, with my bare hands if necessary.
“Trust can be demonstrated,” I said, and where I placed his hand on my body left no doubt of my meaning.
“I prefer never to risk what Roma girls plan during such demonstrations. Flying to the West is no simple matter, little bird. We fly as the British say, no variation.”
“They will not take me without a confirmation word.”
“‘Echidna,’” he said. “Tell them ‘Echidna’ and they see that my bird flies.”
Irinyi opened his bag and shuffled through travel documents and stacks of American money. Tucked in the suitcase lid was a pistol, its aluminum polish catching the closet light. Aluminum meant a PA-63, its loaded magazine holding seven shots.
“How will we get clear of your men?”
Uncertainty flickered in his eyes, and he began rummaging through his case faster.
“Hit me.” I grabbed my dress at the collar and tore it open to expose my brassiere. “Hard. For us both it must look like I fought you. Otherwise, why leave now, unsatisfied? Just please, get me back to Budapest alive.”
Irinyi nodded. He swung a flabby hand at me, weak but catching my lip with his ring. I screamed and tumbled bawling across the bed. My skin burned where he struck me. I tasted blood, felt it dribble down my chin.
Heavy feet pounded up the wooden stairs. Irinyi spun toward the sound, preoccupied readying his story for the guard. He did not see me reach for the gun.
The callow man burst through the door and turned on the overhead light. “Comrade Deputy?”
“Little bitch likes to bite,” Irinyi said. “Take me to—”
I rolled off the bed and fired twice at the callow man. Both bullets hit the center of his chest. Any noise he made before dying did not carry over the ringing in my ears.
“Fool!” Irinyi said. “You have damned us! If all the hills did not hear, the guards will—”
I turned the gun toward Irinyi. “More likely they are already dead.”
The rage drained out of him. My devil rubbed his face while he collected his silver tongue. “The West pays far better than terrorists. Come with me. The British want me badly enough to grant anything. I can see you are more than comfortable.”
There never was much in me to charm. “The British can rot as they let us rot.”
Irinyi gave a resigned grimace and stood up tall, seeking more dignity in death than ever he had granted. “They do not stop hunting those who cross them. Hope they find you before my friends do. The British kill faster.”
“Not so fast as a Hungarian.”
I put three bullets into Irinyi. The first was for Csepel, a shot to his bald forehead. The last two I put in his heart, one for each of my parents.
I shut off all lights except the front room. Next I unlocked the doors and raised a shade one-third off the windowsill. From the woods a flashlight blinked its reply.
A minute later Margaret slipped inside the house. She inspected the pistol and wiped it over her coat. “Show me.”
Upstairs I let Margaret pace the bedroom and prod both dead men. She spat on Irinyi’s corpse.
“The saints make us their sparks,” Margaret said. “My Helena, brightest spark of all. One hour yet to reach the safe house. Flash the light twice and head for where I signaled. Braintree will be hard on you. Be just as hard.”
“Margaret—”
“Do not go stupid on me now. What did I ask when you first came to stay with me?”
“If I wanted to fight.”
“Then fight,” Margaret said. “Play out your part. Swear you left the Butcher alive. Spare the others Braintree comes for if he is not convinced. See he gets you out before the bear is awake. Go, and someday Saint Jerome leads my Helena back home.”
I waited until out of the cottage before crying, my tears mixing with the soft rain. Margaret deserved more than to see that from me. I was halfway to the tree line when she pulled the trigger and returned her spark to Hungary.
SIDE EFFECTS
BY T. JEFFERSON PARKER
We’re down in the bomb shelter alphabetizing the canned foods so we can find what we’re looking for during an invasion or nuclear attack. Not bitchen on Labor Day weekend. The shelter is a long rectangular room with fluorescent lights, a bathroom at one end and a sink and small stove/oven at the other. Surplus military cots, blankets, pillows, and flashlights everywhere you look. No windows because it’s underground. The ceiling is low, and the lights flicker and hum and make you squint. Mom and Dad have a small record player set up down here for Tijuana Brass, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Andy Williams. If we get bombed I’ll take in my Cream and Doors. Amazing, the music old people would want to hear during a nuclear attack.
We’ve already reviewed the Batteries/Drinking Water/Perishables Rotation Schedule, which is written out on graph paper in Dad’s perfect handwriting and tacked to the corkboard below the Radiation Exposure Do’s and Don’ts. The whole family is here—Dad, Mom, Max, Marie, and me. I’m Mike, sixteen and the oldest. I can’t wait to finish up the work so I can get to 15th Street in Newport Beach, where there’s a south swell and waves running three to five feet, glassy conditions, water temp of seventy. Of course Dad has other ideas.
“Take your time and do a good job here, troops,” he says. “Chicken noodle before clam chowder and so forth, right on down the line. When this is done we’ve got some reloading to do in the gun room. The forty-five brass is really piling up! Then, the rest of Saturday is yours. But remember we’ve got the chapter meeting here tonight.”
Again, not bitchen. Fully not. The meeting is the South Orange County California chapter of the John Birch Society. Which means monthly atrocity films about the World Communist Conspiracy, programs on how to detect drug use in young people, plenty of cocktails and cigarettes, moms in short skirts, and dads with skinny ties and flat-tops. Dullsville. Me and Max steal almost-finished drinks when the grown-ups lose track of them. Which is easy when the living room is dark so they can see the atrocity films. Piled bodies, executions, maimed survivors. The speakers all agree that these things will happen here in America if we let them take our guns away. Or negotiate with the Russians. Or if we let the government put fluoride in our water. Fine, but I’m a member of the Newport Beach Bodysurfing Association, and Newport’s three-to-five and I’ve got the keys to the Country Squire.
It’s more like six to eight feet by the time we get to 15th Street that afternoon, a blow-out, the waves just mountains of chop. Some of the other club members are there. We wear white water polo caps to distinguish us in the water from nonbodysurfers, whom we call “goons.” We meet once a month and talk about contests, techniques, and trips to other breaks. I catch a right and stay tucked up high in the pocket as long as I can hang there, trimming along, palms and swim fins vibrating on the wave, which catches up and breaks over me. I could stand in that cylinder it’s so big. It’s loud, too—a full-on roar. I’m blinded by the spray, the brine grinding away under my eyelids for my short, sweet ride. Then the usual bodysurfer’s exit—a lip-launched freefall. Gravity tilts me downward but I try to maintain my elevation. Like a falling jet. I’d scream but I’ll need the air. Soon. The wave drives me straight to the bottom, where I flatten, rake my fingers into the sand and hold what’s left of my breath while the wave thunders by above me. Fireflies in my eyes. Finally I shove off and wriggle upward, break the surface in the oddly smooth and spreading wake to gasp in sudden red sunlight. Fully bitchen. So bitchen I swim back out and do it again. Several times. Later Max gets a great ride but comes up under a jellyfish and when we’re riding home his face looks like a stewed tomato. Marie, who has worked hard on her tan, thinks it’s hilarious.