I had to go after Boldiszar. I needed clarity, and now. I crept down the stairs, testing each piece of wood for signs of creaking before putting my weight down. My heart beat so loudly, it sounded like a giant plodding through my ears. Halfway down the stairs, a gruesome moan stopped my heart altogether. I froze. The sound of coughing—no, the sound of hacking, hacking and gagging—filled the basement. I had no clue where to go next, except down.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw a faint light sneaking out from beneath a door, revealing a grimy, cluttered basement. From the corner of the room, two eyes caught mine. They peered into me, but didn’t move. Was it the old man’s? Did something happen to him? I tiptoed over to him, carefully avoiding a chaos of bikes, china plates, and ripped fabric chairs. Instead, I found a deer head mounted to a slab of splintering wood. Its right antler had been hacked off, causing it to lean crookedly against an armoire. It fixed its glazed-over eyes on me, as if I was the empty nothingness of death.
A door started to creak open, sending my body into convulsions of fear and dread. I shuffled over to two shipping boxes and crouched behind them. I stared at the door, willing Boldiszar to walk confidently out. Instead, it opened just enough to reveal three men in Soviet uniforms huddled over something at their feet. One of them stepped to the side. There was a body on the floor. It was Boldiszar. Knees to his chest, eyes shut, hands cuffed, he rocked back and forth, and was he… bleeding?
I didn’t know what to do. We had been betrayed—that I knew—but by whom?
The soldiers started kicking Boldiszar. They rammed their boots into the boy’s knees and stomped on his shoulders. With every thud, my body rocked with a fresh spasm.
“Tell us where they are. Tell us,” one of the Soviets shouted at Boldiszar.
Boldiszar opened his mouth for a second, but instead of words, blood came out of it.
I needed help. I wished I had brought Antal with me—he would think of something. He had a way of distancing himself from chaotic situations, giving advice as if he was in a classroom or doctor’s office. But, wait; Antal was the one who told me about this specific meeting location. He handed me the phone to speak to Anya. He took that phone back. He mumbled something inaudibly to the person on the other line, who maybe wasn’t even Anya at all, because maybe it was Antal who betrayed us. I thought back to Antal repeating the word “czar” through the delirium of his injuries. It had to be Boldiszar’s name he was trying to say. Did I find Antal, beaten to pulp, right after he was tasked with this mission? Did they spring it on him? Or did he know for a long time? And, more importantly, how could he have done this to us?
“You bastard,” a soldier yelled at Boldiszar. “We will kill you. You think you deserve to be alive?”
Another soldier lit a cigarette and savored a long, first drag. He stooped down, holding the cigarette to Boldiszar’s lips. “Smoke your last little cigarette, boy.”
Boldiszar pursed his lips, refusing to part them.
“What? The commander doesn’t like to indulge?” the soldier laughed. He jammed the lit end of the cigarette into Boldiszar’s lips, sending a distinctive sizzle through the basement, and the faint smell of charred flesh.
Boldiszar’s face contorted. I wondered if I should try to save him, and how. I didn’t have a weapon. I could scream. Would it be loud enough for his friends to hear me outside? The old man reclined in a chair, watching the soldiers with total indifference. One of the soldiers went over to him, pulled out a wad of money, and placed it in his hand.
“Here’s your other half. Thanks for helping us out with him,” the soldier spat and shoved the old man out the door.
Some friend of Boldiszar’s, he was.
The soldier turned back to Boldiszar, pressing the sole of his boot on Boldiszar’s jaw. “You’re going to tell us everything we want to know. Who else are you working with? What are your plans? We know you know.”
The taller soldier lined up next to Boldiszar, swung his foot back and drove it into Boldiszar’s head.
Boldiszar moaned and curled deeper into his chest, “And what if I tell you nothing?”
Pointing a gun toward Boldiszar’s stomach, the taller soldier said, “You want the stomach, the neck, or the head? It’s your choice.”
Boldiszar’s eyes crossed each other as he looked at the barrel of the gun.
“I’ll never tell you.”
Shrinking behind the boxes, I pressed my cheek against their hard edges and wept in silence. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Antal created this situation, and so did I. Antal, the kindly old man who, despite spending eight hours a day working for the government, still had the energy and freedom to sneak out at night to help dissidents like me. He encouraged me to say the West was coming to our aid, and I fell for it. So intent on seeing my dreams come true, I ignored reality.
Laszlo was right. Antal didn’t have any real reason to work with us and undo the comfort of his life, unless he was, of course, working against us. And, if the Americans weren’t really coming, what would happen to the Freedom Fighters?
I wanted to asphyxiate myself with the guilt clamping down on my chest. I should have done something—scream, charge those soldiers, run upstairs for help—but my entire body turned to sludge. I tried to stand, but I couldn’t feel my bones. My mind failed to reason, my lungs wouldn’t breathe.
One of the soldiers peeled away from the group and walked toward the boxes. After delivering two more blows to Boldiszar, the others joined their comrade, standing above me. I tried to make my breathing shallow and scarce, willing my heart to slow too, terrified the soldiers would pick up on its frenetic drumming.
“Dmitry,” the shorter one said, “what should we do now?”
“If we kill him, our work here is done,” Dmitry said.
“But shouldn’t we get some information out of him first?” the third soldier chimed in. “If we find out where the other leaders are, we can kill them too.”
I felt a tiny drop of his spit land on the back of my neck.
“There’s no point, really. We don’t need to kill them to win. The tanks are going to roll in soon and obliterate all of them,” Dmitry said.
The soldiers started laughing.
“So what are we doing here then? Wasting our bullets on this loser?” the shorter one whined.
“If we don’t kill him, our commander will kill us.” Dmitry took out his gun. “I’ll take care of him. Go upstairs and watch his friends.”
Dmitry sighed and slunk back to where Boldiszar twisted on the floor. Towering over him, Dmitry aimed the gun at Boldiszar. Boldiszar uncurled his body, puffing out his chest and straightening his legs, despite his restraints. He looked up into Dmitry’s eyes.
I closed my eyes, and I covered my ears. I willed my brain to move faster. I tried to think. I tried to get my legs to carry me to Boldiszar or my voice to shout out and distract the soldier. I even opened my mouth to force out noise, but nothing came out. The only thing I heard was the screaming in my head—No. No. No.
I woke up, but I couldn’t see. I blinked. Black. I blinked again. Still, black. The smell of chalk and ashes rushed into my nose. My mind came back to me, but I wished it hadn’t. I realized I was smelling gunpowder, and I had passed out.
I had to find Boldiszar. I had to get help. I had to warn his friends outside, and Laszlo too. I felt cold and dizzy. I hoisted myself up and hobbled out of my hiding place. The blackness began to recede a little, like curtains drawing back on a still dark night. I saw dirty footprints on the floor, leading away from the room where they held Boldiszar. I traced them back to their origins, realizing they weren’t made of dirt, but blood. As I crept closer to the room, they got thicker and redder.