The Hungarian Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Acknowledgements

  The

  Hungarian

  Victoria

  Dougherty

  The Hungarian

  Text copyright ©2017 by Victoria Dougherty

  Cover design by Brianna Harden, www.briannaharden.com

  Typesetting by Chris Bell, Atthis Arts LLC, www.atthisarts.com

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  Published by Wilderness Press

  ISBN (paperback) 978-0-9974657-5-4

  (ebook) 978-0-9974657-6-1

  Visit the author at www.victoriadoughertybooks.com

  Also By Victoria Dougherty

  The Bone Church

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  BUT ONLY IF YOU LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS, BAD WOMEN AND GREAT WHISKEY…

  For Jack.

  “I trust no one. Not even myself.”

  —Joesph Stalin

  Spring, 1956

  Chapter 1

  The South Bohemian countryside, Czechoslovakia

  The ticketing agent’s heels squeaked across the linoleum, adding a tinny accompaniment to his poor whistling.

  “Lístky, tickets, Fahrkarte!” the man droned—a welcome interruption to his little symphony.

  Pasha Tarkhan slipped out of his first class compartment, intercepting the weary-eyed fellow.

  “Lístky,” Pasha said, producing two stiff cards from his breast pocket.

  The agent appeared a bit ruffled at first, shifting his feet and tugging on his shaggy walrus mustache. Pasha loomed over him—more than a head taller, dark and imposing, not the kind of man you’d want to meet alone. But the agent took the tickets, stamping and returning them to the Russian’s hand. Avoiding eye contact, he whistled a scarcely recognizable refrain to “Virgin and Whore,” an old Czech folk tune, then continued his stroll down the aisle. Pasha took up the song as well, concluding the last, weeping note as the ticketing agent disappeared into the next car.

  Pasha looked down at the tickets.

  They were neatly stamped with a round ČSSR insignia, and a delicate gray cigarette paper was implanted between them. Pasha ran his thumb along its seam. Peering out the aisle window, he caught a glimpse of an old, mustard-yellow farmhouse surrounded by fruit trees before it all went dark. The train had entered a tunnel, and the Russian closed his eyes, relishing the grinding rhythms beneath his feet.

  Pasha Tarkhan had loved trains since he took his first one from Tbilisi to Moscow when he was sixteen years old. It was a three-day trip that took him through Stalingrad, Tambov and Tula in the coveted window seat of a crowded compartment smelling of days-old perspiration and live roosters. As a boy who’d never been out of Josefov (population 222), he found every hour of his journey a delight—even sleeping with his cheek sucked against the window like a piece of calf’s liver. His sore neck and back were a small price to pay for the opportunity to go to school in Moscow and fulfill his socialist destiny.

  He took airplanes and luxury automobiles to most places now, but whenever circumstances permitted, he booked a seat on the rail. Pasha’s car and driver couldn’t provide him with the shuffling and hard-stepping of the locomotive wheels, the smells of spilled cognac and fine cigarettes that always permeated the first class cabins and, best of all, unspoiled views of the countryside that even the back roads couldn’t offer. Traveling through Czechoslovakia was a particular treat.

  The southern part of the country reminded him of his native Georgia, which he hadn’t seen in the almost twenty years since he’d left for Moscow. Not the people or the style of housing as much as the rolling hills speckled with wildflowers and curling rows of trees meandering in and out of the valleys like rivers. The climate was similar, too. The sun felt hotter in the southern Bohemian countryside than it did in Austria, only a few kilometers behind him. Hotter and brighter, like a Georgian summer. He remembered how dark his mother would get when she worked outside in the fields, tending to the sprouting grains.

  Poor Mama, he thought. She’d begged him to come home once more before she died, but he was living in Rome at the time and couldn’t get permission to return.

  To be honest, he hadn’t tried. His life had taken him so far away from his farmboy roots that he had no idea how to come home and explain to his parents and siblings what he’d become. He could’ve pretended, the way he did every day at work and at embassy functions with his comrades, but his family would’ve seen through him. His mother, especially, would have known that he was changed, and that realization would’ve put his life in danger. She would’ve rather seen her son in a gulag in Siberia than have hidden a Judas from Stalin’s ever-watchful eyes. Josef Stalin had been her hero, and socialism her religion. In the end, it had been better to let her die with the knowledge that her boy, Pasha, was a high-ranking and trusted member of her government, and that she and her family in Josefov would always get their flour, sugar and butter for free.

  Pasha opened his eyes as the train exited the tunnel and the countryside he’d been delighting in came to view once more. He turned his attention back to his tickets. Reaching into his trouser pocket, he retrieved a packet of fine tobacco—floral and earthen in its scent. He unfolded the little paper between his fingertips and sprinkled the tobacco onto it. As he began the delicate process of rolling his cigarette, he read the neat, black script printed on the gray paper’s edge: BICK 3:00 PM TOMORROW.

  Pasha ran his tongue over the black ink and finished rolling his smoke. He lit it, taking a deep drag and smiling at his memory of the comely Miss Bick and the safe house she would be offering him the next af
ternoon. She had tendered her bed in the past as well, but he wouldn’t be taking her up on that particular pleasure this visit. The information he would be passing was far too critical for him to don the casual air of an affair, and Pasha didn’t want to risk making her feel too at ease with the service she was providing. He would never want a helper to be jumpy and chance attracting attention, but then again, a woman in love could get sloppy, and Miss Bick had murmured that endearment into Pasha’s ear during their previous liaison. It was a fine line to walk and one he didn’t particularly revel in, despite Miss Bick’s generosity in tending to his more immediate needs.

  Miss Bick. He didn’t even know her first name, but she was the kind of woman who would’ve made a fine wife to a more conventional man. A doctor perhaps. Or a shopkeeper. If only she hadn’t decided to involve herself in matters of espionage.

  Pasha often wondered if he’d be a happier man if he’d taken a job on the farm where his father repaired tractors. If he’d gone to trade school and chosen the life of a mechanic—a problem solver—his dreams would’ve remained as simple as his youthful perceptions of Soviet life. He would’ve married a local girl, had local children and loved nothing better than the smell of manure baking in the summer sun. The farthest he would travel would be to the Black Sea, where he could rent a cottage for a few rubles and put his feet up. That, instead of going from city to city, meeting to meeting, party to party, drinking vodka and wine and eating rich food to excess, while everyone talked of politics.

  It was a shame Miss Bick couldn’t accompany him on some of his engagements. An architect—and a good one at that—she had fine tastes and refined interests. He’d found their post-coital conversations unexpectedly rich. Miss Bick, however, had a difficult time containing the iron streak of nationalism she’d inherited from her father, and that wouldn’t do. For a man in Pasha’s position, it was important to have a mistress who was either an overt Soviet sympathizer or simply too stupid to have any of her own opinions.

  “Oh, Pasha, are those poppies? I love fields of poppies.”

  Brandy France peeked her head into the aisle, summoning Pasha back to their compartment. Once there, she guided him down onto the bench and sat next to him, smoothing a crease in her yellow Chanel suit. She wore a matching hat with veil.

  To Pasha, Brandy looked like a canary bird, but a very pretty one. Thousands of the tiny, red flowers she was admiring were reflected in her eyes, swarming over the grassland, looking all the more vivid against the backdrop of her blue irises. They were a deeper red than even Brandy’s painted lips.

  “You’ve seen poppies before—they grow anywhere.”

  “But they’re better here, aren’t they? Poppies of the worker’s paradise,” she chirped, putting her head against Pasha’s massive, rounded shoulder.

  “Yes, the worker’s paradise,” he repeated.

  Pasha had met Brandy in Rome, where her husband was producing a romantic comedy starring a well-known American actor and an unknown Italian hopeful. For months she offered her crude espionage services to him—talking up politicians at political fundraisers—coming to Pasha with mostly useless bits of jargon that at first he let her blabber to any of his colleagues who would listen. It made him look good that he was able to enlist the enemy, regardless of the caliber of information.

  Only weeks after he was transferred to Vienna, Brandy and her husband, Buster, moved there for yet another film. At the time, he thought it was a coincidence.

  He was already growing tired of her and planning a graceful exit when she mentioned quite accidentally that her husband had taken to carrying a funny little metal card with the letter “t” engraved on it. A “good luck symbol,” he called it, a prop left over from one of his films. Brandy had followed him to a tiny church near Schedenplatz, where he’d visited a number of times—speaking in hushed tones with a Jesuit there and even donating money. A lot of it.

  She’d feared her Jewish husband wanted to convert, but Pasha knew better. In the lining of his suitcase he carried a similar card, only his was engraved with the Russian word for soul. Its meaning, however, was the same: subversive, spiritualist and, in Pasha’s case, traitor.

  From that moment on, Pasha couldn’t let Brandy go as he’d planned. Furthermore, he had to figure out a way to keep her mouth shut and her visibility low, until he could extract himself from the relationship without injuring her pride. Or injuring her, if it came to it.

  For that, he’d appealed to her overly developed sense of drama.

  “The Austrian Premier’s wife may have been using the word ‘stockings,’ but my dear, ‘stockings’ is the word Western spies commonly employ to mean weapons.”

  “Pasha!” Brandy had gasped. “I’ve heard so many of the ministers’ wives use the word ‘stockings’ in the ladies room.”

  Before long, she forgot all about her husband’s “conversion” and spent more and more time going to parties at the homes of government officials. It was to Pasha’s great relief when Buster France went back to Los Angeles, taking his wife with him. Brandy visited as often as she could, but for the most part she was out of his hair. He even missed her now and then, and her company on the Czechoslovakian leg of his trip would be just enough time spent with her.

  “Is it anything like Russia here?” Brandy leaned her head back against the cushion and sighed, humming one long note. “Russia. Even the word is beautiful. When will you take me there?”

  Pasha smiled and moved a platinum blonde curl away from Brandy’s eye with his finger.

  “I think Prague will be better attuned to your interests.”

  “Oh, my interests are political!” she insisted. “World events. Buster thinks it’s an obsession, really, but I’m worried that the whole planet’s coming apart. It’s all gotten quite out of hand, don’t you agree?”

  Pasha nodded.

  “I’ve been a lucky woman all of my life. I know I have, and I intend to pass on some of that luck to the less fortunate. We can all make a difference, Pasha. Here I am. Here you are. We’re making a difference just by talking about it. Not that I’m all talk. I’m action, too. But action begins with talk and talk begins with thought, thought begins with . . . well, I’m not sure what thought begins with, but it’s important.”

  Brandy lifted her hand to her lips and laughed at herself. She had a throaty, sophisticated laugh—practiced and summoned effortlessly.

  “In that case, I’ll have to take you to Moscow as soon as possible. Perhaps when my ex-wife brings our daughters to Leningrad.”

  Brandy hooked her arm through his elbow and held his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. Her husband, Buster, never listened to her the way Pasha did.

  “How much longer until we get to Praha?” Brandy stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes, yawning. She hated trains.

  “Darling, I told you: at least four more hours, and that’s without delays. We can be grateful we have no more borders to cross.”

  “It took so long at the border. Why did it take so long?”

  Brandy stood up and cracked the window, looking out onto a row of tiny steeples in the distance. The country air didn’t cool the compartment enough or ease her claustrophobia. Unbuttoning her jacket, she fanned her breasts with her lapels, finally getting some relief.

  “The Soviet Union takes security very seriously.”

  Pasha Tarkhan’s last word dropped off as he watched Brandy’s mother-of-pearl silk camisole ripple like water against her skin while she fanned. It was when she moved like this—unconscious and graceful—that he remembered why she’d attracted him.

  Pasha reached up and tiptoed his fingers over her collarbone, running them down the middle of her torso and onto her leg until reaching her knee. He slid his hand under the fabric of her skirt and up her slender thigh, pulling her down to him and kissing the curve of her ear.

  “Pasha, what if one of those men comes again? They just barge in whenever they want to—I’ve seen them.”

 
; He suckled her entire ear, slipping his fingers into her panties.

  “They know who I am and have no reason to bother us.”

  Brandy arched her back and ‘mmm’d’ like she did after taking her first spoonful of a chocolate mousse—her favorite dessert.

  “Are you sure?”

  Pasha helped her pull off her camisole and bent his enormous head down toward her breasts, kissing each one like he would the tops of his young daughters’ heads.

  “Positive.”

  She stood up and undid the back of her skirt, shimmying out of it and kicking it onto the seat opposite them, doing the same with her panties. That left her in only her garter belt, stockings and yellow, patent leather pumps—just how Pasha liked it. He kissed her breasts and belly, then lifted her effortlessly, as if she were merely a glass of champagne, and set her shapely derriere on the window ledge. Brandy loved the strength of his arms, his thrilling combination of brute force and gentility. Pasha slid down until his face was between her thighs, then knelt and let her wrap her legs around his neck.

  “Tell me more about what life is going to be like after you conquer the world.”

  “Oh, darling,” he said, trailing kisses up her inner thigh. “It’ll be beautiful.”

  Chapter 2

  Monemvasia, Greece

  The rosy sun skimmed the water, as if dipping its toe to test the temperature. The simple beauty of the sky made Lily smile. It was one of the few uncomplicated things in her life right now. The sun, the water, and Etor, the hotel gigolo, who sat beside her imparting his particular brand of wisdom.

  “A woman should never travel alone,” Etor chided. “Especially one of childbearing age.”

  Lily chuckled at how he could sound like a prim schoolmaster, all the while sporting a most fashionable pair of chartreuse swimming trunks that left little to the imagination. She tossed her head back, enjoying the tickle of a lone droplet of sweat that rushed down from her neck and into her cleavage.

  “I’m not alone,” she teased. “I have you.”