From Budapest With Love

Will Magda make it past the Nazis, from Hungary to Portugal, with her precious information?

Garrido’s guest list to the names of the people they arrested and found one name missing.

At the safe house I moved quickly, changing into sturdier attire, hiding money and valuables in the seams of my skirt as the refugees did, tucking my real papers (including the Portuguese visa that Sampaio Garrido had insisted upon) into my knickers.

The usual escape routes were south and west, through Yugoslavia to the coast, but these were now compromised. Each week brought news of friends, rounded up and sent east on a cattle train. I couldn’t use that route… but there was another.

I packed a small case and forced myself to sleep for a few hours. exhausted sigh I understood all too well.

I stayed in the crowd of departing travellers as long as I could before moving into an area that had seen heavy bombing, looking for a house that seen better days – even before the war.

A man answered my knock, his canny eyes narrowing.

“Let me in, Sándor. It’s me.”

He pulled me inside, closing the door and leaned his back against it. Stillmuscular arms crossed over his chest.

“Magda Király. What the devil are you doing here?”

I put down the case, and crossed my own arms, meeting his gaze. He wasn’t the most reliable, certainly not the most upstanding, person I knew, but I didn’t need upstanding right now. I needed someone to forge me a set of German documents. If Sándor Bauer wasn’t the shiniest apple on the family tree, he was still family. And the best forger I knew. “I needed to get out of Budapest.” He blinked and lifted one bushy eyebrow. “And you thought to have a pleasant summer in safe Vienna?”

“There’s no need for sarcasm. If you can’t help me, I’ll find someone else to.”

Black eyes assessed me for a few moments. Finally, his mouth pursed, signalling a decision made.

“Yes, I’ll help you – but I’ll need you to help me too.”

There was always a quid pro quo with Sándor. “What do you want?”

His head tilted from side to side. Wordlessly, he led me through to a filthy kitchen and poured a shot of liquid into two glasses. He handed one to me and sat on a wobbly chair.

“Don’t worry. It’s not that bad.” Whenever Sándor told me not to worry, I worried.

“I have a friend,” he continued. “This friend can’t travel by himself, and you, you shouldn’t be. Seems sensible for you two to travel together, doesn’t it?”

The herbal liquor was poor substitute for unicum. I ignored the burning in my throat and gestured for him to hurry up.

on the map, his black eyes locked on mine. “You separate here. Silke, you will go to the first café you find walking west from the Cathedral. Ask for Thierry; he will take you the next leg of the journey.” “And Tomas?”

Sándor and Tomas exchanged a glance. “Tomas knows what he needs to do.” Their tone was clear: itisn’tyour affairandbestyoudon’tknowdetails.

At first Tomas was polite, if taciturn. Professional yet driven. Handsome, but remote. On the second day, I pointed out that couples travelling together didn’t treat each other like strangers, and things changed.

He didn’t quite open up, but he allowed me glimpses into his life. Beloved family killed in a raid, friends sent east “to work”, the dog he had rescued, shot because he’d growled at an SS officer.

He hadn’t allowed his tragedies to define him and a dry sense of humour emerged, making me laugh, making me want to be the one to make him laugh.

Every day brought a new challenge, which we faced together. Covering for each other, and protecting each other. Acceptance became respect. Respect became affection, and the fiction of our romance soon became reality.

Despite this, my terror grew. Not about the bombings, or the ever-present threat of the SS. But of losing him in Caen.

He changed as we approached Frankfurt, became in turns more remote and more affectionate. It maddened me, and despite feeling a rising doom, I was compelled to force a brighter, happier version of myself.

On that last night in Frankfurt, he sat by a lamp, cleaning his pistol, more silent than usual. Slowly he folded the rag and put it on the table, the gun on top of it. “Silke.”

I knew what was coming.

“Don’t say it.”

“Silke.”

“It’s not Caen. We still have time!” He sighed. “Silke, we don’t.” One warm hand cupped my face, and then his lips touched mine.

“No,” I whimpered, knowing my protest was in vain. We wouldn’t separate in Caen; we would separate here. In Frankfurt.

“You knew I had a job to do.” Eyes soft, he brushed away the tear that traced down my cheek. “You know the way to Caen. You’ll get there, and you’ll get to Portugal.”

I couldn’t speak through the knot

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in my throat. Felt his arms surround me. “When this is over, Silke, I’ll come to Lisbon. I’ll find you there,” he whispered.

There was a desperate tinge to his lovemaking that night, and when I woke in the morning, he was gone.

Ifollowed Sándor’s instructions, destroying evidence of Silke Kellen, and refused to look back.

News of the senior Nazi shot by a German officer rippled through the streets as I boarded a train for France. I almost turned around, but there was no way of connecting that officer to Tomas, and even if it was him, he would be in hiding. We had a plan, and I had to trust him to stick to his side of it. That he would evade capture and find me after the war.

I disembarked the train in Caen but the nearest café to the cathedral was rubble. As was the one after that. In front of the third, I was surrounded by a pack of SS thugs, firing questions from every angle. Despair lent me a sense of calm. “There’s no need for this.” I handed them my papers, hoping they wouldn’t recognise the name. “I have a safe conduct and a visa for Portugal.”

The circle tightened; a wall of black uniforms pressing close. I stared at each face. Blue eyes, brown eyes, a spot, a wart.

Was this how it ended? After everything, I would die here, in France, beaten to death?

No. I had to get to Portugal, which meant I would have to get through this.

Help unexpectedly arrived from a pair of pampered Frauen.

“We are not animals,” one said. “We do not treat women – anyone – like this.” She pushed her way through the circle, as the taller one pulled me out of it.

I wanted to thank her, but they weren’t the words that came out. “Why have you done this for me?” She gave me a sad smile. “Because you remind me of someone.” I sensed she wouldn’t tell me who.

“Did I hear you tell the… them that you had a visa for Portugal?” she asked. I nodded.

“Good. Well, if you make it there, you must go to the Pastelaria Suíça on Rossio Square in Lisbon. And if you find the ugliest man there, scarred, burned and battered, give him my regards.”

She took me to a dressmaker’s shop, and ordered them to make me a new skirt and blouse – on her account. I didn’t know how a pampered German wife would have known about this shop, much less that the dressmakers were connected to the Resistance, but within days, garbed in clean clothing, I was again en route to Lisbon; passed from person to person, through France and Spain to Portugal.

Iemerged from Rossio train station in Lisbon into the hot summer sun and followed a sea of refugees a short distance to a large rectangular piazza that bore the same name. Black-andwhite tiles were arranged in a wave pattern around a statue, making me feel