ARKANE Thrillers Books 4-6

Chapter 2

2

“Ilona, come now,” Anna said, stepping away and walking quickly into the shelter of the stone corridor, out of sight.

But Morgan remained, watching the youths as they began chanting something in Hungarian, no doubt some kind of racial slur. She stepped closer to the bars, smiling at them.

“What do you want here, boys?” she asked, her voice unthreatening, her posture open. They looked confused by her advance, obviously expecting her to be cowed and frightened by their threats. “Should I come out there and see if you want to play up close?”

Perhaps they didn’t understand her words but Morgan knew they could sense that she was unafraid.

She felt a rising outrage and a need to challenge their behavior. Although she wasn’t Hungarian, these were her people and this was her land, even though she had never been here before. She would fight, even in a country that wasn’t her own, because of the shared history of suffering. This group of boys probably didn’t even know what they were chanting about. They were merely repeating slogans heard at the football pitch, or spouted by their parents, racial slurs that were indoctrinated without thought.

Morgan stood close to the fence. They could strike her from where they stood, but she felt strongly that they wouldn’t, that as yet their actions were just bravado. One of the boys looked at her, and she saw fear in his eyes, not of her, but of what the group might do. She tried to send him some strength, for it was individuals like him who could sometimes halt the violence of a group.

The cacophony of a police siren broke the moment and the boys looked around, then scattered. Some turned and shouted back as they ran off, making obscene gestures as they disappeared down the street.

“You have a way with these vandals,” a deep voice said.

Morgan turned to see a man in a tight brown leather jacket approaching her. He wasn’t tall, perhaps the same height as her, but he was stocky, and she recognized the power of a trained fighter packed into his taut muscles. Morgan sensed in him a reflection of her own tendency to favor action over retreat and she smiled in welcome.

“I’m Morgan Sierra,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m here returning some of the artifacts from the Gold Train.”

The man returned the smile, flashing white teeth, his jawline emphasized by a line of close-cropped facial hair. He wore a silver star of David as an earring in his left ear and his right cheek up towards his temple was scarred, a pitted surface of puckered flesh. Morgan had seen enough wounds in the Israeli Defense Force to know it was a grenade injury, and she wondered what his story was.

“I’m Zoltan Fischer. You could call me a security consultant for the Jewish community.” Zoltan’s grip was just a second longer than was necessary, flirtation in his gaze.

The sound of shouting and sirens suddenly intensified and drew their attention back to the entrance.

“You’ve picked a hell of a day to visit. But come,” Zoltan said, “I’ll finish the tour with you and let Anna take Ilona inside.”

Anna waved to Morgan and hurried with her little girl back towards the Museum. She was clearly grateful to retreat from the noise and stress of what could touch them out here, preferring to conserve the treasures of the past than face the potential conflict of the present. But that had been the attitude of the community back in the 1940s, Morgan thought, before the Nazis shut them into the Ghetto.

She thought of recent news reports in Eastern Europe, the rise of right-wing parties fueled by anti-Semitic slander. There was even a poll in Austria showing that the Nazi party could be re-elected if the ban against it was lifted. Worrying times indeed, and while Israel focused on the threat from Muslim fundamentalists, it seemed that European Jews had as much to fear from their own countrymen.

Zoltan led the way into a courtyard behind the main synagogue. A tree made of metal in the shape of a weeping willow shone silver in the sun, metallic leaves reflecting the light. Around the tree were small piles of stones, placed there in memory of the dead.

“Each leaf on this tree is inscribed with a name,” Zoltan explained. “In remembrance of the Hungarian Jewish martyrs. This park is a memorial to all who died in the Shoah, the Holocaust.”

“Are any of your family here?” Morgan asked. Zoltan’s eyes darkened and he reached forward to touch a leaf with gentle fingers, caressing the inscribed name. He nodded.

“You can read some of their names on the plaque by the mass grave, and there are many more in the lists of those who died at the camps.” He turned back to her. “This will always be my fight, Morgan, but what about you? Why did you choose to return our memories to us?”

Morgan closed her eyes for a second, but the light from the tree had seared the names of the victims onto her eyelids, and she opened them again to meet his intense gaze.

“My father was Jewish and I was brought up in Israel. He was Sephardi, from Spain originally, and secular for much of my childhood, but he found his God later in life. I never converted, but when I defend Judaism, as I did in the Israeli Defense Force, I defend him and the right to exist and believe as he did.”

Zoltan’s eyes were piercing. “So you are a warrior, then?”

Morgan felt the pulsing of her blood against the scars on her body, sustained in fighting against evil. The demon in the bone chapel of Sedlec, the assassins that hunted the Ark of the Covenant, these were battles she would carry forever.

“I thought I could be just a scholar,” she replied, “but it seems that I am still called to fight.”

The chanting outside was growing louder and more cohesive now, increasing in volume as if the crowd had become a mob. The edge of the harsh words cut through the air, and even though Morgan didn’t understand the language, she could discern hatred and destruction in their tone.

“Then I may need your help today,” Zoltan said quietly. “I fear that the rabble will bring violence before the truth of the Basilica murder is uncovered.”

At that moment, two security guards ran into the square, shouting to Zoltan. He spun and conversed with them quickly, then beckoned for her to follow.

“We are gathering everyone into the main synagogue building. The gates are barred and locked and we’ve called the police but I fear there will be bloodshed if any Jews are caught outside.”

Morgan raced with Zoltan back towards the front of the building in the wake of the security guards. The noise of shouting became deafening as they reached the metal gates that only a little while earlier had opened to a line of interested tourists.

Now a mob of around fifty people jeered and roared their anger, faces contorted by hate, shouting for revenge in the wake of the Basilica crimes, rattling the gates as they tried to force their way in.