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Farkas finally spoke, turning every head. “The pilgrimage will be filled with the elderly and frail. The priests will be prepared to help them, to keep the pace reasonable, to ensure no one falls behind. They do this every year and are quite good at it.”
Another silence filled the room as each of us sorted through the mental math.
This still sounded mad to me.
“I hate this,” Will said, locking eyes with me. “You don’t have enough pain meds to make it that far. What are you going to do a week from now when we’re stranded on the side of a road in the freezing rain or snow?”
I tried to smile. “I’ll have you, remember?”
Will’s eyes narrowed, and his scowl deepened.
“The border is only two-thirds of the way. Once we’re in Austria, we’ll be safe,” Farkas said.
Sparrow leaned forward. “What’s to say we take the pilgrimage out of Budapest long enough to find a bus station or car to steal?”
“The border checkpoint—” Will began.
Sparrow cut him off. “You’re assuming the Soviets will have distributed flyers a hundred seventy miles from Budapest within a few days of learning about all this. Do we really think they’rethatgood?”
“If they are, we’re dead,” Will retorted.
A moment passed before Egret’s voice cut through the room. “It’s your call, Condor. I follow where you lead.”
It was an unusual show of support, almost submission, on Egret’s part. I looked up and gave him a grateful nod. He nodded back, as if to say, “I’ve got you, brother.”
“All right. We go with the pilgrimage cover, but we look for any opportunity to slip away and cut the trek short. None of us need to be out in the cold any longer than necessary.”
Farkas stood and resumed his pacing.
Eszter blinked without a word.
Will snorted. “So we’ve gone from papers and forgeries to hiding in wheat sacks and now praying our way out of Hungary.”
“It’s not the worst idea,” I said.
“Which part?” Will asked.
“The praying.” I brought my hands together in mock prayer, a wave of pain swiftly punishing me for the sudden movement.
Sparrow sat back. “So what do we do?”
All eyes—even Egret’s—turned to me. I was their leader, the strategic mind of the group. They weren’t just looking to me for answers; this was my call. The weight of expectation, of the risk to my friends’ lives, pressed down even heavier than the pain coursing through my shoulder.
“The pilgrimage thing is crazy but plausible,” I said. “It’s something they won’t expect—but it also fits a narrative, something they can’t stop without looking terrible on the world stage, and we all know how Stalin feels about that right now.”
Will shifted in his chair. “It’s something visible, not hidden.”
Egret nodded. “You’re thinking misdirection.”
“Exactly,” I said.
We fell quiet again. No one said it, but the seed had been planted, and just like that, we stopped trying to hide and started thinking about how to vanish in plain sight.
48
Will
Wewerereallygoingto do it: disguise ourselves as pilgrims—nuns and orphans, priests and sinners—and walk our way across the border like we were players in some medieval fable.