The man pulled my green card from his pocket and held it under my nose.

“When you have a legitimate American document why do you have to lurk around one of our most secret underground bases pretending you want to cross the border illegally? Answer me that!”

“I had no idea you had a base there,” I said because looking at me menacingly he was expecting an answer.

He slapped my face with the back of his hand.

“I don’t need your false answer. I need the truth.”

The interrogation went on for about an hour. He kept accusing me of being a spy and I continued telling him that what he already knows is the truth. He hit me a few more times before finally he gave up and called in the guard to take me back to my cell.

Hans and the others sensed that something was wrong and stayed away from me from then on.

That day, the older guy was severely beaten. When he returned, he had blood all over his face. He washed his wounds for a long time at the faucet in the corner restroom.

My interrogation continued the next day.

As soon as the two civilians entered the room, the one that spoke English approached me and hit me in the stomach.

“Today, you will tell me the truth,” he said very seriously. “If not, we’ll take you back to the Hungarian border and hand you over to the Hungarian authorities.”

“I have already told you the truth,” I said.

Again, he accused me of spying and I kept defending myself.

Finally, he gave up again and after a few slaps in the face I was sent back to my cell.

The third day of my interrogation was a little different. I had to write down my story.

“When you sign what you write there, you may sign your death sentence,” the man said. “Think it over well. Think what you write. I don’t want to read your usual crap!”

They left the room. Later, the man came back alone.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

I handed him the blank sheet.

“Look,” I told him, “I could not change my story now even if the version you already know was not the truth. If I changed it, would you believe me?”

The man was at a loss for a while.

When he hit me in the face I began to feel disgusted by him.

“You have pretty strong arms,” I said sarcastically. “You keep hitting me… then when you go home tonight you will use those hands to eat your dinner. How will that dinner taste for you?”

I could see he was surprised.

“Look!” he shouted right into my face. “I need your confession! I did not come here to play games with you.”

“You keep hitting me because you serve a regime. Our paths in life accidentally crossed, unfortunately, not the right way. If we had met down at the beach, we could have had a nice conversation and we could be good friends by now.”

“I have no pleasure doing this. I am actually trying to help you. If you tell me the truth, I will help you. If you don’t, your future is fekete.”

He used the Hungarian word which means ‘black’ or ‘dark’.

“You have already told me that I will rot in your prison forever. You have also told me that you will hand me over to the Hungarians. Obviously, I am in your hands and you will do as you please. Regardless of what story I tell you.”

“You think you are smart,” he said. “Listen to this! We have arrested dozens of Russian spies this past summer. They came here to undermine Tito’s system. Some of them have already been executed. If you also turn out to be one of the KGB, you won’t live long, I guarantee.”

I couldn’t take the guy seriously any longer.

“I have told you what I have told you. I guarantee you that I am not going to change that no matter what. If you have to hand me over to the Hungarians, fine. If you will make me rot in your prison, that’s fine, too. If you prove that I am from the KGB and execute me, let it be. I’d rather die than lie.”

He called for the guard and I was back in the cell.

Hans was released that day with a couple of others. In the meantime we had two new arrivals. Same story, caught at the border.

I had two more days left of the eight-day sentence.

On my seventh day, the interrogating civilian officer surprised me when he showed up at our cell.

“Come with me, please,” he said in a friendly tone.

He took me to an office where he extended his hand towards me.

“I offer my apologies,” he said at the same time.

I hesitated so he withdrew his hand.

“I can understand if you are not ready to shake hands with me,” he said. “Please, sit down.”

“I did what I had to do,” he continued after I lowered myself into the comfortable armchair. “Tomorrow is your eighth day here. Tomorrow, your sentence is over. Tomorrow, you will get back all your belongings. I understand you are trying to reach the USA where you have lived for three years already. First you need to get to Italy. I am not sure you are in good shape to attempt another escape. Besides, our border guards are not bad, they might catch you again. Well, we don’t want you back here again so we decided to help you a bit. Tomorrow night, we’ll take you to the Italian border and let you go free.”

I did not know how to react.

“What? Aren’t you happy?” the man said in surprise.

“I am in your hands,” I said finally. “You do with me what you want.”

“Wow! It sounds like you don’t believe me.”

“Whether I believe you or not makes no difference, I think.”

“I understand… I would feel the same way if I were you. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

On the eighth day, I was taken from my cell shortly after lunch and locked into a very small and very dark room. I did not know what to make of it.

I had to wait several hours when finally the door opened.

A very big man stood in the door with my knapsack in one of his hands.

After he said something I did not understand he threw my knapsack at me. When he waved with his hand, I followed him. He took me to a yard where a small Volkswagen was waiting. The street lights were already on as it was already after sunset. I saw two other similarly huge men sitting in the front seats of the Volkswagen.

The one that came for me grabbed my arm and shoved me into the back seat behind the driver. After he closed my door, he walked over to the other side and occupied the empty seat.

As soon as all doors were closed, I began to smell alcohol. All three men appeared to be drunk.

We left the prison complex and then soon entered a highway.

When I saw the traffic sign ‘Trieste 25 km’, I got a bit excited. A few minutes later I saw ‘Trieste 20 km’.

‘It seems like they are really taking me to the border,’ I thought.

It was already dark.

Suddenly, the driver made a right turn onto a dirt road. Without reducing the speed, he kept driving on that bumpy dirt road into a field of darkness.

‘Where are they taking me now?’ I wondered. ‘What are they up to?’

I did not trust the three giants. I was on full alert ready to fight for my life if I had to. My stomach was in one big knot.

After several minutes on the dirt road, we turned onto a pavement. Soon, I saw the headlights of another vehicle approaching from behind a hill.

I sighed with relief.

Soon we were driving on a ridge. I saw a few houses on one side of the road but no lights in any of the windows.

The driver turned off our headlights and drove on in the dark.

When we pulled over and came to a stop, the driver quickly got out, opened my door and grabbed my arm. I hit my head as he pulled me out of the car.

Maintaining the very strong grip on my arm, he led me behind the car and made me face some lights very far deep down in the distance.

“Trieste,” he said.

The night was not very dark, I saw that another paved road curved just a few feet from where we stood.

Studio R

With a sudden motion, I freed my arm and jumped over the ditch that separated us from that road. While running across the road, I heard a shot. The shot, however, did not sound like it was coming from the direction of the Volkswagen. Whatever it was, or wherever it was coming from, did not make me stop and wonder. Over on the other side of the road, I fell down on the steep roadside, right into very soft soil. Fortunately, I did not hurt myself.

When I stood up, I saw that I was in a vineyard. I started running down a slope between the rows. A dog barked nearby. I just kept running as fast as I could.

When the vineyard came to an end about a few hundred feet down, as I was not prepared to stop, I fell over a fence about two feet high.

I was under a streetlight. I looked at the car parked there and saw it had an Italian license plate. I stood up and checked out other cars parked along the street and they were all Italian as well.

As I walked on the sidewalk, I saw two young men talking in front of a Trattoria.

“Am I in Italy?” I asked them in English.

“You certainly are?” one of them answered.

“Wow! I can’t believe I made it,” I said.

“Where are you coming from?” the other one asked. Both of them spoke English.

“From the other side.”

They asked more questions so I briefly told them about my ordeal.

“Very interesting,” one of them said. “You must be hungry. May we invite you in? We are having a birthday party in this restaurant. We just stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.”

A minute later I was sitting at a long table covered with a white table cloth. There were all kinds of goodies on the table, lots of different dishes and plenty of red wine. The Chianti was really delicious and I was really thirsty. I emptied a couple glasses in a hurry.

While eating, the dozen or so youngsters asked me many questions.

“You definitely look like you have just come from the other side,” a beautiful girl commented while filling my glass again.

After I ate enough, I looked at my watch.

“It’s getting late,” I said standing up. “I have a long walk ahead of me.”

“Where are you going now?” somebody asked.

“Trieste.”

“Well, why don’t I take you there? I was about to head home anyway.”

A little later I was sitting in a red Ferrari as we were speeding along the Bay of Trieste. We were in the city in a very short time.

“Where can I drop you off?” the driver asked.

“How about the train station,” I said after some thinking.

“Do you need any help?” he asked when we arrived at the station. “Here, take this!” He pulled a fifty-thousand Lira bill from his pocket and handed it to me. “And here is my telephone number in case things don’t go the way you planned.”

“Thanks,” I said as I put his name card and the money in my pocket. “I did not really expect…”

“Never mind,” he cut me off. “Call me if you get into trouble. Good night.”

I got out of his car and he drove off.

Walking into the station, I was looking for a waiting room where I could spend the night. I found one with just a few people inside. I stretched out on an empty bench, resting my head on my knapsack.

Suddenly, I sat up realizing that I should check what’s missing from the knapsack. I was pleasantly surprised. I found all my papers, and I had my green card as well. And none of the Yugoslav money I had before I was captured was taken. This meant the five kilograms of chocolate was a present from the Yugoslav authorities.

I stretched out again and fell asleep.

A female janitor woke me up not much later.

“Chiuso!” she said, meaning ‘closing’ in Italian. I had to leave the waiting room.

Out on the platforms, I thought I might find a train that’s not leaving for a while.

I stopped two young boys when they passed me and I heard them talk in English.

“Do you know of a place where I could spend the night without documents? I lost my passport.”

“You need a place for the night?” one of them asked. “Easy. Come with us. We are going to a friend’s place where you can surely find a corner to sleep.”

I joined them. As we walked along the streets, they often stopped. They invited me to say a short prayer with them every time we stopped.

“We are sons of Jesus,” they answered when I asked if they were members of a religious group.

Years later I heard about the European cult called the Sons of Jesus and why it had to be banned.

The two boys were probably not even twenty years old yet.

After a rather long walk, we arrived at our destination. We walked up to the top floor of the five story building where we rang the bell by a door under a sign that read ‘Studio R’.

A young girl opened the door after she first stuck her head out and recognized my two ‘Good Samaritans’.

In the hall we took off our shoes. I saw a huge number of shoes all over the floor.

I began to smell something rather unusual. The smell got very strong when we entered the big room, the ‘studio’.

Inside that big room, I saw about fifteen people of various ages. Most of them young, around twenty, but some looked like they were in their thirties. They were sitting around a Buddha statue that had something burning on the top of its head in a small depression. There was a rubber tube coming out of the statue’s belly. I saw one of the youngsters putting the end of the tube in her mouth and inhaling. After she blew out some smoke, she handed the tube to the girl sitting beside her.

“Welcome,” one of the older men said. “Come join us.”

My two saviors immediately made room for themselves in the circle.

I realized that they were smoking some kind of ‘mood enhancer’. I had no idea of what effect opium or hashish had because I had never tried any drugs. I was not about to change that habit so I had to come up with a clever excuse.

“I have chronic lung problems. The doctor advised me not to smoke anything ever,” I said.

“He just wants to spend the night here because he has nowhere to go,” one of the boys I arrived with said.

The older men seemed to be curious about me. They asked who I was, where I came from. I briefly told them my story.

“Finally, I was able to leave that red hell they call communism behind,” I was finishing up, “and I am on my way back to America.”

One of the men, probably the oldest, stood up. He was tall with black hair and had a rather rough look on his face. He wore a long black leather coat that reached down to the floor.

“So you like not communists?” he said in a deep voice and with a heavy accent. 

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