Breaking the Cross

Breaking the Cross is a tale of corruption, racism and neo-fascism in post-communist Hungary. Charlie Barrow (who featured in my first thriller A Wicked Device) is a British journalist working out of Budapest. He uncovers a plot by Colonel Mihaly Kozma, the top man in state security, to return the country to totalitarianism. Kozma aims to revive the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis who held power in the last months of World War II. He has friends in high places and in the mafia, helping him to bankroll a private army through dodgy business deals. They use this to kidnap Roma (gypsies) for slave labour in their camps. Barrows allies are Captain Peter Kovacs and Sergeant Sandor Ubul, police officers in a squad assigned to root out illegal immigrants. This brings them into contact with Coro, a young Roma who suffers Arrow Cross brutality and provides much of the evidence needed to nail Kozma. As they probe further, they meet success and tragedy. Charlie gets his story but wonders was it worth it?