The man took a sip from his coffee, which must’ve been cold by now. “Some of us were lucky enough to get out,” he continued. “The prison is heavily guarded on the outside by the ÁVO. I had to tunnel under a couple of gates only to face a barbed wire fence. It was my only chance. I climbed it. Got cut up in the process but I climbed it.” He turned up his sleeve to his elbow to show me how he got his cuts. “Compared to what they did to us in there, this is kid’s stuff.”
He took the hand that had been in his pocket all this time and held it up to us. “Look what they did to my hand.” Two of his fingers were missing. “My God!” I said. The man sighed and furrowed his sparse eyebrows. He said there was a chance my father could be one of the escapees or that he was still inside. “Maybe a dozen go
