Where Is Johnny Hvasta?

Leopoldov Prison in central Czechoslovakia is a 17th century fortress with walls 39 feet thick. There last December Stepan Gavenda. a tough Czech worker serving a rap for anti-Communist activity, saw a prison work detail taking bricks, sand and cement into a tunnel in the fortress wall. Said Gavenda to his frailer friend Jaroslav Bures. a bookkeeper also convicted for antiCommunism: "Where there is a hole to be filled in, there's a hole to get out." At the first opportunity they explored the tunnel, which proved to be an old gun port, and found the far end jammed with bricks and fresh mortar.

Six men in Gavenda's work detail planned the escape. Prison guards armed with submachine guns patrolled the top of the fortress wall, but the work detail wangled a job close to the tunnel entrance. Each day one man crept into the tunnel and scratched away at the still soft mortar. One of the six men seemed too weak to make the break. This was the one they called Johnny, a shy, silent 24-year-old with pinched cheeks and the jumpy eyes of a man who has spent a long time in solitary. He was having trouble with his feet; the police had beaten him on them during interrogation. One of the prisoners spoke up: "Johnny is an American, and once we get out. maybe he can help us through the American embassy in Prague."

By the Right Fork. When the zero hour came, Johnny, pale and nervous, stood watch while Gavenda bloodied his fingers tearing down the last bricks. At 4 p.m. the head guard signaled that the day's work was over, and the guards descended from the fortress walls. Gavenda crawled out of the recessed gun port, got a firm hold on the outer wall and swung himself down to the ground. The others tumbled after him. The six men made a dash for a railroad embankment, ran under its cover to a bridge across the Vah River. Gavenda almost fell over a woman washing clothes in the river. She stared at the men in grey prison clothes, said quietly: "You will not get through this way." Gavenda shot back over his shoulder: "Little mother, we will get through anywhere."

Near the village of Svaty Peter, the path forked. Gavenda. Bures and another man turned left, going through a quiet village street. Johnny and two other prisoners took the right fork. That was the last Bures saw of johnny.

The Secret Kept. A month later, Gavenda, veteran of 30 border crossings, dragged the exhausted Bures across the frontier into the safety of West Germany. They brought to U.S. Intelligence the first news that John Hvasta of Hillside, N.J., a Czech-born naturalized American had jumped bail. Hvasta had been snatched from his job in the U.S. consulate in Bratislava in 1948 and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on an espionage charge. For six months Intelligence kept the story secret, in order not to help the Communists in their search. Fortnight ago the Czech Foreign Minister informed the U.S. of Hvasta's escape. In Munich the U.S. let Refugees Gavenda and Bures give their own estimate of Hvasta's chances. Said Bookkeeper Bures: "I think Hvasta is alive. Why should the Czechs say he was missing if he wasn't? If they had shot him they could say he was shot trying to escape." Said Gavenda: "I've been in this business a long time now. long enough to know that one of us helps the other. If he made it to friends he's probably safe."

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