The Catchers Caught

To the officer on duty at Austrian State Police headquarters in Vienna, it was a familiar story. A man had rushed in to say that he was being threatened by agents of the dreaded Hungarian AVH. The officer calmly noted down the answers to his questions. Name? Dr. Tamas Pasztor. Age? Forty-six. Status? Hungarian refugee. Profession? Formerly a journalist in Budapest. Married? Yes, to an American woman now in New York trying to expedite Pasztor's entry into the U.S.

What was his complaint, asked the officer. On his way to work that morning, Dr. Pasztor replied, he had been stopped by an AVH agent. The accusation was all too common in an Austria filled with 20,000 uneasy Hungarian refugees; how could he be so sure the man was an AVH agent? "Because I know him," Pasztor answered quietly. "His name is Jozsef Teleki, and he was one of my interrogators during the seven years I was imprisoned by the Communists." In the 1956 revolution, when AVHs were being hanged from lampposts, Teleki had even had the gall to ask ex-Prisoner Pasztor for help in escaping the revolutionary fury. Now he had stopped Dr. Pasztor on the streets of Vienna and said that AVH wanted him to work for the disunity of refugee groups abroad, and especially in the U.S. If he refused, the agent promised "suitable treatment" for Pasztor's mother, who is still in Budapest.

Next morning Dr. Pasztor again met Agent Teleki on a park bench under the linden trees near Vienna's State Court. Nearby, as Teleki's lookout paced Jozsef Kertesz,. first secretary of the Hungarian legation. On other benches, stolid Viennese burghers dozed in the warm May sun. But when Teleki began talking to his victim, the dozing burghers sprang into action: they were Austrian security police. Teleki was grabbed on his bench; First Secretary Kertesz sprinted for a passing streetcar but was quickly collared and dragged back, weeping.

At week's end the Austrian Cabinet met in a special session, peremptorily expelled Teleki and Kertesz as personae non gratae. For the Austrian security police it was the second breakup of a Communist spy ring since last year, when they similarly put out of business an espionage network set up by the Czechoslovak legation.

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