The Last Frontier (16 page)

'Just so long as you don't expect me to go through it all again.' Reynolds pulled at a loose tooth, winced as it came out and threw it on the floor. 'I trust you're satisfied now.'
'Is that all you've got to say?' Julia demanded. Her eyes, hostile as they looked both at the Count and Jansci, softened as she looked at the battered mouth. 'After all that's been done to you?'
'What do you expect me to do?' Reynolds asked mildly. Try to knock out a few of the Count's teeth? I'd have done the same in his position.'
'Professional understanding, my dear,' Jansci murmured. 'Nevertheless, we are extremely sorry for what has happened. And the next move, Mr. Reynolds -- now that that tape recording will have started off the biggest man-hunt for months? The Austrian frontier, I take it, with all speed.'
The Austrian frontier, yes. With all speed -- I don't know.' Reynolds looked at the two men sitting there, thought of their fantastic histories as Julia had recounted them and knew there was only one possible answer to Jansci's question. He gave another tentative wrench, sighed with relief as a second tooth came clear and looked at Jansci. 'It all depends how long I take to find Professor Jennings.'
Ten seconds, twenty, half a minute passed and the only sounds were the whirr of the snow tyres on the road, the low murmur from the cab of Sandor's and Imre's voices above the steady roar of the engine, then the girl reached out and turned Reynolds' face towards her, her fingertips gentle against the cut and swollen face.
'You're mad.' She stared at him, her eyes empty of belief. 'You must be mad.'
'Beyond all question.' The Count unstopped his flask, gulped and replaced the stopper. 'He has been through a great deal Tonight.'
'Insanity,' Jansci agreed. He gazed down at his scarred hands, and his voice was very soft. 'There is no disease half so contagious.'
'And very sudden in its onset.' The Count gazed down sadly at his hip flask. The universal specific, but this time I left it too late.'
For a long moment the girl stared at the three men, her face a study of bewildered incomprehension, then understanding came and with it some certainty of foreknowledge, some evil vision that drained all the colour from her cheeks, darkened the cornflower blue of her eyes and left them filled with tears. She made no protest, no slightest gesture of dissent -- it was as if the same foreknowledge had warned her of the uselessness of dissent -- and, as the first tears brimmed over the edge of her eyes, turned away so that they could not see her face.
Reynolds reached out a hand to comfort her, hesitated, caught Jansci's troubled eye and the slow shake of the white head, nodded and withdrew his hand.
He drew out a pack of cigarettes, placed one between his smashed lips and lit it. It tasted like burnt paper.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was still dark when Reynolds awoke, but the first grey tinges of dawn were beginning to steal through the tiny window facing the east. Reynolds had known that the room had a window, but until then he hadn't known where it was: when they had arrived in the abandoned farmhouse last night -- or early that morning, it had been almost two o'clock -- after a mile-long, freezing trudge in the snow, Jansci had forbidden lights in all rooms without shutters, and Reynolds' had been one of these.
He could see the whole of the room from where he lay without even moving his head. It wasn't difficult -- the entire floor area was no more than twice that of the bed, and the bed only a narrow canvas cot. A chair, a washbasin and a mildewed mirror and the furnishings of the room were complete: there would have been no room for more.
The light was beginning to filter in more strongly now through the single pane of glass above the washbasin, and Reynolds could see in the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the heavily snow-weighted branches of pine trees: the trees must have been well downhill, the feathery white tops appeared to be almost on level with his eyes. The air was so clear that he could make out every tiny detail of the branches. The greying sky was changing to a very pale blue hue, empty of all snow and clouds: the first cloudless sky, indeed the first patch of blue sky he had seen at all since he had come to Hungary: perhaps it was a good omen, he needed all the good omens he could get. The wind had dropped, not the slightest zephyr stirring across the great plains, and the silence everywhere was profound with that frozen stillness that comes only with a sub-zero dawn and the snow lying deeply across the land.
The silence was interrupted -- one could not say ended, for afterwards it seemed even deeper than before -- by a thin, whip-like crack, like a distant rifle shot, and now that Reynolds searched back through his memory he knew that was what had waked him in the first place. He waited, listening, then after a minute or so he heard it again, perhaps closer this time. After even a shorter interval, he heard it a third time and decided to investigate. He flung back the bedclothes and swung his legs out of bed.
Only seconds afterwards he decided not to investigate and that flinging his legs over the side of the cot without due forethought was not to be recommended: with the sudden movement his back felt as if somebody had stuck in a giant hook and pulled with vicious force. Gently, carefully, he pulled his legs back into the cot and lay down with a sigh: most of the trouble, he thought, came from the large area of stiffness that extended even up past his shoulder blades, but the sudden jerking of stiffened muscles could be as agonising as any other pain. The noise outside could wait, no one else appeared unduly worried: and even his brief contact with the outer air -- all he wore was a pair of borrowed pyjama trousers -- had convinced him that a further acquaintance should be postponed as long as possible: there was no heating of any kind and the little room was bitterly cold.
He lay back, staring at the ceiling, and wondered if the Count and Imre had made it safely back to Budapest last night, after they had dropped the others. It had been essential that the truck be abandoned in the anonymity of the big city: just to park it in some empty lane near at hand would have invited disaster. As Jansci had said, the hunt would be up for that truck this morning over all Western Hungary, and no better place could be found for it than some deserted alley in a large town.
Further, it had been essential that the Count return also. The Count was now as near certain as he could be that no suspicion had fallen on him, and if they were ever to find out where Dr. Jennings had been taken -- it was unlikely that the Russians would risk keeping him in a hotel, no matter how heavy a guard they mounted -- he would have to return to the AVO offices, where he was due on duty anyway after lunch-time. There was no other way they could find out. There was always an element of risk in his going there, but then there always had been.
Reynolds did not deceive himself. With the finest help in the world -- and with Jansci and the Count he believed that he had just that -- the chances of ultimate success were still pretty poor. Forewarned was forearmed, and the Communists -- he thought of the tape recorder with a deep chagrin that would long remain with him -- had been well and truly forewarned. They could block all the roads, they could stop all traffic in and out of Budapest. They could remove the professor to the security of the remote and impregnable fortified prison or concentration camp in the country, they might even ship him back to Russia. And, over and above all that, there was the keystone to the whole conjectural edifice, the overriding question of what had happened to young Brian Jennings in Stettin: the Baltic port, Reynolds was grimly aware, would be combed that day as it had seldom been combed before, and it required only one tiny miscalculation, the slightest relaxation of vigilance by the two agents responsible for the boy's safety -- and they had no means of knowing that the alarm-call was out, that hundreds of the Polish U.B. would be searching every hole and corner in the city -- for everything to be lost. It was frustrating, maddening, to have to lie there, to wait helplessly while the net closed a thousand miles away.
The fire in his back gradually ceased, the sharp, stabbing pains finally stopping altogether. Not so, however, the whip-like cracks from just outside the window: they were becoming clearer and more frequent with the passing of every minute. Finally Reynolds could restrain his curiosity no longer, and, moreover, a wash was urgently needed -- on arrival that night he had just tumbled, exhausted, into bed and been asleep in a moment. With infinite care he slowly levered his legs over the side of the bed, sat on its edge, pulled on the trousers of his grey suit -- now considerably less immaculate than when he had left London three days previously -- pushed himself gingerly to his feet and hirpled across to the tiny window above the wash-basin.
An astonishing spectacle met his eyes -- not so much the spectacle, perhaps, as its central figure. The man below his window, no more than a youngster really, looked as if he had stepped directly from the stage of some Ruritanian musical comedy: with his high-plumed velvet hat, long, flowing cloak of yellow blanket cloth and magnificently embroidered high boots fitted with gleaming silver spurs all so sharply limned against and emphasised by the dazzling white background of snow, he was a colourful figure indeed, in that drab, grey Communist country, colourful even to the point of the bizarre.
His pastime was no less singular than his appearance. In his gauntleted hand he held the grey-horned stock of a long, thin whip, and even as Reynolds watched he flicked his wrist with casual ease and a cork lying on the snow fifteen feet away jumped ten feet to one side. With the next flick it jumped back to exactly where it had lain before. A dozen times this was repeated, and not once did Reynolds see the whip touch the cork, or go anywhere near the cork, the lash was too fast for his eyes to follow. The youngster's accuracy was fantastic, his concentration absolute.
Reynolds, too, became absorbed in the performance, so absorbed that he failed to hear the door behind him open softly. But he heard the startled 'Oh!' and swung round away from the window, the sudden jerk screwing up his face as the pain knifed sharply across his back.
'I'm sorry.' Julia was confused. 'I didn't know -- ' Reynolds cut her off with a grin.
'Come in. It's all right -- I'm quite respectable. Besides, you ought to know that we agents are accustomed to entertaining all sorts of feminine company in our bedrooms.' He glanced at the tray she had laid on his bed. 'Sustenance for the invalid? Very kind of you.'
'More of an invalid than he'll admit.' She was dressed in a belted blue woollen dress, with white at the wrists and throat, her golden hair had been brushed till it gleamed and her face and eyes looked as if they had just been washed in the snow. Her fingertips, as they touched the tender swelling on his back, were as fresh and cool as her appearance. He heard the quick, indrawn breath.
'We must get a doctor, Mr. Reynolds. Red, blue, purple -- every colour you could think of. You can't leave this as it is -- it looks terrible.' She turned him round gently and looked up at his unshaven face. 'You should go back to bed. It hurts badly, doesn't it?'
'Only when I laugh, as the bloke said with the harpoon through his middle.' He moved back from the washbasin, and nodded through the window. 'Who's the circus artist?'
'I don't have to look,' she laughed. l/I can hear him. That's the Cossack -- one of my father's men.'
"The Cossack?'
'That's what he calls himself. His real name is Alexander Moritz -- he thinks we don't know that, but my father knows everything about him, the same way he knows everything about nearly everybody. He thinks Alexander is a sissy's name, so he calls himself the Cossack. He's only eighteen.'
'What's the comic opera get-up for?'
'Insular ignorance,' she reproved. 'Nothing comic about it. Our Cossack is a genuine csikos -- a cowboy, you would say, from the puszta, the prairie land to the east, round Debrecen, and that's exactly how they dress. Even to the whip. The Cossack represents another side to Jansci's activities that you haven't heard of yet -- feeding starving people.' Her voice was quiet now. 'When winter comes, Mr. Reynolds, many people of Hungary starve. The Government takes away far too much meat and potatoes from the farms -- they have to meet terribly high surrender quotas -- and it's worst of all in the wheat areas, Where the Government takes all. It was so bad at one time that the people of Budapest were, actually sending bread to the country. And Jansci feeds these hungry people. He decides from which Government farm the cattle shall be taken, and where they'll be taken: the Cossack takes them there. He was across the border only last night."
'Just as simple as that?'
It is for the Cossack: he has a strange gift for handling cattle. Most of them come from Czechoslovakia -- the border is only twenty kilometres from here. The Cossack just diloro-forms them or gives them a good drink of bran mash laced with cheap brandy. When he's got them half-drunk or half-anaesthetised, he just walks across the border with them with as little trouble as you or I would cross a street.'
'Pity you can't handle humans the same way,' Reynolds said dryly.
"That's what the Cossack wants -- to help Jansci and the Count with people, I mean, not chloroform them. He will soon.' She lost interest in the Cossack, gazed unseeingly out of the window for some moments, then looked up at Reynolds, the remarkable blue eyes grave and still. She said, tentatively, 'Mr. Reynolds, I -- '
Reynolds knew what was coming and hastened to forestall her. It had needed no perspicuity last night to see that her acceptance of their decision not to give up the search for Jennings was a token one and only for the moment: he had been waiting for this, for the inevitable appeal, had known it was in her mind from the moment she had entered the room.
'Try Michael,' he suggested. 'I find it difficult to be formal and stand on my dignity with my shirt off.'
'Michael.' She said the name slowly, pronouncing it 'Meeehail.' 'Mike?'
'I'll murder you,' he threatened.
'Very well. Michael.'
'Meechail,' he mimicked, and smiled down at her. 'You were going to say something?'
For a moment the dark-eyes and the blue ones met and held mute understanding. The girl knew the answer to her question without ever having to ask it, and the slender shoulders drooped fractionally in defeat as she turned away.
'Nething.' The life had gone out of her voice. 'Ill see about a doctor. Jansci says to be down in twenty minutes.'
'Good lord, yes!' Reynolds exclaimed. 'The broadcast. I'd forgotten all about it'
That's something anyway.' She smiled faintly and closed the door behind her.
Jansci rose slowly to his feet, turned off the radio and looked down at Reynolds.
It is bad you think?'
'It's bad enough.' Reynolds stirred in his chair to try to ease his aching back: even the effort of washing, dressing and coming downstairs had taken more out of him than he cared to admit, and the pain was constant now. 'The call-out word was definitely promised for today.'
'Perhaps they have arrived in Sweden and haven't yet been able to get word through to your people?' Jansci suggested.
'I'm afraid not.' Reynolds had banked heavily on the call-word coming through that morning, and the disappointment ran deep. 'Everything was laid on for that: a contact from the consul's office at Halsingborg is waiting all the time.'
'Ah, so... But if these agents are as good as you said they were, they may have become suspicious and are lying low in Stettin for a day or two. Till -- how do you say -- the heat is off.'
'What else can we hope for?... My God, to think I should have fallen for that mike in the shower,' he said bitterly. 'What's to be done now?'
'Nothing, except possess our souls in patience,' Jansci counselled. 'Us, that is. For you, bed -- and no arguments. I've seen too much sickness not to know a sick man when I see one. The doctor has been sent for. A friend of mine for years,' he smiled, seeing the question in Reynolds' face. 'We can trust him completely.'
The doctor came up to Reynolds' room with Jansci twenty minutes later. A big, burly, red-faced man with a clipped moustache, he had the professionally cheerful voice that invariably made patients suspect the worst, and radiated a magnificent self-confidence -- in fact, Reynolds thought dryly, he was very much like doctors the world over. Like many doctors also, he was a man of strong opinions and not unduly backward about expressing them: he roundly cursed those damned Communists half a dozen times within the first minute of entering the room.
'How have you managed to survive so long?' Reynolds smiled. 'I mean, if you express your opinions -- '
'Tchah! Everybody knows what I think of these damned Communists. Daren't touch us quacks, my boy. Indispensable. Especially the good ones.' He clamped a stethoscope to his ears. 'Not that I'm any damned good. The whole trick lies in making them think you are.'
The doctor did himself considerably less than justice. The examination was skilled, thorough and swift.
'You'll live,' he announced. 'Probably some internal haemorrhaging, but very slight. Considerable inflammation and really magnificent bruising. A pillow-case, Jansci, if you please. The effectiveness of this remedy,' he continued, 'is in direct proportion to the pain it inflicts. You'll probably go through the roof, but you'll be better tomorrow.' He spooned a liberal amount of greyish paste on to the pillow-case and spread it evenly. 'A form of horse liniment,' he explained. 'Centuries old recipe. Use it everywhere. Not only do patients have trust in the doctor that sticks to the good old-fashioned remedies, but it also enables me to dispense with the tedious and laborious necessity of keeping abreast of all the latest developments. Besides, it's just about all these damned Communists have left us.'