The Last Frontier

FIVE

Reynolds’ gun was in his hand, almost without his being aware of it. If Jennings’ companion chose to make an inspection of the bathroom, there was no time for him, Reynolds, to move into the shelter of the big cupboard. And if he was discovered, then Reynolds would be left without any option, and with the guard — and for safety’s sake he had to assume that it was a guard — unconscious or dead, his boats would have been burnt behind him. There would never then be another chance of contacting Jennings, the old professor would have to come with him that night whether he liked it or not, and Reynolds rated as almost non-existent his chances of escaping unobserved from the Three Crowns with an unwilling prisoner at the point of a gun and getting any distance at all through the hostile dark of Budapest.

But the man with Jennings made no move to enter the bathroom, and it soon became apparent that he was no guard. Jennings appeared to be on friendly enough terms with the man, called him Jozef, and discussed with him, in English, some highly technical subjects that Reynolds couldn’t even begin to understand. A scientific colleague, beyond doubt. For a moment, Reynolds was conscious of astonishment that the Russians should allow two scientists, one a foreigner, to discuss so freely; then he remembered the microphone, and he wasn’t astonished any more. It was the man in the brown suit who was doing most of the talking, and this was at first surprising, for Harold Jennings had the reputation of being talkative to the point of garrulousness, forthright to the point of indiscretion. But Reynolds, peering through the jamb of the door, could see that Jennings was a vastly changed Jennings from the person whose figure and face he had memorised from a hundred photographs. Two years in exile had added more than ten in age to his appearance. He seemed smaller, somehow, curiously shrunken, and in place of a once splendid mane of white hair were now only a few straggling locks across a balding head: his face was unhealthily pale, and only his eyes, dark, sunken pools in a deeply lined and etched face, had lost none of their fire and authority. Reynolds smiled to himself in the darkness. Whatever the Russians had done to the old man, they hadn’t broken his spirit: that would have been altogether too much to expect.

Reynolds glanced down at the face of his luminous watch, and his smile vanished. Time was running out. He must see Jennings, see him alone, and soon. Half a dozen different ideas occurred to him within the space of a minute, but he dismissed them all as unpractical or too dangerous. He must take no chances. For all the apparent friendliness of the man in the brown suit, he was a Russian and must be treated as an enemy.

Finally he came up with an idea that carried with it at least a fair chance. It was far from foolproof, it could fail as easily as it could succeed, but the chance had to be taken. He crossed the bathroom on noiseless feet, picked up a piece of soap, made his silent way back to the big cupboard, opened the door with the long mirror inside and started to write on the glass.

It was no good. The dry soap slid smoothly over the smooth surface and made scarcely a mark. Reynolds swore softly, as he softly recrossed to the washbasin, turned the tap with infinite care till a little trickle of water came out, then wet the soap thoroughly. This time the writing on the glass was all he could have wished for, and he wrote in clear, block letters:

Then, gently, careful to guard against even the smallest metallic sound or creak of hinges, he eased open the bathroom corridor door and peered out. The corridor was deserted. Two long paces took him outside Jennings’ bedroom door, a very soft, quick tap-tap on the wood and he was back inside the bathroom as noiselessly as he had gone, picking his torch up from the floor.

The man in the brown suit was already on his feet, walking towards the door, when Reynolds stuck his head through the partly open bathroom door, one finger in urgent warning at his lips, another pressing down on the morse button of his torch, the beam striking Jennings’ eyes — a fraction of a second only, but long enough. Jennings glanced up, startled, saw the face at the door, and not even Reynolds’ warning forefinger could stifle the exclamation that leapt to his lips. The man in the brown suit, with the door open now and glancing uncomprehendingly along the length of the corridor, swung round.

‘Something is wrong, Professor?’

Jennings nodded. ‘This damned head of mine — you know how it troubles me … No one there?’

‘No one — no one at all. I could have sworn — you do not look well, Professor Jennings.’

‘No. Excuse me.’ Jennings smiled wanly and rose to his feet. ‘A little water, I think, and some of my migraine tablets.’

Reynolds was standing inside the big cupboard, the door just ajar. As soon as he saw Jennings come into the bathroom, he pushed the door wide open. Jennings couldn’t fail to see the mirror with its message: he nodded almost imperceptibly, glanced warningly at Reynolds, and continued towards the washbasin without breaking his stride. For an old man unaccustomed to this sort of thing, it was a remarkable performance.

Reynolds interpreted the warning glance correctly, and the cupboard door had hardly closed before the professor’s companion was in the room.

‘Perhaps I should get the hotel doctor,’ he said worriedly. ‘He would be only too willing.’

‘No, no.’ Jennings swallowed a tablet and washed it down with a gulp of water. ‘I know these damned migraines of mine better than any doctor. Three of these tablets, three hours lying down in absolute darkness. I’m really terribly sorry, Jozef, our discussion was just beginning to become really interesting, but if you would excuse me—’

‘But of course, of course.’ The other was cordiality and understanding itself. ‘Whatever else happens, we must have you fit and well for the opening speech on Monday.’ A few platitudes of sympathy, a word of farewell and the man in the brown suit was gone.

The bedroom door clicked shut and the soft sound of his footfalls faded in the distance. Jennings, his face a nice mixture of indignation, apprehension and expectation, made to speak but Reynolds held up his hand for silence, went to the bedroom door, locked it, withdrew the key, tried it in the bathroom corridor door, found to his relief that it fitted, locked it and closed the communicating door leading to the bedroom. He produced his cigarette case and offered it to the professor, only to have it waved aside.

‘Who are you? What are you doing in my room?’ The Professor’s voice was low, but the asperity in it, an asperity just touched with fear, was unmistakable.

‘My name is Michael Reynolds.’ Reynolds puffed a cigarette alight: he felt he needed it. ‘I left London only forty-eight hours ago, and I would like to talk to you, sir.’

‘Then, dammit, why can’t we talk in the comfort of my bedroom?’ Jennings swung round, then brought up abruptly as Reynolds caught him by the shoulder.

‘Not in the bedroom, sir.’ Reynolds shook his head gently. ‘There’s a concealed microphone in the ventilation grill above your window.’

‘There’s a what — How did you know, young man?’ The professor walked slowly back toward Reynolds.

‘I had a look around before you came,’ Reynolds said apologetically. ‘I arrived only a minute before you.’

‘And you found a microphone in that time?’ Jennings was incredulous and not even politely so.

‘I found it right away. It’s my job to know where to look for such things.’

‘Of course, of course! What else could you be? An espionage agent, counter-espionage — damned things mean the same to me. Anyway, the British Secret Service.’

‘A popular if erroneous—’

‘Bah! A rose by any other name.’ Whatever of fear there was in the little man, Reynolds thought dryly, it certainly wasn’t for himself: the fire of which he had heard so much burned as brightly as ever. ‘What do you want, sir? What do you want?’

‘You,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Rather, the British Government wants you. I am asked by the Government to extend to you a most cordial invitation—’

‘Uncommonly civil of the British Government, I must say. Ah, I expected this, I’ve been expecting it for a long time now.’ If Jennings had been a dragon, Reynolds mused, everything within ten feet of him would have been incinerated. ‘My compliments to the British Government, Mr Reynolds, and tell them from me to go to hell. Maybe when they get there, they’ll find someone who’ll help them build their infernal machines, but it isn’t going to be me.’

‘The country needs you, sir, and needs you desperately.’

‘The last appeal and the most pathetic of all.’ The old man was openly contemptuous now. ‘The shibboleths of outworn nationalism, the catchpenny phrase words of the empty-headed flag wavers of your bogus patriotism are only for the children of this world, Mr Reynolds, the morons, the self-seekers and those who live entirely for war. I care only to work for the peace of the world.’

‘Very good, sir.’ The people at home, Reynolds thought wryly, had badly underestimated either Jennings’ credulity or the subtlety of Russian indoctrination: even so, his words had seemed a far-off echo of something Jansci had said. He looked at Jennings. ‘The decision, of course, must rest entirely with you.’

‘What!’ Jennings was astonished, and could not conceal his astonishment. ‘You accept it? You accept it as easily as that — and you have come so far?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘I am only a messenger, Dr Jennings.’

‘A messenger? And what if I had agreed to your ridiculous suggestion?’

‘Then, of course, I would have accompanied you back to Britain.’

‘You would have — Mr Reynolds, do you realise what you are saying? Do you realise what — you — you would have taken me out of Budapest, through Hungary and across the frontier …’ Jennings’ voice slowly trailed away into nothingness, and when he looked up at Reynolds again, the fear was back in his eyes.

‘You are no ordinary messenger, Mr Reynolds,’ he whispered. ‘People like you are never messengers.’ All of a sudden certainty struck home at the old man, and a thin white line touched the edges of his mouth. ‘You were never told to invite me back to Britain — you were told to bring me back. There were to be no ‘ifs’ or ‘maybes,’ were there, Mr Reynolds!’

‘Isn’t that rather silly, sir?’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Even if I were in a position to use compulsion, and I’m not, I wouldn’t be such a fool as to use it. Supposing you were to be dragged back to Britain tied hand and foot, there’s still no way of keeping you there or making you work against your own will. Let’s not confuse flag wavers with the secret police of a satellite state.’

‘I don’t for a moment think you’d use direct force to get me home.’ The fear was still in the old man’s eyes, fear and sickness of heart. ‘Mr Reynolds, is — is my wife still alive?’

‘I saw her two hours before I left London Airport.’ There was a quiet sincerity in every word that Reynolds spoke, and he had never seen Mrs Jennings in his life. ‘She was holding her own, I think.’

‘Would you say — would you say she is still critically ill?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘That is for the doctors to say.’

‘For God’s sake, man, don’t try to torture me! What do the doctors say?’

‘Suspended animation. Hardly a medical term, Dr Jennings, but that’s what Mr Bathurst — he was her surgeon — calls it. She’s conscious all the time, and in little pain, but very weak: to be brutally frank, she could go at any moment. Mr Bathurst says she’s just lost the will to live.’

‘My God, my god!’ Jennings turned away and stared unseeingly through the frosted window. After a moment he swung round, his face contorted, his dark eyes blurred with tears. ‘I can’t believe it, Mr Reynolds, I just can’t. It’s not possible. My Catherine was always a fighter. She was always—’

‘You don’t want to believe it,’ Reynolds interrupted. His voice was cold to the point of cruelty. ‘Doesn’t matter what the self-deception is, does it, as long as it satisfies your conscience, this precious conscience that would let you sell your own people down the river in exchange for all this claptrap about co-existence. You know damned well your wife has nothing to live for — not with her husband and son lost for ever to her beyond the iron curtain.’

‘How dare you talk—’

‘You make me sick!’ Reynolds felt a momentary flash of distaste for what he was doing to this defenceless old man; but crushed it down. ‘You stand there making noble speeches and standing upon all these wonderful principles of yours, and all the time your wife is in a London hospital, dying: she’s dying, Dr Jennings, and you are killing her as surely as if you were standing by her side and throttling—’

‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake stop!’ Jennings had his hands to his ears and was shaking his head like a man in agony. He drew back his hands across his forehead. ‘You’re right, Reynolds, heaven only knows you’re right, I’d go to her tomorrow but there’s more to it than that.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘How can you ask any man to choose between the lives of his wife, who may be already beyond hope, and his only son. My situation is impossible! I have a son—’

‘We know all about your son, Dr Jennings. We are not inhuman altogether.’ Reynolds’ voice had dropped to a gentle, persuasive murmur. ‘Yesterday Brian was in Poznan. This afternoon he will be in Stettin and tomorrow morning he will be in Sweden. I have only to receive radio confirmation from London, and then we can be on our way. Certainly inside twenty-four hours.’

‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it.’ Hope and disbelief struggled pitifully for supremacy in the old, lined face. ‘How can you say—’

‘I can’t prove a thing, I don’t have to prove a thing,’ Reynolds said wearily. ‘With all respect, sir, what the hell’s happened to this mighty intellect? Surely you know that all the government wants of you is that you should work for them again, and you also know they know what you’re like: they know damned well if you returned home and found your son still a prisoner in Russia that you’d never work for them as long as you lived. And that’s the last thing in the world they’d ever want.’

Conviction had come slowly to Jennings, but now that it had come it had come for keeps. Reynolds, seeing the new life come into the professor’s face, the determination gradually replacing the worry and the sorrow and the fear, could have laughed aloud from sheer relief: even on himself, the strain had been greater than he had realised. Another five minutes, a score of questions tumbling out one after the other, and the professor, afire now with the hope of seeing his wife and son in the course of the next few days, was all for leaving that very night, at that very instant, and had to be restrained. Plans had to be made, Reynolds explained gently, and much more important, they had first to get news of Brian’s escape and this had brought Jennings to earth immediately. He agreed to await further instructions, repeated aloud several times the address of Jansci’s house until he had completely memorized it, but agreed never to use it except in extreme emergency — the police might have already moved in as far as Reynolds knew — and promised, in the meantime, to carry on working and behaving exactly as he had been doing.

So completely had his attitude towards Reynolds changed that he tried to persuade him to share a drink, but Reynolds declined. It was only half past seven, he had plenty of time before his appointment in the White Angel, but he had already pushed his luck to the limit: at any moment now the imprisoned guard might recover consciousness and start to kick the door down, or a supervisor might make his rounds and find him missing. He left immediately, by way of the professor’s bedroom window and by means of a couple of sheets which let him climb down far enough to catch the barred grills of a window on the ground storey. Even before Jennings had had time to reel in the sheets and close his windows, Reynolds had dropped silently to the ground and vanished wraith-like into the darkness and the snow.

The White Angel Café lay just back from the east bank of the Danube on the Pest side, opposite St Margit Island, and Reynolds passed through its frosted swing doors just as a nearby church bell, muffled and faint through the curtaining snow, struck the hour of eight o’clock.

The contrast between the world outside these swing doors and the one inside was as abrupt as it was complete. One step across the threshold and the snow, the cold, the chill dark silent loneliness of the lifeless streets of Budapest were magically transformed into warmth and brightness and the gaiety of laughing, babbling voices as men and women found an outlet for their natural gregariousness in the cramped and smoky confines of the little café and sought to make their escape, however artificial and ephemeral such escape might be, from the iron realities of the world outside. Reynolds’ first and immediate reaction was that of surprise, shock, almost, to find such an oasis of colour and light in the grim, drab greyness of a police state, but that reaction was brief: it was inevitable that the Communists, no mean psychologists, should not only permit such places but positively encourage them. If people were to gather in the company of one another, as people would no matter what the prohibitions, how much better that they should do it in the open and drink their coffee and wine and porter under the watchfully benevolent eye of some trusted servants of the state, rather than gather in dark and huddled corners and plot against the régime. Excellent safety valves, Reynolds thought dryly.

He had broken step and paused just inside the door, then moved on again almost at once, but without haste. Two tables near the doors were crowded with Russian soldiers laughing, singing and banging their glasses on the table in high good humour. Harmless enough, Reynolds judged, and doubtless that was why the café had been chosen as a rendezvous: no one was going to look for a western spy in the drinking haunt of Russian soldiers. But these were Reynolds’ first Russians, and he preferred not to linger.

He moved in to the back of the café and saw her almost at once, sitting alone at a tiny table for two. She was dressed in the belted hooded coat the manager had described to Reynolds earlier in the day, but now the hood was down and the coat open at the throat. Her eyes caught his without a flicker of recognition and Reynolds took his cue at once. There were half a dozen tables nearby with one or two vacant places and he stood there hesitating over which seat to choose long enough for several people to notice his presence. Then he moved across to Julia’s table.

‘Do you mind if I share your table?’ he asked.

She stared at him, turned her head to look pointedly at a small empty table in the corner, glanced at him again, then pointedly shifted her body until her shoulder was turned to him. She said nothing, and Reynolds could hear the stifled sniggers behind him as he sat down. He edged his chair closer to hers, and his voice was only a murmur.

‘Trouble?’

‘I’m being followed.’ She had turned towards him again, her face hostile and aloof. She’s no fool, Reynolds thought, and by heavens she knew how to act.

‘He’s here?’

A millimetric nod, but nod nevertheless.

‘Where?’

‘Bench by the door. Near the soldiers.’

Reynolds made no move to turn his head.

‘Describe him.’

‘Medium height, brown raincoat, no hat, thin face and black moustache.’ The disdain still registering on her face was in almost comical contrast with the words.

‘We must get rid of him. Outside. You first, me last.’ He stretched out his hand, squeezed her forearm, bent forward and leered at her. ‘I’ve been trying to pick you up. In fact, I’ve just made a most improper suggestion. How do you react?’

‘Like this.’ She swung back her free hand and caught Reynolds across the face with a slap so loud that it momentarily stopped all hubbub and conversation and turned every eye in their direction. Then Julia was on her feet, gathering up her handbag and gloves and walking haughtily towards the door, looking neither to her left nor right. As if by a signal, the talk and the laughter broke out again — and most of the laughter, Reynolds knew, was directed against himself.

He lifted a hand and gingerly caressed a tingling cheek. The young lady, he thought ruefully, carried realism to quite unnecessary lengths. A scowl on his face, he swivelled in his seat in time to see the glass doors swinging to behind her and to see a man in a brown raincoat rise unobtrusively from his seat by the door, throw some money on his table and follow close behind her even before the door had stopped swinging.

Reynolds was on his feet, a man obviously bent on leaving the scene of his discomfiture and mortification with all possible speed. Everybody, he knew, was looking at him, and when he pulled his coat collar up and his hat brim down, a renewed chorus of sniggers broke out. Just as he approached the door, a burly Russian soldier, his face red with laughter and drink, heaved himself to his feet, said something to Reynolds, thumped him on the back hard enough to send him staggering against the counter, then doubled up, convulsed with laughter over his own wit. A stranger to Russians and Russian ways, Reynolds had no idea whether anger or fear would be the safer reaction in the circumstances: he contented himself with a grimace that was compounded of a sullen scowl and sheepish grin, sidestepped nimbly and was gone before the humorist could renew the assault.

The snow was very light now, and he had little difficulty in locating both the girl and the man. They were walking slowly up the street to the left, and he followed, keeping the man at the very limit of observation. Two hundred yards, four hundred, a couple of corners and Julia had halted in a tram shelter outside a row of shops. Her shadow slid silently into a doorway behind the shelter and Reynolds went past him, joining the girl in the glass-fronted shelter.

‘He’s behind us, in a doorway,’ Reynolds murmured. ‘Do you think you could put up a desperate fight for your honour?’

‘Could I—’ She broke off, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. ‘We must be careful. He’s AVO, I’m certain, and all AVO men are dangerous.’

‘Dangerous fiddlesticks,’ Reynolds said roughly. ‘We haven’t all night.’ He looked at her speculatively, then lifted his hands and caught her by the coat lapels. ‘Strangulation, I think. Must account for the fact that you’re not screaming for help. We have enough company as it is!’

The shadow fell for it, he would have been less than human not to fall for it. He saw the man and woman come staggering out of the tram shelter, the woman fighting desperately to tear away the hands encircling her throat, and didn’t hesitate. His feet silent on the hard-packed snow he came running lightly across the pavement, the weapon raised high in his right hand ready to strike — then collapsed soundlessly as Reynolds, at a warning exclamation from the girl, swung round, elbowed him viciously in the solar plexus and chopped him with the edge of his open hand across the side of the neck. It took only seconds thereafter for Reynolds to stuff the man’s blackjack — a canvas tube filled with lead shot — in his pocket, bundle the man himself into the tram shelter, take the girl’s arm and hurry away along the street.

The girl shivered violently, and Reynolds peered at her in surprise in the almost total darkness of the watchman’s box. Confined as they were in a narrow space and shelterd from the snow and the bitter wind they were relatively comfortable, and even through his coat he could feel the warmth of the girl’s shoulder against his own. He reached for her hand — she had taken off her gloves to rub the circulation into life when they had arrived ten minutes previously — but she snatched it away as from the touch of flame.

‘What’s the matter?’ Reynolds’ voice was puzzled. ‘Still feeling frozen?’

‘I don’t know, I — yes, I do know. I’m not cold.’ She shivered again. ‘It’s — it’s you. You’re too inhuman. I’m afraid of people who are inhuman.’

‘Afraid of me?’ Reynolds sounded incredulous and felt that way. ‘My dear child, I wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.’

‘Don’t you “child” me!’ A sudden flash of spirit, then a quiet, small voice, ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

‘Then what the devil am I supposed to have done?’

‘Nothing. That’s the whole point. It’s not what you do, it’s what you don’t do, it’s what you don’t show. You show no feelings, no emotions, no interest or concern in anything. Oh, yes, you’re interested enough in the job to be done, but the method, the how of it is a matter of absolute indifference, just as long as the job is done.

‘The Count says you’re only a machine, a mechanism designed to carry out a certain piece of work, but without any life or existence as an individual. He says you’re about the only person he knows who cannot be afraid, and he is afraid of people who cannot be afraid. Imagine! The Count afraid!’

‘Imagine,’ Reynolds murmured politely.

‘Jansci says the same. He says you’re neither moral nor immoral, just amoral, with certain conditioned pro-British, anti-Communist reactions that are valueless in themselves. He says whether you kill or not is decided not on a basis of wrong or right but simply of expediency. He says that you are the same as hundreds of young men he has met in the NKVD, the Waffen SS and other such organizations, men who obey blindly and kill blindly without ever asking themselves whether it is right or wrong. The only difference, my father says, is that you would never kill wantonly. But that is the only difference.’

‘I make friends wherever I go,’ Reynolds murmured.

‘There! You see what I mean? One cannot touch you. And now tonight. You bundle a man into a hotel cupboard, bound and gagged, and let him suffocate — he probably did. You hit another and leave him to freeze to death in the snow — he won’t last twenty minutes in this. You—’

‘I could have shot the first man,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘I have a silencer, you know. And do you think that lad with the blackjack wouldn’t have left me to freeze to death if he’d got in first?’

‘You’re just quibbling … And, worst of all, that poor old man. You don’t care what you do as long as he goes back to Britain, do you? He thinks his wife is dying, and yet you’d torture him till he must be almost insane with worry and grief. You encourage him to believe, you make him believe that if she goes he’ll be her murderer. Why, Mr Reynolds, why?’

‘You know why. Because I’m a nasty, amoral, emotionless machine of a Chicago gangster just doing what I’m told. You just said so, didn’t you?’

‘I’m just wasting my breath, am I not, Mr Reynolds?’ The tone was flat and dull.

‘By no means.’ Reynolds grinned in the darkness. ‘I could listen all night to your voice, and I’m sure you wouldn’t preach so earnestly unless you thought there was some hope of conversion.’

‘You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?’

‘A nasty, superior sort of smirk,’ Reynolds admitted. Suddenly he caught her hand and lowered his voice. ‘Keep quiet — and keep still!’

‘What—’ Only the one word had escaped before Reynolds clamped a hand tightly over her mouth. She started to struggle, then relaxed almost immediately. She, too, had heard it — the crunch of footsteps in the snow. They sat without moving, hardly daring to breathe while three policemen walked slowly past them, past the abandoned café terraces farther on and disappeared along a winding path beneath the bare, snow-laden beeches, planes and oaks that lined the perimeter of a great lawn.

‘I thought you told me this part of Margit Island was always deserted?’ His voice was a savage whisper. ‘That no one ever came here in the winter?’

‘It always has been before,’ she murmured. ‘I knew the policemen made a round, but I didn’t know they came that way. But they won’t be back for another hour, I’m sure of that. The Margitsziget is big, and they will take time to go round.’

It had been Julia, teeth chattering with the cold and desperate for a place where they could talk in privacy — the White Angel had been the only café in the area which was open — who, after a fruitless search elsewhere, had suggested Margit Island. Parts of it, she had said, were banned and under curfew after a certain hour, but the curfew wasn’t treated too seriously. The patrolling guards were members of the ordinary police forces, not the secret police, and were as different from the AVO as chalk from cheese. Reynolds, himself almost as cold as the girl, had readily agreed and the watchman’s hut, surrounded by the granite setts, chips and tar barrels of road repairers who had vanished with the onset of the cold weather, had seemed an ideal place.

There Julia had told of the latest happenings at Jansci’s house. The two men who had been watching the house so assiduously had made an error — only one, admittedly, but their last. They had grown overconfident and had taken to walking past on the same side of the street as the garage instead of the opposite side, and, on one occasion, finding the garage door open had gone so far as to let their curiosity get the better of them and peer in, which was a mistake, as Sandor had been waiting for them. Whether they had been informers or AVO men was not known, as Sandor had cracked their heads together rather harder than was necessary. All that mattered was that they were under lock and key and that it would now be safe for Reynolds to visit the house to make final plans for the abduction of the professor. But not before midnight, Jansci had insisted on that.

Reynolds in his turn had told her of what had happened to him, and now, just after the departure of the three policemen, he looked at her in the gloom of the shelter. Her hand was still in his, she was quite unaware of it: and her hand was tense and rigid and unyielding.

‘You’re not really cut out for this sort of thing, Miss Illyurin,’ he said quietly. ‘Very few people are. You don’t stay here and lead this life because you like it?’

‘Like it! Dear God, how could anyone ever like this life? Nothing but fear and hunger and repression, and, for us, always moving from place to place, always looking over our shoulders to see if someone is there, afraid to look over our shoulder in case someone is there. To speak in the wrong place, to smile at the wrong time—’

‘You’d go over to the west tomorrow, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes. No, no, I can’t. I can’t. You see—’

‘Your mother, isn’t that it?’

‘My mother!’ He could feel her shift against him as she turned to stare in the darkness. ‘My mother is dead, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Dead?’ His voice inflected in surprise. ‘That’s not what your father says.’

‘I know it’s not.’ Her voice softened. ‘Poor, dear Jansci, he’ll never believe that Mother is dead. She was dying when they took her away, one lung was almost gone, she couldn’t have lived a couple of days. But Jansci will never believe it. He’ll stop hoping when he stops breathing.’

‘But you tell him you believe it too?’

‘Yes. I wait here because I am all Jansci has left in the world and cannot leave him. But if I told him that, he would have me across the Austrian frontier tomorrow — he would never have me risk my life for him. And so I tell him I wait for Mother.’

‘I see.’ Reynolds could think of nothing else to say, wondered if he himself could have done what this girl was doing if he felt as she did. He remembered something, his impression that Jansci had seemed indifferent to the fate of his wife. ‘Your father — he has looked for your mother, searched for her, I mean?’

‘You don’t think so, do you? He always gives that impression, I don’t know why.’ She paused for a moment, then went on, ‘You will not believe this, no one believes this, but it is true: there are nine concentration camps in Hungary, and, in the past eighteen months, Jansci has been inside five of them, just looking for Mother. Inside, and, as you see, out again. It’s just not possible, is it?’

‘It’s just not possible,’ Reynolds echoed slowly.

‘And he’s combed a thousand, over a thousand collective farms — or what used to be collective farms before the October Rising. He has not found her, he never will find her. But always he looks, always he will keep on looking and he will never find her.’

Something in her voice caught Reynolds’ attention. He reached up a gentle hand and touched her face: her cheeks were wet, but she did not turn away, she didn’t resent the touch.

‘I told you this wasn’t for you, Miss Illyurin.’

‘Julia, always Julia. You mustn’t say that name, you mustn’t even think that name … Why am I telling you all these things?’

‘Who knows? But tell me more — tell me about Jansci. I have heard a little, but only a little.’

‘What can I tell you? “A little,” you say, but that’s all I, too, know about my father. He will never talk about what is gone, he will not even say why he will not talk. I think it is because he lives now only for peace and the making of peace, to help all those who cannot help themselves. That is what I heard him say once. I think his memory tortures him. He has lost so much, and he has killed so many.’

Reynolds said nothing, and after a time the girl went on, ‘Jansci’s father was a Communist leader in the Ukraine. He was a good Communist and he was also a good man — you can be both at the same time, Mr Reynolds. In 1938 he — and practically every leading Communist in the Ukraine — died in the secret police torture cellars in Kiev. That was when it all started. Jansci executed the executioners, and some of the judges, but too many hands were against him. He was taken to Siberia and spent six months in an underground cell in the Vladivostock transit camp waiting for ice to melt and the steamer to come to take them away. He saw no daylight for six months, he didn’t see another human being for six months — his crusts and the slops that passed for food were lowered through a hatch. They all knew who he was and he was to take a long time dying. He had no blankets, no bed, and the temperature was far below zero. For the last month they stopped all supplies of water also, but Jansci survived by licking the hoar frost off the iron door of his cell. They were beginning to learn that Jansci was indestructible.’

‘Go on, go on.’ Reynolds still held the girl’s hand tightly in his own, but neither of them was aware if it. ‘And after that?’

‘After that the freighter came and took him away, to the Kolyma Mountains. No one ever comes back from the Kolyma Mountains — but Jansci came back.’ He could hear the awe in the girl’s voice even as she spoke, even as she repeated something she must have said or thought a thousand times. ‘These were the worst months of his life. I don’t know what happened in those days, I don’t think there is anyone still alive who knows what happened then. All I know is that he sometimes still wakes up from his sleep, his face grey, whispering, “Davai, davai!” — get going, get going! — and “Bystrey, bystrey” — faster, faster! It’s something to do with driving or pulling sledges, I don’t know what. I know too, that even to this day, he cannot bear to hear the sound of sleigh bells. You’ve seen the missing fingers on his hands — it was a favourite sport to drag prisoners along behind the NKVD’s — or OGPU’s, as it was then — propeller-driven sledges, and see how close they could be brought to the propeller … Sometimes they were jerked too close, and their faces …’ She was silent for a moment, then went on, her voice unsteady. ‘I suppose you could say Jansci was lucky. His fingers, only his fingers … and his hands, these scars on his hands. Do you know how he came by these, Mr Reynolds?’

He shook his head in the darkness, and she seemed to sense the movement.

‘Wolves, Mr Reynolds. Wolves mad with hunger. The guards trapped them, starved them and then flung a man and a wolf into the same pit. The man would have only his hands: Jansci had only his hands. His arms, his entire body is a mass of these scars.’

‘It’s not possible, all this is not possible.’ Reynolds’ low-pitched mutter was that of a man trying to convince himself of something which must be true.

‘In the Kolyma Mountains all things are possible. That wasn’t the worst, that was nothing. Other things happened to him there, degrading, horrible, bestial things, but he has never spoken of them to me.’

‘And the palms of his hands, the crucifixion marks on his hands?’

‘These aren’t crucifixion marks, all the Biblical pictures are wrong, you can’t crucify a man by the palms of his hands … Jansci had done something terrible, I don’t know what it was, so they took him out to the taiga, the deep forest, in the middle of winter, stripped him of all his clothes, nailed him to two trees that grew close together and left him. They knew it would be only a few minutes, the fearful cold or the wolves … He escaped, God knows how he escaped, Jansci doesn’t, but he escaped, found his clothes where they had thrown them away and left the Kolyma Mountains. That was when all his fingers, his fingertips and nails went, that’s when he lost all his toes … You have seen the way he walks?’

‘Yes.’ Reynolds remembered the strange, stiff-legged gait. He thought of Jansci’s face, its kindness and its infinite gentleness, and tried to see that face against the background of its history, but the gap was too great, his imagination baulked at the attempt. ‘I would not have believed this of any man, Julia. To survive so much … He must be indestructible.’

‘I think so too … It took him four months to arrive at the Trans-Siberian Railway where it crosses the Lena, and when he stopped a train he was quite insane. He was out of his mind for a long time, but he finally recovered and made his way back to the Ukraine.

‘That was in 1941. He joind the army, and became a major inside a year. Jansci joined for the reason that most Ukrainians joined — to wait his chance, as they are still waiting their chance, to turn their regiments against the Red Army. And the chance came soon, when Germany attacked.’

There was a long pause, then she went on quietly.

‘We know now, but we didn’t know then, what the Russians told the world. We know what they told of the long, bloody battle as we fell back on the Dnieper, the scorched earth, the desperate defence of Kiev. Lies, lies, all lies — and still most of the world doesn’t know it.’ He could hear her voice softening in memory. ‘We welcomed the Germans with open arms. We gave them the most wonderful welcome any army has ever had. We gave them food and wine, we decorated our streets, we garlanded the storm-troopers with flowers. Not one shot was fired in defence of Kiev. Ukrainian regiments, Ukrainian divisions deserted en masse to the Germans, Jansci said there’s never been anything like it in history, and soon the Germans had an army of a million Russians fighting for them, under the command of the Soviet General Andrei Vlassov. Jansci was with this army, he rose to be Major-General and one of Vlassov’s right-hand men, and fought with this army, until the Germans fell back on his home town of Vinnitsa in 1943.’ Her voice tailed away, came again after a long silence. ‘It was after Vinnitsa that Jansci changed. He swore he would never fight again, he swore he would never kill again. He has kept his promise.’

‘Vinnitsa?’ Reynolds’ curiosity was roused. ‘What happened at Vinnitsa?’

‘You — you’ve never heard of Vinnitsa?’

‘Never.’

‘Dear God,’ she whispered. ‘I thought the whole world had heard of Vinnitsa.’

‘Sorry, no. What happened there?’

‘Don’t ask me, don’t ask me!’ Reynolds heard the long, quivering sigh. ‘Someone else, but please don’t ask me.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Reynolds’ voice was quick, surprised. He could feel her whole body shaking with silent sobs, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Skip it. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Thank you.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘That’s just about all, Mr Reynolds. Jansci went to visit his old home in Vinnitsa, and the Russians were waiting for him — they had been waiting a long time. He was put in command of a Ukrainian regiment — all deserters who had been recaptured — given obsolete weapons and no uniforms at all and forced into a suicide position against the Germans. That happened to tens of thousands of Ukrainians. He was captured by the Germans — he had thrown away his weapons and walked across to their lines, was recognised and spent the rest of the war with General Vlassov. After the war the Ukrainian Liberation Army broke up into sections — some of them, believe it or not, are still operating — and it was there that he met the Count. They have never parted since.’

‘He is a Pole, isn’t he — the Count, I mean?’

‘Yes, that’s where they met — in Poland.’

‘And who is he really? Do you know?’

He sensed rather than saw the shake of the head in the darkness.

‘Jansci knows, but only Jansci. I only know that next only to my father, he is the most wonderful person I have ever known. And there’s some strange bond between them. I think it’s because they both have so much blood on their hands, and because neither of them has killed for years. They are dedicated men, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Is he really a Count?’

‘He is indeed. So much I know. He owned huge estates, lakes and forests and great pastures at a place called Augustow, up near the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania — or what used to be the borders. He fought the Germans in 1939, then took to the underground. After a long time he was captured and the Germans thought that it would be very amusing to make a Polish aristocrat earn his living by forced labour. You know the kind of labour, Mr Reynolds — clearing the thousands of corpses out of the Warsaw ghetto after the Stukas and the tanks had finished with it. He and a band of others killed their gaolers and joined General Bor’s Polish Resistance Army. You will remember what happened — Marshal Rossokovsky halted his Russian armies outside Warsaw and let the Germans and the Polish resistance fight it out to the death in the sewers of Warsaw.’

‘I remember. People speak of it as the bitterest battle of the war. The Poles were massacred, of course.’

‘Nearly all. The remnants, the Count among them, were taken off to the Auschwitz gas chambers. The German guards let them nearly all go, no one yet knows why — but not before they branded them. The Count has his number inside his forearm, running from wrist to elbow, all scarred, raised lumps.’ She shivered. ‘It’s horrible.’

‘And then he met your father?’

‘Yes. They were both with Vlassov’s men, but they didn’t stay long. The endless, senseless killings sickened them both. These bands used to disguise themselves as Russians, stop and board the Polish trains, make the passengers get out and shoot all who held Communist Party cards — and many of the holders had no option but to have these cards, if they and their families were to survive: or they would move into towns, ferret out the Stakhanovites or would-be Stakhanovites and throw them among the ice blocks of the Vistula. So they left for Czechoslovakia and joined the Slovak partisans in the High Tatra.’

‘I’ve heard of them, even in England,’ Reynolds acknowledged. ‘The fiercest and most independent fighters in Central Europe.’

‘I think Jansci and the Count would agree,’ she said feelingly. ‘But they left very soon. The Slovaks weren’t really interested in fighting for something, they were just interested in fighting, and when things were dull they were just as happy to fight among themselves. So Jansci and the Count came to Hungary — they’ve been here over seven years now, most of the time outside Budapest.’

‘And how long have you been here?’

‘The same time. One of the first things Jansci and the Count did was to come to the Ukraine for us, and they took my mother and me here by way of the Carpathians and the High Tatra. I know what it must sound like, but it was a wonderful journey. It was high summer, the sun shone, they knew everybody, they had friends everywhere. I never saw my mother so happy.’

‘Yes.’ Reynolds steered her away from the topic. ‘The rest I know. The Count tips off who’s next for the axe and Jansci gets them out. I’ve talked to dozens in England alone who were taken out by Jansci. The strange thing is that none of them hated the Russians. They all want peace, Jansci has talked them all into preaching for peace. He even tried to talk to me!’

‘I told you,’ she said softly. ‘He’s a wonderful man.’ A minute passed in silence, two minutes, then she said suddenly, surprisingly: ‘You’re not married, are you, Mr Reynolds?’

‘What’s that again?’ Reynolds was startled at the sudden switch.

‘You haven’t a wife, have you, or a sweetheart or any girls at all? And please don’t say “No, and don’t bother applying for the vacancy,” for that would be harsh and cruel and just a little cheap, and I don’t really think you are any of these things.’

‘I never opened my mouth,’ Reynolds protested. ‘As to the question, you guessed the answer. Anybody could. Women and my kind of life are mutually exclusive. Surely you can see that.’

‘I know it,’ she murmured. ‘I also know that two or three times this evening you have turned me away from — from unpleasant subjects. Inhuman monsters just don’t bother about that kind of thing. I’m sorry I called you that, but I’m glad I did, for I found out I was wrong before Jansci and the Count did. You don’t know what it’s like for me — these two — they’re always right, and I’m always wrong. But this time I’m right before them.’

‘I’ve no doubt you know what you’re talking about …’ Reynolds began politely.

‘And can’t you just see their expressions when I tell them that I sat for ten minutes tonight with Mr Reynolds’ arm around me.’ The voice was demure, with bubbling undertones of laughter. ‘You put it round me when you thought I was crying — and so I was crying,’ she admitted. ‘Your wolf’s clothing is getting a little threadbare, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Good lord!’ Reynolds was genuinely astonished. For the first time he realised that his arm lay along her shouders, he could just feel the touch of her hair on the back of his almost numbed hand. He muttered some discomfited apology, and was just starting to lift his arm when he froze into perfect stillness. Then his arm fell back slowly and tightened round her shoulder as he put his lips to her ear.

‘We have company, Julia,’ he murmured.

He looked out of the corner of his eye, and this confirmed what his abnormally keen ear had already told him. The snow had stopped, and he could clearly see three people advancing softly towards them. He would have seen them a hundred feet away if his vigilance hadn’t slipped. For the second time that night Julia had been wrong about the policemen, and this time there was no escaping them. That soft-footed advance was a sure acknowledgement of the policemen’s awareness of their presence in the little hut.

Reynolds didn’t hesitate. He brought his right hand over, caught her by the waist, bent down and kissed her. At first, as if by reflex instinct, she tried to push him off, to turn her face away, her whole body stiff in his arms. Then all at once she relaxed, and Reynolds knew that she understood. She was her father’s daughter, and she caught on fast. Her arm came up around his neck.

Ten seconds passed, then as many again. The policemen, Reynolds thought — and it was becoming difficult to keep his thoughts on the policemen — were in no hurry to make their presence known, but it was no punishment, and he could have sworn that the pressure of her arm around his neck was beginning to tighten when a powerful flashlight clicked on and a deep, cheerful voice spoke.

‘By heaven, Stefan, I don’t care what people say, there’s nothing wrong with the young generation. Here they are, the thermometer twenty degrees below zero, and you’d think they were lying on the beaches of Balaton in a heatwave. Now, now, not so fast, young man.’ A large hand reached out of the darkness behind the torch beam and pushed Reynolds, who had been struggling to his feet, back down again. ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know this place is forbidden at night?’

‘I know it is,’ Reynolds muttered. His face was a nice mixture of fear and embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry. We had nowhere else to go.’

‘Nonsense!’ the hearty voice boomed. ‘When I was your age, young man, there was nothing better in wintertime than the little curtained alcoves of the White Angel. Only a few hundred metres from here.’

Reynolds began to relax. There was little to fear from this man. ‘We were at the White Angel—’

‘Show us your papers,’ another voice demanded, a cold, hard, mean little voice. ‘You have them?’

‘Of course I have them.’ The man behind that voice was a different proposition altogether. Reynolds reached inside his coat, his fingers folding over the butt of his automatic, when the first policeman spoke again.

‘Don’t be silly, Stefan. You really will have to be careful — all those terrible thrillers you read. Or maybe you think he’s a western spy sent to find out how much co-operation they can expect from the young ladies of Budapest when the next rising comes.’ He roared with laughter, bent over and slapped his thigh, all but overcome by his own wit, then slowly straightened. ‘Besides, he’s as Budapest born and bred as I am. The White Angel you said,’ his voice suddenly thoughtful. ‘Come out of there the two of you.’

They rose stiffly, and the torch shone so close to Reynolds’ face that he screwed his eyes shut.

‘This is him, all right,’ the policeman announced jovially. ‘This is the one we heard about. Look, you can still see the mark of every finger on his cheek. No wonder he wouldn’t go back. It’s a wonder his jaw wasn’t dislocated.’ He swung his torch on to a blinking Julia. ‘Looks as if she could do it too. Built like a boxer.’ He ignored the outraged gasp, turned to Reynolds, and waving a warning forefinger, his voice solemn with the solemnity of a comic vastly enjoying himself. ‘You want to be careful, young man. Beautiful, but — well, you can see for yourself. If she’s as plump as this in her twenties, what’s she going to be like in her forties? You should see my wife!’ His laugh boomed out again, and he waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Be off, my children. Next time it’s the dungeon for you.’

Five minutes later they parted on the shore side of the bridge, just as the snow began to fall again. Reynolds glanced at his luminous watch.

‘Just after nine o’clock. I’ll be there in three hours.’

‘We will be expecting you then. That should give me just about enough time to describe in detail how I almost dislocated your jaw, and how the ice-cold calculating machine had his arm round me and kissed me for a whole minute without coming up for air once!’

‘Thirty seconds,’ Reynolds protested.

‘A minute and a half at least. And I won’t tell them why. I can hardly wait to see their faces!’

‘I’m at your mercy,’ Reynolds grinned. ‘But don’t forget to tell them what you’re going to look like by the time you’re forty.’

‘I won’t,’ she promised. She was standing close to him now, and he could see the mischief in her eyes. ‘After what has passed between us,’ she went on solemnly, ‘this counts even less than a handshake.’ She reached up on tiptoe, brushed her lips lightly across his cheek and hurried away into the darkness. For a full minute Reynolds stood looking after her, long seconds after she had vanished, thoughtfully rubbing his cheek: then he swore softly to himself, and made off in the opposite direction, head bent forward and hat-brim pulled far down against the snow in his eyes.

When Reynolds reached his room in the hotel, unobserved and by way of the fire-escape, it was twenty minutes to ten and he was very cold and very hungry. He switched on the central heating, satisfied himself that no one had been in the room during his absence, then called the manager on the phone. There had been no message for him, no callers. Yes, he would be delighted to provide dinner even at this late hour: the chef was just going to bed, but would consider it an honour to show Mr Rakosi just what he could do in the way of an impromptu meal. Reynolds rather ungraciously said that speed was of the essence and that the culinary masterpieces could wait till another day.

He finished an excellent meal and the best part of a bottle of Soproni just after eleven o’clock and prepared to depart. Almost an hour, yet, to his appointment, but what had taken only six or seven minutes in the Count’s Mercedes would take far longer by foot, the more so as his route would be wandering and devious. He changed a damp shirt, tie and socks and folded them neatly away, for he did not then know that he was never to see either that room or its contents again, jammed the key in the door, dressed against the winter night and left once more by the fire-escape. As he reached the street, he could hear a telephone ringing faintly, insistently, but he ignored it, the sound could have come from a hundred rooms other than his own.

By the time he had arrived at the street of Jansci’s house it was a few minutes after twelve. Despite the brisk pace he had kept up throughout he was half-frozen, but satisfied enough for all that, he was certain that he had neither been followed nor observed since he had left the hotel. Now, if only the Count still had some of that barack left …

The street was deserted and the garage door, when he came to it was, as by arrangement, open. He turned into the darkness of its interior without breaking step, angled confidently across to the corridor door at the other end, and had taken perhaps four paces when the garage was flooded with light at the touch of a switch and the iron doors clanged shut behind him.

Reynolds stood perfectly still, keeping both hands well clear of his clothes, then looked slowly around him. In each corner of the garage, a submachine-gun cradled under his arm, stood a watchful, smiling AVO man, each in his high peaked cap and long, sweeping belted trench-coat. There was no mistaking these men, Reynolds thought dully, there was no mistaking the real thing when you saw it, the coarsened brutality, the leering, expectant sadism of the lowermost dregs of society which automatically find their ways into the Secret Police of Communist countries the world over.

But it was the fifth man, the little man by the corridor door with the dark, thin, intelligent Jew’s face that caught and held his attention. Even as Reynolds looked at him, he put away and buttoned up his pistol, took two steps forward, smiled and bowed ironically.

‘Captain Michael Reynolds of the British Secret Service, I believe. You are very punctual, and we sincerely appreciate it. We of the AVO do not like to be kept waiting.’