The Last Frontier

EIGHT

Reynolds, in those first few minutes of shock, was conscious of nothing but the entire absence of all emotion, of all feeling, as if the touch of the metal fetters on his wrists and ankles had somehow deprived him of all capacity to react. But then came the first slow wave of numbed disbelief, then the shocked disbelief and chagrin that this should have happened to him again, then the bitter, intolerable realization that they had been effortlessly and absolutely trapped, that the commandant had been toying with them and had deceived them completely, that they were prisoners now within the dreaded Szarháza and that if they ever emerged they would do so only as unrecognizable zombies, as the broken, empty husks of the men they had once been.

He looked across at Jansci, to see how the older man was taking this crushing blow, the final defeat of all their plans, the virtual sentence of death on themselves, to see what his reaction was. As far as he could judge, Jansci wasn’t reacting at all. His face was quiet and he was looking at the commandant with a thoughful, measuring gaze — a gaze, Reynolds thought, curiously like the one with which the commandant was regarding Jansci.

As the last metal shackle clipped home around a chair leg, the leader of the guards looked questioningly at the commandant. The latter waved a hand in dismissal.

‘They are secure?’

‘Completely.’

‘Very well, then. You may go.’

The guard hesitated. ‘They are dangerous men—’

‘I am aware of that,’ the commandant said patiently. ‘Why else do you think I deemed it necessary to summon so many to secure them? But they are shackled to chairs that are bolted to the floor. It is unlikely that they will merely evaporate.’

He waited until the door had closed, steepled his thin fingers and went on in his quiet, precise voice.

‘This, gentlemen, is the moment, if ever there was a moment, for gloating: a self-confessed British spy — that recording, Mr Reynolds, will create an international sensation in the People’s Court — and the redoubtable leader of the best organized escape group and anti-Communist ring in Hungary both in one fell swoop. We shall, however, dispense with the gloating: it is useless and time-wasting, a fit pastime only for morons and imbeciles.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Speaking of such, it is, incidentally, a pleasure to deal with intelligent men, who accept the inevitable and who are sufficiently realistic to dispense with the customary breast-beating lamentations, denials and outraged expostulations of innocence.

‘Nor do theatricalism, prolonged climaxes, the creation of suspense or unnecessary secrecy interest me,’ he continued. ‘Time is the most valuable gift we have, and its waste an unforgiveable crime … Your first thoughts, naturally — Mr Reynolds, be so good as to follow your friend’s example and refrain from doing yourself an unnecessary injury in testing these shackles — your first thought, I say, is, how has it come about that you find yourself in this melancholy position. There is no reason why you should not know, and at once.’ He looked at Jansci. ‘I regret to inform you that your brilliantly gifted and quite incredibly courageous friend who has been masquerading so long, and with such fantastic success, as a Major in the Allám Védelmi Hátoság, has finally betrayed you.’

There was a long moment’s silence. Reynolds looked expressionlessly at the commandant, then at Jansci. Jansci’s face was quite composed.

‘That is always possible.’ He paused. ‘Inadvertently, of course. Completely so.’

‘It was,’ the commandant nodded. ‘Colonel Josef Hidas, whose acquaintance Captain Reynolds here has already made, has had a feeling — he could call it no more than that, it was not even a suspicion — about Major Howarth for some little time.’ It was the first time Reynolds heard the name by which the Count was known to the AVO. ‘Yesterday the feeling became suspicion and certainty, and he and my good friend Furmint prepared a trap baited with the name of this prison and convenient access to Furmint’s room for a length of time sufficient to secure certain documents and stamps — these now on the table before me. For all his undoubted genius, your friend walked into the trap. We are all human.’

‘He is dead?’

‘Alive, in the best of health and, as yet, in blissful ignorance of what is known. He was despatched on a wild goose chase to keep him out of the way during the course of today: I believe that Colonel Hidas wishes to make the arrest personally. I expect him here this morning — later in the day Howarth will be seized, given a midnight court-martial at the Andrassy Ut and executed — but not, I fear, summarily.’

‘Of course.’ Jansci nodded heavily. ‘With every AVO officer and man in the city present he will die only a little at a time, so that no one else will be tempted to emulate him. The fools, the blind, imbecilic fools! Do they not know that there can never be another?’

‘I’m afraid I agree with you. But it is no direct concern of mine. Your name, my friend?’

‘Jansci will serve.’

‘For the moment.’ He removed his pince-nez and tapped them thoughtfully on the table. ‘Tell me, Jansci, what do you know of us members of the Political Police — of our composition, I mean.’

‘You tell me. It is obvious that you wish to.’

‘Yes, I’ll tell you, though I think you must already know. Of our members, all but a negligible fraction are composed of power-seekers, morons who find our service intellectually undemanding, the inevitable sadists whose very nature bans them from all normal civilian employment, the long-time professionals — the very people who dragged screaming citizens from their beds in the service of the Gestapo are still doing precisely the same thing for us — and those with a corroding grievance against society: of the last category, Colonel Hidas, a Jew whose people have suffered in Central Europe agonies beyond all imagining is the prime example in the AVO today. There are also, of course, those who believe in Communism, a tiny minority only, but nevertheless certainly the most feared and dangerous of all inasmuch as they are automats pervaded by the whole idea of the state with their moral judgments either in a state of permanent suspension or completely atrophied. Furmint is one such. So, also, strangely enough, is Hidas.’

‘You must be terribly sure of yourself.’ Reynolds was speaking for the first time, slowly.

‘He is the commandant of the Szarháza prison.’ Jansci’s words were answer enough. ‘Why do you tell us this? Did you not say waste of time was abhorrent to you?’

‘It still is, I assure you. Let me continue. When it comes to the delicate question of gaining another’s confidence, all the various categories in the list I have given you have one thing in common. With the exception of Hidas, they are all victims of the idée fixe, of the hidebound conservatism — and somewhat biased dogmatism — of their unshakable convictions that the way to a man’s heart—’

‘Spare us the fancy phrases,’ Reynolds growled. ‘What you mean is, if they want the truth from a man they batter it out of him.’

‘Crude, but admirably brief,’ the commandant murmured. ‘A valuable lesson in time-saving. To continue in the same curt fashion, I have been entrusted with the task of gaining your confidence, gentlemen: to be precise, a confession from Captain Reynolds, and, from Jansci, his true name and the extent and modus operandi of his organization. You know yourselves the almost invariable methods as practised by the — ah — colleagues I have mentioned? The whitewashed walls, the brilliant lights, the endless, repetitive, trip-hammering questions, all judiciously interspersed with kidney-beatings, teeth and nail extractions, thumb-screws and all the other revolting appurtenances and techniques of the medieval torture chamber.’

‘Revolting?’ Jansci murmured.

‘To me, yes. As an ex-professor of nerve surgery in Budapest’s University and leading hospitals, the whole medieval conception of interrogation is intensely distasteful. To be honest, interrogation of any kind is distasteful, but I have found in this prison unsurpassed opportunities for observation of nervous disorders and for probing more deeply than ever before possible into the intensely complicated workings of the human nervous system. For the moment I may be reviled: future generations may differ in their appraisal … I am not the only medical man in charge of prisons or prison camps, I assure you. We are extremely useful to the authorities: they are no less so to us.’

He paused, then smiled, almost diffidently.

‘Forgive me, gentlemen. My enthusiasm for my work at times quite carries me away. To the point. You have information to give, and it will not be extracted by medieval methods. From Colonel Hidas I have already learnt that Captain Reynolds reacts violently to suffering, and is likely to prove difficult to a degree. As for you …’ He looked slowly at Jansci. ‘I do not think I have ever seen in any human face the shadows of so many sufferings: suffering for you can now itself be only a shadow. I have no wish to flatter when I say that I cannot conceive of a physical torture which could even begin to break you.’

He sat back, lit a long, thin cigarette and looked at them speculatively. After the lapse of over two minutes he leaned forward again.

‘Well, gentlemen, shall I call a stenographer?’

‘Whatever you wish,’ Jansci said courteously. ‘But it would grieve us to think of wasting any more of your time than we have already done.’

‘I expected no other answer.’ He pressed a switch, talked rapidly into a boxed microphone, then leant back. ‘You will, of course, have heard of Pavlov, the Russian medical psychologist?’

‘The patron saint of the AVO, I believe,’ Jansci murmured.

‘Alas, there are no saints in our Marxist philosophy — one to which, I regret to say, Pavlov did not subscribe. But you are right insofar as your meaning goes. A bungler, a crude pioneer in many ways, but nevertheless one to whom the more advanced of us — ah — interrogators owe a considerable debt and—’

‘We know all about Pavlov and his dogs and his conditioning and breakdown processes,’ Reynolds said roughly. ‘This is the Szarháza prison, not the University of Budapest. Spare us the lecture on the history of brainwashing.’

For the first time the commandant’s studied calm cracked, a flush touched the high cheekbones, but he was immediately under control again. ‘You are right, of course, Captain Reynolds. One requires a certain, shall we say, philosophical detachment to appreciate — but there I go again. I merely wished to say that the combination of the very advanced developments we have made of Pavlov’s physiological techniques and certain — ah — psychological processes that will become apparent to you in the course of time, we can achieve quite incredible results.’ There was something about the man’s detached enthusiasm that was chilling, frightening. ‘We can break any human being who ever lived — and break him so that never a scar shows. With the exception of the incurably insane, who are already broken, there are no exceptions. Your stiff-upper-lipped Englishman of fiction — and, for all I know, fact — will break eventually, like everyone else: the efforts of the Americans to train their Servicemen to resist what the western world so crudely calls brainwashing — let us call it rather a reintegration of personality — are as pathetic as they are hopeless. We broke Cardinal Mindszenty in eighty-four hours: we can break anyone.’

He stopped speaking as three men, white-coated and carrying a flask, cups and a small metal box, entered the room and waited until they had poured out two cups of what was indubitably coffee.

‘My assistants, gentlemen. Excuse the white coats — a crude psychological touch which we find effective with a large majority of our — ah — patients. Coffee, gentlemen. Drink it.’

‘I’ll be damned if I will,’ Reynolds said coldly.

‘You will have to undergo the indignity of nose-clips and a forcible tube feed if you don’t,’ the commandant said wearily. ‘Do not be childish.’

Reynolds drank and so did Jansci. It tasted like any other coffee, but perhaps stronger and more bitter.

‘Genuine coffee,’ the commandant smiled. ‘But it also contains a chemical commonly known as Actedron. Do not be deceived by its effects, gentlemen. For the first minutes you will feel yourself stimulated, more determined than ever to resist: but then will come somewhat severe headaches, dizziness, nausea, inability to relax and a state of some mental confusion — the dose, of course, will be repeated.’ He looked at an assistant with a syringe in his hands, gestured at it, and went on to explain. ‘Mescaline — produces a mental state very akin to schizophrenia, and is becoming increasingly popular, I believe, among writers and others artists of the western world: for their own sakes, I trust they do not take it with Actedron.’

Reynolds stared at him and had to force himself not to shiver. There was something evil, something abnormally wrong and inhuman about the quiet-talking commandant with the gently humorous professorial talk, all the more evil, all the more inhuman because it was deliberately neither, just the chillingly massive indifference of one whose utter and all-exclusive absorption in an insatiable desire for the furthering of his own particular life’s work left no possible room for any mere consideration of humanity … The commandant was speaking again.

‘Later, I shall inject a new substance, my own invention but so recently discovered that I have not yet named it: Szarházazine, perhaps, gentlemen — or would that be too whimsical? I can assure you that if we had had it some years ago the good Cardinal would not have lasted twenty-four hours, much less than eighty-four. The combined efforts of the three, after perhaps two doses of each, will be to reduce you to a state of absolute mental exhaustion and collapse. Then the truth will come inevitably, and we will add what we will to your minds, and that, for you, will be the truth.’

‘You tell us all this?’ Jansci said slowly.

‘Why not? Forewarned, in this case, is not forearmed: the process is irreversible.’ The quiet certainty in his voice left no room for any doubt. He waved away the white-coated attendants and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Come gentlemen, it is time that you were shown your quarters.’

Almost at once the guards were in the room again, releasing legs and arms one at a time from chair arms and legs, then reshackling wrists and ankles together, all with a swift and trained efficiency that precluded all idea of escape, much less escape itself. When Jansci and Reynolds were on their feet, the commandant led the way from the room: two guards walked on either side and a third, with a pistol ready, behind each of the two men. The precautions were absolute.

The commandant led the way across the hard-packed snow of the courtyard, through the guarded entrance to a massively-walled, window-barred block of buildings and along a narrow, dim-lit corridor. Half-way along, at the head of a flight of stone steps leading down in the gloom below, he paused at a door, gestured to one of the guards and turned to the two prisoners.

‘A last thought, gentlemen, a last sight to take with you down into the dungeons below, while you spend your last few hours on earth as the men you have always known yourselves to be.’ The key clicked in the lock, and the commandant pushed it open with his foot. ‘After you, gentlemen.’

Hobbled by the shackles, Reynolds and Jansci stumbled into the room, saving themselves from falling by catching at the foot-rail of an old-fashioned iron bedstead. A man was lying on the bed, dozing, and Reynolds saw, almost with no sensation of surprise — he had been expecting it from the moment the commandant had stopped outside the door — that it was Dr Jennings. Haggard and wasted and years older than when Reynolds had seen him three days previously, he had been dozing on a dirty straw mattress: but he was almost instantly awake, and Reynolds could not resist a slow stirring of satisfaction when he saw that, whatever else the old man had lost, it certainly wasn’t his intransigence: the fire was back in the faded eyes even as he struggled upright.

‘Well, what the devil does this latest intrusion mean?’ He spoke English, the only language he knew, but Reynolds could see that the commandant understood. ‘Haven’t you damned ruffians pushed me about enough for a weekend without …’ He broke off when he recognized Reynolds for the first time and stared at him. ‘So the fiends got you, too?’

‘Inevitably,’ the commandant said in precise English. He turned to Reynolds. ‘You came all the way from England to see the professor. You have seen him. Now you can say goodbye. He leaves this afternoon — in three hours’ time, to be precise, for Russia.’ He turned to Jennings. ‘Road conditions are extremely bad — we have arranged for a special coach to be attached to the Pécs train. You will find it comfortable enough.’

‘Pécs?’ Jennings glared at him. ‘Where the devil is Pécs?’

‘One hundred kilometres south of here, my dear Jennings. The Budapest airport is temporarily closed by snow and ice, but the latest word is that Pécs Airport is still open. A special plane for yourself and a — ah — a few other special cases is being diverted there.’

Jennings ignored him, turned and stared at Reynolds.

‘I understand that my son Brian has arrived in England?’ Reynolds nodded in silence.

‘And I’m still here, eh? You’ve done splendidly, young man, just splendidly. What the devil is going to happen now God only knows.’

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, sir.’ Reynolds hesitated, then made up his mind. ‘There’s one thing you should know. I have no authority for telling you this, but for this once only to hell with authority. Your wife — your wife’s operation was one hundred per cent successful and her recovery is already almost complete.’

‘What! What’s that you’re saying?’ Jennings had Reynolds by the lapels, and though forty pounds lighter than the younger man was actually shaking him. ‘You’re lying, I know you’re lying! The surgeon said …’

‘The surgeon said what we told him to say,’ Reynolds interrupted flatly. ‘I know it was unforgivable, but it was essential to bring you home and every possible lever was to be brought to bear. But it doesn’t matter a damn any more, so you might as well know.’

‘My God, my God!’ The reaction Reynolds had expected, especially from a man of the professor’s reputation — that of an almost berserker anger over having been duped so long and so cruelly — completely failed to materialize. Instead, he collapsed on his bed as if the weight of his body had grown too much for his old legs to bear, and blinked happily through his tears. ‘This is wonderful, I can’t tell you how wonderful … And only a few hours ago, I knew I could never be happy again!’

‘Most interesting, all most interesting,’ the commandant murmured. ‘And to think that the west has the effrontery to accuse us of inhumanity.’

‘True, true,’ Jansci murmured. ‘But at least the west doesn’t pump its victims full of Actedron and Mescaline.’

‘What? What’s that?’ Jennings looked up. ‘Who’s been pumped full of—?’

‘We have,’ Jansci interrupted mildly. ‘We’re to be given a fair trial and then shot in the morning, but first comes the modern equivalent of being broken on the wheel.’

Jennings stared at Jansci and Reynolds, the incredulity on his face slowly changing to horror. He rose and looked at the commandant.

‘Is this true? What this man says, I mean?’

The commandant shrugged. ‘He exaggerates, of course, but—’

‘So it is true.’ Jennings’ voice was quiet. ‘Mr Reynolds, it is as well you told me of my wife: the use of that lever would now be quite superfluous. But it’s too late now, I can see that, just as I begin to see many other things — and begin to know the things I shall never see again.’

‘Your wife.’ Jansci’s words were statement, not question.

‘My wife,’ Jennings nodded. ‘And my boy.’

‘You shall see them again,’ Jansci said quietly. Such was the quiet certainty, the unshakable conviction in his tone, that the others stared at him, half-convinced that he had some knowledge that was denied them, half-convinced that he was mad. ‘I promise you, Dr Jennings.’

The old man stared at him, then the hope slowly faded from his eyes.

‘You are kind, my friend. Religious faith is the prop—’

‘In this world,’ Jansci interrupted. ‘And soon.’

‘Take him away,’ the commandant ordered curtly. ‘The man goes mad already.’

Michael Reynolds was going insane, slowly but inevitably insane, and the most terrible part of it was that he knew he was going insane. But since the last forced injection shortly after they had been strapped in their chairs in that underground cellar, there had been nothing he could do about the relentless onset of this madness, and the more he fought against it, the more resolutely he struggled to ignore the symptoms, the pains, the agonizing stresses that were being set up in mind and body, then the more acutely he became aware of the symptoms, the deeper into his mind dug these fiendish claws, chemical claws, claws that were tearing his mind apart.

He was secured to his high-backed chair hand and foot, by a thigh belt and by a waist-belt and he would have given all he ever had or would have for the blessed release of throwing off these bonds, of flinging himself to the floor, or against a wall, or of contorting, convulsing his body in every fashion conceivable, of flexing and stretching, flexing and stretching every muscle he had, anything in a desperate attempt to ease that intolerable itch and frightening tension set up by ten thousand jumping, jangling nerve-ends all over his body. It was the old Chinese torture of tickling the soles of the feet magnified a hundredfold, only here there were no feathers, only the countless insidious probing needles of Actedron jabbing every screaming nerve-end into a frantic frenzy, an undreamed-of pitch of phrenetic excitability.

Waves of nausea swept over him, his inside felt as if a wasp’s nest had been broken there and a thousand buzzing wings were beating against the walls of his stomach, he was having difficulty with his breathing and, more and more frequently now, his throat would constrict in a terrifying fashion, he could feel himself choke for want of air while waves of panic surged through him, then at the last instant release would come and the air surge gaspingly into his starving lungs. But his head, his mind — that was the worst of all. The inside of his head seemed dark and confused, the edges of his mind ragged and woolly and increasingly losing contact with reality, for all his conscious, desperate attempts to cling on to what shreds of reason the Actedron and Mescaline had left him. The back of his head felt as if it were being crushed between a vice, and his eyes ached abominably. He could hear voices now, voices calling from afar, and as the last vestiges of his reason slipped away from his powerless grasp and down into the darkness he knew, even as his power of knowing left him, that the dark shroud of madness had completely enveloped him in its thick and choking folds.

But still the voices came — even down in the black depths, still the voices came. Not voices, something seemed to tell him, not voices but just a voice, and it wasn’t speaking to him or whispering insanely in the dark corners of his mind as all the other voices had been, it was shouting at him, calling him with a strength that penetrated even through the folds of madness, with a desperate, compelling urgency that no man with life at all left in him could possibly ignore. Again and again it came, endlessly insistent, seeming to grow louder and louder with every moment that passed, until at last something reached deep down into Reynolds’ darkness, lifted a tiny corner of the shroud and let him recognize the voice for a passing moment of time. It was a voice he knew well, but a voice he had never heard like this before: it was, he just dimly managed to realize, Jansci’s voice, and Jansci was shouting at him, over and over again. ‘Keep your head up! For God’s sake, keep your head up! Keep it up, keep it up!’ over and over again like some insane litany.

Slowly, ponderously, inch by agonizing inch as if he were lifting some tremendous weight, Reynolds lifted his head off his chest, his eyes still clamped shut, until he felt the back of his head press against the high chairback. For a long moment he stayed in that position, fighting for breath like a long-distance runner at the end of a gruelling race, then his head started to droop again.

‘Keep it up! I told you to keep it up!’ Jansci’s voice was vibrant with command, and Reynolds was suddenly aware, clearly and unmistakably aware, that Jansci was projecting towards himself, making a part of himself, some of that fantastic will-power that had taken him from the Kolyma Mountains and brought him back alive across the uncharted, sub-zero wastes of the Siberian deserts. ‘Keep it up, I tell you! That’s better, that’s better! Now, your eyes — open your eyes and look at me!’

Reynolds opened his eyes and looked at him. It was as if someone had covered his eyes with thick sheaths of lead, the effort was so great, but open them he finally did and peered with unfocused gaze across the gloom of the cellar. At first he could see nothing, he thought his eyes were gone, there was only a misty vapour swimming across his eyes, and then suddenly he knew it was a misty vapour, and he remembered that the stone floor was covered in six inches of water and the entire cellar festooned with steam pipes: the steaming, humid heat, worse by far than any Turkish bath he had ever known, was part of the treatment.

And now he could see Jansci: he could see him as if he were seeing through a misted, frosted glass, but he could see him, perhaps eight feet away, in a chair the duplicate of his own. He could see the head continually shaking from side to side, the jaws working constantly, the hands at the end of the pinioned arms opening and closing convulsively as Jansci sought to release some of the accumulated tension, the exquisitely agonizing titillation of his over-stimulated nervous system.

‘Don’t let your head go again, Michael,’ he said urgently. Even in his distress, the use of his Christian name struck Reynolds, the first time Jansci had ever used it, pronouncing it exactly as his daughter had done. ‘And for heaven’s sake keep your eyes open. Don’t let yourself go, whatever you do, don’t let yourself go! There’s a peak, a crisis of some kind to the effects of these damned chemicals, and if you get over that — don’t let go!’ he shouted suddenly. Again Reynolds opened his eyes: this time the effort was fractionally less.

‘That’s it, that’s it!’ Jansci’s voice came more clearly now. ‘I felt just the same a moment ago, but if you let go, yield to the effects, there’s no recovery. Just hang on, boy, just hang on. I can feel it going already.’

And Reynolds, also, could feel the grip of the chemicals easing. He had still the same mad urge to tear loose, to convulse every muscle in his body, but his head was clearing, and the ache behind his eyes beginning to dwindle. Jansci was talking to him all the while, encouraging him, distracting him, and gradually all his limbs and body began to quieten, he grew cold even in the fierce tropical heat of the cellar and bouts of uncontrollable shivering shook him from head to foot. Then the shivering faded and died away, and he began to sweat and grow faint as the humidity and the heat pouring from the steam pipes increased with every moment that passed. He was again on the threshold of collapse — a clear-headed, sane collapse this time — when the door opened and gum-booted warders came splashing through the water. Within seconds the warders had them free and were urging them through the open door into the clear, icy air and Reynolds, for the first time in his life, knew exactly what the taste of water must seem like to a man who had been dying of thirst in the desert.

Ahead of him he could see Jansci shrugging off the supporting hands of the warders on either side of him, and Reynolds, though he felt like a man after a long and wasting bout of fever, did the same. He staggered, all but fell when the support of the arms was withdrawn, recovered and steeled himself to follow Jansci out into the snow and bitter cold of the courtyard with his body erect and his head held high.

The commandant was waiting for them, and his eyes narrowed in swift disbelief as he saw them come out. For a few moments he was at a loss, and the words so ready on his lips remained unsaid. But he recovered quickly, and the professorial mask slipped effortlessly into place.

‘Candidly, gentlemen, had one of my medical colleagues reported this to me, I should have called him a liar. I would not, I could not have believed it. As a matter of clinical interest, how do you feel?’

‘Cold. And my feet are freezing — maybe you hadn’t noticed it, but our feet are soaking wet — we’ve been sitting with them in water for the past two hours.’ Reynolds leaned negligently against a wall as he spoke, not because his attitude reflected his feelings, but because without the wall’s support he would have collapsed on to the snow. But not even the wall lent him the support and encouragement that the approving gleam in Jansci’s eye did.

‘All in good time. Periodic alternations of temperature is part of the — ah — treatment. I congratulate you, gentlemen. This promises to be a case of unusual interest.’ He turned to one of the guards. ‘A clock in their cellar, and where they can both see it. The next injection of Actedron will be — let me see, it’s now midday — will be at 2 p.m. precisely. We must not keep them in undue suspense.’

Ten minutes later, gasping in the sudden, stifling heat of the cellar after the zero cold of the yard outside, Reynolds looked at the ticking clock, then at Jansci.

‘He doesn’t miss out even the smallest refinement of torture, does he?’

‘He would be horrified, genuinely horrified, if he heard you mention the word “torture,”’ Jansci said thoughtfully. ‘To himself the commandant is just a scientist carrying out an experiment, and all he wants is to achieve the maximum efficiency from the point of view of results. He is, of course, quite mad, with the blind insanity of all zealots. He would be shocked to hear you say that, too.’

‘Mad?’ Reynolds swore. ‘He’s an inhuman fiend. Tell me, Jansci, is that the sort of man you call your brother? You still believe in the oneness of humanity?’

‘An inhuman fiend?’ Jansci murmured. ‘Very well, let us admit it. But at the same time let us not forget that inhumanity knows no frontiers, no frontiers in either time or space. It’s hardly the exclusive perquisite of the Russians, you know. God only knows how many thousands of Hungarians have been executed or tortured till death came as a welcome release — by their fellow Hungarians. The Czech SSB — their secret police — were on a par with the NKVD, and the Polish UB — composed almost entirely of Poles — were responsible for worse atrocities than the Russians had ever dreamed of.’

‘Worse even than Vinnitsa?’

Jansci looked at him in long, slow speculation, then raised the back of his hand to his forehead: he could have been wiping the sweat away.

‘Vinnitsa?’ He lowered his hand and stared sightlessly into the gloom of a far corner. ‘Why do you ask about Vinnitsa, my boy?’

‘I don’t know. Julia mentioned it — perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry, Jansci, forget it.’

‘No need to be sorry — I can never forget it.’ He broke off for a long moment, then went on slowly. ‘I can never forget it. I was with the Germans in 1943 when we dug up a high-fenced orchard near the NKVD headquarters. We found 10,000 dead in a mass grave in that orchard. We found my mother, my sister, my daughter — Julia’s elder sister — and my only son. My daughter and my son had been buried alive: it is not difficult to tell these things.’

In the minutes that followed, that dark, furnace-hot dungeon deep under the frozen earth of Szarháza did not exist for Reynolds. He forgot their ghastly predicament, he forgot the haunting thought of the international scandal his trial would bring about, he forgot the man who was bent on destroying them, he could not even hear the ticking of the clock. He could think only of the man who sat quietly opposite him, of the dreadfully stark simplicity of his story, of the shattering traumatic shock that must have followed his discovery, of the miracle that he should not only have kept his sanity but grown into the kind and wise and gentle man he was, with hatred in his heart towards none that lived. To have lost so many that he loved, to have lost the most of what he lived for, and then to call their murderers his brothers … Reynolds looked at him and knew that he did not even begin to know this man, and knew that he would never know him …

‘It is not difficult to read your thoughts,’ Jansci said gently. ‘I lost so many I loved and, for a time, almost my reason. The Count — I will tell you his story some day, has lost even more — I, at least have still Julia and, I believe in my heart, my wife also. He has lost everything in the world. But we both know this. We know that it was bloodshed and violence that took our loved ones away from us, but we also know that all the blood spilt between here and eternity will never bring them back again. Revenge is for the madmen of the world and for the creatures of the field. Revenge will never create a world in which bloodshed and violence can never take our loved ones away from us. There may be a better kind of world worth living for, worth striving for and devoting our lives to, but I am a simple man and I just cannot conceive of it.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘Well, we are talking of inhumanity in general. Let us not forget this specific instance.’

‘No, no!’ Reynolds shook his head violently. ‘Let us forget it, let’s forget all about it.’

‘And that is what the world says — let us forget. Let us not think of it — the contemplation is too awful to bear. Let us not burden our hearts and our minds and our consciences, for then the good that is in us, the good that is in every man, might drive us to do something about it. And we can’t do anything about it, the world will say, because we do not even know where to begin or how to begin — by not thinking that inhumanity is endemic to any particular part of this suffering world.

‘I have mentioned the Hungarians, the Poles and the Czechs. I might also mention Bulgaria and Roumania where nameless atrocities have taken place of which the world has never yet heard — and may never hear. I could mention the 7,000,000 homeless refugees in Korea. And to all of that you might say: It is all one, it is all communism. And you would be right, my boy.

‘But what would you say if I reminded you of the cruelties of Falangist Spain, of Buchenwald and Belsen, of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, of the Japanese prison camps, the death railways of not so long ago? Again you would have the ready answer. All these things flourish under a totalitarian régime. But I said also that inhumanity has no frontiers in time. Go back a century or two. Go back to the days when the two great upholders of democracy were not quite as mature as they are today. Go back to the days when the British were building up their Empire, to some of the most ruthless colonization the world has ever seen, go back to the days when they were shipping slaves, packed like sardines in a tin, across to America — and the Americans themselves were driving the Indian off the face of their continent. And what then, my boy?’

‘You gave the answer yourself: we were young then.’

‘And so are the Russians young today. But even today, even in this twentieth century, things happen which any respecting people in the world should be ashamed of. You remember Yalta, Michael, you remember the agreements between Stalin and Roosevelt, you remember the great repatriation of the people of the east who had fled to the west?’

‘I remember.’

‘You remember. But what you do not remember is what you have never seen, but what both the Count and I have seen and will never forget: thousands upon countless thousands of Russians and Estonians and Latvians and Lithuanians being forcibly repatriated to their own homelands where they knew that one thing and one thing only awaited them — death. You have not seen as we have seen, thousands mad with fear, hanging themselves from every projection that offered, falling on their pocket knives, flinging themselves under the moving wheels of a railway wagon and cutting their throats with rusty razor blades, anything in the world, any form of painful, screaming, self-ending, rather than go back to the concentration camps and torture and death. But we have seen, and we have seen how the thousands unlucky enough not to commit suicide were embarked: they were driven aboard their transports and their cattle cars — they were driven like cattle themselves — and they were driven by British and American bayonets … Never forget that, Michael: by British and American bayonets … Let him who is without sin …’

Jansci shook his head to remove the beads of sweat which spilled out in the climbing humidity: both of them were beginning to gasp with the heat, to have to fight consciously for each breath they took, but Jansci was not yet finished.

‘I could go on indefinitely, my boy, about your own country and the country that now regards itself as the true custodian of democracy — America. If your people and the Americans are not the world’s greatest champions of democracy, you are certainly the loudest. I could speak of the intolerance and cruelties that accompany integration in America, of the springing up of Ku Klux Klan in England which once firmly, but erroneously, regarded itself as being vastly superior to America in the matters of racial tolerance. But it is pointless and your countries are big enough and secure enough to take care of their own intolerant minorities, and free enough to publicise them to the world. The point I make is simply that cruelty and hate and intolerance are the monopoly of no particular race or creed or time. They have been with us since the world began and are still with us, in every country in the world. There are as many evil and wicked and sadistic men in London or New York as there are in Moscow, but the democracies of the west guard their liberties as an eagle does its young and the scum of society can never rise to the top; but here, with a political system that, in the last analysis, can exist only by repression, it is essential to have a police force absolute in its power, legally constituted but innately lawless, arbitrary and utterly despotic. Such a force is a lodestone for the dregs of our society, which first join it and then dominate it, and then dominate the country. The police force is not intended to be a monster, but inevitably, by virtue of the elements attached to it, it becomes a monster, and the Frankenstein that built it becomes its slave.’

‘One cannot destroy the monster?’

‘It is hydra-headed and self-propagating. One cannot destroy it. Nor can one destroy the Frankenstein that created it in the first place. It is the system, the creed by which the Frankenstein lives that we must destroy, and the surest way to its destruction is to remove the necessity for its existence. It cannot exist in a vacuum. And I have already told you why it exists.’ Jansci smiled ruefully. ‘Was it three nights or three years ago?’

‘I’m afraid my remembering and my thinking are not at their best at the present moment,’ Reynolds apologized. He stared at the sweat dripping continuously from his forehead and splashing into the water that covered the floor. ‘Do you think our friend intends to melt us?’

‘It would seem like it. As to what I was saying, I fear I talk too much and at the wrong time. You don’t feel even a little more kindly disposed towards our worthy commandant?’

‘No!’

‘Ah, well,’ Jansci sighed philosophically. ‘Understanding the reasons for an avalanche does not, I suppose, make one any the more grateful for being pinned beneath it.’ He broke off, and twisted to face the door. ‘I fear,’ he murmured, ‘that our privacy is about to be invaded yet again.’

The guards entered, released them, pulled them to their feet and hustled them out of the door, upstairs and across the yard in their usual efficient and uncommunicative fashion. The leader knocked on the commandant’s door, waited for the command, then pushed the door wide, pushing the two men in in front of him. The commandant had company and Reynolds recognized him at once — Colonel Joseph Hidas, the deputy chief of the AVO. Hidas rose to his feet as they entered and walked over to where Reynolds stood trying to stop his teeth chattering and his whole body from shaking: even without the drugs, the instantaneous one hundred degrees alternations in temperature were beginning to have a strangely weakening and debilitating effect. Hidas smiled at him.

‘Well, Captain Reynolds, so we meet again, to coin a phrase. The circumstances, I fear, are even more unfortunate this time than the last. Which reminds me: you will be pleased to hear that your friend Coco has recovered and returned to duty, although still limping somewhat badly.’

‘I’m distressed to hear it,’ Reynolds said briefly. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough.’

Hidas raised an eyebrow and turned his head to have a look at the commandant. ‘They have had full treatment, this morning?’

‘They have, Colonel. A singularly high degree of resistance — but a clinical challenge after my own heart. They will talk before midnight.’

‘Quite. I’m sure they will.’ Hidas turned back to Reynolds. ‘Your trials will take place on Thursday, in the People’s Court. The announcement wil be made tomorrow, and we are offering immediate visas and superb hotel accommodation to every western journalist who cares to attend.’

‘There will be no room for anyone else,’ Reynolds murmured.

‘Which will suit us admirably … However, that is of little interest to me compared to another, and somewhat less public trial that will take place even earlier in the week.’ Hidas walked across the room and stood before Jansci. ‘At this moment I achieve what I must frankly admit has become the consuming desire, the over-riding ambition of my life — to meet, under the proper circumstances, the man who has caused me more trouble, more positive distress and more sleepless nights than the combined efforts of all other — ah — enemies of the state I have ever known. Yes, I admit it. For seven years now you have crossed my path almost continually, shielded and spirited away hundreds of traitors and foes of communism, and interfered with and broken the laws of justice. In the past eighteen months your activities, aided by those of the luckless but brilliant Major Howarth, have become quite intolerable. But the end of the road has come, as it must come for everyone. I can hardly wait to hear you talk … Your name, my friend?’

‘Jansci. That is the only name I have.’

‘Of course! I would have expected nothing—’ Hidas broke off in mid-sentence, his eyes widened and colour ebbed from his face. He took a step backwards, then another.

‘What did you say your name was?’ His voice, this time, was only a husky whisper. Reynolds looked at him in astonishment.

‘Jansci. Just Jansci.’

Perhaps ten seconds passed in utter silence while everyone stared at the AVO colonel. Then Hidas licked his lips and said hoarsely: ‘Turn round!’

Jansci turned and Hidas stared down at the manacled hands. They heard the quick indrawing of his breath, then Jansci turned round of his own accord.

‘You’re dead!’ Hidas’ voice was still the same hoarse whisper, his face lined with shock. ‘You died two years ago. When we took your wife away—’

‘I didn’t die, my dear Hidas,’ Jansci interrupted. ‘Another man did — there were scores of suicides when your brown lorries were so busy that week. We just took one the nearest to me in appearance and build. We took him to our flat, disguised him, and painted his hands well enough to pass any but medical examination. Major Howarth, as you are probably aware by this time, is a genius with disguise.’ Jansci shrugged. ‘It was an unpleasant thing to do, but the man was already dead. My wife was alive — and we thought she might remain alive if I were thought to be dead.’

‘I see, I see indeed.’ Colonel Hidas had had time to recover his balance, and he could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘No wonder you defied us for so long! No wonder we could never break your organization. Had I known, had I but known! I am privileged indeed to have had you for adversary.’

‘Colonel Hidas!’ The commandant’s voice was imploring. ‘Who is this man?’

‘A man who, alas, will never stand trial in Budapest. Kiev, possibly Moscow, but never Budapest. Commandant, let me introduce you. Major-General Alexis Illyurin, second only to General Vlassov in command of the Ukrainian National Army.’

‘Illyurin!’ The commandant stared. ‘Illyurin! Here, in my room? It is impossible!’

‘It is, I know it is, but there is only one man in the world with hands like that! He hasn’t talked yet? No? But he will, we must have a complete confession ready when he goes to Russia.’ Hidas glanced at his watch. ‘So much to do, my Commandant, so little time to do it in. My car, and at once. Guard my friend well against my return. I will be back in two hours, three at the most. Illyurin? By all the gods, Illyurin!’

Back once more in the stone-walled room, Jansci and Reynolds had little to say to one another. Even Jansci’s usual optimism seemed to have failed him, but his face was as untroubled as ever. But Reynolds knew that everything was over, for Jansci even more than himself, and that the last card had been played. There was, he thought, something tragic beyond words about the man sitting quietly opposite him, a giant toppling into the dust, but quiet and unafraid.

And looking at him Reynolds was almost glad that he himself would die also, and he could not but be conscious of the bitter irony of his courage as the thought sprang not from courage but from cowardice: with Jansci dead, and because of him, he could not have faced Jansci’s daughter again. Worse, even worse than that, was the thought of what must inevitably happen to her with the Count and Jansci and himself all gone, but the thought had no sooner come than he had thrust it violently, ruthlessly away from him: if ever there was a time that no weakness must touch his mind, that time was now, and dwelling on the laughter and the sadness of that mobile, delicate face that was all too easily evoked in his mind’s eye was the highroad to despair …

The steam hissed out of the pipes, the humidity spilled over the room, the temperature climbed steadily upwards: 120, 130, 140 and their bodies were drenched with sweat, their eyes blinded by it, and their breathing was the breathing of fire. Twice, three times, Reynolds lost consciousness, and would have fallen and drowned in a few inches of water but for the restraining body belt.

It was as he was emerging from the last of these periods of unconsciousness that he felt hands fumbling at his fastenings and before he properly realized what was happening the guards had himself and Jansci once more out of the cell and into the bitter air of the courtyard for the third time that morning. Reynolds’ mind was reeling as his body was reeling, and Jansci, too, he could see, was being half-carried across, but even through the fog in his mind Reynolds remembered something and looked at his watch. It was exactly two o’clock. He saw Jansci looking at him, saw the grim nod of acquiescence. Two o’clock, and the commandant would be waiting for them, he would be as punctual and precise about this as he was about everything else. Two o’clock and the commandant would be waiting for them: and so, too, would the syringes and the coffee, the Mescaline and the Actedron, waiting to drive them over the edge of madness.

The commandant was waiting for them, but he was not waiting alone. The first person Reynolds saw was an AVO guard, then two more, then the giant Coco leering at him with a wide, anticipatory grin on his seamed and brutalized face. Then, last of all, he saw the back of a man leaning negligently against the window-frame and smoking a black Russian cigarette in a tapered holder: and when the man turned round Reynolds saw that it was the Count.