The Last Frontier

THREE

‘Jansci!’ Michael Reynolds was on his feet without any volition on his own part. For the first time since he had fallen into Hungarian hands the studied calmness, the mask of emotional indifference vanished and his eyes were alight with excitement and a hope that he had thought had vanished for ever. He took two quick steps towards the girl, grabbing at his blanket as it slipped and almost fell to the floor. ‘Did you say, “Jansci”?’ he demanded.

‘What’s wrong? What do you want?’ The girl had retreated as Reynolds had advanced, then stopped as she bumped into the reassuring bulk of Sandor and clutched his arm. The apprehension in her face faded, and she looked at Reynolds thoughtfully and nodded. ‘Yes, I said that. Jansci.’

‘Jansci.’ Reynolds repeated the word slowly, incredulously, like a man savouring each syllable to the full, wanting desperately to believe in the truth of something but unable to bring himself to that belief. He walked across the room, the hope and the conflicting doubt still mirrored in his eyes, and stopped before the man with the scarred hands.

‘Your name is Jansci?’ Reynolds spoke slowly, the unbelief, the inability to believe, still registering in his eyes.

‘I am called Jansci.’ The older man nodded, his eyes speculative and quiet.

‘One four one four one eight two.’ Reynolds looked unblinkingly at the other, searching for the faintest trace of response, of admission. ‘Is that it?’

‘Is that what, Mr Buhl?’

‘If you are Jansci, the number is one four one four one eight two,’ Reynolds repeated. Gently, meeting no resistance, he reached out for the scarred left hand, pushed the cuff back from the wrist and stared down at the violet tattoo. 1414182 — the number was as clear, as unblemished as if it had been made only that day.

Reynolds sat down on the edge of the desk, caught sight of a packet of cigarettes and shook one loose. Szendrô struck and held a match for him, and Reynolds nodded gratefully: he doubted whether he could have done it for himself, his hands were trembling uncontrollably. The fizzling of the igniting match seemed strangely loud in the sudden silence of the room. Jansci it was who finally broke the silence.

‘You seem to know something about me?’ he prompted gently.

‘I know a lot more.’ The tremor was dying out of Reynolds’ hands and he was coming back on balance again, outwardly, at least. He looked round the room, at Szendrô, Sandor, the girl and the youth with the quick nervous eyes, all with expressions of bewilderment or anticipation on their faces. ‘These are your friends? You can trust them absolutely — they all know who you are? Who you really are, I mean?’

‘They do. You may speak freely.’

‘Jansci is a pseudonym for Illyurin.’ Reynolds might have been repeating something by rote, something he knew off by heart, as indeed he did. ‘Major-General Alexis Illyurin. Born Kalinovka, Ukraine, October 18th, 1904. Married June 18th, 1931. Wife’s name Catherine, daughter’s name Julia’. Reynolds glanced at the girl. ‘This must be Julia, she seems about the right age. Colonel Mackintosh says he’d like to have his boots back: I don’t know what he means.’

‘Just an old joke.’ Jansci walked round the desk to his seat and leant back, smiling. ‘Well, well, my old friend Peter Mackintosh still lives. Indestructible, he always was indestructible. You must work for him, of course, Mr — ah—’

‘Reynolds. Michael Reynolds. I work for him.’

‘Describe him.’ The subtle change could hardly be called a hardening, but it was unmistakable. ‘Face, physique, clothes, history, family — everything.’

‘Reynolds did so. He talked for five minutes without stopping, them Jansci held up his hand.

‘Enough. You must know him, must work for him and be the person you claim to be. But he took a risk, a great risk. It is not like my old friend.’

‘I might be caught and made to talk, and you, too, would be lost?’

‘You are very quick, young man.’

‘Colonel Mackintosh took no chance,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Your name and number — that was all I knew. Where you lived, what you looked like — I had no idea. He didn’t even tell me about the scars on your hands, these would have given me instant identification.’

‘And how then did you hope to contact me?’

‘I had the address of a café.’ Reynolds named it. ‘The haunt, Colonel Mackintosh said, of disaffected elements. I was to be there every night, same seat, same table, till I was picked up.’

‘No identification?’ Szendrô’s query lay more in the lift of an eyebrow than the inflection of the voice.

‘Naturally. My tie.’

Colonel Szendrô looked at the vivid magenta of the tie lying on the table, winced, nodded and looked away without speaking. Reynolds felt the first faint stirrings of anger.

‘Why ask if you already know?’ The edged voice betrayed the irritation in his mind.

‘No offence.’ Jansci anwered for Szendrô. ‘Endless suspicion, Mr Reynolds, is our sole guarantee of survival. We suspect everyone. Everyone who lives, everyone who moves — we suspect them every minute of every hour. But, as you see, we survive. We had been asked to contact you in that café — Imre has practically lived there for the past three days — but the request had come from an anonymous source in Vienna. There was no mention of Colonel Mackintosh — he is an old fox, that one … And when you had been met in the café?’

‘I was told that I would be led to you — or to one of two others: Hridas and the White Mouse.’

‘This has been a happy short-cut,’ Jansci murmured. ‘But I am afraid you would have found neither Hridas nor the White Mouse.’

‘They are no longer in Budapest?’

‘The White Mouse is in Siberia. We shall never see him again. Hridas died three weeks ago, not two kilometres from here, in the torture chambers of the AVO. They were careless for a moment, and he snatched a gun. He put it in his mouth. He was glad to die.’

‘How — but how do you know these things?’

‘Colonel Szendrô — the man you know as Colonel Szendrô — was there. He saw him die. It was Szendrô’s gun he took.’

Reynolds carefully crushed his cigarette stub in an ashtray. He looked up at Jansci, across to Szendrô and back at Jansci again: his face was empty of all expression.

‘Szendrô has been a member of the AVO for eighteen months,’ Jansci said quietly. ‘One of their most efficient and respected officers, and when things mysteriously go wrong and wanted men escape at the last moment, there is no one more terrible in his anger than Szendrô, no one who drives his men so cruelly till they literally collapse with exhaustion. The speeches he makes to newly indoctrinated recruits and cadets to the AVO have already been compiled in book form. He is known as The Scourge. His chief, Furmint, is at a loss to understand Szendrô’s pathological hatred for his own countrymen, but declares he is the only indispensable member of the Political Police in Budapest … A hundred, two hundred Hungarians alive to-day, still here or in the west, owe their lives to Colonel Szendrô.’

Reynolds stared at Szendrô, examining every line of that face as if he were seeing it for the first time, wondering what manner of man might pass his life in such incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances, never knowing whether he was being watched or suspected or betrayed, never knowing whether or not the next shoulder for the tap of the executioner might be his own, and all at once, without at all knowing why, Reynolds knew that this was indeed such a man as Jansci claimed. All other considerations apart, he had to be or he, Reynolds, might even then have been screaming on the torture racks, deep down below the basement of Stalin Street …

‘It must indeed be as you say, General Illyurin,’ Reynolds murmured. ‘He runs incredible risks.’

‘Jansci, if you please. Always Jansci. Major-General Illyurin is dead.’

‘I’m sorry … And to-night, how about tonight?’

‘Your — ah — arrest by our friend here?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is simple. He has access to all but a few secret master files. Also he is privy to all proposed plans and operations in Budapest and Western Hungary. He knew of the road-block, the closing of the frontier … And he knew you were on the way.’

‘But surely — surely they weren’t after me? How could—’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, my dear Reynolds.’ Szendrô carefully fitted another brown and black Russian cigarette into his holder — Reynolds was to discover that he chain-smoked a hundred of these every day — and struck a match. ‘The arm of coincidence is not all that long. They weren’t looking for you, they weren’t looking for anyone. They were stopping only trucks, searching for large quantities of ferro-wolfram that are being smuggled into the country.’

‘I should have thought they would have been damned glad to get all the ferro-wolfram they could lay their hands on,’ Reynolds murmured.

‘And so they are, my dear boy, and so they are. However, there are proper channels to be gone through, certain customs to be observed. Not to put too fine a point on it, several of our top party officials and highly-respected members of the government were being deprived of their usual cut. An intolerable state of affairs.’

‘Unthinkable,’ Reynolds agreed. ‘Action was imperative.’

‘Exactly!’ Szendrô grinned, the first time Reynolds had seen him smile, and the sudden flash of white, even teeth and the crinkling of the eyes quite transformed the cold aloofness of the man. ‘Unfortunately, on such occasions as these some fish other than the ones we are trawling for get caught in the net.’

‘Such as myself?’

‘Such as yourself. So I have made it my practice to be in the vicinity of certain police blocks at such times: a fruitless vigil, I fear, on all but very few occasions: you are only the fifth person I’ve taken away from the police inside a year. Unfortunately, you will also be the last. On the previous occasions I warned the country bumpkins who man these posts that they were to forget that I or the prisoner I had taken from them ever existed. To-night, as you know, their headquarters had been informed and the word will be out to all block posts to beware of a man posing as an AVO officer.’

Reynolds stared at him.

‘But good God, man, they saw you! Five of them, at least. Your description will be in Budapest before—’

‘Pah!’ Szendrô flicked off some ash with a careless forefinger. ‘Much good it will do the fools! Besides, I’m no imposter — I am an AVO officer. Did you doubt it?’

‘I did not,’ Reynolds said feelingly. Szendrô hitched an immaculately trousered leg and sat on the desk, smiling.

‘There you are, then. Incidentally, Mr Reynolds, my apologies for my rather intimidating conduct on the way here to-night. As far as Budapest, I was concerned only with finding out whether you really were a foreign agent and the man we were looking for or whether I should throw you out at a street corner and tell you to lose yourself. But by the time I had reached the middle of the town another and most disquieting possibility had struck me.’

‘When you stopped in the Andrassy Ut?’ Reynolds nodded. ‘You looked at me in a rather peculiar fashion, to say the least.’

‘I know. The thought had just occurred that you might have been an AVO member deliberately planted on me and therefore had no cause to fear a visit to the Andrassy Ut: I confess I should have thought of it earlier. However, when I said I was going to take you to a secret cellar, you would have known at once what I suspected, known I could not now afford to let you live and screamed your head off. But you said nothing, so I knew you were at least no plant … Jansci, could I be excused for a few minutes? You know why.’

‘Certainly, but be quick. Mr Reynolds hasn’t come all the way from England just to lean over the Margit Bridge and drop pebbles into the Danube. He has much to tell us.’

‘It is for your ear alone,’ Reynolds said. ‘Colonel Mackintosh said so.’

‘Colonel Szendrô is my right hand, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Very well. But only the two of you.’

Szendrô bowed and walked out of the room. Jansci turned to his daughter.

‘A bottle of wine, Julia. We have some Villányi Furmint left?’

‘I’ll go and see.’ She turned to leave, but Jansci called her. ‘One moment, my dear. Mr Reynolds, when did you eat last?’

‘Ten o’clock this morning.’

‘So. You must be starving. Julia?’

‘I’ll see what I can get, Jansci.’

‘Thank you — but first the wine. Imre’ — he addressed the youngster who was pacing restlessly up and down — ‘the roof. A walk around. See if everything is clear. Sandor, the car number plates. Burn them, and fix new ones.’

‘Burn them?’ Reynolds asked as the man left the room. ‘How is that possible?’

‘We have a large supply of number plates.’ Jansci smiled. ‘All of three-ply wood. They burn magnificently … Ah, you found some Villányi?’

‘The last bottle.’ Her hair was combed now, and she was smiling, appraisal and frank curiosity in her blue eyes as she looked at Reynolds. ‘You can wait twenty minutes, Mr Reynolds?’

‘If I have to.’ He smiled. ‘It will be difficult.’

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she promised.

As the door closed behind her Jansci broke open the seal of the bottle and poured the cool white wine into a couple of glasses.

‘Your health, Mr Reynolds. And to success.’

‘Thank you.’ Reynolds drank slowly, deeply, gratefully of the wine — he could not recall when his throat and mouth had been so parched before — and nodded at the one ornament in that rather bleak and forbidding room, a silver-framed photograph on Jansci’s desk. ‘An extraordinarily fine likeness of your daughter. You have skilled photographers in Hungary.’

‘I took it myself,’ Jansci smiled. ‘It does her justice, you think? Come, your honest opinion: I am always interested in the extent and depth of a man’s percipience.’

Reynolds glanced at him in faint surprise then sipped his wine and studied the picture in silence, studied the fair, waving hair, the broad smooth brow above the long-lashed eyes, the rather high Slavonic cheekbones curving down to a wide, laughing mouth, the rounded chin above the slender column of the throat. A remarkable face, he thought, a face full of character, of eagerness and gaiety and a splendid zest for living. A face to remember …

‘Well, Mr Reynolds?’ Jansci prompted him gently.

‘It does her justice,’ Reynolds admitted. He hesitated, fearing presumption, looked at Jansci, knew instinctively how hopeless it would be to try to deceive the wisdom in these tired eyes, then went on: ‘You might almost say it does her more than justice.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes, the bone structure, the shape of all the features, even the smile is exactly the same. But this picture has something more — something more of wisdom, of maturity. In two years perhaps, in three then it will be your daughter, really your daughter: here, somehow you have caught a foreshadowing of these things. I don’t know how it is done.’

‘It’s quite simple. That photograph is not of Julia but of my wife.’

‘Your wife! Good lord, what a quite extraordinary resemblance.’ Reynolds broke off, hurriedly searched his past sentences for any unfortunate gaffes, decided he had made none. ‘She is here just now?’

‘No, not here.’ Jansci put his glass down and turned it round and round between his fingers. ‘I’m afraid we do not know where she is.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It was all Reynolds could think of to say.

‘Do not misunderstand me,’ Jansci said gently. ‘We know what happened to her, I’m afraid. The brown lorries — you know what I mean?’

‘The Secret Police.’

‘Yes.’ Jansci nodded heavily. ‘The same lorries that took away a million in Poland, the same in Roumania and half a million in Bulgaria, all to slavery and death. The same lorries that wiped out the middle classes of the Baltic States, that have taken a hundred thousand Hungarians, they came also for Catherine. What is one person among so many million who have suffered and died?’

‘That was in the summer of ’51?’ It was all Reynolds could think to say: it was then, he knew, that the mass deportations from Budapest had taken place.

‘We were not living here then, it was just two and a half years ago, less than a month after we had come. Julia, thank God, was staying with friends in the country. I was away that night, I had left about midnight, and when she went to make herself coffee after I had gone, the gas had been turned off and she did not know what that meant. So they took her away.’

‘The gas? I’m afraid—’

‘You don’t understand? A chink in your armour the AVO would soon have prised open, Mr Reynolds. Everybody else in Budapest understands. It is the practice of the AVO to turn off the gas supply to a block of houses or flats before serving deportation notices there: a pillow on the bottom shelf of a gas oven is comfortable enough, and there is no pain. They stopped the sale of poisons in all chemists, they even tried to ban the sale of razor blades. They found it difficult, however, to prevent people from jumping from top storey flats …’

‘She had no warning?’

‘No warning. A blue slip of paper thrust in her hand, a small suitcase, the brown lorry and then the locked cattle trucks of the railway.’

‘But she may yet be alive. You have heard nothing?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all. We can only hope she lives. But so many died in these trucks, stifling or freezing to death, and the work in the fields, the factories or mines is brutal, killing, even for one fit and well: she had just been discharged from hospital after a serious operation. Chest-surgery — she had tuberculosis: her convalescence had not even begun.’

Reynolds swore softly. How often one read, one heard about this sort of thing, how easily, how casually, almost callously, one dismissed it — and how different when one was confronted with reality.

‘You have looked for her — for your wife?’ Reynolds asked harshly. He hadn’t meant to speak that way, it was just the way the words came out.

‘I have looked for her. I cannot find her.’

Reynolds felt the stirring of anger. Jansci seemed to take it all so easily, he was too calm, too unaffected.

‘The AVO must know where she is,’ Reynolds persisted. ‘They have lists, files. Colonel Szendrô—’

‘He has no access to top secret files,’ Jansci interrupted. He smiled. ‘And his rank is only equivalent to that of major. The promotion was self-awarded and for to-night only. So was the name … I think I heard him coming now.’

But it was the youngster with the dark hair who entered — or partially entered. He poked his head round the door, reported that everything was clear and vanished. But even in that brief moment Reynolds had had time to notice the pronounced nervous tic on the left cheek, just below the darting black eyes. Jansci must have seen the expression on Reynolds’ face, and when he spoke his voice was apologetic.

‘Poor Imre! He was not always like this, Mr Reynolds, not always so restless, so disturbed.’

‘Restless! I shouldn’t say it, but because my safety and plans are involved too, I must: he’s a neurotic of the first order.’ Reynolds looked hard at Jansci, but Jansci was his usual mild and gentle self. ‘A man like that in a set-up like this! To say he’s a potential danger is the understatement of the month.’

‘I know, don’t think I don’t know.’ Jansci sighed. ‘You should have seen him just over two years ago, Mr Reynolds, fighting the Russian tanks on Castle Hill, just north of Gellert. He hadn’t a nerve in his entire body. When it came to spreading liquid soap at the corners — and the steep, dangerous slopes of the Hill saw to the rest as far as the tanks were concerned — or prising up loose cobbles, filling the holes with petrol and touching it off as a tank passed across, Imre had no equal. But he became too rash, and one night one of the big T-54 tanks, slipping backwards down a hill with all the crew dead inside, pinned him, kneeling on all fours, against the wall of a house. He was there for thirty-six hours before anyone noticed him — and twice during that time the tank had been hit by high-explosive rockets from Russian fighter planes — they didn’t want their own tanks used against them.’

‘Thirty-six hours!’ Reynolds stared at Jansci. ‘And he lived?’

‘He hadn’t a mark on him, he still hasn’t. It was Sandor who got him out — that was how they met for the first time. He got a crowbar and broke down the wall of the house from the inside — I saw him do it, and he was flinging 200-pound blocks of masonry around as if they were pebbles. We took him into a nearby house, left him, and when we returned the house was a huge pile of rubble: some resistance fighters had taken up position there and a Mongolian tank commander had pulverized the bottom storey until the whole house fell down. But we got him out again, still without a scratch. He was very ill for a long time — for months — but he’s much better now.’

‘Sandor and yourself both fought in the rising?’

‘Sandor did. He was foreman electrician in the Dunapentele steel works, and he put his knowledge to good use. To see him handling high-tension wires with nothing but a couple of wooden battens held in his bare hands would make your blood freeze, Mr Reynolds.’

‘Against the tanks?’

‘Electrocution,’ Jansci nodded. ‘The crews of three tanks. And I’ve been told he destroyed even more down in Csepel. He killed an infantryman, stole his flame-thrower, sprayed through the driver’s visor then dropped a Molotov cocktail — just bottles of ordinary petrol with bits of burning cotton stuffed into the necks — through the hatch when they opened it to get some air. Then he would shut the hatch, and when Sandor shuts a hatch and sits on it, the hatch stays shut.’

‘I can imagine,’ Reynolds said dryly. Unconsciously, almost, he rubbed his still aching arms, then a sudden thought occurred to him. ‘Sandor took part, you said. And yourself?’

‘Nothing.’ Jansci spread his scarred, misshapen hands, palms upwards, and now Reynolds could see that the crucifixion marks indeed went right through. ‘I took no part in it. I tried all I could to stop it.’

Reynolds looked at him in silence, trying to read the expression of the faded grey eyes enmeshed in those spider webs of wrinkles. Finally he said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m afraid you must.’

Silence fell on the room, a long, cold silence: Reynolds could hear the far-off tinkle of dishes in a distant kitchen as the girl prepared the meal. Finally, he looked directly at Jansci.

‘You let the others fight, fight for you?’ He made no attempt to conceal his disappointment, the near-hostility in his tone. ‘But why? Why did you not help, not do something?’

‘Why? I’ll tell you why.’ Jansci smiled faintly and reached up and touched his white hair. ‘I am not as old as the snow on my head would have you think, my boy, but I am still far too old for the suicidal, the futile act of the grand but empty gesture. I leave that for the children of this world, the reckless and the unthinking, the romanticists who do not stop to count the cost; I leave it to the righteous indignation that cannot see beyond the justice of its cause, to the splendid anger that is blinded by its own shining splendour. I leave it to the poets and the dreamers, to those who look back to the glorious gallantry, the imperishable chivalry of the bygone world, to those whose vision carries them forward to the golden age that lies beyond tomorrow. But I can only see to-day.’ He shrugged. ‘The charge of the Light Brigade — my father’s father fought in that — you remember the charge of the Light Brigade and the famous commentary on that charge? “It’s magnificent, but it’s not war.” So it was with our October Revolution.’

‘Fine words,’ Reynolds said coldly. ‘These are find words. I’m sure a Hungarian boy with a Russian bayonet in his stomach would have taken great comfort from them.’

‘I am also too old to take offence,’ Jansci said sadly. ‘I am also too old to believe in violence, except as a last resort, the final fling of desperation when every hope is gone, and even then it is only a resort to hopelessness: besides, Mr Reynolds, besides the uselessness of violence, of killing, what right have I to take the life of any man? We are all our Father’s children, and I cannot but think that fratricide must be repugnant to our God.’

‘You talk like a pacifist,’ Reynolds said roughly. ‘Like a pacifist before he lies down and lets the jackboot tramp him into the mud, him and his wife and his children.’

‘Not quite, Mr Reynolds, not quite,’ Jansci said softly. ‘I am not what I would like to be, not at all. The man who lays a finger on my Julia dies even as he does it.’

For a moment Reynolds caught a glimpse that might almost have been imagination, of the fire smouldering in the depths of those faded eyes, remembered all that Colonel Mackintosh had told of this fantastic man before him and felt more confused than ever.

‘But you said — you told me that—’

‘I was only telling you why I didn’t take part in the rising.’ Jansci was his gentle self again. ‘I don’t believe in violence if any other way will serve. Again, the time could not have been more badly chosen. And I do not hate the Russians, I even like them. Do not forget, Mr Reynolds, that I am a Russian myself. A Ukranian, but still a Russian, despite what many of my countrymen would say.’

‘You like the Russians. Even the Russian in your brother?’ Mask it as he tried with politeness, Reynolds could not quite conceal the incredulity in his question. ‘After what they have done to you and your family?’

‘A monster, and I stand condemned. Love for your enemies should be confined to where it belongs — between the covers of the Bible — and only the insane would have the courage, or the arrogance or the stupidity, to open the pages and turn the principles into practice. Madmen, only madmen would do it — but without these madmen our Armageddon will surely come.’ Jansci’s tone changed. ‘I like the Russian people, Mr Reynolds. They’re likeable, cheerful and gay when you get to know them, and there are no more friendly people on earth. But they are young, they are very young, like children. And like children they are full of whims, they’re arbitrary and primitive and a little cruel, as are all little children, forgetful and not greatly moved by suffering. But for all their youth, do not forget that they have a great love of poetry, of music and dancing, and singing and folk-tales, of ballet and the opera that would make the average westerner, in comparison, seem culturally dead.’

‘They’re also brutal and barbarous and human life doesn’t matter a damn to them,’ Reynolds interjected.

‘Who can deny it? But do not forget, so also was the western world when it was politically as young as the peoples of Russia are now. They’re backward, primitive and easily swayed. They hate and fear the west because they’re told to hate and fear the west. But your democracies, too, can act the same way.’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ Reynolds crushed out his cigarette in a gesture of irritation. ‘Are you trying to say—’

‘Don’t be so naïve, young man, and listen to me.’ Jansci’s smile robbed his words of any offence. ‘All I’m trying to say is that unreasoning, emotionally-conditioned attitudes are as possible in the west as in the east. Look, for instance, at your country’s attitude to Russia in the past twenty years. At the beginning of the last war Russia’s popularity ran high. Then came the Moscow-Berlin pact, and you were actually ready, remember, to send an army of 50,000 to fight the Russians in Finland. Then came Hitler’s assault in the east, your national press full of paeans of praise for “Good old Joe” and all the world loved a moujik. Now the wheel has come full circle again and the holocaust only awaits the one rash or panic-stricken move. Who knows, in five years’ time, all will be smiles again. You are weathercocks, just as the Russians are weathercocks, but I blame neither people; it is not the weathercock that turns, it is the wind that turns the weathercock.’

‘Our governments?’

‘Your governments,’ Jansci nodded. ‘And, of course, the national press that always conditions the thinking of a people. But primarily the governments.’

‘We in the west have bad governments, often very bad governments,’ Reynolds said slowly. ‘They stumble, they miscalculate, they make foolish decisions, they even have their quota of opportunists, careerists and plain downright power-seekers. But all these things are only because they are human. They mean well, they try hard for the good and not even a child fears them.’ He looked speculatively at the older man. ‘You yourself said recently that the Russian leaders have sent literally millions in the past few years to imprisonment and slavery and death. If, as you say, the peoples are the same, why are the governments so utterly different? Communism is the only answer.’

Jansci shook his head. ‘Communism is gone, and gone for ever. To-day it remains only as a myth, an empty lip-service catchword in the name of which the cynical, ruthless realists of the Kremlin find sufficient excuse and justification for whatever barbarities their policies demand. A few of the old guard still in power may cherish the dream of world communism, but just a few: only a global war could now achieve their aims, and these same hard-headed realists in the Kremlin can see no point or sense or future in pursuing a policy that carries with it the seed of their own destruction. They are essentially businessmen, Mr Reynolds, and letting off a time-bomb under your own factory is no way to run a business.’

‘Their barbarities, their enslavements and their massacres don’t stem from world conquest?’ The fractional lift of Reynolds’ eyebrows was its own sceptical comment. ‘You tell me that?’

‘I do.’

‘Then from what in the world—?’

‘From fear, Mr Reynolds,’ Jansci interrupted. ‘From an almost terror-stricken fear that has no parallel among governments of modern times.

‘They are afraid because the ground lost in leadership is almost irrecoverable: Malenkov’s concessions of 1953, Kruschev’s famous de-Stalinization speech of 1956 and his forced decentralization of all industry were contrary to all the cherished ideas of Communist infallibility and centralized control, but they had to be done, in the interest of efficiency and production — and the people have smelled Freedom. And they are afraid because their Secret Police has slipped and slipped badly: Beria is dead, the NKVD in Russia are not nearly so feared as the AVO in this country, so the belief in the power of authority, of the inevitability of punishment, has slipped also.

‘These fears are of their own people. But these fears are nothing compared to their fears of the outside world. Just before he died, Stalin said, “What will happen without me? You are blind, as young kittens are blind, and Russia will be destroyed because you do not know how to recognize her enemies”. Even Stalin couldn’t have known how true his words would prove to be. They cannot recognize enemies, and they can only be safe, only feel safe, if all the peoples of the outside world are regarded as enemies. Especially the west. They fear the west and, from their own point of view, they fear with every reason.

‘They are afraid of a western world that, they think, is unfriendly and hostile and just waiting its chance. How terrified would you be, Mr Reynolds if you were ringed, as Russia is ringed, with nuclear bomb bases in England and Europe and North Africa and the Middle East and Japan? How much more terrified would you be if, every time the world tensions increase, fleets of foreign bombers appear mysteriously on the far edge of your long-distance radar screens, if you know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that whenever such tensions arise there are, at any given moment of the day or night anywhere between 500 and 1,000 bombers of the American Strategic Air Command each with its hydrogen bomb, cruising high in the stratosphere, just waiting the signal to converge on Russia and destroy it. You have to have an awful lot of missiles, Mr Reynolds, and an almost supernatural confidence in them to forget those thousand hydrogen bombers already airborne — and it only requires five per cent of them to get through, as they inevitably would. Or how would you, in Britain, feel if Russia were pouring arms into Southern Ireland, or the Americans if a Russian aircraft carrier fleet armed with hydrogen bombs cruised indefinitely in the Gulf of Mexico? Try to imagine all that, Mr Reynolds, and you can perhaps begin to imagine — only begin, for the imagination can be only a shadow of the reality — how the Russians feel.

‘Nor does their fear stop there. They are afraid of people who try to interpret everything in the limited light of their own particular culture, who believe that all people, the world over, are basically the same. A common assumption, and a stupid and dangerous one. The cleavage between western and Slavonic minds and ways of thinking, the differences between their culture patterns are immense, and alas, unrealized.

‘Finally, but perhaps above all, they are afraid of the penetration of western ideas into their own country. And that is why the satellite countries are so invaluable to them as a cordon sanitaire, an insulation against dangerous capitalist influences. And that’s why revolt in one of their satellites, as in this country two years last October, brings out all that is worst in the Russian leaders. They reacted with such incredible violence because they saw in this Budapest rising the culmination, the fulfilment at one and the same time of their three nightmare fears — that their entire satellite empire might go up in smoke and the cordon sanitaire vanish for ever, that even a degree of success could have touched off a similar revolt in Russia and, most terrible of all, that a large-scale conflagration from the Baltic to the Black Sea would have given the Americans all the excuse or reason they ever needed to give the green light to the Strategic Air Command and the carriers of the Sixth Fleet. I know, you know, that idea’s fantastic, but we are not dealing with facts, only with what the Russian leaders believe to be facts.’

Jansci drained his glass and looked quizzically at Reynolds. ‘You begin to see now, I hope, why I was neither advocate of nor participant in the October rising. You begin to see, perhaps, why the revolt just had to be crushed, and the bigger and more serious the revolt the more terrible would have to be the repression, to preserve the cordon, to discourage other satellites or any of their own people who might be having similar ideas. You begin to see the hopelessness — the fore-doomed hopelessness — of it, the disastrously ill-judged futility of it all. The only effect it had was to strengthen Russia’s position among the other satellites, kill and maim countless thousands of Hungarians, destroy and damage over 20,000 houses, bring inflation, a serious shortage of food and an almost mortal blow to the country’s economy. It should never have happened. Only, as I say, the anger of despair is always blind: noble anger can be a magnificent thing, but annihilation has its — ah — drawbacks.’

Reynolds said nothing: for the moment he could think of nothing to say. A long silence fell on the room, long but not cold any more: the only sound was the scuffling of Reynolds’ shoes as he tied his laces — he had been dressing as Jansci talked. Finally Jansci rose, switched out the light, drew back the curtain of the solitary window, peered out, then switched on the light again. It meant nothing, Reynolds could see, it was purely an automatic gesture, the routine precaution of a man who had lived as long as he had by never neglecting the slightest precaution. Reynolds replaced his papers in his wallet and the gun in its shoulder holster.

A tap came on the door, and Julia came in. Her face was flushed from the warmth of a stove, and she carried a tray holding a bowl of soup, a steaming plate of diced meat and diced vegetables and a bottle of wine. She laid this on the desk.

‘Here you are, Mr Reynolds. Two of our national dishes — Gulyás soup and tokány. I’m afraid there may be too much paprika in the soup and garlic in the tokány for your taste, but that’s how we like it.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Left-overs — all I could produce in a hurry at this time of night.’

‘Smells wonderful,’ Reynolds assured her. ‘I’m only sorry to be such a bother to you in the middle of the night.’

‘I’m used to it,’ she said dryly. ‘Usually there’s half a dozen to be fed, generally about four o’clock in the morning. Father’s guests keep irregular hours.’

‘They do indeed,’ Jansci smiled. ‘Now off to bed with you, my dear: it’s very late.’

‘I’d like to stay a little, Jansci.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ Jansci’s faded grey eyes twinkled. ‘Compared to our average guest, Mr Reynolds is positively handsome. With a wash, brush-up and shave he might be almost presentable.’

‘You know that’s not fair, Father.’ She stood her ground well, Reynolds thought, but the colour had deepened in her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t say that.’

‘It’s not fair, and I shouldn’t,’ Jansci said. He looked at Reynolds. ‘Julia’s dream world lies west of the Austrian frontier, and she’d listen for hours to anyone talking about it. But there are some things she must not know, things that it would be dangerous for her even to guess about. Off you go, my dear.’

‘Very well.’ She rose obediently, if reluctantly, kissed Jansci on the cheek, smiled at Reynolds and left. Reynolds looked over at Jansci as the older man reached for the second bottle of wine and broke open the seal.

‘Aren’t you worried to death about her all the time?’

‘God knows it,’ Jansci said simply. ‘This is no life for her, or for any girl, and if I get caught she goes too, almost for a certainty.’

‘Can’t you get her away?’

‘You want to try it! I could get her across the frontier tomorrow without the slightest difficulty or danger — you know that that is my speciality — but she won’t go. An obedient, respectful daughter as you have seen — but only up to a self-drawn line. After that, she is as stubborn as a mule. She knows the risks, but she stays. She says she’ll never leave till we find her mother and they go together. But even then—’

He broke off suddenly as the door opened and a stranger walked in. Reynolds, twisting round and out of his seat like a cat, had his automatic out and lined up on the man before he had taken a step into the room, the snick of the safety catch plain above the scraping of the chair legs on the linoleum. He stared at the man unwinkingly, taking in every detail of the face, the smooth, dark hair brushed straight back, the lean eagle face, with the thin pinched nostrils and high forehead of a type he knew well — the unmistakable Polish aristocrat. Then he started as Jansci reached out gently and pressed down the barrel of the automatic.

‘Szendrô was right about you,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Dangerous, very dangerous — you move like a snake when it strikes. But this man is a friend, a good friend. Mr Reynolds, meet the Count.’

Reynolds put the gun away, crossed the room and extended his hand. ‘Delighted,’ he murmured. ‘Count who?’

‘Just the Count,’ the newcomer said, and Reynolds stared at him again. The voice was unmistakable. ‘Colonel Szendrô!’

‘No other,’ the Count admitted, and with these words his voice had changed as subtly, but as completely, as his appearance. ‘I say modestly, but with truth, I have few equals in the matter of disguise and mimicry. What you now see before you, Mr Reynolds, is me — more or less. Then a scar here, a scar there, and that is how the AVO see me. You will understand, perhaps, why I was not unduly worried about being recognized to-night?’

Reynolds nodded slowly. ‘I do indeed. And — and you live here — with Jansci? Isn’t that rather dangerous?’

‘I live in the second best hotel in all Budapest,’ the Count assured him. ‘As befits a man of my rank, naturally. But as a bachelor, I must, of course, have my — ah — diversions, shall we say. My occasional absences call for no comment … Sorry to have been so long, Jansci.’

‘Not at all,’ Jansci, assured him. ‘Mr Reynolds and I have had the most interesting discussion.’

‘About the Russians, inevitably?’

‘Inevitably.’

‘And Mr Reynolds was all for conversion by annihilation?’

‘More or less.’ Jansci smiled. ‘It’s not so long since you felt the same way yourself.’

‘Age comes to us all.’ The Count crossed to a wall-cabinet, drew out a dark bottle, poured himself a half-tumblerful of liquid and looked at Reynolds. ‘Barack — apricot brandy, you would call it. Deadly. Avoid it like the plague. Home-made.’ As Reynolds watched in astonishment, he drank the contents without stopping, then refilled the glass. ‘You have not yet come to the business of the day?’

‘I’m coming to it now.’ Reynolds pushed back his plate, drank some more wine. ‘You gentlemen have heard, perhaps, of Dr Harold Jennings?’

Jansci’s eyes narrowed. ‘We have indeed. Who hasn’t?’

‘Exactly. Then you know what he’s like — an elderly dodderer well over seventy, short-sighted, amiable, a typically absent-minded professor in every respect but one. He has a brain like an electronic computer and is the world’s greatest expert and authority on the higher mathematics of ballistics and ballistic missiles.’

‘Which was why he was induced to defect to the Russians,’ the Count murmured.

‘He didn’t,’ Reynolds said flatly. ‘The world thinks he did, but the world is wrong.’

‘You are sure of this?’ Jansci was leaning far forward in his seat.

‘Certainly. Listen. At the time of the defection of other British scientists, old Jennings spoke out strongly, if unwisely, in their defence. He bitterly condemned what he called out-worn nationalism, and said that any man had the right to act according to the dictates of his mind, conscience and ideals. Almost immediately, as we expected, he was contacted by the Russians. He rebuffed them, told them to get the hell back to Moscow and said he fancied their brand of nationalism a damn’ sight less than his own: he had only been talking generally, he said.’

‘How can you be sure of this?’

‘We are sure — we had a tape recording of the entire conversation — we had the whole house wired. But we never made public the recording, and, after he had gone over to the Russians, it would have been too late — nobody would have believed us.’

‘Obviously,’ Jansci murmured. ‘And then, also obviously, you called off the watchdogs?’

‘We did,’ Reynolds admitted. ‘It would have made no difference anyway — we were watching the wrong party. Less than two months after the old boy’s interview with the Russian agents, Mrs Jennings and her sixteen-year-old schoolboy son, Brian — the professor married late in life — went to Switzerland for a holiday. Jennings was to have gone with them, but was held up by some important business at the last minute, so he let them go on alone, intending to rejoin them in two or three days in their Zurich hotel. He found his wife and son gone.’

‘Abducted, of course,’ Jansci said slowly. ‘And the Swiss-Austrian frontier is no barrier to determined men; but more likely, perhaps, by boat, at night.’

‘That’s what we thought,’ Reynolds nodded. ‘Lake Constance. Anyway, what’s certain is that Jennings was contacted within minutes of arriving at the hotel, told what had happened, and left in no doubt as to what lay in store for his wife and son if he didn’t immediately follow them behind the iron curtain. Jennings may be an old dodderer, but he’s not an old fool: he knew these people weren’t kidding, so he went at once.’

‘And now, of course, you want him back?’

‘We want him back. That’s why I’m here.’

Jansci smiled faintly. ‘It will be interesting to learn just how you propose to rescue him, Mr Reynolds, and, of course, his wife and son, for without them you achieve nothing. Three people, Mr Reynolds, an old man, a woman and a boy, a thousand miles to Moscow, and the snow lies deep upon the steppes.’

‘Not three people, Jansci: just one — the professor. And I don’t have to go to Moscow for him. He’s not two miles from where we’re sitting now, right here in Budapest.’

Jansci made no effort to conceal his astonishment. ‘Here? You’re sure of that, Mr Reynolds?’

‘Colonel Mackintosh was.’

‘Then Jennings must be here, he must be.’ Jansci twisted in his seat and looked at the Count. ‘Had you heard of this?’

‘Not a word. Nobody in our office knows of it, I’ll swear to that.’

‘All the world will know next week.’ Reynolds’ voice was quiet but positive. ‘When the International Scientific Conference opens here on Monday, the first paper will be read by Professor Jennings. He is being groomed to be the star of the show. It will be the Communists’ biggest propaganda triumph for years.’

‘I see, I see.’ Jansci drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table, then looked up sharply. ‘Professor Jennings, you said you only wanted the professor?’

Reynolds nodded.

‘Only the professor!’ Jansci stared at him. ‘God above, man, aren’t you aware what will happen to his wife and son? I assure you, Mr Reynolds, if you expect our assistance—’

‘Mrs Jennings is already in London.’ Reynolds held up his hand to forestall the questions. ‘She fell seriously ill about ten weeks ago, and Jennings insisted that she go to the London Clinic for treatment, and he forced the Communists to accede to his demands — you can’t coerce, torture or brainwash a man of the professor’s calibre without destroying his capacity for work, and he flatly refused to carry on working till they had granted his demands.’

‘He must be quite a man.’ The Count shook his head in admiration.

‘He’s a holy terror when something gets his back up,’ Reynolds smiled. ‘But it wasn’t all that much of an achievement. The Russians had everything to gain — the continued services of the greatest ballistic expert alive to-day — and nothing to lose. They held the two trump cards — Jennings and his son — in Russia and knew that Mrs Jennings would return: and they insisted that everything be done in the utmost secrecy. Not half a dozen people in Britain know that Mrs Jennings is in Britain; not even the surgeon who carried out the two major operations on her.’

‘She recovered?’

‘It was touch and go, but she recovered and she’s recuperating very well.’

‘The old man will be pleased,’ Jansci murmured. ‘His wife returns to Russia soon?’

‘His wife will never return to Russia again,’ Reynolds said bluntly. ‘And Jennings has no reason to be pleased. He thinks his wife is critically ill, and that what little hope there is is going fast. He thinks that, because that is what we have told him.’

‘What! What’s that?’ Jansci was on his feet now, the faded grey eyes cold and hard as tone. ‘God in heaven, Reynolds, what kind of inhuman conduct is that? You actually told the old man his wife was dying?’

‘Our people at home need him, and need him desperately: our scientists have been held up, completely blocked, on their latest project for ten weeks now, and they’re convinced that Jennings is the only man that can give them the breakthrough they must have.’

‘So they would use this despicable trick—’

‘It’s life or death, Jansci,’ Reynolds interrupted flatly. ‘It may literally be life or death for millions. Jennings must be moved and we will use every lever we can to that end.’

‘You think this is ethical, Reynolds? You think anything can justify—’

‘Whether I think these things or not doesn’t matter a damn,’ Reynolds said indifferently. ‘The pros and cons are not for me to decide. The only things that concern me are that I’ve been given a job to do: if it is possible in any way at all, I’ll get that job done.’

‘A ruthless and dangerous man,’ the Count murmured. ‘I told you. A killer, but he happens to be on the side of the law.’

‘Yes.’ Reynolds was unmoved. ‘And there’s another point. Like many other brilliant men, Jennings is rather naïve and short-sighted when it comes to matters outside his own speciality. Mrs Jennings tells us that the Russians have assured her husband that the project he is working on will be used for exclusively peaceful purposes. Jennings believes this. He’s a pacifist at heart, and so—’

‘All the best scientists are pacifists at heart.’ Jansci was sitting down now, but his eyes were still hostile. ‘All the best men everywhere are pacifists at heart.’

‘I’m not arguing. All I’m saying is that Jennings is now at the stage where he would sooner work for the Russians, if he thinks he is working for peace, than for his own people, if he knows he is working for war. Which makes him all the more difficult to move — and which — in turn, makes necessary the use of every lever that comes to hand.’

‘The fate of his young son is, of course, a matter of indifference.’ The Count waved an airy hand. ‘Where such tremendous stakes are at issue—’

‘Brian, his son, was in Poznan all day yesterday,’ Reynolds interrupted. ‘Some exposition or other, mainly for youth organizations. Two men shadowed him from the moment he got up. By noon tomorrow — to-day, that is — he’ll be in Stettin. Twenty-four hours later he’ll be in Sweden.’

‘Ah, so. But you are too confident, Reynolds, you underestimate Russian vigilance.’ The Count was regarding him thoughtfully over the rim of his brandy glass. ‘Agents have been known to fail.’

‘These two agents have never failed. They are the best in Europe. Brian Jennings will be in Sweden tomorrow. The call-sign comes from London on a regular European transmission. Then, and not till then, we approach Jennings.’

‘So.’ The Count nodded. ‘Perhaps you have some humanity after all.’

‘Humanity!’ Jansci’s voice was cold still, almost contemptuous. ‘Just another lever to use against the poor old man — and Reynolds’ people know very well that if they left the boy to die in Russia Jennings would never work for them again.’

The Count lit another of his interminable chain of brown cigarettes.

‘Perhaps we are being too harsh. Perhaps, here, self-interest and humanity go hand in hand. “Perhaps,” I said … And what if Jennings still refuses to go?’

‘Then he’ll just have to go whether he wants to or not.’

‘Wonderful! Just wonderful!’ The Count smiled wryly. ‘What a picture for Pravda. Our friends here lugging Jennings by the heels across the border and the caption “British Secret Agent Liberates Western Scientist.” Can’t you just see it, Mr Reynolds?’

Reynolds shrugged and said nothing. He was only too keenly aware of the change of atmosphere in the past five minutes, the undercurrent of hostility that now ran strongly towards himself. But he had had to tell Jansci everything — Colonel Mackintosh had been insistent on that point, and it had been inevitable if they were to have Jansci’s help. The offer of help, if it were to be made at all, now hung in the balance — and without it, Reynolds knew, he might as well have saved himself the trouble of coming at all … Two minutes passed in silence, then Jansci and the Count looked at one another and exchanged an almost imperceptible nod. Jansci looked squarely at Reynolds.

‘If all your countrymen were like you, Mr Reynolds, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you: cold-blooded, emotionless people to whom right and wrong, justice and injustice, and suffering are matters of academic disinterest are as guilty, by silence of consent, as the barbarous murderers of whom you so recently spoke: but I know they are not all like you: neither would I help if it were only to enable your scientists to make machines of war. But Colonel Mackintosh was — is — my friend and I think it inhuman, no matter what the cause, that an old man should die in a foreign land, among uncaring strangers, far from his family and those he loves. If it lies in our power, in any way at all, we will see to it, with God’s help, that the old man comes safely home again.’