The Last Frontier

FOUR

The inevitable cigarette holder clipped between his teeth, the inevitable Russian cigarette well alight, the Count leaned a heavy elbow on the buzzer and kept on leaning until a shirt-sleeved little man, unshaven and still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, came scurrying out from the little cubicle behind the hotel’s reception desk. The Count eyed him with disfavour.

‘Night-porters should sleep in the daytime,’ he said coldly. ‘The manager, little man, and at once.’

‘The manager? At this hour of the night?’ The night-porter stared with ill-concealed insolence at the clock above his head, transferred his stare to the Count, now innocuously dressed in a grey suit and grey raglan raincoat, and made no effort at all to conceal the truculence in his voice. ‘The manager is asleep. Come back in the morning.’

There came a sudden sound of ripping linen, a gasp of pain, and the Count, his right hand gripping the bunched folds of the porter’s shirt, had him halfway across the desk: the blood-shot, sleep-filmed eyes, widened first with surprise and then with fear, were only inches away from the wallet that had magically appeared in the Count’s free hand. A moment of stillness, a contemptuous shove and the porter was scrabbling frantically at the pigeon-holed mail racks behind him in an attempt to keep his balance.

‘I’m sorry, comrade, I’m terribly sorry!’ the porter licked his lips suddenly dry and stiff. ‘I–I didn’t know—’

‘Who else do you expect to come calling at this hour of night?’ the Count demanded softly.

‘No one, comrade, no one! No — no one at all. It’s just that — well, you were here only twenty minutes ago—’

‘I was here?’ It was the raised eyebrow as much as the inflection of the voice that cut short the frightened stammering.

‘No, no, of course not. Not you — your people, I mean. They came—’

‘I know little man. I sent them.’ The Count waved a weary hand in bored dismissal and the porter hurried off across the hall. Reynolds rose from the wall-bench where he had been sitting and crossed the room.

‘Quite a performance,’ he murmured. ‘You even had me scared.’

‘Just practice,’ the Count said modestly. ‘Sustains my reputation and doesn’t do them any permanent harm, distressing though it is to be addressed as “comrade” by such a moron … You heard what he said?’

‘Yes. They don’t waste much time, do they?’

‘Efficient enough in their own unimaginative way,’ the Count conceded. ‘They’ll have checked most of the hotels in town by morning. Only a slim chance, of course, but one that they can’t afford to neglect. Your position is now doubly safe, three times as safe as it was at Jansci’s house.’

Reynolds nodded and said nothing. Only half an hour had elapsed since Jansci had agreed to help him. Both Jansci and the Count had decided that he must leave there at once: it was too inconvenient, too dangerous. It was inconvenient not so much because of the cramped accommodation, but because it was in a lonely and out of the way place: movements of a stranger at any hour of the day or night, such as Reynolds might be compelled to make, would be sure to draw unfavourable attention: it was too remote from the centre of the town, from the big hotels of Pest, where Jennings might be expected to be staying: and, biggest drawback of all, it had no telephone for instant communications.

And it was dangerous because Jansci was becoming increasingly convinced that the house was being watched: in the past day or two both Sandor and Imre had seen two people, singly and on several different occasions, walking slowly by the house on the other side of the street. It was unlikely that they were innocent passers-by: like every city under a police state rule, Budapest had its hundreds of paid informers, and probably they were just confirming their suspicions and gathering their facts before going to the police and collecting their blood-money. Reynolds had been surprised by the casual, almost indifferent way Jansci had treated this danger, but the Count had explained as he had driven the Mercedes through the snow-filled street to this hotel on the banks of the Danube. The changing of their hideouts because of suspicious neighbours had become so frequent as to be almost routine, and Jansci had a sixth sense which, so far, had always led them to pull out in good time. Annoying, the Count said, but no serious inconvenience, they knew of half a dozen bolt-holes just as good, and their permanent headquarters, a place known to Jansci, Julia and himself, was in the country.

Reynolds’ thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door across the hall opening. He looked up to see a man hurrying across the parquet floor, the tap-tap of his metalled heels urgent and almost comically hurried: he was shrugging a jacket over a crumpled shirt, and the thin, bespectacled face was alive with fear and anxiety.

‘A thousand apologies, comrade, a thousand apologies!’ he wrung white-knuckled hands in his distress, then glared at the porter following more slowly behind him. ‘This oaf here—’

‘You are the manager?’ the Count interrupted curtly.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Then dismiss the oaf. I wish to talk to you privately.’ He waited till the porter had gone, drew out his gold cigarette case, selected a cigarette with due care, examined it minutely, inserted it with much deliberation in his holder, took his time about finding his matchbox and removing a match, finally lit the cigarette. A beautiful performance, Reynolds thought dispassionately: the manager, already on the tenterhooks of fright, was now almost in hysterics.

‘What is it, comrade, what has gone wrong?’ In his attempt to keep his voice steady, it had been louder than intended, and it now dropped to almost a whisper. ‘If I can help the AVO in any way, I assure you—’

‘When you speak, you will do so only to answer my questions.’ The Count hadn’t even raised his voice, but the manager seemed to shrink visibly, and his mouth closed tightly in a white line of fear. ‘You spoke to my men some little time ago?’

‘Yes, yes, a short time ago. I wasn’t even asleep just now—’

‘Only to answer my questions,’ the Count repeated softly. ‘I trust I do not have to say that again … They asked if you had any new arrival staying here, any fresh bookings, checked the register and searched the rooms. They left, of course, a typed description of the man they were looking for?’

‘I have it here, comrade.’ The manager tapped his breast pocket.

‘And orders to phone immediately if anyone resembling that description appeared here?’

The manager nodded.

‘Forget all that,’ the Count ordered. ‘Things are moving quickly. We have every reason to believe that the man is either coming here or that his contact is already living here or will be coming here in the course of the next twenty-four hours.’ The Count exhaled a long, thin streamer of smoke and looked speculatively at the manager. ‘To our certain knowledge, this is the fourth time in three months that you have harboured enemies of the State in your hotel.’

‘Here? In this hotel?’ The manager had paled visibly. ‘I swear to God, comrade—’

‘God?’ The Count creased his forehead. ‘What God? Whose God?’

The manager’s face was no longer pale, it was ashen grey: good communists never made fatal blunders of this kind. Reynolds could almost feel sorry for him, but he knew what the Count was after: a state of terror, instant compliance, blind, unreasoning obedience. And already he had it.

‘A — a slip of the tongue, comrade.’ The manager was now stuttering in his panic, and his legs and hands were trembling. ‘I assure you, comrade—’

‘No. No, let me assure you, comrade.’ The Count’s voice was almost a purr. ‘One more slip-up and we must see to a little re-education, an elimination of these distressing bourgeois sentiments, of your readiness to give refuge to people who would stab our mother country in the back.’ The manager opened his mouth to protest, but his lips moved soundlessly, and the Count went on, his every word now a cold and deadly menace. ‘My instructions will be obeyed and obeyed implicitly, and you will be held directly responsible for any failure, however unavoidable that failure. That, my friend, or the Black Sea Canal.’

‘I’ll do anything, anything!’ The manager was begging now, in a state of piteous terror, and he had to clutch the desk to steady himself. ‘Anything, comrade. I swear it!’

‘You will have your last chance.’ The Count nodded towards Reynolds. ‘One of my men. Sufficiently like the spy we are after, in build and appearance, to pass muster, and we have disguised him a little. A shadowed corner of your lounge, say, an incautious approach, and the contact is ours. The contact will sing to us, as all men sing to the AVO, and then the spy himself will be ours also.’

Reynolds stared at the Count, only the years of professional training keeping his face expressionless, and wondered if there was any limit to this man’s effrontery. But in that same insolent audacity, Reynolds knew, the best hope of safety lay.

‘However, all that is no concern of yours,’ the Count continued. ‘These are your instructions. A room for my friend here — let us call him, for the sake of convenience, say, Mr Rakosi — the best you have, with a private bathroom, fire-escape, short-wave radio receiver, telephone, alarm clock, duplicates of all master-keys in the hotel and absolute privacy. No switchboard operator eavesdropping on Mr Rakosi’s room telephone — as you are probably aware, my dear manager, we have devices that tell us instantly when a line is being monitored. No chambermaid, no floor waiters, no electricians, plumbers or any other tradesmen to go near his room. All meals will be taken up by yourself. Unless Mr Rakosi chooses to show himself, he doesn’t exist. No one knows he exists, even you have never seen him, you haven’t even seen me. All that is clearly understood?’

‘Yes, of course, of course.’ The manager was grasping frantically at this straw of a last chance. ‘Everything will be exactly as you say, comrade, exactly. You have my word.’

‘You may yet live to mulct a few thousand more guests,’ the Count said contemptuously. ‘Warn that oaf of a porter not to talk, and show us this room immediately.’

Five minutes later they were alone. Reynolds’ room was not large, but comfortably furnished, complete with radio and telephone and a fire-escape conveniently placed outside the adjoining bathroom. The Count glanced round approvingly.

‘You’ll be comfortable here for a few days, two or three, anyway. Not more, it’s too dangerous. The manager won’t talk, but you’ll always find some frightened fool or mercenary informer who will.’

‘And then?’

‘You’ll have to become somebody else. A few hours’ sleep then I go to see a friend of mine who specializes in such things.’ The Count thoughtfully rubbed a blue and bristly chin. ‘A German, I think will be best for you, preferably from the Ruhr — Dortmund, Essen or thereabouts. Much more convincing than your Austrian, I assure you. East-west contraband trade is becoming so big that the deals are now being handled by the principals themselves, and the Swiss and Austrian middlemen who used to handle these transactions are having a thin time of it. Very rare birds now, and hence an object of suspicion. You can be a supplier of, let us say, aluminium and copper goods. I’ll get you a book on it.’

‘These, of course, are banned goods?’

‘Naturally, my dear fellow. There are hundreds of banned goods, absolutely proscribed by the governments of the west, but a Niagara of the stuff flows across the iron curtain every year — £100,000,000 worth, £200,000,000 — no one knows.’

‘Good lord!’ Reynolds was astonished, but recovered quickly. ‘And I’ll contribute my quota to the flow?’

‘Easiest thing imaginable, my boy. Your stuff is sent to Hamburg or some other free port under false stencils and manifest: these are changed inside the factory and the stuff embarked on a Russian ship. Or, easier still, just send them across the border to France, break up, repack and send to Czechoslovakia — by the 1921 ‘in transit’ agreement goods can be shipped from countries A to C clear across B without benefit of any customs examinations. Beautifully simple, is it not?’

‘It is,’ Reynolds admitted. ‘The governments concerned must be at their wits’ end.’

‘The governments!’ The Count laughed. ‘My dear Reynolds, when a nation’s economy booms, governments become afflicted with an irremediable myopia. Some time ago an outraged German citizen, a socialist leader by the name of, I think, Wehner — that’s it, Herbert Wehner — sent to the Bonn Government a list of six hundred firms — six hundred, my dear fellow! — actively engaged in contraband trade.’

‘And the result?’

‘Six hundred informants in six hundred factories sacked,’ the Count said succinctly. ‘Or so Wehner said, and no doubt he knew. Business is business, and profits are profits the world over. The Communists will welcome you with open arms, provided you have what they want. I’ll see to that. You will become a representative, a partner, of some big metal firm in the Ruhr.’

‘An existing firm?’

‘But of course. No chances and what that firm doesn’t know won’t hurt them.’ The Count pulled a stainless steel hip flask from his pocket. ‘You will join me?’

‘Thank you, no.’ To Reynolds’ certain knowledge, the Count had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of brandy that night already, but its effects, outwardly at least, were negligible: the man’s tolerance to alcohol was phenomenal. In fact, Reynolds reflected, a phenomenal character in many ways, an enigma if ever he had known one. Normally a coldly humorous man with a quick, sardonic wit, the Count’s face, in its rare moments of repose, held a withdrawn remoteness, almost a sadness that was in sharp, baffling contrast to his normal self. Or, maybe his remote self was his normal self …

‘Just as well.’ The Count fetched a glass from the bathroom, poured a drink and swallowed it in one gulp. ‘A purely medicinal precaution, you understand, and the less you have the more I have and thus the more adequately is my health safeguarded … As I say, first thing this morning I fix your identiy. Then I’ll go to the Andrassy Ut and find out where the Russian delegates to this conference are staying. The Three Crowns, probably — staffed by our people — but it may be elsewhere.’ He brought out paper and pencil and scribbled on it for a minute. ‘Here are the names and the addresses of seven or eight hotels — it’s bound to be one of these. Listed A-H, you observe. When I call you on the phone, I’ll first of all address you by the wrong name. The first letter of that name will correspond to the hotel. You understand?’

Reynolds nodded.

‘I’ll also try to get you Jennings’ room number. That will be more difficult. I’ll reverse it on the phone — in the form of some financial quotations in connection with your export business.’ The Count put away his brandy flask and stood up. ‘And that, I’m afraid, is about all I can do for you, Mr Reynolds. The rest is up to you. I can’t possibly go near any hotel where Jennings is staying, because our own men will be there watching them, and, besides, I expect to be on duty this coming afternoon and evening until ten o’clock at least. Even if I could approach him, it would be useless. Jennings would know me for a foreigner right away, and be instantly suspicious, and, apart from that, you are the only person who has seen his wife and can bring all the facts and necessary arguments to bear.’

‘You’ve already done more than enough,’ Reynolds assured him. ‘I’m alive, aren’t I? And I won’t leave this room till I hear from you?’

‘Not a step. Well, a little sleep, then on with the uniform and my daily stint of terrorizing all and sundry.’ The Count smiled wryly. ‘You cannot imagine, Mr Reynolds, what it feels like to be universally beloved. Au revoir.’

Reynolds wasted no time after the Count had gone. He felt desperately tired. He locked his room door, securing the key so that it could not be pushed clear from the outside, placed a chair-back under the handle as additional security, locked his room and bathroom windows, placed an assortment of glasses and other breakable articles on the window-sills — a most efficient burglar alarm, he had found from past experience — slipped his automatic under his pillow, undressed and climbed thankfully into bed.

For a minute or two only his thoughts wandered over the past few hours. He thought of the patient and gentle Jansci, a Jansci whose appearance and philosophies were at such wild variance with the almost incredible violence of his past, of the equally enigmatic Count, of Jansci’s daughter, so far only a pair of blue eyes and golden hair without any personality to go with them, of Sandor, as gentle in his own way as his master, and of Imre with the nervous shifting eyes.

He tried, too, to think of tomorrow — today, it was now — of his chances of meeting the old professor, of the best method of handling the interview, but he was far too tired really, his thoughts were no more than a kaleidoscope pattern without either form or coherence, and even that pattern blurred and faded swiftly into nothingness as he sank into the sleep of exhaustion.

The harsh jangling of the alarm clock roused him only four hours later. He woke with that dry, stale feeling of one who has only half-slept, but none the less he woke instantly, cutting off the alarm before it had rung for more than a couple of seconds. He rang down for coffee, put on his dressing-gown, lit a cigarette, collected the coffee pot at the door, locked it again and clamped the radio’s headphones to his ears.

The password announcing Brian’s safe arrival in Sweden was to consist of a planned mistake on the announcer’s part: it had been agreed that he would say, ‘… tonight — I beg your pardon, that should read “tomorrow” night.’ But the BBC’s short-wave European news transmission that morning was innocent of any such deliberate slip, and Reynolds took off the headphones without any feeling of disappointment. He hadn’t really expected it as early as this, but even so remote a chance was not to be neglected. He finished the rest of the coffee and was asleep again within minutes.

When he woke again he did so naturally, feeling completely rested and refreshed. It was just after one o’clock. He washed, shaved, rang down for lunch, dressed and then pulled apart his window curtains. It was so cold outside that his windows were still heavily frosted, and he had to open them to see what the weather was like. The wind was light, but it struck through his thin shirt like a knife, and it had all the makings, he thought grimly, of an ideal night for a secret agent at large — provided, that was, that the secret agent didn’t freeze to death. The snowflakes, big, lazy, feathery snowflakes, were swirling down gently out of a dark and leaden sky. Reynolds shivered and hastily closed the window, just as the knock came on the door.

He unlocked the door and the manager carried in a tray with Reynolds’ lunch under covers. If the manager resented what he must have regarded as menial work, he showed no signs of it: on the contrary, he was obsequiousness itself, and the presence on the tray of a bottle of Imperial Aszu, a mellow and golden Tokay with, Reynolds rightly judged, the scarcity value of gold itself, was proof enough of the manager’s almost fanatical desire to please the AVO in every conceivable way. Reynolds refrained from thanking him — the AVO, he fancied, were not given to such little courtesies — and waved a hand in dismissal. But the manager dug into his pocket and brought out an envelope, blank on both sides. ‘I was told to deliver this to you, Mr Rakosi.’

‘To me?’ Reynolds’ voice was sharp, but not with anxiety. Only the Count and his friends knew his new assumed name. ‘When did it arrive?’

‘Only five minutes ago.’

‘Five minutes ago!’ Reynolds stared coldly at the manager and his voice dropped a theatrical octave: melodramatic tones and gestures that would have led only to ridicule back home, were, he was beginning to discover, all too readily accepted as genuine in this terror-ridden country. ‘Then why wasn’t it brought to me five minutes ago?’

‘I’m sorry, comrade.’ The quaver was back in the voice once more. ‘Your — your lunch was almost ready, and I thought—’

‘You’re not required to think. Next time a message arrives for me deliver it immediately. Who brought this?’

‘A girl — a young woman.’

‘Describe her.’

‘It is difficult. I am not good at this.’ He hesitated. ‘You see she wore a belted raincoat, with a big hood attached. She wasn’t tall, short almost, but well built. Her boots—’

‘Her face, idiot! Her hair.’

‘The hood covered her hair. She had blue eyes, very blue eyes …’ The manager seized eagerly on this point, but then his voice trailed away. ‘I’m afraid, comrade—’ Reynolds cut him off and dismissed him. He had heard enough and the description tallied sufficiently well with Jansci’s daughter. His first reaction, surprising even to himself, was a faint stirring of anger that she could be risked in this fashion, but on the heels of the thought came the awareness of its injustice: it would have been highly dangerous for Jansci himself, with a face that must have been known to hundreds, to move abroad in the streets, and Sandor and Imre, conspicuous figures as they must have been in the October Rising, would be remembered by many: but a young girl would rouse neither suspicion nor comment, and even if inquiries were made later, the manager’s description would have fitted a thousand others.

He slit open the envelope. The message was brief, printed in block capitals: ‘Do not come to the house tonight. Meet me in the White Angel Café between eight and nine.’ It was signed ‘J.’ Julia of course, not Jansci — if Jansci wouldn’t take the chance of walking through the streets, he certainly wouldn’t go near a crowded café. The reason for the change in plan — he had been supposed to report to Jansci’s house after his meeting with Jennings — he couldn’t guess. Police or informer surveillance, probably, but there could be half a dozen other reasons. Typically, Reynolds wasted no time in worrying about it: guessing would get nowhere, and he would find out from the girl in due time. He burnt letter and envelope in the bathroom washbasin, flushed away the ashes and sat down to an excellent dinner.

The hours came and went. Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock and still no word from the Count. Either he was having difficulty in getting the information or, more likely, he could find no opportunity of passing it on. Reynolds, interrupting his pacing of the room only for an occasional glance through the window at the snow sifting down soundlessly, more heavily than ever, on the houses and streets of the darkening city, was beginning to grow anxious: if he was to find out where the professor was staying, interview him, persuade him to make the break for the Austrian frontier and himself be at the White Angel Café — he had found its address in the directory — by nine o’clock, time was growing very short indeed.

Five o’clock came and passed. Half-past. Then, at twenty minutes to six, the telephone bell jangled shrilly in the silence of the room. Reynolds reached the phone in two strides and picked up the receiver.

‘Mr Buhl? Mr Johann Buhl?’ The Count’s voice was low and hurried, but it was unmistakably the Count’s voice.

‘Buhl speaking.’

‘Good. Excellent news for you, Mr Buhl. I’ve been to the Ministry this afternoon, and they’re very interested in your firm’s offer, especially in the rolled aluminium. They’d like to discuss it with you right away — provided you’re willing to accept their top price — ninety-five.’

‘I think my firm would find that acceptable.’

‘Then they will do business. We can talk over dinner. Six-thirty too early for you?’

‘Not at all. I’ll be there. Third floor, isn’t it?’

‘Second. Until six-thirty, then. Good-bye.’ The receiver clicked, and Reynolds replaced his own phone. The Count had sounded pushed for time and in danger of being overheard, but he had got all the information through. B for Buhl — that was indeed the Three Crowns Hotel, the one exclusively staffed by the AVO and its creatures. A pity, it made everything trebly dangerous, but at least he would know where he stood there — every man’s hand would be against him. Room 59, second floor and the professor dined at six-thirty, when his room would be, presumably, empty. Reynolds looked at his watch and wasted no more time. He belted on his trench-coat, pulled his trilby well down, screwed the special silencer on to his Belgian automatic, and stuck the gun in his right-hand pocket, a rubberized torch in the other and two spare clips for the gun in an inside jacket pocket. Then he rang the switchboard, told the manager that he was on no account to be disturbed by visitors, telephone calls, messages or meals during the next four hours, secured the key in the lock, left the light burning to mislead any person inquisitive enough to peep through the keyhole, unlocked the bathroom window and left by the fire-escape.

The night was bitterly cold, the thick, soft snow more than ankle deep and before he had covered two hundred yards Reynolds’ coat and hat were as white, almost, as the ground beneath his feet. But he was grateful for both the cold and the snow: the cold would discourage even the most conscientious of the police and secret police from prowling the streets with their usual vigilance, and the snow, apart from shrouding him in the protective anonymity of its white cocoon, also muffled every noise, reducing even the sound of his footfalls to the merest whisper. A night for a hunter, Reynolds thought grimly.

He arrived at the Three Crowns in less than ten minutes — even in the snow-filled gloom he had found his way there as unerringly as if he had lived in Budapest all his days — and made his first circumspect inspection of the place, keeping to the far side of the street.

It was a big hotel, occupying a city block to itself. The entrance, the big double glass doors open to the night with a revolving door behind the vestibule, was bathed in a harsh fluorescent light. Two uniformed doormen, occasionally stamping their feet and beating their arms against the cold, guarded the entrance: both men, Reynolds could see, were armed with revolvers in buttoned-down holsters, and carried a baton or night-stick apiece. They were no more doormen than he was himself, Reynolds guessed, but almost certainly regular members of the AVO. One thing was certain: no matter how he was going to effect an entry, it wasn’t going to be through that front door. All this Reynolds saw out of the corner of his eyes as he hurried along the other side of the street, head bent against the snow, to all appearances a man homeward bound with all speed to the comforts of his own fireside. As soon as he was out of their sight, he doubled in his tracks and made a quick examination of the sides of the Three Crowns. There was no more hope here than there had been at the front: all the ground-floor windows were heavily barred and the windows of the storey above might as well have been on the moon as far as accessibility was concerned. That left only the back.

The trade and staff entrance to the hotel lay through a deep archway in the middle of the wall, wide enough and high enough to take a big delivery truck. Through the archway Reynolds caught a glimpse of the snow-covered courtyard beyond — the hotel was built in the form of a hollow square — an entrance door at the far side, opposite the main doors, and one or two parked cars. Above the entrance door to the main block, a hooded electric lantern burned brightly and light shone from several of the ground and first-floor windows. The total illumination was not much, but enough to let him see the angular shapes of three fire-escapes zig-zagging upwards before being lost in the snow and the darkness.

Reynolds walked to the corner, glanced quickly round him, crossed the street at a fast walk and made his way back towards the entrance, hugging the hotel wall as closely as he could. Approaching the opening of the archway, he slowed down, stopped, pulled the brim of his hat farther over his eyes, and peered cautiously round the corner.

For the first moment he could see nothing, for his eyes, so long accustomed and adjusted to the darkness, were momentarily dazzled, blinded by the beam from a powerful torch, and in that sickening instant he was certain he had been discovered. His hand was just coming out of his pocket, the butt of the automatic cradled in his hand, when the beam left him and went round the inside of the courtyard.

The pupils of his eyes slowly widening again, Reynolds could see now what had happened. A man, a soldier armed with a shoulder-slung carbine, was making his rounds of the perimeter of the courtyard, and the carelessly swinging torch light had illuminated Reynolds’ face for an instant, but the guard, his eyes obviously not following the beam, had missed it.

Reynolds turned into the archway, took three silent paces forward and stopped again. The guard was going away from him now, approaching the main block, and Reynolds could clearly see what he was doing. He was making a round of the fire-escapes shining his light on the bottom, snow-covered flight of steps of each. Reynolds wondered ironically whether he was guarding against the possibility of outsiders going in — or insiders going out. Probably the latter — from what the Count had told him, he knew that quite a few of the guests at this forthcoming conference would willingly have passed it up in exchange for an exit visa to the west. A rather stupid precaution, Reynolds thought, especially when it was made so obvious: any reasonably fit person, forewarned by the probing torch, could go up or down the first flight of a fire-escape without his feet making any telltale tracks on the steps.

Now, Reynolds decided, now’s my chance. The guard, passing under the electric storm lantern at the far entrance, was at his maximum distance, and there was no point in waiting until he had made another circuit. Soundlessly, a shadowy ghost in the white gloom of the night, Reynolds flitted across the cobblestones of the archway, barely checked an exclamation, halted abruptly in mid-step and shrank into the wall beside him, legs, body, arms and widespread, stiff-fingered hands pressing hard against the cold, clammy stone of the wall behind, the brim of his hat crushed flat between the side of his head and the archway. His heart was thumping slowly, painfully in his chest.

You fool, Reynolds, he told himself savagely, you bloody kindergarten idiot. You almost fell for it, but for the grace of God and the red arc of that carelessly flung cigarette now sizzling to extinction in the snow not two feet from where you stood, rock-still, not even daring to breathe, you would have fallen for it. He should have known, he should have done the intelligence of the AVO the elementary courtesy of guessing that they wouldn’t make things so childishly simple for anyone hoping to break in or out.

The sentry-box just inside the courtyard stood only a few inches back from the archway, and the sentry himself, half in, half out of the box, his shoulders leaning against the corners both of the box and the archway, was less than thirty inches from where Reynolds stood. Reynolds could hear him breathing, slowly, distinctly and the occasional shuffling of his feet on the wooden floor of the box was almost thunderous in his ears.

He had barely seconds left, Reynolds knew, half a dozen at the most. The sentry had only to stir, to turn his head a couple of lazy inches to the left and he was lost. Even if he didn’t so stir, his companion, now only yards away, would be bound to catch him in the sweep of his torch as he came by the entrance. Three courses, Reynolds’ racing mind calculated, three courses only lay open to him. He could turn and run, and stood a good chance of escape in the snow and the darkness, but the guard would be then so strengthened that his last chance of seeing old Jennings would have gone for ever. He could kill both men — he never questioned his own ability to do this, and would have destroyed them ruthlessly if the necessity were there — but the problem of the disposal of the bodies would be insuperable, and if the hue and cry over their discovery were raised while he was still inside the Three Crowns he knew he would never come out alive. There was only the third way that offered any chance of success, and there was time neither for further thought nor delay.

The automatic was out now, the butt firmly clasped in both hands, the back of his right wrist pressed hard against the archway wall for maximum steadiness. The bulk of the silencer made sighting difficult, the swirling snow made it doubly so, but the chance had to be taken. The soldier with the torch was perhaps ten feet away, the guard in the box clearing his throat to make some remark to his companion when Reynolds slowly squeezed the trigger.

The soft ‘plop’ of the silencer muffling the escaping gases was lost in the sudden crash as the storm lantern above the entrance door shattered into a hundred pieces, the broken fragments tinkling against the wall behind before falling into the cushioning silence of the snow. To the ears of the man at the sentry-box, the dull report of the silencer must have come a fraction of a second before the smashing of the glass, but the human ear is incapable of making such fine distinctions in time, and only the vastly louder sound could have registered. Already he was pounding across the courtyard toward the far entrance, the man with the torch close by his side.

Reynolds wasn’t far behind them. He passed the sentry-box, turned sharply right, ran lightly along the track the circling sentry had beaten in the virgin snow, passed the first fire-escape, turned, launched himself sideways and upwards and caught the stanchion supporting the hand-rail on the first platform at the full extent of his arms. For one bad moment he felt his fingers slipping on the cold, smooth steel, tightened his grip desperately, held, then overhanded himself upwards till he caught the rail. A moment later he was standing securely on the first platform, and neither the snow round the three outer edges of the platform nor that on any of the steps leading up to it showed any signs of having been disturbed.

Five seconds later, taking two steps at a time with his feet, each time, placed sideways in the middle of each step so as to leave no visible trace from below, he had reached the second platform, on a level now with the first floor. Here he crouched, kneeling so as to reduce his bulk to the smallest dimensions possible, for the two soldiers were returning to the archway, in no great hurry, talking to one another. They were convinced, Reynolds could hear, that the hot glass had shattered because of the extreme cold, and not disposed to worry unduly about it. Reynolds felt no surprise: the spent bullet deflected by these granite-hard walls would leave scarcely a mark, and it might lie undisturbed, undiscovered for days under the thick carpet of snow. In their position, he would probably have come to the same conclusion himself. For form’s sake, the two men walked round the parked cars and shone their torches over the lower flights of the fire-escapes, and by the time their cursory inspection was over, Reynolds was on the platform level with the second floor, standing outside a set of double glass doors.

He tried them, cautiously, firmly. They were locked. He had expected nothing else. Slowly, with the utmost care — for his hands were now almost numbed with the cold and the slightest fumble could be his undoing — he had brought out his knife, eased the blade open without a click, slid it into the crack between the doors and pressed upwards. Seconds later he was inside locking the glass doors behind him.

The room was pitch dark but his outstretched, inquiring hands soon told him where he was. The hard smoothness all around, the glazed feel of wall tiles, marble washbasins and chromed rails could belong only to a bathroom. He pulled the door curtains carelessly together — as far as the men below were concerned, there was no reason why a light should not appear in that room more than in any other room — fumbled his way across to the door and switched on the light.

It was a large room with an old-fashioned bath, three of the walls tiled and the other given up to a couple of big linen cupboards, but Reynolds wasted no time in examining it. He crossed to the washbasin, ran the water till the basin was almost full of hot water and plunged his hands in. A drastic method of restoring circulation to numbed and frozen hands, and an exquisitely painful one, but what it lacked in finesse it more than compensated for in speed, and Reynolds was interested in that alone. He dried his tingling fingers, took his automatic out, switched off the light, cautiously opened the door and eased an eye round the corner of the jamb.

He was standing, he found, at the end of a long corridor, luxuriously carpeted as he would have expected of any hotel run by the AVO. Both sides of the corridor were lined with doors, the one opposite him bearing the number 56 and the next but one 57: luck was beginning to break his way and chance had brought him directly into the wing where Jennings and, probably, a handful of other top scientists were quartered. But as his glance reached the end of the corridor, his mouth tightened and he drew back swiftly, noiselessly inside the door, shutting it softly behind him. Self-congratulations were a trifle premature, he thought grimly. There had been no mistaking the identity of that uniformed figure standing at the far end of the corridor, hands clasped behind his back and staring out through a frost-rimmed window: there was no mistaking an AVO guard anywhere.

Reynolds sat on the edge of the bath, lit a cigarette and tried to figure out his next move. The need for haste was urgent, but not desperate enough for rashness: at this stage, rashness could ruin everything.

The guard, obviously, was there to stay — he had that curiously settled look about him. Equally obviously, he, Reynolds, could not hope to break his way into No. 59 as long as the guard remained there. Problem, remove the guard. No good trying to rush him or even stalk him down the brightly lit length of the 120-foot corridor: there were other ways of committing suicide but few more foolish. The guard would have come to him, and he would have to come unsuspectingly. Suddenly Reynolds grinned, crushed out his cigarette and rose quickly to his feet. The Count, he thought, would have appreciated this.

He stripped off hat, jacket, tie and shirt, tossing them into the bath, ran hot water into the basin, took a bar of soap and lathered his face vigorously till it was covered in a deep white film up to his eyes: for all he knew his description had been issued to every policeman and AVO man in Budapest. Then he dried his hands thoroughly, took the gun in his left hand, draped a towel over it and opened the door. His voice, when he called, was low-pitched enough but it carried down the length of the corridor with remarkable clarity.

The guard whirled round at once, his hand automatically reaching down for his gun, but he checked the movement as he saw the harmless appearance of the singlet-clad, gesticulating figure at the other end of the corridor. He opened his mouth to speak, but Reynolds urgently gestured him to silence with the universal dumb-show of a forefinger raised to pursed lips. For a second the guard hesitated, saw Reynolds beckoning him frantically, then came running down the corridor, his rubber soles silent on the deep pile of the carpet. He had his gun in his hand as he drew up alongside Reynolds.

‘There’s a man on the fire-escape outside,’ Reynolds whispered. His nervous fumbling with the towel concealed the transfer of the gun, barrel foremost, to his right hand. ‘He’s trying to force the doors open.’

‘You are sure of this?’ The man’s voice was no more than a hoarse, guttural murmur. ‘You saw him?’

‘I saw him.’ Reynolds’ whisper was shaking with nervous excitement. ‘He can’t see in, though. The curtains are drawn.’

The guard’s eyes narrowed and the thick lips drew back in a smile of almost wolfish anticipation. Heaven only knew what wild dreams of glory and promotion were whirling through his mind. Whatever his thoughts, none was of suspicion or caution. Roughly he pushed Reynolds to one side and pushed open the bathroom door and Reynolds, his right hand coming clear of the towel, followed on his heels.

He caught the guard as he crumpled and lowered him gently to the floor. To open up the linen cupboard, rip up a couple of sheets, bind and gag the unconscious guard, lift him into the cupboard and lock the door on him took Reynolds’ trained hands only two minutes.

Two minutes later, hat in hand and overcoat over his arm, very much in the manner of an hotel guest returning to his room, Reynolds was outside the door of No. 59. He had half a dozen skeleton keys, together with four masters the manager of his own hotel had given him — and not one of them fitted.

Reynolds stood quite still. This was the last thing he had expected — he would have guaranteed the entry to any hotel door with these keys. And he couldn’t risk forcing the door — breaking it open was out of the question, and a lock tripped by force can’t be closed again. If a guard accompanied the professor back to his room, as might well happen, and found unlocked a door he had left locked, suspicion and immediate search would follow.

Reynolds moved on to the next door. On both sides of this corridor only every other door bore a number, and it was a safe assumption that the numberless doors were the corridor entrances to the private bathrooms adjoining each room — the Russians accorded to their top scientists facilities and accommodation commonly reserved in other and less realistic countries for film stars, aristocracy and the leading lights of society.

Inevitably, this door too was locked. So long a corridor in so busy a hotel couldn’t remain empty indefinitely and Reynolds was sliding the keys in and out of the lock with the speed and precision of a sleight-of-hand artist. Luck was against him again. He pulled out his torch, dropped to his knees and peered into the crack between the door and the jamb; this time luck was with him. Most continental doors fit over a jamb, leaving the lock bolt inaccessible, but this one fitted into the jamb. Reynolds quickly took from his wallet a three by two oblong of fairly stiff celluloid — in some countries the discovery of such an article on a known thief would be sufficient to bring him before a judge on a charge of being in possession of a burglarious implement — and slipped it between door and jamb. He caught the door handle, pulling towards himself and in the direction of the hinges, worked the celluloid in behind the bolt, eased the door and jerked it back again. The bolt slid back with a loud click, and a moment later Reynolds was inside.

The bathroom, for such it was, resembled in every detail the one he had just left, except for the position of the doors. The double cupboard was to his right as he entered between the two doors. He opened the cupboards, saw that one side was given over to shelves and the other, with a full-length mirror to its door, empty, then closed them again. A convenient bolt-hole, but one he hoped he would have no occasion to use.

He crossed to the bedroom connecting door and peered in through the keyhole. The room beyond was in darkness. The door yielded to his touch on the handle and he stepped inside, the pencil beam of his torch swiftly circling the room. Empty. He crossed to the window, saw that no chink of light could possibly escape through the shutters and heavy curtains, crossed over to the door, switched on the light and hung his hat over the handle to block off the keyhole.

Reynolds was a trained searcher. It took only a minute’s meticulous examination of walls, pictures and ceilings to convince him that there was no spy-hole into the room, and less than twenty seconds thereafter to find the inevitable microphone, concealed behind the ventilation grill above the window. He transferred his attention to this bathroom, and the examination there took only seconds. The bath was built in, so there could be nothing there. There was nothing behind the washbasin or the water closet, and behind the shower curtains were only the brass handgrip and the old-fashioned spray nozzle fixed to the ceiling.

He was just pulling back the curtains when he heard footsteps approaching in the corridor outside — only feet away, the deep carpet had muffled their approach. He ran through the connecting door into the bedroom, switched off the light — there were two people coming, he could hear them talking and could only hope that their voices drowned the click of the switch — picked up his hat, moved swiftly back into the bathroom, had the door three parts shut and was peering through the crack between jamb and door when the key turned in the lock and Professor Jennings walked into the room. And, hard on his heels, a tall, bulky man in a brown suit followed him through the doorway. Whether he was some AVO appointed guard or just a colleague of Jennings’, it was impossible to say. But one thing was clear enough: he carried with him a bottle and two glasses, and he intended to stay.