The Last Frontier (29 page)

There was a long silence, and when Hidas finally spoke his voice was no more than a husky whisper.
'Perhaps he is not dead, Major Howarth.'
'You can but pray. We shall see -- I'm going to see now. If you value your life, call off these murderous hounds of yours!'
'I shall give the orders immediately.'
The Count replaced the phone, to find Reynolds staring at him.
'Did you mean that? Would you have turned Julia and her mother over -- ?'
'My God, what do you think I am?... Sorry, boy, didn't mean to bite. I must have sounded convincing, eh? I'm bluffing, but Hidas doesn't know I am, and even if he wasn't more scared right now than he has ever been in his life before and realised that perhaps I was bluffing, he wouldn't even dare to try to call the bluff. We have him by the hip. Come, he should have called his dogs off by this time.'
Together they ran out on the road and stooped to examine Jansci. He was lying on his back, his limbs outflung and relaxed, but he was breathing steadily and evenly. There was no need to search for the injury -- the welling red blood from the long wound that stretched from the temple back past the ear was in shocking contrast to the snow-white hair. The Count stooped low, examined him briefly then straightened.
'No one could expect Jansci to die as easily as that.' The wide grin on the Count's face was eloquent of his relief. 'He's been creased and concussed, but I don't even think that the bone has been chipped. He'll be all right, perhaps in a couple of hours. Come, give me a hand to lift him.'
'1 will take him.' It was Sandor speaking, he had just emerged from the wood behind and he brushed them gently aside. He stooped, caught Jansci under the body and legs and lifted him with the ease one would have lifted a little child. 'He is badly hurt?'
'Thank you, Sandor. No, just a glancing blow.... That was a splendid job down by the bridge. Take him into the back of the track and make him comfortable, will you? Cossack, a pair of pliers, up that telephone pole and wait till I give you the word. Mr. Reynolds, you might start the engine, if you please. She may be cold.'
The Count picked up the phone, and smiled thinly. He could hear the anxious breathing of Hidas at the other end.
'Your time has not yet come, Colonel Hidas. Jansci is badly hurt, shot through the head, but he will live. Now listen carefully. It is painfully obvious that you are not to be trusted -- although that, I may say, is no recent discovery on my part. We cannot and will not carry out the exchange here -- there is no guarantee that you will keep your word, every possibility that you won't. Drive along.the field for about half a kilometre -- it will be difficult in the snow, but you have the men and it will give us time to be on our way -- and you will come to a plank bridge that will take you on to the road again. Then drive straight to the ferry. This is clear?'
'It is clear.' Some of the confidence was back in Hidas' voice. 'We will be there as soon as possible.'
'You will be there an hour from now. No more. We do not wish to make you a present of the time to send for reinforcements and cut off escape routes to the west. Incidentally, do not waste precious time in attempting to summon help by this telephone. I am about to cut all the wires now, and shall cut them again about five kilometres north of here.'
'But in an hour!' Dismay was back in Hidas' voice. 'To clear these fields so deep in snow -- and who knows what this side road to the river you speak of is like. If we -are not there in an hour -- '
"Then you will find us gone.' The Count hung up the receiver, gestured to the Cossack to cut the wires, looked into the back of the truck to see if Jansci was comfortable, then hurried round to the cab. Reynolds had the engine running, moved over to make room for the Count behind the wheel, and within seconds they were bumping out of the wood, on to the main road, and off into the north-east where the first dusky fingers of twilight were beginning to touch the snow-capped hills under a dark -and leaden sky.
Darkness was almost upon them, and the snow was beginning to fall more heavily again, with the chill promise of still more to come, when the Count swung the truck off the river road, drove a couple of hundred jolting yards up a narrow dirt track and stopped at the bottom of a small, abandoned stone quarry. Reynolds started out of his deep reverie and looked at him in surprise.
'The ferryman's house -- you've left the river?"
'Yes. Just about another three hundred metres from here -- the ferry, I mean. Leaving the truck in plain view of Hidas when he arrives on the other side would be too much of a temptation altogether.'
Reynolds nodded and said nothing -- he had spoken barely a dozen words since they had left Jansci's house, had sat in silence beside the Count all the way, had hardly exchanged a word with Sandor as he had helped bin to destroy the bridge they had so lately crossed. His mind was confused, he was torn by conflicting emotions, consumed by a torturing anxiety that made all previous anxieties fade into insignificance. The most damnable part of it all was that old Jennings had now become talkative and positively cheerful as he had never been since Reynolds had first known him, and was trying all he could to raise the flagging spirits of the others -- and Reynolds suspected, without in any way having reason for his suspicion, that the old professor knew, in spite of what the Count had said, that he was going to his death. It was intolerable, it was unthinkable, that such a gallant old man should be allowed to die like that. But if he didn't, nothing was more certain than that Julia would die. Reynolds sat there in the gathering darkness, his fists clenched till his forearms ached, but far at the back of his mind he knew, without in any way consciously admitting his decision to himself, that there could be only one answer.
'How is Jansci, Sandor?' The Count had slid open the inspection hatch at the back of the cab.
'He stirs.' Sandor's voice was deep and gentle. 'And he is muttering to himself.'
'Excellent. It takes more than a bullet in the head to account for Jansci.' The Count paused a moment, then continued. 'We cannot leave him here -- it is altogether too cold, and I don't want him to wake up not knowing where he is, not knowing where we are. I think -- '
'I will carry him to the house.'
Five minutes later they reached the ferryman's house, a small white stone building between the road and the heavily shingled, sloping bank of the river. The river here was perhaps forty feet wide, and very sluggish, and even in the near darkness it looked as if it might be very deep at that particular spot. Leaving the others at the door of the ferryman's house -- the door faced on to the river -- the Count and Reynolds jumped from the steep bank on to the shingle and went down to the water's edge.
The boat was double-ended, perhaps twelve feet long, without either engine or oars, the sole means of propulsion being provided by a rope stretched tight between concrete embedded iron posts on either side of the river. This rope passed through screwed pulleys, one at either end of the boat and one on a raised amidships block, and passengers simply crossed from one bank to the other by overhanding themselves along the rope. It was a type of ferry Reynolds had never seen before, but he had to admit that, for a couple of women who probably knew nothing whatsoever about boats, it was a foolproof system. The Count echoed his thoughts.
'Satisfactory, Mr. Reynolds, very satisfactory. And so is the lay of the land on the other side of the river.' He gestured at the far bank, at the curving half-moon of trees that swept back from either bank enclosing a smooth treeless expanse of snow unbroken but for the bisecting road that reached down to the water's edge. 'A terrain which might have been specifically designed to discourage our good friend Colonel Hidas, who is no doubt at this very moment entertaining pleasant visions of his men lurking at the water's edge with their hands full of machine-guns. It would have been difficult -- I say it with modesty -- for anyone to have chosen a better spot for effecting the transfer.... Come, let us call upon the ferryman, who is about to enjoy some unexpected and, no doubt, unwonted exercise.'
The ferryman was just opening the door as the Count raised his hand to knock. He stared first at the Count's high-peaked hat, then at the wallet in the Count's hand, then licked suddenly dry lips. In Hungary it was not necessary to have a bad conscience to tremble at the sight of the AVO.
'You are alone in this house?' the Count demanded.
'Yes, yes, I am alone. What -- what is it, comrade?' He made an attempt to pull himself together. 'I have done nothing, comrade, nothing!'
'That's What they all say,' the Count said coldly. 'Get your hat and coat and return immediately.'
The man was back in a matter of moments, pulling a fur cap on to his head. He made to speak, but the Count raised his hand.
'We wish to use your house for a short time, for a purpose that is no concern of yours. We are not interested in you.' The Count pointed to the road leading south. 'A brisk walk, comrade, and let an hour elapse before you return. You will find us gone.'
The man looked at him unbelievingly, looked wildly around to see what the trap was, saw none and scuttled round the corner of the house and up on to the road without a word. Within half a minute, his legs going like pistons, he was lost to sight round a comer of the road.
'Putting the fear of death in one's fellow-man becomes, as a pastime, increasingly distasteful with the passing of the days,' the Count murmured. 'I must put an end to it. Bring Jansci inside, will you, Sandor?' The Count led the way through the little lobby and into the ferryman's living-room, paused at the door, expelled his breath gustily and turned round.
'On second thoughts, leave him in the lobby. It's like a damn' furnace in this room -- It'll only send him off again.' He looked closely at Jansci as Sandor propped him in a corner with coats and some cushions taken from the living-room. 'See, his eyes open already, but he is still dazed. Stay with him, Sandor, and let him come out of it by himself.... Yes, my boy?' He raised an eyebrow as the Cossack came rushing into the lobby. 'You are perturbed about something?'
'Colonel Hidas and his men,; the Cossack gasped. "They have 'arrived. Their two trucks have just pulled up at the water's edge.'
'Even so.' The Count screwed one of his Russian cigarettes into his holder, lit it and sent the match spinning out through the dark oblong of the open doorway. They are punctual to a degree. Come, let us go and pass the time of day with them.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Count walked the length of the lobby, stopped abruptly, and barred the doorway with his arm.
'Remain inside, Professor Jennings, if you please.'
'I?' Jennings looked at him in surprise. 'Remain inside? My dear fellow, I'm the only person who is not remaining here.'
'Quite. Nevertheless, remain here for the present. Sandor, see that he does.' The Count wheeled and walked quickly away, without giving the professor opportunity for reply. Reynolds was at his heels, and his voice, when he spoke, was low and bitter.
'What you mean is that it requires only one single, well-directed bullet into the professor's heart and Colonel Hidas can retire, complete with prisoners, well satisfied with his night's work.'
'Something of the kind had occurred to me,' the Count admitted. His feet ground on the shifting shingle, then he halted by the boat and looked about the dark, cold waters of the sluggish river. The truck and each individual figure, each man, were easily seen against the white background of snow, but it had already grown so dark that it was nearly impossible to distinguish features or uniforms, just black, empty silhouettes. Only Coco was recognisable, and that by virtue of his great height: but one man stood in advance of the others, his toes by toe water's edge, and it was to this man that the Count addressed himself.
'Colonel Hidas?'
'I am here, Major Howarth.'
'Good, let us not waste time. I propose to effect this exchange as quickly as possible. Night, Colonel Hidas, is almost upon us, and while you're treacherous enough in the daylight, God only knows what you're like when darkness falls. I don't propose to stay long enough to find out.'
'I shall honour my promise.'
'You shouldn't use words you don't understand.... Tell your drivers to reverse till they come to the wood. You and your men are also to fall back as far as that. At that distance -- two hundred metres -- it should be quite impossible for you to distinguish any of us in any way. From time to time guns are accidentally discharged, but not Tonight.'
'It shall be exactly as you say.' Hidas turned, gave some' orders, waited till the two trucks and his men had started to move back from the river bank, then turned to face the Count. 'And now what, Major Howarth?'
"This. When I call you, you will release the general's wife and daughter, and they will start walking towards the ferry. At the same moment, Dr. Jennings will get into the boat here and cross over to the other side. Once there, he will climb up to the bank, wait there till the women are close,,pass by them as they approach the river, then walk slowly towards you. By the time he's there, the women should be safely across and it should be, by then, too dark for anyone, on either side, to achieve anything by indiscriminate shooting. The plan, I think, is foolproof.'
It shall be exactly as you say,' Hidas repeated. He wheeled, scrambled up the shelving bank and started to walk back towards the dark line of trees in the distance, leaving the Count gazing after him and thoughtfully rubbing his chin.
'Just that little bit too compliant, just that little bit too eager to please,' he murmured. 'Just a little.... Tchah! My endlessly suspicious nature. What can he do? The time has come.' He raised his voice. 'Sandor! Cossack!'
He waited till the two men had come out from the cottage, then spoke to Sandor. 'How is Jansci?'
'Sitting up, still swaying a bit. His head hurts very badly.'
'Inevitably.' The Count turned to Reynolds. 'I want to say a few words to Jennings, alone -- Jansci and I. Perhaps you understand. I won't keep him a minute, I promise you.'
'Be as long as you like,' Reynolds said dully. 'There's no hurry for me.'
'I know, I know.' The Count hesitated, made to say something, then changed his mind. 'You might launch the boat, will you?'
Reynolds nodded, watched the Count disappear into the house, and turned to give the others a hand to pull the boat down the shingled beach into the water. The boat was heavier than it looked, they had to pull it gratingly across the pebbles, but with Sandor's help it was in the water in a matter of a few seconds, tugging gently on its rope as the sluggish current caught it. Sandor and the Cossack walked back up to the top of the bank, but Reynolds remained at the water's edge. He stood there for a few moments, pulled out his gun, checked that the safety-catch was on, and thrust it in his coat pocket, his hand still round it.
It seemed that only moments had elapsed, but already Dr. Jennings was at the door. He said something that Reynolds couldn't distinguish, then came Jansci's deep voice, and then the Count's.
'You -- you will forgive me if I remain here, Dr. Jennings.' The Count was hesitant and unsure for the first time that Reynolds had ever known. 'It's just -- I would rather -- '
'I quite understand.' Jennings' voice was steady and composed. 'Do not distress yourself, my friend -- and thank you for all you have done for me.'
Jennings turned away abruptly, took Sandor's arm to help him down from the high bank, then stumbled awkwardly down the shingle, a stooped figure -- until this moment Reynolds had never quite realised how stooped the old man really was -- with his collar turned high against the bitter chill of the evening and the skirts of his thin raglan coat flapping out pathetically about his legs. Reynolds felt his heart go out to the defenceless, gallant old man.
'The end of the road, my boy.' Jennings was still calm, but just a little husky. 'I am sorry, I'm terribly sorry to have given you so much trouble, and all for nothing. You came a long way, a long way -- and now this. This must be a bitter blow for you.'
Reynolds said nothing, he couldn't trust himself to say anything: but the gun was coming clear of his pocket.
'One thing I forgot to say to Jansci,' Jennings murmured.
'Dowidzenia tell him I said that. Just "dowidzenia" He will understand.'
'I don't, understand, and it doesn't matter.' Jennings moving towards the boat, gasped as he walked into the barrel of the gun held rigidly in Reynolds' hand. 'You're not going anywhere, Professor Jennings. You can deliver your own messages.'
'What do you mean, my boy? I don't understand you.'
'There's nothing to understand. You're just not going anywhere.'
'But then -- but then, Julia -- '
'I know.'
'But -- but the Count said you were going to marry her!'
Reynolds nodded silently in the darkness.
'And you're willing -- I mean, you will give her up -- '
'There are some things even more important than that.' Reynolds' voice was so low that Jennings had to stoop forward to catch the words.
'Your final word?'
'My final word.'
'I am well content,' Jennings murmured. 'I need now hear nothing more.' He turned to retrace his steps up the shingle, and, as Reynolds made to thrust his gun back in his pocket, pushed him with all his strength. Reynolds lost his footing on the treacherous pebbles, fell heavily backwards and struck his head against a stone with force enough to leave him momentarily dazed. By the time he had shaken his head clear and risen dizzily to his feet, Jennings had shouted something at the top of his voice -- it wasn't until much later that Reynolds realised that it had been the signal for Hidas to send Julia and her mother on their way -- scrambled into the boat and was already half-way across the river.
'Come back, come back, you crazy fool!' Reynolds' voice was hoarse and savage, and, quite without realising the futility of what he was doing, he was tugging frantically at the rope which stretched across the river, and then he dimly remembered that the rope was fixed and the boat completely independent of it. Jennings paid no attention to his call, did not even as much as look over his shoulder: the bow was grinding on the pebbles of the far side, when Reynolds heard Jansci calling him hoarsely from the door of the ferryman's cottage.
'What is it? What's happening?'
'Nothing,' Reynolds said wearily. 'Everything is going just according to plan.' He climbed up the bank as if his legs were made of lead and looked at Jansci, looked at the white hair and face and the blood that caked one side from temple to chin. 'You had better get cleaned up. Your wife and daughter will be here at any moment -- I can see them crossing the field now.'
'I don't understand.' Jansci pressed his hand to his head.
'It doesn't matter.' Reynolds fumbled a cigarette into his hand and lit it. 'We've kept our side of the bargain, and Jennings is gone.' He stared down at the cigarette glowing in his cupped palm, then looked up. 'I forgot. He said I was to say "dowidzenia" to you.'
'Dowidzenia' Jansci had taken his hand from his head and was staring in perplexity at the blood on his fingers, but now he looked strangely at Reynolds. 'He said that?'
'Yes. He said you'd understand. What does it mean?'
'Farewell -- the Polish "Auf Wiedersehen." Till we meet again.'
'Oh, my God, my God!' Reynolds said softly. He spun his cigarette into the darkness, turned and walked quite slowly along the lobby into the -living-room. The sofa was over in the far corner, by the fire, and the old Jennings, hatless, coat-less, and shaking 'his head from side to side, was trying to prop himself into a sitting position. Reynolds crossed the room, with Jansci now just behind him, and steadied the old man with an arm round his shoulders.
'What happened?' Reynolds asked gently. "The Count?'
'He was here.' Jennings rubbed an obviously aching jaw. 'He came in, and took two grenades out of a bag and put them on the table, and I asked him what they were for and he said, "If they're going back to Budapest with these trucks, they're going to have a damned long shove." Then he came across and Shook hands with me^and that's all I remember.'
'That's all there is, Professor,' Reynolds said quietly. 'Wait here. We'll be back soon -- and you'll be with your wife and son within forty-eight hours.'
Reynolds and Jansci went out into the lobby, and Jansci "was speaking softly.
'The Count.' There was warmth in his voice, something that touched on reverence. 'He dies as he has lived, thinking never of himself. The grenades end the last chance of our being cut off before the border.'
'Grenades!' A slow, dull anger was beginning to kindle deep down inside Reynolds, a strange anger he had never felt before. 'You talk of grenades -- at this hour! I thought he was your friend.'
'You will never know a friend like him.' Jansci was filled with a simple conviction. 'He is the best friend that I or any man could ever have, and because he is that to me I would not stop him now if I could. The Count has wanted to die, he has wanted to die ever since I have known him, it was just a point of honour with him to postpone it as long as possible, to give as many suffering people what they wanted of life and freedom and happiness before he himself took what he wanted of death. That is why risks did not exist for the Count, he courted death every day of his life, but not openly, and I have always known that When the chance came to seize it with honour, he would grasp it with both hands.' Jansci shook his blood-stained head, and Reynolds could see from the light streaming out of the living-room that the faded grey eyes were misted with tears. 'You are young, Meechail, you cannot possibly conceive of the dreariness, the purposelessness, the dreadful emptiness of living day after interminable day when the wish to live has long since died in you. I am as selfish as any other man, but not so selfish as to buy my happiness at the expense of his. I loved the Count. May the snow lie softly on him Tonight.'
'I am sincerely sorry, Jansci.' Reynolds spoke with genuine regret, and in his heart he knew he was deeply sorry, but for what or for whom he could not at that moment have said: all he clearly knew was that the fire of anger within him was slowly 'increasing, burning more brightly than ever. They were at the front door now, and he strained his eyes to pick out what he could on that white expanse of snow on the other side of the river. Julia and her mother he could clearly see, making their way slowly towards the river bank, but, at first, he could see no signs of the Count. But the pupils of his eyes were now widening steadily since he had left the brightness of the room behind him, and he finally picked out his mowing figure, no more than a half-seen blur against the dark line of the trees beyond him -- and, Reynolds suddenly realised, far too near the trees. Julia and her mother were as yet hardly more than half-way across the field.
'Look!' Reynolds grabbed the elder man's arms. 'The Count's almost there -- and Julia and your wife are hardly moving. In the name of heaven, what's the matter with them? They'll be caught, they'll be shot -- What the 'devil was that?'
A loud splash, a thunderclap of a splash in the silence of the night, had startled him with its unexpected suddenness. He ran to the bank and saw the cold dark waters of the river churning to a foam as unseen arms thrashed through them: Sandor had seen the danger even before he had, had flung off his overcoat and jacket and now his great arms and shoulders were carrying him across to the far bank like a torpedo.
'They are in trouble, Meechail.' Jansci too, was on the bank now, and his voice was tense with anxiety. 'One of them, it must be Catherine, can hardly walk -- you see how she drags her steps. It is too much for Julia....'
Sandor was at the other side now, out of the water, up the shingled shore and over the three-foot bank beyond as if it didn't even exist. And then, just as he cleared the bank, they heard it -- a sharp, flat explosion, the unmistakable crack of a grenade, from the woods beyond the field, then another even while the echoes of the first explosion were still rolling away, through the trees, and then, immediately afterwards, the harsh staccato rattle of an automatic carbine -- and then silence.
Reynolds winced and looked at Jansci, but it was too dark to see the expression on his face, he could only hear him murmuring something over and over again to himself, but Reynolds could not distinguish the words, they must have been Ukrainian. And there was not time to wonder, even at that very moment Colonel Hidas might be stooping over the man whom he had thought to be Professor Jennings....
Sandor had reached the two women now, had an arm around each of them, and was plunging back through the frozen-crusted snow towards the river bank as if he had been leading two fleet-footed runners by the hand instead of virtually carrying them, which he was. Reynolds wheeled round, to find the Cossack standing just behind him.
'There's going to be trouble,' Reynolds said quickly. 'Get up to the house, stick the sub-machine-gun through the window and when Sandor drops below the level of the river bank...' But the Cossack was already on his way, his feet churning up the gravel as he raced for the house.