Алистер Маклин - The Last Frontier

‘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?’