Алистер Маклин - The Last Frontier

‘Who are you? What are you doing in my room?’ The Professor’s voice was low, but the asperity in it, an asperity just touched with fear, was unmistakable.

‘My name is Michael Reynolds.’ Reynolds puffed a cigarette alight: he felt he needed it. ‘I left London only forty-eight hours ago, and I would like to talk to you, sir.’

‘Then, dammit, why can’t we talk in the comfort of my bedroom?’ Jennings swung round, then brought up abruptly as Reynolds caught him by the shoulder.

‘Not in the bedroom, sir.’ Reynolds shook his head gently. ‘There’s a concealed microphone in the ventilation grill above your window.’

‘There’s a what – How did you know, young man?’ The professor walked slowly back toward Reynolds.

‘I had a look around before you came,’ Reynolds said apologetically. ‘I arrived only a minute before you.’

‘And you found a microphone in that time?’ Jennings was incredulous and not even politely so.

‘I found it right away. It’s my job to know where to look for such things.’

‘Of course, of course! What else could you be? An espionage agent, counter-espionage – damned things mean the same to me. Anyway, the British Secret Service.’

‘A popular if erroneous–’

‘Bah! A rose by any other name.’ Whatever of fear there was in the little man, Reynolds thought dryly, it certainly wasn’t for himself: the fire of which he had heard so much burned as brightly as ever. ‘What do you want, sir? What do you want?’

‘You,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Rather, the British Government wants you. I am asked by the Government to extend to you a most cordial invitation–’

‘Uncommonly civil of the British Government, I must say. Ah, I expected this, I’ve been expecting it for a long time now.’ If Jennings had been a dragon, Reynolds mused, everything within ten feet of him would have been incinerated. ‘My compliments to the British Government, Mr Reynolds, and tell them from me to go to hell. Maybe when they get there, they’ll find someone who’ll help them build their infernal machines, but it isn’t going to be me.’

‘The country needs you, sir, and needs you desperately.’

‘The last appeal and the most pathetic of all.’ The old man was openly contemptuous now. ‘The shibboleths of outworn nationalism, the catchpenny phrase words of the empty-headed flag wavers of your bogus patriotism are only for the children of this world, Mr Reynolds, the morons, the self-seekers and those who live entirely for war. I care only to work for the peace of the world.’

‘Very good, sir.’ The people at home, Reynolds thought wryly, had badly underestimated either Jennings’ credulity or the subtlety of Russian indoctrination: even so, his words had seemed a far-off echo of something Jansci had said. He looked at Jennings. ‘The decision, of course, must rest entirely with you.’

‘What!’ Jennings was astonished, and could not conceal his astonishment. ‘You accept it? You accept it as easily as that – and you have come so far?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘I am only a messenger, Dr Jennings.’

‘A messenger? And what if I had agreed to your ridiculous suggestion?’

‘Then, of course, I would have accompanied you back to Britain.’

‘You would have – Mr Reynolds, do you realise what you are saying? Do you realise what – you – you would have taken me out of Budapest, through Hungary and across the frontier …’ Jennings’ voice slowly trailed away into nothingness, and when he looked up at Reynolds again, the fear was back in his eyes.

‘You are no ordinary messenger, Mr Reynolds,’ he whispered. ‘People like you are never messengers.’ All of a sudden certainty struck home at the old man, and a thin white line touched the edges of his mouth. ‘You were never told to invite me back to Britain – you were told to bring me back. There were to be no ‘ifs’ or ‘maybes,’ were there, Mr Reynolds!’

‘Isn’t that rather silly, sir?’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Even if I were in a position to use compulsion, and I’m not, I wouldn’t be such a fool as to use it. Supposing you were to be dragged back to Britain tied hand and foot, there’s still no way of keeping you there or making you work against your own will. Let’s not confuse flag wavers with the secret police of a satellite state.’

‘I don’t for a moment think you’d use direct force to get me home.’ The fear was still in the old man’s eyes, fear and sickness of heart. ‘Mr Reynolds, is – is my wife still alive?’

‘I saw her two hours before I left London Airport.’ There was a quiet sincerity in every word that Reynolds spoke, and he had never seen Mrs Jennings in his life. ‘She was holding her own, I think.’

‘Would you say – would you say she is still critically ill?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘That is for the doctors to say.’

‘For God’s sake, man, don’t try to torture me! What do the doctors say?’

‘Suspended animation. Hardly a medical term, Dr Jennings, but that’s what Mr Bathurst – he was her surgeon – calls it. She’s conscious all the time, and in little pain, but very weak: to be brutally frank, she could go at any moment. Mr Bathurst says she’s just lost the will to live.’

‘My God, my god!’ Jennings turned away and stared unseeingly through the frosted window. After a moment he swung round, his face contorted, his dark eyes blurred with tears. ‘I can’t believe it, Mr Reynolds, I just can’t . It’s not possible. My Catherine was always a fighter. She was always–’

‘You don’t want to believe it,’ Reynolds interrupted. His voice was cold to the point of cruelty. ‘Doesn’t matter what the self-deception is, does it, as long as it satisfies your conscience, this precious conscience that would let you sell your own people down the river in exchange for all this claptrap about co-existence. You know damned well your wife has nothing to live for – not with her husband and son lost for ever to her beyond the iron curtain.’

‘How dare you talk–’

‘You make me sick!’ Reynolds felt a momentary flash of distaste for what he was doing to this defenceless old man; but crushed it down. ‘You stand there making noble speeches and standing upon all these wonderful principles of yours, and all the time your wife is in a London hospital, dying: she’s dying, Dr Jennings, and you are killing her as surely as if you were standing by her side and throttling–’

‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake stop!’ Jennings had his hands to his ears and was shaking his head like a man in agony. He drew back his hands across his forehead. ‘You’re right, Reynolds, heaven only knows you’re right, I’d go to her tomorrow but there’s more to it than that.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘How can you ask any man to choose between the lives of his wife, who may be already beyond hope, and his only son. My situation is impossible! I have a son–’

‘We know all about your son, Dr Jennings. We are not inhuman altogether.’ Reynolds’ voice had dropped to a gentle, persuasive murmur. ‘Yesterday Brian was in Poznan. This afternoon he will be in Stettin and tomorrow morning he will be in Sweden. I have only to receive radio confirmation from London, and then we can be on our way. Certainly inside twenty-four hours.’

‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it.’ Hope and disbelief struggled pitifully for supremacy in the old, lined face. ‘How can you say–’

‘I can’t prove a thing, I don’t have to prove a thing,’ Reynolds said wearily. ‘With all respect, sir, what the hell’s happened to this mighty intellect? Surely you know that all the government wants of you is that you should work for them again, and you also know they know what you’re like: they know damned well if you returned home and found your son still a prisoner in Russia that you’d never work for them as long as you lived. And that’s the last thing in the world they’d ever want.’