Алистер Маклин - The Last Frontier

Another ten minutes passed, twenty, then half an hour, the snow still fell thinly, the cold reached deeper for the marrow of their bones, and both Jansci and the Count, with the AVO now long overdue, had become suspicious and anxious. It was not like the AVO to be late, especially when such a prize was at stake, it was most unlike Colonel Hidas, the Count declared, to be late at any time. Perhaps they were being held up by bad or impassable roads. Perhaps Hidas had disregarded instructions, perhaps his men were at that very moment sealing off every road to the frontier and encircling them from the rear, but the Count thought it highly unlikely: he knew that Hidas was under the impression that Jansci had a large and far-reaching organization, and that Jansci should neglect the obvious precaution of posting lookouts on the roads for miles around would probably never even cross his mind. But that Hidas had some stratagem in mind, the Count was now convinced: Hidas was a formidable adversary at any time, and the concentration camps held all too many people who had underrated the astuteness and persistence of that thin and embittered Jew. Hidas was up to something.

And, it became immediately plain when Hidas did finally turn up, he had indeed been up to something. He came from the east, and he came in a big, green, closed-in truck which, the Count said, was his mobile H.Q.-cum-caravan, accompanied by another, small brown truck, almost certainly with some of his AVO killers inside. So much Jansci and the Count had expected. But what they had not expected, and what amply accounted for the AVO’s delay in arriving, was the presence of the third vehicle in the convoy, a big, lumbering, heavily-armoured half-track, equipped with a vicious looking high-velocity anti-tank rifle, almost half the length of the vehicle itself. The watchers by the telephone pole at the woodside stared at each other in perplexity, at the loss to discover any possible reason for this display of armed might: they were not left to wonder long.

Hidas knew exactly what he was doing – he must have learned from Julia that Jansci’s house had two blind gable end walls – for he didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment; he had his men well briefed and trained, and the manoeuvre was executed with smooth and effortless efficiency. A few hundred yards distant from the track leading off the road to the house the two trucks accelerated, leaving the half-track behind, then changed down almost in perfect unison, braked, swerved off the road and across the little hump-backed bridge, raced up to the house and fanned out, one on either side of it, coming to rest opposite and several yards distant from either of the blind gable walls. Immediately the trucks had stopped, armed men leapt out and took up crouching positions behind the trucks and behind the little outbuildings and some of the trees that bordered the back of the house.

Even before the last man had taken up position, the big half-track had swung off the road, scraped between the low walls of the hump bridge with the snout of its long gun pointing grotesquely skywards, plunged down the other side and ground to a halt about fifty yards away from the front of the house. A second elapsed, then another, then there came a flat, whiplash crack as the big gun fired and a roar and erupton of smoke and flying débris as the shell exploded in the wall of the house, just below the ground-floor windows. A few more seconds passed, the dust from the first explosion hadn’t even had time to settle, when the next shell smashed into the house, perhaps a yard away from the first, then another and another and another, and already a hole almost ten feet in length had been torn in the masonry of the front wall.

‘The treacherous, murderous swine,’ the Count whispered. His face was quite expressionless. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust him, but I didn’t know till now just how much I couldn’t trust him.’ He broke off as the big gun fired again, and waited until the rolling echoes had died away. ‘I’ve seen this a hundred times – this is the technique that the Germans first perfected in Warsaw. If you want to bring a house down without blocking the streets, you just knock the bottom out and the house falls in upon itself. They also discovered, just by way of an extra dividend, that everyone hiding in such a house would be crushed to death at the same time.’

‘And that’s what they are trying – I mean, they think we’re in there?’ There was a tremor in Dr Jennings’ voice, and his horror showed in his pale face.

‘They’re not just amusing themselves by having target practice,’ the Count said roughly. ‘Of course they think we’re there. And Hidas has his terriers stationed all round the house, in case the rats should try to bolt from their hole.’

‘I see.’ Jennings’ voice was steadier now. ‘It would appear that I have overestimated the value of my services to the Russians.’

‘No,’ the Count lied. ‘No you haven’t. They want you all right – but I suspect they want Major-General Illyurin – and myself – even more. Jansci is Communist Hungary’s enemy No. 1, and they know this chance would never come their way again. They couldn’t pass it up – and they were prepared to sacrifice even you to make the most of this chance.’

Reynolds felt a slow stirring within him – a stirring of anger and admiration – anger for the way the Count was hiding the truth from Jennings, for letting him think that they could still trade him without any danger to himself, admiration for the ready skill with which he had invented so plausible an explanation.

‘They’re fiends – they’re inhuman fiends,’ Jennings was saying in wonder.

‘It is certainly difficult to think of them as anything else at times,’ Jansci said heavily. ‘Did – did anyone see them?’ There was no need to ask who he meant by ‘them,’ the mute head-shakings showed that all had understood. ‘No? Then perhaps we had better call our friend up there. The phone connection is under the gable. It shouldn’t have been damaged yet.’

And it hadn’t. There was a lull in the firing, and in the still, frosty air it was quite easy for them to hear the ringing of the bell inside the house as Jansci cranked the handle of the field telephone, easy, too, to hear a shouted order and see the man who ran round the corner of the house, waving a signal to the gunners in the half-track: almost at once the big rifle dipped to one side. Another order, and the crouching soldiers round the house broke quickly from their hiding-places, some running towards the front of the house, some towards the back. At the front, the watchers could see the AVO men stooping low along the gaping ruin that was all that remained of the wall, then jumping up and poking their carbines through the shattered windows, while a couple of men kicked the front door back off its broken hinges and passed inside. Even at that distance there was no mistaking the first of the two men who had gone inside, there was no mistaking the giant, gorilla-like figure of Coco anywhere.

‘You begin to understand, perhaps, why the worthy Colonel Hidas has survived so long?’ The Count murmured. ‘One could hardly accuse him of taking unnecessary chances.’

Coco and the other AVO men reappeared at the front door, and at a word from the giant the other men watching at the windows relaxed, while one of them disappeared round the corner of the house. He reappeared almost at once, followed by another who went straight inside the house, and that this other could only have been Colonel Hidas was obvious when they heard his voice coming tinnily through the field phone’s head set seconds later: Jansci had only one of the receivers to his ear and the voice came clearly enough through the second for all the others to hear.

‘Major-General Illyurin, I presume?’ Hidas’ voice was calm, composed, and only the Count knew it well enough to detect the faint edge of anger underneath.