Алистер Маклин - The Last Frontier

‘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 realized 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 realizing 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, coatless, 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 moving figure, no more than a half-seen blur against the dark line of the trees beyond him – and, Reynolds suddenly realized, 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.