‘Yes?’
‘Yes. First, why, if they were listening in the hotel, didn’t they nail me there and then.’
‘Simple. Almost every microphone in the place is wired to tape recorders.’ The Count grinned. ‘I’d have given a fortune to see their faces when they ran off that reel.’
‘Why didn’t you phone to stop me? You must have known from what Julia said that the AVO would come round to your place right away.’
“They did — almost. We got out only ten minutes before them. And we did phone you — but there was no reply.’
‘I had left my room early.’ Reynolds remembered the ringing of the telephone bell as he had reached the bottom of the fire-escape. ‘You could still have stopped me on the street.’
‘We could.’ It was Jansci speaking. ‘You’d better tell him, Count.’
‘Very well.’ For a moment the Count looked almost uncomfortable — so unexpected an expression to find on his face that Reynolds for a moment doubted he had read it correctly. But he had.
‘You met my friend Colonel Hidas Tonight,’ the Count began obliquely. ‘Second-in-command of the AVO, a dangerous and clever man — no more dangerous and clever man in all Budapest. A dedicated man, Mr. Reynolds, who has achieved more — and more remarkable — success than any police officer in Hungary. I said he was clever — he’s more, he’s brilliant, an ingenious, resourceful man, entirely without emotion, who never gives up. A man, obviously, for whom I have the highest respect — you will observe that I was at considerable pains not to let him see me Tonight, even although I was disguised. And that Jansci was at even more pains to direct his line of thinking towards the Austrian border, where, I assure you, we have no intention of going.’
‘Get to the point,’ Reynolds said impatiently.
‘I have arrived. For several years past our activities have been far the greatest thorn in his flesh, and lately, I have had just the tiniest suspicion that Hidas was taking just a little too much interest in me.’ He waved a deprecatory hand. ‘Of course, we officers at the AVO expect to be ourselves checked and shadowed from time to time, but perhaps I have become just a trifle hypersensitive about these things. I thought perhaps that my trips to police blocks had not been so unobserved as I would have wished, and that Hidas had deliberately planted you on me, to break us up.’ He smiled slightly, ignoring the astonishment on the faces of both Reynolds and Julia. ‘We survive by never taking a chance, Mr. Reynolds — it was really too opportune, a western spy so ready to hand. We thought, as I say, you were a plant. The fact that you knew — or said Colonel Mackintosh knew — that Jennings was in Budapest while we didn’t was another point against you: all the questions you asked Julia Tonight about us and our organisation might have been friendly interest — but it might equally well have been from a more sinister reason and the policemen might have left you alone because they knew who you were, not because of your — ah — activities in the watchman’s box.’
‘You never told any of this to me!’ Julia’s face was flushed, the blue eyes cold and angry.
‘We seek,’ said the Count gallantly, ‘to shelter you from the harsher realities of this life. . . . Then, Mr. Reynolds, when there was no reply to our telephone call, we suspected you might be elsewhere — the Andrassy Ut, for example. We weren’t sure, not by a long way, but suspicious enough to take no chances. So we let you walk into the spider’s web — I regret to say that we actually saw you walking. We weren’t a hundred yards away, lying low in the car — not mine, I’m glad to say — which Imre later crashed into the truck.’ He looked regretfully at Reynolds’ face. ‘We did not expect you to get the full treatment right away.’
‘Just so long as you don’t expect me to go through it all again.’ Reynolds pulled at a loose tooth, winced as it came out and threw it on the floor. ‘I trust you’re satisfied now.’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ Julia demanded. Her eyes, hostile as they looked both at the Count and Jansci, softened as she looked at the battered mouth. ‘After all that’s been done to you?’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Reynolds asked mildly. Try to knock out a few of the Count’s teeth? I’d have done the same in his position.’
‘Professional understanding, my dear,’ Jansci murmured. ‘Nevertheless, we are extremely sorry for what has happened. And the next move, Mr. Reynolds — now that that tape recording will have started off the biggest man-hunt for months? The Austrian frontier, I take it, with all speed.’
The Austrian frontier, yes. With all speed — I don’t know.’ Reynolds looked at the two men sitting there, thought of their fantastic histories as Julia had recounted them and knew there was only one possible answer to Jansci’s question. He gave another tentative wrench, sighed with relief as a second tooth came clear and looked at Jansci. ‘It all depends how long I take to find Professor Jennings.’
Ten seconds, twenty, half a minute passed and the only sounds were the whirr of the snow tyres on the road, the low murmur from the cab of Sandor’s and Imre’s voices above the steady roar of the engine, then the girl reached out and turned Reynolds’ face towards her, her fingertips gentle against the cut and swollen face.
‘You’re mad.’ She stared at him, her eyes empty of belief. ‘You must be mad.’
‘Beyond all question.’ The Count unstopped his flask, gulped and replaced the stopper. ‘He has been through a great deal Tonight.’
‘Insanity,’ Jansci agreed. He gazed down at his scarred hands, and his voice was very soft. ‘There is no disease half so contagious.’
‘And very sudden in its onset.’ The Count gazed down sadly at his hip flask. The universal specific, but this time I left it too late.’
For a long moment the girl stared at the three men, her face a study of bewildered incomprehension, then understanding came and with it some certainty of foreknowledge, some evil vision that drained all the colour from her cheeks, darkened the cornflower blue of her eyes and left them filled with tears. She made no protest, no slightest gesture of dissent — it was as if the same foreknowledge had warned her of the uselessness of dissent — and, as the first tears brimmed over the edge of her eyes, turned away so that they could not see her face.
Reynolds reached out a hand to comfort her, hesitated, caught Jansci’s troubled eye and the slow shake of the white head, nodded and withdrew his hand.
He drew out a pack of cigarettes, placed one between his smashed lips and lit it. It tasted like burnt paper.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was still dark when Reynolds awoke, but the first grey tinges of dawn were beginning to steal through the tiny window facing the east. Reynolds had known that the room had a window, but until then he hadn’t known where it was: when they had arrived in the abandoned farmhouse last night — or early that morning, it had been almost two o’clock — after a mile-long, freezing trudge in the snow, Jansci had forbidden lights in all rooms without shutters, and Reynolds’ had been one of these.
He could see the whole of the room from where he lay without even moving his head. It wasn’t difficult — the entire floor area was no more than twice that of the bed, and the bed only a narrow canvas cot. A chair, a washbasin and a mildewed mirror and the furnishings of the room were complete: there would have been no room for more.
The light was beginning to filter in more strongly now through the single pane of glass above the washbasin, and Reynolds could see in the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the heavily snow-weighted branches of pine trees: the trees must have been well downhill, the feathery white tops appeared to be almost on level with his eyes. The air was so clear that he could make out every tiny detail of the branches. The greying sky was changing to a very pale blue hue, empty of all snow and clouds: the first cloudless sky, indeed the first patch of blue sky he had seen at all since he had come to Hungary: perhaps it was a good omen, he needed all the good omens he could get. The wind had dropped, not the slightest zephyr stirring across the great plains, and the silence everywhere was profound with that frozen stillness that comes only with a sub-zero dawn and the snow lying deeply across the land.