‘Just as simple as that?’
It is for the Cossack: he has a strange gift for handling cattle. Most of them come from Czechoslovakia — the border is only twenty kilometres from here. The Cossack just diloro-forms them or gives them a good drink of bran mash laced with cheap brandy. When he’s got them half-drunk or half-anaesthetised, he just walks across the border with them with as little trouble as you or I would cross a street.’
‘Pity you can’t handle humans the same way,’ Reynolds said dryly.
“That’s what the Cossack wants — to help Jansci and the Count with people, I mean, not chloroform them. He will soon.’ She lost interest in the Cossack, gazed unseeingly out of the window for some moments, then looked up at Reynolds, the remarkable blue eyes grave and still. She said, tentatively, ‘Mr. Reynolds, I — ‘
Reynolds knew what was coming and hastened to forestall her. It had needed no perspicuity last night to see that her acceptance of their decision not to give up the search for Jennings was a token one and only for the moment: he had been waiting for this, for the inevitable appeal, had known it was in her mind from the moment she had entered the room.
‘Try Michael,’ he suggested. ‘I find it difficult to be formal and stand on my dignity with my shirt off.’
‘Michael.’ She said the name slowly, pronouncing it ‘Meeehail.’ ‘Mike?’
‘I’ll murder you,’ he threatened.
‘Very well. Michael.’
‘Meechail,’ he mimicked, and smiled down at her. ‘You were going to say something?’
For a moment the dark-eyes and the blue ones met and held mute understanding. The girl knew the answer to her question without ever having to ask it, and the slender shoulders drooped fractionally in defeat as she turned away.
‘Nething.’ The life had gone out of her voice. ‘Ill see about a doctor. Jansci says to be down in twenty minutes.’
‘Good lord, yes!’ Reynolds exclaimed. ‘The broadcast. I’d forgotten all about it’
That’s something anyway.’ She smiled faintly and closed the door behind her.
Jansci rose slowly to his feet, turned off the radio and looked down at Reynolds.
It is bad you think?’
‘It’s bad enough.’ Reynolds stirred in his chair to try to ease his aching back: even the effort of washing, dressing and coming downstairs had taken more out of him than he cared to admit, and the pain was constant now. ‘The call-out word was definitely promised for today.’
‘Perhaps they have arrived in Sweden and haven’t yet been able to get word through to your people?’ Jansci suggested.
‘I’m afraid not.’ Reynolds had banked heavily on the call-word coming through that morning, and the disappointment ran deep. ‘Everything was laid on for that: a contact from the consul’s office at Halsingborg is waiting all the time.’
‘Ah, so … But if these agents are as good as you said they were, they may have become suspicious and are lying low in Stettin for a day or two. Till — how do you say — the heat is off.’
‘What else can we hope for? . . . My God, to think I should have fallen for that mike in the shower,’ he said bitterly. ‘What’s to be done now?’
‘Nothing, except possess our souls in patience,’ Jansci counselled. ‘Us, that is. For you, bed — and no arguments. I’ve seen too much sickness not to know a sick man when I see one. The doctor has been sent for. A friend of mine for years,’ he smiled, seeing the question in Reynolds’ face. ‘We can trust him completely.’
The doctor came up to Reynolds’ room with Jansci twenty minutes later. A big, burly, red-faced man with a clipped moustache, he had the professionally cheerful voice that invariably made patients suspect the worst, and radiated a magnificent self-confidence — in fact, Reynolds thought dryly, he was very much like doctors the world over. Like many doctors also, he was a man of strong opinions and not unduly backward about expressing them: he roundly cursed those damned Communists half a dozen times within the first minute of entering the room.
‘How have you managed to survive so long?’ Reynolds smiled. ‘I mean, if you express your opinions — ‘
‘Tchah! Everybody knows what I think of these damned Communists. Daren’t touch us quacks, my boy. Indispensable. Especially the good ones.’ He clamped a stethoscope to his ears. ‘Not that I’m any damned good. The whole trick lies in making them think you are.’
The doctor did himself considerably less than justice. The examination was skilled, thorough and swift.
‘You’ll live,’ he announced. ‘Probably some internal haemorrhaging, but very slight. Considerable inflammation and really magnificent bruising. A pillow-case, Jansci, if you please. The effectiveness of this remedy,’ he continued, ‘is in direct proportion to the pain it inflicts. You’ll probably go through the roof, but you’ll be better tomorrow.’ He spooned a liberal amount of greyish paste on to the pillow-case and spread it evenly. ‘A form of horse liniment,’ he explained. ‘Centuries old recipe. Use it everywhere. Not only do patients have trust in the doctor that sticks to the good old-fashioned remedies, but it also enables me to dispense with the tedious and laborious necessity of keeping abreast of all the latest developments. Besides, it’s just about all these damned Communists have left us.’
Reynolds winced as the liniment burnt in through his skin, and he could feel the sweat coming to his brow. The doctor seemed pleased.
‘What did I tell you? Fit as a fiddle tomorrow! Just swallow a couple of these White tablets, my boy — they’ll ease the pain internally — and the blue one. Make you sleep — if you don’t, you’ll have that poultice off in ten minutes. Quick-acting, I assure you.’
They were indeed, and Reynolds’ last conscious recollection was of hearing the doctor loudly declaiming against those damned Communists as he went down the stairs. After that, he remembered nothing more for almost twelve hours.
When he awoke night had come again, but this time his window had been curtained and a small oil lamp was burning. He awoke quickly and completely, as he had long trained himself to do, without movement or change in his rate of breathing, and his eyes were on Julia’s face, a face with an expression he had not seen on it before, for a full second; she was aware he was awake and looking at her. He could see the dull colour touching throat and face as she slowly withdrew from his shoulder the hand that had been shaking him awake, but he twisted his wrist and glanced at his watch, a man who had observed nothing unusual.
‘Eight o’clock!’ He sat up abruptly in bed, and it was only after he had done so that he remembered the agony that had followed the last precipitate move he had made. The surprise on his face was obvious.
‘How does it feel?’ she smiled. ‘Better, isn’t it?’
‘Better? It’s miraculous!’ His back felt almost as if it were on fire, but the pain was quite gone. ‘Eight o’clock!’ he repeated incredulously. ‘I’ve been asleep for twelve hours?’
‘You have indeed. Even your face looks better.’ Her composure was back again. ‘The evening meal is ready. Shall I bring it up?’
‘I’ll be down in a couple of minutes,’ Reynolds promised.
He was as good as his word. A cheerful wood fire was burning in the small kitchen, and the table, set for five, was over against the fire. Sandor and Jansci greeted him, were pleased to hear of the progress made in his recovery, and introduced him to the Cossack. The Cossack shook hands briefly, nodded, scowled, sat down to his bread soup and said nothing, not a word throughout the course of the meal: he kept his head lowered all the time so that though Reynolds had an excellent view of his thick, black Magyar hair, brushed straight back from the forehead, it was not until the Cossack rose with his last mouthful and left, with a muttered word to Jansci, that Reynolds caught his first sight of the open, good-looking, boyish face, with its ill-concealed expression of truculence. That the expression was meant for him, Reynolds was left in no doubt. Seconds after the door was slammed, they heard the roar of what seemed to be a powerful motorcycle that swept past the house and faded swiftly away in the distance, soon to be lost in silence. Reynolds looked round the others at table.
‘Will somebody please tell me what I’m supposed to have done? Your young friend just tried to incinerate me by will power alone.’
He looked at Jansci, but Jansci was having trouble in getting his pipe to light. Sandor was staring into the fire, lost apparently in his own thoughts. When the explanation finally came, it came from Julia, her voice edged with an irritation and annoyance so foreign to her that Reynolds glanced at her in surprise.