The commandant reached for a sheet of paper, scribbled on it and stamped it with an official seal. He rang a bell, handed it to a warder and dismissed the man with a wave of his hand:
“Three minutes, gentlemen, no more. He is not far from here,’
But the commandant overestimated. It was not three minutes, it was less than thirty seconds before the door opened, and it opened to admit not Jennings but half a dozen armed swift-moving guards who had Jansci and Reynolds pinned helplessly to their seats before they had recovered from their state of lulled security and could properly begin to realise what was happening. The commandant shook his head and smiled sadly.
‘Forgive me, gentlemen. A subterfuge, I fear — unpleasant as are all subterfuges, but essential. That document I signed was not for the professor’s release but your arrest.’ He took off his pince-nez, polished them and sighed. ‘Captain Reynolds, you are an uncommonly persistent young man.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Reynolds, in those first few minutes of shock, was conscious of nothing but the entire absence of all emotion, of all feeling, as if the touch of the metal fetters on his wrists and ankles had somehow deprived him of all capacity to react. But then came the first slow wave of numbed disbelief, then the shocked disbelief and chagrin that this should have happened to him again, ‘then the bitter, intolerable realisation that they had been effortlessly and absolutely trapped, that the commandant had been toying with them and had deceived them completely, that they were prisoners now within the dreaded Szarhaza and that if they ever emerged they would do so only as unrecognisable zombies, as the broken, empty husks of the men they had once been.
He looked across at Jansci, to see how the older man was taking this crushing blow, the final defeat of all their plans, the virtual sentence of death on themselves, to see what his reaction was. As far as he could judge, Jansci wasn’t reacting at all. His face was quiet and he was looking at the commandant with a thoughtful, measuring gaze — a gaze, Reynolds thought, curiously like the one with which the commandant was regarding Jansci.
As the last metal shackle clipped home around a chair leg, the leader of the guards looked questioningly at the commandant. The latter waved a hand in dismissal.
They are secure?’
‘Completely.’
‘Very well, then. You may go.’
The guard hesitated. ‘They are dangerous men — ‘
‘I am aware of that,’ the commandant said patiently. ‘Why else do you think I deemed it necessary to summon so many to secure them? But they are shackled to chairs that are bolted to the floor. It is unlikely that they will merely evaporate.’
He waited until the door had closed, steepled his thin fingers and went on in his quiet, precise voice.
‘This, gentlemen, is the moment, if ever there was a moment, for gloating: a self-confessed British spy — that recording, Mr. Reynolds, will create an international sensation in the People’s Court — and the redoubtable leader of the best organised escape group and anti-Communist ring in Hungary both in one fell swoop. We shall, however, dispense with the gloating: it is useless and time-wasting, a fit pastime only for morons and imbeciles.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Speaking of such, it is, incidentally, a pleasure to deal with intelligent men, who accept the inevitable and who are sufficiently realistic to dispense with the customary breast-beating lamentations, denials and outraged expostulations of innocence.
‘Nor do theatricalism, prolonged climaxes, the creation of suspense or unnecessary secrecy interest me,’ he continued. ‘Time is the most valuable gift we have, and its waste an unforgivable crime. . . . Your first thoughts, naturally — Mr. Reynolds, be so good as to follow your friend’s example and refrain from doing yourself an unnecessary injury in testing these shackles — your first thought, I say, is, how has it come about that you find yourself in this melancholy position. There is no reason why you should not know, and at once.’ He looked at Jansci. ‘1 regret to inform you that your brilliantly gifted and quite incredibly courageous friend who has been masquerading so long, and with such fantastic success, as a Major in the Allam Vedelmi Hatosag, has finally betrayed you.’
There was a long moment’s silence. Reynolds looked expressionlessly at the commandant, then at Jansci. Jansci’s face was quite composed.
‘That is always possible.’ He paused. ‘Inadvertently, of course. Completely so.’
‘It was,’ the commandant nodded. ‘Colonel Josef Hidas, whose acquaintance Captain Reynolds here has already made, has had a feeling — he could call it no more than that, it was not even a suspicion — about Major Howarth for some little time.’ It was the first time Reynolds heard the name by which the Count was known to the AVO. ‘Yesterday the feeling became suspicion and •certainty, and he and my good friend Furmint prepared a trap baited with the name of this prison and convenient access to Furmint’s room for a length of time sufficient to secure certain documents and stamps — these now on the table before me. For all his undoubted genius, your friend walked into the trap. We are all human.’
‘He is dead?’
‘Alive, in the best of health and, as yet, in blissful ignorance of what is known. He was despatched on a wild goose chase to keep him out of the way during the course of today: I believe that Colonel Hidas wishes to make the arrest personally. I expect him here this morning — later in the day. Howarth will be seized, given a midnight court-martial at the Andrassy Ut and executed — but not, I fear, summarily.’
‘Of course.’ Jansci nodded heavily. ‘With every AVO officer and man in the city present he will die only a little at, a time, so that no one else will be tempted to emulate him. The fools, the blind, imbecilic fools! Do they not know that there can never be another?’
‘I’m afraid I agree with you. But it is no direct concern of mine. Your name, my friend?’
‘Jansci will serve.’
‘For the moment.’ He removed his pince-nez and tapped them thoughtfully on the table. ‘Tell me, Jansci, what do you know of us members of the Political Police — of our composition, I mean.’
‘You tell me. It is obvious that you wish to.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you, though I think you must already know. Of our members, all but a negligible fraction are composed of power-seekers, morons who find our service intellectually undemanding, the inevitable sadists whose very nature bans them from all normal civilian employment, the long-time professionals — the very people who dragged screaming citizens from their beds in the service of the Gestapo are still doing precisely the same thing for us — and those with a corroding grievance against society: of the last category, Colonel Hidas, a Jew whose people have suffered in Central Europe agonies beyond all imagining is the prime example in the AVO today. There are also, of course, those who believe in Communism, a tiny minority only, but nevertheless certainly the most feared and dangerous of all inasmuch as they are automatons pervaded by the whole idea of the state with their own moral judgements either in a state of permanent suspension or completely atrophied. Furmiat is one such. So, also, strangely enough, is Hidas.’
‘You must be terribly sure of yourself.’ Reynolds was speaking for the first time, slowly.
‘He is the commandant of the Szarhaza prison.’ Jansci’s words were answer enough. ‘Why do you tell us this? Did you not say waste of time was abhorrent to you?’
‘It still is, I assure you. Let me continue. When it comes to the delicate question of gaining another’s confidence, all the various categories in the list I have given you have one thing in common. With the exception of Hidas, they are all victims of the idee fixe, of the hidebound conservatism — and somewhat biased dogmatism — of their unshakable convictions that the way to a man’s heart — ‘
‘Spare us the fancy phrases,’ Reynolds growled. ‘What you mean is, if they want the truth from a man they batter it out of him.’
‘Crude, but admirably brief,’ the commandant murmured. ‘A valuable lesson in time-saving. To continue in the same curt fashion, I have been entrusted with the task of gaining your confidence, gentlemen: to be precise, a confession from Captain Reynolds, and, from Jansci, his true name and the extent and modus operandi of his organisation. You know yourselves the almost invariable methods as practised by the — ah — colleagues I have mentioned? The whitewashed walls, the brilliant lights, the endless, repetitive, trip-hammering questions, all judiciously interspersed with kidney-beatings, teeth and nail extraction’s, thumb-screws and all the other revolting appurtenances and techniques of the medieval torture chamber.’