Coco grinned and took his cue. His shove, massive palm flat-handed against Reynolds’ face, sent him staggering against the wall with wicked force, and two others grabbed Jansci and hustled him brutally out of the room. The commandant raised horrified hands.
‘Captain Zsolt. Is it necessary — I mean, I want them back in good condition, so that — ‘
‘Don’t be afraid, Commandant,’ the Count grinned. ‘We too, in our own crude way, are specialists. You will explain to Colonel Hidas when he returns, and ask him to phone the Chief? You will tell him, perhaps, how sorry I am to have missed him, but I cannot wait. Good. Thank you again, Commandant, and good-bye.’
Shivering violently in their sodden clothes, Jansci and Reynolds were hustled across the courtyard into the back of a waiting AVO lorry. A guard accompanied the driver into the cab, and the Count, Coco and another guard climbed into the back of the lorry, placed their guns on their knees and kept a watchful eye on the two prisoners. A moment later the engine turned over, the truck got under way, and within seconds had passed by the saluting sentry at the gate.
Almost at once the Count pulled a map from his pocket, consulted it briefly, then replaced it. Five minutes later he passed by Jansci and Reynolds, slid back the inspection hatch and spoke to the driver.
‘Half a kilometre from here a side road branches off to the left. Take it, and drive until I order you to stop.’
Within a minute the truck slowed, then turned off the road and went bouncing and jolting along a narrow rough track. So pot-holed was the road, so deep the frozen snow, that the truck constantly skidded from one side to the other, and the driver had the greatest difficulty in keeping it on the road at all, but the progress, if slow, was steady. After ten minutes the Count moved to the rear of the truck, stood up and leaned out the door as if looking for a familiar landmark, and after several minutes there he seemed to find it. He gave an order, the truck stopped, and he jumped out on to the snow, followed by Coco and the other guard. Obeying the implicit orders of the silently gesturing gun muzzles, Jansci and Reynolds jumped out after them.
The Count had stopped the truck in the middle of a thick wood, with a clearing to one side. He gave another order and the driver used the space provided by the clearing for reversing the truck. It skidded and slipped on the snow slicked grass, but heaving Shoulders and a few broken branches under the back wheels soon had it back on the road again, facing the direction it had come. The driver stopped the engine and climbed out, but the Count made him restart it and leave it idling: he wasn’t, he said, going to take the chance of the engine freezing up in that zero weather.
And it was indeed bitterly cold. Jansci and Reynolds, still In their same wet clothes, were shivering like men with the ague. The icy air turned chins and ears and nose-tips red and blue and white, and the condensation of breath was heavy and almost like smoke, evaporating slowly like smoke in the still, frozen air.
‘Speed, everyone!’ the Count commanded. ‘You don’t all want to freeze to death here, do you? Coco, you will guard these men. I can trust you?’
‘To the death.’ Coco grinned evilly. ‘One slightest move, and I will kill.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ The Count looked at him thoughtfully. ‘How many men have you killed, Coco?’
‘I lost count many years ago, comrade,’ Coco said simply. Reynolds, looking at him, knew with certainty that he was speaking the truth.
‘Your reward will come one of these fine days,’ the Count said cryptically. ‘The rest of you — a shovel apiece. We have some work to do that will get your blood moving.’
One of the guards blinked stupidly at him.
‘Spades, comrade? For the prisoners?’
‘You thought, perhaps, I was planning a garden allotment?’ the Count asked coldly.
‘No, no. It was just that you said to the commandant — I mean, I thought we were going to Budapest. . . .’ His voice trailed away into silence.
‘Exactly, comrade,’ the Count said dryly. ‘You have seen the error of your ways in time — in time and no more. Whatever else is required of you, comrade, heaven knows it is not thought. Come, or we all freeze. And do not be afraid. There will be no need to dig the ground, impossible anyway, it’s like iron. A little vale in the woods Where the snow has drifted deep, a trench in the snow — and — well, at least Coco understands.’
‘I do indeed.’ The grinning Coco licked his lips. ‘Perhaps the comrade will permit me to — ‘
‘Put an end to their sufferings?’ the Count suggested. He shrugged indifferently. ‘You may as well. What’s only another two after you’ve lost count of all the ones that have gone before?’
He disappeared into the woods behind the clearing with the other three guards and, even in that crystal clear, sound-carrying air, the men left behind could hear their voices growing fainter and fainter until they were only distant murmurs: the Count must have been leading them deep into the very heart of the wood. Coco, meanwhile, watched them with unblinking, venomous little eyes, and Jansci and Reynolds were both all too clearly aware that he was awaiting only the slightest excuse to pull the trigger of the carbine that his great hands cradled as if it were a toy. But they gave him no such excuse: excepting only their uncontrollable Shivering, they stood like statues.
Five minutes elapsed and the Count emerged from the woods, slapping a gauntlet against his polished high boots and the skirts of his long coat to free them of snow.
‘The work proceeds apace,’ he announced. ‘Two more minutes and we will rejoin our comrades. They have behaved, Coco?’
‘They have behaved.’ The disappointment in Coco’s voice was all too clear.
‘Never mind, comrade,’ the Count consoled him. He was marching up and down behind Coco, beating his arms to keep warm. ‘You haven’t much longer to wait. Don’t take your eyes off them for a moment. . . . How is — how is the pain today?’ He inquired delicately.
‘It still hurts.’ Coco glared at Reynolds and swore. ‘I am black and blue all over!’
‘My poor Coco, you’re having an uncommonly rough time of it these days,’ the Count said gently, and the sound of his viciously clubbing revolver was a pistol shot in the silence of the woods as the butt struck home accurately and with tremendous force just above Coco’s ear. The carbine dropped from Coco’s hands, he swayed, eyes turned up in his head, then crashed to the ground like a stricken tree as the Count stepped respectfully to one side to give a clear path to the giant’s fall. Twenty seconds later the truck was oh its way and the clearing in the woods already lost to sight round a curve in the road.
For the first three or four minutes there was no sound, ho word spoken in the cab of the truck, only the low, steady roar of the Diesel engine. A hundred questions, a hundred comments framed themselves on the lips of Jansci and Reynolds, but they didn’t know where to start, and the shadow of the nightmare from which they had just escaped was still too vivid in their minds. And then the Count was slowing down and stopping, one of his rare smiles illuminating his thin, aristocratic face as he dipped into his capacious hip pocket and drew out his metal flask.
‘Plum brandy, my friends.’ His voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘Plum brandy, and God only knows that no one needs it more than we three do today. Me, for I have died a thousand deaths today — especially when our friend here nearly ended everything when he first saw me in the commandant’s office — and you because you are soaking and freezing and prime candidates for pneumonia. And also, I suspect, because they did not treat you too well. I am right?’
‘Right.’ Jansci had to answer, for Reynolds was coughing and choking as the grateful, life-giving warmth of the strong spirit burnt its way down his throat. ‘The usual breakdown chemicals, plus a special one he’s just developed — and, as you know, the steam treatment.’
‘It was not difficult to guess,’ the Count nodded. ‘You did not look at all happy. In fact, you had no right to be on your feet at all, but doubtless you were sustained by the sure knowledge that it was only a matter of time before I appeared on the scene.’