‘Colonel Szendro, Headquarters, Hungarian Political Police. I am at your service, Mr. Buhl, and my car at your disposal. We leave for Budapest, immediately. My colleagues and I have been expecting you for some weeks now, and are most anxious to discuss certain matters with you.’
CHAPTER TWO
It was pitch dark outside now, but light streaming from the open door and uncovered window of the hut gave them enough visibility to see by. Colonel Szendro’s car was parked on the other side of the road — a black, left-hand drive Mercedes saloon already covered with a deep layer of snow, all except the front part of the bonnet where the engine heat melted the snow as it fell. There was a minute’s delay while the colonel told them to release the truck driver and search the inside of the truck for any personal luggage Buhl might have been forced to abandon there — they found his overnight bag almost immediately and stuffed his gun into it — then Szendro opened the front right-hand door of the car and gestured Reynolds to his seat.
Reynolds would have sworn that no one man driving a car could have held him captive for fifty miles, only to find out how wrong he was even before the car started. While a soldier with a rifle covered Reynolds from the left-hand side, Szendro stooped inside the other door, opened the glove compartment in front of Reynolds, fetched out two lengths of thin chain and left the glove box open.
‘A somewhat unusual car, my dear Buhl,’ the colonel said apologetically. ‘But you understand. From time to time I feel that I must give certain of my passengers a feeling of — ah — security.’ Rapidly he unlocked one of the handcuffs, passed the end link of one of the chains through it, locked it, passed the chain through a ring or eye bolt in the back of the glove box and secured it to the other handcuff. Then he looped the second chain round Reynolds’ legs, just above the knees and, closing the door and leaning in through the opened window, secured it with a small padlock to the arm-rest. He stood back to survey his work.
‘Satisfactory, I think. You should be perfectly comfortable and have ample freedom of movement — but not enough, I assure you, to reach me. At the same time you will find it difficult to throw yourself out of the door, which you would find far from easy to push open anyway: you will observe that the pull-out handle is missing from your door.’ The tone was light, even bantering, but Reynolds knew better than to be deceived. ‘Also, kindly refrain from damaging yourself by surreptitiously testing the strength of the chains and their anchors: the chains have a breaking load of just over a ton, the arm-rest is specially reinforced and that ring in the glove box bolted through on to the chassis. . . . Well, what on earth do you want now?’
‘I forgot to tell you, Colonel.’ The policeman’s voice was quick, nervous. ‘I sent a message to our Budapest Office asking to send a car for this man.’
‘You did?’ Szendro’s voice was sharp. ‘When?’
‘Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes ago.’
Tool! You should have told me immediately. However, it’s too late now. No harm done, possibly some good. If they are as thick in the head as you are, a circumstance of which it is admittedly difficult to conceive, a long drive in the cold night air should clear their minds admirably.’
Colonel Szendro banged the door shut, switched on the roof light above the windscreen so that he should have no difficulty in seeing his prisoner, and drove off for Budapest. The Mercedes was equipped with snow tyres on all, four wheels, and, in spite of the hard-packed snow on the road, Szendro made good time. He drove with the casual, easy precision of an expert, his cold blue eyes for ever shifting to his right, very frequently and at varying intervals.
Reynolds sat very still, staring right ahead. He had already, in spite of the colonel’s admonitions, tested the chains; the colonel hadn’t exaggerated. Now he was forcing his mind to think coldly, clearly and as constructively as possible. His position was almost hopeless — it would be completely so when they reached Budapest. Miracles happened, but only a certain kind of miracle: no one had ever escaped from the AVO Headquarters, from the torture chambers in Stalin Street. Once there he was lost: if he was ever to escape it would have to be from this car, inside the next hour.
There was no window winding handle on the door — the colonel had thoughtfully removed all such temptations: even if the window had been open he couldn’t have reached the handle on the outside. His hands couldn’t reach the wheel; he had already measured the arc of radius of the chain and his straining fingers would have been at least two inches away.
He could move his legs to a certain extent, but couldn’t raise them high enough to kick in the windscreen, shatter the toughened glass throughout its length and perhaps cause a crash at fairly high speed. He could have placed his feet against the dashboard, and he knew of some cars where he could have heaved the front seat backwards off the rails. But everything in this car spelt solidity, and if he tried and failed, as he almost certainly would, all he’d probably get for his pains would be a tap on the head that would keep him h ‘ quiet till they got to the Andrassy Ut. All the time he deliberately compelled himself to keep his mind off what was going to happen to him when he got there: that way lay only weakness and ultimate destruction.
His pockets — had he anything in his pockets he could use? Anything solid enough to throw at Szendro’s head, shock him for a length of time necessary to lose control and crash the car: Reynolds was aware that he himself might be hurt as seriously as the colonel, even though he had the advantage of preparation: but a fifty-fifty chance was better than the one in a million he had without it. He knew exactly where Szendro had put the key to the handcuffs.
But a rapid mental inventory dismissed that hope: he had nothing heavier in his pocket than a handful of forints. His shoes, then — could he remove a shoe and get Szendro in the face with it before the colonel knew what he was doing? But that thought came only a second ahead of the realisation of its futility; with his wrists handcuffed, the only way he could reach his shoes in any way unobtrusively was between his legs — and his knees were lashed tightly together. . . . Another idea, desperate but with a chance of success, had just occurred to him when the colonel spoke for the first time in the fifteen minutes since they had left the police block.
‘You are a dangerous man, Mr. Buhl,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘You think too much — Cassius — you know your Shakespeare, of course.’
Reynolds said nothing. Every word this man said was a potential trap.
‘The most dangerous man I’ve ever had in this car, I should say, and a few desperate characters have sat from time to time where you’re sitting now,’ Szendro went on ruminatively. ‘You know where you’re going, and you don’t appear to care. But you must, of course.’
Again Reynolds kept silent. The plan might work — the chance of success was enough to justify the risk.
“The silence is uncompanionable, to say the least,’ Colonel Szendro observed. He lit a cigarette, sent the match spinning through the ventilation window. Reynolds stiffened slightly — the very opening he wanted. Szendro went on: ‘You are quite comfortable, I trust?’
‘Quite.’ Reynolds’ conversational tone matched Szendro’s own. ‘But I’d appreciate a cigarette too, if you don’t mind.’
‘By all means.’ Szendro was hospitality itself. ‘One must cater for one’s guests — you’ll find half a dozen lying loose inside the glove compartment. A cheap and undistinguished brand, I fear, but I’ve always found that people in your — ah — position do not tend to be over-critical about these things. A cigarette — any cigarette — is a great help in times of stress.’
‘Thank you.’ Reynolds nodded at the projection on top of the dashboard at his own side. ‘Cigar lighter, is it not?’
‘It is. Use it by all means.’
Reynolds stretched forward with his handcuffed wrists, pressed it down for a few seconds then lifted it out, its spiral tip glowing red in the faint light from above. Then, just as it cleared the fascia, his hands fumbled and he dropped it on the floor. He reached down to get it, but the chain brought his hands up with a sharp jerk inches from the floor. He swore softly to himself.