‘The treacherous, murderous swine,’ the Count whispered. His face was quite expressionless. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust him, but I didn’t know till now just how much I couldn’t trust him.’ He broke off as the big gun fired again, and waited until the rolling echoes had died away. ‘I’ve seen this a hundred times — this is the technique that the Germans first perfected in Warsaw. If you want to bring a house down without blocking the streets, you just knock the bottom out and the house falls in upon itself. They also discovered, just by way of an extra dividend, that everyone hiding in such a house would be crushed to death at the same time.’
‘And that’s what they are trying — I mean, they think we’re in there?’ There was a tremor in Dr. Jennings’ voice, and his horror showed in his pale face.
‘They’re not just amusing themselves by having target practice,’ the Count said roughly. ‘Of course they think we’re there. And Hidas has his terriers stationed all round the house, in case the rats should try to bolt from their hole.’
‘I see.’ Jennings’ voice was steadier now. ‘It would appear that I have overestimated the value of my services to the Russians.’
‘No,’ the Count lied. ‘No you haven’t. They want you all right — but I suspect they want Major-General Illyurin — and myself — even more. Jansci is Communist Hungary’s enemy No. 1, and they know this chance would never come their way again. They couldn’t pass it up — and they were prepared to sacrifice even you to make the most of this chance.’
Reynolds felt a slow stirring within him — a stirring of anger and admiration — anger for the way the Count was hiding the truth from Jennings, for letting him think that they could still trade him without any danger to himself, admiration for the ready skill with which he had invented so plausible an explanation.
‘They’re fiends — they’re inhuman fiends,’ Jennings was saying in wonder.
‘It is certainly difficult to think of them as anything else at times,’ Jansci said heavily. ‘Did — did anyone see them?’ There was no need to ask who he meant by ‘them,’ the mute head-shakings showed that all had understood. ‘No? Then perhaps we had better call our friend up there. The phone connection is under the gable. It shouldn’t have been damaged yet.’
And it hadn’t. There was a lull in the firing, and in the still, frosty air it was quite easy for them to hear the ringing of the bell inside the house as Jansci cranked the handle of the field telephone, easy, too, to hear a shouted order and see the man who ran round the corner of the house, waving a signal to the gunners in the half-track: almost at once the big rifle dipped to one side. Another order, and the crouching soldiers round the house broke quickly from their hiding-places, some running towards the front of the house, some towards the back. At the front, the watchers could see the AVO men stooping low along the gaping ruin that was all that remained of the wall, then jumping up and poking their carbines through the shattered windows, while a couple of men kicked the front door back off its broken hinges and passed inside. Even at that distance there was no mistaking the first of the two men who had gone inside, there was no mistaking the giant, gorilla-like figure of Coco anywhere.
‘You begin to understand, perhaps, why the worthy Colonel Hidas has survived so long?’ The Count murmured. ‘One could hardly accuse him of taking unnecessary chances.’
Coco and the other AVO men reappeared at the front door, and at a word from the giant the other men watching at the windows relaxed, while one of them disappeared round the corner of the house. He reappeared almost at once, followed by another who went straight inside the house, and that this other could only have been Colonel Hidas was obvious when they heard his voice coming tinnily through the field phone’s head set seconds later: Jansci had only one of the receivers to his ear and the voice came clearly enough through the second for all the others to hear.
‘Major-General Illyurin, I presume?* Hidas’ voice was calm, composed, and only the Count knew it well enough to detect the faint edge of anger underneath.
‘Yes. Is this the way the gentlemen of the AVO keep their bargains, Colonel Hidas?’
‘There is no room for childish recrimination between the two of us,’ Hidas replied. ‘Where are you speaking from, may I ‘inquire?’
“That, too, is irrelevant. You have brought my wife and daughter?’
There was a long pause, while the receiver went dead, then Hidas’s voice came again. ‘Naturally. I said I would.’
‘May I see them, please?’
‘You do not trust me?’
‘A superfluous question, Colonel Hidas. Let me see them’.
‘I must think.’ Again the phone went dead, and the Count said urgently:
‘He’s not thinking, that fox never requires to think. He’s stalling for time. He knows we must be somewhere we can see him — so he knows he can see us. That was what his first pause was for — he was telling his men to — ‘
A shout from the house brought confirmation of the Count’s guess, even before he had made it in words, and a moment later a man came rushing out of the front door and ran down pell-mell towards the half-track.
‘He’s seen us,’ said the Count softly. ‘Us or the truck behind us. And now guess what?’
‘No need to guess.’ Jansci dropped the field set. “The halftrack. Take cover! Will it blast us from there — or will it come to seek us out? That’s the only question.’
‘It’ll come for us,’ Reynolds was certain. ‘Shells are useless in a wood.’
He was right. Even as he was speaking, the big Diesel of the half-track had growled into life, and now it was lumbering up to the clear space in front of the house, stopping and going into reverse.
‘He’s coming all right,’ Jansci nodded. ‘They didn’t have to move to fire from there — that rifle turret can traverse through 360 degrees.’ He moved out from the cover of his tree, jumped over the snow-filled ditch on to the road and held both arms, just touching, high above his head — the agreed signal to the hidden, waiting Sandor that he was to press the plunger.
No one was prepared for what happened, not even the Count, who had underestimated how desperate Hidas had become. Faintly, through the field telephone lying on the ground, he heard Hidas shouting Tire!’ and before the Count had time even to call out a warning, several automatic carbines had opened up from the house and they leapt back behind tree-trunks to escape the whistling hail of rifle fire that smashed into the wood around them, some shells striking into the boles with solid hammer blows, others ricocheting off and whining away evilly to bury their misshapen metal in tree-trunks still deeper in the wood, and yet others just breaking off branches and twigs to bring tiny flurries of frozen snow sifting down gently to the ground. But Jansci had had no time, no chance and no warning and he toppled and swayed and crashed heavily to the road as might one of the trees behind him when the feller’s axe had struck the last blow at its base. Reynolds straightened from his shelter and had just taken his first plunging step towards the road when he was grabbed from behind and hauled roughly behind the tree he had just left.
‘Do you want to get yourself killed, too?’ The Count’s voice was savage, but the savagery was not directed at Reynolds. ‘I don’t think he’s dead — you can see his foot moving.’
‘They’ll fire again,’ Reynolds protested. The crackling of the carbines had ended as abruptly as it had begun. “They can riddle him lying there.’
‘All the more reason why you shouldn’t commit suicide.’
‘But Sander’s waiting! He hadn’t time to see the signal — ‘
‘Sander’s nobody’s fool. He doesn’t require any signal.’ The Count edged an eye round a corner of his Sheltering tree, saw the half-track rumbling down the dirt road towards the bridge. ‘If that bridge goes up now that damn’ tank can stop and pulverise us from where it stands: worse, it can reverse and cross the ditch, tracks first, on to the main road. Sander knows it. Watch!’
Reynolds watched. The half-track was almost on the bridge now. Ten yards, five yards, it was climbing up the far hump of the bridge. Sandor had left it too late, Reynolds knew he had left it too late, then there came a sudden flash of light, a low dull roar nothing like so loud as Reynolds had expected, followed first by the rumbling of falling masonry then a grinding metallic screeching and a crash which shook the ground almost as much as the explosion had done as the half-track plunged nose first into the bed of the stream and the far abutment of the bridge, its long rifle smashing against what was left of the wall of the bridge, fracturing and bending sharply upwards at a crazy angle as if it had been made of cardboard.