‘Our friend has a superb sense of timing,’ the Count murmured. The dry, ironic tone accorded ill with the set, bitter mouth, the fury barely in check. He picked up the field phone, cranked the handle viciously and waited.
‘Hidas? . . . Howarth here.’ The Count bit each word out separately. ‘You mad, crazy fool! Do you know who you’ve shot?’
‘How should I know? Why should I care?’ The easy suavity had gone from Hidas’ voice, the loss of his half-track had shaken him badly.
‘I’ll tell you why you should care.’ The Count had his control back again, and his voice was silky with menace. “That was Jansci you shot, and if he’s dead you will be well advised to accompany us when we cross the border into Austria Tonight.’
‘Fool! Have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘Listen, and judge who is sane. If Jansci is dead, we have no further interest in either his wife or daughter. You may do what you like with them. If he is dead, we will be across the border by midnight and within twenty-four hours Professor Jennings’ story will be splashed in banner headlines across the front page of every newspaper in Western Europe and America, every paper in the free world. The fury of your masters in Budapest and Moscow will know no bounds — and I shall take great care that every paper will publish a full account of our escape and the part you played in it, Colonel Hidas. For you, the Black Sea Canal if you’re lucky, perhaps Siberia, but almost certainly just a disappearance, shall we say. If Jansci dies, you die also — and no one knows it better than you do, Colonel Hidas.’
There was a long silence, and when Hidas finally spoke his voice was no more than a husky whisper.
‘Perhaps he is not dead, Major Howarth.’
‘You can but pray. We shall see — I’m going to see now. If you value your life, call off these murderous hounds of yours!’
‘I shall give the orders immediately.’
The Count replaced the phone, to find Reynolds staring at him.
‘Did you mean that? Would you have turned Julia and her mother over — ?’
‘My God, what do you think I am? . . . Sorry, boy, didn’t mean to bite. I must have sounded convincing, eh? I’m bluffing, but Hidas doesn’t know I am, and even if he wasn’t more scared right now than he has ever been in his life before and realised that perhaps I was bluffing, he wouldn’t even dare to try to call the bluff. We have him by the hip. Come, he should have called his dogs off by this time.’
Together they ran out on the road and stooped to examine Jansci. He was lying on his back, his limbs outflung and relaxed, but he was breathing steadily and evenly. There was no need to search for the injury — the welling red blood from the long wound that stretched from the temple back past the ear was in shocking contrast to the snow-white hair. The Count stooped low, examined him briefly then straightened.
‘No one could expect Jansci to die as easily as that.’ The wide grin on the Count’s face was eloquent of his relief. ‘He’s been creased and concussed, but I don’t even think that the bone has been chipped. He’ll be all right, perhaps in a couple of hours. Come, give me a hand to lift him.’
‘1 will take him.’ It was Sandor speaking, he had just emerged from the wood behind and he brushed them gently aside. He stooped, caught Jansci under the body and legs and lifted him with the ease one would have lifted a little child. ‘He is badly hurt?’
‘Thank you, Sandor. No, just a glancing blow. . . . That was a splendid job down by the bridge. Take him into the back of the track and make him comfortable, will you? Cossack, a pair of pliers, up that telephone pole and wait till I give you the word. Mr. Reynolds, you might start the engine, if you please. She may be cold.’
The Count picked up the phone, and smiled thinly. He could hear the anxious breathing of Hidas at the other end.
‘Your time has not yet come, Colonel Hidas. Jansci is badly hurt, shot through the head, but he will live. Now listen carefully. It is painfully obvious that you are not to be trusted — although that, I may say, is no recent discovery on my part. We cannot and will not carry out the exchange here — there is no guarantee that you will keep your word, every possibility that you won’t. Drive along .the field for about half a kilometre — it will be difficult in the snow, but you have the men and it will give us time to be on our way — and you will come to a plank bridge that will take you on to the road again. Then drive straight to the ferry. This is clear?’
‘It is clear.’ Some of the confidence was back in Hidas’ voice. ‘We will be there as soon as possible.’
‘You will be there an hour from now. No more. We do not wish to make you a present of the time to send for reinforcements and cut off escape routes to the west. Incidentally, do not waste precious time in attempting to summon help by this telephone. I am about to cut all the wires now, and shall cut them again about five kilometres north of here.’
‘But in an hour!’ Dismay was back in Hidas’ voice. ‘To clear these fields so deep in snow — and who knows what this side road to the river you speak of is like. If we -are not there in an hour — ‘
“Then you will find us gone.’ The Count hung up the receiver, gestured to the Cossack to cut the wires, looked into the back of the truck to see if Jansci was comfortable, then hurried round to the cab. Reynolds had the engine running, moved over to make room for the Count behind the wheel, and within seconds they were bumping out of the wood, on to the main road, and off into the north-east where the first dusky fingers of twilight were beginning to touch the snow-capped hills under a dark -and leaden sky.
Darkness was almost upon them, and the snow was beginning to fall more heavily again, with the chill promise of still more to come, when the Count swung the truck off the river road, drove a couple of hundred jolting yards up a narrow dirt track and stopped at the bottom of a small, abandoned stone quarry. Reynolds started out of his deep reverie and looked at him in surprise.
‘The ferryman’s house — you’ve left the river?”
‘Yes. Just about another three hundred metres from here — the ferry, I mean. Leaving the truck in plain view of Hidas when he arrives on the other side would be too much of a temptation altogether.’
Reynolds nodded and said nothing — he had spoken barely a dozen words since they had left Jansci’s house, had sat in silence beside the Count all the way, had hardly exchanged a word with Sandor as he had helped bin to destroy the bridge they had so lately crossed. His mind was confused, he was torn by conflicting emotions, consumed by a torturing anxiety that made all previous anxieties fade into insignificance. The most damnable part of it all was that old Jennings had now become talkative and positively cheerful as he had never been since Reynolds had first known him, and was trying all he could to raise the flagging spirits of the others — and Reynolds suspected, without in any way having reason for his suspicion, that the old professor knew, in spite of what the Count had said, that he was going to his death. It was intolerable, it was unthinkable, that such a gallant old man should be allowed to die like that. But if he didn’t, nothing was more certain than that Julia would die. Reynolds sat there in the gathering darkness, his fists clenched till his forearms ached, but far at the back of his mind he knew, without in any way consciously admitting his decision to himself, that there could be only one answer.
‘How is Jansci, Sandor?’ The Count had slid open the inspection hatch at the back of the cab.
‘He stirs.’ Sandor’s voice was deep and gentle. ‘And he is muttering to himself.’
‘Excellent. It takes more than a bullet in the head to account for Jansci.’ The Count paused a moment, then continued. ‘We cannot leave him here — it is altogether too cold, and I don’t want him to wake up not knowing where he is, not knowing where we are. I think — ‘