‘So they would use this despicable trick –’
‘It’s life or death, Jansci,’ Reynolds interrupted flatly. ‘It may literally be life or death for millions. Jennings must be moved and we will use every lever we can to that end.’
‘You think this is ethical, Reynolds? You think anything can justify –’
‘Whether I think these things or not doesn’t matter a damn,’ Reynolds said indifferently. ‘The pros and cons are not for me to decide. The only things that concern me are that I’ve been given a job to do: if it is possible in any way at all, I’ll get that job done.’
‘A ruthless and dangerous man,’ the Count murmured. ‘I told you. A killer, but he happens to be on the side of the law.’
‘Yes.’ Reynolds was unmoved. ‘And there’s another point. Like many other brilliant men, Jennings is rather naïve and short-sighted when it comes to matters outside his own speciality. Mrs Jennings tells us that the Russians have assured her husband that the project he is working on will be used for exclusively peaceful purposes. Jennings believes this. He’s a pacifist at heart, and so –’
‘All the best scientists are pacifists at heart.’ Jansci was sitting down now, but his eyes were still hostile. ‘All the best men everywhere are pacifists at heart.’
‘I’m not arguing. All I’m saying is that Jennings is now at the stage where he would sooner work for the Russians, if he thinks he is working for peace, than for his own people, if he knows he is working for war. Which makes him all the more difficult to move – and which – in turn, makes necessary the use of every lever that comes to hand.’
‘The fate of his young son is, of course, a matter of indifference.’ The Count waved an airy hand. ‘Where such tremendous stakes are at issue –’
‘Brian, his son, was in Poznan all day yesterday,’ Reynolds interrupted. ‘Some exposition or other, mainly for youth organizations. Two men shadowed him from the moment he got up. By noon tomorrow – to-day, that is – he’ll be in Stettin. Twenty-four hours later he’ll be in Sweden.’
‘Ah, so. But you are too confident, Reynolds, you underestimate Russian vigilance.’ The Count was regarding him thoughtfully over the rim of his brandy glass. ‘Agents have been known to fail.’
‘These two agents have never failed. They are the best in Europe. Brian Jennings will be in Sweden tomorrow. The call-sign comes from London on a regular European transmission. Then, and not till then, we approach Jennings.’
‘So.’ The Count nodded. ‘Perhaps you have some humanity after all.’
‘Humanity!’ Jansci’s voice was cold still, almost contemptuous. ‘Just another lever to use against the poor old man – and Reynolds’ people know very well that if they left the boy to die in Russia Jennings would never work for them again.’
The Count lit another of his interminable chain of brown cigarettes.
‘Perhaps we are being too harsh. Perhaps, here, self-interest and humanity go hand in hand. “Perhaps,” I said … And what if Jennings still refuses to go?’
‘Then he’ll just have to go whether he wants to or not.’
‘Wonderful! Just wonderful!’ The Count smiled wryly. ‘What a picture for Pravda. Our friends here lugging Jennings by the heels across the border and the caption “British Secret Agent Liberates Western Scientist.” Can’t you just see it, Mr Reynolds?’
Reynolds shrugged and said nothing. He was only too keenly aware of the change of atmosphere in the past five minutes, the undercurrent of hostility that now ran strongly towards himself. But he had had to tell Jansci everything – Colonel Mackintosh had been insistent on that point, and it had been inevitable if they were to have Jansci’s help. The offer of help, if it were to be made at all, now hung in the balance – and without it, Reynolds knew, he might as well have saved himself the trouble of coming at all … Two minutes passed in silence, then Jansci and the Count looked at one another and exchanged an almost imperceptible nod. Jansci looked squarely at Reynolds.
‘If all your countrymen were like you, Mr Reynolds, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you: cold-blooded, emotionless people to whom right and wrong, justice and injustice, and suffering are matters of academic disinterest are as guilty, by silence of consent, as the barbarous murderers of whom you so recently spoke: but I know they are not all like you: neither would I help if it were only to enable your scientists to make machines of war. But Colonel Mackintosh was – is – my friend and I think it inhuman, no matter what the cause, that an old man should die in a foreign land, among uncaring strangers, far from his family and those he loves. If it lies in our power, in any way at all, we will see to it, with God’s help, that the old man comes safely home again.’
FOUR
The inevitable cigarette holder clipped between his teeth, the inevitable Russian cigarette well alight, the Count leaned a heavy elbow on the buzzer and kept on leaning until a shirt-sleeved little man, unshaven and still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, came scurrying out from the little cubicle behind the hotel’s reception desk. The Count eyed him with disfavour.
‘Night-porters should sleep in the daytime,’ he said coldly. ‘The manager, little man, and at once.’
‘The manager? At this hour of the night?’ The night-porter stared with ill-concealed insolence at the clock above his head, transferred his stare to the Count, now innocuously dressed in a grey suit and grey raglan raincoat, and made no effort at all to conceal the truculence in his voice. ‘The manager is asleep. Come back in the morning.’
There came a sudden sound of ripping linen, a gasp of pain, and the Count, his right hand gripping the bunched folds of the porter’s shirt, had him halfway across the desk: the blood-shot, sleep-filmed eyes, widened first with surprise and then with fear, were only inches away from the wallet that had magically appeared in the Count’s free hand. A moment of stillness, a contemptuous shove and the porter was scrabbling frantically at the pigeon-holed mail racks behind him in an attempt to keep his balance.
‘I’m sorry, comrade, I’m terribly sorry!’ the porter licked his lips suddenly dry and stiff. ‘I – I didn’t know –’
‘Who else do you expect to come calling at this hour of night?’ the Count demanded softly.
‘No one, comrade, no one! No – no one at all. It’s just that – well, you were here only twenty minutes ago –’
‘I was here?’ It was the raised eyebrow as much as the inflection of the voice that cut short the frightened stammering.
‘No, no, of course not. Not you – your people, I mean. They came –’
‘I know little man. I sent them.’ The Count waved a weary hand in bored dismissal and the porter hurried off across the hall. Reynolds rose from the wall-bench where he had been sitting and crossed the room.
‘Quite a performance,’ he murmured. ‘You even had me scared.’
‘Just practice,’ the Count said modestly. ‘Sustains my reputation and doesn’t do them any permanent harm, distressing though it is to be addressed as “comrade” by such a moron … You heard what he said?’
‘Yes. They don’t waste much time, do they?’
‘Efficient enough in their own unimaginative way,’ the Count conceded. ‘They’ll have checked most of the hotels in town by morning. Only a slim chance, of course, but one that they can’t afford to neglect. Your position is now doubly safe, three times as safe as it was at Jansci’s house.’
Reynolds nodded and said nothing. Only half an hour had elapsed since Jansci had agreed to help him. Both Jansci and the Count had decided that he must leave there at once: it was too inconvenient, too dangerous. It was inconvenient not so much because of the cramped accommodation, but because it was in a lonely and out of the way place: movements of a stranger at any hour of the day or night, such as Reynolds might be compelled to make, would be sure to draw unfavourable attention: it was too remote from the centre of the town, from the big hotels of Pest, where Jennings might be expected to be staying: and, biggest drawback of all, it had n
o telephone for instant communications.
And it was dangerous because Jansci was becoming increasingly convinced that the house was being watched: in the past day or two both Sandor and Imre had seen two people, singly and on several different occasions, walking slowly by the house on the other side of the street. It was unlikely that they were innocent passers-by: like every city under a police state rule, Budapest had its hundreds of paid informers, and probably they were just confirming their suspicions and gathering their facts before going to the police and collecting their blood-money. Reynolds had been surprised by the casual, almost indifferent way Jansci had treated this danger, but the Count had explained as he had driven the Mercedes through the snow-filled street to this hotel on the banks of the Danube. The changing of their hideouts because of suspicious neighbours had become so frequent as to be almost routine, and Jansci had a sixth sense which, so far, had always led them to pull out in good time. Annoying, the Count said, but no serious inconvenience, they knew of half a dozen bolt-holes just as good, and their permanent headquarters, a place known to Jansci, Julia and himself, was in the country.
Reynolds’ thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door across the hall opening. He looked up to see a man hurrying across the parquet floor, the tap-tap of his metalled heels urgent and almost comically hurried: he was shrugging a jacket over a crumpled shirt, and the thin, bespectacled face was alive with fear and anxiety.
‘A thousand apologies, comrade, a thousand apologies!’ he wrung white-knuckled hands in his distress, then glared at the porter following more slowly behind him. ‘This oaf here –’
‘You are the manager?’ the Count interrupted curtly.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘Then dismiss the oaf. I wish to talk to you privately.’ He waited till the porter had gone, drew out his gold cigarette case, selected a cigarette with due care, examined it minutely, inserted it with much deliberation in his holder, took his time about finding his matchbox and removing a match, finally lit the cigarette. A beautiful performance, Reynolds thought dispassionately: the manager, already on the tenterhooks of fright, was now almost in hysterics.
‘What is it, comrade, what has gone wrong?’ In his attempt to keep his voice steady, it had been louder than intended, and it now dropped to almost a whisper. ‘If I can help the AVO in any way, I assure you –’
‘When you speak, you will do so only to answer my questions.’ The Count hadn’t even raised his voice, but the manager seemed to shrink visibly, and his mouth closed tightly in a white line of fear. ‘You spoke to my men some little time ago?’
‘Yes, yes, a short time ago. I wasn’t even asleep just now –’
‘Only to answer my questions,’ the Count repeated softly. ‘I trust I do not have to say that again … They asked if you had any new arrival staying here, any fresh bookings, checked the register and searched the rooms. They left, of course, a typed description of the man they were looking for?’
‘I have it here, comrade.’ The manager tapped his breast pocket.
‘And orders to phone immediately if anyone resembling that description appeared here?’
The manager nodded.
‘Forget all that,’ the Count ordered. ‘Things are moving quickly. We have every reason to believe that the man is either coming here or that his contact is already living here or will be coming here in the course of the next twenty-four hours.’ The Count exhaled a long, thin streamer of smoke and looked speculatively at the manager. ‘To our certain knowledge, this is the fourth time in three months that you have harboured enemies of the State in your hotel.’
‘Here? In this hotel?’ The manager had paled visibly. ‘I swear to God, comrade –’
‘God?’ The Count creased his forehead. ‘What God? Whose God?’
The manager’s face was no longer pale, it was ashen grey: good communists never made fatal blunders of this kind. Reynolds could almost feel sorry for him, but he knew what the Count was after: a state of terror, instant compliance, blind, unreasoning obedience. And already he had it.
‘A – a slip of the tongue, comrade.’ The manager was now stuttering in his panic, and his legs and hands were trembling. ‘I assure you, comrade –’
‘No. No, let me assure you, comrade.’ The Count’s voice was almost a purr. ‘One more slip-up and we must see to a little re-education, an elimination of these distressing bourgeois sentiments, of your readiness to give refuge to people who would stab our mother country in the back.’ The manager opened his mouth to protest, but his lips moved soundlessly, and the Count went on, his every word now a cold and deadly menace. ‘My instructions will be obeyed and obeyed implicitly, and you will be held directly responsible for any failure, however unavoidable that failure. That, my friend, or the Black Sea Canal.’
‘I’ll do anything, anything!’ The manager was begging now, in a state of piteous terror, and he had to clutch the desk to steady himself. ‘Anything, comrade. I swear it!’
‘You will have your last chance.’ The Count nodded towards Reynolds. ‘One of my men. Sufficiently like the spy we are after, in build and appearance, to pass muster, and we have disguised him a little. A shadowed corner of your lounge, say, an incautious approach, and the contact is ours. The contact will sing to us, as all men sing to the AVO, and then the spy himself will be ours also.’
Reynolds stared at the Count, only the years of professional training keeping his face expressionless, and wondered if there was any limit to this man’s effrontery. But in that same insolent audacity, Reynolds knew, the best hope of safety lay.
‘However, all that is no concern of yours,’ the Count continued. ‘These are your instructions. A room for my friend here – let us call him, for the sake of convenience, say, Mr Rakosi – the best you have, with a private bathroom, fire-escape, short-wave radio receiver, telephone, alarm clock, duplicates of all master-keys in the hotel and absolute privacy. No switchboard operator eavesdropping on Mr Rakosi’s room telephone – as you are probably aware, my dear manager, we have devices that tell us instantly when a line is being monitored. No chambermaid, no floor waiters, no electricians, plumbers or any other tradesmen to go near his room. All meals will be taken up by yourself. Unless Mr Rakosi chooses to show himself, he doesn’t exist. No one knows he exists, even you have never seen him, you haven’t even seen me. All that is clearly understood?’
‘Yes, of course, of course.’ The manager was grasping frantically at this straw of a last chance. ‘Everything will be exactly as you say, comrade, exactly. You have my word.’
‘You may yet live to mulct a few thousand more guests,’ the Count said contemptuously. ‘Warn that oaf of a porter not to talk, and show us this room immediately.’
Five minutes later they were alone. Reynolds’ room was not large, but comfortably furnished, complete with radio and telephone and a fire-escape conveniently placed outside the adjoining bathroom. The Count glanced round approvingly.
‘You’ll be comfortable here for a few days, two or three, anyway. Not more, it’s too dangerous. The manager won’t talk, but you’ll always find some frightened fool or mercenary informer who will.’
‘And then?’
‘You’ll have to become somebody else. A few hours’ sleep then I go to see a friend of mine who specializes in such things.’ The Count thoughtfully rubbed a blue and bristly chin. ‘A German, I think will be best for you, preferably from the Ruhr – Dortmund, Essen or thereabouts. Much more convincing than your Austrian, I assure you. East-west contraband trade is becoming so big that the deals are now being handled by the principals themselves, and the Swiss and Austrian middlemen who used to handle these transactions are having a thin time of it. Very rare birds now, and hence an object of suspicion. You can be a supplier of, let us say, aluminium and copper goods. I’ll get you a book on it.’
‘These, of course, are banned goods?’
‘Naturally, my dear fellow. There are hundreds of banned goods, absolutely p
roscribed by the governments of the west, but a Niagara of the stuff flows across the iron curtain every year – £100,000,000 worth, £200,000,000 – no one knows.’
‘Good lord!’ Reynolds was astonished, but recovered quickly. ‘And I’ll contribute my quota to the flow?’
‘Easiest thing imaginable, my boy. Your stuff is sent to Hamburg or some other free port under false stencils and manifest: these are changed inside the factory and the stuff embarked on a Russian ship. Or, easier still, just send them across the border to France, break up, repack and send to Czechoslovakia – by the 1921 ‘in transit’ agreement goods can be shipped from countries A to C clear across B without benefit of any customs examinations. Beautifully simple, is it not?’
‘It is,’ Reynolds admitted. ‘The governments concerned must be at their wits’ end.’
‘The governments!’ The Count laughed. ‘My dear Reynolds, when a nation’s economy booms, governments become afflicted with an irremediable myopia. Some time ago an outraged German citizen, a socialist leader by the name of, I think, Wehner – that’s it, Herbert Wehner – sent to the Bonn Government a list of six hundred firms – six hundred, my dear fellow! – actively engaged in contraband trade.’
‘And the result?’
‘Six hundred informants in six hundred factories sacked,’ the Count said succinctly. ‘Or so Wehner said, and no doubt he knew. Business is business, and profits are profits the world over. The Communists will welcome you with open arms, provided you have what they want. I’ll see to that. You will become a representative, a partner, of some big metal firm in the Ruhr.’
‘An existing firm?’
‘But of course. No chances and what that firm doesn’t know won’t hurt them.’ The Count pulled a stainless steel hip flask from his pocket. ‘You will join me?’
‘Thank you, no.’ To Reynolds’ certain knowledge, the Count had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of brandy that night already, but its effects, outwardly at least, were negligible: the man’s tolerance to alcohol was phenomenal. In fact, Reynolds reflected, a phenomenal character in many ways, an enigma if ever he had known one. Normally a coldly humorous man with a quick, sardonic wit, the Count’s face, in its rare moments of repose, held a withdrawn remoteness, almost a sadness that was in sharp, baffling contrast to his normal self. Or, maybe his remote self was his normal self …