‘Nor do theatricalism, prolonged climaxes, the creation of suspense or unnecessary secrecy interest me,’ he continued. ‘Time is the most valuable gift we have, and its waste an unforgiveable crime … Your first thoughts, naturally – Mr Reynolds, be so good as to follow your friend’s example and refrain from doing yourself an unnecessary injury in testing these shackles – your first thought, I say, is, how has it come about that you find yourself in this melancholy position. There is no reason why you should not know, and at once.’ He looked at Jansci. ‘I regret to inform you that your brilliantly gifted and quite incredibly courageous friend who has been masquerading so long, and with such fantastic success, as a Major in the Allám Védelmi Hátoság, has finally betrayed you.’
There was a long moment’s silence. Reynolds looked expressionlessly at the commandant, then at Jansci. Jansci’s face was quite composed.
‘That is always possible.’ He paused. ‘Inadvertently, of course. Completely so.’
‘It was,’ the commandant nodded. ‘Colonel Josef Hidas, whose acquaintance Captain Reynolds here has already made, has had a feeling – he could call it no more than that, it was not even a suspicion – about Major Howarth for some little time.’ It was the first time Reynolds heard the name by which the Count was known to the AVO. ‘Yesterday the feeling became suspicion and certainty, and he and my good friend Furmint prepared a trap baited with the name of this prison and convenient access to Furmint’s room for a length of time sufficient to secure certain documents and stamps – these now on the table before me. For all his undoubted genius, your friend walked into the trap. We are all human.’
‘He is dead?’
‘Alive, in the best of health and, as yet, in blissful ignorance of what is known. He was despatched on a wild goose chase to keep him out of the way during the course of today: I believe that Colonel Hidas wishes to make the arrest personally. I expect him here this morning – later in the day Howarth will be seized, given a midnight court-martial at the Andrassy Ut and executed – but not, I fear, summarily.’
‘Of course.’ Jansci nodded heavily. ‘With every AVO officer and man in the city present he will die only a little at a time, so that no one else will be tempted to emulate him. The fools, the blind, imbecilic fools! Do they not know that there can never be another?’
‘I’m afraid I agree with you. But it is no direct concern of mine. Your name, my friend?’
‘Jansci will serve.’
‘For the moment.’ He removed his pince-nez and tapped them thoughtfully on the table. ‘Tell me, Jansci, what do you know of us members of the Political Police – of our composition, I mean.’
‘You tell me. It is obvious that you wish to.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you, though I think you must already know. Of our members, all but a negligible fraction are composed of power-seekers, morons who find our service intellectually undemanding, the inevitable sadists whose very nature bans them from all normal civilian employment, the long-time professionals – the very people who dragged screaming citizens from their beds in the service of the Gestapo are still doing precisely the same thing for us – and those with a corroding grievance against society: of the last category, Colonel Hidas, a Jew whose people have suffered in Central Europe agonies beyond all imagining is the prime example in the AVO today. There are also, of course, those who believe in Communism, a tiny minority only, but nevertheless certainly the most feared and dangerous of all inasmuch as they are automats pervaded by the whole idea of the state with their moral judgments either in a state of permanent suspension or completely atrophied. Furmint is one such. So, also, strangely enough, is Hidas.’
‘You must be terribly sure of yourself.’ Reynolds was speaking for the first time, slowly.
‘He is the commandant of the Szarháza prison.’ Jansci’s words were answer enough. ‘Why do you tell us this? Did you not say waste of time was abhorrent to you?’
‘It still is, I assure you. Let me continue. When it comes to the delicate question of gaining another’s confidence, all the various categories in the list I have given you have one thing in common. With the exception of Hidas, they are all victims of the idée fixe, of the hidebound conservatism – and somewhat biased dogmatism – of their unshakable convictions that the way to a man’s heart –’
‘Spare us the fancy phrases,’ Reynolds growled. ‘What you mean is, if they want the truth from a man they batter it out of him.’
‘Crude, but admirably brief,’ the commandant murmured. ‘A valuable lesson in time-saving. To continue in the same curt fashion, I have been entrusted with the task of gaining your confidence, gentlemen: to be precise, a confession from Captain Reynolds, and, from Jansci, his true name and the extent and modus operandi of his organization. You know yourselves the almost invariable methods as practised by the – ah – colleagues I have mentioned? The whitewashed walls, the brilliant lights, the endless, repetitive, trip-hammering questions, all judiciously interspersed with kidney-beatings, teeth and nail extractions, thumb-screws and all the other revolting appurtenances and techniques of the medieval torture chamber.’
‘Revolting?’ Jansci murmured.
‘To me, yes. As an ex-professor of nerve surgery in Budapest’s University and leading hospitals, the whole medieval conception of interrogation is intensely distasteful. To be honest, interrogation of any kind is distasteful, but I have found in this prison unsurpassed opportunities for observation of nervous disorders and for probing more deeply than ever before possible into the intensely complicated workings of the human nervous system. For the moment I may be reviled: future generations may differ in their appraisal … I am not the only medical man in charge of prisons or prison camps, I assure you. We are extremely useful to the authorities: they are no less so to us.’
He paused, then smiled, almost diffidently.
‘Forgive me, gentlemen. My enthusiasm for my work at times quite carries me away. To the point. You have information to give, and it will not be extracted by medieval methods. From Colonel Hidas I have already learnt that Captain Reynolds reacts violently to suffering, and is likely to prove difficult to a degree. As for you …’ He looked slowly at Jansci. ‘I do not think I have ever seen in any human face the shadows of so many sufferings: suffering for you can now itself be only a shadow. I have no wish to flatter when I say that I cannot conceive of a physical torture which could even begin to break you.’
He sat back, lit a long, thin cigarette and looked at them speculatively. After the lapse of over two minutes he leaned forward again.
‘Well, gentlemen, shall I call a stenographer?’
‘Whatever you wish,’ Jansci said courteously. ‘But it would grieve us to think of wasting any more of your time than we have already done.’
‘I expected no other answer.’ He pressed a switch, talked rapidly into a boxed microphone, then leant back. ‘You will, of course, have heard of Pavlov, the Russian medical psychologist?’
‘The patron saint of the AVO, I believe,’ Jansci murmured.
‘Alas, there are no saints in our Marxist philosophy – one to which, I regret to say, Pavlov did not subscribe. But you are right insofar as your meaning goes. A bungler, a crude pioneer in many ways, but nevertheless one to whom the more advanced of us – ah – interrogators owe a considerable debt and –’
‘We know all about Pavlov and his dogs and his conditioning and breakdown processes,’ Reynolds said roughly. ‘This is the Szarháza prison, not the University of Budapest. Spare us the lecture on the history of brainwashing.’
For the first time the commandant’s studied calm cracked, a flush touched the high cheekbones, but he was immediately under control again. ‘You are right, of course, Captain Reynolds. One requires a certain, shall we say, philosophical detachment to appreciate – but there I go again. I merely wished to say that the combination of the very advanced developments we have made of Pavlov’s physiological techniques and certain – ah – psychological processes t
hat will become apparent to you in the course of time, we can achieve quite incredible results.’ There was something about the man’s detached enthusiasm that was chilling, frightening. ‘We can break any human being who ever lived – and break him so that never a scar shows. With the exception of the incurably insane, who are already broken, there are no exceptions. Your stiff-upper-lipped Englishman of fiction – and, for all I know, fact – will break eventually, like everyone else: the efforts of the Americans to train their Servicemen to resist what the western world so crudely calls brainwashing – let us call it rather a reintegration of personality – are as pathetic as they are hopeless. We broke Cardinal Mindszenty in eighty-four hours: we can break anyone.’
He stopped speaking as three men, white-coated and carrying a flask, cups and a small metal box, entered the room and waited until they had poured out two cups of what was indubitably coffee.
‘My assistants, gentlemen. Excuse the white coats – a crude psychological touch which we find effective with a large majority of our – ah – patients. Coffee, gentlemen. Drink it.’
‘I’ll be damned if I will,’ Reynolds said coldly.
‘You will have to undergo the indignity of nose-clips and a forcible tube feed if you don’t,’ the commandant said wearily. ‘Do not be childish.’
Reynolds drank and so did Jansci. It tasted like any other coffee, but perhaps stronger and more bitter.
‘Genuine coffee,’ the commandant smiled. ‘But it also contains a chemical commonly known as Actedron. Do not be deceived by its effects, gentlemen. For the first minutes you will feel yourself stimulated, more determined than ever to resist: but then will come somewhat severe headaches, dizziness, nausea, inability to relax and a state of some mental confusion – the dose, of course, will be repeated.’ He looked at an assistant with a syringe in his hands, gestured at it, and went on to explain. ‘Mescaline – produces a mental state very akin to schizophrenia, and is becoming increasingly popular, I believe, among writers and others artists of the western world: for their own sakes, I trust they do not take it with Actedron.’
Reynolds stared at him and had to force himself not to shiver. There was something evil, something abnormally wrong and inhuman about the quiet-talking commandant with the gently humorous professorial talk, all the more evil, all the more inhuman because it was deliberately neither, just the chillingly massive indifference of one whose utter and all-exclusive absorption in an insatiable desire for the furthering of his own particular life’s work left no possible room for any mere consideration of humanity … The commandant was speaking again.
‘Later, I shall inject a new substance, my own invention but so recently discovered that I have not yet named it: Szarházazine, perhaps, gentlemen – or would that be too whimsical? I can assure you that if we had had it some years ago the good Cardinal would not have lasted twenty-four hours, much less than eighty-four. The combined efforts of the three, after perhaps two doses of each, will be to reduce you to a state of absolute mental exhaustion and collapse. Then the truth will come inevitably, and we will add what we will to your minds, and that, for you, will be the truth.’
‘You tell us all this?’ Jansci said slowly.
‘Why not? Forewarned, in this case, is not forearmed: the process is irreversible.’ The quiet certainty in his voice left no room for any doubt. He waved away the white-coated attendants and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Come gentlemen, it is time that you were shown your quarters.’
Almost at once the guards were in the room again, releasing legs and arms one at a time from chair arms and legs, then reshackling wrists and ankles together, all with a swift and trained efficiency that precluded all idea of escape, much less escape itself. When Jansci and Reynolds were on their feet, the commandant led the way from the room: two guards walked on either side and a third, with a pistol ready, behind each of the two men. The precautions were absolute.
The commandant led the way across the hard-packed snow of the courtyard, through the guarded entrance to a massively-walled, window-barred block of buildings and along a narrow, dim-lit corridor. Half-way along, at the head of a flight of stone steps leading down in the gloom below, he paused at a door, gestured to one of the guards and turned to the two prisoners.
‘A last thought, gentlemen, a last sight to take with you down into the dungeons below, while you spend your last few hours on earth as the men you have always known yourselves to be.’ The key clicked in the lock, and the commandant pushed it open with his foot. ‘After you, gentlemen.’
Hobbled by the shackles, Reynolds and Jansci stumbled into the room, saving themselves from falling by catching at the foot-rail of an old-fashioned iron bedstead. A man was lying on the bed, dozing, and Reynolds saw, almost with no sensation of surprise – he had been expecting it from the moment the commandant had stopped outside the door – that it was Dr Jennings. Haggard and wasted and years older than when Reynolds had seen him three days previously, he had been dozing on a dirty straw mattress: but he was almost instantly awake, and Reynolds could not resist a slow stirring of satisfaction when he saw that, whatever else the old man had lost, it certainly wasn’t his intransigence: the fire was back in the faded eyes even as he struggled upright.
‘Well, what the devil does this latest intrusion mean?’ He spoke English, the only language he knew, but Reynolds could see that the commandant understood. ‘Haven’t you damned ruffians pushed me about enough for a weekend without …’ He broke off when he recognized Reynolds for the first time and stared at him. ‘So the fiends got you, too?’
‘Inevitably,’ the commandant said in precise English. He turned to Reynolds. ‘You came all the way from England to see the professor. You have seen him. Now you can say goodbye. He leaves this afternoon – in three hours’ time, to be precise, for Russia.’ He turned to Jennings. ‘Road conditions are extremely bad – we have arranged for a special coach to be attached to the Pécs train. You will find it comfortable enough.’
‘Pécs?’ Jennings glared at him. ‘Where the devil is Pécs?’
‘One hundred kilometres south of here, my dear Jennings. The Budapest airport is temporarily closed by snow and ice, but the latest word is that Pécs Airport is still open. A special plane for yourself and a – ah – a few other special cases is being diverted there.’
Jennings ignored him, turned and stared at Reynolds.
‘I understand that my son Brian has arrived in England?’ Reynolds nodded in silence.
‘And I’m still here, eh? You’ve done splendidly, young man, just splendidly. What the devil is going to happen now God only knows.’
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, sir.’ Reynolds hesitated, then made up his mind. ‘There’s one thing you should know. I have no authority for telling you this, but for this once only to hell with authority. Your wife – your wife’s operation was one hundred per cent successful and her recovery is already almost complete.’
‘What! What’s that you’re saying?’ Jennings had Reynolds by the lapels, and though forty pounds lighter than the younger man was actually shaking him. ‘You’re lying, I know you’re lying! The surgeon said …’
‘The surgeon said what we told him to say,’ Reynolds interrupted flatly. ‘I know it was unforgivable, but it was essential to bring you home and every possible lever was to be brought to bear. But it doesn’t matter a damn any more, so you might as well know.’
‘My God, my God!’ The reaction Reynolds had expected, especially from a man of the professor’s reputation – that of an almost berserker anger over having been duped so long and so cruelly – completely failed to materialize. Instead, he collapsed on his bed as if the weight of his body had grown too much for his old legs to bear, and blinked happily through his tears. ‘This is wonderful, I can’t tell you how wonderful … And only a few hours ago, I knew I could never be happy again!’
‘Most interesting, all most interesting,’ the commandant murmured. ‘And to think that the west has the ef
frontery to accuse us of inhumanity.’
‘True, true,’ Jansci murmured. ‘But at least the west doesn’t pump its victims full of Actedron and Mescaline.’
‘What? What’s that?’ Jennings looked up. ‘Who’s been pumped full of –?’
‘We have,’ Jansci interrupted mildly. ‘We’re to be given a fair trial and then shot in the morning, but first comes the modern equivalent of being broken on the wheel.’
Jennings stared at Jansci and Reynolds, the incredulity on his face slowly changing to horror. He rose and looked at the commandant.
‘Is this true? What this man says, I mean?’
The commandant shrugged. ‘He exaggerates, of course, but –’
‘So it is true.’ Jennings’ voice was quiet. ‘Mr Reynolds, it is as well you told me of my wife: the use of that lever would now be quite superfluous. But it’s too late now, I can see that, just as I begin to see many other things – and begin to know the things I shall never see again.’
‘Your wife.’ Jansci’s words were statement, not question.
‘My wife,’ Jennings nodded. ‘And my boy.’
‘You shall see them again,’ Jansci said quietly. Such was the quiet certainty, the unshakable conviction in his tone, that the others stared at him, half-convinced that he had some knowledge that was denied them, half-convinced that he was mad. ‘I promise you, Dr Jennings.’
The old man stared at him, then the hope slowly faded from his eyes.
‘You are kind, my friend. Religious faith is the prop –’
The Last Frontier Page 18