The Last Frontier

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘I’m afraid my remembering and my thinking are not at their best at the present moment,’ Reynolds apologized. He stared at the sweat dripping continuously from his forehead and splashing into the water that covered the floor. ‘Do you think our friend intends to melt us?’

  ‘It would seem like it. As to what I was saying, I fear I talk too much and at the wrong time. You don’t feel even a little more kindly disposed towards our worthy commandant?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Jansci sighed philosophically. ‘Understanding the reasons for an avalanche does not, I suppose, make one any the more grateful for being pinned beneath it.’ He broke off, and twisted to face the door. ‘I fear,’ he murmured, ‘that our privacy is about to be invaded yet again.’

  The guards entered, released them, pulled them to their feet and hustled them out of the door, upstairs and across the yard in their usual efficient and uncommunicative fashion. The leader knocked on the commandant’s door, waited for the command, then pushed the door wide, pushing the two men in in front of him. The commandant had company and Reynolds recognized him at once – Colonel Joseph Hidas, the deputy chief of the AVO. Hidas rose to his feet as they entered and walked over to where Reynolds stood trying to stop his teeth chattering and his whole body from shaking: even without the drugs, the instantaneous one hundred degrees alternations in temperature were beginning to have a strangely weakening and debilitating effect. Hidas smiled at him.

  ‘Well, Captain Reynolds, so we meet again, to coin a phrase. The circumstances, I fear, are even more unfortunate this time than the last. Which reminds me: you will be pleased to hear that your friend Coco has recovered and returned to duty, although still limping somewhat badly.’

  ‘I’m distressed to hear it,’ Reynolds said briefly. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough.’

  Hidas raised an eyebrow and turned his head to have a look at the commandant. ‘They have had full treatment, this morning?’

  ‘They have, Colonel. A singularly high degree of resistance – but a clinical challenge after my own heart. They will talk before midnight.’

  ‘Quite. I’m sure they will.’ Hidas turned back to Reynolds. ‘Your trials will take place on Thursday, in the People’s Court. The announcement wil be made tomorrow, and we are offering immediate visas and superb hotel accommodation to every western journalist who cares to attend.’

  ‘There will be no room for anyone else,’ Reynolds murmured.

  ‘Which will suit us admirably … However, that is of little interest to me compared to another, and somewhat less public trial that will take place even earlier in the week.’ Hidas walked across the room and stood before Jansci. ‘At this moment I achieve what I must frankly admit has become the consuming desire, the over-riding ambition of my life – to meet, under the proper circumstances, the man who has caused me more trouble, more positive distress and more sleepless nights than the combined efforts of all other – ah – enemies of the state I have ever known. Yes, I admit it. For seven years now you have crossed my path almost continually, shielded and spirited away hundreds of traitors and foes of communism, and interfered with and broken the laws of justice. In the past eighteen months your activities, aided by those of the luckless but brilliant Major Howarth, have become quite intolerable. But the end of the road has come, as it must come for everyone. I can hardly wait to hear you talk … Your name, my friend?’

  ‘Jansci. That is the only name I have.’

  ‘Of course! I would have expected nothing –’ Hidas broke off in mid-sentence, his eyes widened and colour ebbed from his face. He took a step backwards, then another.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ His voice, this time, was only a husky whisper. Reynolds looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘Jansci. Just Jansci.’

  Perhaps ten seconds passed in utter silence while everyone stared at the AVO colonel. Then Hidas licked his lips and said hoarsely: ‘Turn round!’

  Jansci turned and Hidas stared down at the manacled hands. They heard the quick indrawing of his breath, then Jansci turned round of his own accord.

  ‘You’re dead!’ Hidas’ voice was still the same hoarse whisper, his face lined with shock. ‘You died two years ago. When we took your wife away –’

  ‘I didn’t die, my dear Hidas,’ Jansci interrupted. ‘Another man did – there were scores of suicides when your brown lorries were so busy that week. We just took one the nearest to me in appearance and build. We took him to our flat, disguised him, and painted his hands well enough to pass any but medical examination. Major Howarth, as you are probably aware by this time, is a genius with disguise.’ Jansci shrugged. ‘It was an unpleasant thing to do, but the man was already dead. My wife was alive – and we thought she might remain alive if I were thought to be dead.’

  ‘I see, I see indeed.’ Colonel Hidas had had time to recover his balance, and he could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘No wonder you defied us for so long! No wonder we could never break your organization. Had I known, had I but known! I am privileged indeed to have had you for adversary.’

  ‘Colonel Hidas!’ The commandant’s voice was imploring. ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘A man who, alas, will never stand trial in Budapest. Kiev, possibly Moscow, but never Budapest. Commandant, let me introduce you. Major-General Alexis Illyurin, second only to General Vlassov in command of the Ukrainian National Army.’

  ‘Illyurin!’ The commandant stared. ‘Illyurin! Here, in my room? It is impossible!’

  ‘It is, I know it is, but there is only one man in the world with hands like that! He hasn’t talked yet? No? But he will, we must have a complete confession ready when he goes to Russia.’ Hidas glanced at his watch. ‘So much to do, my Commandant, so little time to do it in. My car, and at once. Guard my friend well against my return. I will be back in two hours, three at the most. Illyurin? By all the gods, Illyurin!’

  Back once more in the stone-walled room, Jansci and Reynolds had little to say to one another. Even Jansci’s usual optimism seemed to have failed him, but his face was as untroubled as ever. But Reynolds knew that everything was over, for Jansci even more than himself, and that the last card had been played. There was, he thought, something tragic beyond words about the man sitting quietly opposite him, a giant toppling into the dust, but quiet and unafraid.

  And looking at him Reynolds was almost glad that he himself would die also, and he could not but be conscious of the bitter irony of his courage as the thought sprang not from courage but from cowardice: with Jansci dead, and because of him, he could not have faced Jansci’s daughter again. Worse, even worse than that, was the thought of what must inevitably happen to her with the Count and Jansci and himself all gone, but the thought had no sooner come than he had thrust it violently, ruthlessly away from him: if ever there was a time that no weakness must touch his mind, that time was now, and dwelling on the laughter and the sadness of that mobile, delicate face that was all too easily evoked in his mind’s eye was the highroad to despair …

  The steam hissed out of the pipes, the humidity spilled over the room, the temperature climbed steadily upwards: 120, 130, 140 and their bodies were drenched with sweat, their eyes blinded by it, and their breathing was the breathing of fire. Twice, three times, Reynolds lost consciousness, and would have fallen and drowned in a few inches of water but for the restraining body belt.

  It was as he was emerging from the last of these periods of unconsciousness that he felt hands fumbling at his fastenings and before he properly realized what was happening the guards had himself and Jansci once more out of the cell and into the bitter air of the courtyard for the third time that morning. Reynolds’ mind was reeling as his body was reeling, and Jansci, too, he could see, was being half-carried across, but even through the fog in his mind Reynolds remembered something and looked at his watch. It was exactly two o’clock. He saw Jansci looking at him, saw the grim nod of acquiescence. Two o’clock, and the commandant would be wa
iting for them, he would be as punctual and precise about this as he was about everything else. Two o’clock and the commandant would be waiting for them: and so, too, would the syringes and the coffee, the Mescaline and the Actedron, waiting to drive them over the edge of madness.

  The commandant was waiting for them, but he was not waiting alone. The first person Reynolds saw was an AVO guard, then two more, then the giant Coco leering at him with a wide, anticipatory grin on his seamed and brutalized face. Then, last of all, he saw the back of a man leaning negligently against the window-frame and smoking a black Russian cigarette in a tapered holder: and when the man turned round Reynolds saw that it was the Count.

  NINE

  Reynolds was certain that his eyes and his mind were deceiving him. He knew that the Count was safely out of the way and that his AVO superiors would not let him move an inch without guarding him like a hawk. He knew, too, that that last hour and a half in that steam oven of a dungeon had had an enormously debilitating effect and that his mind, dark and woolly and still confused, was playing curious tricks on him. Then the man at the window pushed himself leisurely off the wall and was sauntering easily across the room, cigarette holder in one hand, a pair of heavy leather gloves swinging in the other and suddenly, there could be doubt no more. It was the Count, alive, completely unharmed, the old mocking self that he had always been. Reynolds’ lips parted in the first conclusive moment of shock, his eyes widened, then the beginning of a smile began to limn its lines on his pale and haggard face.

  ‘Where on earth –’ he began, then staggered back against the wall behind him as the Count slashed him across the face and mouth with his heavy gauntlets. He could feel the blood springing from one of the recently healed cuts on his upper lip, and with all he had already suffered this latest pain and shock left him weak and dizzy, and he could see the Count only dimly, as through a haze.

  ‘Lesson number one, little man,’ the Count said casually. He eyed a tiny spot of blood on his glove with evident distaste. ‘In future you will speak only when you have been spoken to.’ The look of distaste transferred itself from his gloves to the two prisoners. ‘Have these men fallen into a river, Commmandant?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all.’ The commandant was looking very upset. ‘Just undergoing a course of treatment in one of our steam rooms … This is most unfortunate, Captain Zsolt, really most unfortunate. It has destroyed the entire sequence.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry, Commandant,’ the Count said soothingly. ‘This is unofficial, and please don’t quote me, but I understand that they are being brought back here either late tonight or early in the morning. I believe Comrade Furmint has the greatest of faith in you as a – shall we say – psychologist.’

  ‘You’re sure of that, Captain?’ The commandant was anxious. ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Certain.’ The Count glanced at his watch. ‘We must not delay, Commandant. You know how essential haste is. Besides,’ he smiled, ‘the sooner they’re away, the sooner they’re back again.’

  ‘Let me not delay you then.’ The commandant was now affability itself. ‘I am quite reconciled to their departure. I am looking forward to completing my experiment, especially on so illustrious a personage as Major-General Illyurin.’

  ‘It’s not a chance which will come your way again,’ the Count agreed. He turned to the four AVO men. ‘Right, out into the truck with them, at once … Coco, my infant, I fear you are losing your grip. They are made of glass, you think?’

  Coco grinned and took his cue. His shove, massive palm flat-handed against Reynolds’ face, sent him staggering against the wall with wicked force, and two others grabbed Jansci and hustled him brutally out of the room. The commandant raised horrified hands.

  ‘Captain Zsolt. Is it necessary – I mean, I want them back in good condition, so that –’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Commandant,’ the Count grinned. ‘We too, in our own crude way, are specialists. You will explain to Colonel Hidas when he returns, and ask him to phone the Chief? You will tell him, perhaps, how sorry I am to have missed him, but I cannot wait. Good. Thank you again, Commandant, and goodbye.’

  Shivering violently in their sodden clothes, Jansci and Reynolds were hustled across the courtyard into the back of a waiting AVO lorry. A guard accompanied the driver into the cab, and the Count, Coco and another guard climbed into the back of the lorry, placed their guns on their knees and kept a watchful eye on the two prisoners. A moment later the engine turned over, the truck got under way, and within seconds had passed by the saluting sentry at the gate.

  Almost at once the Count pulled a map from his pocket, consulted it briefly, then replaced it. Five minutes later he passed by Jansci and Reynolds, slid back the inspection hatch and spoke to the driver.

  ‘Half a kilometre from here a side road branches off to the left. Take it, and drive until I order you to stop.’

  Within a minute the truck slowed, then turned off the road and went bouncing and jolting along a narrow rough track. So pot-holed was the road, so deep the frozen snow, that the truck constantly skidded from one side to the other, and the driver had the greatest difficulty in keeping it on the road at all, but the progress, if slow, was steady. After ten minutes the Count moved to the rear of the truck, stood up and leaned out the door as if looking for a familiar landmark, and after several minutes there he seemed to find it. He gave an order, the truck stopped, and he jumped out on to the snow, followed by Coco and the other guard. Obeying the implicit orders of the silently gesturing gun muzzles, Jansci and Reynolds jumped out after them.

  The Count had stopped the truck in the middle of a thick wood, with a clearing to one side. He gave another order and the driver used the space provided by the clearing for reversing the truck. It skidded and slipped on the snow-slicked grass, but heaving shoulders and a few broken branches under the back wheels soon had it back on the road again, facing the direction it had come. The driver stopped the engine and climbed out, but the Count made him restart it and leave it idling: he wasn’t, he said, going to take the chance of the engine freezing up in that zero weather.

  And it was indeed bitterly cold. Jansci and Reynolds, still in their same wet clothes, were shivering like men with the ague. The icy air turned chins and ears and nose-tips red and blue and white, and the condensation of breath was heavy and almost like smoke, evaporating slowly like smoke in the still, frozen air.

  ‘Speed everyone!’ the Count commanded. ‘You don’t all want to freeze to death here, do you? Coco, you will guard these men. I can trust you?’

  ‘To the death.’ Coco grinned evilly. ‘One slightest move, and I will kill.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ The Count looked at him thoughtfully. ‘How many men have you killed, Coco?’

  ‘I lost count many years ago, comrade,’ Coco said simply. Reynolds, looking at him, knew with certainty that he was speaking the truth.

  ‘Your reward will come one of these fine days,’ the Count said cryptically. ‘The rest of you – a shovel apiece. We have some work to do that will get your blood moving.’

  One of the guards blinked stupidly at him.

  ‘Spades, comrade? For the prisoners?’

  ‘You thought, perhaps, I was planning a garden allotment?’ the Count asked coldly.

  ‘No, no. It was just that you said to the commandant – I mean, I thought we were going to Budapest …’ His voice trailed away into silence.

  ‘Exactly, comrade,’ the Count said dryly. ‘You have seen the error of your ways in time – in time and no more. Whatever else is required of you, comrade, heaven knows it is not thought. Come, or we all freeze. And do not be afraid. There will be no need to dig the ground, impossible anyway, it’s like iron. A little vale in the woods where the snow has drifted deep, a trench in the snow – and – well, at least Coco understands.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ The grinning Coco licked his lips. ‘Perhaps the comrade will permit me to –’

  ‘Put an end to their suffe
rings?’ the Count suggested. He shrugged indifferently. ‘You may as well. What’s only another two after you’ve lost count of all the ones that have gone before?’

  He disappeared into the woods behind the clearing with the other three guards and, even in that crystal clear, sound carrying air, the men left behind could hear their voices growing fainter and fainter until they were only distant murmurs: the Count must have been leading them deep into the very heart of the wood. Coco, meanwhile, watched them with an unblinking, venomous little eyes, and Jansci and Reynolds were both all too clearly aware that he was awaiting only the slighest excuse to pull the trigger of the carbine that his great hands cradled as if it were a toy. But they gave him no such excuse: excepting only their uncontrollable shivering, they stood like statues.

  Five minutes elapsed and the Count emerged from the woods, slapping a gauntlet against his polished high boots and the skirts of his long coat to free them of snow.

  ‘The work proceeds apace,’ he annunced. ‘Two more minutes and we will rejoin our comrades. They have behaved, Coco?’

  ‘They have behaved’ The disappointment in Coco’s voice was all too clear.

  ‘Never mind, comrade,’ the Count consoled him. He was marching up and down behind Coco, beating his arms to keep warm. ‘You haven’t much longer to wait. Don’t take your eyes off them for a moment … How is – how is the pain today?’ He inquired delicately.

  ‘It still hurts.’ Coco glared at Reynolds and swore. ‘I am black and blue all over!’

  ‘My poor Coco, you’ve having an uncommonly rough time of it these days,’ the Count said gently, and the sound of his viciously clubbing revolver was a pistol shot in the silence of the woods as the butt struck home accurately and with tremendous force just above Coco’s ear. The carbine dropped from Coco’s hands, he swayed, eyes turned up in his head, then crashed to the ground like a stricken tree as the Count stepped respectfully to one side to give a clear path to the giant’s fall. Twenty seconds later the truck was on its way and the clearing in the woods already lost to sight round a curve in the road.