Korvuth nodded, holding the handkerchief to his bloody mouth. His eyes were bright with vicious hatred. “Yes. Of course I will go with you. Dr. Tagy is a prize I want to win.”
“Then your only chance for him is if we get out of here.”
“I understand. You are a fool, you know.”
Durell smiled tightly. “We’ll see.”
It was done easily, after all. Matyas’ uniform and Korvuth’s presence lending authority to their progress, opened the gates of Rezd Prison to the night. McFee had recovered well enough to walk slowly between Durell and Ilona. Matyas brought up the rear, behind Korvuth. Nobody stopped them. There were no questions. It was easier to get out, Durell reflected, than to get in. Their car was where they had left it, outside the gate in the barbed-wire fence. Korvuth got in the back with Matyas. Durell helped McFee in, and the little man slumped on the seat between himself and Ilona.
The truck full of soldiers was gone. The two tanks were still on guard duty.
Durell started the car. “Dick, can you hear me?”
McFee made a groaning noise.
“Relax,” Durell said. “You’re all right now. Understand? You’re all right.”
“Dreaming . . ." McFee whispered.
Ilona’s teeth were chattering. “Please. Let us go. I think I’m going to be sick. I tried hard not to be afraid, but I think if we stay here another moment—”
“All right,” Durell said. He was worried about McFee's condition. “We’ll go back to town now. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was an hour later. Durell sat wearily in Maria’s kitchen, a cup of coffee before him, Ilona at his side. Ilona bent forward and kissed him lightly, smiling. “It will be all right, darling. We’re all right so far. All that is left is to get out of the city.”
There was the sound of sirens in the distance. For the past twenty minutes, Durell knew, every police agency in Budapest had been alerted to look for him. His rescue of McFee from the Rezd Prison had become known, and there _ had been no chance to get out of the city before the roads were blocked. Not with McFee the way he was. Whatever drugs had been used on him still had a lingering, stupefying effect, and expect for that brief moment of life in the prison when Durell first saw him, McFee had been dull and listless, scarcely able to walk.
Durell looked around the crowded apartment now, wondering what he could do with all these people. Dr. Tagy and his wife, the boy Janos, Maria and Ilona, McFee, Matyas —all their lives were forfeit. How long would it be before the dragnet being cast in every direction by the AVO happened to fall on this place? He couldn’t guess how much time he had left. The old Zis sedan was hidden in the alley behind the apartment house, but it could well be suicide to try to use it.
“Sam,” Ilona said. “Try to talk to McFee again. We need his help.”
“All right.”
He got up, conscious of his own physical weariness, the drag on his mind. Maria and the boy, Janos, were guarding Bela Korvuth in the main room of the apartment. Mrs. Tagy and Dr. Tagy were in the bedroom with McFee. Matyas stood outside on the street below as a lookout.
McFee looked bad. His breathing was ragged, his color was gray, and Mrs. Tagy shook her head in answer to Durell’s silent inquiry.
“Has the brandy helped?” he asked.
“I could not get him to take any,” the woman said. “He thinks it is poison.”
“He talked to you?”
“Only that. Nothing else.”
“Go out and join the others,” Durell said. “Leave the brandy here. I want to talk to him alone, please.”
The woman hesitated. “How much longer are we to stay here?”
“I don’t know,” Durell said. “I had hoped to get you out of the city tonight. But I don’t know, now.”
“Is this man important to you?”
He nodded. “Very important.”
“You will not take us unless he can come, too?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Please leave us alone for a few minutes.”
He closed the door after them and walked back to the bed, staring down at Dickinson McFee’s sprawled, thin figure, trying to remember what he knew of the truth serums and will-destroying drugs, and then picked up the brandy and sat down on the bed beside the small man. McFee’s eyes remained closed. His breathing was ragged.
“Dick,” he said quietly. “General, listen to me. You can hear me, I know. This is Durell. Sam Durell. The Cajun. You’re out of the prison and you’re safe. Do you understand? I came over to Budapest to get you out, and now you’re out of that cell and you’re safe, here with me. This is Durell talking to you. I got you away from the AVO. Think about that. You can believe it. Open your eyes and look at me. Take a nip of this brandy. It’s not bad stuff. Of course, my old grandpappy down in Bayou Peche Rouge could distil a batch of the smoothest white corn you ever tasted—I’m sure I gave you some last month when we were in Washington—but this brandy isn’t too bad, either. Look at me, Dick. It’s Durell. Try some of the brandy. You’re safe now.” McFee’s eyes opened suddenly, gray, murky, uncertain. “What is your—grandfather’s name?”
“Jonathan. Grandpappy Jonathan.”
“Name of—his boat?”
“The Three Belles, Dick. You can believe me. You can hear me. It’s Sam Durell. Come on, look at me. Try some of the brandy.”
The little man’s eyes were still cloudy, but his hand came up to touch the bottle, and Durell held it for him until he took a small sip, and then another, and then sighed and shuddered.
“It's a trick.”
“You didn’t look at me. I had to dye my hair, General. It was black, as it should be, until a couple of hours ago. I had to make it blond. That’s the trouble, you’re just not used to it. Look again.”
McFee’s eyes focused with an effort on Durell’s face. Then his glance went around the room, touching the homey, feminine, pitifully meager appointments Maria Stryzyk had used to decorate it. A look of wonder slowly dawned in his haggard face. “Sam?”
“That’s right. Try some more brandy, General. Then try to sit up. I’m going to walk you around. You’ve had a needle, right? You remember it? You were in prison, but I got you out, and now I need you on your feet to help us get all the way out, free and clear of this mess. Come on, sit up. Stand up. Let’s walk a bit.”
It was slow, exhausting work, coaxing the man’s numbed mind and body back to reality. The brandy helped, and Durell was patient, walking him back and forth in the small bedroom. Time was like a giant clamp, squeezing him with impatience, bringing nearer with every minute the threat of ultimate destruction. Yet he could not hurry his work with McFee. He took it slowly, gently, teasing the man’s mind with phrases and memories.
“What happened to your guide Tibor?” he asked once. “Shot. Dead in a ditch.”
“They didn’t find him?”
“Don’t think so.”
“But they got you, eh?”
“The son of a bitch,” McFee muttered.
“Who?”
“Who you think? Our own boy. Ratted on us. Tipped them I was coming in.”
“Wyman? Roger Wyman?”
“Oh, you met him? Bastard. Dirty, treasonous bastard.” “We’ll get him, General. As soon as you can walk, we’ll start out. I’ve got Dr. Tagy and his family with me. I’ve even got Korvuth—”
It had been quiet in the other room until this moment, with only an occasional murmur of conversation from the others. Now Durell suddenly paused, as something suddenly crashed in there, as if a piece of furniture had been knocked over. Ilona’s scream was stifled. There was another crash, and a scuffling of struggling feet, and Durell spun to McFee. “Stay here.”
He slammed open the bedroom door and jumped into the other room. It was Bela Korvuth. Somehow he had managed to get Ilona to drop her guard. He had jumped her, upsetting a round pie-crust table, and grabbed the pistol she had been covering him with. He was turning no
w, his grin tight, his round face suddenly looking drawn and vicious as he spun toward Durell. The Tagys stood in frightened paralysis. Ilona was sprawled on the floor, struggling to rise. A trickle of blood ran down from her newly dyed black hair. And then Durell heard Maria Stryzyk laugh.
“Bela? Look at me, Bela.”
She had a kitchen knife in her hand. Her narrow, fanatical face was pale with taut rage.
“You killed my brother. You had no right to kill him, no need to bother Endre. He was out of it, he had quit for good—”
Bela Korvuth made the mistake of changing his target from Durell to the dark-haired woman. Maria moved too fast for Durell to interfere. The knife flashed, the blade flickering in the dim light of the crowded room. Durell heard the chunking sound it made as she drove it home. A look of utter amazement came across Bela Korvuth’s face. The assassin whose business it was to kill, to provide death for those he was ordered to kill, looked stunned. The knife was still in Maria’s hand. She screamed something and struck again, and then the blade caught in bone and she was unable to keep her grip on the hilt as Korvuth’s fall wrenched it free. Maria began cursing and kicking at the body, and Durell caught her thin form and flung her aside and then bent to help Ilona.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, he tried . . . I’m sorry, I was careless, I looked at Dr. Tagy for a moment instead of keeping my eyes on him.”
“Maria?”
The woman said breathlessly: “I’m not sorry. I’d do it again. I wish I could. I wish I could kill him over and over again . . .” Her voice spiralled upward, nearing hysterics, shrill and loud in the narrow room. Durell slapped her, hard. Her head rocked back and a strangled sound moved in her throat, and then she swallowed and leaned back against the wall and then sank slowly to a sitting position on the floor, as if her legs could no longer support her. She began to laugh softly and rock back and forth, hugging herself, never taking her eyes off the dead man.
“No one will weep for that man,” Ilona whispered.
Durell turned and looked at McFee in the bedroom doorway. McFee’s eyes were clear and bright.
Durell caught Janos Tagy’s shoulder and pushed the boy toward the front door of the apartment. “Go down and get Matyas. We’ll need him. We’ve got to pull out of here. Somebody must have heard Maria scream.”
The boy nodded and ran out of the room. Durell went and got the brandy bottle and forced a drink between Maria’s clenched teeth. The woman coughed and sputtered, then laughed softly. “It was for Endre . . ."
“I know. We should thank you. He could have ruined us all.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Endre.”
Durell turned away from her and looked at Dr. Tagy. “Do you think you can travel now, Doctor?”
“If I must, I can. It will be better if we leave now.” Then Janos came back into the room. His face was white. “Matyas isn’t downstairs on guard any more. He’s gone.” Janos swallowed. “And so is the car.”
The street was dark and cold. Only a few lights shone in the tall windows of the old stone houses that had been converted to apartments, and there was a bright street light at the corner down the hill, where the trolley line came up from the center of Buda. Durell had checked the back alley to make sure that Matyas hadn’t simply moved the car a little farther away from the house. It wasn’t in sight. The others were waiting for him in the dark courtyard behind the apartments. There was no sign of anything suspicious. Perhaps Matyas had simply changed his mind and decided to stay in Budapest; but Durell could not accept that, after the man’s help in the Rezd Prison. Matyas, as well as he, was a marked man.
He heard the sound of a motor grinding up the hill, and paused to watch and wait. The motor was too heavy and strong for a passenger car, yet it did not seem like that of a truck, either. Headlights swung around the corner, and in the glare of the street lamp over the trolley stop, Durell saw it was an old yellow bus. The body of the bus was dark, and it did not seem to be carrying any fares. It came up the hill slowly, the motor straining, and for a moment the headlights caught Durell in the doorway where he watched. The lights blinked off for a moment, then came on again. Durell suddenly stepped forward, recognizing inspiration. He waved his arm, and the bus came to a halt, and Matyas leaned down from the high window of the driver’s seat. The man’s broad, dark face was grinning, his teeth agleam in the dim light.
“Hello! Were you worried about me?”
“A little. Where did you get that?”
‘‘The bus? Oh, I stood out here thinking,” Matyas said, with a great show of being casual, although he looked very pleased with himself. “We’re quite a crowd by now, and the car is hot, as you would say. So I thought of a friend of mine who drives this bus for the city administration, and I thought of how fine a vehicle it would be for us, so I drove the old car of Janos’s down to the terminal garages and saw my friend. It was easy to convince him to yield the keys and keep his mouth shut. He thinks I’ve graduated from my AVO uniform to plainclothes.”
“Hold it right there,” Durell said.
Turning, he ran back to the alley where the others were huddled in a dark, shivering group. Quickly he organized them and one by one they slipped through the shadows and boarded the waiting bus.
“What about our friend Bela?” Matyas asked.
“He’s dead. He tried to break things up, and Maria killed him.”
Matyas looked at the dark, thin woman with admiration. “Now that is what I call a real woman. One who is not afraid, who can act with speed and decision. Come sit by me, Maria. We can talk together on the way.”
McFee signaled to Durell from the back of the bus, and as it lurched forward on the beginning of what was to be a memorable journey, Durell took the Russian rifle from Janos and worked back to join the little man.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Sam," McFee said tiredly.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”
“I know that. In a way, I ought to bat your ears down for coming in after me. It was a crazy thing to do. On the other hand, I’m grateful. I don’t know how long I could have held out against them. I don’t think they were really sure of my identity, or they would have really put the screws on me, and I lost my pills, so I couldn’t put myself out of their reach. I guess I’m a bit too old for this sort of thing, after all.”
“You gave me a free hand,” Durell said. “I thought it best to come this way.”
“Do you think we can make it?”
Durell looked at Matyas up in the driver’s seat; the big man was talking happily to Maria, who sat listening quietly and smiling. “I begin to think so,” he said softly. “With these people, anything is possible. They want freedom in a way we’ve almost forgotten, General. Maybe they’ll be good for us. They’ll remind us of some things we take for granted, which we can lose too easily if we don’t stay sharp about it.” McFee sighed. He looked very tired. “But there will always be people like Roger Wyman.”
“He’s our only loose end. We’ll tie him up,” Durell said. “You’d better try to rest now. We may have a long way to walk, later on.”
The bus was already in the outskirts of Buda, rolling westward on the highway. The night was dark and windy and cold, with no stars, and every now and then a spit of rain sprayed the wide windows of the vehicle. Durell started forward to talk to Matyas about the route he was taking, and Ilona plucked at his sleeve and he sank down into the seat beside her. She smiled at him, a wistfulness on her small, pretty face, and then she turned her head so she wasn’t looking directly at him. Her hands were restless in her lap.
“Everything has been moving so fast, Sam. You and I have not had a moment alone since those hours in Hegedus’ farm. Yet I have been thinking of you constantly. You’re on your way home, at last.”
“So are you,” Durell said. “You’re coming with us, all the way.”
“I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind about it.”
“You can�
��t stay here in Hungary.”
“Probably not. It is just a feeling I have. As if I were deserting people who need help so desperately.”
“You’ve done your share,” Durell said. “Don’t think about it.”
“Who is to measure the cup and say it is full now, there is enough given to it, you may rest and drink?”
“You’re tired,” Durell said. “Tomorrow it will look different to you.”
“Tomorrow you will be flying back to Deirdre,” she said. “I haven’t thought about her.”
“Yes, you have. You have never forgotten her and you never will. What happened between us was nothing. Only a moment of hysteria on my part, a moment of loneliness for you. There is no need to reproach yourself about it. I have no regrets. I shall always be grateful to you.”
Durell leaned forward and kissed her lightly. Her lips were cool and unresponsive. She touched his cheek with light, slim fingers.
“I want to sleep now,” she said.
Chapter Nineteen
The first barricade showed up in the village of Rozsadomb, in the outskirts of Budapest. A truckload of soldiers stood at the intersection of the secondary road Matyas had taken. In the bus, everything was dark and quiet, and Durell had ordered everyone to sit quietly in their seats as if they were ordinary passengers. A Russian sub-lieutenant with a machine gun halted the bus and climbed aboard, his slanted Mongolian eyes glittering and suspicious. The man spoke only a few words of halting Hungarian, and it was obvious, from his lack of ease, the manner in which his eyes touched the appointments of the bus interior, and his general air of nervousness, that he was not long from the wild steppes of Central Asia. In some respects he was all the more to be feared, Durell thought quietly, leaning his head back against the seat as if weary of delays and wishing only sleep. Beside him, under the fold of his coat, was the automatic rifle, his finger on the trigger. The sub-lieutenant swaggered through the bus, barked something at Matyas, who shrugged expressively, and then climbed down again and waved them through.
Assignment - Budapest Page 17