The Last Frontier

by Alistair MacLean

  For the first three or four minutes there was no sound, no word spoken in the cab of the truck, only the low, steady roar of the Diesel engine. A hundred questions, a hundred comments framed themselves on the lips of Jansci and Reynolds, but they didn’t know where to start, and the shadow of the nightmare from which they had just escaped was still too vivid in their minds. And then the Count was slowing down and stopping, one of his rare smiles illuminating his thin, aristocratic face as he dipped into his capacious hip pocket and drew out his metal flask.

  ‘Plum brandy, my friends.’ His voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘Plum brandy, and God only knows that no one needs it more than we three do today. Me, for I have died a thousand deaths today – especially when our friend here nearly ended everything when he first saw me in the commandant’s office – and you because you are soaking and freezing and prime candidates for pneumonia. And also, I suspect, because they did not treat you too well. I am right?’

  ‘Right.’ Jansci had to answer, for Reynolds was coughing and choking as the grateful, life-giving warmth of the strong spirit burnt its way down his throat. ‘The usual breakdown chemicals, plus a special one he’s just developed – and, as you know, the steam treatment.’

  ‘It was not difficult to guess,’ the Count nodded. ‘You did not look at all happy. In fact, you had no right to be on your feet at all, but doubtless you were sustained by the sure knowledge that it was only a matter of time before I appeared on the scene.’

  ‘Doubtless,’ Jansci said dryly. He drank deep of the brandy, his eyes flooded with tears, and he gasped for air. ‘Poison, sheer poison – but I have never tasted anything half as good!’

  ‘There are times when one’s critical judgments are better suspended,’ the Count admitted. He tilted the bottle to his mouth, swallowed as another man might swallow water, for all the apparent effect it had on him, and pushed the flask back in his pocket. ‘A most essential stop, but we must press on: time is not on our side.’

  He engaged the clutch and the truck moved forward. Reynolds had to shout his protest over the high-pitched roar of its first gear.

  ‘But surely you are going to tell us –’

  ‘Try to stop me,’ the Count said. ‘But as we drive along, if you don’t mind. I will explain why later. However, to the happenings of to-day … First of all, I must tell you that I have resigned from the AVO. Reluctantly, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jansci murmured. ‘Does anyone know yet?’

  ‘Furmint does, I should think.’ The Count’s eyes never left the road as he wrestled the skidding truck along between the narrow banks. ‘I didn’t actually give notice in writing, but as I left him gagged and bound hand and foot in his own office, I don’t think he could have been in much doubt about my intentions.’

  Neither Reynolds nor Jansci said anything, there seemed no remark to meet the occasion, and as the silence stretched out they could see the grin spreading over the Count’s thin lips.

  ‘Furmint!’ It was Jansci who broke the silence, his voice sounding strained. ‘Furmint! You mean your chief –’

  ‘Ex-chief,’ the Count corrected. ‘None other. But let me begin from the morning. You will remember that I had sent a message out with the Cossack – incidentally, did he and his Opel arrive intact?’

  ‘Both of them.’

  ‘A miracle. You should have seen his take off. As I say, I told him that I was being sent out to Gödöllö – some security check-up, a big one. I should have expected Hidas to handle it himself, but he told me he had some important business elsewhere in Györ.

  ‘Well, we went to Gödöllö – eight men, myself and a Captain Kálmán Zsolt – an able man with a rubber truncheon, but singularly ungifted otherwise. And as we went I was worried – in a mirror I had caught the Chief giving me a very curious look indeed just before I left the Andrassy Ut. Not, mind you, that there is anything remarkable about the Chief giving anybody curious looks, he doesn’t even trust his own wife, but it was curious coming from the man who had only last week complimented me on being the ablest AVO officer in Budapest.’

  ‘You are irreplaceable,’ Jansci murmured.

  ‘Thank you … Then, just as we were arriving in Gödöllö, Zsolt dropped a bomb in my lap. He mentioned casually that he had been speaking to Hidas’ chauffeur that morning and that he understood that the colonel was going to the Szarháza prison and wondered what the devil the colonel was going to that hell-hole for. He kept on rambling about something or other, I don’t know what, which was just as well as I’m sure my face at that moment must have been a very interesting sight for anyone who cared to look at it.

  ‘Everything fell together in my mind with such loud clicks that it’s a wonder that Zsolt didn’t hear it. Shoving me out of the way to Gödöllö, the Chief’s strange look, the lie Hidas had told me, the ease with which I had found out that the professor was in Szarháza, the still greater ease with which I got the papers and stamps from Furmint’s office. My God, I could have kicked myself when I remembered that Furmint had actually gone out of his way, quite unnecessarily, to tell me that he was going to hold a meeting with some officers, thereby letting me know that his office would be empty for some time to come – it was during the dinner hour when there was no one in his outer office … How they got on to me, I will never know. I’ll swear that only forty-eight hours ago I was the most trusted officer in Budapest. However, that is by the way.

  ‘I had to act, I had to act once for all, and I knew that my bridges were already burnt and that I had nothing to lose. I had to act on the assumption that only Furmint and Hidas knew about me. Obviously Zsolt knew nothing, but I wasn’t banking on that, he’s too stupid to be entrusted with anything, it’s just that both Furmint and Hidas are naturally so distrustful that they wouldn’t risk telling anyone.’ The Count smiled broadly. ‘After all, if their best man had defected, how were they to know how far the rot had spread?’

  ‘How indeed,’ Jansci said.

  ‘Precisely. Immediately we arrived in Gödöllö we went to the mayor’s office – not our local branch there, they were being investigated among others – threw the mayor out and took over. I left Zsolt there, went downstairs, collected the men, told them that their duty until five o’clock this evening was to consist of going round cafés and bars, posing as disaffected AVO men, to see what they could turn up in the way of seditious talk. A job after their own hearts. I provided them with plenty of money for local colour: they’ll be drinking away steadily for hours yet.

  ‘Then I went dashing back to the mayor’s place in a state of great excitement, and told Zsolt that I had found something of utmost importance. He didn’t even stop to ask what it was. He came tearing out of the office with me, dreams of promotion shining in his eyes.’ The Count coughed. ‘We will miss out the unpleasant part of it. Suffice to say that he is now incarcerated in an abandoned cellar not fifty yards from the mayor’s office. Not bound or hurt in any way, but it will take an oxy-acetylene torch to free him.’

  The Count stopped speaking, braked the truck and got out to clear his windscreen. It had been snowing quite heavily now for two or three minutes, but neither of the other two had noticed it.

  ‘I took my unfortunate colleague’s identity papers.’ The Count was on his way again both with truck and story. ‘Forty-five minutes later, stopping only en route to buy a clothes rope, I was at the door of our H.Q., and a minute later I was in Furmint’s office – the very fact that I got as far as that showed that Furmint and Hidas had indeed been as close-mouthed about my defection as I had suspected they might be.

  ‘The whole thing was ridiculously simple throughout. I had nothing to lose, I was still officially in the clear, and nothing succeeds like effrontery, especially on a massive scale, Furmint was so staggered to see me that I had the barrel of my pistol between his teeth before his jaw had time to close again: he is surrounded by fancy knobs and bell-pushes all designed to save his life in an emergency, but they were not, you understan
d, designed to protect him against such as myself.

  ‘I gagged him, then informed him to write a letter, in his own hand, to my dictation. Furmint is a brave man and he was most reluctant, but nothing overcomes high moral principles like the muzzle of a pistol grinding into your ear. The letter was to the commandant of the Szarháza prison, who knows Furmint’s writing as well as he knows his own, authorizing him to release you two to myself, one Captain Zsolt. Then he signed it, covered it with practically every stamp we could find in his office, put it in an envelope and sealed it with his own private seal, a seal not known to a score of people in all Hungary: I, fortunately, was one of them, although Furmint didn’t know it.

  ‘I had twenty metres of clothes rope, and when I was finished Furmint was trussed like a fowl. All he could move were his eyes and his eyebrows, and he used these to great effect when I picked up the direct phone to the Szarháza and spoke to the commandant in what I pride myself was a perfect imitation of Furmint’s voice. I think Furmint began to understand a great many things that had puzzled him over the last year or so. Anyway, I told the commandant that I was sending Captain Zsolt to pick up these prisoners, and that I was also sending a written authorization, in my own personal writing with my own personal seal, with him. There were to be no slip ups.’

  ‘What if Hidas had still been there?’ Reynolds asked curiously. ‘He must have left only very shortly before you phoned.’

  ‘Nothing could have been better and easier.’ The Count gestured with an airy hand, then grabbed the wheel quickly as the truck slewed towards a ditch. ‘I’d just have ordered Hidas to bring you back immediately, and waylaid him en route … When I was speaking to the commandant, I coughed and sneezed from time to time, and let my voice seem a little husky. I told the commandant I had a devil of a cold coming on. I had my reasons for that. Then I spoke on the table microphone to his outer office, and said that I wasn’t to be disturbed, on any account whatsoever, for the next three hours, not even if a minister wanted to speak to me. I left them in no doubt as to what would happen if my orders were disobeyed. I thought Furmint was going to have an apoplectic stroke. Then, still in Furmint’s voice, I rang up the transport pool, ordered a truck to be brought round for Major Howarth at once, and ordered four men to be standing by in readiness to accompany him – I didn’t want them, but I had to have them for local colour. Then I bundled Furmint into a cupboard, locked it, left his office, locked that too and took the key with me. Then we set off for Szarháza … I wonder what Furmint’s thoughts are at this very moment? Or Zsolt’s? Or if any of the AVO men I left in Gödöllö are still sober. And can’t you just see Hidas’ and the commandant’s face as the truth dawns on them?’ The Count smiled dreamily. ‘I could spend all day just thinking of these things.’

  For the next few minutes they drove along in silence. The snow, although not yet blinding, was thickening steadily, and the Count had to give his exclusive attention to the road. Beside him Jansci and Reynolds, helped as much by the heat generated in the cab by the engine as by the second drink they had had from the Count’s bottle, could feel the warmth gradually returning to their frozen bodies as the continuous shivering eased and gradually stopped and a thousand pins and needles jabbed their numbed legs and arms in the exquisite agony of returning circulation. They had listened to the Count’s story in an almost complete silence, and still sat in silence: Reynolds could think of no suitable comment on either this fantastic man or his story, and to know how even to begin to thank him was quite beyond his imagination. Besides, he had more than a shrewd suspicion that thanks would receive very short shrift indeed.

  ‘Did either of you see the car Hidas arrived in?’ the Count asked suddenly.

  ‘I saw it,’ Reynolds answered. ‘A black Russian Zis – big as a house.’

  ‘I know it. Solid steel body and bullet-proof windows.’ The Count was slowing down now, edging their truck close in to the shelter of some trees that crowded down on the roadside. ‘I think it unlikely that Hidas would fail to recognize one of his own trucks and pass by without comment. Let us see how the land lies.’

  He stopped, jumped out into the swirling snow and the others followed him. Fifty yards took them to the junction of the main road, smooth and unbroken now under its fresh covering of snow.

  ‘Obviously nothing’s passed by here since the snow started falling,’ Jansci observed.

  ‘Exactly,’ the Count agreed. He glanced at his watch. ‘Three hours almost to the minute since Hidas left Szarháza – and he said he would return within the three hours. He shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just run the truck across the road and stop him?’ Reynolds suggested. ‘That would delay the alarm another couple of hours.’

  The Count shook his head regretfully. ‘Impossible. I’d thought of it, but it’s no good. In the first place, the men we left behind in the woods should make it back to Szarháza in an hour – an hour and a half at the most. Then you’d require a crowbar or a stick of dynamite to break into a car armoured like the Zis, but even that’s not the point: in this weather the driver almost certainly wouldn’t see the truck until it was too late – and that Zis weighs about three tons. It would wreck the truck – and if we are to survive at all, we want to keep that truck intact.’

  ‘He could have passed by in the first minutes after we left the road, before the snow started falling,’ Jansci put in.

  ‘It’s possible,’ the Count conceded. ‘But I think we should give him a few minutes –’ He broke off suddenly, listened, and Reynolds heard it at the same time – the subdued hum of a powerful motor, closing rapidly.

  They were off the road and into the shelter of a few trees just in time. The approaching car, Hidas’ black Zis without a doubt, swept by in the swirling snow with a hissing crunch of wide snow tyres, and was lost to sight and sound almost immediately. Reynolds caught a glimpse of a chauffeur in the front, and of Hidas in the back with what looked like another small figure huddled beside him, but it was impossible to be sure. And then they were racing back to the truck and the Count was swinging it out on the main road: the hunt would be up in minutes now, and time was running out. The Count had barely changed up to top gear when he changed down again and brought the truck to a halt by the side of a small wood through which telephone poles and wires were strung to cut off the approaching corner. Almost at once two men, half-frozen with the bitter cold and their clothes so matted with snow that they looked more like a couple of walking snowmen than human beings, came stumbling out of the wood and running towards the truck, each carrying a box under his arm. As they saw, through the windscreen, Jansci and Reynolds sitting in the cab, they waved their arms in delight and grinned broadly, and there was no mistaking them now: Sandor and the Cossack, and their expressions were those of men welcoming friends back from the dead. They piled into the back of the truck with as much speed as their frozen limbs would allow, and the Count was on his way again within fifteen seconds of coming to rest.

  The inspection door behind the cab pushed open and Sandor and the Cossack plied them with excited questions and congratulations. After a minute or two, the Count passed back his brandy flask and Jansci took advantage of the sudden lull in talk to ask a question.

  ‘What boxes were they carrying?’

  ‘The small one was a telephone linesman’s kit for tapping wires,’ the Count explained. ‘Every AVO truck carries one of these. On the way here I stopped at the inn in Petoli, gave it to Sandor and told him to follow us to near the Szarháza, climb a telephone pole and tap the private line from the prison to Budapest. If the commandant was still suspicious and wanted confirmation, Sandor would have answered: I told him to talk through a handkerchief, as if Furmint’s cold, which I had already let the commandant know was developing, had become much worse.’

  ‘Good lord!’ Reynolds found it impossible to hide his admiration. ‘Is there anything you did not think of?’

  ‘Very little,’ the Count admitted modestly. ‘Anyway,
the precaution was not needed: the commandant, as you saw, had never a suspicion. The only thing I was really afraid of was that these dolts of AVO men I had with me might call me Major Howarth in front of the commandant, instead of Captain Zsolt as I had coached them to call me, for reasons, I said, which Furmint would personally explain to them if any of them blundered … The other box contains your ordinary clothes, which Sandor also brought on from Petoli in the Opel. I’ll stop in a moment and you can nip into the back and change out of these uniforms … Where did you leave the Opel, Sandor?’

  ‘Back there, deep in the wood. No one can see it.’

  ‘No loss.’ The Count dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. ‘It wasn’t ours in the first place. Well, gentlemen, the hunt is up, or will be any moment now, and it will be up with a vengeance. Every escape route to the west, from trunk roads down to bicycle tracks, will be blocked as they have never been blocked before: with all due respects to yourself, Mr Reynolds, General Illyurin is the biggest fish that has ever threatened to escape their net. We will do very well indeed to escape with our lives: I do not rate our chances very highly. So what now, I wonder.’

  No one had immediate suggestions to make. Jansci sat looking straight ahead, the lined face beneath the thick white hair calm and unworried, and Reynolds could almost have sworn that a slight smile was touching the corners of his mouth. He himself had never felt less like smiling and as the truck roared steadily on from the whitely opaque world of snow behind to the whitely opaque world of snow ahead, he made a mental catalogue of his own successes and failures since he had entered Hungary only four days previously. The catalogue was not one that he could contemplate with either pleasure or pride. On the credit side, there could only be reckoned the contacts he had made, with Jansci and his men in the first place, and then with the professor – and he could derive no real satisfaction from these, without the Count and Jansci even these would have been impossible. On the debit side – he winced as he realized the length of the list on the debit side: being captured immediately after arriving in the country, making the AVO a gratis presentation of a tape recording that had ruined everything, walking into Hidas’ trap and having to be rescued by Jansci and his men, having to be saved by Jansci from succumbing to the effects of the drug in the Szarháza, almost betraying his friends and himself when his astonishment had overcome him at the sight of the Count in the commandant’s room. He writhed in his seat as he thought of it. In short, he had lost the professor, split up the professor’s family beyond recovery, been responsible for the Count losing the position that alone enabled Jansci’s organization to work smoothly – and, as bitter as anything, he had lost any hope he might have had that Jansci’s daughter might look kindly on him again. It was the first time that Reynolds had admitted, even to himself, that he ever had any such hope, and he was lost for a long, long moment at the wonder of it. With physical effort, almost, he shook off all thought of it, and when he spoke he knew there was only one thing he could say.