The Last Frontier

by Alistair MacLean

  Sandor had reached the boat now, and was lifting somebody into it. A moment later he helped the second person inside, dragged the heavily-laden boat off the gravel with one mighty heave and was overarming himself so powerfully across the river that the gurgling water at the forefoot piled high into a bow-wave that gleamed whitely even in the darkness of the night.

  Jansci and Reynolds, on their feet again, were at the water’s edge, waiting, hands reached out ready to grab the boat and drag it ashore, when all at once there came a hiss, a soft crack and a blinding white light burst into life not a hundred feet above their heads, and, almost on the instant, a machine-gun and several rifles opened up, again, still from the trees, but much farther to the south, where the wood curved in to meet the river.

  ‘Shoot the flare down!’ Reynolds shouted to the Cossack. ‘Never mind the AVO. Shoot that damned flare down!’ Blinded by the glare, he plunged into the river just as he heard Jansci doing the same thing, swore softly as the side of the boat struck painfully against the kneecap, grabbed the gunwale, jerked the boat up on the shelving pebbled beach, staggered as someone who had incautiously stood up in the boat pitched forward against him, recovered and caught her up in his arms just as the flare above the river died as suddenly as it had come to life. The Cossack was proving himself that night. But the guns from the wood across the river still coughed and chattered, the men behind them were firing from memory, and bullets were still whistling and ricocheting all around them.

  There was no doubt who Reynolds had in his arms, it must have been Jansci’s wife, she was too frail, too light altogether for Julia. Guided now only by the slope of the pebbled shore – the darkness, after the blinding whiteness of the flare, was now quite impenetrable – Reynolds took a step forward and all but collapsed to the ground as the pain in his momentarily paralyzed knee struck at him. He freed one hand, grabbed at the tautened rope to steady himself, heard a thud as if someone had fallen heavily, felt someone else brush by him and heard steps running up towards the bank, clenched his teeth against the pain and limped up the shingles as quickly as he could. He felt a bullet pluck at the sleeve of his coat, the three-foot bank that he had to scale with his aching leg and the woman in his arms loomed as an unsurmountable obstacle in his mind, then a great pair of hands caught him from behind and he was standing on top of the bank, still clutching the woman before he had more than dimly realized what was happening.

  The oblong of pale light that was the door of the ferryman’s cottage was before him now, not ten feet away, and, even as he saw it, even as he heard bullets smashing against the stonework of the cottage and whining away into the darkness, Jansci, who had been first to reach the house, reappeared in the doorway, suicidally silhouetted against the light behind him. Reynolds made to shout a warning, changed his mind – it was too late now if any marksman had drawn a bead, and it was only two seconds away – moved forwards, heard the woman in his arms say something, knew instinctively, without understanding the words, what she wanted and set her gently on her feet. She took two or three faltering steps forward then flung herself into the outstretched arms of the waiting man, murmuring, ‘Alex! Alex! Alex!’ then she seemed to shudder, leaned heavily against him as if she had been struck from behind, but that was all Reynolds saw: Sandor had bundled them all into the lobby and crashed the door shut behind him.

  Julia was half-sitting, half-lying at the far end of the corridor, supported by an anxious-looking Dr Jennings. Reynolds reached her in two strides and fell on his knees beside her. Her eyes were shut, her face very pale, there was the beginning of a bruise high upon her forehead, but she was breathing, shallowly but evenly.

  ‘What’s happened to her?’ Reynolds asked huskily. ‘Has she been – has she been –’

  ‘She’ll be all right.’ Sandor’s voice behind him was deep and reassuring. He stooped and lifted her in his arms, and turned towards the living-room. ‘She fell getting out of the boat, and she must have struck her head on the stones. I’ll take her in to the couch here.’

  Reynolds watched the giant, the water dripping steadily from his soaking clothes, carry her through the door as if she had been a child, rose slowly to his feet and almost bumped into the Cossack. The youngster’s face was alive with exultation.

  ‘You should be at your window,’ Reynolds said quietly.

  ‘No need.’ The Cossack’s grin stretched from ear to ear. ‘They’ve stopped firing and gone now back to the trucks – I can hear their voices in the woods. I got two of them, Mr Reynolds, two of them! I saw them fall in the light of the flare, just before you shouted at me to shoot the flare out.’

  ‘And you did that too,’ Reynolds acknowledged. That accounted, he realized, for the lack of any more of the pistol flares: a double-edged weapon, it had turned disastrously in Hidas’ hand. ‘You’ve saved us all tonight.’ He clapped the proud boy on his shoulder, turned to look at Jansci and then stood very still.

  Jansci was kneeling on the rough wooden floor, and his wife was in his arms. Her back was to Reynolds, and the first thing he saw was the round, red-ringed hole in her coat, high up below her left shoulder. It was a very small hole, and only a little blood and the stain wasn’t spreading at all. Slowly, Reynolds walked the length of the corridor and sank on his knees beside Jansci. Jansci lifted his white, blood-stained head and looked at him with sightless eyes.

  ‘Dead?’ Reynolds whispered.

  Jansci nodded without speaking.

  ‘My God!’ Reynolds’ shock showed in every line of his face. ‘Now, now – to die now!’

  ‘A merciful God, Meechail, and understanding far beyond my deserts. Only this morning, I asked Him why He hadn’t let Catherine die, why He hadn’t made her die … He has forgiven my presumption. He knew far better than I. Catherine was gone, Meechail, gone before the bullet ever touched her.’ Jansci shook his head, a man marvelling at the splendour of it all. ‘Could there be anything more wonderful, Meechail, than to pass from this earth, without pain, at the moment of your greatest happiness? Look! Look at her face – see how she smiles!’

  Reynolds shook his head without speaking. There was nothing to say, he could think of nothing to say, his mind was numbed.

  ‘We are both blessed.’ Jansci was talking, almost rambling to himself, he eased his arms, so that he could look down on his wife’s face and his voice was soft with memory. ‘The years have been kind to her, Meechail, time loved her almost as much as I. Twenty years ago, five and twenty years ago, drifting down the Dnieper on a summer’s night – I see her now as I saw her then. She has not been touched.’ He said something in a tone so low that Reynolds couldn’t catch it, then his voice came more clearly again. ‘You remember her photograph, Meechail, the one you thought did Julia more than justice? Now you can see: it could never have been anyone else.’

  ‘It could never have been anyone else, Jansci,’ Reynolds echoed. He thought of the photograph of the beautiful, laughing girl and stared down at the dead face in Jansci’s arms, at the thin white hair, the grey face haggard and emaciated as he had never seen a face before, a pitifully wasted face sculpted and graven into the deep lines of premature old age by unimaginable privations and hardships and he felt his eyes go blind. ‘It could never have been anyone else,’ Reynolds repeated. ‘The portrait did her less than justice.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Catherine, that’s what I always said to her,’ Jansci murmured. He turned away and bent low and Reynolds knew that he wanted to be alone. Reynolds stumbled blindly to his feet, he had to feel for the wall to support and guide him, and walked slowly away, the numbness in his mind slowly giving way first of all to a confusing maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions, then slowly clearing and settling till there was only one thought, one fixed immovable purpose left in his mind. The slow anger that had been smouldering within him all evening now burst into an intense white flame that consumed his mind, his every thought to the exclusion of all else, but there was no trace of this blazing fury within
him when he spoke quietly to Sandor.

  ‘Could I ask you to bring the truck here, please?’

  ‘In a moment,’ Sandor promised. He gestured at the girl lying on the couch. ‘She is just coming to. We must hurry.’

  ‘Thank you. We will.’ Reynolds turned away and looked at the Cossack. ‘Keep a good watch, Cossack. I will not be long.’ He walked along the corridor, went past Jansci and Catherine without looking at either of them, picked up the automatic carbine that leaned against the wall and passed out through the door, closing it softly behind him.

  FOURTEEN

  The dark, sluggish waters were ice-cold as the tomb, but Reynolds didn’t even feel their freezing touch, and though his whole body shuddered involuntarily as he had slid silently into the river, his mind had not even registered the shock. There was no room in his mind for any physical sensation, for any emotion or thought of any kind, except for that one starkly simple, primeval desire, the desire that had sloughed off the tissue veneer of civilization as if it had never been – that of revenge. Revenge or murder – there was no distinction in Reynolds’ mind at that moment, the absolute fixity of his purpose permitted of none. That frightened boy in Budapest, Jansci’s wife, the incomparable Count – they were all dead. They were dead, primarily, because he, Reynolds, had set foot in Hungary, but he had not been their executioner: only the evil genius of Hidas could be held accountable for that. Hidas had lived too long.

  Automatic carbine held high above his head, Reynolds breasted his way through the thin film of crackling ice that stretched out from the far bank, felt his feet touch bottom and scrambled ashore. Stooping, he filled a spread handkerchief with handfuls of tiny pebbles and sand, tied the corners and was on his way, without even pausing to wring or shake any of the icy water out of his clothes.

  He had run two hundred yards down-river before making his crossing, and now he found himself in the perimeter of the wood that curved east and south to the bisecting road where the two trucks were parked. Here, in the shadow of the trees, he could not be seen and the frozen snow on the ground beneath their laden branches was so thin that his stealthy progress could have been heard barely ten feet away. He had slung his automatic carbine now, and the weighted handkerchief in his hand swung gently to and fro as he picked his wary way from tree to tree.

  But for all his soft-footed caution, he had covered the ground swiftly, and was alongside the parked trucks within three minutes, peering out from the shelter of a tree. There was no sign of life from either truck, their rear doors were closed, there was no sign of life at all. Reynolds straightened, preparing to glide across the snow to Hidas’ truck, then froze into immobility, rigid against the bole of his tree. A man had moved out from behind the shelter of Hidas’ truck, and was coming directly towards him.

  For a moment Reynolds was certain that the man had seen him, then almost at once relaxed. AVO soldiers didn’t go hunting for armed enemies in a dark wood with their gun carried under the crook of one arm and a lighted cigarette in the other hand. The sentry obviously had no suspicions, was just walking around to keep his blood moving in that bitter cold. He passed by within six feet of Reynolds and as he began to move away, Reynolds waited no longer. He took one long step out from the concealing shelter of the tree, his right arm swinging, and just as the man started to whirl round, his mouth open to cry out, the weighted cloth caught him with vicious force at the nape of the neck. Reynolds had time to spare and to catch both the man and his gun and lower them silently to the ground.

  He had the carbine in his hand now, and half a dozen steps took him to the front of the brown truck – a truck, Reynolds could see, with its engine hood blown off and motor damaged by the explosion of the Count’s grenade – then he was moving silently across to Hidas’ caravan, his eyes so intently watching the back door that he all but tripped over the crumpled shape lying at his feet on the ground. Reynolds stooped low, and although he knew, even as he stooped, who it was that was lying there, nevertheless the shock of confirmation made him grasp the barrel of his carbine as if he would crush it in his bare hands.

  The Count was lying face upwards in the snow, his AVO cap still framing the lean aristocratic face, the chiselled aquiline features even more aloof and remote in death than they had been in life. It was not hard to see how he had died – that burst of machine-gun fire must have torn half his chest away. Like a dog they had shot him down, like a dog they had left him lying there in the darkness of that bitter night, and the gently falling snow was beginning to lie on the cold, dead face. Moved by some strange impulse, Reynolds removed the hated AVO cap, sent it spinning away into the darkness, pulled a handkerchief – a handkerchief stained with the Count’s own blood – from the dead man’s breast pocket and spread it gently across his face. Then he rose and walked to the door of Hidas’ caravan.

  Four wooden steps led to the door and Reynolds walked up these as softly as a cat, kneeling at the top to peer through the keyhole. In the space of a second he could see what he wanted to see – a chair on the left-hand side, a made-up bunk on the right hand and, at the far end, a table with what looked like a wireless transmitter bolted to the top of it. Hidas, back to the door, was just seating himself in front of the table, and as he cranked a handle with his right hand and picked up a telephone with his left, Reynolds realized that it was no transmitter but a radio telephone. They should have thought of it. Hidas was not a man to move about the country without means of instant communication available to him, and now, with the skies clearing, he would almost certainly be calling in the air force, in a last, desperate gamble to stop them, but it didn’t matter any more. It was too late, it made no difference now, none to those whom Hidas was pursuing, and certainly none to Hidas himself.

  Reynolds’ groping hand found the knob and he passed through the well-oiled door like a shadow, not quite closing it behind him: Hidas, his ear filled with the sound of the ratchety whirl of the call-up handle, heard nothing. Reynolds took three steps forward, the barrel of his carbine gripped in both hands and the stock raised high above his shoulders, and, as Hidas began to speak, brought it swinging down over Hidas’ shoulder and smashed the delicate mechanism to pieces.

  Hidas sat for a moment in petrified astonishment, then whirled round in his chair, but he had lost the only moment he would ever need, Reynolds was already two paces away, the carbine again reversed in his hands, the muzzle trained on Hidas’ heart. Hidas’ face was a stone mask carved in shock, only his lips moved but no sound came from them as Reynolds slowly retreated, picked up the key he had seen lying on the bunk, felt for the keyhole and locked the door, his eyes never once leaving Hidas’. Then he moved forward and halted, with the mouth of the carbine, rocklike in its steadiness, just thirty inches short of the man in the chair.

  ‘You look surprised to see me, Colonel Hidas,’ Reynolds murmured. ‘You should not be surprised, you of all men. Those who live by the sword, as you have lived by the sword, must know better than any man that this moment comes to all of us. It comes to you to-night.’

  ‘You have come to murder me.’ It was a statement and not a question. Hidas had looked on death too often from the sidelines not to recognize it when its face turned towards himself. The shock was slowly draining out of his face, but no fear had yet come to replace it.

  ‘Murder you? No. I have come to execute you. Murder is what you did to Major Howarth. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t shoot you down in cold blood as you shot him? He hadn’t even a gun on him.’

  ‘He was an enemy of the State, an enemy of the people.’

  ‘My God! You try to justify your actions?’

  ‘They need no justification, Captain Reynolds. Duty never does.’

  Reynolds stared at him. ‘Are you trying to excuse yourself – or just begging for your life?’

  ‘I never beg.’ There was no pride, no arrogance in the Jew’s voice, just a simple dignity.

  ‘Imre – the boy in Budapest. He died – slowly.’

&nbs
p; ‘He withheld important information. It was essential that we got it quickly.’

  ‘Major-General Illyurin’s wife.’ Reynolds spoke quickly to fight off a growing feeling of unreality. ‘Why did you murder her?’

  For the first time a flicker of emotion showed in the thin, intelligent face, then vanished as quickly as it had come.

  ‘I did not know that.’ He inclined his head. ‘It is no part of my duty to wage war on women. I genuinely regret her death – even though she was dying as it was.’

  ‘You are responsible for the actions of your AVO thugs?’

  ‘My men?’ He nodded. ‘They take their orders from me.’

  ‘They killed her – but you are responsible for their actions. Therefore you are responsible for her death.’

  ‘If you put it that way, I am.’

  ‘If it were not for you, these three people would be alive now.’

  ‘I cannot speak for the General’s wife. The other two – yes.’

  ‘Is there then – I ask you for the last time – any reason why I shouldn’t kill you – now?’

  Colonel Hidas looked at him for a long moment, in silence, then he smiled faintly, and Reynolds could have sworn that the smile was tinged with sadness.

  ‘Numerous reasons, Captain Reynolds, but none that would convince an enemy agent from the west.’

  It was the word ‘west’ that did it – but Reynolds was not to realize that until long afterwards. All he knew was that something had triggered open a flood gate, released a spate of pictures and memories in his mind, pictures of Jansci talking to him in his house in Budapest, in the dark agony of that torture cell in the Szarháza prison, with the firelight on his face in the cottage in the country, memories of what Jansci had said, what he had said over and over again with a repetitive persistence, with a passionate conviction that had hammered his ideas more deeply home into his mind than Reynolds had ever suspected. Everything he had said about – deliberately, desperately, Reynolds forced the thoughts and pictures from his mind. His carbine jabbed forward another six inches.