The Last Frontier (11 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Reynolds' gun was in his hand, almost without his being aware of it. If Jennings' companion chose to make an inspection of the bathroom, there was no time for him, Reynolds, to move into the shelter of the big cupboard. And if he was discovered, then Reynolds would be left without any option, and with the guard -- and for safety's sake he had to assume that it was a guard -- unconscious or dead, his boats would have been burnt behind him. There would never then be another chance of contacting Jennings, the old professor would have to come with him that night whether he liked it or not, and Reynolds rated as almost non-existent his chances of escaping unobserved from the Three Crowns with an unwilling prisoner at the point of a gun and getting any distance at all through the hostile dark of Budapest.
But the man with Jennings made no move to enter the bathroom, and it soon became apparent that he was no guard. Jennings appeared to be on friendly enough terms with the man, called him Jozef, and discussed with him, in English, some highly technical subjects that Reynolds couldn't even begin to understand. A scientific colleague, beyond doubt. For a moment, Reynolds was conscious of astonishment that the Russians should allow two scientists, one a foreigner, to discuss so freely; then he remembered the microphone, and he wasn't astonished any more. It was the man in the brown suit who was doing most of the talking, and this was at first surprising, for Harold Jennings had the reputation of being talkative to the point of garrulousness, forthright to the point of indiscretion. But Reynolds, peering through the jamb of the door, could see that Jennings was a vastly changed Jennings from the person whose figure and face he had memorised from a hundred photographs. Two years in exile had added more than ten in age to his appearance. He seemed smaller, somehow, curiously shrunken, and in place of a once splendid mane of white hair were now only a few straggling locks across a balding head: his face was unhealthily pale, and only his eyes, dark, sunken pools in a deeply lined and etched face, had lost none of their fire and authority. Reynolds smiled to himself in the darkness. Whatever the Russians had done to the old man, they hadn't broken his spirit : that would have been altogether too much to expect.
Reynolds glanced down at the face of his luminous watch, and his smile vanished. Time was running out. He must see Jennings, see him alone, and soon. Half a dozen different ideas occurred to him within the space of a minute, but he dismissed them all as unpractical or too dangerous. He must take no chances. For all the apparent friendliness of the man in the brown suit, he was a Russian and must be treated as an enemy.
Finally he came up with an idea that carried with it at least a fair chance. It was far from foolproof, it could fail as easily as it could suceed, but the chance had to be taken. He crossed the bathroom on noiseless feet, picked up a piece of soap, made his silent way back to the big cupboard, opened the door with the long mirror inside and started to write on the glass.
It was no good. The dry soap slid smoothly over the smooth surface and made scarcely a mark. Reynolds swore softly, as softly recrossed to the washbasin, turned the tap with infinite, care till a little trickle of water came out, then wet the soap thoroughly. This time the writing on the glass was all he could have wished for, and he wrote in clear, block letters:
'I AM FROM ENGLAND -- GET RID OF YOUR FRIEND AT ONCE.'
Then, gently, careful to guard against even the smallest metallic sound or creak of hinges, he eased open the bathroom corridor door and peered out. The corridor was deserted. Two long paces took him outside Jennings' bedroom door, a very soft, quick tap-tap on the wood and he was back inside the bathroom as noiselessly as he had gone, picking his torch up from the floor.
The man in the brown suit was already on his feet, walking towards the door, when Reynolds stuck his head through the partly open bathroom door, one finger in urgent warning at his lips, another pressing down on the morse button of his torch, the beam striking Jennings' eyes -- a fraction of a second only, but long enough. Jennings glanced up, startled, saw the face at the door, and not even Reynolds' warning forefinger could stifle the exclamation that leapt to his lips. The man in the brown suit, with the door open now and glancing uncomprehendingly along the length of the corridor, swung round.
'Something is wrong, Professor?'
Jennings nodded. 'This damned head of mine -- you know how it troubles me.... No one there?'
'No one -- no one at all. I could have sworn -- you do not look well, Professor Jennings.'
'No. Excuse me.' Jennings smiled wanly and rose to his feet. 'A little water, I think, and some of my migraine tablets.'
Reynolds was standing inside the big cupboard, the door just ajar. As soon as he saw Jennings come into the bathroom, he pushed the door wide open. Jennings couldn't fail to see the mirror with its message: he nodded almost imperceptibly, glanced warningly at Reynolds, and continued towards the washbasin without breaking his stride. For an old man unaccustomed to this sort of thing, it was a remarkable performance.
Reynolds interpreted the warning glance correctly, and the cupboard door had hardly closed before the professor's companion was in the room.
'Perhaps I should get the hotel doctor,' he said worriedly. 'He would be only too willing.'
'No, no.' Jennings swallowed a tablet and washed it down with a gulp of water. 'I know these damned migraines of mine better than any doctor. Three of these tablets, three hours lying down in absolute darkness. I'm really terribly sorry, Jozef, our discussion was just beginning to become really interesting, but if you would excuse me -- '
'But of course, of course.' The other was cordiality and understanding itself. 'Whatever else happens, we must have you fit and well for the opening speech on Monday.' A few platitudes of sympathy, a word of farewell and the man in the brown suit was gone.
The bedroom door clicked shut and the soft sound of his footfalls faded in the distance. Jennings, his face a nice mixture of indignation, apprehension and expectation, made to speak but Reynolds held up his hand for silence, went to the bedroom door, locked it, withdrew the key, tried it in the bathroom corridor door, found to his relief that it fitted, locked it and closed the communicating door leading to the bedroom. He produced his cigarette case and offered it to the professor, only to have it waved aside.
'Who are you? What are you doing in my room?' The professor's voice was low, but the asperity in it, an asperity just touched with fear, was unmistakable.
'My name is Michael Reynolds.' Reynolds puffed a cigarette alight: he felt he needed it. 'I left London only forty-eight hours ago, and I would like to talk to you, sir.'
'Then, dammit, why can't we talk in the comfort of my bedroom?' Jennings swung round, then brought up abruptly as Reynolds caught him by the shoulder.
'Not in the bedroom, sir.' Reynolds shook his head gently. "There's a concealed microphone in the ventilation grill above your window.'
'There's a what -- How did you know, young man?' The professor walked slowly back towards Reynolds.
'I had a look around before you came,' Reynolds said apologetically. 'I arrived only a minute before you.'
'And you found a microphone in that time?' Jennings was incredulous and not even politely so.
'I found it right away. It's my job to know where to look for such things.'
'Of course, of course! What else could you be? An espionage agent, counter-espionage -- damned things mean the same to me. Anyway, the British Secret Service.'
'A popular if erroneous -- '
'Bah! A rose by any other name.' Whatever of fear there was in the little man, Reynolds thought dryly, it certainly wasn't for himself: the fire of which he had heard so much burned as brightly as ever. 'What do you want, sir? What do you want?'
'You,' Reynolds said quietly. 'Rather, the British Government wants you. I am asked by the Government to extend to you a most cordial invitation -- '
'Uncommonly civil of the British Government, I must say. Ah, I expected this, I've been expecting it for a long time now.' If Jennings had been a dragon, Reynolds mused, everything within ten feet of him would have been incinerated. 'My compliments to the British Government, Mr. Reynolds, and tell them from me to go to hell. Maybe when they get there, they'll find someone who'll help them build their infernal machines, but it isn't going to be me.'
'The country needs you, sir, and needs you desperately.'
'The last appeal and the most pathetic of all.' The old man was openly contemptuous now. 'The shibboleths of outworn nationalism, the catch penny phrase words of the empty-headed flag wavers of your bogus patriotism are only for the children of this world, Mr. Reynolds, the morons, the self-seekers and those who live entirely for war. I care only to work for the peace of the world.'
'Very good, sir.' The people at home, Reynolds thought wryly, had badly underestimated either Jennings' credulity or the subtlety of Russian indoctrination: even so, his words had seemed a far-off echo of something Jansci had said. He looked at Jennings. "The decision, of course, must rest entirely With you.'
'What!' Jennings was astonished, and could not conceal his astonishment. 'You accept it? You accept it as easily as that -- and you have come so far?'
Reynolds shrugged. 'I am only a messenger, Dr. Jennings.'
'A messenger? And what if I had agreed to your ridiculous suggestion?'
'Then, of course, I would have accompanied you back to Britain.'
'You would have -- Mr. Reynolds, do you realise what you are saying? Do you realise what -- you -- you would have taken me out of Budapest, through Hungary and across the frontier...' Jennings' voice slowly trailed away into nothingness, and when he looked up at Reynolds again, the fear was back in his eyes.
'You are no ordinary messenger, Mr. Reynolds,' he whispered. 'People like you are never messengers.' All of a sudden certainty struck home at the old man, and a thin white line touched the edges of his mouth. 'You were never told to invite me back to Britain -- you were told to bring me back. There were to be no "ifs" or "maybes," were there, Mr. Reynolds!'
'Isn't that rather silly, sir?' Reynolds said quietly. 'Even if I were in a position to use compulsion, and I'm not, I wouldn't be such a fool as to use it. Supposing you were to be dragged back to Britain tied hand and foot, there's still no way of keeping you there or making you work against your own will. Let's not confuse flag wavers with the secret police of a satellite state.'
'I don't for a moment think you'd use direct force to get me home." The fear was still in the old man's eyes, fear and sickness of heart. 'Mr. Reynolds, is -- is my wife still alive?'
'I saw her two hours before I left London Airport.' There was a quiet sincerity in every word that Reynolds spoke, and he had never seen Mrs. Jennings in his life. 'She was holding her own, I think.'
'Would you say -- would you say she is still critically ill?'
Reynolds shrugged. 'That is for the doctors to say.'
'For God's sake, man, don't try to torture me! What do the doctors say?'
'Suspended animation. Hardly a medical term, Dr. Jennings, but that's what Mr. Bathurst -- he was her surgeon -- calls it. She's conscious all the time, and in little pain, but very weak: to be brutally frank, she could go at any moment. Mr. Bathurst says she's just lost the will to live.'
'My God, my God!' Jennings turned away and stared unseeingly through the frosted window. After a moment he swung round, his face contorted, his dark eyes blurred with tears. 'I can't believe it, Mr. Reynolds, I just can't. It's not possible. My Catherine was always a fighter. She was always -- '
'You don't want to believe it,' Reynolds interrupted. His voice was cold to the point of cruelty. 'Doesn't matter what the self-deception is, does it, as long as it satisfies your conscience, this precious conscience that would let you sell your own people down the river in exchange for all this claptrap about co-existence. You know damned well your wife has nothing to live for -- not with her husband and son lost for ever to her beyond the iron curtain.'
'How dare you talk -- '
'You make me sick!' Reynolds felt a momentary flash of distaste for what he was doing to this defenceless old man, but crushed it down. 'You stand there making noble speeches and standing upon all these wonderful principles of yours, and all the time your wife is in a London hospital, dying: she's dying, Dr. Jennings, and you are killing her as surely as if you were standing by her side and throttling -- '
'Stop! Stop! For God's sake stop!' Jennings had his hands to his ears and was shaking his head like a man in agony. He drew back his hands across his forehead. 'You're right, Reynolds, heaven only knows you're right, Td go to her tomorrow but there's more to it than that.' He shook his head in despair. 'How can you ask any man to choose between the lives of his wife, who may be already beyond hope, and his only son. My situation is impossible! I have a son -- '
'We know all about your son, Dr. Jennings. We are not inhuman altogether.' Reynolds' voice had dropped to a gentle, persuasive murmur. 'Yesterday Brian was in Poznan. This afternoon he will be in Stettin and tomorrow morning he will be in Sweden. I have only to receive radio confirmation from London, and then we can be on our way. Certainly inside twenty-four hours.'
'I don't believe it, I don't believe it." Hope and disbelief struggled pitifully for supremacy in the old, lined face. 'How can you say -- '
1 cant prove a thing, I don't have to prove a thing,' Reynolds said wearily. 'With all respect, sir, what the hell's happened to this mighty intellect? Surely you know that all the government wants of you is that you should work for them again, and you also know they know what you're like: they know damned well if you returned home and found your son still a prisoner in Russia that you'd never work for them as long as you lived. And that's the last thing in the world they'd ever want.'
Conviction had come slowly to Jennings, but now that it had come it had come for keeps. Reynolds, seeing the new life come into the professor's face, the determination gradually replacing the worry and the sorrow and the fear, could have laughed aloud from sheer relief: even on himself, the strain had been greater than he had realised. Another five minutes, a score of questions tumbling out one after the other, and the professor, afire now with the hope of seeing his wife and son in the course of the next few days, was all for leaving that very night, at that very instant, and had to be restrained. Plans had to be made, Reynolds explained gently, and much more important, they had first to get news of Brian's escape and this had brought Jennings to earth immediately. He agreed to await further instructions, repeated aloud several times the address of Jansci's house until he had completely memorised it, but agreed never to use it except in extreme emergency -- the police might have already moved in as far as Reynolds knew -- and promised, in the meantime, to carry on working and behaving exactly as he had been doing.