For a moment Sandor lay motionless, while Coco’s iron fingers tightened inexorably round his throat, the massive shoulders hunching as he put all his great strength into the effort. Then Sandor stirred, reached up his hands and caught Coco round the wrists.
Reynolds, still weak and barely able to stand upright, Julia beside him now and clutching his arms, stared in fascination. Reynolds’ entire body seemed a sea of pain, but even through that pain he seemed to feel again something of the agony he had felt when Sandor had once caught him by the forearms and squeezed — and squeezed with the flat of his fingers and not as he was now doing, with his hooked fingertips digging deep into the tendons on the inside of Coco’s wrists.
Shock it was that showed first in Coco’s face, the shock of unbelief, then pain, then fear as his wrists were crushed in the vice of Sandor’s grip and his fingers round Sandor’s throat slowly forced to open. Still holding Coco’s wrists, Sandor pushed him to one side, rose to his feet, pulled Coco after him so that the AVO giant towered high above him, swiftly released the wrists and had his arms locked round Coco’s chest before Coco had had time to appreciate what was happening. Reynolds thought at first that Sandor meant to throw the other, and from the momentary relief on Coco’s face it seemed that he had thought so also, but if he had so thought the disillusionment and the pain and the fear came soon and all in an instant as Sandor buried his head deep into Coco’s chest, lifted his shoulders high and began to crush the giant in a murderous bear hug which Coco must have known in a sudden flash of certainty he would never live to feel relaxing, for the fear in his expression gave way to contorted terror as his face turned bluish-red from the lack of oxygen, as he moaned deep in his throat while his starving lungs fought for air and his fists hammered in frantic madness against Sandor’s back and shoulders with as much effect as if he were beating them against a rock of granite. But the memory of that moment that Reynolds took with him was not of Coco’s threshing panic and darkening, pain-contorted features, not even of Sandor’s expressionless face with the still gentle eyes, but of the steady crackling of ice as Sandor crushed ever more tightly, more remorselessly, and of the horror on Julia’s face as he caught her to him and tried to shut out from her ears as best he could the hoarse, horrible scream that filled the room then slowly faded and died.
FIFTEEN
It was just after four o’clock in the morning when Jansci halted them in the centre of a thick clump of head-high reeds, turned and waited until the others had caught up with him. They came in single file, Julia, Reynolds, the Cossack and Dr Jennings with Sandor beside him, half-helping, half-carrying him across the frozen marshes, all with their heads bent low, all except Sandor with the trudging, stumbling gait of those very close to exhaustion.
They had reason, and more than reason, for their exhaustion. Two hours and three miles lay between them and where they had left the truck, two hours of winding in and out between the frozen reeds that snapped and crackled at the lightest touch, two hours of interminable stumbling and crunching through the thin ice of freezing marshes, ice just not strong enough to bear their weight, but more than strong enough to impede their progress, compelling them to lift each foot high to clear it before moving on to the next step, where they would sink down again through ice and frozen mud, often beyond their knees. But that same ice was their salvation that night, the dogs of the border guards would have found the conditions hopeless for operation and could only have floundered along, helplessly out of their depth. Not that they had seen or heard either dogs or guards once in those three miles: on a night such as this even the fanatical guards of the AVO huddled high in their stilted border towers round the warmth of a stove, and let who would pass by.
It was a night such as the night on which Reynolds had crossed the border into Hungary, with the cold stars riding high in a cold and empty sky, and a wind sighing gently through the marshes, a bitter wind that touched their cheeks with icy talons and carried their frozen breath drifting away through the softly rustling reeds. For a moment Reynolds himself was lost in the memory of that first night, when he had lain in the snow, as cold, and even colder than he was now, and had felt the icy wind in his face and seen the stars high above, and then, with an almost physical effort, he wrenched his mind away from that night, for his thoughts had moved on to the police hut and the appearance of the Count and he felt sick to his heart when he remembered for the hundredth time that the Count would never come again.
‘No time for dreaming now, Meechail,’ Jansci said gently. He nodded with his roughly-bandaged head, leaned forward and parted high reeds for Reynolds to have a glimpse of what lay beyond — a sheet of ice, perhaps ten feet wide, that stretched in both directions as far as he could see. He straightened again and looked at Jansci.
‘A canal?’
‘A ditch, that’s all. Just a little drainage ditch, but the most important in all Europe. On the other side lies Austria.’ Jansci smiled. ‘Five metres from freedom, Meechail, freedom and the success of a mission. Nothing can stop you now.’
‘Nothing can stop me now,’ Reynolds echoed. His voice was flat, empty of all life. The longed-for freedom interested him hardly at all, the complete success of his mission even less: the success was ashes in his mouth, the cost had been too cruelly high. Worst of all perhaps, was what was to come, and he knew with a sombre certainty what that was. He shivered in the bitter cold. ‘It grows even colder, Jansci. The crossing is safe — no guards are near?’
‘The crossing is safe.’
‘Come then — let’s not wait any longer.’
‘Not me.’ Jansci shook his head. ‘Just you and the professor and Julia. I remain here.’
Reynolds nodded heavily and said nothing. He had known what Jansci was about to say, and knew with equal certainty that discussion was useless. He turned away, not knowing what to say, and even as he turned Julia broke loose from his arms and caught her father by the lapels of his coat.
‘What did you say, Jansci? What was that you said?’
‘Please, Julia. There is no other way, you know there is no other way. I have to stay.’
‘Oh, Jansci! Jansci!’ She was pulling at his lapels, shaking them in her anxiety. ‘You can’t stay, you mustn’t, not now, not after all that’s happened!’
‘More than ever after all that’s happened.’ He put his arms round her and pulled her close and said: ‘I have work to do, I have much work to do, and as yet I have hardly begun: if I stop now, the Count will never forgive me.’ He smoothed the blonde hair with his scarred and twisted hand. ‘Julia, Julia, how could I ever accept freedom for myself while I know there are hundreds of poor people who will never know freedom unless it comes through me — no one can help them as well as I, you know that. How can I buy for myself at the expense of others a happiness that would be no happiness at all? Can you expect me to sit at my ease somewhere in the west while the young men here are still being dragged off to the Black Sea Canal or dying old women being driven out to work in the beet fields, and the snow still on the ground? Do you indeed think so little of me, Julia?’
‘Jansci.’ Her face was buried in his coat, and her voice was muffled. ‘I can’t leave you, Jansci.’
‘You can and must. You were not known before, but you are known now and there is no place for you in Hungary. No harm will come to me, my dear — not while Sandor lives. And the Cossack, too, will look after me.’ In the starlit gloom the Cossack seemed to straighten and grow tall.