The Last Frontier. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ at him in sudden wonder. That it was his clothes they wanted – looking for giveaway tags, probably – instead of himself was surprising enough, that the courtesy – and on that cold night, the kindness – of a covering blanket should be offered was astonishing. And then he caught his breath and utterly forgot about both of those things, because the man behind the desk had risen and walked round with a peculiarly stiff-legged gait to examine the clothes.

      Reynolds was a trained judge, very highly trained, of faces and expressions and character. He made mistakes and made them often, but he never made major mistakes and he knew that it was impossible that he was making a major one now. The face was fully in the light now, and it was a face that made these terrible hands a blasphemous contradiction, an act of impiety in themselves. A lined tired face, a middle-aged face that belied the thick, snow-white hair above, a face deeply, splendidly etched by experience, by a sorrowing and suffering such as Reynolds could not even begin to imagine, it held more goodness, more wisdom and tolerance and understanding than Reynolds had ever seen in the face of any man before. It was the face of a man who had seen everything, known everything and experienced everything and still had the heart of a child.

      Reynolds sank slowly down on to the bench, mechanically wrapping the faded blanket around him. Desperately, almost, forcing himself to think with detachment and clarity, he tried to reduce to order the kaleidoscopic whirling of confused and contradictory thoughts that raced through his mind. But he had got no farther than the first insoluble problem, the presence of a man like that in a diabolical organization like the AVO, when he received his fourth and final shock and almost immediately afterwards, the answer to all his problems.

      The door beside Reynolds swung open towards him, and a girl walked into the room. The AVO, Reynolds knew, not only had its complement of females but ranked among them skilled exponents of the most fiendish tortures imaginable: but not even by the wildest leap of the imagination could Reynolds include her in that category. A little below middle height, with one hand tightly clasping the wrap about her slender waist, her face was young and fresh and innocent, untouched by any depravity. The yellow hair the colour of ripening corn, was awry about her shoulders and with the knuckles of one hand she was still rubbing the sleep from eyes of a deep cornflower blue. When she spoke, her voice was still a little blurred from sleep, but soft and musical if perhaps touched with a little asperity.

      ‘Why are you still up and talking? It’s one o’clock in the morning – it’s after one, and I’d like to get some sleep.’ Suddenly her eyes caught sight of the pile of clothing on the table, and she swung round to catch sight of Reynolds, sitting on the bench and clad only in the old blanket. Her eyes widened, and she took an involuntary step backwards, clutching her wrap even more tightly around her. ‘Who – who on earth is this, Jansci?’

THREE

      ‘Jansci!’ Michael Reynolds was on his feet without any volition on his own part. For the first time since he had fallen into Hungarian hands the studied calmness, the mask of emotional indifference vanished and his eyes were alight with excitement and a hope that he had thought had vanished for ever. He took two quick steps towards the girl, grabbing at his blanket as it slipped and almost fell to the floor. ‘Did you say, “Jansci”?’ he demanded.

      ‘What’s wrong? What do you want?’ The girl had retreated as Reynolds had advanced, then stopped as she bumped into the reassuring bulk of Sandor and clutched his arm. The apprehension in her face faded, and she looked at Reynolds thoughtfully and nodded. ‘Yes, I said that. Jansci.’

      ‘Jansci.’ Reynolds repeated the word slowly, incredulously, like a man savouring each syllable to the full, wanting desperately to believe in the truth of something but unable to bring himself to that belief. He walked across the room, the hope and the conflicting doubt still mirrored in his eyes, and stopped before the man with the scarred hands.

      ‘Your name is Jansci?’ Reynolds spoke slowly, the unbelief, the inability to believe, still registering in his eyes.

      ‘I am called Jansci.’ The older man nodded, his eyes speculative and quiet.

      ‘One four one four one eight two.’ Reynolds looked unblinkingly at the other, searching for the faintest trace of response, of admission. ‘Is that it?’

      ‘Is that what, Mr Buhl?’

      ‘If you are Jansci, the number is one four one four one eight two,’ Reynolds repeated. Gently, meeting no resistance, he reached out for the scarred left hand, pushed the cuff back from the wrist and stared down at the violet tattoo. 1414182 – the number was as clear, as unblemished as if it had been made only that day.

      Reynolds sat down on the edge of the desk, caught sight of a packet of cigarettes and shook one loose. Szendrô struck and held a match for him, and Reynolds nodded gratefully: he doubted whether he could have done it for himself, his hands were trembling uncontrollably. The fizzling of the igniting match seemed strangely loud in the sudden silence of the room. Jansci it was who finally broke the silence.

      ‘You seem to know something about me?’ he prompted gently.

      ‘I know a lot more.’ The tremor was dying out of Reynolds’ hands and he was coming back on balance again, outwardly, at least. He looked round the room, at Szendrô, Sandor, the girl and the youth with the quick nervous eyes, all with expressions of bewilderment or anticipation on their faces. ‘These are your friends? You can trust them absolutely – they all know who you are? Who you really are, I mean?’

      ‘They do. You may speak freely.’

      ‘Jansci is a pseudonym for Illyurin.’ Reynolds might have been repeating something by rote, something he knew off by heart, as indeed he did. ‘Major-General Alexis Illyurin. Born Kalinovka, Ukraine, October 18th, 1904. Married June 18th, 1931. Wife’s name Catherine, daughter’s name Julia’. Reynolds glanced at the girl. ‘This must be Julia, she seems about the right age. Colonel Mackintosh says he’d like to have his boots back: I don’t know what he means.’

      ‘Just an old joke.’ Jansci walked round the desk to his seat and leant back, smiling. ‘Well, well, my old friend Peter Mackintosh still lives. Indestructible, he always was indestructible. You must work for him, of course, Mr – ah –’

      ‘Reynolds. Michael Reynolds. I work for him.’

      ‘Describe him.’ The subtle change could hardly be called a hardening, but it was unmistakable. ‘Face, physique, clothes, history, family – everything.’

      ‘Reynolds did so. He talked for five minutes without stopping, them Jansci held up his hand.

      ‘Enough. You must know him, must work for him and be the person you claim to be. But he took a risk, a great risk. It is not like my old friend.’

      ‘I might be caught and made to talk, and you, too, would be lost?’

      ‘You are very quick, young man.’

      ‘Colonel Mackintosh took no chance,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘Your name and number – that was all I knew. Where you lived, what you looked like – I had no idea. He didn’t even tell me about the scars on your hands, these would have given me instant identification.’

      ‘And how then did you hope to contact me?’

      ‘I had the address of a café.’ Reynolds named it. ‘The haunt, Colonel Mackintosh said, of disaffected elements. I was to be there every night, same seat, same table, till I was picked up.’

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