Read Online The Last Frontier by Alistair MacLean - Free Book Online

road-block, the closing of the frontier.... And he knew you were on the way.'

'But surely -- surely they weren't after me? How could -- '

'Don't flatter yourself, my dear Reynolds.' Szendro carefully fitted another brown and black Russian cigarette into his holder -- Reynolds was to discover that he chain-smoked a hundred of these every day -- and struck a match. 'The arm of coincidence is not all that long. They weren't looking for you, they weren't looking for anyone. They were stopping only trucks, searching for large quantities of ferro-wolfram that are being smuggled into the country.'

'I should have thought they would have been damned glad to get all the ferro-wolfram they could lay their hands on,' Reynolds murmured.

'And so they are, my dear boy, and so they are. However, there are proper channels to be gone through, certain customs to be observed. Not to put too fine a point on it, several of our top party officials and highly-respected members of the government were being deprived of their usual cut. An intolerable state of affairs.'

'Unthinkable,' Reynolds agreed. 'Action was imperative.'

'Exactly!' Szendro grinned, the first time Reynolds had seen him smile, and the sudden flash of white, even teeth and the crinkling of the eyes quite transformed the cold aloofness of the man. 'Unfortunately, on such occasions as these some fish other than the ones we are trawling for get caught in the net.'

'Such as myself?"

'Such as yourself. So I have made it my practice to be in the vicinity of certain police blocks at such times: a fruitless vigil, I fear, on all but very few occasions: you are only the fifth person I've taken away from the police inside a year. Unfortunately, you will also be the last. On the previous occasions I warned the country bumpkins who man these posts that they were to forget that I or the prisoner I had taken from them ever existed. Tonight, as you know, their headquarters had been informed and the word will be out to all block posts to beware of a man posing as an AVO officer.'

Reynolds stared at him.

'But good God, man, they saw you! Five of them, at least. Your description will be in Budapest before -- '

'Pah!' Szendro flicked off some ash with a careless forefinger. 'Much good it will do the fools! Besides, I'm no impostor -- I am an AVO officer. Did you doubt it?'

'I did not,' Reynolds said feelingly. Szendro hitched an immaculately trousered leg and sat on the desk, smiling.

There you are, then. Incidentally, Mr. Reynolds, my apologies for my rather intimidating conduct on the way here Tonight. As far as Budapest, I was concerned only with finding out whether you really were a foreign agent and the man we were looking for or whether I should throw you out at a street corner and tell you to lose yourself. But by the time I had reached the middle of the town another and most disquieting possibility had struck me.'

'When you stopped in the Andrassy Ut?' Reynolds nodded. 'You looked at me in a rather peculiar fashion, to say the least.'

'I know. The thought had just occurred that you might have been an AVO member deliberately planted on me and therefore had no cause to fear a visit to the Andrassy Ut: I confess I should have thought of it earlier. However, when I said I was going to take you to a secret cellar, you would have known at once what I suspected, known I could not now afford to let you live and screamed your head off. But you said nothing, so I knew you were at least no plant.... Jansci, could I be excused for a few minutes? You know why.'

'Certainly, but be quick. Mr. Reynolds hasn't come all the way from England just to lean over the Margit Bridge and drop pebbles into the Danube. He has much to tell us.'

'It is for your ear alone,' Reynolds said. 'Colonel Mackintosh said so.'

'Colonel Szendro is my right hand, Mr. Reynolds.'

'Very well. But only the two of you.'

Szendro bowed and walked out of the room. Jansci turned to his daughter.

'A bottle of wine, Julia. We