"Alistair MacLean - Last Frontier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

'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 Szendro, 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, then 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,8 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?'

'1 had the address of a cafe.' 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.'

'No identification?' Szendro's query lay more in the lift of an eyebrow than the inflection of the voice.

'Naturally. My tie.'

Colonel Szendro looked at the vivid magenta of the tie lying on the table, winced, nodded and looked away without speaking. Reynolds felt the first faint stirrings of anger.

'Why ask if you already know?' The edged voice betrayed the irritation in his mind.

'No offence.' Jansci answered for Szendro. 'Endless suspicion, Mr. Reynolds, is our sole guarantee of survival. We suspect everyone. Everyone who lives, everyone who moves -- we suspect them every minute of every hour. But, as you see, we survive. We had been asked to contact you in that cafe -- Imre has practically lived there for the past three days -- but the request had come from an anonymous source in Vienna. There was no mention of Colonel Mackintosh -- he is an old fox, that one.... And when you had been met in the cafe?'

'I was told that I would be led to you -- or to one of two others: Hridas and the White Mouse.'

'This has been a happy short-cut,' Jansci murmured. 'But I am afraid you would have found neither Hridas nor the White Mouse.'

'They are no longer in Budapest?'

'The White Mouse is in Siberia. We shall never see him again. Hridas died three weeks ago, not two kilometres from here, in the torture chambers of the AVO. They were careless for a moment, and he snatched a gun. He put it in his mouth. He was glad to die.'

'How -- but how do you know these things?'

'Colonel Szendro -- the man you know as Colonel Szendro -- was there. He saw him die. It was Szendro's gun he took.'

Reynolds carefully crushed his cigarette stub in an ashtray. He looked up at Jansci, across to Szendro and back at Jansci again: his face was empty of all expression.