The Last Frontier - Alistair MacLean

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stopped again long enough to tie a silk handkerchief securely over Reynolds’ eyes. Ten minutes later, after much turning and twisting which completely lost Reynolds, as he knew it was designed to do, all sense of place and direction, the car bumped heavily once or twice, dropped steeply down a long ramp and drew up inside an enclosed space – Reynolds could hear the deep exhaust note of the car beating back off the walls. And then, as the motor died, he heard heavy iron doors clanging shut behind them.

      Seconds later the door on Reynolds’ side of the car opened and a pair of hands busied themselves with freeing him of the restraining chains and then re-securing the handcuffs. Then the same hands were urging him out of the car and removing the blindfold.

      Reynolds screwed up his eyes and blinked. They were in a big, windowless garage with heavy doors already locked behind them, and the brightness of the overhead light reflecting off whitewashed walls and ceiling was momentarily dazzling after the darkness of the blindfold and the night. At the other end of the garage, close to him, was another door, half-open, leading into a brightly-lit whitewashed corridor: whitewash, he reflected grimly, appeared to be an inseparable concomitant of all modern torture chambers.

      Between Reynolds and the door, still holding him by the arm, was the man who had removed the chains. Reynolds looked at him for a long moment. With this man available, the AVO had no need to rely on instruments of torture – those enormous hands could just tear prisoners apart, slowly, piece for piece. About Reynolds’ own height, the man looked squat, almost deformed in comparison, and the shoulders above that great barrel of chest were the widest Reynolds had ever seen: he must have weighed at least 250 lbs. The face was broken-nosed and ugly, but curiously innocent of any trace of depravity or bestiality, just pleasantly ugly. Reynolds wasn’t deceived. In his line of business, faces meant nothing: the most ruthless man he had ever known, a German espionage agent who had lost count of the number of men he had killed, had the face of a choirboy.

      Colonel Szendrô slammed the car door and walked round to where Reynolds was standing. He looked at the other man and nodded at Reynolds.

      ‘A guest, Sandor. A little canary who is going to sing us a song before the night is through. Has the Chief gone to bed?’

      ‘He is waiting for you in the office.’ The man’s voice was what one would have expected, a low, deep rumble in the throat. ‘Excellent. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Watch our friend here, watch him closely. I suspect he’s very dangerous.’

      ‘I’ll watch him,’ Sandor promised comfortably. He waited till Szendrô, with Reynolds’ bag and papers in his hand, had gone, then propped himself lazily against a whitewashed wall, massive arms folded across his chest. Hardly had he done so when he had pushed himself off the wall and taken a step towards Reynolds. ‘You do not look well.’

      ‘I’m all right.’ Reynolds’ voice was husky, his breathing quick and shallow, and he was swaying slightly on his feet. He lifted his shackled hands over his right shoulder, and massaged the back of his neck, wincing. ‘It’s my head, the back of my head.’

      Sandor took another step forward, then moved swiftly as he saw Reynolds’ eyes turning up till only the whites showed, beginning to topple forward, his body twisting slightly to the left as he fell. He could injure himself badly, even kill himself if his unprotected head struck the concrete floor, and Sandor had to reach forward quickly, arms outstretched to cushion the fall.

      Reynolds hit Sandor harder than he had ever hit anyone in his life. Thrusting forward off the ball of his foot and pivoting his body with whiplash speed from left to right, he brought his manacled hands scything down in a violent, vicious, chopping blow that carried with it every last ounce of power of his sinewy arms and shoulders. The flat edges of his two hands, pressed hard together, caught Sandor across the exposed neck, just below the line of jawbone and ear. It was like striking the trunk of a tree, and Reynolds gasped with pain: it felt as if both his little fingers were broken.

      It was a judo blow, a killing judo blow, and it would have killed many men: all others it would have paralysed, left unconscious for hours; all others, that is, that Reynolds had ever known: Sandor just grunted, momentarily shook his head to clear it, and kept on coming, turning sideways to neutralize any attempt Reynolds might make to use feet or knees, pressing him back remorselessly against the side of the Mercedes.

      Reynolds was powerless. He couldn’t have resisted even had he been of a mind to, and his utter astonishment that any man could not only survive such a blow but virtually ignore it left no room for any thought of resistance. Sandor leaned against him with all his great weight, crushing him against the car, reached down with both hands, caught Reynolds by the forearms and squeezed. There was no animosity, no expression at all in the giant’s eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Reynolds’ from a distance of three or four inches. He just stood there and squeezed.

      Reynolds clenched teeth and lips together till his jaws ached, forcing back the scream of agony. It seemed as if his forearms had been caught in two giant, inexorably tightening vices. He could feel the blood draining from his face, the cold sweat starting on his forehead, and the bones and sinews of his arms felt as if they were being mangled and crushed beyond recovery. The blood was pounding in his head, the garage walls were becoming dim and swimming before his eyes, when Sandor released his grip and stepped back, gently massaging the left-hand side of his neck.

      ‘Next time I squeeze it will be a little higher up,’ he said mildly. ‘Just where you hit me. Please stop this foolishness. Both of us have been hurt and for nothing.’

      Five minutes passed, five minutes during which the sharp agony in Reynolds’ arms faded to a dull, pounding ache, five minutes in which Sandor’s unblinking eyes never strayed from him. Then the door opened wide, and a young man – he was hardly more than a boy – stood there, looking at Reynolds. He was thin and sallow, with an unruly mop of black hair and quick, nervous darting eyes, almost as dark as his hair. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

      ‘The Chief wants to see him, Sandor. Bring him along, will you?’

      Sandor escorted Reynolds along the narrow corridor, down a shallow flight of stairs at the end into another corridor, then pushed him through the first of several doors that lined both sides of the second passageway. Reynolds stumbled, recovered, then looked around him.

      It was a large room, wood panelled, the worn linoleum on the floor relieved only by a stretch of threadbare carpet in front of the desk at the far end of the room. The room was brightly lit, with a lamp of moderate power in the ceiling and a powerful wall-light on a flexible extension arm behind the desk: at the moment the latter was pointing downward on to the surface of the desk, harshly highlighting his gun, the jumble of clothes and the other articles that had recently been so neatly folded in Reynolds’ bag: beside the clothes were the torn remnants of the bag itself: the lining was in tatters, the zip had been torn off, the leather handle had been slit open and even the four studs of the base of the bag had been torn out by the pair of pliers lying beside them. Reynolds silently acknowledged the handiwork of an expert.

      Colonel Szendrô was standing beside the table, leaning over towards the man seated behind it. The face of the latter was hidden in deep shadow, but both hands, holding some of Reynolds’ papers, were exposed to the pitiless glare of the lamp. They were terrible hands, Reynolds had never seen anything remotely like them, had never imagined that any human being’s hands could be so scarred, crushed and savagely mutilated and still serve as hands. Both thumbs were crushed and flattened and twisted, fingertips and nails were blurred into a shapeless mass, the little finger and half of the fourth finger of the left hand were missing, and the backs of both hands were covered with ugly scars surrounding bluish-purple weals in the middle, between the tendons of the middle and fourth fingers. Reynolds stared at these weals, fascinated, and shivered involuntarily, he had seen these marks once before, on a dead man: the marks of crucifixion. Had these been his hands, Reynolds thought in revulsion, he would have had them amputated. He wondered what manner of man could bear to live with these hands, not only live with them but have them uncovered. He was suddenly possessed of an almost obsessive desire to see the face of the man behind these hands, but Sandor had halted several paces from the desk and the blackness of the shadow by the lamp defeated him.

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