Gelda smiled and moved her body against Shaw’s. In halting English she said, “Trust Gorsak. Gorsak know what he do. Often he go over.”
“Is right. I go through on business — plenty, plenty times.” Shaw had to be content with that. He was committed to Gorsak now and they all knew it. But he didn’t like any of this. He saw no prospect whatever of evading a search by the B.A.C.S., the Hungarian Security Police. They wouldn’t miss a trick any more than the MVD He was more and more worried as the ancient vehicle bounced and rattled along the wet road, south for the Hungarian border. Meanwhile he was uncomfortably aware of Gelda’s closeness and of her breath, hot on his face, and of the way she was thrusting her tight, hard breasts against him whenever she leaned across to speak to Gorsak. There was a time and a place for everything, Shaw thought, and this wasn’t it. Besides, he told himself with a faint grin, any more of this and Gorsak might get jealous! He didn’t care for the thought of a jealous Gorsak. Gelda had all the appearance of a nymphomaniac, but no doubt Gorsak was more than equal to that and wouldn’t appreciate any help.
When the first faint streaks of dawn lightened the eastern sky Gorsak broke a long silence, speaking in Hungarian to Gelda. Gelda nodded in reply and once again her body moved hard against Shaw as she turned towards Gorsak. A little after, Gorsak pulled the bus off the road and stopped. He jumped down, landing on soft earth wet with the recent rain.
“Out,” he said brusquely to Shaw.
“What for?”
“Do as Gorsak say.” A huge hand reached in, took Shaw’s upper arm, and squeezed. The grip tightened painfully until the forearm swelled and throbbed with trapped blood. Gorsak pulled Shaw close to his heavy, bearded face. He grinned. “O.K.?”
Shaw’s eyes were blue ice and he had to use every effort of his will to stop himself smashing a left into Gorsak’s face. But he said evenly, “All right, Gorsak. I said you knew best. That stands. But I only hope to God I’m right. And I’ve just an idea that you and I are going to fall right out before long.” He climbed stiffly out of the bus, saw Gelda coming round the back, giving him a lascivious look and rather more than a glimpse of her body. As he glanced at her, almost in unwilling fascination, he sensed Gorsak moving, but he was a fraction too late. A huge bunched fist took him just above the ear. He staggered and fell, dazed and caught right off his guard. He saw the two of them looking down at him, Gelda with a curious mixture of emotions in her dark face. Maddened with pain and rage, Shaw struggled up and went for the Hungarian. Gorsak stood like a rock, taking blows as they came through his guard without a flicker, and then he simply reached out and grabbed the collar of Shaw’s windcheater. Pushing Shaw backwards, he propped him against the side of the bus and slammed his fist into his face. The back of Shaw’s head hit the bus with a cracking jerk and he felt blood spurting from his cheek where the skin had split. Two more blows came in rapid succession, followed by a couple of short, vicious jabs to the body and a knee in the crutch. He went down in a heap, dazedly pulled himself to a sitting position. They watched him as he lurched to his feet like a drunk, bent almost double with pain, and then Gorsak came in again and finally. Shaw’s head seemed to part from his neck and then he passed out in a blinding flash of coloured light.
Gorsak stepped back and looked down at him. He said, “Gelda, strip him and rub his clothes in the mud. I will help.” Together they bent and, helped by Gorsak, Gelda stripped Shaw naked. As she began to tread his clothing into a muddy heap, Gorsak picked Shaw up and carried him into the back of the bus, where he put him down on a sleazy bunk.
Gelda came in then and he said, “The leaves.”
Gelda went over to a box under the second of the two bunks, and came back with a handful of oily leaves. She wrinkled up her nose and said, “They stink. I am sorry for him.”
“No time for pity, Gelda. Rub him all over, but not the face. Leave that. He is brown with the sun, and it would not take, over the bleeding.”
Gelda nodded and got to work. She kneaded the dye into every part of his body and gradually his skin darkened. Then they dressed him again in the muddy clothes and lay him down once more on the bunk. He was still flat out. Gorsak slammed the door and he and Gelda climbed back into the front and Gorsak took the bus back onto the road and drove on for Carovác and the frontier into Hungary — and the Iron Curtain.
Six
Shaw came round slowly and painfully after having been out for a long while and when he did so he felt the bus still jolting and rattling beneath his bruised, muddy body. The jerking motion racked his head and he felt a wave of nausea. His face was stiff, his jaw ached abominably, and his whole body felt as if it were caked with blood. His flesh was bruised, pulpy. He lay there on the filthy bunk for many minutes before he found the strength to lift his head. When he was able to do so, he twisted round and saw Gorsak and the woman in the front. He must have made some small sound for Gelda looked round and then turned to Gorsak and said something to him in Hungarian.
Gorsak jerked the bus to a stop and climbed through to the back. Standing by the bunk with Shaw’s Webley in his hand, he looked down, his dark eyes searching the agent’s face. After a moment he said, “Gorsak is sorry, friend.”
“Sorry!” Shaw tried to sit up, but fell back heavily, his head splitting and another wave of sickness racking him. He retched agonizingly. Then he saw the Webley and said bitterly, “You bastard. Just tell me something, Gorsak — is Prakesh behind this?”
Gorsak grinned, showing broken yellow teeth. He sat down on a packing case and said, “Yes, friend, he is.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Russia.”
“I see.” Shaw tried to struggle up, but Gorsak reached out and pushed him down firmly.
Gorsak said, “Now I joke no more. I am sorry. We take you not into Russia, but simply to the Russian frontier, as arranged.”
Shaw stared at him. “What? D’you mean—”
“What I have said.” The man was grinning still. “You are now inside Hungary, friend, and Gorsak has kept his promise. You are thinking Gorsak is a double agent, but not so. To prove, you may now have back the revolver.”
He handed the Webley to Shaw.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Shaw said wonderingly. “So that beating-up… was it all part of the cover, Gorsak? How did you work it all?”
“It was easy — and much, much the best way. It meant that you would not be called upon to speak in a tongue that you do not know. You were my brother-in-law, who had come into Austria with me on business of his own. You had made unwelcome advances of love to my woman, and Gorsak had been forced to deal with you. The security policeman on the frontier post at Carovác came to look at you in the back and he laughed very much when he saw you. That, he said, is the kind of thing that should happen to men who advance love on other men’s women, and I agreed. It is not needed, perhaps, to say that this man, an N.C.O., is a good friend of mine… if he had not been, he would have looked a little harder and checked you more thoroughly with the papers. This also was part of the plan — that we should cross the frontier while this man was on duty.”
Shaw nodded painfully. “Did you mention… papers, Gorsak?”
“Yes!” Gorsak’s eyes gleamed oddly. “My brother-in-law’s papers. He came through with us not a week earlier.”