Assignment - Karachi (18 page)

Passport, two letters from Sarah written in New York, addressed to Rudi at Cannes. He did not read them. A photo, very faded, of a man in a turtleneck sweater with long pale hair and a defiant smile, against the unmistakable background of the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin. It was signed in German with a bold signature—from Uncle Franz to Little Rudi—and a Nazi swastika banner against a building background identified the time the snapshot was taken, somewhere in the late ’30’s. Durell frowned, trying to identify the man’s face. Perhaps only the resemblance to Rudi teased his memory. But he thought not. He had seen this man’s photograph elsewhere, in K Section’s files, perhaps, or in some faded dossier in Paris, at the Deuxieme Bureau’s headquarters. But he could not be certain.

There was no sign of Bergmann’s chart in the rucksack.

It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could be on Rudi’s person. Durell felt irritated by the restraints placed upon him both by Colonel K’Ayub and Sarah. He started to rise— and something gently pricked the nape of his neck. A shadow had fallen across him, cast by someone standing between him and the firelight.

“You are curious, Mr. Durell?”

It was Rudi. He had not been in his sleeping bag; the bag had been made up to imitate the shape of a sleeping man.

Durell moved carefully. A long hunting knife was in Rudi’s hand, and the man’s face was inscrutable, shadowed by the dying campfire.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Rudi asked.

“Who is Uncle Franz?”

“A relative. A man I much admired. But he is dead, long ago.” Rudi gestured to the open rucksack. “I trust you are satisfied?”

“Not quite. I think you and I have much to settle.”

“I do not know what you suspect, or what you talk about.”

“I think you do. Soon we will come to a time when you will be frank about it.”

Rudi put his knife away and smiled. “We are men of the world, you and I. We need not be enemies. You still suspect me in poor little Jane King’s death, do you not?” His voice hardened suddenly. “Did you speak to Sarah about it? Is this why she has been upset today?”

“What did you do with Bergmann’s chart, Rudi?”

“You think I have it in my bag? You must be insane.”

“What did you do with it?”

“You speak in riddles. I have nothing more to say.”

Durell gave it up.

The camp seemed to sleep again. Rudi went back to his sleeping bag. Durell returned to his own and waited for half an hour. Then he moved to the rear of one of the trucks and pulled Alessa’s rucksack from those on the tailboard. But he only got as far as unbuckling the straps, when he was again interrupted. This time it was Sarah Standish.

“I’ve been watching you, Sam.” She stood fully clothed, ready for the night march. Her hair was tied with a small ribbon, and she wore a quilted jacket over slacks and boots. “What are you doing with Alessa’s things?”

“Looking for Bergmann’s chart,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know if Alessa has it, but I think Rudi knows where it is. He might have given it to her.”

“Are you accusing my fiance of being a spy or a murderer?”

He looked directly at her. “Yes. I am.”

Her face was pale, blank. How much did she really know about Jane King? How much was she willing to overlook? A woman like Sarah, in love for the first time, could be blindly irrational to protect what would seem most precious to her. He said, “Sarah, did Rudi give you anything to hold for him, last night in ’Pindi?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Before I got back from Qissa Khani—when you claimed you were with him all that day—did he turn something over to you for safekeeping?”

She said dimly, “He was not with me all the time. I lied to you, and I think you know why.”

“All right. Did he give you an envelope, or a chart?”

“He gave me a packet of maps, yes,” she whispered. “Did you examine them?”

“No.”

“Where are they now?”

She gestured to Alessa’s rucksack. “I gave them to Alessa to return to Rudi. I couldn’t speak to him about it, after you—after you told me what you suspected about him. They may still be here.”

“We’ll see,” Durell said grimly.

Her voice was dull. “Sam, if what you suspect is true—” “I think you know it is,” he said harshly. “But I think there is someone else—someone who was here in ’Pindi when Alessa, Bergmann and Hans came down off S-5 the first time. Someone who worked with Rudi before. It’s the only reason I don’t step on your fiance right now.”

She said nothing, and he turned angrily back to Alessa’s rucksack. But once again he was interrupted—this time by Hans. For a camp that seemed to be asleep, he thought in frustration, everyone in it was restless enough.

Hans put a huge hand on Alessa’s pack.

“You will not touch anything that belongs to Fraulein Alessa, Herr Durell.”

“I thought you were asleep, Hans.”

“I do not sleep when Alessa is in danger. We are all in danger here. You, especially, Herr Durell.”

“From you, Hans?”

The man scowled; his deep-set eyes were sullen and angry. “You have taken something from me, I think, that I wanted for a long time. However, we shall see which of us comes back from S-5.”

But then Colonel K’Ayub stalked over to the truck. Durell gave up his effort to examine the others’ belongings. K’Ayub ordered everyone ready for the march, to slip from the Emir’s men to the ridge above. He spoke with hard authority. When the others scattered, moving silently in the starlight, Durell told K’Ayub what he had tried to do.

The colonel looked grave. “If someone has the chart and it travels with us, what can we complain of? He—or she— will be alone against us all. We can watch and wait. My only mission is to verify Herr Bergmann’s discovery of nickel ore, for my government. If successful, a simple radio message will bring a division of troops to hold the frontier. Such a move will naturally be considered an aggressive act by our neighbors to the north. And my government does not wish to tweak the tiger’s tail without good cause. If the flags Bergmann used to mark the ore site are still there, the international difficulties will be worth the trouble. Our objective will be to occupy the area first, and I will brook no interference in this aim.”

“Your goal is mine, too,” Durell agreed. “But someone among us is a traitor—possibly two.”

“Then let us give our enemies every chance to show their intention. That is my decision, Mr. Durell. And I am in command here.”

They marched in double file up the gorge that led north from Lake Mohseri. The route was always upward. A thin moon arose to shine on the twin peaks of S-5, soaring with white slopes against the night. A rough trail provided clear footing for the first two hours. The pines grew scrubby, and often the party was strung out for some distance across exposed rocky slopes. The women did not complain at the forced pace. Now and then Durell dropped back to talk with one or the other.

There was no sign of pursuit from the Mirandhabad troops. Looking back through a narrow defile, Durell glimpsed the sheen of moonlight on the distant lake far below. A few minarets gleamed silvery in the strange mountain light. Then a growth of pine and scrub oak cut off the view, and he did not see either the lake or the town again.

He sat with Alessa at a ten-minute break shortly before dawn. She stared straight ahead, refusing a cigarette, huddled in her fleece-lined coat, her face partly hidden under the folds of her hood.

She said abruptly, “I do not have what you were looking for, Sam. I cannot tell you what I did with it. That night in Rawalpindi gives you no right to ask that I betray anyone.”

“Then you know something that might betray Rudi?”

“I did not say that.”

“Alessa, you’re thinking the same things I do, about Jane King and Ernst Bergmann, and wondering if your brother—”

“No,” she said sharply. “Rudi is all the family left to me. He must be protected—saved, if you like. When you spend your life in history, you come to value a sense of continuity in man. Family, too, represents such continuity. The survival of a name, a blood line, always in the last analysis rests with the individual.”

“At any cost? And even if the individual is unworthy?”

“I cannot judge that. I simply deny your suspicions. I refuse to believe you are right.” She turned to look at him. “I am sorry, Sam, for many things. But you and I are too different.”

The ten-minute rest period was over. They got up to march again.

At dawn a light rain fell again. They stopped for breakfast in a rocky, treeless area shrouded in mist. Tumbled peaks loomed in vast, ghostly shapes all around them. The wind breathed of snow and ice in the upper altitudes ahead. K’Ayub’s men quickly set up canvas shelters, pegged against a sheer rock wall that soared out of sight in the clouds above. Other troopers fanned out ahead and to the rear to cover the line of march.

They had lost the Pakhustis, it seemed, by the simple ruse of the night march. Then Zalmadar, K’Ayub’s Pathan servant, returned from scouting the trail ahead, speaking earnestly to the colonel.

K’Ayub turned to Durell. “We have a problem ahead. The trail goes down a sheer rock face a mile to the north. Zalmadar says that dynamite charges were set off some time ago and destroyed the path cut into the rock. We cannot go around it. Our route offers no alternatives. But perhaps Hans Steicher can show us how to bridge the gap.”

“Any sign of who sabotaged the trail?” Durell asked.

K’Ayub shrugged. “The Emir’s men—or perhaps a Chinese patrol—although this is pretty far over the border, even for them.”

They went ahead to look at the trail. The gorge that cut across their way had to be descended and then climbed on the other side. The path that led down was shattered in several places, with gaps of more than twenty feet across. Below was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet.

Hans knew his business. From his pack he took a handful of steel spikes and a hammer and began to climb across the first gap like a huge fly clinging to an impossible rock face. With the hammer, he drove in the spikes at regular intervals. Yet it seemed inevitable that he would slip and fall. Durell stood beside Alessa on the path, watching. Her face was pale, watching the big man, her eyes never leaving his labored progress.

By carefully selecting small cracks in the stone face and driving home a series of pitons as hand grips, the big man swung across the first gap in a matter of twenty minutes. He waved to them, went on down the narrow path to the next, and went through the same procedure, trailing the climbing rope behind him to fashion a series of safety holds. The rain increased, and the wind thundered in violence around the rock pinnacles. The troopers waited, with Zalmadar belaying Hans’ climbing rope at the edge of the gorge. Finally, Hans Steicher signalled the others to follow.

The colonel went first, using the nylon line, his legs occasionally dangling over the dizzy drop below. He made it with what seemed to be comparative ease. Half the troopers then followed. Rudi and Sarah Standish went next, and Durell was interested to see that Sarah showed no fear. Alessa, a fine climber in her own right, covered the stretch of perilous path in a few, easy moments.

Durell followed.

The first gap wasn’t difficult, using the pitons. And the second. On the third, close to the end, one of the spikes suddenly ripped free of the crumbling gneiss and he dropped violently into space.

Even as he fell, he whipped the nylon rope around his wrist. The other end was belayed by Hans, who had stood on monolithic strength to anchor the passage of the others across the abyss. Durell swung in a short, savage arc against the brink at the other end of the path; he twisted, got his legs up and flexed his knees to break the impact with his booted feet. The nylon rope stretched, bouncing him back in a spin. The misty sky and wet rocks far below turned giddily under him. Pain shot through his arm and shoulder. He looked up, turning helplessly on the rope. Some of the troopers were shouting in alarm. Their voices had a curious, echoing quality in the misty chasm. He saw the heads of K’Ayub and Alessa peering down at him. He looked at Hans Steicher.

The big man was braced, holding the climbing axe he had jammed into the yielding gneiss to belay the rope that kept Durell from dropping to his death. There was no slackening. The line could have been anchored in steel, as Hans began to pull him up.

It was a laborious effort, with quick disaster waiting for any slip. Durell caught a grip with his left hand on the line and slowly walked his way up the rough face of the cliff. Hans pulled at the same time, allowing no slack in the rope. The man’s face was grim. It seemed forever before Durell looked over the top edge of the path that was his goal. K’Ayub reached down and offered a hand. He shook his head and hauled again and Hans gave one more heave that brought his knees and then his booted feet onto solid ground again.

Durell drew a deep breath and looked into Hans’ eyes.

“Thank you.”

Hans was unsmiling, his enmity still unabated. “Next time,” he said softly, “I may not be able to belay in time. Perhaps you will fall again—later.”

No one else heard the remark. Was it a threat? Durell wondered. A promise of destruction later, when it was safer to accomplish? He did not know. He walked on, to join the others.

They paused for an hour on the opposite side of the gorge, then marched on all day, with regular halts for rest. The rain did not stop, except to give way in the late afternoon to a cold, penetrating fog that seemed to crawl right into their parkas. Once they came to a small village of Hunzas and were ferried across a rushing tributary of the Indus on an ancient wooden barge. They camped that night at a stupa, a small Buddha figure, centuries old, erected long ago by travelers on the trail they followed. But there were no recent offerings in evidence at the shrine.

The second day the ascent was an average of 40 degrees, a steady climb that demanded long traversing techniques, more ferrying across icy glacial streams, and once they fashioned a rope handrail to ford a smaller river, wading chest-deep in the frigid water melted from the ice of the mountains ahead. They camped again in an abandoned monastery that seemed like a miracle in the stony wilderness. No fires were permitted now. They ate cold rations, used their sleeping bags on the stone floor of the crumbling Buddhist building. K’Ayub set out his routine pickets. They all slept in a huddle on the cold common floor of the ruins.