Assignment - Karachi (22 page)

“For what?”

“I want your opinion on something.”

“You and I have no need for words,” the man said flatly.

“We have need of each other’s skill and strength. Come.” Hans was reluctant to take his arm from around Alessa, and did so with surprising gentleness. His eyes softened, and a small smile touched his hard mouth. She did not waken. He slid away from her slowly and stood, towering the gloomy light shed by the single battery lamp.

They walked together toward the cave entrance. The man’s enmity was like a cold wall around him. At the point where the path angled sharply right, the cave roof yielded and a glimpse of midnight stars was available high up between the jagged opening of the cliffs.

There was no other source of light. A cold wind blew into the fissure from the mouth of the fault, a hundred feet away. Durell looked up at the towering rock walls and Hans followed his gaze and grunted.

“It is impossible,” Steicher said softly.

“How high do you estimate it?” Durell asked.

“Three hundred and fifty—possibly four hundred. And we do not know what is above us.”

Durell said quietly, “But if we got up there, we’d know what is below. Rudi’s men, the Pakhustis—and perhaps the Chinese. They’re certainly not up there. We’d get on their flank; we could surprise them.”

“It is suicide    to    try,” Hans said flatly.

“It is suicide    to    stay here, isn’t it?”

Hans tilted his head back to stare at the looming walls. “It cannot be done. See, the face of the rock tilts in, leans to each other to meet over the cave. Farther out, it opens more—but we would be under fire out there.”

“It has to be done here,” Durell said.

“I am a man, not a fly.”

“They told me you’re the best
bergsteiger
in the world,” Durell said. “Are you afraid?”

“Nothing frightens me,” Hans said soberly. “I am intimate enough with death. I have been trapped in snow, buried in an avalanche; I have fallen and dangled by my ankle in two thousand feet of air. Do not tell me I am afraid.” Hans looked to right and left; but the darkness was so thick that Durell wondered what he could see. “I considered this before, Herr Durell. The same idea occurred to me. If we could climb out to the top and then flank those people outside, we could take them by surprise and destroy them, yes. But I would not want to try it.”

“Because you still feel Rudi is your friend?”

“No, he is not my friend. But he is Alessa’s brother, and there are remarkably strong, strange ties between them. Could I kill him, if we succeeded in getting out of here? It would kill everything for me, with Alessa, too.”

“Ask her, first,” Durell urged.

“No. It is madness to try such a climb, in the darkness, the way the wall leans outward. It would need two men for the first climb. Afterward, with a belayed rope, we could lift up some of the soldiers and their weapons. But it would take two men to climb first.”

Durell said, “I’ll try it with you, Hans.”

Surprise stirred the man’s dark body. “I have sworn an oath to myself.” Hans paused, sighed. “You know what it is? I promised myself that I would kill you.”

“Because of Alessa?”

“Yes, because of her.”

“I don’t care what you feel about me, Hans. But we must get out of here. I’ll try the climb with you, and take my chances on what you might do.”

Hans was silent for a moment. “You are either a brave man or a great fool. Do not trust me, Herr Durell.”

“I don’t. But perhaps I’m a little of both.”

Hans moved toward the wall. He was a huge shadow in the darkness at the bottom of the pit. The cave entrance was silent, and Durell wondered why the harassing sniper fire had been discontinued. He drew a deep breath.

“Hans, you can do it,” he said. “I’m sure you can.” -“We will both fall. We will both be killed.”

“You said you were not afraid.”

“True. But some things are impossible.”

“Right now we have to try the impossible. If I could go alone, I would,” Durell argued. “But I need your help. No one but you could climb this wall. You could save us. When the Chinese come, we’re finished. It must be tried now, at once, in the dark, before dawn comes.”

He sensed the inner struggle going on inside Hans. The man’s solid devotion to Alessa had existed for many years, since their days at the Sorbonne. She had always rejected him. And Durell was sure that Hans knew about the night in Rawalpindi. The man hated him for gaining so quickly what he had always wanted. Yet his love for Alessa was unchanged, except that it was balanced by the hatred he equated with Durell. Hans might be as good as his word and try to kill him. But that was a risk he had to take.

They were enemies, but for the next few hours, they had to help each other at the risk of instant death.

“All right,” Hans said suddenly. “It is the only way out. We will try it. But I can promise you nothing.”

Hans had carried several coils of nylon climbing rope with him when they first entered the cave. They gathered these, together with Steicher’s pitons and hammer. Each added an ice axe, sheathed in leather, to his gear. Colonel K’Ayub watched their preparations dubiously.

“No man can climb out of here. It is impossible. You will make noises, dislodge stones, and be shot down from the outside.”

“You can cover us with some irregular fire from your guards.”

“We do not have much ammunition to spare.”

“You couldn’t use it to better advantage,” Durell argued.

K’Ayub gave in. Alessa spoke to Hans in a quiet, earnest voice as the big man gathered up his equipment. Now and then she looked toward Durell, and he knew she was trying to convince Hans about something concerning him. Hans stolidly went on with his preparations.

It was one o’clock before they were ready. Hans threw one coil of rope over his shoulder and Durell took the other. Then they moved out of the cave and around the corner of the fissure until they could see the stars through the crack in the mountain overhead. The walls, leaning inward, looked impossible to scale. But Hans felt his way along the north side, then the south, taking his time. The faint starlight that sifted down offered little guidance. Hans returned to the north wall, moving sidewise and outward toward the entrance. They were dangerously near the point where the Pakhusti snipers might reach them. And the higher they climbed, the more exposed they would be.

“We will try here,” Hans announced in a whisper.

He had found a fault in the otherwise sheer rock face that leaned over them, a rough chimney, perhaps two feet wide. Hans reached up for a grip and lifted himself with a handhold, braced his shoulders against one side of the narrow cleft in the rock, flexed his legs against the other. A few pebbles dislodged by his ascent clattered loudly to the ground. One of K’Ayub’s men promptly fired three rapid rounds out of the fissure entrance, into the night.

Hans called softly from above. “Come.”

Durell followed, using Hans’ technique. The first few feet were not difficult, except for the blinding darkness. Hans paused overhead, then went on. The chimney narrowed, then angled sharply left to form a narrow ledge that gave only a few inches for a toehold. Only occasionally could Durell see the man above him. On the ledge, he felt the vast pressure of the rock wall, tending to push him outward.

—The force that thrust at his sense of balance seemed irresistible. He paused for a few moments.

Hans called softly again.

“Wait.”

The click of his hammer driving a spike into the rock made the troopers unleash another series of shots to cover the noise. The echoes were deafening in the narrow slot of rock. There came another series of hammer blows, a long pause, a grunt. A white snake of nylon rope flicked down and lightly grazed Durell’s cheek.

“Climb,” came Hans’ disembodied voice.

Durell lashed the line around himself and hauled upward. He gained another fifteen feet, felt another ledge under his knee, and hoisted himself up on it. Hans waited for him here. At their backs, a bulge of rock pressed outward and overhead, cutting off their progress.

“It is impossible,” Hans whispered. “It cannot be done.”

“We’ve got to go on.”

“The overhang is too great. It affords no grip.”

“Try it.”

“Well—” The big man sighed, a shapeless form in the dark. “We must belay ourselves. If I slip, if one of the pitons gives way, I go down. I doubt if you could hold me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Hans made a sound in his throat. “Perhaps you would.”

They went on. The big man was methodical, agonizingly slow. The next twenty feet took almost an hour. They had climbed less than a fifth of the way during the first seventy minutes. The top, where the stars shone in cold glimmerings, seemed as unattainable as ever.

As each spike for a handgrip was used, Durell withdrew it and passed it on up to the man above. His muscles ached and trembled with the tension. He shed his coat for greater ease of movement, dropping it to the ground below. There was a small cry down there when it thudded down. He thought the sound came from Alessa, expecting the worst. Hans, too, tossed his hampering clothes aside. They no longer

felt the chill of the thin mountain air. Their bodies were covered with sweat.

Another hour passed. They could see each other now, as they crawled upward inch by inch, gripping with fingers and toes, panting and probing and testing for every step upward. The darkness yawned below. The stars seemed brighter overhead. Now and then, an occasional burst of fire from the troopers below covered the sounds they made.

At any moment they could be spotted. Another flare, tossed into the cave entrance, would expose them like flies on a wall. But none came. Everything was silent outside. Were the Pakhustis trying to entice them into probing out of the trap, so they could be mowed down? It was a cold war of nerves, and Durell knew his own tension was matched by the uncertainties of those he had left beneath.

They were halfway up when they came to the widest ledge. It had been invisible from below, in the dark, and for several minutes, following its upward slant, Durell began to hope for quick success. And then Hans paused.

“It is no good,” he gasped.

“Why not?”

“Everything ends here.”

In the dim starlight, Durell saw the dismaying prospect. The ledge terminated abruptly, and where they had halted, crouching, it was only eight inches wide. But overhead, a heavy bulge of rock pushed outward for five feet into space and presented an impossible obstacle to their climb. To go back and retrace their way for another route would be suicidal. But they could go no farther, either.

Hans breathed gustily, feeling his way upward. A small rivulet of shale fell from his fingers, followed by the covering burst of fire from below.

“If we could climb another ten feet, I think it would be easier. I have a feeling we were deceived from below by this bulge,” Hans gasped. “The rock will slant back above, if we can get past this.”

“We must try,” Durell said.

Hans turned his face toward him. It was pale and hard in the gloom. “I have never tried anything so dangerous.” “We have nothing more to lose,” Durell said.

“I would depend on your strength and skill. How can I trust you?”

“I’ve trusted you so far, haven’t I?”

“I wonder,” Hans said. “I do not understand you.”

“Go ahead,” Durell urged. “Let’s do what we can.”

There was no real alternative. Hans belayed one of the safety ropes and then spent ten minutes searching overhead for tiny cracks in which to insert his pitons and tap them home. They provided an extra handhold for Durell to cling to the tiny ledge. When he thought of the drop below, a wave of dizziness touched him; he put it from his mind. Hans reached upward cautiously, against the outward thrust of rock and tapped home another grip for himself. Clinging to his first iron, he reached another two feet against the rock underside and drove home a third. The sound of his hammer echoed loudly in the black air. With his left hand gripping the second piton, Hans then reached for the farthermost thrust of the overhang. He leaned at an angle over the abyss now, struggling for a new grip. His right hand drove home a last iron, then, with his left securing his weight against the drop, he hammered it in securely.

Durell knew what had to follow. Hans must swing out, feet free, and haul himself up and over the bulge by sheer physical strength. It would take steel nerves, a lifetime of skill.

The man’s breathing was harsh.

“Now!” he whispered.

He swung, gripping the outermost iron with his left hand, dangling in the dark air two hundred feet above the fissure floor. His body jerked, heaved upward, pulled by the immense strength of his arms. The upper half of his body slid up and out of view beyond the overhang—

It was a fault of the rock, perhaps. Or Hans had underestimated the force and pressure of his upward swing to get above the rock bulge. Whatever the reason, there came a grating sound, a spill of crumbling stone, and Hans fell abruptly, the piton wrenched loose from its socket.

There was nothing to stop him except the rope belayed around Durell.

Almost any other man would have cried out in that moment, shrieking a negative to his imminent death.

Hans fell silently.

The jolting impact tore Durell’s left hand loose from one of the two grips Hans had prepared for him. He felt an instant of utmost pressure, yanking him out and down after the big man’s falling weight. Pain flashed through his arms and shoulders and down his body. There came a second jolt as Hans bounced with the spring of the nylon rope.

Durell was pulled perilously outward, clinging to his last grip, his feet braced against the tiny shelf under him.

Hans swayed back and forth over the abyss. And even now he did not call out to betray their presence to the enemy outside the cave.

The enormous pull on Durell’s arm seemed impossible to overcome. Carefully he swung to one side, then the other, reaching with his left hand for the grip he had lost. At the third try, his fingers touched the piton, slipped, and fell away again. He swung once more, caught the steel spike, pulled himself flat against the cold face of the rock. The climbing rope around him tore and wrenched with Hans’ weight below. He did not move again. It was up to Hans to climb up once more.