The Black Mountain (6 page)

Neither have I. He put his glass down and took his watch from his vest pocket.

It’s half-past seven, and I’m empty. I’ll see what’s in the kitchen. He arose and went for the door through which Telesio had gone for the wine and almonds. I followed. It certainly would not have qualified as a kitchen with the Woman’s Home Companion or Good Housekeeping, but there was an electric stove with four units, and the pots and pans on hooks were clean and bright. Wolfe was opening cupboard doors and muttering something to himself about tin cans and civilization. I asked if I could help, and he said no, so I went and got my bag and opened it, got the necessary articles for a personal hour in a bathroom, and then realized that I hadn’t seen one. However, there was one, upstairs. There was no hot water. An apparatus in the corner was probably a water heater, but the instructions riveted to it needed a lot of words, and rather than call Wolfe to come up and decode, I made out without it. The cord of my electric shaver wouldn’t plug into the outlet, and even if it had fitted there was no telling what it might do to the circuit, so I used my scraper. When I went back downstairs the living room was dark, but I made it to the windows and got the curtains over them before turning on the lights. In the kitchen I found Wolfe concentrated on cuisine, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, under a bright light from a ceiling fixture, and the window bare. I had to mount a chair to arrange the curtain so there were no cracks, after making a suitable remark.

We ate at a little table in the kitchen. Of course there was no milk, and Wolfe said he wouldn’t recommend the water from the faucet, but I took a chance on it.

He stuck to wine. There was just one item on the menu, dished by him out of a pot. After three mouthfuls I asked him what it was. A pasta called tagliarini,

he said, with anchovies, tomato, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper from the cupboard, sweet basil and parsley from the garden, and Romano cheese from a hole in the ground. I wanted to know how he had found a hole in the ground, and he said - offhand, as if it were nothing - by his memory of local custom. Actually he was boiling with pride, and by the time I got up to dish my third helping I was willing to grant him all rights to it. While I washed up and put away, Wolfe went upstairs with his bag. When he came down again to the living room he stood and looked around to see if someone had brought a chair his size during his absence, discovered none, went to the couch and sat, and drew in air clear down to the tagliarini he had swallowed.

Have we made up our mind'I inquired.

Yes.

That’s good. Which of the three did we pick'

None. I’m going to Montenegro, but not as myself. My name is Tone Stara, and I’m from Galichnik. You have never heard of Galichnik.

Right.

It is a village hanging to a mountain near the top, just over the border from Albania in Serbia, which is a part of Yugoslavia. It is forty miles southeast of Cetinje and the Black Mountain, and it is famous. For eleven months of each year only women live there - no men but a few in their dotage - and young boys. It has been that way for centuries. When the Turks seized Serbia more than five hundred years ago, groups of partisans in the lowlands fled to the mountains with their families, thinking the Turks would soon be driven out. But the Turks stayed, and as the years passed, the refugees, who had established a village on a crag and named it Galichnik, realized the hopelessness of wresting a living from the barren rocks. Some of the men, skilled craftsmen, started the practice of going to other lands, working for most of a year, and returning each July to spend a month at home with their women and children. The practice became universal with the men of Galichnik, and they have followed it for five centuries. Masons and stonecutters from Galichnik worked on the Escorial in Spain and the palaces at Versailles. They have worked on the Mormon Temple in Utah, the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, the Empire State Building in New York,

the Dnieperstroi in Russia. He joined his fingertips. So I am Tone Stara of Galichnik. I am one of the few who one July did not return - many years ago. I have been many places, including the United States. Finally I became homesick and curious. What was happening to my birthplace, Galichnik, perched on the border between Tito’s Yugoslavia and Russia’s puppet Albania'I was eaten by a desire to see and to know, and I returned. The answer was not in Galichnik.

There were no men there, and the women suspected me and feared me and wouldn’t even tell me where the men were. I wanted to learn and to judge, as between Tito and the Russians, and between them both and certain persons of whom I had vaguely heard, persons who were calling themselves champions of freedom. So I made my way north through the mountains, a hard rocky way, and here I am in Montenegro, determined to find out where the truth is and who deserves my hand.

I assert my right to ask questions so I may choose my side. He turned his palms up. And I ask questions.

Uh-huh. I wasn’t enthusiastic. I don’t. I can’t.

I know you can’t. Your name is Alex.

Oh. It is.

It is if you go with me. There are good reasons why it would be better for you to stay here, but confound it, you’ve been too close to me too long. I’m too dependent on you. However, the decision is yours. I don’t claim the right to drag you into a predicament of mortal hazard and doubtful outcome.

Yeah. I’m not very crazy about the name Alex. Why Alex'

We can choose another. It might not increase the risk of exposure for you to keep Archie, and that would make one less demand on our vigilance. You are my son, born in the United States. I must ask you to suffer that presumption because no lesser tie would justify my hauling you back to Galichnik with me.

You are an only child and your mother died in your infancy. That will reduce the temptation for you to indulge your invention if we meet someone who speaks English. Until recently I repressed all sentiment about my homeland, so I have taught you no Serbo-Croat and no Serbian lore. At one point, while I was cooking, I decided you should be deaf-mute, but changed my mind. It would create more difficulties than it would solve.

It’s an idea, I declared. Why not'I practically am anyway.

No. You would be overheard talking with me.

I suppose so, I conceded reluctantly. I’d like to take a crack at it, but I guess you’re right. Are we going to Galichnik'

Good Heavens, no. There was a time when sixty kilometers through those hills was only a frolic for me, but not now. We’ll go across to a spot I used to know,

or, if time has changed that too, to one that Paolo - The phone rang. I was up automatically, realized I was disqualified, and stood while Wolfe crossed to it and lifted it to his ear. In a moment he spoke, so it was Telesio. After a brief exchange he hung up and turned to me.

Paolo. He has been waiting for Guido to return from an excursion on his boat.

He said he might have to wait until midnight or later. I told him we have decided on a plan and would like to have him come and discuss it. He’s coming.

I sat down. Now about my name …

There are boats and boats. The Queen Elizabeth is a boat. So was the thing I rowed one August afternoon on the lake in Central Park, with Lily Rowan lolling in the stern, to win a bet. Guido Battista’s craft, which took us across the Adriatic, was in between those two but was a much closer relative of the latter than of the former. It was twelve meters long, thirty-nine feet. It had not been thoroughly cleaned since the days when the Romans had used it to hijack spices from Levantine bootleggers, but had been modernized by installing an engine and propeller. One of my occupations en route was trying to figure out exactly where the galley slaves had sat, but it was too much for me. We shoved off at three P.M. Monday, the idea being to land on the opposite shore at midnight or not long after. That seemed feasible until I saw the Cispadana, which was her name.

To expect that affair to navigate 170 miles of open water in nine hours was so damn fantastic that I could make no adequate remark and so didn’t try. It took her nine hours and twenty minutes. Wolfe and I had stuck to the stuccoed hideout, but it had been a busy night and day for Telesio. After listening to Wolfe’s plan, opposing it on various grounds, and finally giving in because Wolfe wouldn’t, he had gone again for Guido and brought him, and Wolfe and Guido had reached an understanding. Telesio had left with Guido, and I suppose he got a nap somewhere, but before noon Monday he was back with a carload. For me to choose from he had four pairs of pants, three sweaters, four jackets, an assortment of shirts, and five pairs of shoes, and about the same for Wolfe.

They weren’t new, except the shoes, but they were clean and whole. I picked them more for fit than looks, and ended up with a blue shirt, maroon sweater, dark green jacket, and light gray pants. Wolfe was tastier, with yellow, brown, and dark blue. The knapsacks weren’t new either, and none too clean, but we wiped them out and went ahead and packed. At the first try I was too generous with socks and underwear and had to back up and start over. In between roars of laughter, Telesio gave me sound advice: to ditch the underwear entirely, make it two pairs of socks, and cram in all the chocolate it would hold. Wolfe interpreted the advice for me, approved it, and followed suit himself. I had expected another squabble about armament, but quite the contrary. In addition to being permitted to wear the Marley in the holster, I was provided with a Colt .38 that looked like new, and fifty rounds for it. I tried it in my jacket pocket, but it was too heavy, so I shifted it to my hip. I was also offered an eight-inch pointed knife, shiny and sharp, but turned it down. Telesio and Wolfe both insisted, saying there might be a situation where a knife would be much more useful than a gun, and I said not for me because I would be more apt to stick myself than the foe.

If a knife is so useful, I challenged Wolfe, why don’t you take one yourself'

I’m taking two, he replied, and he did. He put one in a sheath on his belt,

and strapped a shorter one to his left leg just below his knee. That gave me a better idea of the kind of party we were going to, since in all the years I had known him he had never borne any weapon but a little gold penknife. The idea was made even clearer when Telesio took two small plastic tubes from his pocket and handed one to Wolfe and one to me. Wolfe frowned at it and asked him something,

and they talked. Wolfe turned to me. He says the capsule inside the tube is a lullaby - a jocose term, I take it, for cyanide. He said for an emergency. I said we didn’t want them. He said that last month some Albanians, Russian agents, had a Montenegrin in a cave on the border for three days and left him there. When his friends found him the joints of all his fingers and toes had been broken, and his eyes had been removed, but he was still breathing. Paolo says he can furnish details of other incidents if we want them. Do you know what to do with a cyanide capsule'

Certainly. Everybody does.

Where are you going to carry it'

My God, give me a chance. I never had one before. Sew it inside my sweater'

Your sweater might be gone.

Tape it under my armpit.

Too obvious. It would be found and taken.

Okay, it’s your turn. Where will you carry yours'

In my handiest pocket. Threatened with seizure and search, in my hand.

Threatened more imminently, the capsule out of the tube and into my mouth. It can be kept in the mouth indefinitely if it is not crushed with the teeth. The case against carrying it there is the risk of being stampeded into using it prematurely.

I’ll take the chance. I put the tube in my pocket.

Anyway, if you did that you’d never know it, so why worry'

The lullabies completed our equipment. It was considered undesirable for Telesio to be seen delivering us at the waterfront, so we said good-by there, with the help of a bottle of wine, and then he took us in the Fiat to the center of town,

let us out, and drove away. We walked a block to a cab stand. I guess we weren’t half as conspicuous as I thought we were, but the people of Bari didn’t have the basis for comparison that I had. To think of Wolfe as I knew him best, seated in his custom-built chair behind his desk, prying the cap from a bottle of beer, a Laeliocattleya Jaquetta sporting four flowers to his left and a spray of Dendrobium nobilius to his right, and then to look at him tramping along in blue pants, yellow shirt, and brown jacket, with a blue sweater hanging over his arm and a bulging old knapsack on his back - I couldn’t help being surprised that nobody turned to stare at him. Also, in that getup, I regarded myself as worth a glance, but none came our way. The hackie showed no sign of interest when we climbed into his cab and Wolfe told him where to go. His attitude toward obstacles was somewhat similar to Telesio’s, but he got us into the old city and through its narrow winding streets to the edge of a wharf without making contact. I paid him and followed Wolfe out, and had my first view of the Cispadana sitting alongside the wharf. Guido, standing there, left a man he was talking to and came to Wolfe. Here where he belonged he looked more probable than in the pink living room. He was tall, thin except his shoulders, and stooped some, and moved like a cat. He had told Wolfe he was sixty years old,

but his long hair was jet black. The hair on his face was gray and raised questions. It was half an inch long. If he never shaved why wasn’t it longer'If he did shave, when'I would have liked to ask him after we got acquainted, but we weren’t communicating. Telesio had said that with the three hundred bucks I had forked over he would take care of everything - our equipment, Guido, and a certain waterfront party - and apparently he had. I don’t know what kind of voyage it was supposed to be officially, but no one around seemed to be interested. A couple of characters stood on the wharf and watched as we climbed aboard, and two others untied us and shoved the bow off when Guido had the engine going and gave the sign, and we slid away. I supposed one or both of them would jump on as we cleared, but they didn’t. Wolfe and I were seated in the cockpit.

Where’s the crew'I asked him. He said Guido was the crew.

Just him'

Yes.

Good God. I’m not a mariner. When the engine quits or something else, who steers'

I do.

Oh. You are a mariner.

I have crossed this sea eighty times. He was working at the buckle of a knapsack strap.

Help me get this thing off. My tongue was ready with a remark about a man of action who had to have help to do off his knapsack, but I thought I’d better save it. If the engine did quit, and a squall hit us, and he saved our lives with a display of masterly seamanship, I’d have to eat it. Nothing happened at all the whole way. The engine was noisy, but that was all right, the point was,

it never stopped being noisy and no squall. Late in the afternoon clouds began coming over from the east, and a light wind started up, but not enough to curl the water. I even took a nap, stretched out on a cockpit seat. A couple of times, when Guido went forward on errands, Wolfe took the wheel, but there was no call for seamanship. The third time was an hour before sundown, and Wolfe went and propped himself on the narrow board, put a hand on the wheel, and was motionless, looking ahead. Looking that way, the water was blue, but looking back, toward the low sun over Italy, it was gray except where the sun’s rays bounced out of it at us. Guido was gone so long that I stepped down into the cabin to see what was up, and found him stirring something in an old black pot on an alcohol stove. I couldn’t ask him what, but a little later I found out,

when he appeared with a pair of battered old plates heaped with steaming spaghetti smothered with sauce. I had been wondering, just to myself, about grub. He also brought wine, naturally, and a tin pail filled with green salad.

It wasn’t quite up to Wolfe’s production the day before, but Fritz himself wouldn’t have been ashamed of the salad dressing, and it was absolutely a meal.

Guido took the wheel while Wolfe and I ate, and then Wolfe went back to it and Guido went to the cabin to eat. He told us he didn’t like to eat in the open air. Having smelled the inside of the cabin, I could have made a comment but didn’t. By the time he came out it was getting dark, and he lighted the running lights before he went back to the wheel. The clouds had scattered around, so there were spaces with stars, and Guido began to sing and kept it up. With all the jolts I had had the past two days, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Wolfe had joined in, but he didn’t.

It had got pretty chilly, and I took off my jacket, put on the sweater, and put the jacket back on. I asked Wolfe if he didn’t want to do the same, and he said no, he would soon be warming up with exercise. A little later he asked what time it was, my wristwatch having a luminous dial, and I told him ten past eleven.

Suddenly the engine changed its tune, slowing down, and I thought uhhuh, I knew it, but it kept going, so evidently Guido had merely throttled down. Soon after that he spoke to Wolfe, and Wolfe went to the wheel while Guido went to douse the lights and then returned to his post. There wasn’t a glimmer anywhere on the boat. I stood up to look ahead, and I have damn good eyes, but I had just decided that if there should be anything ahead I wouldn’t see it anyway, when I saw something pop up to shut off a star.

I turned to Wolfe. This is Guide’s boat, and he’s running it, but we’re headed straight for something big.

Certainly we are. Montenegro.

I looked at my watch. Five after twelve. Then we’re on time'

Yes. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. Will you please help me with this thing'

I went and helped him on with his knapsack and then got mine on. After a little the engine changed tune again, slower and much quieter. The thing ahead was a lot higher and had spread out at the sides, and it kept going up. When it was nearly on top of us Guido left the wheel, ran in and killed the engine, came out and glided around the cabin to the bow, and in a moment there was a big splash.

He came gliding back and untied the ropes that lashed the dinghy to the stern. I helped him turn the dinghy over, and we slid it into the water and pulled it alongside. This maneuver had been discussed on the way over, and Wolfe had informed me of the decision. On account of the displacement of Wolfe’s weight,

it would be safer for Guido to take him ashore first and come back for me, but that would take an extra twenty minutes and there was an outside choice That one of Tito’s coastguard boats would happen along, and if it did, not only would Guido lose his boat but also he would probably never see Italy again. So we were to make it in one trip.

Guido held the dinghy in, and I took Wolfe’s arm to steady him as he climbed over the side, but he shook it off, made it fairly neatly, and lowered himself in the stern. I followed and perched on the bow. Guido stepped down in the middle, light as a feather, shipped the oars, and rowed. He muttered something,

and Wolfe spoke to me in an undertone. We have twelve centimeters above the water amidship - about five inches. Don’t bounce.

Aye, aye, sir.

Guide’s oars were as smooth as velvet, making no sound at all in the water and only a faint squeak in the rowlocks, which were just notches in the gunwale.

As I was riding backward in the bow - and not caring to twist around for a look,

under the circumstances - the news that we had made it came to me from Wolfe,

not much above a whisper - Your left hand, Archie. The rock.

I saw no rock, but in a second there it was at my elbow, a level slab a foot above the gunwale. Flattening my palm on its surface, I held us in and eased us along until Guido could reach it too. Following the briefing I had been given, I climbed out, stretched out on the rock on my belly, extended a hand for Guido to moor to, and learned that he had a healthy grip. As we kept the dinghy snug to the rock, Wolfe engineered himself up and over and was towering above me. Guido released his grip and shoved off, and the dinghy disappeared into the night. I scrambled to my feet.

I had been told not to talk, so I whispered, I’m turning on my flashlight.

No.

We’ll tumble in sure as hell.

Keep close behind me. I know every inch of this. Here, tie this to my sack. I took his sweater, passed a sleeve under the straps, and knotted it with the other sleeve. He moved across the slab of rock, taking it easy, and I followed.

Since I was three inches taller I could keep straight behind and still have a view ahead, though it wasn’t much of a view, with the only light from some scattered stars. We stepped off the level slab onto another that sloped up, and then onto one that sloped down. Then we started up again, with loose coarse gravel underfoot instead of solid rock. When it got steeper Wolfe slowed up, and stopped now and then to get his breath. I wanted to warn him that he could be heard breathing for half a mile and therefore we might as well avoid a lot of stumbles by using a light, but decided it would be bad timing. The idea was to get as far inland as possible before daylight, because we were supposed to have come north through the mountains from Galichnik, and then west toward Cetinje,