The Ice Soldier (17 page)

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Authors: Paul Watkins

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BOOK: The Ice Soldier
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I raced across the courtyard, threadbare tie flapping around my neck.
Five minutes later, I emerged from the storage closet, spiffed out in my standard change, to find Dr. Webb standing in the classroom.
He was so out of place that for a moment I couldn't recall who he was. “Hello again,” I said, once I had remembered.
“Sorry to keep dropping in on you like this.” Webb peered around the classroom, taking in the various maps on the walls and names scrawled on the blackboard.
“Peloponnesian War, is it?” he asked.
“That's right,” I said hurriedly. “Athens, Sparta. Lots of blood and treachery. The students seem to like it.” I glanced not very subtly at my watch. “You've caught me at a bit of a bad time. I've actually got to go, I'm afraid.”
“Ah, of course. Then I suppose I should get right to it.” He reached into the chest pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “I have a message for you,” he said.
“From whom?” I started walking for the door.
“From Henry Carton.” He held out the letter. “The late Henry Carton, I should say. Perhaps you would like to read it.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“I assure you it is not.” By now the letter was quivering slightly in his grasp. “I found this letter on his body. It contains a request. Several requests, actually, one of which concerns you.”
I heard the sound of running in the courtyard and saw a couple of junior teachers dashing past, doing up their ties as they went. I turned back to Webb. “Why didn't you tell me when you came by yesterday?”
“Because I needed to speak to you in private.”
“Look, Dr. Webb, can this wait a bit? I've got to be at a meeting in about three minutes.”
“No,” he said. “It really can't wait.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “What are these requests?”
“Carton asked that his body be embalmed.”
“Embalmed? What? Like an Egyptian mummy?” I laughed. “Well, I can't help you with that! My knowledge of history doesn't go back further than the Greeks.”
“No.” Webb smiled faintly. “That is what he asked of me. It's what he asked of you that I am here about.”
By now I should have been arriving at the headmaster's chambers, leaving me just enough time to take my seat between Higgins and Houseman before the headmaster breezed in and shut the door behind him. “Look, I've got to go. Otherwise …”
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise I'm done for! The headmaster—”
Webb cut me off. “What I have to explain to you is that Henry Carton wants his body to be placed in a sealed metal coffin and transported to the Alps”—and here he paused—“by you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “But there must be funeral directors who can transport bodies overseas. I'm sure it happens all the time.”
“It's a little more complicated than just transporting him, Mr. Bromley. He would like his body taken to the top of Carton's Rock.”
Just then, I heard the school bell ring. Now the headmaster would leave his study, walk down the green-carpeted corridor to the side door of his chambers, which was his own private entrance. He would complete this little journey by the time the clock struck four. Then the main doors would be closed. Attendance would be taken. The meeting would begin.
As the last bell died away, I felt my heart sink. “Oh, God,” I muttered. “The headmaster is going to ring my neck.”
“I'm sure that your headmaster, like Carton himself, has complete confidence in your abilities. The only sticking point for Carton was whether Stanley would be up to the task.”
I stared at Webb. “You mean he wants Stanley to do this as well?”
Webb nodded.
“Well, you can stop right there!” I shouted and did not care that I was shouting. “Stanley wouldn't sign up for a job like this. Not in a million years.”
Webb looked confused. “Actually, he's already agreed to do it.”
I felt the breath catch in my throat. At first I couldn't believe it. But then I understood. “He's trying to impress that woman is all! He won't do it! He'll find some excuse. He's good at that.”
“In the event that this falls through,” continued Webb, “Henry Carton will be cremated and his ashes scattered in the Thames off Waterloo Bridge.”
I thought about the ashes, the million flecks of gray sinking into that greasy brown tide, joining with all the nameless Celts and Romans and Vikings and Normans whose bones lay crumbling in its mud, and the now-tarnished brass of Stanley's ON WAR SERVICE badge, which he had thrown from that same
bridge into the water years ago. To insist upon such an anonymous and undignified finale was, for Carton, as much of a statement as being dragged to the top of a mountain. He had made this an all-or-nothing proposition.
“You would be setting off as soon as your teaching duties are completed for the term,” continued Webb. “That's in about two weeks, isn't it?”
“One week actually. Exams begin tomorrow.”
“According to the letter,” Webb continued, “you would need to get up the mountain before the first snow falls, which I'm told might happen as early as September. Carton has provided a small budget, as much as he could afford, so you will be able to hire a few guides. If all goes well, you could be back by the end of the summer.” Now he paced across the classroom and came to a stop in front of the window which looked out onto the courtyard. “In the event that you are successful, Stanley is to be placed in charge of his own inheritance. Otherwise, the bank is to dispense it in the same amounts as he is currently receiving, which I gather Stanley does not consider adequate.”
“And me?” I asked.
He glanced back. “Nothing,” he said. “Not a penny.”
“Why should I do this?” I demanded. “Give me one good reason.”
“I can't,” he replied. “I am only delivering the message. Perhaps Mr. Carton thought you knew the answer for yourself.”
We stepped outside the classroom and I walked Dr. Webb to the school gates, where a car was waiting for him.
Webb got into the car, then rolled down the window and handed me his card. “I need to have your answer by the end of tomorrow. I can't hold things off any longer than that. You can
telephone me at my office.” Then his car sped off, joining the streams of traffic heading in and out of the city.
When he was out of sight, I took the old tin from my pocket, ready to roll myself a smoke. But a sudden gust of wind tipped it out of my grasp. The tin landed with a clatter on the road. Crumbs of tobacco and the rolling papers spilled out. Quickly, I bent down to pick them up, but the breeze got to them first and swept them away.
Without thinking, I ran out into the road, chasing the little bits of paper. It was only when a car narrowly missed me that I stumbled over to the narrow concrete verge which separated the lanes of cars. A second later, a car ran over the tin and flattened it.
The fragile cigarette papers flitted about in the air.
Oblivious to the oncoming traffic, I stared at the drifting white shapes.
I was remembering something, but at first I could not tell what it was. This was no nightmare, as the sound of the apple had been. The emotions of this other memory had begun to reach me before the memory itself. They were strong but muddled, a kind of exhilaration bordering on fear, but not fear itself. There was hope. There was determination.
And then at last I began to see. Those cigarette papers were transforming into the substance of the memory. As the picture came slowly into focus, everything around me started to disappear. It was as if the place in which I stood had begun to dissolve. The particles that held the solid world together were flying apart and behind where they had been this memory was still alive, still happening, as if it were not in fact a memory at all. Rather, it seemed as if everything that had happened to me since then held no more substance than a dream.
I felt myself drawn forward through the tattered veil of this peaceful London evening.
Then all about me was the rush of air. The canopy of a parachute mushroomed above my head. I drifted downward through the night sky, the sound of the plane already fading. In its place I felt more than heard the great familiar stillness of the mountains.
I
T WAS STILL DARK when we leaped from the Dakota. I heard the rustle and thump of our parachutes deploying, then looked down to see our cloudlike shadows drifting over the Palladino Valley. A few seconds later, we landed in the dew-soaked grass of a meadow beside the San Michele woods.
By the time we had stashed the chutes, unloaded the drop canisters, strapped on our gear, and found the road, the sun was rising on a clear, cold day.
Now that we had begun our climb we were in full view of anyone who looked up to the hills. Despite this, there was no sense of danger. Palladino looked so peaceful down below, wisps of smoke rising from its crooked chimney pots.
For the first quarter of a mile, as the road climbed steeply, the path was more or less intact. Beyond that, just after the first bend, the going became much harder. Portions of the
road had collapsed, leaving gaps in the path over which we had to jump or else move with the slow precision of tortoises, to avoid setting loose any more of the earth. In other places, the ground from above had slumped down, so instead of jumping over gaps, we now had to climb across the loose earth and stones of these small avalanches.
Our progress was slow. The weight of our packs and the added burden of the beacon parts soon had us all soaked in sweat. It was a beautiful day, however, and we found it almost impossible to believe that away to the south, whole armies were clashing together. The first reminder we had of the war was a series of contrails in the sky, great chalky cat scratches, at the tips of which we could just make out the planes themselves. From where we stood, the planes were a luminous white. They looked like chips of ice up in the blue. Separate streams of condensation from the engines on each wing merged to form one trail behind every plane. There seemed to be hundreds of these trails, but it was impossible to count since some planes were flying directly above others, so that when the planes were directly above us, the lines blurred together into one huge path across the vault of the sky. Only after they had passed could we hear the rumble of their engines.
We watched and listened for a while, trying to imagine the men up in those planes, swathed in sheepskin, the pilots trying to stay in formation, the gunners watching the frost build up on the barrels of their .50-calibers, the navigators squinting down upon the brightness of sun off snow and seeing the world below as we had seen it on the map at Achnacarry—a smooth, clean maze of ice and stone, the height of mountains measured only by the shadows they cast across the surrounding glaciers.
Turning back to the crumbling path, I thought how for the next few days we would measure this world not with maps and the blink of an eye but in sweat and the shuffling of our boots.
The road jackknifed twice more before it leveled out, by which time we were well above the tree line. Here, the ground was covered with stunted grass and lichen. Snow clung to the hollows. Icicles dripped from the lips of stones. Some of these were huge and had been propped at precarious angles by the glaciers which had left them behind.
Our original schedule, as devised by Carton, had allowed us two hours to reach this place. But either because he had misjudged it or because the breaks in the road and the weight of the gear had slowed us down so much, we did not get to the level ground until midafternoon and still had several kilometers to go before we reached the customs house.
The schedule didn't seem to matter much, however. We were on our own now, and appeared to have the entire range to ourselves. Scrabbling up the mountainside on that beautiful autumn day, there were times when I almost managed to forget that we were carrying weapons, and that we had been ordered to kill anyone we came across between here and the Swiss border.
Shortly afterwards, we stopped to rest and brew up tea.
Then, shouldering our packs, we continued along the gravel road. It was bordered on both sides by ditches, along which a shallow but steady stream of water splashed over the stony ground.
My body swung once more into the rhythm of the march. My vision narrowed in on the heels of Whistler walking before me and the tidily rolled ends of his canvas pack straps.
It was only a moment later that I heard the strange, dry,
popping crack which I at first failed to understand was the sound of a gun.
Whistler tripped, or so it seemed to me. He fell down hard on his face and the heavy Bergen pack slipped over his head.
I stumbled to avoid tripping over him. Once I had regained my balance, I reached down to help him up, still wondering what that sound could have been and thinking that it must have been the ice cracking out in the glacier.
Then I saw Sugden and Forbes scrabbling down into the ditch on the other side of the road. Armstrong jumped for cover, landing with a splash in the ditch nearest to me. Then he turned and shouted to me. His face was white.
I looked from Armstrong to Whistler, and then out towards the glacier and the lake. My gaze swept over the boulder-strewn ground. Only now did I fully grasp that we had come under fire
“Come on!” shouted Armstrong.
I stumbled towards him.
His hand reached out to me, fingernails dirty with gun oil.
I dropped into the ditch beside him.
Hurriedly I took out my binoculars. With Armstrong ready to shoot, I scanned the ground between us and the lake, from where the shot appeared to have come.
After finally locating the sniper, I ducked down and indicated the spot to Armstrong. Slowly, the way people sometimes move in dreams, he raised his rifle and took aim.
I crouched beside him, breathing hard. My head rested against the side of the ditch. The binoculars were still clutched in my hand.
Then I heard a sound right by my face, like someone biting into an unripe apple. Armstrong's face became a blur. His legs gave way and he fell in a heap at the bottom of the trench.
Armstrong lay on his back with his legs twisted under him. His hands were thrown out to the sides and his fingers curled gently over his open palms. His head looked lopsided, squashed like a stepped-on loaf of bread. It seemed to be pressed into the wall of the ditch, but then I realized that the left side of his face was missing. A bullet had gone through his right ear and come out somewhere around his left cheekbone. His mouth was open and his shattered teeth were stained red.
Immediately after came another gunshot, which made me flinch and close my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw Sugden running across the road. He tumbled in beside me, breathing hard. The rim of his helmet, its surface roughened by sand sprinkled over the paint when it was wet, cut a sharp line across his brow. “I got the sniper when he came out from behind the rock,” he said. As his eyes met mine, a look of horror spread across his face. Immediately, he began tearing at his pocket, trying to pull out one of the field-dressing bandages we all carried.
“It's no good,” I told Sugden. “Armstrong's dead.”
“This isn't for him,” replied Sugden, his breathing shallow and fast. “It's for you.”
“But I'm not hurt,” I told him. Then I touched a hand to my face and saw blood on my fingers. “It's not mine,” I said, pointing a red-smeared finger at Armstrong.
Sugden paused, the half-unraveled bandage clutched in his hands. Almond-colored eyes glowed in his sunburned face. “Oh, Christ,” he whispered.
Now Forbes left cover and made his way across the road. He stopped in the middle, grabbed Whistler by his pack straps, and dragged him to the edge of the ditch before jumping down beside us.
We could see for certain that Whistler was dead. His eyes remained open. The bullet had gone in through the right side of his chest. It must have hit him in the heart and killed him instantly.
Armstrong's blood tinted the water sluicing past my feet.
I glanced at Sugden and Forbes. Each of their faces bore the same pale mask, which blurred their features into the same hollowed-out expression of fear.
“There couldn't just be one man up here by himself,” said Forbes, his voice trembling. “He must be part of a patrol.”
“Then why was only one man shooting at us?” asked Sugden.
We squinted at one another in the bright light, sweat dried powdery and white in the corners of our eyes.
“He might have been a sentry,” I said hopefully.
“Guarding what?” demanded Sugden, but before anyone had time to answer, he had figured out the answer for himself. “They're in the customs house,” he said.
But if this was true, then how many were there? We did not even know if the customs house existed anymore.
Forbes took off his glasses and rubbed his reddened eyes. “What are we going to do?” he whispered, more to himself than to us.
“We must turn back,” answered Sugden. His breathing was shallow and fast.
I stared at him. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak of turning back from anything.
“There's no point going back,” I told them both. “Switzerland is that way.” I pointed up the road in the direction we had been going.
“Then let's just forget about the beacon and move on into
Switzerland,” Sugden protested. “We can't do the job. Not now. Not with two men gone.” He scratched at the side of his face, leaving red lines through the dirt that pasted his skin.
Then I remembered what Carton had told me back at Achnacarry—that the beacon was the most important thing. More important than me. More important than my friends. I had not believed for an instant that it would ever come to this, but now I knew what choice I had to make. “We will still make the climb,” I told them.
The two men stared at me in silence, as if they could not believe what I'd just said.
I met their gaze and held it. “The rules are different now,” I whispered.
Sugden turned away and spat. “What do you say, Forbes?” he asked.
“Sugden,” I said as firmly as I could, “it's my decision.”
He turned on me. “I don't care about your decision! I want to know what Forbes thinks.” Bringing his dirty face close to Forbes, he whispered, “What's it going to be?”
Forbes blinked Sugden's breath out of his eyes. He cleared his throat. “I don't want to be here any more than you do,” he said.
I gritted my teeth. With two of them against me, there would be no hope of completing the task.
“Then it's settled!” Sugden hissed. “We head back down the valley. We'll hide out until things quiet down, then make it through to Allied lines.”
“No,” said Forbes.
“What do you mean?” Sugden's face was twisted with disbelief.
Forbes aimed one black-rimmed fingernail at Sugden. “If we pack it in now, Armstrong and Whistler will have died for
nothing. No matter how badly I want to get out of this, I say we push on and get the job done.”
Sugden's eyes darted from Forbes to me and back again. His hands curled into fists, the knuckles turning white as he squeezed the blood out of them. “Fine,” he spat. “Then let's get on with it. Don't say I didn't warn you.”
We prepared to move out. Pushing into some backwater of our minds the wretchedness of going through the pockets and the packs of our two dead friends, we shared among ourselves the pieces of the beacon they had been carrying. After we had redistributed the equipment, we took the food from the dead men's packs, then filled our pockets with additional ammunition. Lastly, we took their dog tags.
“We'd better go and get that other man out of sight,” I said. I could see him lying out there in the open, beside the rock where he had taken cover.
With Sugden and Forbes standing by, I ran to where he lay.
The soldier was on his back. Sugden's bullet had hit him in the throat, exposing his torn windpipe and the milk-white tendons of his neck. The features of his face were sharp, his lips thin and pale. The way that death had pinched his skin, I could not tell how old he was.
He wore a greenish-gray tunic made of shabby wool, held together with gray pebbled buttons and a black leather belt. On the belt were two sets of leather ammunition pouches. One of them was open, and bullets had spilled out over the ground. Also on the belt was a green canvas bag on which he had clipped a wool-covered canteen. His helmet lay upturned beside him. The fact that he wasn't carrying a pack confirmed that he must have been using the customs house for a base.
I took his paybook from the top right pocket of his tunic and was getting ready to go through his other pockets when
Sugden called for me to hurry. I grabbed hold of the man's heavy mountain boots and dragged him behind the rock, where he would not be seen from the road.
There was no time to bury Whistler and Armstrong, so we dragged their bodies behind the flat rock and laid them beside the German who had killed them. Then we spread a ground sheet over the three men and pinned it down with stones.
When Sugden, Forbes, and I moved out, we walked in the ditch, stumbling over uneven ground and splashing through the shallow stream.

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