The Satanist (65 page)

All of them were now craning forward in their seats to catch the first glimpse of the cable railway up which fortyeight hours earlier the stolen war-head had been carried. At length they rounded a last bend and came in full view of it. Half a mile ahead lay the engine-house. Beyond it, in the distance, far up the valley and on its opposite side from the railway, a little group of figures were moving. They were making their way up a broad gully towards a dip in the ridge and were visible only because they had already passed the snow line.

The Brigadier spoke into the walkie-talkie he was carrying, ordering two jeeps filled with ski-troops to go after them and bring them in; but the sight of the group, which was so obviously making off, was enough to tell Verney that his fears had been well founded. The Sergeant’s visit two hours earlier must have alerted Lothar to the fact that Switzerland was being combed for him. Since then, no doubt,
he would have used his psychic powers to detect and observe the advancing column of police and troops.

Two minutes later the leading cars pulled up outside the engine-house. Their occupants tumbled out. Armed police and troops dashed inside. A Lieutenant emerged again almost at once and shouted, ‘The place is empty, but the cage is down here.’

C.B. was staring after the tiny figures that stood out against the snow, and wondering now if Lothar was one of them. Barney tugged at his sleeve and cried, ‘Come on, the cabin’s here! Come on, or there won’t be room for us in it.’

‘Half-a-mo’, partner,’ C.B. replied. ‘The bird we are after may have fled the nest. Maybe he’s one of those little moving dots up there.’

‘He’d never have abandoned his rocket at this stage,’ Barney argued quickly. ‘I swear he’d die rather. And if … if Mary’s not dead, she will be with him.’

‘If the rocket was all fixed to go, he might have. He could have left it with a time fuse attached to launch it. Anyhow, the rocket is first priority. These cable-railway cages usually hold only four, and the Brigadier told me that he had been ordered to bring explosive experts with him. I’m sorry, Barney, but we must let them go ahead so that they may have the best possible chance to get at that war-head in time to dismantle it. But Lothar is our pigeon, and getting him our best hope of saving Mary. If he is one of those dots up there we must go after him.’

With a murmured apology Barney almost snatched a pair of field-glasses from an officer who was standing nearby. Swiftly he focused them on the distant figures and, after a moment, said, ‘There are seven of them. That is two in addition to the five Chinese that the Sergeant found down here in the engine-house. None of them looks like a woman; but in those clothes one can’t tell. Anyhow, Colonel Washington’s not one of them. I’m sure of that because of his height.’

At that moment there came the sudden crack and roar of an explosion. Its blast flung them both forward on their
knees. As they picked themselves up they looked round to find that the engine-house was now a smoking ruin. Shouts and screams were coming from it. Troops and police were running to the assistance of their wounded comrades. For a few minutes everything was confusion.

As the smoke above the wrecked building cleared Barney suddenly shouted, ‘Look! Look! There he is. The explosion has brought the murdering swine out to see the results of his handiwork.’

Following Barney’s pointing finger, C.B. saw that a figure had emerged from the cave and was now standing on the edge of the broad ledge, looking down through a pair of glasses at the scene of havoc. He, too, had no doubt that it was Lothar.

Richter staggered up to them, his face blackened, his eyebrows singed and his uniform torn.

‘What happened?’ Verney asked him.

The American was still panting. ‘That devil had booby-trapped both the cage and the engine. I chanced to be looking towards the winding gear as a corporal pushed over the lever. Both bombs went off simultaneously. The Brigadier and Jodelweiss were both in the cage. With them and in the freight compartment they had several sappers; bomb experts. All of them are to hell and gone. So are six or eight fellers who were standing round the engine, I was lucky. I couldn’t get a place in the cage but I was standing alongside it by the opening. So I was blown clear.’

As he finished speaking Fratelli limped up to them. He had been outside the building but near it, and a flying length of wooden rafter had caught him a nasty blow on his left leg. Otto had escaped altogether, as he had been well away from the engine-house and, already certain in his own mind that Lothar was still in the cave, was staring up at it.

Within a few minutes the last of the wounded had been rescued from the smouldering debris, and a tall, thin Major came up to them. The greater part of the troops were his own men and, now that the Brigadier had been killed, he was the senior officer present. After expressing his fury that
the police should have allowed them to walk into such a trap, he demanded to know the object of the operation.

In a low voice Fratelli told him, upon which he promptly declared his intention of having his tanks train their guns on the cave and shell it to blazes. The others swiftly implored him not to, as they feared that the concussion of the bursting shells might set off the H-bomb war-head that they believed to be at the far end of the tunnel. It was Verney who said,

‘There is only one thing for it now, Major. We have got to get up there by climbing; and the more of us who make the attempt the better, because he may have some means of inflicting casualties on us as we go up. I suggest that you should form your men into groups and send each group up by a different route. Some should certainly be sent round the shoulder of the mountain so as to work their way up, if they can, to the far entrance of the tunnel that can’t be seen from here.’

After a moment he added, ‘Although we are not equipped for climbing, my friends and I naturally wish to be in on this too. As a number of your men have been wounded perhaps you would be good enough to let us have the loan of their gear.’

The Major agreed, said that he would lead an attack round the shoulder of the mountain on the other entrance of the cave, and detailed a blond, pink-cheeked Lieutenant to look after them. Already most of the injured had had their wounds dressed and, wrapped in blankets, were being made as comfortable as possible in jeeps for swift removal to hospital; so the young Lieutenant was soon able to collect ski-suits, snow-shoes, woollen gloves and caps, and pistols for his charges. Two tracked vehicles came up; the Lieutenant, C.B. and Otto joined the crew of one, and Barney, Richter and Fratelli that of the other.

As they set off Barney glanced at his watch. It had been just on nine o’clock then they had driven up to the enginehouse; it was now nearly half past.

It was a beautiful May morning. By this time the sun was
well above the ridge to the east, lightening the tender green of the meadows in the valley bottom, turning the flying drops of the cascading river that ran through it into sparkling diamonds and making the snow on the higher levels crumpled sheets of dazzling whiteness.

In less than ten minutes the tracked vehicles, which possessed a quite amazing capability to travel up steep slopes, had negotiated the boulder-strewn hillside of coarse grass and carried them up to the fringe of the forest belt. But it was too thick for them to find a way through it. Leaving the vehicles, the two parties and half a dozen others, on average a hundred yards apart, entered the trees and continued the upward climb on foot.

For most of the way the gradient was not less than one in five, and a carpet of pine needles made the going so slippery that it added greatly to their exertions. As they advanced they passed patches of half-melted snow, and every few moments there came a loud rustle, or a ‘plop’, as the sun’s rays caused great lumps of it on the upper branches of the trees partially to thaw and fall to the ground.

When they came out from the trees Barney was sweating profusely, but his two amateur companions were in a far worse case. Eyeing the snowfield, that now lay before them like the roof of a gargantuan house, plump, forty-year-old Colonel Richter frankly confessed that he was in no condition to face it, and declared that if he made the attempt he would only prove a drag on the others. Fratelli, too, decided to throw his hand in, although only because his injured leg was paining him so badly. The others, now reduced to a team of five, roped themselves together, with a Sergeant leading and Barney two from the end. Then they set off again.

Some distance to their left the Lieutenant’s team had also emerged from the trees, but its ‘passengers’ were in better shape. Otto had done quite a lot of climbing on his holidays in Switzerland; while Verney, although he had done no climbing for several years, was an old hand and considerably stronger than anyone might have supposed
from a casual glance at his lanky, stooping figure.

Slowly the two teams wound their way upwards, while others to right and left followed other, apparently possible, ways up the mountain side. It was a little after half past ten when the walkie-talkie of the young Lieutenant who was leading C.B.’s team began to crackle. Signalling the string of men behind him to halt, he listened for a few moments, then he looked back and called down to Verney.

‘This is for you, Colonel, and for all concerned in the capture of Lothar Khune. It is relayed by our mobile radio unit down in the valley from Police Headquarters, Berne. Soon after ten o’clock Khune put out a long broadcast in Russian and followed it by one in English. He has announced that he, Lothar Khune, is taking steps today to bring a New Order into the world for the glory of his master, Prince Lucifer. That an upheaval is necessary in which many must die, but that those who survive will for ever bless the name of Satan. He intends to set the ball rolling which will lead to the tstablishment of the new order at twelve o’clock precisely.’ The Lieutenant paused, then added, ‘I don’t know what you think, but he sounds completely crazy to me.’

Verney did not reply. By all normal standards, of course, Lothar was crazy, but according to his own lights he was behaving with impeccable logic, and his statement had to be regarded as made by a man terrifyingly and damnably sane.

But that thought no more than flashed across C.B.’s mind. He was gazing upward at the ever steeper ascent, glinting in the sunshine with snow and ice, made perilous by jutting rocks, sheer cliffs and, in places, overhang. So far they had barely accomplished half the climb. By far the most difficult half was yet to come. Since Lothar meant to launch his rocket at midday they had barely an hour and a half left. His heart contracting with despair, C.B. forced himself to realise that they could not possibly reach the cave in time.

The sight of the Great Ram advancing noiselessly down the tunnel seemed to turn Mary’s blood to water and to paralyse her limbs. For a few seconds she remained motionless. With what felt like a physical wrench she tore her glance away and tapped sharply on one of the fuel drums. The sound might easily have been made by a falling icicle thawed out at the entrance to the cave by the heat coming from inside it; but Wash heeded her warning signal. Stooping, he swiftly thrust in among the paraphernalia at the base of the rocket the tool he was holding.

Kneeling in the narrow, pitch dark space between the two piles of fuel drums, Mary held her breath. It seemed to her certain that the Great Ram must have sensed her presence even if he did not see her and, halting in his stride, would turn and rend her. But on coming opposite the drums he had rounded the bend of the tunnel sufficiently to catch sight of Wash. His harsh voice cut the stillness.

‘I had a feeling that you were here. What are you doing?’

With a laconic calmness for which Mary gave Wash full marks, his reply came back. ‘Taking a look-see at the rocket. You’re an expert on these things, Exalted One, and I’m a babe. All the same, I couldn’t get it out of my mind this evening that we’ve got it oriented wrong.’

The Great Ram had walked on towards him. Now that they were talking together Mary knew that she ought not to lose a moment in obeying Wash’s orders to leave them to it and get back to her cabin. If the Great Ram chanced to look round he would see her, but that risk had to be taken as the lesser than his yet discovering her among the fuel drums and realising that she had been lurking there as a look-out for Wash. Quickly she slipped off her shoes. Then, summoning her resolution, she took the plunge.,

As she tiptoed forward her spine seemed to creep. Every
second she expected an occult force to be directed at her back – a lightning flash that would scorch, char and utterly destroy her. Into her terrified mind there came again a picture of the Black Imp that had materialised from the Great Ram the first time she had seen him. For one awful moment the sound of the drips from the melting ice at the entrance to the cave seemed to take on a new rhythm and she thought they were the swift, light footfalls of the Imp coming after her. Suppressing a scream of terror, she broke into a run. It was only then she suddenly became aware that she was well round the bend of the tunnel and so must have escaped discovery.

When she reached her cabin she was trembling from head to foot. In the doorway she paused to look back, fearful now that Wash’s bluff would fail and that the Great Ram would kill him. If that happened she knew that she would receive short shrift. Any attempt to defend herself would be hopeless but, if she could take him by surprise, there was just a chance that she might inflict some serious injury on him before his terrible power as a destroyer could take effect. But for that she must have a weapon. How, where, could she get hold of one? The kitchen was only thirty feet away. There might be something there.

She tiptoed along, and peeped in. It was deserted but still faintly lit by the small blue pilot bulb. From the cabin beyond it came the snoring of the Chinese cook. As she looked quickly round her glance fell on a saw-edge bread knife that had been left on the table. She would have preferred something more lethal; but it would have taken time to hunt through the drawers, and she dared not linger there. Snatching up the bread knife, she ran back to her own cabin, slipped inside, and shut the door. Still trembling, she threw down her shoes, stepped out of her skirt and, getting into the bunk, pulled the blankets over her.