XII

I nearly froze.

There were no extra blankets. I suppose there would have been if the costly and essential supplies had not been moved to another cache, but that didn’t keep me warm. Pasic gave Wolfe his blanket, and, being a proud Montenegrin with guests, offered to get one from one of the sleeping men for me, but I said oh no, I wouldn’t think of it, through my interpreter. I spent the rest of the night — what was left — thinking of it. Wolfe had told me the elevation there was five thousand feet, but he must have meant meters. The pile of hay Pasic assigned me to was damp, and pulling some of it over me only made things worse. I guess I must have slept some, because I know I dreamed, something about a lot of dogs with cold noses.

I heard voices and opened my eyes and saw bright sunshine outside the cave entrance. My watch said ten past eight, so I had been refrigerating for more than four hours. I lay and figured it out: if I was frozen I couldn’t move, so if I could move I wasn’t frozen. I bent the legs and raised the torso, scrambled to my feet, and tottered to the entrance.

The sun wasn’t there yet. To get it on me I would have had to go to the ledge and out on it a way, and I was all through with that ledge if there was any other possible route out of there. Then I remembered; we weren’t going back, but forward; we were going to cross the border to the old Roman fort to visit Albanians. Wolfe had explained it all to me before we had entered the cave to hit the hay, including Pasic’s strategy with the dog. No doubt that had influenced my dream.

“Good morning,” Wolfe said. He was sitting on a rock, looking exactly the way I felt.

If I reported all the details of the next hour you would think I was piling on the misery just for the hell of it, so I’ll mention only a few to give you a notion. The sun stuck to a crazy slant so as not to touch us. There was water in a can to drink, but none to wash in. I was told that to wash all I had to do was go over the ledge to the trail and down it less than a kilometer to a brook. I didn’t wash. For breakfast we had bread, nothing like Meta’s, cold slices of mush that had been fried in lard, and canned beans from the United States of America. When I asked Wolfe why they didn’t at least start a fire and make some tea, he said because there was nothing to burn, and, looking around, I had to admit he was right. There wasn’t a single stick, alive or dead, anywhere in sight. Just rock. And of course I couldn’t talk, which might have helped to get the blood started. There wasn’t even anything to listen to, except the goddam jabber as usual. The five men whom I hadn’t met formally kept off in a group, with their jabber pitched low, evidently, judging from their sidelong glances, discussing Wolfe and me. Wolfe and Danilo and Pasic had a long argument, won by Wolfe, though I didn’t know that until later, when he told me they had opposed his announced plan so strongly they had even threatened to set up a trail block.

Then he started an argument with me and lost it. His idea was that he would stand a better chance with the Albanians if he went alone, because they would be much more reluctant to talk if there were two of us, and they would be particularly suspicious of one who couldn’t speak Albanian, which was a different language from Serbo-Croat. Actually it wasn’t an argument, because I didn’t argue. I merely said flatly nothing doing, on the ground that there would be nothing at the cave for lunch but cold mush, and Pasic had said there was a place at the fort for cooking.

It wasn’t until the knapsacks were strapped on and we were ready to go that I realized we would have to return to the trail by way of the ledge. Numb and dumb with cold, I had been supposing that we would go on to the border without any backtracking. With seven pairs of eyes on me, not counting Wolfe’s, it was up to me to sustain the honor of American manhood, and I set my jaw and did my best. It helped that my back was to them. An interesting question about walking a narrow ledge over a fifteen-hundred-foot drop is whether it’s better to do it at night or in the daytime. My answer is that it’s better not to do it at all.

After we got to the trail it wasn’t bad. The sun and the exercise were thawing me out, and there was no hard going. When we came to a rivulet crossing the trail we stopped and drank, and ate some chocolate. I told Wolfe it would take me only five minutes to rinse off my feet and put on fresh socks, and he said there was no great hurry, so I took off my knapsack and went to it. The water was like ice, but you can’t have everything. Wolfe sat on a rock and chewed chocolate. He informed me that Albania was just ahead, about three hundred meters, but was unmarked because a debate had been going on for centuries as to the exact line of the water-parting in this section of the mountains. Also he pointed to a niche in a crag towering above us and said that was where Stan Kosor had perched with the binocular to watch the fort the day Carla had gone there. He added that almost certainly Kosor would be back in the niche today, to watch again. It was a perfect spot for it, since he could aim his glass at the fort through a crack.

I asked Wolfe how his feet were. “It is no longer merely my feet,” he declared. “It is every muscle and nerve in my body. No words would serve, so I won’t waste any.”

It was warming up, so we took off our sweaters before going on. We crossed into Albania without knowing precisely when, and in another three minutes rounded a corner, and there was the fort. It was against a perpendicular wall of rock so high there was no point in straining my neck to find the top, and was of course a perfect match. Where the trail passed it there was a level space twenty yards wide and twice as long, and at its farther end a little brook splashed across the trail. There were slits in the walls, and in the one facing the trail the rock had crumbled to leave a big hole, presumably Pasic’s point of entry for his appointment with Carla.

There was no sign of life, not even a dog. The idea was just to walk in and introduce ourselves, announcing, I suppose, that we had about decided to hook up with the Kremlin and wanted to discuss matters, so we headed for the only visible door, a big wooden one, standing wide open. We were about twenty paces short of it when somebody inside screamed, a long scream and a real one. A man’s scream has more body to it than a woman’s. We stopped dead and looked at each other.

The scream came again, longer.

Wolfe jerked his head to the left and moved that way, toward the hole in the wall, on his toes, though it must have killed him. I was right behind. Climbing through the hole would have been a cinch, even for him, if noise hadn’t been a factor, but crawling over the rubble silently was complicated. He managed it, and in a moment I was in beside him. We crossed to a door in the inner wall, which was open a crack, probably just as Pasic had left it ten days before, stood to listen, and heard a voice, and then another, from a distance. Then came another scream, a bad one, and while it was still in the air Wolfe opened the door more and stuck his head out. A voice came faintly. Wolfe pulled his head back in and murmured, “They’re down below. Let’s see.”

If there had been a movie camera that would register in that dark corridor, and if I had had it with me, a film of Wolfe trying to navigate that stone floor without making any noise would be something I wouldn’t part with. I didn’t fully enjoy it at the time, being too busy myself with the problem of moving quietly in the heavy shoes, but it’s wonderful to look back at it. At the end was another corridor to the right, narrower and even darker, and ten feet along that took us to the head of a flight of steps going down. lie voices were down there. Wolfe started down, going sidewise with his palms flat against the wall, and it was a good thing the steps were stone, since wooden treads would certainly have had something to say to his seventh of a ton. I took the other side right behind him, using the wall too. A thing like that distorts time out of all proportion. It seemed like a good ten minutes on those steps, but afterward I figured it. There were fifteen steps. Say we averaged ten seconds to a step — and it wasn’t that much — that would make only two and a half minutes.

At the bottom it was darker still. We turned left, in the direction of the voices, and saw a little spot of light in the left wall twenty feet away. Inching along, we got to it. There was the dim outline of a closed door, and the light was coming through a hole in it, eight inches square, with its center at eye level for a man a little shorter than me. Wolfe started to slide an eye past the edge of the hole, thought better of it, moved an arm’s length away from the wall, and looked through the hole. Inside, a man was talking, loud. Wolfe moved closer to the hole, then sidestepped and put his face almost against the door, with his left eye at the right edge of the hole. Taking it as an invitation, I moved beside him and got my right eye at the left edge of the hole. Our ears rubbed.

There were four men in the room. One of them was sitting on a chair with his back to us. Another one was neither sitting nor standing nor laying down. He was hanging. He was over by the far wall, with his arms stretched up and his wrists bound with a cord, and the cord was fastened to a chain suspended from the ceiling. His feet were six inches above the floor. Tied to each ankle was the end of a rope a few feet long, and the other end of each rope was held by a man, one standing off to the right and the other to the left. They were holding the ropes tight enough to keep the subject’s feet spread apart a yard or more. The face of the subject was so puffed and contorted that it was half a minute before I realized I had seen him before, and that long again before I placed him. It was Peter Zov, the man with the flat nose, slanting forehead, and low, smooth voice who had been in Gospo Stritar’s office, and who had told Wolfe he was a man of action. He was getting action, no question about that, but his voice wouldn’t be so low and smooth after the screams he had let loose.

The man in the chair with his back to us, who had been talking, stopped. The two men standing started to pull on the ropes, slow but sure. The gap between the subject’s feet widened to four feet, four and a half, five — more, and then no one looking at Peter Zov’s face would have recognized him. An inch more, two, and he screamed. I shut my right eye. I must have made some other movement too, for Wolfe gripped my arm. The scream stopped, with a gurgle that was just as bad, and when my eye opened the ropes were slack.

“That won’t do, Peter,” the man in the chair said. “You are reducing it to a routine. With your keen mind you have calculated that all you have to do is scream, and that time you screamed prematurely. Your scream is not musical, and we may be forced to muffle it. Would you prefer that?”

No answer.

“I repeat,” the man in the chair said, “that you are wrong to think you are finished. It is not impossible that we can still find you useful, but not unless you play fair with us. Much of the information you have brought us has been of no account because we already had it. Some of it has been false. You failed completely in the one important operation we have entrusted to you, and your excuses are not acceptable.”

“They’re not excuses,” Peter Zov mumbled. He was choking.

“No? What are they?”

“They’re facts. I had to be away.”

“You said that before. Perhaps I didn’t explain fully enough, so I’ll do it more patiently. I am a patient man. I admit that you must make sure to keep your employers convinced that you are to be trusted, since if you don’t you are of no value whatever, either to them or to us. I am quite realistic about it. You’re being discourteous, Peter; you’re not listening to me. Let him down, Bua.”

The man on the left dropped the rope, turned to the wall, unfastened a chain from a peg, and played it out through a pulley on the ceiling. Peter Zov’s feet got to the floor, and his arms were lowered, but only until his hands were even with his shoulders. He swayed from side to side as if he were keeping time to slow music.

“That should improve your manners temporarily,” the man in the chair told him. “I was saying that I realize you must satisfy that fool, Gospo Stritar, that you serve him well, but you must also satisfy me, which is more difficult because I am not a fool. You could have carried out that operation without the slightest risk of arousing his suspicion, but instead you went to America on a mission for him, and now you have the impudence to come here and expect to be welcomed — even to be paid! So I am paying you. If you answer my questions properly the payment may be more to your taste.”

“I had to go,” Peter Zov gasped. “I thought you would approve.”

“That’s a lie. You’re not such a blockhead. Those enemies of progress who call themselves the Spirit of the Black Mountain — you know their chief target is the Tito regime, not us, and it suits our purpose for them to make things as difficult as possible for Belgrade. There is little chance perhaps none, that they will be able to overthrow the regime, but if they do that will suit us even better. We would march in and take over in a matter of hours. Our hostility to the Spirit of the Black Mountain is only a pretense, and you understood that perfectly. The more help they got from America the better. If that lackey of a crook, that Marko Vukcic who made himself rich pandering to the morbid appetites of the bloated American imperialists — if he had increased his help tenfold it would have been a great favor to us. You knew that, and what did you do? At the command of Belgrade you went to America and killed him.”

He made a gesture. “If you thought we wouldn’t know, you are so big a fool that you would be better dead. The night of March fourth you entered Italy at Gorizia, with papers under the name of Vito Rizzo, and went on to Genoa. You sailed from Genoa as a steward on the Amilia on March sixth. She docked at New York on March eighteenth, and you went ashore that night and killed Marko Vukcic and were back on the Amilia before nine o’clock. I don’t know who briefed you in New York, or whether you had help in such details as stealing the car, but that’s of no importance. You stayed aboard the Amilia until she sailed on March twenty-first, left her at Genoa on April second, and returned to Titograd that night. I tell you all this so you may know that you can hide nothing from us. Nothing.”

He gestured again. “And on Sunday, April fourth, you came here to explain to these men that you had been unable to carry out our operation because you had been sent abroad on a mission. You found a woman here, drinking vodka with them, which was a surprise to you, but a greater surprise was to find that they already knew where you had been and what your mission was. Mistakes were made, I admit it; I only learned of them when I returned to Tirana yesterday from Moscow. They told you that they knew about your mission, and that alarmed you and you fled, and not only that, after you left they told the woman about you. They blame the vodka, but they will learn that it is not a function of vodka to drown a duty. Later they corrected their blunder by disposing of the woman — that is in their favor — but they will have to be taught a lesson.”

His tone sharpened. “That can wait, but you can’t. Up with him, Bua.”

Peter Zov sputtered something, but Bua ignored it. He had it on Peter in bulk, so when he pulled the chain not only Peter’s arms went up but also the rest of him. When the feet were well off the floor Bua hooked the chain on the peg and picked up the end of the rope and was ready to resume. So was his colleague.

“Of course,” the man in the chair said, “you had to come when you got my message yesterday, since you knew what to expect if you didn’t, so that’s no credit to you. You can get credit only by earning it. First, once more, how many boats patrol out of Dubrovnik, and what are their schedules?”

“Damn it, I don’t know!” Peter was choky again.

“Bah. My patience can’t last forever. Split him.”

As the men tightened the ropes Wolfe lowered himself to a squat, pulling at my sleeve, and I went down to him. He had the long knife in his right hand. I had been so intent with my eye at the hole that I hadn’t seen him take it from his belt. His left hand was fumbling at a pocket. He whispered in my ear, “We’re going in when he screams. You open the door, and I go first. Gun in one hand and capsule in the other.”

I whispered back, “Me first. No argument. Rescue him?” He nodded. As we straightened up he was still fumbling in his pocket, and I was reaching to the holster for the Marley. It didn’t carry the punch of the Colt, but I knew it better. I admit I felt in my pocket to touch the capsule, but I didn’t take it out, wanting the hand free. The door should be no problem. On our side was a hasp with a padlock hanging on a chain.

He started to scream. A glance showed me that Wolfe’s left hand had left his pocket, and he nodded at me. As I pushed the door open and stepped through, what was at the front of my mind was light. Its source hadn’t been visible through the hole. If it was a lamp, as it must be, and if one of them killed it, knives would have it on guns. The only insurance against it would be to plug the three of them in the first three seconds.

I didn’t do that, I don’t know why — probably because I had never shot a man unless there was nothing else left. The scream drowned the sound of our entry, but Bua saw us and dropped the rope and goggled, and then the other one; and the man in the chair jumped up and whirled to face us. He was closest, and I put the Marley on him. Wolfe, beside me, with the hand that held the knife at his belt level, started to say something but was interrupted. The closest man’s hand went for his hip. Either he was a damn fool or a hero, or because I didn’t say anything he thought I wasn’t serious. I didn’t try anything fancy like going for his arm or shoulder, but took him smack in the chest at nine feet. As I moved the gun back to level, the hand of the man on the right darted back and then forward, and how I knew a knife was coming and jerked myself sidewise the Lord only knows. It went by, but he was coming too, pulling something from his belt, and I pressed the trigger and stopped him.

I wheeled left and saw a sight. Bua was at the wall with his knife raised, holding it by the tip, and Wolfe, with his knife still at belt level, was advancing on him step by step, leaning forward in a crouch. When I asked him later why Bua hadn’t let fly, he explained elementary knife tactics, saying that you never throw a knife against another knife at less than five meters, because if you don’t drop your man in his tracks, which is unlikely if he’s in a crouch, you’ll be at his mercy. If I had known that I might have tried for Bua’s shoulder, but I didn’t, and all I wanted was to get a bullet to him before his knife started for Wolfe. I fired, and he leaned against the wall, with his hand still raised. I fired again, and he went down.

This is funny, or call it dumb. Before Bua even hit the floor I turned around to look for the light. I had entered the room with the light on top of my mind, and apparently it had stayed there and I had to get it off. It was a letdown to see that it came from three spots: two lanterns on a shelf to the right of the door, and one on the floor at the left. I had worried about nothing.

Wolfe walked past me to the chair, sat, and said, “Better look at them.”

Peter Zov, still hanging, croaked something. Wolfe said, “He wants down. Look at them first. One of them may be shamming.”

They weren’t. I took my time and made sure. I suspected Bua when I put a piece of fuzz from my jacket on his nostrils, holding his lips shut, and it floated off, but two more tries showed that it had been only a current in the air. “No shamming,” I reported. “It was close quarters. If you wanted any—”

“This is what I wanted. Let him down.”

I went and took the chain off the peg and eased it up. I suppose I should have been more careful, but my nerves were a little ragged, and when I saw his feet were on the floor I loosened my grip, and his weight jerked the chain out of my hands as he collapsed on the stone. I went to him and got out my pocket knife to cut the cord from his wrists, but Wolfe spoke.

“Wait a minute. Is he alive?”

I inspected him. “Sure he’s alive. He just passed out, and I don’t blame him.”

“Will he die?”

“Of what? Did you bring smelling salts?”

“By heaven,” he blurted with sudden ferocity, “you’ll clown at your funeral! Tie his ankles and we’ll go upstairs. I doubt if the shots could have been heard outside even if there were anyone to hear them, but I want to get out of here.”

I obeyed. There was a choice of ropes to tie his ankles with, and it didn’t take long. When I finished, Wolfe was at the door with a lantern in his hand, and I got one from the shelf and followed him out and up the fifteen steps. We went up faster than we had come down. He said we had better make sure there was no one else in the fort, and I agreed. He knew his way around as well as if he had built it himself, and we covered it all. He even had me climb the ladder to the tower, while he stood at the foot with my Colt in his hand, talking Albanian — I suppose warning anyone in the tower that if I were attacked he would pump them. When I rejoined him intact we went back to ground level and on outdoors, and he sat down on a flat rock at the corner nearest the trail. On its surface beside him was a big dark blotch.

“That’s where Pasic killed the dog,” I remarked.

“Yes. Sit down. As you know, I look at people when I talk to them, and I don’t like to stretch my neck.”

I sat on the blotch. “Oh, you want to talk?”

“I don’t want to, I have to. Peter Zov is the man who murdered Marko.”

I stared at him. “What is this, a hunch?”

“No. A certainty.”

“How come?”

He told me what the man in the chair had said.