Declare (77 page)

He squinted at the bumpy stone wall, trying to look for hand and footholds and to ignore the lines of red drops, which had already
frozen over; and at last, not roped to anything, he fitted his left foot into a crack in the rock face and then kicked himself up to grip an outcrop with his left hand. He scuffed his right foot against the stone, trying to find a purchase for the front point of his crampons, and then he felt Philby take hold of his calf and lift his foot to a solid projection. Hale straightened his right leg, and now he was high enough to reach out with his right hand and catch the rope.

His Prusik knot—or somebody’s—still hung on the rope, down at the level of his thigh; he hiked his hand down the length of the rope until he was able to grab the knotted cord, and he was careful to slide it back up the rope gently, so that it would not tighten. The icy wind battered against his face and his unprotected eyes. When he had worked the knotted cord up to a point level with the carabiner at the front of his harness, he pulled the rope in and with numbed fingers held it against the snap-link while he thumbed open the spring-loaded gate.

After a full minute of fumbling and cursing into the wind and trying to blink past the ice that was frozen onto his eyelashes, while the fingers of his numbed left hand cramped and stung as they gripped the rock outcrop behind him, he got the loop of the Prusik knot into the carabiner link, and then he let his weight sag against the rope, bracing himself on the rock wall with his crampons and letting his aching arms hang.

“D-damn you!” shouted Philby from below him. “What about m-m-me?”

“I’ll free the other rope,” called Hale. “Don’t shoot me.” Hale flapped his arms and flexed his constricted fingers, then began climbing up toward the point from which he would be able to reach the snagged rope; he quickly caught the trick of leaning forward to give the Prusik knot slack when he wanted to pull himself up and then leaning away from the rock when he wanted it to belay him.

When he had grabbed the other rope, he pulled the whole length of it across to him, coiling it loosely over his lap, and he saw that several of the Prusik-knotted cords were hung along the last yard of it; but before he let it all drop down to where Philby waited, he unsnapped the front of his parka to reach into an inner
pocket. Very carefully he pulled out a box of .410 shot shells, and he gripped the brass of two of them between his teeth and pulled them out as he closed the box and tucked it away; then he reached into the outer pocket and drew the derringer. He pushed the button behind the exposed trigger and swiveled the locking lever around in a half-circle and swung the hinged barrels up away from the frame. He pushed up the extractor and lifted the spent shells out of the barrels, then took the fresh shells from between his teeth and fitted them into the barrels. At last he closed the gun and locked it and replaced it in his pocket, along with the two spent shells.

“Here!” he yelled, letting the rope spill off his legs to hang slack down the rock face a yard to his left. He peered down past his legs at Philby’s upturned face.

“Is it long enough?” shouted Hale.

“Yes!” came Philby’s call from below.

Thank God. Hale had not wanted to try cutting and splicing it. “Fit the bight of a knot into your snap-link!”

“Aye aye,” shouted Philby.

Within ten minutes they were both sitting cross-legged, panting, on the wind-swept crest of the Parrot glacier. They had pulled up one of the ropes and freed it from its piton, and now it lay coiled beside Hale. It was an unwieldy pile. He had unslung his Kalashnikov and fitted a fresh magazine into the receiver in case the helicopter might reappear, but the racing wind had not abated since he had shot the djinn by the Black Ark, and he didn’t think the aircraft would dare approach the mountain now.

Philby swung his frosted, blood-blackened face toward Hale, and his eyes were invisible behind the sky glare on the goggle lenses. “Shoot the other rope,” he said, loudly to be heard over the wind.

Hale thought of Hakob Mammalian, conceivably still alive down there on the northern face, making his wounded way to the ledge and finding both the static lines gone. “No,” he called back to Philby, wearily standing up and slinging his gun. He bent down to pick up the coil of rope, then straightened with it and began
plodding up the crest, toward the windward side of the glacier. “Come on, the sun’s past noon.”

From behind him he heard Philby say, “D-damn you! Then I’ll d-do it.”

Hale spun clumsily around, his crampons grating on the ice as he dropped the coiled rope, and Philby was standing, and had already unslung his own Kalashnikov and was lifting it to his shoulder.

The derringer felt extraordinarily heavy in Hale’s right hand as he drew it and raised it to point it at Philby’s back, and cocking the hammer against its tight spring seemed to take all of his remaining strength.

Am I my brother’s keeper?

Philby was aiming, and had not fired yet.

Hale touched the derringer’s trigger with his forefinger, and the little gun flared and hammered back hard into his palm.

Then his knees hit the snow, and Hale was simply too exhausted to try to re-cock the derringer or raise the barrel of his machine gun.

Through watering eyes he peered past the retinal glare at the silhouette of Philby.

The man had fallen to one knee, and his head was down, and he was making a noise, a flat monotone wail.
The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,
thought Hale, fearful that he might have been standing too close to him. How wide would the shot pattern have spread in twelve feet?

“Are you dying?” Hale croaked. He blinked around at the infinity of snow. He could melt some between his palms. “I can baptize you.”

Then with a shout of pain Philby had straightened up and turned, and Hale saw that the muzzle of Philby’s Kalashnikov, though wobbling, was pointed straight at him.

“If,”
grated Philby, “I t-try again to shoot the r-rope, will you—” He inhaled with a near shriek. “Will you sh-shoot me, again?”

Hale stared through a red haze of exhaustion into the ring of the wavering muzzle. He took a deep breath, wondering if Elena might have been aboard the French helicopter. “Yes,” he said.

Philby’s answering howl was lost in the battering roar of the
machine gun, but Hale could see that the muzzle flare was slanted away to the left side of him; and after three deafening seconds the gun stuttered to a ringing halt, its thirty-round magazine emptied.

Then Philby was on his knees in front of Hale, shaking him weakly by the shoulders, and the mouth opened in the frosted black face and Philby was screaming, “I would n-not shoot my own f-family!” The wind was strengthening, flinging clouds of obscuring snow over them and down the slope behind them. Philby fell back, his hands clasped across his chest in evident pain. “C-can we!” he said loudly. “Get down off th-this, to the Cehennem Dere?”

Hale nodded. He recalled that the Spetsnaz had left the piton in the edge of this glacier, between the cornices over the level where the tents had been. He would find the little iron ring, if he had to crawl the whole length of the glacier edge.

The south sides of the tents were nearly buried in fresh snowdrifts, and Hale and Philby had blundered a dozen yards past them in the flying white haze before Hale happened to look back and see the rectangular shapes. He waved to catch Philby’s attention, and pointed back.

Philby had to walk stiffly around in a circle to look back; and then he didn’t nod, but waved his left hand weakly, and began trudging heavily in that direction, leaning into the snowy wind.

Hale tugged his machine gun forward, into the Bedu position— God knew what the response of the two Turks would be to the return of only two of the thirteen men who had gone up the mountain. Ahead of him, Philby laboriously unslung his own machine gun and limped forward carrying it.

Hale peered through nearly blinded eyes at Philby’s back; he thought he could see a couple of the tiny pin-holes where the bird-shot had penetrated, but of course there was no blood visible on this outermost layer of clothing.

“Fuad!” roared Philby as he stepped up to the tent entrance. “Umit! Open up in the n-name of the KGB!”

The wall of the tent fluttered, and then snow was being punched away from the tent entrance from the inside; at last Hale saw yellow
lamplight through a vertical slit between rubberized canvas flaps, and a gun muzzle pointed out.

“You m-mad sod,” shouted Philby, “p-put that down. Who d-do you sup-suppose it is out h-here that knows your n-names?”

Enough snow had been shoved away so that the flap could be pulled open, and Philby was a shaggy silhouette against the lamp-light as he blundered inside. Hale pulled his numb feet quickly through the snowdrifts to enter right behind him.

The still air of the tent burned on Hale’s face as he let himself collapse into a sitting position. One of the Turks was at the tent opening, but the other seemed to be closer. Philby fell heavily to his knees and demanded the bottle of arak, and Hale rocked his head in an emphatic nod. Philby had brought his flasks with him onto the mountain, but of course there was the risk that the liquor in them might by now be far below the freezing temperature of water, though still liquid, so that one mouthful would freeze teeth and tongue and throat.

Through his watering, ice-crusted eyes Hale could see only blurry silhouettes and a yellow glow that was the paraffin lamp, but he could make out the shape of one of the Turks standing over him.

“Where are the others?” the Turk asked, his voice ringing in Hale’s ears.

“C-close the tent,” rasped Philby. “Where’s the arak? The others are all d-dead.”

“Dead!” said the Turk, and his suspicious tone made Hale sure that it was Fuad. “Did you kill them?”

“Of course, F-F-Fuad, t-two middle-aged Englishmen k-killed ten spit-spit—fucking—Spetsnaz. The elite so-so-Soviet
commandos
. You fool.”

Hale could blurrily see the bottle in Philby’s hand—it appeared to have been uncorked, but Philby was simply holding it.

Hale bit off the mitten and liner glove from his right hand, and then reached out clumsily. “Infirm of purpose,” he said hoarsely, “give me the liquor.”

Philby tipped the bottle up to his lips first, and Hale heard gurgling; then the bottle was in Hale’s hand, and he lifted it and
swallowed several mouthfuls of the warm, stinging, licorice liquor.

“A F-French helicopter,” said Philby, exhaling, “strafed us, f-fired explosive rah-rah-rockets.” Hale could feel his gaze, and then Philby added, “I c-caught some shrapnel, in my b-back. I’ll w-want medical attention.”

“I’m sure they’ll be ready to treat injuries,” said Hale, “at the air base in Erivan.” You’re crossing the border, remember, Hale thought—you’re defecting now, not going back to Beirut. “You’ve got a flare pistol?”

“In the back!” sneered Fuad. “You did not run as fast as the shrapnel, quite, eh?”

Philby was silent for several seconds, and when he spoke it was to answer Hale. “There’s a f-flare piss-piss-
pistol
in the tent, y-yes.” Hale heard him shift, and then the bottle was taken out of Hale’s hand. “You w-wouldn’t care to—c-come along? Hero’s w-welcome.”

“In the Workers’ Paradise,” said Hale. The ice was melting off of his eyelids, and he was blinking around to assure himself that he could still see. “No, thank you. I was hired help for this enterprise. This failed enterprise.”

“We c-can’t fire the fluh-flare yet,” said Philby. “Snowstorm. W-wait until they can s-s-see it.”

“I need a pair of snow-goggles,” Hale said.

“The helicopter w-will l-land right here,” said Philby. “Twenty p-paces from the t-tent.”

“And I’ll be gone by then,” said Hale. “If I was to go to Erivan with you, I might not ever get back across. And if I wait here, the Soviet agents might not care to let me just walk away. Which,” he added, “I am going to do as soon as I’ve rested here. Oh, and I’ll want the key to one of the trucks.”

“No spare goggles,” said Fuad with satisfaction.

Philby had pulled back his furred hood and tugged his goggles down below his chin; the top half of his face seemed bone-white in contrast to his blackened mouth and jaw. Now he reached up with both hands and pulled the snow-goggles off over the top of his head; and there was wry humor in his pouchy exhausted eyes as he held the goggles out toward Hale.

“I won’t need them,” he said. “Umit—give him the keys to the Dodge.”

Hale saw Fuad open his mouth to object, then shrug.

Umit crouched by a tin box on the rubber floor and opened it, and when Fuad nodded he tossed a ring to Hale.

“A waste,” said Fuad. “You will surely die before you reach the truck, if you leave now.” His glittering eyes fixed on Hale. “A waste of the truck key, I meant.”

Hale groped for the key, and when he had closed his stinging fingers on it, he carefully dropped it into the pocket with the derringer.

“Let’s put it to the test,” he said.

Philby was smiling sourly at him. “They’ll k-kill you, you know,” he said softly. “Don’t l-look for g-gratitude.”

Fuad and Umit would suppose he referred to the KGB, or the GRU; but Hale knew he meant the SIS, the secret SOE—he meant Jimmie Theodora.