The Black Mountain

grumpily. 'You are not.' 'Phooey. I want to see your birthplace and put a plaque on it.' No comment. He sighed again, arose from his chair, crossed to a sofa with a high back that was against the far wall, placed a cushion to suit him, and stretched out. He tried it first on his back, but protruded over the edge, and turned on his side. It was a pathetic sight, and to take my mind off it I went to another wall and looked at pictures some more. I think he got a nap in. Some time later, when Danilo returned, I had to go to the 191 sofa and touch Wolfe's arm before he would open his eyes. He gave me a dirty look, and one just as dirty to Danilo, swung his legs around, sat, and ran his fingers through his hair. 'We can go now,' Danilo announced. He had on a leather jacket. 'Very well.' Wolfe made it to his feet. 'The knapsacks, Archie?' As I bent to lift them Meta's voice came from the doorway. Her husband answered her, and Wolfe said something and then spoke to me. 'Archie, Mrs. Vukcic asks if we would like to look at the children, and I said yes.' I kept my face straight. The day that Wolfe would like to climb steps to look at children will be the day I would like to climb Mount Everest barefooted to make a snowman. However, it was good public relations, and I don't deny he might have felt that we should show some appreciation for her contribution to the discussion of our future. I know I did, so I dropped the knapsacks and gave her a cordial smile. She led the way through the arch and up a flight of narrow wooden stairs, uncarpeted, with Wolfe and me following and Danilo bringing up the rear. On the top landing she murmured something to Wolfe, and we waited there 192 while she disappeared through a doorway and in a moment rejoined us, carrying a lighted candle. After going to another door that was closed, she opened it gently and crossed the sill. With the heavy shoes we were wearing it wasn't easy to step quietly, and with the condition Wolfe's feet were in it wasn't easy for him to tiptoe, but by gum he tried, and made, on the bare floor, quite a little less noise than a team of horses. They were in beds, not cribs, with high wooden posts, against opposite walls. Zosha, who was on her back, with one of her long black curls across her nose, had kicked the cover off, and Meta pulled it up. Wolfe, looking down at her, muttered something, but I can't say what because he has always refused to tell me. Ivan, who was on his side with an arm stretched out, had a smudge on his cheek, but you have to make allowance for the fact that when Meta put them to bed unexpected guests had arrived and she had been under pressure. When Meta turned away with the candle, and Wolfe and I followed, Danilo stayed by Ivan's bed, and we waited for him at the foot of the stairs, with Meta holding the candle high to light him. In the living room Danilo spoke to Wolfe, and Wolfe relayed it to me. 'We'll go first, 193 by a route I know, not far, and Danilo will follow. We won't want the knapsacks on our backs in the car, so if you'll carry them?' We shook hands with Meta. I picked up the luggage. Danilo escorted us to the front door and let us out, and we were loose again. It was past midnight and the houses were all dark, and so was the street, except for one dim excuse for a light at the corner a hundred yards away. We headed in the other direction. When we had gone some fifty paces I stopped and wheeled to look back, and Wolfe grumbled, 'That's futile.' 'Okay,' I conceded, 'but I trust Danilo as far as I can see him, and now I can't see him.' 'Then why look? Come on.' I obeyed, with my arms full of knapsacks. There were some stars, and soon my eyes were adjusted enough for objects thirty feet off and for movements much farther. Before long we came to a dead end and turned left. At the next intersection we turned right, and in a few minutes went left again and were on a dirt road with ruts. There were no more houses, but ahead in the distance was a big black outline against the sky, and I asked Wolfe what it was. 'Sawmill. The car's there.' He sounded more confident than I felt, 194 but he was right. When we approached the outline it became a building surrounded by other outlines, and closer up they became stacks of lumber. I saw the car first, off the road, in between the second and third stacks, which were twice as high as my head. We went up to it. It was a car all right, an old Chewy sedan, and the hood was warm to my hand, but it was empty. 'What the hell,' I said. 'No driver? I have no road map.' 'He'll come.' Wolfe opened the rear door and was climbing in. 'There'll be four of us, so you'll have to ride with me.' I put the knapsacks in, taking care not to drop them on his feet, but stayed out on the ground. With my hands free, I had a strong impulse to get the Marley in one and the Colt in the other, and I had to explain to myself why it would be a waste of energy. If someone not Danilo arrived I certainly wasn't going to shoot on sight, and I wouldn't even know what his viewpoint was until Wolfe interpreted for me. I compromised by transferring the Colt from my hip to my side pocket. It was Danilo who arrived. Hearing footsteps, I looked around the corner of the lumber pile and saw him coming down the road. When he was close enough to recog- 195 nize I took my hand out of my pocket, which shows the state of mind I was in. According to me, he was as likely to saw off our limb as anyone. He turned in, brushing past me, went to the car and spoke to Wolfe, turned, and pronounced a word that sounded something like Steven. Immediately a man appeared beside him, coming from above. He had jumped down from the lumber pile, where he had been perched, probably peeking down at me, while I had been talking myself out of drawing my guns. 'This is Stefan Protic,' Danilo told Wolfe. 'I have told him about you and your son Alex. Seen anything, Stefan?' 'No. Nothing.' 'All right, we'll go.' Danilo got in with Wolfe, so I circled the car and climbed in beside Stefan. He gave me a long, hard, deliberate look, and I returned it as well as I could in the darkness. About all I could tell was that he was some shorter than me, with a long narrow face that certainly wasn't pale, and broad shoulders. He started the engine, which sounded as if it would appreciate a valve job, rolled into the road, and turned right, without turning his lights on. I can't tell you anything about the first three miles, or five kilometers, of that ride, 196 because I saw nothing. I had already suspected that European drivers had kinks that nothing could be done about, and now concluded that Stefan's was an antipathy for lights, when suddenly he flashed them on, and I saw why we had been bumping so much. You couldn't have driven that road without bumping if it had been lined on both sides with continuous neons. I remarked over my shoulder, 'If you'll tell this bird to stop I'd rather get out and run along behind.' I expected no reply but got one. Wolfe's voice came, punctuated by bumps. 'The main routes from Podgorica are north and south. This is merely a lane to nowhere.' Podgorica again. Also he wasn't going to have me casting slurs at Montenegro, which was pretty generous of him, considering the kind of reception Montenegro was giving us. In another mile or so the road smoothed off a little and started up and began to wind. Wolfe informed me that we were now along the Cijevna, and on our right, quite close, I caught glimpses of the white of a rushing stream, but the engine was too noisy for me to hear it. I remembered that one evening after dinner I had heard Wolfe and Marko discussing the trout they had caught in their 197 early days, Marko claiming he had once landed one forty centimeters long, and I had translated it into inches -- sixteen. I swiveled my head to ask Wolfe if it was in the Cijevna that he and Marko had got trout, and he said yes, but in a tone of voice that did not invite conversation, so I let it lie. The road got narrower and steeper, and after a while there was no more Cijevna, anyhow not visible. Stefan shifted to second to negotiate a couple of hairpin turns, tried to get going in high again, couldn't make it, and settled for second. The air coming in my open window was colder and fresher, and in the range of our lights ahead there were no longer any leaves or grass, or anything growing, nothing but rock. I had seen no sign of a habitation for more than a mile, and was thinking that Wolfe must have been hatched in an eagle's nest, when suddenly space widened out in front of us, and right ahead, not fifty feet away, was a stone house, and the car stopped with a jerk. I was making sure it was really a house and not just more of the rock, when Stefan switched off the lights and everything was black. Danilo said something, and we all piled out. I got the knapsacks. Stefan went toward the house, came back in a moment with a can, lifted the hood and removed the 198 radiator cap, and poured water in. When that chore was finished he got in behind the wheel, got turned around with a lot of noisy backing and tacking, and was gone. Soon I was relieved to see, down below, his lights flash on. Wolfe spoke. 'My knapsack, Archie, if you please?' 199 Chapter 11 We got to Josip Pasic, according to the luminous dial on my wrist, at eighteen minutes past three in the morning. I did not, and still don't, understand how Wolfe ever made it. We didn't actually scale any cliffs -- it was supposed to be a trail all the way except the last three hundred yards -- but it was all up, and at least fifty times my hands had to help my feet. I must admit that Danilo was very decent about it. Even in the dark he could probably have romped along like a goat, but he would always wait like a gentleman for Wolfe to catch up. I had no choice. I was behind, and if Wolfe had toppled he would have taken me with him. There was no taboo on talking, and during the halts Danilo did some briefing, and Wolfe passed it on to me when he had a little breath to spare. Our destination was not the cache but a decoy. The costly and 200 essential supplies had been moved. There were guards at the new cache, but Pasic and five others were at the old one, now empty, expecting and awaiting an invasion. It sounded goofy to me, six guys sitting in a cave asking for it, but I understood it better when we got there. The last three hundred yards, after we left the trail, were not the hardest but they were the most interesting. Danilo, saying that at one point we would have to walk a ledge less than a meter wide with a five-hundredmeter drop, had suggested that he bring Pasic to us at the trail, but Wolfe had vetoed it. When we got to the ledge, which was nearly level, apparently it meant nothing to him. As for me, I didn't spend my boyhood herding goats around cliffs and chasms, and I would have preferred to be walking down Fifth Avenue, or even Sixth. There was enough light from the stars to see the edge, and then nothing. Wide open spaces are okay fairly horizontal, but not straight down. We were