He stopped and mopped the sweat from his face and neck. 'Too much
vodka,' he grunted, 'you are getting soft.' His shirt was as sodden as
though he had plunged in the river.
He changed the slin of the rifle to his other shoulder, lifted his
binoculars and swept the sides of the wooded gully. They appeared sheer
and unscalable, but then he picked out the stunted shape of a small tree
that grew out of a narrow crack in the face. It looked like a Japanese
bonsai, with a twisted, malformed trunk and tortured branches.
The Walia ibex had been standing on the ledge just above that tree when
the American had fired. In his mind's eye Boris could still see the way
in which the wild goat had hunched its back as the bullet struck, and
then spun around and raced away up the cliff. He panned the glasses
upwards gently, and could just make out the inclination of the narrow
ledge as it angled up the face.
'Da, da. This is the spot.' He was thinking in his mother tongue again.
It was a relief after these last days of having to struggle in French
and English.
Before he began the climb, he left the trail and scrambled down the
boulder-strewn slope to the river. He knelt at the edge of the Nile and
splashed double handfuls over himself, soaking his cropped head and
sluicing the sweat from his face and neck. He drained and refilled his
water bottle, then drank until his belly was painfully full.
Then he rinsed out the bottle and refilled it. There was no water on the
mountain. Finally he dipped his bush hat in the river and placed it back
on his head, sodden and streaming water down his neck and face.
He climbed back to the main trail and followed it for another hundred
paces, moving slowly and studying the 'ground. At one place there was a
rock boulder almost blocking the path. The men ahead of him had been
forced to step over this obstruction, on to a patch of talcum-fine dust
beyond it. They had left perfect impressions of their footprints for him
to read.
Most of the men were wearing Israeli-style para boots with a
zigzag-patterned sole, and those coming up from behind had overtrodden
the spoor of the leaders. He had to go down on one knee to examine the
signs minutely before he could pick out the imprint of a much smaller
and more delicately formed foot, a lighter, unmistakably feminine tread.
It was partially obliterated by other larger masculine footprints, but
the outline of the toe was clear, and the pattern was that of a smooth
rubber-soled Bata tennis shoe. He would have recognized it from ten
thousand others.
He was relieved to find that Tessay was still with the group, and that
she and her lover had not left and taken another path. Mek Nimmur was a
sly one, and cunning.
He had escaped from Boris's clutches once before. But not this time! The
Russian shook his head vehemently: not this time.
He gave his full attention to the female footprint once again. It gave
him a pang to look at it. His anger returned in full force. He did not
consider his feelings for the woman. Love and desire did not enter into
the equation.
