I just made it in time. The supply bag thudded into the ground and I followed a split second later, rolling into a patch of surprisingly springy turf. I rolled again and came to rest, a shoulder of rock nudging me in the ribs.
I lay there, winded, and someone came close and leaned over me. There was the gleam of steel and I got my hand up just in time, the Smith and Wesson ready.
“I was only going to cut your line,” Piet Jaeger said.
“Are you sure it wasn’t my throat you were aiming for?”
“Another time,” he said. “When you aren’t so useful. When we don’t need you any more.”
He sounded as if he meant it and sliced through my belt line and pulled my supply bag clear. I struggled out of my harness and got rid of the chute. Now that I was down, the light seemed much better and I could see Burke and Legrande approaching carrying their chutes and supply bags. The Frenchman was limping, but it turned out to be nothing serious. In his case, his oscillation had been so great that he had hit the ground before his supply bag when unprepared. He’d obviously had a bad shaking, but he made light of it as we unpacked.
The supply bags held the commando rucksacks containing food and water, our weapons and extra ammunition, and when they were empty, went into a convenient crevasse together with the parachutes.
We squatted in the shelter of the rocks and Burke passed round a flask of brandy. I took a long pull and found myself smiling, grateful to be alive, two feet on solid earth again as the warmth spread through me.
“There’s no point in hanging about,” he said. “Straight up to the top from here. We’ve got to get over and into those trees while it’s still dark.”
Which didn’t give us long because dawn was officially at ten past four and we moved out at once in single file. I took the lead because, in theory at least, I knew more about the terrain than anyone else and followed a route which took us straight up the side of the waterfall.
It was a marvellous night, the moon almost full, a tracer or two of cloud aroused, stars glittering everywhere. The mountains marched into the distance, ridge after ridge of them, and far to the east moonlight glittered on Etna’s snowy peak.
The valleys were dark, but four thousand feet below and a couple of miles to the right in the general direction of Bellona, a single light gleamed. I wondered if it could be Cerda sitting up and wondering how we were making out, for nothing was more certain than that my grandfather would have kept him fully informed.
A good actor, Cerda, one had to admit that. Even the gun behind his back had all been part of the show. He had behaved in a way it was reasonable to suppose I would expect him to – very clever. His one flaw had been his apparent ignorance of the presence of Joanna Truscott in the mountains. Hardly likely in a man who knew everything else there was to know about Serafino.
Still, an excellent performance with Marco keeping out of the way in the back room. You really couldn’t trust anyone in this affair, or so it seemed to me then.
It was just after three when we made the summit and I dropped into a hollow between rocks and waited for the others. I was tired and I suppose the truth was that I wasn’t really fit enough for this kind of game yet. On the other hand, the others didn’t look too good either, Legrande particularly, and Burke seemed to be having difficulty with his breathing.
He passed the brandy round again, probably as an excuse to have one himself. “So far so good. We’ve got just under an hour to get down a thousand feet or so. If we can do that I think we’ll have it made.”
He nodded to me. “All right, Stacey.”
It wasn’t easy going at all. The ground was rough and treacherous and with the moon almost down, the light on that side of the mountain was very bad indeed. In places there were great aprons of shale that were as treacherous underfoot as ice, sliding like water at the slightest movement.
I paused after half an hour on a small plateau and waited for them. In the east, there was already a perceptible lightening of the sky on the rim of the world and I knew we were not going to make it unless the going changed completely.
Piet arrived first, seemingly in excellent shape and then Legrande who slumped to the ground and looked pretty tired to me. Burke brought up the rear and I noticed again that his breathing wasn’t good.
“What have we stopped for?” he demanded.
I shrugged. “I thought we could all do with a breather.”
“To hell with that. We’ll never make it at this rate.”
He sounded good and angry and I cut him off with a quick gesture. “Okay – you’re the boss.”
I started down again, pushing myself hard, taking a chance or two on occasion, at one point sliding a good hundred feet on a great wave of shale that seemed as if it would never stop moving. Not that it did any good. In the grey light of dawn, we were still three hundred feet up from the first scattering of trees.
I’ve never felt so naked in my life as when I led the way down that final stretch of bare hillside. It was exactly twenty minutes to five when I reached the outer belt of trees.
ELEVEN
AS THE GREYNESS spread among the trees, we crouched in a circle and had something to eat. Burke seemed fine when sitting down and his breathing was normal again. But Legrande looked his age and more, the lines on his face etched knife deep. He was getting old, that was the trouble; too old for this sort of caper.
Even Piet looked tired and cold crouched there with the mist curling from the damp ground. The heavy brigade, that’s what we’d always called Legrande and him. There had been occasions when the sight of those two arriving shoulder to shoulder, smashing their way through with the force of a runaway train, had been enough to make you stand up and cheer, but not any more. Times changed and people changed with them – that was life and the pattern of things.
I shivered slightly. I did not like this kind of grey dawning. It reminded me of too many similar ones and a lot of good men gone. I lit a cigarette which tasted foul, but I persisted and Burke moved over and unfolded his copy of the map.
“We can’t be more than five hundred feet above this shepherd’s hut where he’s supposed to be hanging out. It might be an idea if you made a quick reconnaissance. We’ll wait here. I’ll give you three-quarters of an hour.” He added in a low voice, “I think Legrande could do with the rest. He looks shot to me.”
I got to my feet. “I think you’ve got a point there. I’ll see you later.”
I moved down through the trees. On the rockier slopes they were cork-oak and holly-oak, but then I entered a belt of beech and pine and the going became a lot easier.
A fox broke cover, giving me so much of a fright that I almost ended his days for him which would have been fatal for all of us, but there was plenty of wildlife on the mountain besides Serafino and his boys. Wildcats and martens and the odd wolf, although they all tended to run the opposite way at the first smell of a man.
I made good progress now and broke into a trot, my rifle at the trail, sliding down the occasional slope on my backside, and within fifteen minutes of leaving the others, I had descended a good three hundred feet.
There was a freshwater stream over on my right. I worked my way across, lay on my belly and splashed water on my face. It seemed as good a route down as any and it was more than likely that any shepherd building a hut would place it as close to water as possible, especially when you considered what it was like in this country during the summer.
It was the voice I heard first, a kind of smothered gasp that was cut off sharply. I paused, dropping to one knee. There was silence, then a vigorous splashing and another sharp cry.
I had seen the Honourable Joanna Truscott twice in my life, both times on photos which Hoffer had shown us. In one she had been dressed for skiing, in the other for a garden party at Buckingham Palace. It was difficult to accept that the girl I watched now from the bushes, floundering naked in a hollow among the trees where the stream had formed a small pool, was the same.
Her hair was tied back into a kind of eighteenth-century queue and her face, neck and arms were gypsy-brown
