The woman stopped. The room became eerily silent. Saul had listened so raptly that it took a moment before a reference at the end of her words tugged at his memory.
“He reached the cabin in October of forty-four?” Heat rushed into Saul’s stomach. “But didn’t you say he came back last year … ?”
“In October,” the woman said. “Given what he wrote in his diary, about his ordeal in the war, I doubt the parallel of the months was coincidental. The past was on his mind. Something must have driven him to return. His diary’s so vivid it’s as if he did more than recall his terrors—he relived them.”
“To be that obsessed …” Erika shuddered.
“As obsessed as your father was,” Saul said. In the presence of their hostess, he didn’t mention the photographs in the basement of the Vienna apartment building.
“But you said that in 1945 Avidan left here in May, at the end of the war,” Erika said. “This year, though, he left in February. The pattern isn’t exact.”
“Unless he intended to leave in May,” the woman said, “and something forced him to leave early, just as something had forced him to come back here. He left without warning. He took almost nothing with him. His decision must have been abrupt.”
“Or someone abruptly made the decision for him,” Erika said, “just as I suspect someone did for my father.”
“Abducted him?” the woman asked.
“It’s possible.” Erika exhaled. “We still don’t know enough.”
Through open windows, Saul heard the drone of a car coming along the road. The drone became louder. All at once it stopped.
His shoulder blades contracted. He left the kitchen and, careful to stand to the side of the big front window, peered out past the porch. A black Renault stood in the open gate of the rutted lane that led from the road toward the house. He saw the silhouettes of three men inside.
Erika came into the living room. “What’s the matter?” The woman followed her.
Saul turned to the woman. “Do you recognize that car?”
The woman stepped toward the window.
“Don’t show yourself,” Saul warned.
The woman obeyed, moving to the side of the window as Saul had. “I’ve never seen it before.”
The three men got out of the car. They were tall and well-built, in their mid-thirties. Each wore thick-soled casual shoes, dark slacks, and a zipped-up Windbreaker. The jackets were slightly too large.
In June? Saul thought. On a warm day like this? Why zipped-up Windbreakers?
As the men walked up the lane, each pulled down the zipper on his jacket.
Saul felt Erika close behind him.
“They could have driven all the way up to the house,” she said.
“But instead they blocked the gate. Until they move their car, we can’t drive out.”
The men walked abreast of each other. Though their expressions were blank, their eyes kept shifting, scanning the Volkswagen, the house, the pasture on either side, the woods and mountains beyond. Each had his left hand raised toward his belt. They were halfway up the lane now, close enough for Saul to notice the bright red ring each wore on the middle finger of his raised left hand.
He spun toward the woman. “Have you got a gun in the house?”
The woman stepped back, repelled by the force of his question. But her voice was steady. “Of course. This is Switzerland.”
She didn’t need to explain. Switzerland, though a neutral country, believed in military preparedness. Every male from the age of twenty to fifty was obligated to undergo military training. Every family had to keep a weapon in the house.
“Get it. Quickly,” Saul said. “Make sure it’s loaded. We have to leave here now.”
“But why would … ?”
“Now!”
Eyes widening, the woman rushed to a closet, removing a Swiss-made Sturmgewehr, or storm rifle. Saul knew it well. The length of a carbine, it was chambered for NATO’s 7.62-mm caliber bullets. It had a fold-down tripod beneath the barrel and a rubber-coated stock that helped to lessen the force of the recoil.
The woman groped for two magazines on the shelf above her. Erika took them, checking to make sure they were full to their twenty-round capacity. She inserted one into the rifle, switched off the safety, set the weapon for semiautomatic firing, and pulled back the arming bolt to chamber a round. She shoved the remaining magazine under her belt.
The woman blinked in dismay. “Those men surely wouldn’t …”
“We don’t have time to talk about it! Get out of here!” Saul lunged for the diary and the photographs on the kitchen table and crammed them into their cardboard packet. With the rifle in one hand, Erika yanked open the rear door to the kitchen. Saul grabbed the woman’s arm, tugging her with him, and charged out after Erika.
They raced across a small grassy area, through the barn, and up the slope toward Avidan’s cabin.
Saul heard a shout behind him. Legs pounding, he pressed the cardboard packet against his chest and risked stumbling to glance backward. Two of the men darted around the left side of the barn while the other man appeared at the right, pointing upward. The third man yelled in French. “Ici!”
Each pulled a pistol from beneath his Windbreaker.
“Erika!” Saul shouted.
She looked back, saw the three men aiming, and spun. In a fluid motion, she dropped to one knee, propped an elbow on her upraised other knee, and sighted along the rifle. Before the three men could fire, she pulled the trigger, then shot again. And again. The range was fifty meters. She was a skilled sharpshooter, but with no time to steady her muscles, the barrel wavered. She grazed one man’s shoulder, the other bullets slamming against the barn.
The injured man grabbed his arm and darted back behind the barn. His companions ducked out of sight inside it. If she hadn’t killed them, at least she’d distracted them, and she rose, sprinting after Saul and the woman, who’d already reached the top of the slope. A bullet tore splinters off a log on Avidan’s cabin as she took cover behind the building.
Saul and the woman waited for her, breathing deeply. Erika took a chance and showed herself to shoot twice more down the slope at the men scrambling after them.
The men sprawled flat.
“You know these woods,” Saul told the woman. “Take us into the mountains.”
“But where will we … ?”
“Hurry. Move.”
5
The woman squeezed through a line of bushes and came to a narrow path that veered up a wooded slope, her muscular bare legs taking long forceful strides toward the summit. Saul and Erika followed, struggling to adjust to the unaccustomed altitude. At the top, the path changed direction, angling to the left, then descending between two chest-high boulders. Dense trees shut out the sun. Saul sensed their pine resin fragrance, their fallen needles soft beneath the impact of his shoes, but what occupied his attention was the crack of branches behind him, the muffled echo of angry voices.
The woman led them down the path to a shallow stream. Saul splashed across it, ignoring the cold wetness of his pants clinging to his legs, and forced himself into the shadowy continuation of the forest. He heard Erika’s feet plunge through the stream behind him.
The woman led them up another slope, but this slope was steeper, the trail almost indiscernible. Saul zigzagged past deadfalls, thickets, and clumps of boulders. Finally at the top, his lungs on fire, he pivoted to stare past Erika down toward the hollow. The men weren’t in sight, but he could hear footsteps splashing through the stream.
The woman had brought them to a grassy plateau. A hundred meters away, another stretch of dense forest angled up, it seemed forever. They raced ahead. High grass tugged at Saul’s shoes. His back itched as he imagined the three men suddenly appearing at the top of the slope behind him, but no bullet punched through his spine. He threw himself to the ground behind bushes at the opposite edge of the clearing. Erika dropped beside him, aiming the rifle. The woman rushed farther,
stopped when she realized her protectors weren’t racing to follow, then sank to her knees behind a tree.
In contrast with her obvious terror, Saul felt almost joyous. We made it! he thought. We crossed before they saw us! They didn’t catch us in the open! Now it’s our turn!
Beside him, Erika calmed her breathing, pulled down the tripod attached to the rifle’s barrel, steadied her aim, and became rock-still.
Not long now, Saul thought. Not long. He wiped sweat from his eyes and concentrated on the opposite edge of the clearing. Any moment, the bushes over there would part. The men would show themselves.
Five seconds became ten. Fifteen. Thirty. After what seemed two minutes, Erika scrambled backward, and Saul knew exactly why. The situation was wrong. The men should have reached the top of the slope by now. They should have shown themselves.
He followed Erika, scurrying toward the woman. When the woman opened her mouth to speak, he clamped a hand across her lips and gestured forcibly toward the continuation of the forest. She reacted to the desperation in his eyes and ran, leading them upward through the trees.
He could think of only one reason the men hadn’t shown themselves. They’d approached the clearing, sensed the trap, and separated, following the rim of trees on either side, trying to get ahead of their quarry. It was possible they’d already done so.
The crack of a gunshot parallel to Saul, on his left, spurred him faster up the wooded slope. The bullet shredded leaves beside him. He heard it—felt it—zip past him.
But was the shot meant to force them toward a sniper waiting at the top of this slope? Or was it intended to make them stop and take cover while the three men encircled them?
Instincts assumed control. Motion—escape—was everything. Saul understood why Erika didn’t bother returning fire. She didn’t have a target, and even if she did, the trees would interfere with her aim. He knew they couldn’t even hope that the gunshots would attract help from the village. In Switzerland, mandatory military training required farmers to practice their marksmanship on a regular basis. Gunshots in the Alps were as ordinary as the tinkle of cowbells. No one would pay attention.
The air had cooled. Clouds had covered the sky. Drops of moisture pelted his shirtsleeves. He pressed the cardboard packet of photographs and Avidan’s diary harder against his chest, grateful for its plastic wrapping. The rain increased, drenching him. He shivered. Black clouds scudded over the mountains, making him realize how dangerous the weather had become. The strain of racing ever higher in unaccustomed altitude could lead to delirium from oxygen deprivation. Add to that a cold extended rain, and conditions were perfect for hypothermia, a rapid drain of strength and body heat, death from exposure.
Three hours, Saul thought. That’s the maximum time hypothermia takes to kill. That’s how long we’ve got now. His only consolation was to imagine the similar apprehension of his hunters.
Trembling from cold, he reached the top of this farther hill, only to wince when he saw yet another wooded ridge above, obscured by darker clouds and worsening rain. The downpour muffled a shot from his right. The bullet slammed against a tree behind him.
Propelled by fear, the woman raced ahead. Saul had trouble keeping up with her. She guided them through a maze of obstacles. Higher. Steeper. We must be at eight thousand feet by now, Saul thought. The thin air threw him off balance. No matter how quickly and deeply he breathed, he couldn’t satisfy his lungs. His thoughts began to swirl. Movement became automatic, a reflexive struggle. Twice he fell, helped up by Erika. Then Erika fell, and he helped her up. His head throbbed. But the woman, as agile as a mountain goat, scrambled ever higher.
He wasn’t sure when the trees became less dense, when pine needle–covered ground gave way to more and more rocks and open space, but suddenly his thoughts and vision cleared sufficiently for him to realize that he’d passed the treeline, that only granite and snow-covered peaks rose above him.
We’re trapped, he thought. We can’t go much higher. We’ll faint.
Or freeze to death. The rain, which had chilled him to his core, had changed to snow. Above the timberline, a June blizzard wasn’t unusual; experienced mountaineers took that danger into account and carried woolen clothes in their knapsacks. But Saul hadn’t expected to be up here; he was dressed for summer conditions. Far below him, in the untouched village, this sudden far-off storm would have been merely picturesque, but up here, it was life-threatening. Already the snow had accumulated on his scalp. His shoulders were covered, his hands numb.
We’re going to die up here, he thought. We’ve gone so far, even if we turned around and tried to get back to the woman’s farm, we wouldn’t make it there before we fainted from exposure and froze to death. And somewhere along the way we’d be ambushed by our hunters.
The snow obscured the gray of the granite slopes above. But despite the freezing wind, the woman persisted, climbing higher. She’s crazy, Saul thought. She’s so afraid of those men she’ll scramble up till she collapses, and in the meantime, the men’ll realize the danger we’re heading into. They’ll hang back. They’ll stay below the treeline, take shelter beneath a deadfall, and stalk us when the storm is over. They’ll find us frozen where we fell and simply leave us there. In July, after the snow melts, hikers will come upon us and report another mountain accident.
The thought made Saul angry enough to keep following the woman. The flakes cleared sporadically, allowing him to see that the three of them had reached another plateau, this one completely barren. The woman pushed onward.
But not toward the next even steeper slope, instead toward a wooden door set into a granite wall.
The door had been placed here precisely for conditions such as this—a common Swiss precaution against unexpected storms. The snow gained such volume that he couldn’t any longer see the door, let alone the granite slopes beyond it. There wasn’t a choice. He and Erika had to follow.
But when the woman opened the door, revealing a murky cave beyond, he balked.
“The door’s two inches thick!” the woman insisted. “Bullets can’t go through it! Those men will die if they try to wait us out!”
Saul understood her logic. From years of living next to the mountains, she was conditioned to think of this cave as a refuge. But his own years of training rebelled against enclosing himself. A refuge could also be a trap. What if the storm let up? What if the men decided not to linger beneath a deadfall at the treeline and instead followed their tracks through the snow and besieged the cave? What if they had carried more than pistols beneath their slightly too large Windbreakers?
Explosives, for instance.
No! He had to fight the enemy on open ground, free to maneuver. But he couldn’t leave Erika unable to defend herself. Tempted to reach for the rifle she carried, he forced his arms to remain by his sides. “I’ll be back. If you don’t recognize my voice, shoot anyone who tries to open the door.”
Snow clung to Erika’s face. The falling temperature had blanched her skin. She squeezed his arm. “I love you.”
The snow fell harder.
“If I knew another way …” he said. “But there isn’t.”
She opened her mouth to say something else.
He echoed her “I love you” and, knowing she’d understand, shoved her toward the cave. She acquiesced, darting inside after the woman. Darkness cloaked her. The door slammed shut with a thud that was almost inaudible in the wind.
6
He spun toward the slope below him. With his back turned toward the gusts, he saw more clearly now. Boulders that had been invisible loomed murkily in the storm. Going down, he’d have a slight advantage against his hunters. They’d be blinded by the snow squalling at their eyes, just as he’d been blinded when he came up. Perhaps that advantage would compensate for his lack of a weapon. They had the advantage of three against one. The equalizer was the numbing cold.
The League of Night and Fog Page 19