by Eric Ambler
“We can go,” he whispered.
“The light a moment, Leo,” Fischer said.
Miller held the light up for him. With his good hand, Fischer eased a small snub-nosed revolver from his breast pocket, worked the safety catch, and then transferred the thing to a side pocket. He gave me a meaning look as he patted it.
Miller got up, so I stood up, too. He came down the steps with the tackle and looped it around one shoulder like a bandolier. “I will go first,” he said; “Arthur will follow me. Then you, Hans. Is there anything else? Ah yes, there is.”
He went and relieved himself in the corner by the fire hose. When he had finished Fischer did the same thing.
I was smoking. “Put that out now,” Miller said. He looked at Fischer. “Are you ready?”
Fischer nodded; then, an instant before the light went out, I saw him cross himself. That is something I don’t understand. I mean, he was asking a blessing, or whatever it is, when he was going to commit a sin.
Miller went up the stairs slowly. At the top he paused, looking all round, getting his bearings. Then he bent his head down to mine.
“Karl said that you may have vertigo,” he said softly; “but it is all quite simple. Follow me at three paces. Do not look sideways or back, only ahead. There is one step down from this ironwork. Then there is lead sheet. I will step down, go three paces, and wait a little so that your eyes can adjust themselves.”
I had been so long in the darkness that the intermittent glare of the pen light had been almost painful. Outside on the roof, the moonlight seemed to make everything as bright as day; too bright for my liking; I was certain that someone would see us from the ground and start shooting. Fischer must have had the same feeling. I heard him swear under his breath behind me.
Miller’s teeth gleamed for an instant; then he started to move forward past the three cupolas over the quarters of the White Eunuchs. There was a space of about five feet between the cupolas and the edge of the roof. Staying close to the cupolas and looking only ahead as Miller had instructed me, I had no sensation at all of being on a high place. For a while, my only problem was keeping up with him. Harper had compared him to a fly. To me he looked more like an earwig as he slithered round the last of the three cupolas and scuttled on, leaning inward over the slight hump in the center of the roof. He stopped only once. He had crossed the roof of the Audience Chamber, to avoid what looked like three large fanlights over the Gate of Felicity, and was returning to the Eunuchs’ roof when another fanlight appeared and the flat surface narrowed suddenly. The way across was only about two feet wide.
I saw the ground below and started to go down on my knees-I might just have been able to crawl across by myself, I suppose-when he reached back, gripped my forearm, and drew me after him. It was done so quickly that I had no time to get sick and lose my balance. His fingers were like steel clamps.
Then, we were level with the kitchens and I could see the conical bases of their ten squat chimneys stretching away to the right. Miller led the way to the left. The flat space here was over thirty feet wide and I had no trouble. There was a four-foot rise then, which brought us over the big room with the exhibition of miniatures and glass in it. Ahead, I could see the whole of one cupola and, beyond it, the top of another smaller one. The smaller one, I knew, was the one on the roof of the Treasury Museum.
Miller began to move more slowly and carefully as he skirted the big cupola. Every now and again he stopped. Then I saw him lower himself over a ledge. When his feet found whatever there was below, only his head and shoulders were showing.
I was following round the big cupola, and had started to move away from it towards the ledge, when Miller turned and beckoned to me. He had moved a yard or two towards the outer edge of the roof, so I changed direction towards him. That is how it was that when I came to the ledge I saw too much.
There was the vaulted roof of the Treasury, and the cupola with a flat space about four feet wide all around the base of it. That is where Miller was standing. But beyond him there was nothing, just a great black emptiness, and then, horribly far away below, the faint white hairline of a road in the moonlight.
I felt myself starting to lose my balance and fall, so I knelt down quickly and clung to the lead surface of the roof. Then I began retching. I couldn’t help it; I’ve never been able to help it. From what I’ve heard from people who get seasick, that must be the same sort of feeling; only my feeling about heights is worse.
I had nothing in my stomach to throw up, but that didn’t make any difference. My stomach went on trying to throw up.
Fischer began kicking me and hissing at me to be silent. Miller reached up and dragged me by the ankles down over the ledge, then made me sit with my back against the side of the cupola. He shoved my head hard between my knees. I heard a scuffling noise as he helped Fischer down off the ledge, then their whispering.
“Will he be all right?”
“He will have to be.”
“The fat fool.” Fischer kicked me as I started to retch again.
Miller stopped him. “That will do no good. You will have to help. As long as he gets no nearer the edge it may be possible.”
I opened my eyes just enough to see Miller’s feet. He was laying out the anchor rope round the cupola and presently he pulled one end of it down between my back and the part I was leaning against. A moment or two later, he crouched down in front of me and began knotting the rope. When that was done, he slipped on the upper block of the lifting tackle. Then he brought his head close to mine.
“Can you hear me, Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“If you didn’t have to move, you’d feel safe here, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are safe now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then listen. You can handle the tackle from here. Open your eyes and look up at me.”
I managed to do so. He had taken his coat off and looked skinnier than ever. “Hans will be at the edge,” he went on, “and with his good hand will hold my coat in place there. In that way the ropes will run smoothly over it and not be cut. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you will not have to go near the edge-only let out rope and pull in when you are told.”
“I don’t know. Supposing I let it slip.”
“Well, that would be bad, because then you would have only Hans to deal with, and he would certainly make sure that you slipped, too.”
The teeth, as he smiled, were like rows of gravestones. Suddenly he picked up a coil of rope from the lead beside him and put it in my hands.
“Get ready to take the strain,” he said, “and remember that it stretches. I don’t mind how slowly I go down or how quickly I come up. Hans will give you the signals to lower, stop, and raise.” He pointed to a ridge in the lead. “Brace your feet against this. So.”
The day Mum died, the Imam came and intoned verses from the Koran. Now taste the torment of the fire you called a lie.
Miller slipped the end of the rope around my chest and knotted it firmly. Then he hauled in the slack. “Are you ready, Arthur?”
I nodded.
“Then look at Hans.”
I let my eyes go to Fischer’s legs and then his body. He was lying on his right side with his shoulder on Miller’s coat and his right hand on the tackle ready to guide it. I dared not look any nearer the edge. I knew I would pass out if I did.
I saw Miller put a pair of gloves on, step into the sling, then crouch down and move out of sight.
“Now,” Fischer whispered.
The strain didn’t come suddenly; the stretch in the nylon had to be taken up first. My hands were slippery with sweat and I had looped the rope round the sleeve of my left arm to give me more purchase. When the full strain came, the loop tightened like a tourniquet. Then the pressure fluctuated and I could feel Miller bouncing in the sling as the tackle settled down.
“Steady.” Fischer hel
d his right hand palm downwards over the tackle.
The movement in the block by the anchor rope beside me ceased.
“Lower slowly.”
I let the rope slide round my arm and the bouncing began again.
“Keep going, smoothly.”
I went on paying out the rope. There was less bouncing now, just an occasional vibration. Miller was using his feet to steady himself against the wall as he descended. I watched the coil of rope beside me growing smaller and had another terror to fight. The end of the rope was tied round my chest. I couldn’t untie it now without letting go. If there were not enough rope in the coil to reach the shutter below, Fischer would make me move nearer to the edge.
There was about six feet left to go when he raised his hand. “Stop. Hold still.”
I was so relieved that I didn’t notice the pain in my arm from the tightened loop; I just closed my eyes and kept my head down.
There were slight movements on the rope, and, after a moment or two, faint clicking sounds as he went to work on the metal shutters. Minutes went by. My left arm began to go numb. Then, there was another sound from below, a sort of hollow tapping. It only lasted a moment, before Fischer hissed at me. I opened my eyes again.
“Lower a little, very slowly.”
As I obeyed I felt the tension in the rope suddenly slacken. Miller was inside.
“Rest.”
I loosened the rope on my arm and massaged it until the pins and needles began. I didn’t try to massage them away. They kept my mind on my arm and away from other things, such as the day the games master had made me dive. When you got into the cadet corps you had to be able to swim, and, once a week, all the boys in each squad who couldn’t do so were marched to the Lewisham Public Baths to take lessons. When you had learned to swim you had to dive. I didn’t mind the swimming part, but when my head went under water I was always afraid of drowning. For a time I didn’t have to, because I kept telling the games master that I had bad ears; but then he said that I would have to get a doctor’s certificate. I tried to write one myself, but I didn’t know the proper words to use and he caught me out. I expected him to send me with a note to The Bristle, but instead he made me dive. I say “dive.” What he did was pick me up by one arm and a leg and throw me in the deep end; and he kept on doing it. Every time I managed to get out, even while I was still choking up water, he would throw me in again. One of the attendants at the Baths had to stop him in the end. He was married, so I wrote a letter to his wife telling her how he messed about with certain boys in the changing cubicles and pestered them to feel him. I was careless though, because I used the same handwriting as I had used on the certificate, and he knew for certain it was me. He couldn’t prove it, of course, because he had torn up the certificate. He took me into a lobby and accused me and called me an “unspeakable little cad”; but that was all he did. He was really shaken. When I realized it, I could have kicked myself. If I had known that he actually had been messing about with boys in the cubicles, I could have put the police onto him. As it was, I had simply warned him to be more careful. He had thin, curly brown hair with an officer’s mustache, and walked as if he had springs on the soles of his feet. The term after that he left and went to another school.
Fischer hissed at me and I opened my eyes.
“Take the strain.”
I wrapped the rope round my waist this time so that I could use my weight to push away from the edge if necessary.
“Ready?”
I nodded and held on tight. There was a jerk as Miller got his weight into the sling again. Then Fischer nodded.
“Up.”
I started to pull. The friction of the rope against the coat on the edge of the roof made it terribly hard. The sweat ran into my eyes. Twice I had to stop and knot the rope round my waist so that I could wipe my hands and ease the cramp in my fingers; but the coil got larger again and then Fischer began to use his good hand on one of the ropes in the tackle.
“Slow… slower… stop.”
Suddenly the tackle ran free and Miller, grinning, was crawling across the roof towards me. He patted my leg.
“Merci, mon cher collegue,” he said.
I shut my eyes and nodded. Through the singing in my ears I could hear him reporting to Fischer as he gathered in the tackle.
“All those we counted on and a few more to garnish the dish. I even fastened the shutters again.”
I felt him untying the rope from my chest. When I opened my eyes he was clipping the velvet bag to his belt. Fischer was fumbling with the knots in the anchor rope. I crawled over and began to help him. All I wanted was to get away, and I knew that they would have to help me.
Fischer with his injured hand needed help to get back onto the upper roof level. Then, Miller somehow managed to heave me up high enough for me to claw my way over the ledge. I crawled then on my hands and knees to the shelter of the big cupola. By the time Miller reached me, I was able to stand up.
We started back, as we had started out, with Miller in the lead. This time, however, there was no turn to make. We left the White Eunuchs’ quarters on our right and went on over the kitchen roofs to the wall by the Gate of Salvation. There was one awkward place-for me, that is-by the old water tower, but I somehow got past it on my hands and knees; then we were on the wall overlooking the Courtyard of the Janissaries.
There was a row of tall plane trees close to the wall, and Miller used an overhanging branch as an anchor for the tackle. He lowered Fischer first, in the sling, and then me; but he wouldn’t use the sling himself, because that would have meant leaving the tackle in the tree. It was not the tackle itself he cared about, he said; he didn’t want to leave any traces behind of how the job had been done. He got off the wall by looping the anchor rope over the branch and sliding down it. Doubled like that, it wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, so he dropped the last six feet, pulling one end of the rope with him. He landed as lightly as a cat and began gathering in the rope. After all he had done, he wasn’t even out of breath.
Fischer took over the lead now, and headed for the outer wall on a line parallel with the road the tourist cars used during the day. Miller walked behind me. After a minute or two, we could see the lights of the guard room beside the huge Bab-i-Humayun Gate and Fischer slowed down. We had been walking in the shadow of a row of trees, but now they came to an end. Fifty yards across the road to the right was the bulk of St. Irene; ahead the road forked, the right prong going to the gate, the left prong narrowing and curving inward down the hill towards the sea.
Fischer stopped, staring at the gate.
It was no more than fifty yards away and I could see the sentry. He had his carbine slung over his shoulder and was picking his nose.
Fischer put his mouth to my ear. “What time is it?”
“Five to ten.”
“We have time to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“We have to go left down the hill. The guard changes in five minutes. It will be safer then.”
“Where are we going to?”
“The railroad-where it bridges the wall.”
A section of the railway ran along the shoreline just inside the big wall for about three quarters of a mile; but I knew that there were guard posts at both ends of it. I said so.
He grinned. “Guard posts, yes. But no gates.”
Miller hissed a warning.
An oblong of light glowed as the door of the guard room opened. For an instant two men were outlined in the doorway. Then, as the business of changing sentries began, Fischer touched my arm.
“Now.”
He moved forward out of the shadow of the trees and cut across a patch of rough grass to the road. It descended sharply and narrowed to little more than a track. Within thirty seconds the top of the slope hid us from the sentries. Fischer glanced back to see that we were with him, and then walked on at a more leisurely pace.
Ahead was a strip of sea and beyond it the lights of Selimiye a
nd Haydarpasar on the Asian side. Other lights moved across the water-a ferry and small fishing boats. In the daylight, tourists with movie cameras waste hundreds of feet of film on the view. I suppose it’s very beautiful. Personally, I never want to see it again-in any sort of light.
After a couple of minutes’ walking we came to another track, which led off to the right towards the outer wall. Fischer crossed it and went straight on down over a stretch of wasteland. There were piles of rubble from archaeological diggings, and part was terraced as if it had at some time been cultivated as a vineyard. At the bottom was the railway embankment.
There was a wooden fence running alongside it, and Miller and I waited while Fischer found the damaged section which he had chosen on an earlier reconnaissance as the best way through. It was about thirty yards to the right. We clambered over some broken boards to the side of the embankment and walked along the drainage ditch. Five minutes later it was possible to see the big wall again. We walked on another hundred feet, and there the embankment ended. If we were to go any farther we had to climb up and walk along the track over the bridge.
Fischer stopped and turned. “What is the time?”
“Ten-fifteen,” said Miller. “Where is the guard post exactly?”
“On the other side of the bridge, a hundred meters from here.” He turned to me. “Now listen. A train will be coming soon. When it starts to cross the bridge we go to the top of the embankment. As soon as the last wagon has passed us, we start to follow along the tracks at walking speed. When we have gone about twenty meters we will hear a loud explosion ahead. Then we start to run, but not too fast. Have you ever smelled tear gas?”
“Yes.”
“You will smell it again, but do not worry. It is our tear gas, not theirs. And there will be smoke, too, also ours. The train will have just gone through. The guard post will not know what is happening. They may think the train has blown up. It does not matter. The tear gas and the smoke will make it hard for them to think, or see. If any of them tries too hard he will get a bullet or a plastic grenade to discourage him. In the confusion we run through. And then, as I told you, the Volkswagen will be waiting for us.”