Assignment - Karachi

by Edward S. Aarons

Hans moved toward the wall. He was a huge shadow in the darkness at the bottom of the pit. The cave entrance was silent, and Durell wondered why the harassing sniper fire had been discontinued. He drew a deep breath.

  “Hans, you can do it,” he said. “I’m sure you can.” -“We will both fall. We will both be killed.”

  “You said you were not afraid.”

  “True. But some things are impossible.”

  “Right now we have to try the impossible. If I could go alone, I would,” Durell argued. “But I need your help. No one but you could climb this wall. You could save us. When the Chinese come, we’re finished. It must be tried now, at once, in the dark, before dawn comes.”

  He sensed the inner struggle going on inside Hans. The man’s solid devotion to Alessa had existed for many years, since their days at the Sorbonne. She had always rejected him. And Durell was sure that Hans knew about the night in Rawalpindi. The man hated him for gaining so quickly what he had always wanted. Yet his love for Alessa was unchanged, except that it was balanced by the hatred he equated with Durell. Hans might be as good as his word and try to kill him. But that was a risk he had to take.

  They were enemies, but for the next few hours, they had to help each other at the risk of instant death.

  “All right,” Hans said suddenly. “It is the only way out. We will try it. But I can promise you nothing.”

  Hans had carried several coils of nylon climbing rope with him when they first entered the cave. They gathered these, together with Steicher’s pitons and hammer. Each added an ice axe, sheathed in leather, to his gear. Colonel K’Ayub watched their preparations dubiously.

  “No man can climb out of here. It is impossible. You will make noises, dislodge stones, and be shot down from the outside.”

  “You can cover us with some irregular fire from your guards.”

  “We do not have much ammunition to spare.”

  “You couldn’t use it to better advantage,” Durell argued.

  K’Ayub gave in. Alessa spoke to Hans in a quiet, earnest voice as the big man gathered up his equipment. Now and then she looked toward Durell, and he knew she was trying to convince Hans about something concerning him. Hans stolidly went on with his preparations.

  It was one o’clock before they were ready. Hans threw one coil of rope over his shoulder and Durell took the other. Then they moved out of the cave and around the corner of the fissure until they could see the stars through the crack in the mountain overhead. The walls, leaning inward, looked impossible to scale. But Hans felt his way along the north side, then the south, taking his time. The faint starlight that sifted down offered little guidance. Hans returned to the north wall, moving sidewise and outward toward the entrance. They were dangerously near the point where the Pakhusti snipers might reach them. And the higher they climbed, the more exposed they would be.

  “We will try here,” Hans announced in a whisper.

  He had found a fault in the otherwise sheer rock face that leaned over them, a rough chimney, perhaps two feet wide. Hans reached up for a grip and lifted himself with a handhold, braced his shoulders against one side of the narrow cleft in the rock, flexed his legs against the other. A few pebbles dislodged by his ascent clattered loudly to the ground. One of K’Ayub’s men promptly fired three rapid rounds out of the fissure entrance, into the night.

  Hans called softly from above. “Come.”

  Durell followed, using Hans’ technique. The first few feet were not difficult, except for the blinding darkness. Hans paused overhead, then went on. The chimney narrowed, then angled sharply left to form a narrow ledge that gave only a few inches for a toehold. Only occasionally could Durell see the man above him. On the ledge, he felt the vast pressure of the rock wall, tending to push him outward.

  —The force that thrust at his sense of balance seemed irresistible. He paused for a few moments.

  Hans called softly again.

  “Wait.”

  The click of his hammer driving a spike into the rock made the troopers unleash another series of shots to cover the noise. The echoes were deafening in the narrow slot of rock. There came another series of hammer blows, a long pause, a grunt. A white snake of nylon rope flicked down and lightly grazed Durell’s cheek.

  “Climb,” came Hans’ disembodied voice.

  Durell lashed the line around himself and hauled upward. He gained another fifteen feet, felt another ledge under his knee, and hoisted himself up on it. Hans waited for him here. At their backs, a bulge of rock pressed outward and overhead, cutting off their progress.

  “It is impossible,” Hans whispered. “It cannot be done.”

  “We’ve got to go on.”

  “The overhang is too great. It affords no grip.”

  “Try it.”

  “Well—” The big man sighed, a shapeless form in the dark. “We must belay ourselves. If I slip, if one of the pitons gives way, I go down. I doubt if you could hold me.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Hans made a sound in his throat. “Perhaps you would.”

  They went on. The big man was methodical, agonizingly slow. The next twenty feet took almost an hour. They had climbed less than a fifth of the way during the first seventy minutes. The top, where the stars shone in cold glimmerings, seemed as unattainable as ever.

  As each spike for a handgrip was used, Durell withdrew it and passed it on up to the man above. His muscles ached and trembled with the tension. He shed his coat for greater ease of movement, dropping it to the ground below. There was a small cry down there when it thudded down. He thought the sound came from Alessa, expecting the worst. Hans, too, tossed his hampering clothes aside. They no longer

  felt the chill of the thin mountain air. Their bodies were covered with sweat.

  Another hour passed. They could see each other now, as they crawled upward inch by inch, gripping with fingers and toes, panting and probing and testing for every step upward. The darkness yawned below. The stars seemed brighter overhead. Now and then, an occasional burst of fire from the troopers below covered the sounds they made.

  At any moment they could be spotted. Another flare, tossed into the cave entrance, would expose them like flies on a wall. But none came. Everything was silent outside. Were the Pakhustis trying to entice them into probing out of the trap, so they could be mowed down? It was a cold war of nerves, and Durell knew his own tension was matched by the uncertainties of those he had left beneath.

  They were halfway up when they came to the widest ledge. It had been invisible from below, in the dark, and for several minutes, following its upward slant, Durell began to hope for quick success. And then Hans paused.

  “It is no good,” he gasped.

  “Why not?”

  “Everything ends here.”

  In the dim starlight, Durell saw the dismaying prospect. The ledge terminated abruptly, and where they had halted, crouching, it was only eight inches wide. But overhead, a heavy bulge of rock pushed outward for five feet into space and presented an impossible obstacle to their climb. To go back and retrace their way for another route would be suicidal. But they could go no farther, either.

  Hans breathed gustily, feeling his way upward. A small rivulet of shale fell from his fingers, followed by the covering burst of fire from below.

  “If we could climb another ten feet, I think it would be easier. I have a feeling we were deceived from below by this bulge,” Hans gasped. “The rock will slant back above, if we can get past this.”

  “We must try,” Durell said.

  Hans turned his face toward him. It was pale and hard in the gloom. “I have never tried anything so dangerous.” “We have nothing more to lose,” Durell said.

  “I would depend on your strength and skill. How can I trust you?”

  “I’ve trusted you so far, haven’t I?”

  “I wonder,” Hans said. “I do not understand you.”

  “Go ahead,” Durell urged. “Let’s do what we can.”

  T
here was no real alternative. Hans belayed one of the safety ropes and then spent ten minutes searching overhead for tiny cracks in which to insert his pitons and tap them home. They provided an extra handhold for Durell to cling to the tiny ledge. When he thought of the drop below, a wave of dizziness touched him; he put it from his mind. Hans reached upward cautiously, against the outward thrust of rock and tapped home another grip for himself. Clinging to his first iron, he reached another two feet against the rock underside and drove home a third. The sound of his hammer echoed loudly in the black air. With his left hand gripping the second piton, Hans then reached for the farthermost thrust of the overhang. He leaned at an angle over the abyss now, struggling for a new grip. His right hand drove home a last iron, then, with his left securing his weight against the drop, he hammered it in securely.

  Durell knew what had to follow. Hans must swing out, feet free, and haul himself up and over the bulge by sheer physical strength. It would take steel nerves, a lifetime of skill.

  The man’s breathing was harsh.

  “Now!” he whispered.

  He swung, gripping the outermost iron with his left hand, dangling in the dark air two hundred feet above the fissure floor. His body jerked, heaved upward, pulled by the immense strength of his arms. The upper half of his body slid up and out of view beyond the overhang—

  It was a fault of the rock, perhaps. Or Hans had underestimated the force and pressure of his upward swing to get above the rock bulge. Whatever the reason, there came a grating sound, a spill of crumbling stone, and Hans fell abruptly, the piton wrenched loose from its socket.

  There was nothing to stop him except the rope belayed around Durell.

  Almost any other man would have cried out in that moment, shrieking a negative to his imminent death.

  Hans fell silently.

  The jolting impact tore Durell’s left hand loose from one of the two grips Hans had prepared for him. He felt an instant of utmost pressure, yanking him out and down after the big man’s falling weight. Pain flashed through his arms and shoulders and down his body. There came a second jolt as Hans bounced with the spring of the nylon rope.

  Durell was pulled perilously outward, clinging to his last grip, his feet braced against the tiny shelf under him.

  Hans swayed back and forth over the abyss. And even now he did not call out to betray their presence to the enemy outside the cave.

  The enormous pull on Durell’s arm seemed impossible to overcome. Carefully he swung to one side, then the other, reaching with his left hand for the grip he had lost. At the third try, his fingers touched the piton, slipped, and fell away again. He swung once more, caught the steel spike, pulled himself flat against the cold face of the rock. The climbing rope around him tore and wrenched with Hans’ weight below. He did not move again. It was up to Hans to climb up once more.

  He heard a faint exhalation from the other’s lungs, a scrape of spiked boots on rock, a new series of tugs at his waist.

  A few moments later, Hans was back on the tiny ledge beside him.

  And a flare burst, thrown in from the outside, brightening the fissure with an implacable, deadly brilliance.

  chapter seventeen

  THEY did not move. They were exposed like flies on a wall, easy targets for searching eyes that looked for the source of the sounds they had made. At any moment, if the eyes lifted, they would be seen. Two easy shots could pick them off, where they clung to the face of the rock.

  Hans was shaking. In the glare, his hard face was pale, shining with sweat. His eyes were white. A few sniping bullets screamed into the fissure; but they were aimed at ground level, and one of K’Ayub’s men answered with a burst of fire that shook the air with its echoes.

  Two minutes dragged by.

  The flare sputtered and went out. Darkness returned, seeming more absolute after the brilliant blue light.

  Hans shifted his weight carefully to release the pressure on the climbing rope around Durell. His whisper was an exhausted sigh.

  “You could have let me fall, you know.”

  “Would you have done that to me?” Durell asked.

  “I think so, yes. I promised it to myself.”

  “Because of Alessa?”

  The big man was silent.

  “Or is there some other reason, Hans?” Durell asked quietly.

  “No. No other reason.”

  “It seems to me that Alessa has finally chosen you, these last few days.”

  Hans stared into the dark, his body slumped, drained of its strong, rock-like quality. “I do not know. You saved my life now. I would have let you fall, if our positions had been reversed. It would have been an easy thing to do, even if the others were watching.”

  “You had another chance, on the road up here. Why didn’t you kill me then?”

  “I don’t know. I do not understand myself, these days.” Durell looked at the overhang. “Are we stranded here, then?”

  “No. I shall try again. I am all right now.”

  “Take your time,” Durell said.

  “No, it will soon be daylight. We must get to the top before we can be seen.” Hans straightened slowly. “A man is full of weaknesses that betray him,” he said heavily. “One tries to be strong in all things. It is the only way to survive in this world. Our lives are made unreal by sheltering propaganda. But reality is stern, and we live only once in this foolish world. One guides his life by such realities as he can discover, and then—”

  Durell smiled slightly. “Then you fell in love.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is no great weakness, Hans.”

  “It is, with me. It leads to mistakes, perhaps to destruction.” The big man turned his head and looked at Durell again. “But sometimes one gets the chance to correct such mistakes.”

  He tackled the overhang again, and the second try went easier and quicker, as if the fate that had almost destroyed them had resigned its opposition. A new piton was hammered home to replace the one that had torn loose. Again Hans swung himself into dark space, clawed upward, gained a toehold, got his knee over the edge, and then swung out of sight, dangling the white climbing rope behind him.

  Now it was Durell’s turn.

  He waited for the signal on the rope and looked down at the bottom of the crevasse. It seemed utterly black down there, impossible to see the straining faces trying to watch their progress. He drew a deep breath and swung out on the taut line belayed by Hans, above him.

  But some small instinct warned him not to depend on the rope entirely. He kept one grip on the pitons at all times, and the nylon rope was actually slack as he wriggled up and over the bulge of rock that had stopped them at this point.

  Hans was waiting, silent, hauling the rope in hand over hand.

  “It will be easy now. You did not quite trust me, eh?”

  “No,” Durell said.

  “It is just as well.”

  He saw that Hans had estimated the problem beyond the overhang with surprising accuracy. The bulge had offered a false top to the cliff’s edge, when seen from below. For another hundred feet upward, the fault slanted back and away. The rock surface was rough, affording easy handholds, inclining in a relatively easy direction for the next twenty minutes’ climb.

  A few more moments, and they both heaved themselves over the top into the outer world.

  It had taken over three hours to get out of the cave. For long minutes, they sat side by side in the cool wind, sucking thin air into their aching lungs, waiting for the trembling of their muscles to ease. Neither spoke. There was a rising moon, and the tumbled mountains lifted in awesome grandeur in every direction, a sight that Durell had begun to doubt he would ever see again.

  There was no sign of the Pakhustis. The night was clear, cold and empty. In an hour, it would be dawn.

  Durell stood up, slipping free of the climbing rope. Hans got up, too, his movements oddly cumbersome. His face looked chiseled from granite. Under his heavy brows, his eyes gleamed, reflectin
g the moonlight.

  “Let’s get some troopers up here, Hans,” Durell said. “There isn’t much time left.”

  “There is no time left at all. I am sorry. It was not my plan to have anyone escape from the cave,” Hans said heavily. “Not even you, Durell. But I needed your help to get up here.” Durell looked at the big man and saw the gun Hans had taken from his coat. He held it loosely, muzzle pointing down beside his leg. The wind made a soft keening sound against the naked mountainside.

  “You had a plan of your own?” Durell asked softly. “All the time,” Hans said.

  “Let me remind you that Alessa is still down there.” “She will be safe. That is why I wanted to get out first, to be sure nothing happens to her when it is all ended.”

  “And the others?”

  Hans shrugged. “It is the fortune of war. You should know about war, Durell. You have been in it for a long time. A quiet kind of war, is it not? Full of silences, and full of surprises.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Durell said. “Put away the gun Hans.” “I cannot. It is too bad, because you are a brave man, and you saved my life. It is a sad duty for me. But as I said, one must be a realist to survive today. The world is too crowded for two kinds to survive. Only the strong and the scientific can exist. Humanism and democracy are only words that are as dead as the last century.”

  Hans paused. “I knew you suspected Rudi. But when did you begin thinking about me?”

  “From the beginning,” Durell said. “A free-lance romantic like Rudi von Buhlen is usually teamed up in your so-called shadow system. Someone was behind him, giving the orders, making the plans, receiving the information he gathered and passing^ it on. It had to be someone who was on hand here when "Ernest Bergmann first disappeared. Obviously, it was you.”

  “So you knew all the time?”

  “I guessed. I wasn’t sure. I had to give you both enough rope to expose your system of silent partnership. Does Rudi know who you are?”

  Hans shook his head. “He has never known. Our system of dual teams, with one in command and hidden behind a perfect cover, like my own, gives the orders by various systems of signals. Rudi never knew who gave him his jobs, although several times he tried to find out. Rudi was a fool. But his personality was a good cover for the things he had to do. He had been useful to us. Between the two of us, we earned much money.”