After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “As far as the frontier.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I shall go back and hold your brother’s hand.”

  Laura propped herself up on one arm and said, “Do you enjoy your job, Evelyn?”

  “Not very much.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “It’s that or starve.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am being serious,” said Evelyn. “Intelligence work is the only job I’m trained for. It was my father’s fault. He was crazy about languages. You know how fathers work out their own ambitions through their sons. Train them from birth to swim the Channel or play cricket for England. Well, my old man was determined that I should be the linguist of the century. We started with German, of course, because it was the twenties, and everyone had their eyes on the next war already. I was brought up in Germany. Went to a German school, and did sums in pfennigs and marks, and learnt how Blücher had won the battle of Waterloo. But that wasn’t enough for my father. We spent our holidays in France and Spain, and we had a Spanish cook. Then, when I was about ten, and spoke German and French and Spanish like anything, he got a bee in his bonnet about Russia. So we added a Russian gardener to the ménage.”

  “It sounds fun.”

  “It was damned hard work. How would you like doing German all day, Russian in the evenings, and French and Spanish in the holidays?”

  “I’d rather do it than Latin and hockey. What happened then?”

  “What happened next was the war. No ordinary soldiering for me. Not on your life. Special service. In the course of six years I think I was in every damned silly outfit in the army. I didn’t volunteer for them. I was drafted. I was dropped out of airplanes, landed from submarines, went for long, circular tours in the desert, was smuggled across frontiers. There was even a project, I remember, of lowering me from a helicopter.”

  ‘That sounds like fun, too.”

  Evelyn said, quite seriously, “You’re quite wrong. It might have been fun to start with. But the novelty wore off. I got to loathe every moment of it. I was never very brave, and any courage I started with had evaporated long before the war was over.”

  “Courage can’t evaporate.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said Evelyn. “Though why I should bother, except that you look so curiously attractive lying there with your hair like a bird’s nest and the top of your what-not hanging out of the top of your sweater, that if we stop talking for a single moment you’ll find me right in there with you. What was I saying?”

  Laura said hastily, “Courage. You were talking about courage.”

  “That’s what people don’t realize about courage,” said Evelyn. “You can use it up. It’s like the capital you inherit when you’re twenty-one. You think it’s going to last forever, but it doesn’t. And once you’ve used it, it’s almost impossible to replace.”

  “If you loathed intelligence work so much, why did you go on with it after the war?”

  “I told you. It was the only job I was fit for. Anyway, in peacetime it’s not a bad sort of life. It’s mostly office work, and reading reports, and listening to people talk. It’s only when people like you come along that things start happening.”

  “So now it’s my fault.”

  “Here’s your food.”

  Laura had finished the soup and drunk some of the wine when a small man with a brown face and a greying moustache poked his head around the door. He smiled at Evelyn, but he looked worried.

  “What’s up, Rudi?”

  “Did Hans see you?”

  “Hans?”

  “My son.”

  There was a young man leaning on the gate when we came in. Perhaps that was your son.”

  “And he saw you?”

  “Certainly. He spoke to us.”

  Rudi said something abrupt and violent.

  “Does it matter?”

  “If I had known he had seen you I would have locked him up until you were gone. He is quite untrustworthy. An active member of the Bund. Marthe!”

  His wife reappeared, and there was a flurry of crosstalk.

  Laura said, “What’s happening? What’s everyone getting so upset about?”

  “It’s that boy we met when we were coming in. He’s disappeared. They think he’s probably down in the village raising the alarm. You’d better get dressed and come down.”

  Five minutes later they were in the kitchen. Rudi had put on an old felt hat, which seemed to be all the dressing up he did when he went out.

  “He’s taking you now,” said Evelyn. “There’s a couple of hours of daylight left – which is a pity. He prefers to make the crossing at dusk. But we can’t risk waiting. Off you go.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m staying here. Hurry.”

  “But, Evelyn–”

  “Listen–”

  The kitchen door was open. In the sudden silence they could hear quite clearly the sound of more than one motor engine.

  “For God’s sake,” said the woman, “take her and go.”

  Evelyn kissed her quickly on the nose, and she followed Rudi out through the back of the kitchen and into a smaller courtyard behind; then over a cow wall and up a track which rose and twisted.

  Left to himself, Evelyn stood for a moment in the dimness of the kitchen. The lady of the house had disappeared. The roar of the engines grew louder.

  Moving with great deliberation, Evelyn shut and bolted the kitchen door and mounted the ladder that led up to the sleeping quarters.

  The window behind the bed gave a view of the yard. As he opened it the nose of an armoured half-track appeared around the corner; a man in the grey uniform of the auxiliary police jumped down from beside the driver and started to fumble with the catch of the gate.

  Evelyn, with a look of extreme distaste, extracted an automatic pistol from the inside pocket of his coat, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the cupola of the armoured car and ricocheted off it with a metallic screech.

  The man at the gate stopped what he was doing and dived behind the wall. The machine-gun mounted in the cupola swung ponderously round, there was an angry chattering noise, and the top part of the bedroom window disintegrated into a mess of flying glass and splintered wood.

  But Evelyn was already out of the room. He had crawled along the passage to the window and was taking a careful look. The man who had dismounted chose this moment to poke his head around the wall. Evelyn fired once more, hitting the track of the vehicle. Although the shot had gone nowhere near him, the man took the hint and disappeared rapidly.

  Evelyn looked at his watch. He had no intention of dying a hero’s death or, indeed, any other sort of death as long as the event could be postponed. Laura had already had ten minutes’ start. Another five minutes, and she should be absolutely safe.

  Further time went by. The silence continued unbroken. Then he heard the engine of the armoured car start up. He decided that it was going to come straight through the gate. There was the noise of the engine accelerating. He risked a quick look. The car was not advancing, it was retiring.

  Other things were happening too.

  The lane outside the farm seemed to be full of men. They were certainly not auxiliary police. Their uniform was olive green, not grey, and they were wearing baggy overalls and curious, close-fitting helmets.

  Evelyn went back into the bedroom, hid the pistol carefully on top of the wardrobe, and went downstairs. As he reached the kitchen, someone was hammering on the door.

  He opened it, and an officer came through. He carried no visible weapon, and the two men who walked behind had their machine pistols slung round their shoulders. Behind them he could see that the yard was already full of men.

  Evelyn saw the wings embroidered on the officer’s overalls, and comprehension dawned.

  “Parachute troop,” he said.

  �
��Twelfth Regiment, Second Airborne Division from Vienna,” said the officer. “Major Amsbacher.”

  “Captain Fiennes,” said Evelyn. “And am I glad to see you!”

  Major Amsbacher said, “Perhaps you could explain what is going on. I heard firing.”

  Evelyn did his best.

  At the end the Major said, “Much of this is outside the scope of my immediate mission. The First Division has already taken control at Lienz. Our orders are to disarm certain irregular camps which have been formed in the frontier area. We do not anticipate any trouble.”

  Evelyn looked at the men who were standing in the courtyard. They had the reassuringly casual look of regular troops.

  “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble at all,” he said. “I wonder if you could spare a few men to go after Miss Hart.”

  The Major’s eyes lit up.

  “Miss Hart,” he said. “That is the lady all the newspapers are speaking of. The Consul’s sister. Yes?”

  “That’s the one,” said Evelyn. “I didn’t realize she’d got into the papers, though.”

  “In all the papers. It will be a pleasure to help.”

  “You’ll have to hurry. She’s had nearly half an hour’s start, and she’s got the best guide in the Tyrol.”

  16

  Exit of a Heroine

  Rudi led off at a deceptive, shuffling pace which looked slow but was too fast for Laura. After he had been forced to wait for her once or twice, he slowed it down a little.

  When she heard the machine-gun open up, she hesitated. Rudi grunted out something in his incomprehensible argot. She gathered that he was saying that they would not be caught now.

  The track they were following climbed steadily along the south side of a long, shallow valley, twisting among smooth, rounded rocks scattered haphazard, as if a giant had been playing at bowls. Since the setting sun was in her eyes she knew that they were going due west.

  It took them an hour to reach the end of the valley and to climb out of it. Beyond the crest lay an upland plateau, rounded like a shallow saucer, tilted gently upward toward the immediate skyline. In the centre of the saucer was a small lake. In summer it must have been an enchanting place, a private paradise of close-cropped grass, mountain flowers, and blue water. Now, under its mantle of ice and snow, with the red sun of a winter’s evening going down behind the mountains, it had a desolate look.

  Ahead of them a rising wind was blowing puffs of sugar-icing snow off the crest.

  Rudi had increased his pace. She thought he was beginning to look anxious and drove herself to keep up with him.

  They skirted the lake, passing a derelict wooden hut at its head. Rudi pointed to it and said something. She could not understand his words, but she could understand the look in his eyes. He was frightened.

  “Guards?” she said. “Soldiers?”

  Rudi shook his head violently, and pointed again.

  She looked more closely at the hut. It had been set on stout log piles, above the head of the lake, at a point where a little stream ran down the throat of the valley, and it was evidently designed as a shelter for summer hikers and picnickers. It consisted of a single room, with a veranda in front. The windows were now shuttered, and the double door at the back of the veranda was padlocked.

  “What is it, Rudi?”

  He pointed to the ground in front of the steps leading up to the veranda. There were footmarks in the snow.

  Someone had come up to the hut and had spent some time walking around it, possibly trying to break in. On the ground beside the steps there was an empty cigarette packet, of the cheapest Austrian brand, and what looked like a piece of very stale bread.

  It looked innocent enough. Then she noticed something that did puzzle her. It was the footprints. They had been made by partly naked feet.

  There was one clear print in the snow, underneath the shuttered window. The man who had made it had been wearing either a very old shoe or some sort of sandal. The marks of all five toes were very clear in the snow.

  Rudi was tugging at her sleeve.

  “How far?” she said.

  He showed her five fingers, and then another three.

  Eight of something? Eight hundred metres, she guessed. About half a mile. She smiled at him reassuringly. Having come so far, she wasn’t going to fail at the last fence.

  The path they were following led out of the top of the valley. The sinking sun had swung across to their right side. They were going south now.

  The path became steeper. They were in a small, but steep, ravine. It was exactly what Laura, in her youth, had supposed the Khyber Pass would be like, a knife gash in the crest of a mountain range, narrow, dangerous. On the one hand, a place for ambush; on the other, the gateway to freedom and safety.

  Rudi, who was a few paces ahead of her, stopped suddenly. He was listening. In that high place the silence was absolute.

  Rudi turned his head. He was suspicious, for no reason that she could see, of a mass of rock which overhung the path to the right, and formed an elbow in the ravine. He took a few cautious steps toward it.

  At that moment a portion of the rock seemed to detach itself. Laura glimpsed huge arms upraised, saw a bearded face and an open mouth. Then an enormous boulder hit Rudi full in the chest, throwing him onto his back and leaving him flat in the snow, arms and legs spreadeagled.

  The shock was so extreme that it drove the breath out of her like a fist in the stomach. Then, as she half turned in her tracks, someone was bounding down the slope toward her, capering grotesquely as he came.

  It was an enormous man. Her first impression was simply of size. When he reached the path he stooped and grinned at what was left of Rudi, then executed a little jig. He was as pleased as if he had brought down a difficult bird, on the wing, with one snap shot.

  As he straightened up and came toward her, he seemed, to her hypnotized senses, to be bowing from the waist, like a dancer in a ritual marriage dance emerging from the corner to claim his bride.

  The face was hidden under a forest growth of matted hair and tangled beard out of which two tiny black eyes glittered jovially. The body was decked in the rags of other men’s clothes, botched together with sacking and string. Bare toes stuck out from the wreck of canvas shoes.

  He was half a dozen paces from her when Laura wrenched herself round and started to run. She was aware of the pad of feet pumping after her, once, twice, and then, as she stumbled, something heavy, but curiously soft, descended on her head, and she fell forward into blackness.

  She was in church.

  It was dim, and she felt sick, as she often did when she went with her mother to early service without eating. Also someone was chanting.

  Consciousness came back slowly, and in waves.

  She was lying on some sort of pallet on the sloping floor of a cave. It was not a very thick pallet. She could feel the stones through it.

  The cavern was not more than three feet high, but rough attempts had been made to render it habitable. Two or three planks had been wedged in to block the end of it, and from nails in the planks hung an old coat, a couple of traps, and a dead mountain hare, tied by its feet.

  This put her in mind of something, and she looked down to find that her own feet had been hobbled. Apart from this she did not seem to have been harmed.

  She turned her head, and the stabbing pain brought tears to her eyes and blinded her for a moment. As the tears cleared, she saw the rest of her habitation. It was very simple.

  To the right, and almost within reach, lay the top of a table, without its legs. On it stood a saucer of oil, with a lighted wick floating in it. There were other things on the table: a tin plate, a table knife, the blade of which, she could see, had been whittled almost away with sharpening; a half loaf of bread, and a very large, old-fashioned revolver.

  All this time the singing continued. It was a quavering chant, breaking from octave to octave, and it came from outside the mouth of the cave, where the man was squatting. S
he could make out his bulk, which blocked the low opening. She wondered what, exactly, he was doing, sitting outside in the freezing cold serenading the setting sun. As her other senses returned, she realized other things too. It was bitterly cold inside the cave; cold, and foul-smelling; carrion and filth, the smell of an old man-eater’s lair.

  Her stomach revolted, and she turned on her side and was miserably sick.

  Somehow this cleared her wits. Her feet were lashed together, but not fastened to anything. Her hands were free. She had a limited radius of movement. And there was a revolver on the table. She realized – and for a moment was startled by the realization – that she would have no compunction about using it. Her prayer was that it might be loaded.

  She edged across, until her fingers touched it. As far as she could tell, she made no sort of sound. But the man outside the cave had hearing like a wild beast’s. The singing stopped, and he half turned.

  There was a moment of paralysis. Then she grabbed at the gun, and he had turned and was coming for her. Her awkward fingers stumbled onto the trigger, and she pulled it.

  Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

  Either the gun was empty or the safety catch was on. She had no time to find out. She was sprawled, on her side, half on the pallet, half on the floor when he landed on top of her, the impact of his arrival rolling her right over onto her back.

  Her right arm was flung wildly out, and her knuckles hit the table top with a crack, the useless revolver flying out of her fingers.

  Then he was on top of her, pinning her to the ground, exactly as the boulder had pinned poor Rudi. His face was almost touching hers, and she could see his little black eyes, shuttling backward and forward as if they were looking, wildly, furiously, for something that they knew was there, something which had been so cunningly hidden that they could not find it.

  The weight was lifted from her as he raised himself on his left elbow. A hand, black and ingrained with dirt like a dog’s pad, reached out, caught the front of her windbreaker, and tore it open.

  At that moment her right hand closed on something cold. It was the handle of the table knife. She picked it up. No hurry. Plenty of time. She drove it in, once; and then, as the man on top of her arched upward, again and again and again.