“Can you braid?”
“I haven’t done that since I was a little girl. Why?”
“Because we’ll need a rope. You said you weren’t the world’s greatest lady climber, so you’ll need a little help,” the Scorpion said, undoing his headcloth and bisht. Using the chisel to start a cut, he tore it all into long strips. He hefted the bundle of strips thoughtfully.
“Won’t be enough,” he sighed.
“What about that bulletproof plastic you wore around your chest?” she asked.
“Too short. And there’s no way of cutting it or tying it to anything else.”
“There’s my dress,” she said. She took off the dress and a silk slip until she was down to just her panties and bra, gleaming white against the creamy skin of her firm, slim body. Her legs were long and fine, her rump nicely rounded. Her breasts were small, pert and uptilted and he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out for them.
Clad only in panties and bra, she began to attack the dress. It was soon in strips.
“Too bad about the dress,” he said, obviously delighted to see her undressed.
“It’s all right. I never liked this dress anyway,” she smiled back and began to braid the cloth strips into a rope.
The Scorpion nodded and looked away. If he kept looking at her, they’d never get out. He grabbed a handful of strips and soon they were both intently braiding.
They worked quickly, yet methodically. Their lives would depend on the strength of their knots. Soon they had a rope about twenty feet long.
“Is it enough, do you think?” she asked.
“It’ll have to be. We don’t have any more cloth,” he said and began checking everything he would need. The rope, chisel, lighter, lamp, the wooden stave about five feet long that had once been part of a spear or shepherd’s staff, and some hand-sized rocks.
The Scorpion stood up, clad only in his underwear, the remains of his white thaub tied around his waist, like a short skirt. In the flickering light from the lighter, he looked like an ancient Greek warrior ready for battle. His rock-hard muscles were finely etched and his skin was slick with sweat. Kelly could see the muscles rippling under his skin as he prepared his gear. He was so much of a man he seemed more than a man. His sheer male beauty made her tremble. If ever a man was made who could do the impossible, it was this dark stranger, she thought, a spark of hope stirring.
He showed her how he wanted her to use the lamp, holding it so the light would hit the rock face above him where he would have to make his next move. She nodded, then looked up into the darkness. It seemed so high up. It was insurmountable, she thought, her heart sinking. She held the flame so she could see his face. His eyes were gray as flint and she could see the flame reflected in them.
“How will you do it?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“There’s only one way to do anything. One step at a time.”
“But why did you pick that side? More handholds or something?”
“Not really. It’s pretty uniform all the way around. But there’s a little ledge near the top on that side. It was probably used to rest earthenware jars. We’ll need it to get you up.”
“If you can get me up, you mean,” she said.
“No. When I get you up.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes.
“Anything else I should know?” she asked.
“Yes. Stand away from that side. A falling human body can do a lot of damage if it lands on top of you.”
“You have such a delightful way of putting things.”
“It’s part of my charm,” he smiled.
They looked into each other’s eyes as if saying goodbye. The Scorpion gave her the wooden spear to hold. Then he moved boldly up to the rock wall.
For a moment he contemplated the rock, planning the sequence of moves. He tried to keep up his spirits, but the wall looked utterly formidable, as high up as he could see.
“One of the basic laws of the universe is that everything looks a hell of a lot easier than it really is,” Alex used to say back in Bangkok. And Allah knows the Pathet Lao had shown Alex the hard way to die, the Scorpion thought, trying to shake the memory. Negative thinking can defeat you before you ever start, he knew. Instead, he forced his mind to imagine himself successfully moving upward, one step at a time. That was what he wanted to keep in his mind. He took a deep breath to relax every muscle and clear his head. Then he began.
Using the flint chisel and one of the rocks as a mallet, he chipped pairs of indentations shoulder-width apart every two feet, starting at knee level and going upwards until he was stretching his arms as high as he could reach. The rock cut and split easily and large chips of sandstone flew by as he worked. Once he started climbing the rock face, he would be able to use only one hand to cut, but for the first eight feet or so he might as well make it easy on himself, he thought.
The Scorpion stepped away from the rock and wiped his sweaty face on his forearm, gritty with sand and dust. He now had four pairs of hand and footholds carved into the rock. He dropped the rock he had used for a mallet and carefully rewrapped the rags around his right hand. He wrapped the braided rope around his waist and tied the end. Then he clenched the chisel in his teeth.
The easy part was over.
He took a deep breath, exhaled and stepped up to the wall. Inserting his toe in the lowest notch and grabbing the highest notch on the left side, he pulled himself up. He placed his left toes in the lowest left notch and clung to the wall like a fly. His toes, inserted into the two bottom notches, supported most of his weight as he pulled himself towards the wall with the fingertips of his left hand.
Already he could feel gravity trying to pull him backwards and he pressed his fingertips against the unyielding rock to hold on. His fingers began to ache almost at once. It was going to be murderous, he thought, then pushed the thought away.
He took the chisel from between his teeth and holding on with his left hand, used his right to stab at the rock an arm’s length above his left hand. Once a sufficient notch had been cut, he repeated the process on the right side, carving a handhold parallel and about a foot away from the new left-hand notch. Then he gripped the chisel in his jaws again and inserting first his left hand and right foot into the higher notches, pulled himself up again. With both hands and feet secured to the rock face, he caught his breath for a second.
It was, he knew, the exact opposite of a normal rock climb. The professional method was to work out a path up the rock face, then climb from notch to notch maintaining a smooth ongoing rhythm, sustaining upward movement with the momentum of the climb. Ideally, the rock climber should never actually stop at any point, hanging by his fingers, where fatigue and gravity begin to take their deadly toll.
But the standard approach was impossible for the Scorpion for several reasons. The first was that he was facing an absolutely vertical surface. The sheer 90-degree face made it impossible to climb all the way up, non-stop. The second difficulty was that because of hundreds of years of erosion, water and sand particles scouring the rock, there were few if any natural crevices. The rock was steep and smooth for its entire height. Every notch would have to be hand-cut. The final and greatest difficulty was the lack of pitons. He had no way of hammering in anything to support his weight, so that he could rest and use both hands to hammer in the next upward hold.
No, this would be a slow, methodical, crab-like approach, an agonizing step-by-step process whereby he would cling by the fingers of one hand while he hammered out notches with the other. As each new pair of notches was hammered out, he would grip the chisel between his teeth like a movie pirate, then use both hands and feet to inch up to the next higher set of notches and then begin all over again.
It was the kind of slow grinding climb designed to take the heart out of anyone, he thought, trying to blink the sweat out of his eyes. Better not to think, he told himself. There were a lot of things he had better not do. Like looking up or down. Up was bad b
ecause the sight of how far he still had to go could destroy his will to go on. Down was bad because the fear of falling could set in.
The best was just to concentrate on the next step. You don’t have to climb all the way, he told himself, just the next step. You can swim an ocean, one stroke at a time. No, you can’t. That’s not progress, it’s megalomania, he contradicted himself. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything except the next step. Lots of pain in fingers. Cramping badly and it’s much too soon. Don’t panic, he argued back. It’s only one step. Now bend the right knee sideways. Keep it close to the rock, otherwise leaning out puts too much weight on the fingers. Feel for the next notch with the toes of the right foot. Don’t try to look down. You couldn’t see it anyway. Can’t find it. Where is it? It has to be there. Move the toes left and right. Find it fast! Fingers giving way. Ya Allah! Can’t hold it. Have to. Hurry!
“It’s there. Just to your left,” Kelly’s voice called out.
Desperately, his toes scratched at the lip of the notch to the left. He found the notch and with his last strength, jammed his toes into the notch, let his toes take his weight as he pushed up, grabbed the higher handhold with his right hand, stuck his left foot into the foothold and once more, he clung by all fours to the rock.
His left hand was slippery with sweat. He started to wipe it on what was left of the thaub around his waist, but it felt sticky. He glanced at his hand and instantly regretted it. His left hand was curled into a claw and slick with blood. His fingers were raw and bleeding.
The Scorpion started to straighten his fingers, then changed his mind. Leave it alone, he told himself. The hand is more useful as a claw. He grabbed at the notch with his left hand and began to chop away with his right. He pulled himself up like a crippled monkey, one link at a time.
His fingers were hurting now. His bare chest heaved for breath as he crushed it against the rough stone. Don’t think about the pain, he told himself. It’s just pain, that’s all. Just minor abrasions, so don’t feel sorry for yourself. A nurse in any hospital emergency room would laugh at them and put you at the end of the line. And what about Nam and all the guys who lost a lot more than fingers? Remember the black plastic body bags stretched out on the ground in Danang? A long line of them waiting to be picked up like so much garbage. What would any of them give to be still clinging to life, even by raw fingertips? Just hang on.
How far had he come? No. Wrong question. How far to go? he began to wonder, knowing he shouldn’t think about it, shouldn’t look up. Keep focused on the light, on the next step, he told himself. Forget the girl. Forget the CIA. Forget Arabia and the war. There’s only the rock and the next step. His universe had shrunk to a few feet of rock and darkness. There was no longer up or down, no past or future. Only the rock and the pain, he thought, pulling himself painfully up to the next set of hand and footholds.
“You’re almost there!” Kelly’s voice sang out from below. There was excitement in it. “You’re doing wonderfully,” she called and the Scorpion didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her warm encouragement.
Only about five feet to go, he told himself, gathering his reserves for a last push. Wearily, he reached up and began stabbing at the rock again. The instant he struck the blow he knew it had gone wrong. The clang of the flint against the rock sounded different and then the awful snap and whirring as the broken blade flew straight at his eyes, spinning like a propeller.
Instinctively, he jerked his head back and even as he turned he knew it was wrong. He tried to duck his head back into the rock, but it was too late. He could feel his balance going and there was nothing he could do. His hands were peeled off the rock by the momentum and before he could even think to react he was falling, briefly aware of the rush of air and somewhere Kelly’s scream and in that last second, his body took over, pulling his knees into a tuck position because it would be fatal to land on his head. He felt his feet hit the ground with a thud that jarred every bone as his body collapsed like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
When he came to, Kelly was holding his head cradled in her lap. She had moistened a cloth with her saliva and was using it as a washcloth on his face. Feeling him stir, she bent over and kissed him passionately, their lips almost bruising each other, her long blond hair folding around their faces like a tent.
“I thought you would be killed,” she whispered, her eyes shiny in the dancing flamelight.
“So did I,” he said.
“You were wonderful,” she said and tried to smile, but it didn’t come off. She stared blankly into the darkness.
The Scorpion didn’t say anything.
“It’s not your fault. You were going so well. It’s just lousy luck.”
He didn’t say anything.
She held his hands in her own and looking at the battered fingers her eyes began to fill with tears.
“Poor hands. Poor poor hands,” she said. She lifted his hands to her mouth and kissed them tenderly. He winced and she quickly put them down.
“My hands are all right. Don’t worry about my hands. I’m not a concert violinist,” he snapped.
“You never let anyone get close, do you?” Kelly said. There was a tremble in her voice.
“I can’t afford to. There’s no time.”
“Then you can’t afford not to,” she retorted.
He smiled, but it changed to a grimace of pain as he tried to get up. She pulled him back to the warm comfort of her lap.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Just a few seconds.”
He tried to struggle up but she held him back.
“Easy. Rest first. You’re exhausted. Just relax for a minute,” she soothed.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? There’s lots of time.”
“No. If I don’t get up now I’m not sure I ever will. Every bit of me doesn’t want to move, so I know I should. Besides, there is no time. King Salim’s being tortured right now. If he gives in and abdicates, we’ll be too late. Abdul Sa’ad will have won,” he said and rolled over on to his hands and knees. Groaning in pain like a wounded animal, he crawled on all fours back to the wall.
Using the wall for support, he somehow pulled himself slowly and awkwardly erect, like a creature who had never walked before.
“Where’s the chisel?” he demanded.
“Here,” she said and sifting through the sand, grabbed at the black stone shard.
“But it’s broken,” she said, handing it to him.
He examined the blade in the shadowy light. The blade had snapped in two almost in the middle, leaving a jagged edge. The Scorpion fingered the broken edge thoughtfully. It was razor sharp.
“Might even be better,” he rasped. He studied it in the lamplight.
“It’s odd, isn’t it? The fate of nations in the Atomic Age hanging on a stone-age implement,” he said.
She looked into his eyes and was jolted by what she saw. His eyes were underlined with dark circles. They looked old as the rock itself.
“You look awful,” she said quietly. He shook his head.
“If the warranty hadn’t expired, I’d trade this body in for a new model,” he said.
He wrapped the soiled and torn rags around his hand again. Then he rewrapped the cloth around the broken chisel, put it between his teeth, and turned to face the wall once more. It seemed more forbidding, even hostile this time, the dark shadows gathering like demons in the faint flickering light. The Scorpion took a breath and suddenly he was scrambling back up.
“Go with God,” Kelly murmured softly. She wasn’t sure if he heard her.
The Scorpion moved quickly, agilely, from notch to notch, like a great awkward monkey. He cursed each time his fingers took the weight, but never stopped moving upwards. Groaning and climbing and not stopping as if he knew that if he stopped he might never start again. By the time a minute had gone by he had managed to climb back to where he had fallen from. He paused at last to catch his breath, cling
ing to the wall by all fours like a spider to a shaky web.
Now the battle for the last few feet began in earnest, inching his way up in near darkness while clinging to the rock only with his bruised fingers and toes. The air was stale and lifeless. He wondered if they were running short of oxygen or was it just his imagination running rampant. “Cowardice is the inability to control your imagination,” Koenig once said. Don’t think, he told himself. Move! His strength was going fast.
He could feel his fingers slipping in the darkness. He had no strength to stop it any more. The scraping sound of fingernails on stone and tiny pebbles told him he was losing it. The Scorpion screamed in frustration and struck again with the stone blade, but this time he missed the rock wall entirely. He balanced for a desperate instant on the toes of his right foot, flailing at the air while his numbed and bewildered brain tried to understand what was happening.
As he began to fall again, an electrifying thought flashed through his mind. He had reached the ledge! Thrusting out both arms in the darkness, he dug his battered fingers into the ledge and with a final desperate effort, heaved himself up so that he was balancing on his palms. He kicked his right leg over the ledge and threw his body into the niche.
He lay for what seemed like hours, panting like a horse ridden almost to death. It had been a near thing, he knew. His head throbbed unmercifully and white and blue spots sailed across the darkness before his eyes. He tried to focus his mind, but couldn’t. His breath wheezed like a bellows, his chest heaved and it was all he could to just to breathe. But he had done it! He exulted. Done what? some cynical part of his mind retorted. You’re still trapped in the well like a fly in a bottle. The heavy stone sealing the opening to the well was a five-hundred-pound cork. At that moment, his desperate little stratagem to get the two of them out seemed hopelessly pathetic.
“Hey, Nick? Are you all right?” Kelly called, her voice faint and echoing in the darkness. It caught him by surprise and jolted him upright. He had to get her up, he thought. And then, somehow, he would kill Bandar. By the living Allah he would.
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