Assignment - Karachi (19 page)

The next day they reached the first snow. It was a foot or more thick, lying unmelted in the perpetual north shadow of a giant monolith that soared several thousand feet above their heads. They put on crampons, metal plates with sharp cleats worn on their boots for better footing, and unsheathed their ice axes. Zalmadar acted as lead man, poking ahead on reconnaissance with his axe or a pole, probing for crevasses. In the morning they traversed a long, steep slope, moving diagonally across the lesser mountain. Traversing was a special technique that demanded the ankles be bent outward, so that your body remained vertical while your feet assumed the same angle as the snow. It was a temptation on any steep slope to lean inward, which was a sure way to guarantee a slip. Beyond the snow slope was a series of smooth ice ledges. Here Hans used his tubular ice pitons, driving the hollow metal spikes into the ice where they froze solidly and made a rope ascent possible. K’Ayub’s men were tireless, uncomplaining. By noon the overcast lifted and gave them their first true glimpse of the wild, tumbled mountains that soared around them.

They were in a long, shallow valley, free of snow again, between two towering ranges of peaks that ended in a col directly ahead, where the twin summits of S-5 blocked their way. Far to the west in the valley was another Hunza village, an oasis of terraced green against the gray and brown and white of the mountains. Misty in the distance, the towering Karakorums loomed against the sky. In contrast to those more distant peaks, S-5 looked relatively small for which Durell felt mildly grateful. Yet he noted the snow fields in cold, lavender blankets along the north and eastern shoulders of the twin peaks. And up there, in that vast empty stillness, nothing seemed to love or live.

Sarah Standish pointed to the peaks, her face flushed with the cold, half hidden under the hood of her parka. “How far do you think it is?” she asked.

“Fifteen—eighteen miles,” Durell told her. “We may reach it by noon tomorrow.”

She looked backward along their trail. “I have the oddest feeling that we’re being watched all the time.”

“It’s quite probable.”

“I never—I didn’t think it would be like this.” She made a vague gesture with her gloved hands. “So—empty.”

“Do you regret coming with us?”

“No. Why should I?”

“You and Rudi have quarreled, haven’t you?”

She didn’t reply.

“I think you should tell me about it,” Durell urged. “It’s not wise to keep secrets from the rest of us up here.”

“It’s purely a personal matter,” she murmured.

The march was resumed. The brief noonday sun yielded to a thin overcast that was driven across the sky by a southeasterly wind. The air felt colder. The thin atmosphere tended to exhaust them quicker than the day before.

By four o’clock the wind was howling, and huge plumes of snow drifted in ragged shreds from the peaks around them. The snow came down upon them with a rush, blotting out everything.

Camp was made a little earlier as a premature darkness fell. It was too dangerous to proceed in the snow in the night hours. This time there was no ruined monastery to shelter them, and the tents went up again.

Durell shared a tent with K’Ayub. For an hour after their dinner, he listened to the wind and the hiss of hard-driven ice particles around the tent flaps. The pressure of the storm increased steadily, the wind shrieking and threatening to tear the tent to shreds. Every hour, the colonel got up and patrolled the site, spoke to his men, checked the sentries. He seemed tireless, calm and efficient, in his element up here.

Durell dozed restlessly. Once, it seemed, he heard someone cry out, and he sat up and got out of the sleeping bag. The oil lamp in the tent was turned low. As he stood, KAyub came back in, dusted with snow, and lifted inquiring eyes.

“I thought I heard something,” Durell said.

“It is only this accursed wind.”

“Is everything secure?”

“Zalmadar says the snow will end soon, and tomorrow will be warm.”

“Let’s hope so.”

But he slept uneasily for the rest of the night.

The camp was astir at dawn. Cooking fires were permitted in the thin air at 12,000 feet elevation, and the smell of coffee filled the air. The snow storm had ended. The sky was clear. Durell dressed in the wool-lined mountain outfit, fastened his boots, and walked to the nearest campfire where Alessa was pouring coffee.

“Good morning.”

She looked at him quickly, then turned away. Since the night in Rawalpindi, she seemed afraid to meet his gaze. Hans hovered in the background at the next cookfire, but he was staring off to the north, at the looming peaks of S-5, their goal. The snow glittered everywhere, only a few inches deep, with many cleared spots ahead along a sharp ridge that lifted to the shoulders of the fabled mountain. To the west and north, the mighty Karakorums loomed as an impregnable wall, casting back brilliant sunlight.

Durell took a cup of coffee from Alessa. “Isn’t Rudi up yet?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

He looked further around the camp. “And Sarah?”

“I haven’t seen her, either,” Alessa said.

Durell walked toward Sarah’s tent, then turned and looked back at the blonde girl. “Sarah shared this tent with you, didn’t she?”

“She was gone when I got up,” Alessa said quietly.

“Gone?”

“I haven’t seen her or Rudi this morning.”

His alarm came in a swift, angry surge that broke in dismay over the bright, promising morning. He went quickly to the girls’ tent, knocked on the pole, lifted the flap. The two sleeping bags were empty. He turned and walked to Hans, who crouched at the fire and washed his messkit in the light, crunchy snow.

“Where is Herr von Buhlen?” Durell asked.

Hans looked at him with his usual blank, stony face. “I have not seen him. He is gone away, I think.”

“Where?”

Hans shrugged. “It is his own business, perhaps.”

It took only five minutes for Durell and K’Ayub to prove the dismaying fact. There was no sign in the camp of Rudi or Sarah. Their rucksacks and equipment were missing. Some food had been taken from the common packs. On the snow-field behind them there were no footsteps, no trace of which direction they had taken. It could only mean one thing.

Some time during the night, while it was still snowing hard enough to cover their tracks, Rudi and Sarah had deliberately left the camp.

They were missing.

AT EIGHT o’clock that morning the snowfields changed color from pale lavender to a dazzling, blinding white that demanded snow glasses. K’Ayub came out of his radio tent and nodded to Durell.

“I have sent Zalmadar and four other men back along yesterday’s trail after Miss Standish and Herr von Buhlen. They have just reported, by their walkie-talkie. It is possible they are heading for Mirandhabad.”

“Alone?”

“There was no sign of violence.” The Pakistani was calm. “As far as I can determine, they left us of their own free will. Sergeant Zalmadar will determine that.”

Durell was angry. “Sarah Standish is my responsibility. My job is to make sure she remains safe. You should have let me know you were sending Zalmadar after her; I’d have gone along.”

“I am sorry. I cannot permit that. I understand your quandary—you must protect Miss Standish, and also verify the discovery of nickel on S-5. I cannot concern myself, however, with which is more important to you. It is my judgment that those two left us willingly. If she was misled or hoodwinked—” K’Ayub shrugged. His voice was hard. “I must go on to S-5. It is only a half-day’s march from here. And I have been getting radio reports. Two Tibetan refugees picked up by our frontier posts reported some Chinese probing activity in the mountains beyond S-5. I think speed is vital. I pleaded with Karachi to send a division here immediately, however the Pakhustis might resent it. But no move will be made until the nickel is verified. I have taken it on myself to survey the roadway to this point—two of my men are engineers—and if mining development promises, it must be considered as a practical measure.”

“I think Sarah Standish is in grave danger,” Durell insisted.

“I cannot spare guides to accompany you. And I will need you on S-5. It is my decision, Mr. Durell, that you come ahead with us. More than a decision. It is an order. After all, the life of one woman—”

“A most important woman,” Durell insisted.

K’Ayub’s shrug was indifferent. To his Moslem mind, none of Sarah’s wealth or influence raised her to an equal scale with any man. His lynx eyes were adamant. He was going on.

Durell looked at Alessa, then at the peaks ahead. K’Ayub was in command. He refused to send more men after Sarah, denied Durell permission to go alone. Sergeant Zalmadar was big, tough and competent. The Pathan would travel fast, perhaps overtake Sarah and Rudi before they could reach Mirandhabad. He had no choice. They had to go on.

The last five hours of the march were the most difficult. By noon they were on the lower shoulders of the southern peak of S-5. On every horizon, the outlook was desolate, as alien as a lunar landscape. Durell could see the vast, domeshaped thrust of rock on the southern peak that Alessa identified as Roxana’s Breast. The old man, Omar, in the bazaar of Qissa Khani, had mentioned it, and he sensed a growing excitement in Alessa as they toiled upward to their goal. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright with-anticipation. Not once did she mention Rudi or Sarah.

“Do you think Omar told us the truth?” she asked. “I believe I know the exact spot he mentioned, from where we might get a clue about the North Peak. Poor Uncle Ernst went there alone, interested by some unusual fault he had glimpsed. But I gather the light has to be just right. Oh, if we can find it! If there is a Cave of a Thousand Skulls, it will verify all my research. I could write several papers on it for—”

“Take it easy,” Durell suggested. “We’re not there yet.”

She looked up at him, her excitement dashed. “You are worried about Sarah?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I am sure that Rudi can take care of her. He is an excellent climber. It seems to me that perhaps they had a sudden impulse to abandon the climb and go to Mirandhabad —perhaps to be married there. Why not?”

“Then why not tell us, or leave a, note?”

“Rudi has always been impulsive, unpredictable. Perhaps they were together last night, and felt too impatient to wait longer—”

“Did you hear her leave your tent last night?”

“I was fast asleep. But if she was taken by force, I’m sure I’d have been wakened by any commotion. That is why I am not concerned. Sarah went willingly with Rudi.”

“Alessa, listen to me—Rudi has Ernst Bergmann’s chart, hasn’t he?”

Her eyes hardened. “I cannot believe that. If I did, then I would also have to believe that Rudi killed Ernst. I cannot accept it.”

“Maybe K’Ayub sent his sergeant off in the wrong direction,” Durell said. He stared at the sunlight on the slope above. “Maybe Rudi pushed on ahead of us.”

“Why should he do that?”

“To find Bergmann’s flags first. To radio the Chinese.”

“But that would be treasonous,” Alessa whispered.

“Exactly,” Durell said.

She left him abruptly, and thereafter walked beside Hans.

The wind whistled coldly across the bleak, rocky slopes. Now and then the snow blew in hard, icy particles that scratched their faces. The angle of ascent increased, and Hans reconnoitred the way ahead with care. Climbing ropes were the rule of the day, and their progress was slower than they had hoped. In the thin snow cover, Alessa found traces of the original encampment she made on her first expedition here. It was late afternoon when K’Ayub announced they would make camp for the night.

There was nothing special to be seen on the pinnacle of the North Peak. It looked desolate, separated from them by a deep valley that lifted in a series of steep ledges to a tumbled peak three miles away and two thousand feet higher. Because of the failing light, no details were discernible. Alessa stared through field glasses for long moments, then lowered them in disappointment.

“I see nothing unusual. Omar must have been lying.”

“Didn’t he say about looking for the spot in the morning light?”

She bit her lip. “There cannot be anything over there.”

Durell took her glasses and studied the tantalizing peak. It was empty, barren, savage—the end of the world. In the dark shadows that mantled the eastern slope, there were few details to be seen. But if Bergmann had planted pennants on his climbing wands to mark his discovery, surely they would show up against the thin crust of snow. But he saw nothing.

Then a small black spot moved, infinitely tiny, and vanished.

He was not sure he had seen it.

He watched the place for long moments.

Another spot. And a third.

Then they were all gone.

Three, he had counted. Not two, which might have meant Sarah and Rudi had gone ahead, but three. Perhaps more. He watched, but there was nothing else. The light changed the snow to dark purple as the sun went down behind the savage western peaks. The air grew colder at once. His fingers were numb from holding the glasses to his eyes.

He walked over to Colonel K’Ayub and mentioned what he had seen. K’Ayub was impassive. He ordered a double guard for the night.

No one slept much during the hours of darkness.

In the morning, with the sun full on the face of the North Peak, there were still no details to be seen except the natural ravages of erosion and avalanches. It was warmer, and much of the snow evaporated in the thin, dry air. No fires were permitted for breakfast.

K’Ayub consulted with Alessa and decided to wait for the changing light to verify, if possible, Omar’s story of a cave mouth being visible from where they stood. The hours dragged. Again and again, Durell scanned the ominous peak. He did not see any further movement there.

At noon precisely, they scanned the cliffs ahead for anything unusual. No one spoke. The light on the mountain brightened, faded, and brightened again. Several reddish streaks suddenly glowed as the sunlight played on the cliffs. There were only a few pale clouds in the sky. In the silence, they could hear the distant thunder of the wind, the rumble of a rock slide somewhere. The air vibrated with vast, primeval pressures.