Catacombs (43 page)

The echoes bounced cheerlessly, frustratingly across the wide moorland.

It was schoolboy's pique; he'd known from the beginning that the odds were impossibly long. From bootprints on the ground it was apparent that Robeson Kumenyere also had turned back at this point. But his brief celebration before boarding the helicopter was testimony to his success. Undoubtedly he'd overtaken Landreth here and left him dead, perhaps in a narrow vale now deep in gelid mud.

At the corner of his eye Belov saw a tiny flare of red. It was next to nothing, a pinprick of light, attractant because of its contrast to the monotonous mud landscape. It could have been a late shaft of sun striking a piece of quartz at a specific angle to bring out the refracted color, but although there was a glow of sunset in the west, the fading daylight was diffused by the cloud cover. He looked to his right but didn't see the light again. All he saw were rocks of all sizes, smashed and uprooted trees with skinny trunks and large crowns of green leaves, thousands of pieces of ice embedded in the lahar.

Still. . .

He took binoculars from his pack and straightened, but before he could raise the glasses to his eyes he saw the tiny blip of red again. He focused hurriedly on the quadrant from which the glow was emanating. He couldn't locate it. He began a search pattern, noting the almost jellylike consistency of the mud, the thin puddles of rainwater on the undulant surface, some torn blossoms, and the time: The time was five twenty-three. The date was–

Belov lowered the glasses disbelievingly, a rictus of a smile appearing. He raised them again and saw the uplifted hands and a bony wrist, the large black lozenge and stainless band of a quartz LED watch, the slant red numerals. A trembling finger depressed a button on the side of the case. The display vanished. Then it was on again. Five twenty-four. He cocked the binoculars a little to the right of the watch and brought into view the mummified head of Henry Landreth, mud everywhere except for the black holes of nostrils, eyes, shrunken mouth.

"Hang on!" Belov called. "I'm coming!"

There was no immediate response; then he saw the blinking of a mud-thickened eyelash, the fingers of Henry's left hand closing weakly in a try at a clenched-fist salute.

Alive.

"I'll get you out!" Belov said reassuringly. But even as he spoke he realized how very near impossible it would be to effect a rescue without sacrificing his own life in the attempt. Still, without Henry Landreth he couldn't hope to get his hands on the red diamonds, and the FIREKILL formula.

He was already working as he tried to think of a surefire solution. Henry was some forty yards uphill and to his right, well into the flow of mud which Belov now perceived to be moving, very slowly, piling up more thickly in some places than in others. The depth of the mud surrounding Henry was difficult to gauge: perhaps five feet. He seemed to be buried in it on his back and at an angle, his head downhill.

Should Belov wade up into the mud, he might quickly become immobile. Perhaps, no matter how careful he tried to be, he would step into a depression in the uneven moorland and sink over his head.

He was carrying two hundred coiled feet of a light but tough Dacron rope, his best bet if Henry retained sufficient strength in the cold mud bath to seize it. In the late seventies Belov had spent eight weeks touring the United States, and had enjoyed a couple of days on a dude ranch in Arizona. There a sometime movie cowboy and stunt man named Zane Grey Glenburn had taught him how to make and throw a lasso. The rope he now had in his hands lacked the weight of the lariat he'd used on the ranch, and he wasn't sure he could reach Henry, but there was no other real hope.

"I'm throwing a rope! Hold up your arm as high as you can–give me something to aim at!"

He edged closer to Henry along the perimeter of the moving mud, and as he did so was distracted by an unexpected and unnerving sight. On the raft of timbers that had been the roof of the climbing hut a tawny cheetah was sitting, watching him. The cheetah's face, at a distance, looked as stylized as a Noh mask; typically feline eyes a vivid yellow in the dying light, black teardrop patterns bracketing the short nose from the inside of each eye to the corners of the mouth. The tips of the steely whiskers had a peculiar radiance, like St. Elmo's fire.

It wasn't possible to tell how the creature had so cleanly reached the raft; perhaps by springing from one boulder after another across the coffee-colored mud. And, he thought, sparing the matter a few moments, cheetahs were plains animals, common enough in the flatlands of the Serengeti, where their startling bursts of speed augmented their hunting skills. But probably a lone cheetah was unheard of at this altitude. What had brought it here?

His fascination with the animal was short-lived; it looked well fed and couldn't be any danger to him. And he had to be quick about getting Henry unstuck. There was very little left of him above the surface.

Henry had heard, and tried to obey, Belov's command. But the arm he thrust higher shook and fell back to the mud. Now almost all of his head was submerged.

"Here it comes!"

Belov made a big whirling loop to one side of his body as Zane Grey Glenbum had taught, and threw the lasso forty feet. The loop, six feet in diameter, landed around Henry and he began to draw it tighter. Henry still had his other hand free.

"Try to push it down under your arm!" Belov shouted when the mud-laden Dacron loop had drawn closer and tighter around Henry. Obviously Henry no longer could lift his head from the ooze; but his left hand felt slowly around for the rope and closed on it, drew it down to the elbow of his right arm, pushed it beneath the mud. Not very far. Belov gave a slow steady pull on the line, setting the loop around what

he hoped was Henry's shoulder. When his cautious pull resulted in a taut line he was ready for the desperate business of trying to yank Henry home without suffocating him along the way. "We need leverage! Grasp the line above your head with your left hand!"

Belov waited impatiently for Henry to respond. Henry needed three tries to reach high enough to take hold of the line inches above his face.

Belov's breath was smoking; he felt the cold even through his mountaineer's sweater and knit cap and marveled at the spark that had kept Henry alive, even at this low ebb, for what might have been hours. "Now! Give me all the help you can–you're dead weight!"

Belov belayed the Dacron line around his waist and chest; the line ran tight back over one shoulder. He heaved with what he thought was all of his strength and felt no give, no momentum beginning, which shocked him; it was like trying single-handedly to yank a whale off the ocean floor.

He sobbed with effort, finding it difficult, even in nailed boots, to get a good purchase on the sodden heath. He bent nearly double, trembling violently, willing himself to sustain the effort.

Another man might have cursed, or prayed. Belov did John Wayne.

"Well, Pilgrim . . . don't know how you got yourself . . . pinned down in that hog waller, but . . . it's gonna be all right. . . . The Duke ain't lost . . . a poor wayward Pilgrim . . . yet, and he ain't . . . about to start now . . . ayuh."

The tight line around his chest was having the undesirable effect of cutting off some of his wind, and he felt as if he were drifting off into a field of sparkling stars, out of touch with his fingers, his stomping boots.

Then the line seemed to part behind him and, with no way to put the brakes on, he pitched head over heels down the slope.

It took him half a minute to get to his feet; his head cleared slowly. He had gashed his chin and blood dripped steadily. He shoved a gloved finger against the wound to stanch the blood and turned in despair.

He saw that it hadn't been the line after all. Nor had he pulled Henry Landreth's right arm out of the socket. The mud had yielded Henry whole, and he had come skimming and slicking down the heath after Belov. He was lying motionless, faceup, in a freshened rain. There was not an inch of Henry uncoated with mud, hair and hide, but the rain began slowly to clean him up.

Belov fetched his canteen to help nature along, and the flask of brandy. Henry took a long drink of water, choked, spat and spat streams of brown water. His skin was too blue, and Belov was worried. He poured a few drops of the brandy at a time on Henry's tongue and began to strip him in order to wrap him in one of the wool blankets from his pack.

Henry put a hand on his arm, a gesture of gratitude.

"Did you see them?" he whispered. Belov was astonished to hear any sound from him other than wheezing, choking, and gasping.

"What?" He looked back over his shoulder, at the raft of timbers. The cheetah had vanished.

"They," Henry continued, as if it were of vital importance, "did not want me to die. I thought they would be angry. But they came down to watch over me. Otherwise, don't you see–I'd have given up."

"I haven't seen anyone."

"No?"

"Who are you talking about?"

"The Lords of the Storm," Henry explained, his voice almost inaudible. "They ruled the earth–or at least the continent of Africa–ten thousand years ago." Henry's dirty forehead creased in a frown. He tried to take a look around, but hadn't the strength.

Belov, sitting him up naked to get a blanket around him, could almost see the wild beating of his heart in the thin cage of bones that was his chest. As far as Belov could tell, Henry hadn't been shot. But he was having trouble breathing. He looked very ill from prolonged exposure on the inhospitable mountain, and apparently was delirious.

He could lose the Englishman, Belov thought, gritting his teeth. After years at his trade he had an instinct about the nearness of death. He began rubbing Henry's body furiously in an attempt to restore circulation, to draw some warmth from the tepid veins. After all the luck they'd both had, bloody hell, Henry just wasn't going to duck out on him now!

MOMELA LAKES, TANZANIA

Camp David, Maryland

May 20

T
he four men from the Soviet Union met at Chanvai with Jumbe Kinyati and Robeson Kumenyere at ten thirty in the morning, following an all-night flight from Moscow to Kilimanjaro airport. The delegation had been handpicked by the thirteen members of the Politburo to provide a convincing demonstration of the faith they had in Jumbe's bloodstones.

Two of the men, scientists of formidable brilliance, had never before been allowed to travel outside the Motherland. Grigor Altunyan was director of the Center for High-Energy Physics in Protvino, and Ardalion Udaltsov, known as the Russian Einstein, did his thinking at an institute named for him in the city of Obninsk, which was devoted exclusively to scientific facilities.

They were chaperoned, so to speak, by Vasili Obadashev, a deputy director (First
 
Chief Directorate) of the KGB and a protégé of the director; and by Aleksandr Kekilova, head of the powerful Administrative Organs Department of the Central Committee, also a protégé of the strongman–of the U.S.S.R., the general secretary of the Communist Party.

A full support group of interpreters, secretaries, and KGB officers had accompanied them. A corollary purpose of the trip was to make contact with Michael Belov, who was known to have left Zanzibar on the morning of the nineteenth for Kilimanjaro. But where he was now, and what he was up to, remained a mystery that irritated Vasili Obadashev. Particularly because it was now clear that Cobra Dance's mission to the War-shield ranch had been a dismal failure. Undoubtedly Matthew Jade was at this moment well on his way to Tanzania, or already in the country.

Obadashev was a small man with narrow shoulders and no meat on his bones, temples that stood out so prominently on a high forehead they looked like the bumps of horns about to sprout, accentuating a decidedly devilish appearance. He wore thick glasses that threw his eyes into unsettling relief, as if they lived independently of his face.

He said to Jumbe, "The red diamond which we have seen is a remarkable artifact. The etchings found on it are, according to our scientists, part of a stringent mathematical model that has to do with the fluid-dynamic stability of plasmoids."

"Interesting," Udaltsov said, with a nod. He was rough as a peasant, in stature almost a giant but with arms so short he had to bend over to unzip his fly.

"Interesting," Kekilova continued. In a black suit and sweater and tieless white collar, he looked rather like an Irish priest. "But hardly enough to persuade us to reach into our hip pockets and hand over IRBMs in barter for those diamonds required to formulate the antimissile device known as FIREKILL."

Jumbe, his eyes heavy lidded, let that one just hang there. It was hot in the room, with the louvers of the windows nearly closed to shut out the sun's glare. Jumbe had apologized; the air conditioner was not working. But perhaps he only wanted the un-acclimatized Russians to sweat.

Robeson Kumenyere sipped iced tea and studied the faces in front of him, and kept an eye on his pocket watch as he had promised to do, because of Jumbe's delicate health.

Jumbe said finally, "I'm not surprised to hear this. Only that it required so many of you, on short notice, to tell me."

Obadashev smiled. "Obviously our reservations fall short of outright rejection of your terms. We would like, however, to propose a somewhat more equitable method of determining the . . . scientific value of the so-called FIREKILL stones. I assume we will not be allowed to speak to any of your own experts, among them Dr. Henry Landreth, I believe."