Cause for Alarm (31 page)

By this time the sight and smell of coffee had become unbearable, and we disposed of the coffee we had to order by pouring it over the roots of the privets which stood in green wooden tubs along the pavement in front of the tables. I was
feeling sick and wretched. Zaleshoff looked ghastly. We had sat there for an hour, and I was wondering how on earth we were going to spend the time until the banks opened, when I saw his face light up. He snapped his fingers.

“Got it!”

I grunted. “What?”

“A Turkish bath.”

My spirits rose. “But will there be one?”

“More likely than an ordinary bath and in a town this size.…” He broke off and summoned the waiter.

There
was
a Turkish bath. It opened at half-past seven and we spent the next four hours in it. We had left instructions with the attendant that we were to be called at half-past eleven. We slept soundly. Both of us, I think, could have slept the clock round and we were still tired when we were awakened; but we felt immeasurably better, and a cold shower apiece temporarily stifled the desire for more sleep.

It was decided that it would be wiser for Zaleshoff to go to the bank alone, and I went for a walk in the public gardens. He rejoined me there soon after twelve and displayed his bulging notecase with a grin. Over our lunch he expounded his plan of campaign.

“The first thing,” he said, “is another change of clothes. I don’t think for a minute that we’ve been traced this far, but it won’t do any harm. Besides, where we’re going, these clothes would look a bit curious.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“Up into the mountains.”

He brought the map out again. I looked at it while he traced a line north-east towards the Yugo-Slav frontier with the handle of a fork.

“That’s all very well,” I objected; “but why clamber about mountains when we can go due east towards Laibach?”

“I’ll tell you. The Gorizia-Laibach road may be more direct, but we’d have to cross the frontier between Godovici
and Planina. The frontier along that line is pretty well dead straight, and there’s a road running along it on the Italian side. That means that it’s an easy stretch to guard. If we go north-east, the frontier between Fusine and Kranjska on the Yugo-Slav side is no farther away from Udine, and the country round there is better from our point of view. A mountain frontier is fine from a military standpoint, but it’s darn difficult to patrol effectively. We’ll go as a couple of hikers. Can you speak German?”

“Not a word.”

“Pity. German hikers are more usual. Still, we shall have to do the best we can with our Italian. As to the clothes, we shall need plus-fours, ski-ing boots and jerseys, and sticks—oh, and rucksacks.”

“Rucksacks!”

“All right, all right! we can bulk them with paper. Talking of paper. They’ve got my name in this morning’s issues. And what do you think? Saponi has been arrested. That makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I suppose that because they found his name on my office door they thought he had something to do with me. They’ll let him go again, but”—he chuckled—“it serves the dirty double-crosser right.” He was as gleeful as a small boy with a new catapult.

I regarded him suspiciously. “I thought you said that that hard-luck story of yours was untrue.”

“Not the bit about Saponi. He sold me a pup all right. I knew he thought he was making a sucker out of me when he sold me that agency, but I let him go on with it. It suited me to do so.”

“In your rôle of respectable American citizen?” I said sarcastically, and thought I saw the beginnings of a blush spreading from his neck. Without answering, he referred to a slip of paper in his pocket.

“I called in at the station. There’s a train at three-five to Villach in Germany. It stops at Tarvisio, which is about
twelve kilometres from the Yugo-Slav frontier. We should be at Tarvisio at about five. It’s a slowish train. Then we can start hiking. We’ll cross the frontier after dark.” He beamed at me. “We’ve done the worst now. I said I’d get you out, didn’t I? The rest’ll be easy.”

“Good.”

I thought his jubilation a little previous, and for once I was right; but I did not voice the thought. It would have made no difference if I
had
done so. I remembered suddenly that I had done nothing about getting in touch with Claire. I mentioned the fact.

“You can telephone from Belgrade to-morrow. It’ll be quicker than a letter and you can have the call on me.”

That was unanswerable.

An hour later we emerged from the municipal lavatories in our new clothes. Zaleshoff had added peaked caps to the outfit. We looked, I thought, extremely silly and very conspicuous, and I said as much. He waved the idea aside.

“It’s just that you’re English and self-conscious,” he stated; “when we get up in the mountains it’ll be all right.”

For the first part of the journey we shared a compartment with an old couple accompanied by their son-in-law. They took no notice of us. The woman and the son-in-law, an unpleasant young man with a huge wart on his chin, spent most of the time brow-beating the old man. He chewed unhappily at his toothless gums as he listened first to one and then the other. They were speaking a dialect and I could understand little of what they were saying; but I felt sorry for the old man. They got out at Pontebba. A man who looked like a farmer got in and slung a bundle on the rack.

We had been following a river valley, but now we began to climb more steeply. Through gaps in the lower hills I could see great pine-clad slopes rising steeply into drifting mists that seemed to move like long filmy grey curtains hanging from a lofty ceiling. I saw Zaleshoff frowning at
them. The farmer had gone into the corridor and was leaning on the rail smoking. Zaleshoff got up and followed him. I remained where I was. The scene fascinated me. The clouds were constantly shifting, forming new shapes; their movements were like those of a conjurer’s hands moving mysteriously to invoke magic. There was a dramatic quality to them drifting sulphurously like that among the hills. They made me think of illustrations to
Paradise Lost
. There was no sun and the sky was leaden. I noticed suddenly that it was getting very cold. The train went into a tunnel.

Outside in the corridor, Zaleshoff was talking to the farmer. By the yellow electric light I could see his lips moving, but the noise of the train drowned the words. Then I saw him nod to the other man. He came back into the compartment, slid the door to behind him and sat down facing me with his hands on his knees. He was looking worried. Suddenly we ran out of the tunnel.

“What’s the matter?”

The corners of his mouth drooped. “Bad news.”

“What is it?”

“That man comes from Fusine. It’s been snowing for the past two days up there.”

“In May!”

“Summer’s always two months late in the mountains. It’s bad, Marlow. He says it’s a yard deep above the three thousand feet mark. He tells me they’ve had snow ploughs out on the roads, but that some of the villages higher up are still cut off. It’s been freezing hard at night and all the snow isn’t down yet. There’s been no sun either to thaw what is down.” He looked at the leaden sky. “That lot’ll probably come down to-night. It’s the devil’s own luck.”

“Three thousand feet’s a long way up.”

“When you start from sea level, yes. But round about Fusine it’s over four thousand. Even if we stuck to the main
road across the frontier we’d still be above the snow line. But we can’t even do that. We’ve got to keep away from the road and that means going higher still. If the weather was good the walk would give us a nice appetite for breakfast to-morrow, but with a heavy fall of snow on the mountains and more on the way, we’ll be in a mess.”

“A little snow won’t hurt us, surely.”

He snorted. “A little snow! We’re not in England now. Have you ever been in the mountains when it’s snowing?”

“No.”

“Well, then, don’t talk out of the back of your neck. It wouldn’t be a picnic if we could follow the road. Off the road it’ll be blue murder. And another thing. You see those clouds? Well, if it doesn’t snow to-night we’re going to be trying to find our way through them.”

“Well, what do you propose?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. I’m darned if I know. If there was a train back to Udine to-night I’d say we ought to take it. But the only train going back comes from across the frontier and they might be examining passports on the train. It might be O.K., but we can’t risk it. If we hide out in the open we shall get pneumonia. Even if we stay below the snow line it’ll be cold and wet with those clouds about.”

“Isn’t there a Turkish bath at Tarvisio?”

“Is that meant to be funny?” he snarled.

“Can’t we do as we did last night?”

“Tarvisio is not much more than an overgrown village. Everything’ll be shut by ten. They go to bed early in these parts.”

“Well, if we can’t go back and we can’t stay at Tarvisio, we shall have to go on. Is that it?”

He grunted. “There are times, Marlow, when that sort of logic is just damn silly.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to spend some money at Tarvisio.”

“What on?”

“Food and clothes. Wool caps to keep our ears warm, gloves, ski-ing gaiters to keep our ankles dry, an extra jersey apiece, woollen scarves, a bottle of rum and a better map than this one. I tried to pump that guy about routes. Naturally, I couldn’t say any more than that we wanted some nice walks, but I did get out of him that there’s an old disused road that runs over the frontier a few kilometres south of the motor road. Apparently it’s overgrown by trees now and little more than a path. He mentioned it to warn me. It seems that last summer four hikers wandered out along it, got on to the wrong side of the frontier by mistake and were fired at by the Yugo-Slav frontier guards. That’s the path we’ll make for.”

“I’ve always wanted to be fired at by a Yugo-Slav frontier guard.”

“Don’t be a sap! It’ll be dark. Besides, it’s the Italians we’ve got to worry about and they …” He broke off. The door slid open and the farmer returned to his seat. For the rest of the journey I watched the clouds in silence.

Shortly after six o’clock we left Tarvisio along a secondary road running south of Fusine.

Almost immediately we found ourselves climbing. The road was cut in a series of diagonals across the face of a range of grey stone hills. Below us the ash trees and pines grew against the hill-side like the quills on a porcupine. Through the dense mist that drifted down into the valley below I caught occasional glimpses of snow on the sides of the cloud-capped heights ahead. There was no wind, but it was bitterly cold. The air had an astringent quality about it that made the skin of my face tingle. There was an almost heady smell of pine resin. But for the cold I should have felt sleepy earlier than I did. It was not until nearly eight o’clock that we came upon the first traces of snow.

Shortly before we drew level with Fusine the road curled
away to the left and we struck off up the hill-side to the right of us.

According to Zaleshoff’s map and compass we were heading for the path mentioned by the farmer. We should, he had calculated, reach it before dark. For a time we climbed steadily through a dense pine forest, through which the mists drifted and curled like long eerie fingers searching absently for something lost. It was very still. Occasionally the loud, harsh croaking of mountain crows would break the silence. But that was all. The sound accentuated the silence. When we spoke it was in whispers. Then among the trees ahead of us we saw a patch of white.

The patches became more frequent. At first they were thin and looked, as our boots crunched across them, like granulated sugar. Then they grew thicker and merged one with another so that soon we could see nothing but white through the trees ahead. The air became colder.

Then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves fighting our way round a deep drift of snow that had accumulated in a small gully. Beyond the gully, however, it was nearly as deep. As I scrambled on I kept thinking that it would get easier when we were clear of that freakish drift; and yet somehow it never did get easier. It became more difficult. Now drift seemed to merge into drift. The snow was half-way up our thighs. It was a dry, cloying powder that dragged at the feet. Now the forest was full of sound, a rustling, secret sound as the dense roof of pine needles far above us shifted uneasily under the weight of snow, allowing it to hiss softly through the lower branches in chalky cascades. The mist had become thicker.

By a quarter to nine we got to the top of what appeared to be a long ridge. We were both of us breathless and Zaleshoff called a halt. Then, when he had got his breath back:

“We ought to be above Fusine and slightly beyond it—about here.” He jabbed the map. I did not bother to see
where. “If we keep going level for a bit now we should strike the path where it tops the ridge. That is, if we can see it at all. If this damned mist would lift …”

We went on. In spite of the exertion of climbing, in spite of the two jerseys, I began to feel terribly cold. I could feel the snow, melted by the heat of my body, soaking through the thick woollen socks above the gaiters. The top of the ridge was rocky and we toiled through drifts of snow that came up to our waists. By this time, too, night was falling. The mist seemed to be closing in on us. I began to feel panicky.

As the light went the mist cleared. It seemed to dissolve into the shadows. At one moment it was all round us; thirty seconds later it had gone and we saw the lights of isolated cottages on the hillside far away down the valley. There were no stars. The night hung like a black fog overhead. A few minutes later it began to snow hard.

The top of the ridge was partly screened by trees, but the shelter they gave was negligible. The snow did not fall in flakes, but in great frozen chunks. There was a frightening savagery about it. There was no wind and it fell vertically: but when we moved forward it beat against our faces with stinging force. Our arms shielding our faces, we blundered on a few steps at a time, pausing in between for breath.

We must have gone on for twenty minutes like that before we felt the ridge begin to dip slightly. Zaleshoff grasped my arm.