He looked across the canyon at a curling lip of snow below that bank he had observed earlier. Bad country, a slide poised to go with a million tons of snow, rock, and dead trees behind it. Left alone, the snow might melt off gradually, but if someone tried to cross, or if there were some sudden sound, the whole thing would come down.
He shook his heavy head. Rukovsky was a fool! He should go back to country he knew! Such a man was a danger in the mountains, to himself and to others. Alekhin did not care about the others as long as he was not one of them. He did not like Rukovsky. Too smart, too efficient, one of those officer and gentleman types. He liked none of them, but he preferred to work with Zamatev. The man was cruel, ice hard, and ruthless. Alekhin did not like him, either, and it would be only what he deserved if the American turned around and went back to find and kill him.
Zamatev had said he was coming out to take personal charge. The fool! What could he do? Take charge of what?
Yet Alekhin knew that Zamatev had made a sudden flight to Moscow and back. He had returned bursting with confidence. Shepilov was to be called off, told to return to things that concerned him. Zamatev and the GRU would handle the American.
As if they could!
Alekhin paused. A pebble, pressed into mud when it was wet, had been kicked from its socket in the long-dried mud. Something or somebody had passed this way. If it was the American it must have been done at night when he was moving fast. It was unlike him to leave such an indication.
Pausing, Alekhin looked carefully around. A dozen times he had come upon traps left for pursuers, and he had seen several men die from those traps. Others had been crippled, temporarily at least.
Nothing seemed wrong, yet he was wary. With this man you made only one mistake.
He heard the footsteps behind him and muttered angrily. How could he accomplish anything with those fools tramping around over the mountains?
It was Rukovsky again. “We’re making a sweep of this slope, Alekhin,” he said. “If we find anything we will call you at once.”
“You?” Alekhin demanded rudely. “What could you find?”
Colonel Rukovsky controlled himself. “We might find a great deal. A hundred eyes are better than two.” He pointed. “I’ve started a patrol on the other wall of the canyon. We’re right here where it begins, so I had them cross to the other side.”
Alekhin looked across the canyon. A thin gray line of men walked in single file and then, as he watched, spread up the steep slope in a skirmish line, to cover everything.
Alekhin did not care in the least, but he said, “I hope none of them have families.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“They will die,” Alekhin said coldly. “You have just condemned them to death.”
Rukovsky stared at him. The man was not only arrogant, he was insane!
Alekhin’s eyes held contempt. “You! What a fool you are! Whatever you wanted to accomplish is finished. You are finished. ”
Alekhin turned his back and walked away before he could reply. Rukovsky stared after him. Alekhin was Zamatev’s man, and one did not lightly cross Zamatev. Nonetheless —
He glanced around. His men were scattered along the rocky face of the mountain, scattered among the fir and the cedar, their weapons ready, moving forward and upward in an uneven line. There were scattered spruce trees along the slope and several patches of Dahurian larch. Rukovsky paused to take in the wild, barren beauty of the place.
He was a man who read much, who thought much, a man who loved good music and who had been reared in an atmosphere of art and artists. His youngest sister was in the ballet and already accepted as one of the best.
He wished suddenly that she could see this: the vast gray mountain splashed with patches of snow, the dark columns of the spruce, and his soldiers advancing. He turned to look across the canyon. It had widened, and he needed his glasses now to make out the men. They were on bare rock, as here, but were approaching a wide bank of old snow. The snow ran down to the very edge of the canyon, some lopping over the abyss.
Captain Obruchev was in command of that group, a fine officer and a good friend.
Alekhin had disappeared! Irritated, Rukovsky looked around. Where could the man have gotten to?
He was an impudent fool! Yet he had been warned that Alekhin was no respecter of authority. He simply did not care. He wanted nothing they could give him and was afraid of nobody. Zamatev used him, needed him for this sort of thing, and had often said that Alekhin, when he wished, could simply vanish into wild country and lose himself. Just as this American seemed to have done.
He slapped his gloves against his thigh, irritated. He glanced around him, then started forward, his own eyes searching.
What exactly did a man look for, a tracker like Alekhin? Surely, there was nothing Alekhin could see that he could not.
But he could find nothing on this barren, rocky slope. He looked ahead, and along the ridge he saw jagged, serrated rocks with occasional towers, almost like battlements in some places. Directly before him, there was a grove of wild, wind-torn trees looking like a clutch of hags with their wild hair blowing in the wind. Only there wasn’t any wind, just those ragged trees.
He stepped carefully, for a misstep on this broken rock could give a man a nasty fall.
What did Alekhin mean that he was finished? That his career was at an end? Hell, if all went well he would be a general before the year was out! He knew he was in line for promotion and knew that the right people had been spoken to and were interested.
He smiled, mildly amused. After all, so little had changed since the time of the Tsars! Only the names had changed, and instead of the old nobility you had the Party members, and in place of the Grand Dukes you had the Politburo. Only, the Grand Dukes had usually had less power.
Gorbachev had more ability than most of the Tsars, and hopefully he would do something to build Russia internally before it came apart at the seams. But it was hard for any man to move against the sheer inertia of entrenched civil servants who did not want change and feared to lose their privileges.
Wild and treacherous as these mountains were, they possessed a rare kind of beauty. He was glad he was momentarily alone. To truly know the mountains, one should go to meet them as one would meet a sweetheart, alone.
Alone as he was now. Colonel Rukovsky looked off across incredible distances behind him. Far below he could see a helicopter setting down. Three trucks were tailing up the very bad road, looking no larger than ants, although he knew the tops of their radiators were as high as his head.
Whatever else the American’s escape had done, it had brought him here to this unbelievable beauty, which otherwise he might never have seen.
A cold wind blew along the mountain, and he shivered. There were ghosts riding this wind, strange ghosts born of this strange, almost barren land. Far to the west and against the horizon was the Verkhoyansk Range.
He paused, hearing a bird in the brush near the larch. It was a nutcracker; he remembered them from his boyhood.
What had Alekhin meant, saying he was through? It was absurd, but the words rankled. They stuck like burrs in his thoughts, and he could not rid himself of that dire warning.
He was near the haglike trees he had seen, and close up they looked even wilder. One of the trunks was battered and beaten, struck hard by something until the bark had been shattered into threads. Suddenly he remembered a brother officer, a hunter of big game, who had told him of wild rams battering such trees, butting them again and again in simple exuberance and lust for combat.
He paused again to catch his breath. The altitude was high and the air was thin as well as being crisp and cold.
Far off, he thought he heard a shout. Looking around, he could see nothing.
Then, high up on the mountain, Alekhin appeared, pointing. Rukovsky ran forward, looking across the canyon.
His men were lined out, moving in their skirmish line across that vast field of snow above the canyon’s edge.
Then, from somewhere down in the gorge, came a shot.
Colonel Rukovsky saw then a sight he would never forget. His men, twenty-odd of them, were on the field of snow when the shot sounded in the depths of the canyon. An instant of trembling silence when the sound of the shot racketed away along the rocky cliffs, and then horrified, he saw that whole vast field of snow start to move!