Thirty-Six

 

When morning came, Joe Mack stood alone upon the mountain. His hair had grown long, and rather than try to cut it with his knife he had begun wearing it in two braids that hung down over his chest. All you need now, he told himself, is a necklace of bear claws.

His smile was grim as he studied the country below and about him. Yet his thoughts wandered, and he remembered the story of the Apache, the Indian Massai, who had been deported to Florida after Geronimo's surrender in 1886. He had escaped from the train after they had left St. Louis, and he had worked his way across country, returning to Arizona without being seen except by a friendly Indian to whom he revealed himself. Two thousand miles or more he had traveled, much of it through populated country. Nobody had ever known the whole story, but it had been a tale worth the telling.

In the old days the Apaches would have sung songs of his courage and his skills. Nowadays they did not sing anymore, and too many of the Indians were forgetting the old songs and the old stories. He knew many of them. His grandmother and his mother had told him the stories, and his white grandfather, too, who had known more of them than many of the Indians. He had lived close to the old men, and he knew the value of their songs and their stories. Many he had noted down; others he had simply repeated to Joe Mack when he was a small boy.

Below him was the vast gorge with its roaring river, rimmed with jagged rocks as if born from some surrealistic nightmare, rocks gnawed upon by wind and broken by expanding ice, sheets of rock and slabs of rock and crumbled rock underneath. Below the rim, the wild, wind-torn trees leaned with the prevailing winds and cast their dead branches like skeleton bones along the narrow ledges below.

He knew this land, knew it from his memories of Hell's Canyon, from the Snake and the Salmon rivers of Idaho. This was like them, but wilder, somehow different. More and more he felt himself turning back the leaves of time. Fading into dimness were his days of training as an officer, his years of flying, his neat uniforms, and before them the lessons learned in school. Now he was back to the mountains of his boyhood and his memories of the wild, free mountain life.

He had never been but superficially a civilized man. He knew that, and he knew he could, or thought he could, return to it. Now he did not know. He was a man of the wilderness, living as he had dreamed of living. His life was wild, hard, cold, and dangerous, yet he was ready for it.

"I may be the last Indian," he told himself aloud, "who will live in the old way, think the old thoughts."

He had not chosen his enemies. They had chosen him. They had ripped him away from the life he had been living, to be used, drained, and cast aside. They would have left the pitiful rags of a man, what remained after torture, after repeated, demeaning questionings. This was better. He was not afraid to die. All his life had been a preparation for dying, but dying as a warrior would die. Yet now he would not die, for dying would give them victory. He would live, he would escape, he would flaunt it in their faces. He would show them what a man could do.

They were out there now, seeking him. Very well, let them find him, and find death.

A few had died, he knew that. The pursuit of him had not gone easily for them. How many his traps had killed he did not know, but he knew of three who had died with the helicopter, and there had been others. All right, if they wished to pay the price, he would give them what they wished.

No longer would he simply flee to escape them. Now he would fight back.

Rukovsky was waiting beside the fire when Suvarov drove up. "He's up there somewhere," Rukovsky said. "It is rough, but we will find him." He gestured. "I've a dozen patrols scattered along this valley. When we have eaten, we will start up the mountains. You can tell your Colonel Zamatev that we will have him."

Suvarov nodded, but kept his doubts to himself. "We have pursued him for months. I would like to see him taken."

"Have no fears. My men will take him." He turned his back to the wind that was blowing down from the mountain. It was not a strong wind, but cold, very cold.

"It will be an exercise for them. Get them in shape for the real thing. This could not have come at a better time."

Suvarov looked up at the mountains. Here there was some snow on the ridges and a huge bank of it under one ridge.

"You are from the Ukraine?" Suvarov looked at the mountain again. "Have you traveled mountains in the winter?"

"A little. No matter; my men can handle mountains. They can handle anything."

He looked around. "Personally, I'll be glad to get into the hills. Get away from some of this wind."

Rukovsky glanced at Suvarov. "I've a bottle in the car. How about a nip of vodka?"

"Why not?" Suvarov stood up, nervously. "I thought I smelled smoke?"

"You probably did. My men have fires; they're making tea and having a bite." He glanced at his wristwatch. "They've not much longer."

Suvarov took a swallow from the bottle and passed it to Rukovsky. "I hear Comrade Shepilov has recruited trappers to find the American."

Rukovsky smiled. "No matter. We will get him first."

"That's rough country up there," Suvarov gestured. "I have not seen it myself, but I have heard stories."

He took another swallow from the vodka and reached for his teacup. He filled it and stood up. "I say, that's an awful lot of smoke!"

Rukovsky got to his feet. It was quite a lot. Suddenly he was angry. "They've let their fire get away from them!" He swore and reached for the radio. He asked a question and then began barking orders.

"Get in. We will see what's going on." They scrambled into the car, and the driver stepped on the starter. It whirred, but nothing happened. The driver stepped on the starter again, and at that moment the smoke billowed up, a cloud of it swept over them, and they saw a wall of flame racing toward them ahead of the wind. The grass in the small valley was dry, and the fire was coming fast. "To hell with the car!" Rukovsky dropped to the ground and started for the rocks. Suvarov and the driver were only a step behind him.

They scrambled up in the rocks where there was very little growth just as the flames swept down the valley. They hit the car and rolled around it, and then the flames got to the gas spilled around the tank. Flames roared, flames leaped up, and then the car exploded. For a moment the flames shot skyward and then roared madly as the remaining gas burned.

Rukovsky swore again. "I will find who is responsible for this, and I'll — !"

The line of flames raced down the little valley, leaving the grass charred and black behind it. Only a few of the soldiers had suffered minor burns, most of them in attempting to save equipment or food.

"Sir?"

Rukovsky glanced around impatiently. Suvarov said, "Before you assign the blame, it would be well to think of the American."

"What do you mean?"

"He could have set the grass afire."

"Nonsense!" Rukovsky spoke and then paused to consider. "Is it likely? Would he attempt such a thing?"

Suvarov repeated the story of the helicopter. Of numerous traps, "It is guerrilla warfare. He's very good at it."

"Come! Let's go see where the fire started."

Soldiers were beginning to climb down from the rocks where they had taken refuge. Most had escaped with their arms; some had escaped with rations. Three vehicles had been destroyed, the last one a truck just beyond the line of the fire.

"This one was set afire after the fire had passed, Colonel. See? It was over this rise, out of sight of most of the command."

"Is anything missing?"

Several cases of rations had been ripped open and both food and ammunition taken. An AK-47 was missing.

Reports came in slowly. Most of the food supplies had been burned and much equipment damaged. The fire had been sudden and unexpected and had moved swiftly ahead of the wind. Most men had saved their weapons; some had rations upon them; some had been hastily gathered among the rocks and out of reach of the flames. Not enough remained to keep the command in the field.

"Did anyone see him?"

Nobody had seen anything, but it was apparent that the flames had come from several points. "Fire arrows," somebody said.

"What?" Rukovsky turned on him.

"In the films, sir. I saw it when I was a boy. The Indians used fire arrows to set wagons afire, and sometimes they shot them over the walls into forts."

Rukovsky swore. "Is there a radio working?" he asked then. "I want a ration drop, and I want supplies brought in. I am going in there after him."

Lieutenant Suvarov said nothing. He was only a liaison officer here, and he wished he was anywhere else. It was cold here, and it would be worse up in those mountains. He was a city man, more at home in the homes of top officials and embassies than here. Why did he not get that assignment to Japan, the one he wanted if he could not have Paris? His father had been an important man with connections. The trouble was, there were others with important fathers who were still alive. And Colonel Zamatev had actually asked for him, which was a great honor, but one he was beginning to question.

The radio was still working, and after a time they picked up a reply. Nothing could be done until tomorrow or the day after.

"No matter," Rukovsky said. "We can equip several squads, and we will send them out. Let's keep moving."

In the shelter of a huge boulder they built a fire, and two soldiers built a shelter for Colonel Rukovsky and Suvarov. It was cold, but spring was not far off. Suvarov said as much, and Rukovsky snorted. "In this country? Is there ever spring?"

He leaned back against the trunk of the tree that formed the back of their shelter. "Is this man really an Indian, Lieutenant?"

"He is, sir. A very fine flyer, too, by all reports. He had been testing one of their latest fighters, among other things."

"One doesn't think of a Red Indian doing things of that sort, but I know little about them."

"Alekhin's hunting him, sir. Somewhere about here, in fact."

"I wish he'd catch him. Or that somebody would. No, I would like to do it myself. A flyer, you say? An officer?"

"A major, sir."

"Where are the rest of the men?"

"Down the valley, sir. Those who are not out on patrol. There was a more sheltered area for that number. But we've sentries out."

"Sentries? Here?"

"The American is somewhere about, sir. And we do not know just where he is. This is a big country."

It was cold, but one of his men had found a ground sheet and some blankets in an incompletely destroyed truck. Colonel Rukovsky found himself liking the campfire and said as much.

Suvarov said, "Yes, sir. It is pleasant." Yet he did not think so at all. How had he ever got into this, anyway? If he could not be in Tokyo or Paris, why not Moscow?

He drank some of the tea the guard had prepared and put the pot back beside the fire. The Colonel was falling asleep, so Suvarov drew his blanket around him and huddled closer to the fire.

He had been asleep for some time, he supposed, when he opened his eyes and saw the man sitting across the fire from him.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. Have you slept long?"

Colonel Rukovsky opened his eyes and sat up. The man across the fire was dressed in furs, goatskins he believed, and he had an AK-47 across his knees. His right hand held the gun. His left a cup of tea.

"I hope you don't mind, Colonel. Your tea is excellent."

The man had two braids of hair falling down on his chest. He had a lean, dark face and startling gray eyes. Perhaps it was only that they looked startling from such a dark face.

"You are the American?"

"Major Joseph Makatozi, at your service." The American smiled. "I have a hard time remembering that. I am afraid I've reverted to what my people once were."

"You will be captured, you know? My men are all about."

"Lying about, you should say, Colonel. I am afraid I had to tie them up. We mustn't leave them too long, or they'll freeze."

"Have you come to give yourself up?"

The American laughed. "When I am in command? Of course not. To be frank, I am just debating what use I might have for you and the lieutenant, but sadly enough I find you'd be more of a trouble than of any value.

"No, I just dropped in for a cup of tea. I shall be leaving soon. To tell you the truth I was getting a bit tired of talking to myself." He glanced over at Suvarov. "What has been happening?"

Suvarov hesitated, and Rukovsky said, "Tell him if you wish. We will have him soon, anyway. By the way, Major, how did you get here?"

"You mean tonight? Why, I just walked in. Your men were so busy talking among themselves — "

He shook his head. "You need Siberians, Colonel. These young men are mostly town boys. I was tempted to gather all their weapons just for the joke of it."

He turned to Suvarov. "You were saying?"

"I do not know what there is that you would like to know. The search for you has been quite general. Comrade Shepilov has gathered a bunch of trappers to come down on you from the north. He is a KGB officer. There have been a few arrests.

"The bodies of the helicopter pilot and his companions have been found. Also the KGB man who was found dead in his car."

Joe Mack finished his tea and came suddenly to his feet. "I would take my men and go home, Colonel, if I were you. They are not suited to the mountains, and they will suffer. You will lose men and equipment, much more than I am worth to you or to the Soviet Union."

The AK-47 was ready in his hands. He took a step back toward the outer darkness. "Along the way," he said, "I have encountered a few civilians. None of them helped me in any way, but I'd not want them hurt because of me. That was the reason for my question."

"I know of nothing of the sort except for that village where it was said you lived for a time among some rascals who had taken to the woods."

"And that village?"

"They were gone when searchers returned. All gone, where we do not know."

At the very edge of the light, Joe Mack dropped to one knee and took up a package of emergency rations. "You will forgive me, of course? The supply system in the mountains is inadequate, to say the least."

One moment he was there, and then he was gone, like a ghost in the night.

Rukovsky came to his feet with a bound, and drawing the pistol he had in his scabbard he fired in the direction the American had gone. Fired, and swore.

"Lieutenant! Find those men and cut them loose! I want an all-out search. Now!"

Now, Suvarov thought, when it is too late. Why had he not drawn that pistol when the American was in sight?

For that matter, why hadn't he drawn his?

 

 

Thirty-Seven

 

Rukovsky was furious. The rations taken had been his own, a packet made up especially for him, at his direction. "Lieutenant! Cut those men loose! I want a search started immediately!"

"Of course, sir, but I am afraid they will not be able to see much while it is still dark. In another hour — "

"Now!" Rukovsky said. "Before he can get too far away."

He was perfectly aware that in the darkness they would find nothing. A man who could slip into camp, tie up his guards, drink tea with him, and then escape would not be found by the bunch of city boys he commanded, but it would look good on his report that a search had begun on the instant.

Secretly, he was amused by the man's daring. Once his anger at losing his rations had cooled somewhat, he chuckled to himself. Red Indian or not, the man had a flair. He glanced at Suvarov. "An interesting man, Lieutenant. Very interesting. I wish we could have talked longer."

"Men from the lower camp are bringing up some food, sir. And some tea as well as vodka. "

"Good! And it is growing light. " He turned to look along the slope. He could see his men, in a long skirmish line, advancing up the slope and into the scattered trees. It was, he told himself again, a good exercise for them. Let them get a taste of some really rough country.

From high on the slope, Alekhin watched them with contempt. They were not going to find anything or anybody. From the beginning, he had known he would be the one to find the American. Let the others blunder about. They would never catch him. They did not even know the kind of man with whom they dealt. Still, they were near, and he would go down and have tea with them. It would save his doing it for himself. Besides, he knew where the American was and how to get him.

Using the trappers had been a good idea, but not one that would work. He knew them too well. A few might try; others would take what they were paid and do very little. Most of them admired the American and thought of him as one of their own. If they came upon him they might capture or shoot him, but not many of them would try very hard.

Nobody tried very hard to do anything these days. The trappers sold most of their furs on the black market and some of them even into China. Alekhin had done it himself. He knew what was going on better than most of the KGB, although some among them were good, and a few were very good.

By the time he reached the fire, Rukovsky and Suvarov were eating. He moved up and stood on the edge of the camp for several minutes before Rukovsky saw him. The sight of him standing there so near angered Rukovsky, who had had quite enough of people slipping into his camp without warning.

"You!" he demanded. "Who are you?" The sun was in Rukovsky's eyes and he could see nothing.

"I am Alekhin."

"What?" The man was a legend in Siberia. "Come in! Come in! Will you join us?"

He was a big man, Rukovsky noted, who moved like a cat. Alekhin moved up to the fire and sat down cross-legged.

"You look for the American?"

"I know where he is."

"What? Then why don't we take him? If you know — "

"I know. Taking him is not easy. You go with all those people and he is gone, poof. I will take him. Me."

"Where is he?"

Alekhin jerked his head to the rear. "Up there. You go for him, your men will die. They are fools. They do not know how to search for this man."

Rukovsky was inclined to agree, but not to admit it. "He was here this morning, early."

Alekhin's heavy-lidded eyes stared at him. Rukovsky had an idea he had surprised Alekhin.

"He was here; had tea with us. Tied up three of my men. Then he took my packet of rations and was gone."

Alekhin sipped his tea. Inside he was angry, coldly, bitterly angry. The American dared to do this when he was around? He would pay for that.

"I will get him," he repeated. "I will get him soon now."

He looked across the fire at Rukovsky. "If you follow him, men will die. Take your soldiers and go home. It will be better. "

Colonel Rukovsky's back stiffened. "Your advice is not needed." His tone was cold. "If you expect to take the American, I would suggest you get on with it."

Deliberately, he turned to Suvarov and began to speak of other things. Inwardly, he was seething. Who was this buffoon that he should tell him what to do?

Alekhin ignored them. He took his time, finishing his small meal and the tea. Then he arose and without a backward glance, walked away. He did not care what they did. If men died, it was of no importance to him. By the time he had reached the forest's edge he had forgotten them. He had not warned Rukovsky because of any humanitarian principles, simply because so many men would tramp out all the tracks, destroy what indications the American might have left.

He had been here this morning? Some sign would be left, then. He cast back and forth. He already knew the length of the American's stride, knew some of his methods of travel. Soon he would know all. Deliberately he had waited, wanting the man to tire himself, wanting him to become overconfident and hence careless, wanting the others to drop the chase.

The American was somewhere near the head of the Indigirka or the Kolyma, and he believed the former. The canyons were excellent places in which to hide, but the man would have to eat, and if he killed for food he would leave a part of the carcass behind. That would attract the carrion eaters.

It was a wild land of broken rock, gray cascades of talus, and a few stunted trees. Alekhin paused to look down a great gash in the mountainside, a gash choked with fir trees. It was a steep descent and a harder climb back up if he found nothing or if it ended, as so many such did, in a vast drop to the canyon floor. Vainly he searched for some evidence of a man's passing. He found nothing but the droppings of a mountain goat and a few patches of snow.

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!

There was an instant of frozen stillness as the snow moved, and then his men scattered, some running forward, some running back, a few crouching in place looking for something they could grip. And there was nothing. The whole mountainside seemed to be moving, and then, with a thunderous roar, the snowfield gathered speed and swept toward the rim of the gorge.

Spilling over the lip, it fell like a Niagara of snow into the vast depths below!

One moment he saw his men, swinging arms wildly, fighting to stem the tide; then over they went, and far away as he was he seemed to hear their screams, screams that he would never forget. And one of those who fell was Captain Obruchev, engaged to his sister.

After the roar of the avalanche, silence.

 

 

Thirty-Eight

 

Major Joseph Makatozi crouched beside a giant spruce, looking up the canyon. He was sheltered from the wind, always a major consideration, and his coat made from the hide of a mountain goat was warm. The pelage of the mountain goat-is the finest, softest, and undoubtedly the warmest of any animal. Being white, it blended well with the occasional patches of snow. His pants were made of the same material.

From beside the spruce, he had seen the patrol start across the snowfield. This was war, and they were hunting him to kill or capture. And capture meant eventual death.

He watched them move out on the snowfield with exasperation. What could their commander be thinking of? Certainly, he was not a Siberian, but any Russian accustomed to mountain travel should know better than to walk across a slope that was obviously unstable.

He found himself almost hoping they would make it across, but if they did they would be in a position to see into his hanging valley, and they might even see him in his hideout above it. Certainly, a man with a good glass would be able to pick him out. And he was, for the time being, tired of running.

Joe Mack knew that in such cases, with snow poised to start, a sudden shout or a shot might be enough to start it, particularly in the narrow confines of the canyon.

Their movements on the snowfield might be enough to start a slide, but he could not leave it to chance. He lifted the AK-47 and fired.

He did not aim, because he had no plan to hit anything. He did not know the accurate range of the weapon, although all guns carried farther than most people believed, but the men were a good half mile away. He simply fired, and whether it was their movements or the shot he did not know, but the slide started.

At least two of the soldiers at the rear threw themselves back off the snow, while another two or three had not reached it, but for the others there was no chance.

When the roar of the slide ceased and snow puffed up in a thick cloud, he settled back against his tree and waited. He was relatively secure. There was nowhere on this side of the canyon that overlooked his hideout and no way it could be easily reached except above and behind him, and even that was not a simple way.

He guessed that the patrol he had seen was but one of several. No doubt they had planned to work along both sides of the canyon, but only an officer unfamiliar with such mountains would have attempted it. In such canyons there are usually several levels left by the water in cutting its way through the rock and carving out the gorge. A thorough search might be made on one level while leaving unseen hiding places on the next. Of course, many of these were visible from across the canyon, as his would have been had the patrol crossed the snowfield.

The tilted slope opposite him and somewhat higher was now almost bare of snow. He could see several men huddled together, who seemed in shock. He did not blame them. The snowfield had extended several hundred feet above them and back. It must have seemed that the whole side of the mountain was moving. As he watched, the men turned and started back the way they had come, occasionally turning to look back as if in disbelief of what had happened.

Going to the little hollow at the back of the bench, he built a small fire of dry wood that gave off almost no smoke. He made tea and a thick broth of meat scrap and melted snow. Occasionally he peered through the trees, and always he listened. Alekhin was out there somewhere.

The months of living in the snow and cold had built his resistance to it. It had begun to warm up, and at thirty degrees below zero he was almost warm. He remembered long ago reading an account of Byrd's men in Antarctica shoveling snow, stripped to the waist at ten degrees below zero. Given a chance, the human body had an amazing capacity for adapting itself to changing conditions.

Undoubtedly a patrol was coming along on his side of the canyon. Knowing the terrain, he knew that the patrol must either be well scattered or fail in covering the area. The nature of the country left only a few possible routes.

His present position was invisible from below. Looking up, they would see only a forested mountainside much too steep for travel. From below, as he had seen for himself, there was no indication of the little bench on which he was camped.

The only possible way of seeing it was from across the gorge where the soldiers had been headed who were carried away by the avalanche. He had meat, and he could afford to sit tight. Hard as it was to remain still, that was just what he must do. The risk was great, yet he needed the rest.

The very nature of the traps he had left behind denied him the chance to know if they had worked. If nothing else, they would make his pursuers move more slowly and with greater caution. Yet now he was within a few hundred yards of at least two such traps.

Here he was sheltered from the wind and from observation except by aircraft, and if he was under the trees they might see his hideout but not him. However, sighting the hideout might lead to a search. Was there communication with the ground forces by radio? He had to believe there was, although there might not be.

Under the trees he found a viewpoint that permitted him to see both possible entries into the hanging valley below him.

Suddenly, on the trail opposite, a soldier appeared. He was only two or three steps above the flat white stone Joe Mack had undermined.

The soldier halted, his weapon ready. He was surveying what he could see of the surprising little valley. He turned and spoke over his shoulder to someone; then another man appeared. Joe Mack could not see his insignia, but supposed him a noncommissioned officer.

There was no way they could see more of the valley without descending into it. As if on command, the soldier started forward; he hit the step above, moving fast, and then he stepped down hard on the flat white stone, as it was somewhat lower than a normal step. Instantly the stone tipped and slid, and the soldier came down hard. The fall was no more than fifteen or sixteen feet, but it was immediately apparent that the fallen soldier had broken his leg.

Others gathered around him while two or three descended into the valley and began a search. An injured man was better than a dead man, for it would take at least two men to carry him back to where he could get attention.

An improvised stretcher was made while two other soldiers attempted to restore the broken step in the path. Joe Mack, resting in his brush hideout, waited and watched.

Only minutes passed before a helicopter appeared. It swung around and surveyed the hanging valley, but appeared to ignore his hideout, which from the air must have seemed no more than a small ledge on the side of the mountain above the valley, a place of no consequence. Unless Alekhin was in that helicopter.

Always, he must remember Alekhin.

The soldiers were laboring back up the path, and he lay quiet, watching them. At last they were gone, and he added spruce boughs to his bed. Taking a chance, he kindled a small fire of dry wood and broiled some meat from the mountain goat. He ate well, drank tea, and extinguished his fire. Again he took a look all about and then returned to his bed.

Lying on his back on the boughs, he stared up into the branches overhead. He had done the right things, made the right moves. Even so he had been lucky, indeed, and such luck could not be expected to last.

He sat up and in the dimming light, studied his maps. Ahead of him lay lower and fewer mountains and many small lakes and tundra. Places to hide would be infrequent, and much of the time he would be traveling in the open.

For three days he remained on the small bench, cold most of the time, having a fire but rarely with which to make tea and boil meat. He saw no more soldiers, although twice planes flew over and once a helicopter. Once, on the far side of the hanging valley, he saw movement in the brush, but nothing appeared. If it was a wild animal, it did not emerge.

He lighted his fire only when the wind was taking the smell of it out over the gorge. He always used dry wood, avoiding smoke.

On the fourth day, he decided to move. Carefully, from a hidden place among the trees, he studied possible routes by which he could keep under cover. He selected a possible destination, although that would vary according to what he found when he arrived. While in camp he doubled his supply of arrows and found two new and better chunks of iron pyrite, which he partly covered with rawhide for a better grip when striking a fire.

He started before dawn on the fifth day, impatient to be off. He went out to the north and stayed under cover of the trees. Now he took special effort to leave no trail. Although he did not like the added weight, he kept the AK-47.

Topping a ridge, he looked over the vast panorama of mountain, forest, and valley toward the east and south. Timbered ridges marched away in endless procession, with hollow basins, ridges of slide rock, patches of snow, and here and there what seemed to be glaciers. Beyond that were great crags and the cone shapes of ancient volcanoes. Avoiding an easy path into the woods, he took a mere goat trail up into the crags and crouched there to study the country. The more he saw of it, the more he was inclined to cut back to the southeast and try to stay clear of regions of small lakes and tundra. It would be much the longer route, but offered better chances of finding cover, as well as wild game.

That night he decided he would turn southeast and try to reach the Kolyma Mountains above Magadan and then follow them to the northeast.

Every few minutes now, he checked his back trail. That somebody was following him he was quite sure, and he began to think of a trap, a very subtle one that might fool even Alekhin.

Dipping down into a narrow opening between two appallingly sheer gray cliffs, he walked along a sandy floor, crawled over boulders, and wended a precarious way through a forest of tumbled rock. Here and there were patches of snow and narrow crevasses into which a man's foot might slip, breaking an ankle. Growth was scarce except for lichens.

Except for his carefully husbanded tea, his food was almost gone, so he watched for any kind of wild animal that he might kill.

Several times he glimpsed grouse, or ptarmigan, but it was midday before he was able to kill one with his sling. He had just climbed down over a steep wall of black rocks and at their base came on a pile of driftwood stacked up against boulders by the rushing waters of spring runoff in past years. He made a small fire, broiled and ate the grouse, and then carefully covered the feathers and bones.

Looking back up the narrow gorge down which he had come, he was amazed. He must have descended more than a thousand feet, and watching, he could see no signs of movement behind him or on the cliffs above. Finding a break in the canyon wall, he turned into it and climbed steeply up, crossing a wide belt of slide rock that sounded, as he crossed it, like walking on piles of empty bottles. At the top of the slide, he found a few inches next to the cliff where he could walk. The towering boulders at the place he had started his climb now looked like mere pebbles.

Trees choked the great crack up which he was traveling. Mostly spruce and fir, there was a scattering of larch and an occasional dwarfed and gnarled cedar. There was much debris, broken branches and fallen trees, many of them mere bare poles now. He found some long-dead bark and gathered tinder for a fire whenever he might decide to stop.

Looking back down, he judged any follower would have gone on down the canyon, not thinking that a man would choose such a precipitous climb. He turned and kept on, climbing now as if up a steep stairway. Soon the crack became so tight he could touch either side with ease. At the top a raven flew up, flapping its black wings slowly away. He had to use his hands to lift himself out of the crack at the place where it began. First, just enough to look around.

Not fifty feet away was a mountain goat, a big one weighing he would guess not less than three hundred pounds. It was looking right at him, no doubt astonished by the sudden appearance of this weird looking creature in a domain where he no doubt ruled the roost. The animal seemed in no wise frightened or even disturbed.

Carefully, aware that his hands were busy and unable to use a weapon, Joe Mack hoisted himself from the crack and sat on its edge. He needed the meat, but estimating the distance, he did not like the odds.

Cautiously, Joe Mack got to his feet. The goat was amazingly white, his horns jet black and sharp as needles. His build was like others of his kind, stocky and powerful, better for climbing and leaping than running, something he would rarely have a chance to do, living on the heights as he did.

Joe Mack brought his bow around, and then seeing some larch trees not far off, he backed toward them. The goat watched him with interest, once bobbing his head low and giving it a kind of twisting shake.

Having seen goats in action, Joe Mack was perfectly aware of how dangerous they could be. Usually they hooked low and hard, trying to rip the belly of whatever they were attacking. When he reached the trees, Joe Mack retreated into the small grove and began working his way through them. When he emerged, he was upon an almost sheer mountainside, with an enormous panorama of ridges, peaks, and mountains lying before him. He was facing east and a little south and looking at one of the most rugged bits of terrain he had ever seen. It reminded him of the Sawtooth Range in his own Idaho country.

Climbing a promontory, he studied the country behind him. He could see no movement, nothing to indicate pursuit, although he knew it was there. He doubted whether the soldiers would persist, however, but somewhere soon he should be meeting the trappers and hunters Shepilov had sent to find him.

He descended from the rocks and made his way carefully over the bare rock of the mountain's crest. Here and there were loose slabs and patches of snow, some of them extensive.

He was working his way down a steeply sloping dome of granite when he saw them.

Three men, trappers or hunters by their look, far down the slope below him. If they looked up they would see him, unless his goatskin coat and pants appeared to them like snow. These men would be good shots, and all carried rifles.

For a moment he held himself still; then, just a little further down the slope, he saw a big, rounded boulder balanced on the slick rock face.

Carefully, he began edging closer. If that boulder fell — !

They were right beneath it and at least three hundred yards away, but at the base of a steep hillside.

He climbed down, using his hands to ease himself down in a sitting position. The rock was very slick, and at places there was ice. The three men were coming closer.

He reached the boulder, lifted his feet until he could put them high on its side, and then bracing himself against the mountainside, he pushed.

There was a moment when it only crunched slightly, and he pushed again, with all the power in his legs. The boulder teetered, crunched, and slowly began to turn over.

Ponderously, almost majestically, it began to roll over, and then suddenly, seized by the forces of gravity, it turned over and began to tumble down the slope.

It reached a drop, fell, and bounded high, and then as it began to fall, the hunters froze in place, staring up, eyes wide with horror.

 

 

Thirty-Nine

 

The hunters took that one startled look and then scrambled to escape. All three made it.

The boulder landed within inches of where they had been standing, hitting with terrific impact. Then it rolled back a few feet and lodged against a smaller rock.

Two of the men had fallen. They got to their feet, badly shaken, and looked up at the mountain. They could see nothing.

Hurriedly, they moved back into the nearest trees. There were not many at that point, but they were some shelter.

"That was no accident," one of them said.

For several minutes nobody spoke, and then Hymoff said, "Did you ever think of all you could do to somebody following you into the mountains?"

"Who hasn't?"

"I never liked Shepilov, anyway," Hymoff suggested.

It was a dangerous remark, and they all knew it. If such a comment were repeated, it could mean trouble for the speaker.

"Well, a man could always trap some fur. Doubt if this country has been trapped lately. A man could keep busy," he added.

"How did he come to be a prisoner here, anyway? My grandfather sold furs to an American trader at Emma's Landing, years ago. Said he was an honest man, as traders go."

"No way he's going to escape, anyway. No way he could cross the Strait."

"The Chukchis crossed it for years, hundreds of years, I guess."

"That was before radar and patrol planes. I crossed it most of the way on the ice, one time. I was with my father, and I was just twelve that year."

From high on the slope, Joe Mack watched them. What reward had been offered for him he did not know, or what other inducement, if any. He had not planned to kill any of them, but that was their problem. If they chose to follow, he would stop them, one way or another.

He arose and went back off the ridge and followed it toward the southeast. It was easy walking here, with few trees, scattered rock, and nothing but sky above. It was clear and blue, like most skies in this part of the country. He did not hurry, but he made good time. Yet at intervals he stopped to study his back trail. Alekhin would be back there somewhere, or perhaps outguessing him and waiting up ahead. That had been one of the reasons he had changed direction so drastically.

Later that day he killed a musk deer and broiled a steak over the fire. He ate hugely, eating as his forebears had eaten when meat could not be saved and another kill might be days away.

When he had eaten he put out his fire, obliterated as much as possible of the sign it left, and hiked on another two miles before finding a place to sleep.

Somewhere far ahead was the Kolyma River and beyond it mountains of the same name. When he reached those mountains he would follow them toward the northeast.

He was tempted to go into Magadan, just for a change of diet, if no more. He had his suit and he had the white shirt Natalya had made for him. At this time of the year, he might even get away with wearing moccasins. He shook his head. Not with a suit. A new suit, at that. It would draw attention he did not want. Nonetheless, it was a temptation.

There was no trail or path where he now walked, and he kept his eyes open to pick up an animal trail. It was easy to get oneself into a cul-de-sac, not knowing the mountains. If you followed a trail, it was always a way somebody or something had gone before.

It was bitterly cold and getting more so. Before nightfall he would have to get down off the top of the mountain where he now walked. Warm air rises, and if he could find a hiding place on a good slope he would settle in, even if it was early.

He heard the helicopter only a moment before it appeared, and there was nowhere to hide. Hoping they had not seen him he dropped to the ground among some flat rocks, hoping they would take him for snow or even a dead animal. He lay perfectly still, but inside his coat his hand gripped the AK-47.

The copter swung by, not directly overhead, and started on; then it around and came back, flying lower.

They had seen something. They were coming back for him. All right, Joe Mack, he whispered to himself. Get them the first time.

He lay still, and they swung by directly over him, not fifty feet off the ground.

He rolled over as they swung by and let go with a burst just as they began their turn. They were making a tight turn not more than fifty yards away, and they believed he had only a bow and arrows. What they got was totally unexpected.

The copter dipped sharply and then smashed into the ground, tipping slightly and then righting itself. The rotor made a few despairing turns and then slowed to a stop.

Lying behind the rocks — a poor cover at best, for they were very low — Joe Mack watched, ready to fire again.

Nothing happened. Nobody stirred.

He waited a slow count of twenty and still nothing moved. His gun covering the side of the helicopter, he got to his feet. Working his way toward the tail, he kept the gun in position and slowly drew abreast. He heard a low gasping moan, as if someone had tried to move and had been stopped by sheer agony. With his left hand he opened the door.

The pilot lay slumped forward, obviously dead. The man nearest him made a feeble effort to reach for a weapon. "No!" Joe Mack spoke sharply, the muzzle of his gun against the Russian's side.

He was a young man with a boyish face, but a tough, competent-looking man. In Russian he asked him, "How are you hurt?"

"My legs are broken, I think."

Quickly, efficiently, he searched the man, taking a pistol from him. Then, with infinite care, he lifted him out of the seat to the ground. From the helicopter he recovered the man's heavy coat and several blankets. There was a folded emergency tent, and he took that out and laid it on the ground.

"Not much I can do for you," he said. "I'm no surgeon. Did you get off a call for help?"

"No."

Joe Mack believed him. There had been no time, no chance. "How soon will they start looking for you?"

"When we do not answer."

"All right. I'm going to fix you up as warm as I can, and then I'll leave. Sorry about this, but you shouldn't have been hunting me."

"We were not. That is, until we saw something lying there. We were going to pick up a prisoner. A dissident."

Joe Mack gathered all the coats and blankets from the copter to make the wounded man as warm as possible. As he talked, he built a windbreak of the flat rocks.

"A dissident? I didn't know you had such things." He spoke with a touch of sarcasm in his tone.

"We have our share. This is a bad one. He tried to free another prisoner. Did free him, in fact, but was captured himself."

"Tough."

"Yes, he is a tough one, as you say. Very strong man and not afraid. Too bad he has become a dissident. We need such men in Russia."

"So does every country." A thought came to him suddenly, a wild random thought. Yet why not? "What was his name?"

"Yakov. We do not have a patronymic. He was known to the KGB."

"You are not KGB?"

"I am a soldier," the man said. Then, "How will they find me?"

"I shall build a fire and leave some fuel for you. There is much lying about. And I found a flashlight in the plane." He had found two of them, as a matter of fact. One he intended to keep. He had also found emergency rations, such as every such ship carried in this country, and matches.

He built a small fire and made tea, hot, black, and strong. "Best thing for shock, they tell me."

He drank some tea himself and moved a packet of the emergency rations close to the wounded man.

"I won't be able to stay, you know. In fact, I'd best be off and away."

"I am obliged. You could have killed me."

"You are a soldier. I am a soldier. In combat I might have killed you or been killed, but you are wounded. It is a different thing."

"It is said you are a Red Indian?"

Joe Mack smiled. "I am."

Obviously in pain, the man bit his lip and held himself hard against it. Then he said, "Do not Indians take scalps?"

Joe Mack shrugged. "That was long ago, in another world almost. Yes, it was a way of keeping score. I have never taken one, although in a couple of cases I might be tempted."

He gathered his things, rummaged in the plane for more ammunition, found it, and took what other rations were available. Then he brought more wood for the fire. There was not a shortage of that, except that it needed gathering.

"It will keep a small fire going, and from up there they will see it easily. I must be off now." Yet he lingered. "Yakov, you say? Where were you to pick him up?"

"Near Khonuu. It is not far," he caught himself and was silent for a moment, "if you are flying."

He paused again. "The KGB are holding him at the airfield." He glanced up. "I have feeling for him. They will be rough, I think."

"When were they not? I do not know your country. I did not think there were rebels here."

The flyer shrugged. "There are none, or at least few who speak out. There is corruption, of course, and the black market. Many are discontented but have faith that everything will be put right."

Joe Mack went into the darkness and gathered fuel. There were few trees here and scattered, but there was much debris fallen from them and dead trees, blown down or struck by lightning. He dragged some heavy stuff closer.

"You will not escape, you know," the flyer said. "Alekhin knows where you are. He will find you."

"I shall be expecting him."

"You are not afraid?"

"He is a man. I am a man. We will see."

He added a few sticks to the fire. "Good luck, Russian. Next time, tell your pilot to stay out of matters that do not concern him."

He walked away into the darkness.

Of course, he had delayed too long. When there was no word from the helicopter, a search would begin. Once the helicopter was found, they would know where he was, approximately.

Khonuu? It was a town on the Indigirka, and Yakov was a prisoner there.

Yakov, who had helped him, gone out of his way to guide him. Yakov, who was a free spirit and partly of Tungus blood. Yakov, who refused to be harnessed. Yakov was a prisoner. Yet what could he, Joe Mack, do? He did not know the town or the airfield. The chances were great, however, that Yakov would be held at the airfield awaiting transportation to wherever the KGB wanted him. After interrogation, Yakov would be killed. Of that there could be no question.

Khonuu was not that far out of his way, yet he had avoided populated districts, knowing he would be recognized for who he was almost at once.

When it was light enough to see, he began to run. He ran easily, smoothly, careful of each step. Black, bare trees stretched bare black arms against the lightening sky. He ran into the dawn, an Indian, feeling himself an Indian, and when he found a dim game trail he went along it, finding it led him down the mountain.

The long hard months had left him lean and strong. As a cold sun arose from the far-distant gray clouds, he ran toward it, and then the trail took him north. He was going the way he must. Was it fate? He did not believe in fate, but something seemed to be guiding him as he ran.

He was a warrior, and another warrior, brother to him in spirit, was in trouble. He knew the risk, knew the slight chance he had of even finding where Yakov was held, but he took the chance freely.

Once, long ago, he had seen a young Chinese on the gallows waiting for the noose. He had said, "Some mans spend nice new money. I spend nice new life."

"If I must, I will," he told himself. "I am alone, and nobody awaits me."

Nobody? What of her? What of Natalya? Did she await him somewhere? Or was he forgotten, something that had drifted across her life like a passing cloud?

What had she promised? Nothing. What had he offered? To come for her, when both knew it was a vain, desperate promise to which no sane person would hold him. Yet in that respect he might not be sane, for he truly expected to return, to take her from the shore at Plastun Bay.

Foolish? Of course, but so many things worth doing may seem foolish to others, may seem impossible.

He ran down the mountain in the morning's gray light and found his way into the shadowed firs, the black guardian firs that clustered along his way. He crossed frozen streams and ran through patches of thin snow where his moccasins barely left a track behind.

When the sun was warm he found a place among the willows and slept, and when the sun was higher still he awakened. For a long time he stood, listening to the wind, hearing what was moving, watching the flight of birds, and they seemed unafraid and undisturbed. He began to run once more, for he had far to go and did not know how much time he had.

He saw no one and heard nothing but, once, far off, the ring of an ax chopping wood.

The morning opened wide before him, and the forest thinned again. In the distance he saw the smoke of cooking fires in the homes of those he did not know, and far off a city against the sky and a river between.

He slowed to a walk. A running man would be seen and would invite questions to which he had no answers. Now he must find the airfield. He was guessing, judging Yakov would be held waiting for the transportation to take him away. Now to scout the field and see where such a man might be held. And after that?

He was a warrior, and for a warrior any day was a good day to die.

Only he expected to live. He needed to live to free Yakov, to count coup on his enemies, and to meet a golden lady on a distant shore.

He was no longer an officer and a gentleman, no longer a flyer for the American Air Force; he was, for now, an Indian. And he had enemies.

There were scattered houses. One man, carrying an armful of wood, glanced at him, then went inside.

He walked steadily on. He saw a small plane take off and knew where the airfield was. He changed direction, walked among some houses, and crossed a bridge. His heart was pounding, his mouth dry. His AK-47 was hidden under his coat, his bow appeared to be a staff, no more than that.

It was very early and very cold. Nobody went willingly into the cold on such a day.

Two men walked before him, two thick men in thick coats and dark fur hats. They walked steadily and did not look back, but the walk of one was familiar. He unfastened the string that tied his coat and let his hand touch the butt of the AK-47. He was ready, but he took longer strides to move faster without seeming to hurry.

The man turned around, and it was Botev.

 

 

Forty

 

For a moment Botev stood still. Then he reached out and touched his companion. The other man turned, and it was Borowsky.

Were they to be considered friends or enemies? They were, after all, Russians. Yet they had differences with their government. He walked closer.

"You are still free," Botev said. "It is an achievement."

"Yakov is a prisoner."

"That is why we are here."

"He is at the airfield?"

Botev's eyes swept the area around to see if they were attracting attention. Nobody was in sight.

"He is there. There are four KGB men with him. They are in a small waiting room near the control center, waiting for the plane to come and take them away. It will be a helicopter, I believe."

"You have a plan?"

Botev shrugged. "How can we plan? We know so little. He is there and we wish to free him. If we free him, we can escape into the taiga. We have friends there, scattered friends. We also have friends in Magadan."

"I did not know there were so many of you."

Borowsky shrugged. "We are few, comrade, very few. We are not seeking to overthrow the government, even if that were possible. We only want some freedom for ourselves and to protect our own. Yakov is one of the best. We need him. He has helped all of us from time to time."

"Our choice is limited," Botev said. "The taiga or a prison camp, and for Borowsky and me, they would put us to work that would soon kill us. If they did not torture us to death. We can expect nothing less. Neither can Yakov."

"We had better move on," Borowsky said. "To stand talking in the cold is unreasonable. We will attract attention."

"Four men, you say? There will be others about?"

Borowsky shrugged. "Perhaps, Most of them will not like the KGB, but we cannot tell what they might do."

They walked on in silence along the snow-covered road. They passed a long building like a warehouse and then some smaller buildings. They could see the field now. It had several hangars, a building that was probably an administration building with a tower, and a smaller building nearby with a Volga standing before it.

Joe Mack said, "There's a chopper coming in now. Will that be it?"

"It will. When they start for the chopper, we had better take them."

"No," Joe Mack said. "Let's take the chopper. I can fly it."

"Well — "

"It will get us out of town. There will be planes after us, but we can ditch it and take to the woods."

They paused beside a hangar. "When it lands," Botev said, "they will drive out in the Volga. They will not expect trouble. "

They waited, stamping their feet against the cold, shivering and watching. "If we are seen," Borowsky said, "they will wonder why we are standing here in the cold."

"It is a risk we take," Botev said, "Yakov would do it for us."

"He got me out of Kirensk," Borowsky said. "He risked his neck to do it."

"And me from one of the Sol'vychegodsk camps," Botev said.

The chopper was coming in low. It would land on the airfield not far from the hangars.

Joe Mack's hand was on the AK-47. He heard the Volga start, and from the corner of the hangar they saw two men emerge from the building with a prisoner between them. His hands were shackled behind him.

"There will be two men in the building. Maybe they will be watching."

"No matter." Joe Mack saw the helicopter landing gently on the field and heard the car's motor start. The hatch of the copter opened and a man got down and stood aside. It was a bigger ship than those he had seen before and would carry at least a squad. Inwardly he was praying there was no such force aboard. If there were, nobody would get out of this alive.

"Let's go," he said, and they started to walk, not in a group but scattered out, drifting onto the field with the casual manner of curious country folk.

The Volga swung alongside the chopper, and the driver remained at the wheel. From the Volga, three men got down, and they saw Yakov turn his head slightly, eyes downcast, and glance toward them. Suddenly he fell to his knees. "No! No!" he cried out. "I am afraid to fly! I — !"

Angrily, the KGB men tried to jerk him erect, their attention completely on their prisoner. Even the driver had turned his head to see what was happening. Borowsky stepped alongside the Volga and opened the door on the driver's side. The driver, surprised, turned to look into a pistol. "Get out, very carefully," Borowsky said quietly. "I do not want to kill you."

Botev had rounded the Volga, coming up behind the two men who struggled with Yakov. Yakov was a powerful man, and he had managed, with a lunge, to knock one man off his feet. The other struggled, swearing, to pull Yakov to a standing position. Botev moved in behind him as Joe Mack went to the chopper. He spoke to the pilot.

"Will you step out, please? I am very nervous, and a burst of fire at this distance would empty your guts."

Carefully, the copter pilot began to get out. He was a brave man, but he wished to live, and the AK-47 was very close, and the man who held it was like no one he had ever seen, with the striking gray eyes in a dark hawklike face, his hair in two braids. The pilot moved very carefully. "Be careful with that," he said. "I have two children."

"You are fortunate. Children need a father, so stay alive, comrade, and make no mistakes. I want your chopper."

"You can fly it?"

"I can fly anything." He nudged the pilot with the gun barrel to move him further. "And this seems very like one of our own."

Botev had the two KGB men on their feet against the side of the Volga. From the buildings they were screened. Nevertheless, one of the KGB men had come outside and was looking toward them. "Have you got the key for the handcuffs?" he asked Botev. "If so, disarm them and put them in the copter."

Borowsky was astonished. "You will take them with us?"

"Why not? There is room, and if left behind there's no telling what tales they might tell."

Working swiftly, the four men, the pilot, the driver of the Volga, and the two KGB men were bundled into the helicopter. Yakov, his hands freed, took the guns taken from two of them and climbed in with them. The helicopter was soon airborne.

Joe Mack glanced at his watch. The whole operation had taken just six minutes.

A half hour later he landed on a rugged plateau of the Chersky Mountains. "Yakov? Let them out here. Loosen their bonds so they can free themselves after we are gone. No reason to let them freeze to death."

"To the devil with them," Yakov said. "Let the bastards freeze!"

"The pilot did you no harm," Joe Mack said. "Besides, he's a family man. Let them free themselves and find their way back. However," he added, "I've had some experience with these mountains. I would suggest the first things you do is build a fire and a windbreak. Then get settled for the night. It is too late to get anywhere today."

He circled once as they took off. The men were on their feet, struggling to free themselves. He turned the helicopter and headed off to the west; then, when some distance away, he circled back to the east.

"Where?" he asked Yakov.

"To the mountains east of Semychan," Yakov suggested. "I've a place there." He took up a map board. "Here, I can show you." He glanced up. "How are we on fuel?"

"No more than an hour's flying time. Perhaps less. I will take you as far as possible."

He kept the helicopter low, barely clearing the treetops, following canyons and low ground wherever possible. By now there would be pursuit, and when sighted they would be shot down without hesitation. But until they picked up the four men left behind, the pursuers would not know who was involved. And the KGB men would not know him, unless the description fitted one they already had. The braids might be a giveaway. Certainly it was unlikely that anybody else would be wearing such a hairstyle. Yet what could he do? There were no barbers in the taiga, and it had been nearly a year since he had had a haircut.

The air was clear, visibility excellent. He had left the Indigirka behind and was flying toward the Kolyma. When he landed the plane, it was in a small clearing among the trees. "We should chance it no further," he said. "They will be searching for us now. Let's camouflage the chopper. It will take them that much longer to find us."

There were, as in all such craft flying in the area, emergency rations. "We will give you half," Yakov said. "We have friends not far off where we can get more. Luck to you, comrade."

"And to you."

Yakov smiled widely. "You know, of course, that if we met in a war I should shoot you. I do not like our government very much, but I am a Russian."

"Of course," Joe Mack replied. "And I am an American. Let us hope it does not come to that. After all," he added, "we want nothing you have. Nothing but free travel and communication. There are millions of Americans who would like to see Lake Baikal and the Kamchatka Peninsula. If Russia would put the KGB to working on farms and doing something productive, tear down the Berlin Wall, and build more good hotels, we Americans would be all over your country spending money, making friends, seeing the beauties of Russia, and making ridiculous all that both countries are spending on munitions.

"If America had had any aggressive intentions against Russia, we could have moved when only America had the atomic bomb. We did not and would not, so don't worry about it, Yakov."

Yakov chuckled. "I like that bit about putting the KGB to work on farms. I doubt if they could raise enough to feed themselves." He lifted a hand. "Good-bye, then!"

He walked away, followed by Botev and Borowsky. Joe Mack waited a while, watching them go, glancing again at the now-camouflaged helicopter. It would be found, but not soon.

He added the additional rations to his pack, arranged his goatskin coat, and started off to the north.

Nothing moved but the wind. The coarse snow stirred along the frozen ground. Spring was coming, but the earth did not yet know it, holding itself back, waiting for some of the frost to go out of the sleeping earth.

Spring was coming and after it, the brief summer. It would be good to be warm again. He had almost forgotten how it would feel.

Where was Natalya now? Would he ever see her again? Ever hold her hands in his and look again into her eyes? Or had she forgotten already? He could not blame her. After all, who was he? A strange young man who came from the forest and disappeared again into that strange forest. A man whose path had crossed hers briefly and who must now seem like a dream. He grinned into the late afternoon. "Or a nightmare," he said aloud.

There was still forest, although the trees were not as tall, the undergrowth less, and there was more moss, lichens, and tundra. Soon he would run out of cover and would have to seek out other ways in which to hide himself.

In the thickest patch he could find, he built a crude shelter, started a fire with his two pieces of iron pyrite, and made a thick broth as well as tea. The helicopter flight had probably given him a little respite. Even Alekhin would have trouble picking up his trail now.

Twice during the day he had seen the tracks of moose and decided it would be good to kill one and save as much meat as possible. In this cold, it was no problem to keep meat. It froze solid almost as soon as it was killed. Tomorrow he would kill a moose. Tomorrow —

Arkady Zamatev looked across his desk at the Yakut. "Why have you not found him?" he demanded. "Has he outwitted you again?"

"I do not have to follow him. I know where he is going. I shall be there."

"Where now?"

"I go to Gizhiga. There I go inland. He will come that way, and I shall take him."

"So you said before."

"And I shall." Alekhin shrugged impatiently. "Those others, they get in the way." He smirked, his sullen eyes showing his contempt. "He made a fool of Colonel Rukovsky. He destroyed him. Ruined him. How does he explain losing so many men, and nothing to show for it? Rukovsky was a fool to get involved. It was not necessary, and I was there. I would have had him then but that they muddied the waters. I knew where he was."

"And you did not tell?"

"To let Rukovsky or Shepilov get credit for capturing him? He cost Rukovsky twenty-nine men, and Rukovsky must explain."

"The American had nothing to do with the slide."

"You say. I say he knew where he hid. He knew how they must search, and he prepared some traps and led them to others. Of course he knew. He planned it that way.

"What of the fire that destroyed so much equipment? The American started that fire. What of the traps along the trail that killed or injured men? He prepared those, too. He is no fool, this American, but I shall have him now."

He looked up slyly from under his brows. "You still want him alive? It would be easier to kill him."

"I must have him alive. I need three to five days alone with him. He will tell me all I wish to know,"

"He will tell you nothing. Nothing at all. By now you should know this. You may kill him, but he will tell you nothing. He is not afraid of pain, this one. He knows what he can do."

Zamatev shook his head. "Bring him here. That is all I ask."

"He was one of those who delivered Yakov."

Zamatev sat up sharply. "You know this? Why was I not told?"

"I tell you now."

Zamatev swore. "Then he has Russians helping him! I want them rounded up, brought in, every one of them!"

Alekhin looked at his thick fingers with their broken nails, and then he looked up from under his brows. "Be careful, comrade. He has destroyed Rukovsky, this one. Be sure he does not destroy you."

Zamatev snorted angrily. "Destroy me? That is ridiculous!"

Alekhin looked out of the window. "He will destroy you," he said contemptuously, "and then he will return and kill you."

"Bah!" Zamatev said impatiently. "How could he reach me? If he is anxious to kill me, why has he not tried?"

"First," Alekhin said, "he wishes to escape. But to escape is not enough. He escapes to make light of you. Then he wishes to beat you at your own game."

"That's childish! That's nonsense! Why should he care? Anyway, how could you know this?"

"He is Indian. I am Yakut. He is not like you. He is like me. He knows how to hate, this one. He knows how to win. He will make a fool of you, destroy you, and then he will come back."

"Come back to Siberia? You are insane! He cannot escape, but if he should, why would he come back?"

"To kill you," Alekhin repeated. "He has pride, this one. He does not ask reward. He does not care if his government knows. He does not care if Russia knows. It is only important that he knows." Alekhin smiled, and it was not a good smile. "And that you know. When he kills you, you will know he is doing it."

 

 

Forty-One

 

Evgeny Zhikarev was frightened. Across the river was China, not a mile from where he stood looking out the dirty, flyspecked window. Now that he was so near, his courage seemed to have drained from him, and for the first time he thought of himself as an old man.

Once he could have swum that river. Once he could have ducked and dodged if necessary to escape them. Now he was no longer agile, and his poor stumps of feet were crippled and broken. To move swiftly or adroitly was impossible.

Worst of all, he had promised a beautiful young woman that he would help her escape from Siberia.

How could he have been so foolish? Was it not enough that he escape himself, without trying to help another? And what did she mean to him, anyway?

She meant nothing. He scarcely knew her. Actually, he did not know her at all. She was the daughter of Stephan Baronas, and he had known, slightly, Stephan Baronas and respected him as a man and as a scholar.

He shivered. Escape was so near, and he so desperately wanted to live his last years in warmth and contentment. He wanted to be away from fear of the authorities, from fear of questioning, of harassment. He just wanted to sit in the sun again, to doze quietly and watch the boats on the bay, any bay at all where he was free.

He wanted to eat well again, to sit in a cafe, order a meal, and talk with people at other tables near him. He wanted to read a book, a newspaper, anything that was simply what it was and not something first approved by the state.

He was an old man, and he was tired.

Yesterday he had ventured into the streets for the first time. He had found his way to a small place where river men went to eat or drink and where fur trappers sometimes came, although free trappers were scarce these days. Soldiers came there sometimes, and he had heard them talking among themselves. Lieutenant Potanin was stationed here, and the men liked him. He was easy on them, demanding little except alertness when superior officers were around, or the KGB.

It was quiet along the border. The Chinese were over there, but they bothered nobody, and a little undercover trade went on across the river. The Chinese had vegetables, fruit, and many other things unavailable across the Ussuri.

What fruit could be found on the Russian side of the river was packaged and sent elsewhere.

He heard the door open behind him and turned. It was Natalya. How lovely she was! She could have been the daughter he had never had, the family he had wanted.

She came over to the window. He gestured. "There is China, and now I am afraid."

"I know." She was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, "We must not be afraid now, no more than we need to be to be careful. I think we will escape, you and I."

The road that ran along in front of the house was hard-packed snow with hoofprints, footprints, and tire tracks.

There were piles of dirty snow along the walks, which were only paths now between the buildings and the drifts. Soot was scattered over the snow, and drifting dust and dirt. Soon the snow would be gone and spring would come. The ice on the river had broken up.

"Potanin is here?"

"He is. I listened to soldiers speak of him and of others. He is here now, and I must find a way to speak to him, but not at his post. It must be here in the town and quietly if possible."

"You do not know where he lives?"

"No, and I cannot ask. I must watch, listen, and hope for a word or to meet someone I know. That truck driver, the one who brought us to town, he knows him."

"But he is gone!"

"Of course, but he will return. " Evgeny peered into the street. "I do not like this. Something is wrong! Something feels wrong! I am afraid." He looked at her. "Do not think me a coward, but we are so close now, and this feeling, this sense, this foreboding — I do not like it.

"That truck driver? He was kind to give us the ride, but what is he to us? Nothing! Suppose he is picked up by the police and just to get them off his back he speaks of us? Suppose we were seen getting out of the truck? It was night, I know, but there is always somebody up and about, and people report on their neighbors, their own families, even! So what are we? Nobody! He could inform on us with a clear conscience. It is better to trust nobody."

"What of Potanin?"

"I do not worry about him. Not much. He believes he will make a little from dealing with me. He will let me go over, thinking I will come back with a fat piece of whatever it is for him. He lives well, that one. He eats well, he has a few things to give to the girls, and he sends a few things to his family in Irkutsk. Because of him, they live well, too."

A big Kama truck growled past, laboring with its heavy load on the icy street.

"I must be careful," he grumbled. "On my feet I can move only slowly, and I think they look for me. I think they look for a man with crippled feet."

"I can go. I am not afraid."

He hesitated. "It is a risk. If you are stopped — ?"

"I will be in trouble," she said, "but nothing is gained without risk, and how long can we stay here?"

She was right, of course. They had no right to be here. He knew the owner was a sick man and was far away in Khabarovsk in a hospital. There had been business between them, and sometimes furs had been stored here. Nevertheless, if he returned and found them here, he would drive them out at once. The risk was too great.

"Whatever you do," Zhikarev warned, "do not go to the post. Do not go nearer the river than you must. They are very suspicious, and they shoot first and ask questions of the body.

"Potanin likes to live well, and there is a small place" — he traced an imaginary diagram with his forefinger — "here. There is a woman there who makes little pastries and has tea. Also" — he looked up at her — "she does a bit of business. She will have a bit of cheese and some sliced meat, and she makes an excellent borscht.

"Potanin goes there. This our driver told me while you slept. He goes there each day for a bit of something before going on duty. He reads a little, that one. He will be a round-faced one with black hair, and he will have a book."

"A book?"

"He is always with a book. He reads the old ones, Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov — "

He paused. "Speak to him of books. You will have his attention at once. You understand? He is friendly but aloof. I mean he does not mix. He is not one of your vodka-swilling young officers who stagger home from duty.

"He will have a drink, of course, but all who approach him want favors; others are afraid because he is a soldier and wears that uniform. As for receiving things from across the border, many of his superiors come to him for a bit of something now and again. But speak to him of books and you will not be brushed aside. He will be curious. I know him."

She put on her coat and the fur hat. She was shabby, she knew. Her clothing was old and much worn. However, there would be many like her here, and it was well that she would not attract attention. She must be as unobtrusive as possible.

"You have some rubles?"

"Enough. Say a prayer for me, Father. I shall need it."

She went out and closed the door behind her. Ah, he said to himself, she called me Father! I wish I were her father. To have such a child could make a man proud. Yet he was frightened. She had been long away from towns and people, and things in Russia had changed.

She walked steadily, stepping carefully because of the ice, but not wanting to attract attention by hurrying too much. As she walked she was alert to all around her.

A Volga went by, slowing a little for slippery places. Another Kama was parked at the corner. As she passed it, she felt dwarfed by its size. Few people were on the street. The Volga had gone on ahead of her and was pulling off to one side near an official-looking building of concrete, squat and ugly.

She had to pass right by it, but she kept her head down and walked on. Two people were getting out of the Volga, a big man who stamped his feet to warm them and a woman. She was a young woman, dressed very well, but obviously an official.

As she passed the Volga, the woman turned around. She was a sharp-looking, very attractive brunette. Her hair was drawn back, and her eyes were large. For an instant their eyes met, and she saw a puzzled expression come into the woman's face. Natalya walked on, her heart beating heavily.

Had she been recognized? But how could she be? Who knew her? Or cared about her?

Forcing herself not to look back, she continued on, rounded a corner, then went off down another street. Then she came back to the little place of which Evgeny had spoken.

She went in. Several people were present, but no young officer. She ordered tea and a bowl of borscht that turned out to be surprisingly good.

She ate slowly and had another cup of tea. He did not come. At last she arose, paid, and left. At the door she took a moment to straighten her coat and put on her gloves, studying the street. Emerging, she looked again up and down and then deliberately chose a way that would avoid the street along which she had come. Her heart was pounding, and it was all she could do to avoid looking around to see if she was followed.

Several times she changed direction, but the streets were virtually empty in this quarter. She hurried on, returning to the little room in the corner of the old building.

Evgeny Zhikarev was waiting inside. He reached both his hands for hers, drawing her quickly inside, and then closed the door.

"Ah! You do not know how frightened I have been! I have imagined all sorts of things! Please, are you all right?"

"I am all right, but he did not come. Your literary lieutenant did not come. I sat and waited. I drank my tea slowly, but he did not come."

She took off her coat and hat, fluffing her hair a little after the hat's confining. "There was a car, a Volga with two people in it. The woman looked straight at me. For a minute I thought — "

"Two people? What was she like, this woman?"

"Dark hair, very striking. A handsome woman, she had manners like an official. She looked right at me."

Zhikarev could feel his heart beating, and there was a sick feeling in his stomach. "And the man? A tall, soldierly man? Very strong?"

"That's the one. Do you know them?"

"I know them." Evgeny Zhikarev sat down suddenly. "She is Comrade Kyra Lebedev. She works with Colonel Zamatev, and the man was Stegman." He gestured to his crippled feet. "He did this to me."

He limped across to the fire and added coal from the bucket. He straightened up. "We have no time, then. Why else would they be here but for us?"

"She knows you by sight?"'

"Of course. She has been to my shop. We spoke of furs together. She would recognize me at once."

For a long time they were silent, each thinking, frightened, understanding what impended. "We have no choice," she admitted. "I must return to the tearoom. I must meet Potanin. "

He shook his head. "I do not like it. If she looked at you, by now she knows who you must be. She saw you, and she is a very astute young woman. I have heard it said that she is Zamatev's strong right arm. His future depends on capturing that American, and if they believe you knew him they will try to discover what you know, or they will hold you to bring him in."

"How would he know?"

"They would find a way; believe me, they would." Zhikarev looked at her. "Would he come back for you? Give himself up for you?"

She shook her head. "I do not know. I hope not. They lie; they will promise and then do as they wish. I cannot let that happen. If they catch me I will kill myself."

He shrugged. "It is not easy to do. They will leave you nothing. Being captured by them is not good. Particularly for a woman.

"No," he said. "We must escape. We must escape now."

"I will try once more to see Potanin. This afternoon — "

"And I shall be ready to move. It must be today or tonight, no later. No matter what he says, insist."

When Kyra Lebedev realized who she was, would the search begin at once? Or would they try to locate her by other means? Or simply alert their people to watch for her to see with whom she was associated and where she was in hiding?

It was late afternoon before she took to the street again. "If I do not appear by shortly after dark you had best forget about me," she advised. "I will do what I can, but they might arrest me, so I'd be unable to return."

He went to the door with her. "See yonder?" he said. "That grove of birches by the river? If I must leave here, I will go there and wait for you until midnight. We should not try to cross by daylight, anyway."

"What of the Chinese? Will they let us enter?"

He shrugged. "It is a chance we must take. I have the name of a Chinese who might help. One never knows."

The small street was empty. She walked swiftly to the corner, then crossed and went into the street of the cafe, if such it could be called, avoiding the more busy street where she had seen Kyra Lebedev.

Only four tables were occupied when she entered the cafe, and she saw Lieutenant Potanin at once. He was seated near the door, and he was reading while sipping his tea. He looked up as she entered, and she crossed the room to his table. Surprised, he stood up.

She said, "Do you remember Ivan Karamazov, who wanted not millions, but an answer to his questions?"

He smiled. "I have read Dostoevsky," he said, "but do you have questions, too?"

"Several." She seated herself. "But very little time. I bring you greetings from a friend who deals in furs. He does not walk well."

He shook his head, smiling. "Will you have some tea?"

"I also bring you" — she took the book from under her arm — "Balzac's 'Le Pere Goriot'. It was a book of my father's."

"A gift?" His eyes searched hers. "What is it you wish?"

"My friend has furs awaiting, as usual. We would like to pick them up tonight."

" 'We?' Does it need more than one?"

"It does." She smiled at him. "I do not like being abrupt, and I know this is not the way such things are done, but I have no choice."

His eyes searched hers, and the smile disappeared. "I see." He took up the book she had placed on the table. "Fortunately, I read French." He spoke very softly then, keeping his eyes on hers and his face slightly averted from the room, although nobody seemed to be paying attention. "At fifteen minutes to midnight, then? No earlier, no later."

"Thank you." She arose. "Until then," she said, and turned to the door.

The street was dark but for the light from the cafe windows. Quickly, she crossed the street and stepped into the shadows of a doorway.

The street was empty, and snow was falling softly. Hesitating a moment, she stepped out into the snow. And then she heard the car.

It was coming up the street, the headlights pointing a lighted finger before them. With a step she was back in the doorway again and out of sight.

The Volga drew up at the cafe. A door opened and a woman got out. On the other side of the car the driver stepped out. He was a big, broad-shouldered man. The woman turned toward him, her face momentarily in the light.

It was Kyra Lebedev.

 

 

Forty-Two

 

Joe Mack knew how to wait while the dawn washed color from the sky. He knew how to wait while watching beyond the agonized arms of gnarled trees stretched against the morning. He had killed the moose and skinned it out, eating meat and saving meat against the long days to come.

He knew how to wait and watch for movement. The forest was sparse now, except for occasional tight groves of Mongolian poplar, willow along the streams, and scattered larch. He had found a shadow that suited him, and he waited in the shadow to see what moved in the distance.

Over there, a blue shadow against a paler sky, was another range, and he needed to study it in sunlight and in shadow to learn where the passes might be and where the canyons were.

He had come far, but had far yet to go, and now the land was narrow and the chase would tighten and close in. Alekhin would know that he would avoid the open tundra for its lack of cover and would keep to the mountains along the sea.

Alekhin had been hanging back, listening to what was said, studying his trail, planning for his own move. Joe Mack knew that as well as if Alekhin had told him. Alekhin would be impatient with the blundering efforts made thus far. He would know what to do when his time came, and his time was now.

There had been much blundering. First, Zamatev had not wanted to advertise that a prisoner had escaped him or that he even had prisoners. He had held back, expecting a quick capture.

Bringing soldiers into the field had been a mistake, also. If they had had to bring soldiers, they should have been a detachment of Siberians, not men from the Ukraine. Good men, no doubt, but flatlanders, unaccustomed to Arctic mountains.

The trappers had been a wise move on the face of things, but as Alekhin would know, the trappers were half in sympathy with the American. Not that they were in any sense disloyal, simply that he was one of them, a hunter and a trapper who handled himself as such, and they took pleasure in seeing him outwit the city men who organized the pursuit. The American had used their country as they might have used it, and so when they went into the field they did not look too hard.

Joe Mack studied the distance with care, his eyes sweeping the country bit by bit, missing nothing, remembering everything. He could read terrain as a scholar reads a rare manuscript or a jewelsmith studies a diamond for the cutting. Much of his life had been spent in wild country, and for nearly a year now he had lived in the taiga, learning its moods and its whims. Long ago he had learned that one could not make war against the wilderness. One had to live with it, not against it.

Somewhere out there, before or behind him, was Alekhin, closing in, making ready for the capture or kill. And Alekhin had had time to study him, while he knew little of the Yakut. Now he must learn or die.

Joe Mack knew that every move he made must be calculated, yet he must never establish a pattern of behavior. He must not allow Alekhin to guess where he might be at any given time. He must vary his campsites, be careful of his kills, change direction often.

Above all, he must be prepared for a fight to the death. Alekhin would understand nothing less.

Carefully, from his shadow atop the low ridge, he studied the terrain and plotted his route. There was easy cover ahead and to his right, so he must avoid it. That would be the best way, the likely way, so he must choose another. Yet even that procedure must not become a pattern.

Criminals were almost invariably stupid in this respect. If they escaped from the law, they returned to familiar surroundings to be close to those they knew, people who could help them and conceal them, people with whom they were comfortable. Of course, the law knew this and knew where to look for them and whom to question, and there was always somebody who would talk or who would drink too much and say too much.

Willie Sutton, that skillful escape artist, had rarely made that mistake. He would lose himself in a totally unexpected environment where nobody knew him and nobody would look for him.

So far he had kept to the highlands. Now, for a little while at least, he would take to the low country. Consequently, he must avoid being seen from above.

Seated in his shadow he worked on the moosehide, scraping fragments of flesh from it, allowing the warm sun to reach it. The hide would make excellent moccasins, and he would be needing them.

Nothing moved in the terrain before him. Working on the hide, he took time to watch, ready to catch the slightest movement. He saw nothing but a bird now and again, and just before the sun disappeared he saw three moose come from the willows and amble slowly across the terrain. He stopped his work to watch, for if they were frightened while en route it would reveal a presence there. They walked across the area and disappeared into the trees. Rolling up his moosehide, he added it to his pack, and shouldering it, he left the trees and went down a dry watercourse toward the river.

That night he found an overhang by the river where the rocks had been somewhat warmed by the brief sun. There he bedded down and slept. Before dawn he was moving again.

A narrow stream flowed north through the tundra. There was a film of ice along its banks, no more. Here and there was a patch of thin snow. There were willows in plenty and occasional poplar or larch. He wandered on, pausing at intervals to listen and to watch the flight of birds or the movements of animals. He found no tracks of men, only animals.

It was very still, not a breath of air stirring. He walked through the day and into the early evening. At night he found a place on a south-facing slope under some larch. There had been a blowdown there some years before and many of the trees stretched out above the bank of a watercourse, forming a roof. Beneath them he found a place for his camp.

Colonel Arkady Zamatev landed in Chersky. Lieutenant Suvarov awaited him as the plane landed. He led the way to a Volga parked near the airfield.

"No question about it, Colonel Zamatev. He has been seen in the forest. He was spotted by a high-flying plane, crossing a clearing."

"You reported this to Alekhin?"

Suvarov s lips tightened. "Comrade Alekhin says it was not him, but who else could it be?"

"Why does he not think it was the American?"

Suvarov shrugged. "He says the American would not cross a clearing at this time. He would go around it. That's absurd! Why go the long way around when he is obviously in a hurry?"

Zamatev said nothing. The Volga was taking them down a bumpy, icy street. Big concrete buildings, most of them five stories high, loomed about him. He looked at them, hating their bleak ugliness. Of course, in such a place as this, what could one expect? It was amazing they had built anything at all in this godforsaken country.

On the desk in the office prepared for him lay a series of reports. He scanned them rapidly. One and all they were, no matter how carefully worded, reports of failure. Not only failure to recapture the American, but losses of men and equipment.

"Any word from Comrade Lebedev?"

"Yes, sir. She is in Iman. The woman Baronas is there also. No sign of her father."

"She has arrested the woman?"

"Not yet, but she is sure she is there, possibly with some intention of crossing into China. She should have her by nightfall."

Zamatev sat down abruptly. He was exasperated. The Baronas woman was not that important. Why was Kyra wasting her time? She should be here, coordinating things, which she could do so very much better than this Suvarov. A nice young man, but no imagination, too ready to accept the easy way.

His hurried flight to Moscow had been on orders. He had been called on the carpet, and his friend on the Politburo had set it forth in plain, unvarnished terms: get the American at once or he would be removed from his command.

"You have been a fool, Arkady," his friend had said. "You began well, and you should have continued with a series of small fry. Instead you became too ambitious. Taking this American was a frightful risk. Admitting for the moment that you carried it off well, you were still taking a chance of international repercussions. Then you allowed him to escape."

"Nobody could have dreamed a man would attempt such a thing — "

"Yet he did, and now he is making fools of you all. Believe me, Arkady, if you do not capture this man and get something to show for what you have done, you are through. I can do no more for you. My friends will not accept failure."

"Shepilov — "

"I know about Shepilov. He has been recalled to his station. There is enough for him to do without being occupied in this nonsense." He had paused. "And what about this man Stephan Baronas and his daughter? What have they to do with all this?"

Zamatev was surprised. How did they know about him? But what did they not know? He spoke carefully. "The escaped prisoner was reported to have stopped for a time in a village where Baronas lived. Baronas and his daughter seem to have known him there, and we wanted them for questioning."

"How long ago was that?"

"Well, it was several months — "

"You have been wasting time, Arkady. As you say, that was months ago. Whatever they knew then cannot apply now. The man has fled hundreds of miles since then. Leave them alone."

Zamatev hesitated, then said, "But if they aided an enemy — ?"

"We do not know that they did. In any event, the important thing is to recapture this American." His friend had turned to Zamatev, and his eyes were not friendly. "Arkady, you have been a very able man. You have proved helpful to others as well as myself. We all value that help, but it is beginning to appear that you have lost your grip. It is a hard world, Arkady. My success depends much on the success of those whom I sponsor, as I have you. Do not fail me."

He took up his pipe from an ashtray. "I wish you to understand something, Arkady. Baronas and his daughter have friends, very important friends. They are to be allowed to leave the country."

"Yes, sir." Zamatev was astonished, but he hoped it did not show on his face.

"Very important friends, and as he is of no value to us, he is being permitted to leave. Do not interfere. Do you understand?"

He understood well enough, but now Kyra was in Iman and about to arrest the Baronas woman. If Natalya Baronas and her father were arrested now, there would be trouble. He, and Kyra as well, might find themselves spending the rest of their lives on duty in some such place as Chersky.

"Suvarov? Can you get a call through to Comrade Lebedev in Iman?"

"I think so, sir."

"Do it then. Tell her Baronas and his daughter are not to be arrested or interfered with in any way. Do you understand? And I want her here, now!"

Zamatev walked to the window and looked out over the bleak street and the gray blocks of concrete into the cheerless distance.

Baronas? Who would have believed it? The man was a Lithuanian, if he remembered correctly, some sort of a professor. Well, such men often made friends, powerful friends.

He shrugged. It was no business of his. He shoved his hands down in his pockets. His friend had certainly made it painfully clear. Catch the American and get something out of him, or he was through. All his dreams, his ambitions, for nothing. Once one had a mark like this against him, it was almost impossible to get going again.

He had no doubts about Kyra. She had become a tail to his kite, but if the kite would not fly — ?

He walked to the door and looked into the outer office. "Let me know as soon as you have talked to Comrade Lebedev."

"You wish to speak to her?"

"Just convey my message, nothing more."

He walked back to his desk and sat down heavily. He must get into the field himself. He could not simply leave it to Alekhin, although the Yakut seemed confident enough.

On the wall, there was a great map showing the vast stretch of country between Chersky and the Bering Strait, everything from Magadan east. For a long time he stood, hands clasped behind his back, studying that map. Suvarov had placed a pin on the map at the place where the man had been seen. At least, where a man had been seen.

Suppose that man was not the American? Who could it be? And what would he be doing out in that miserable country at this time of year?

He returned to the door of the outer office. "Suvarov? I'll want a helicopter. Didn't I see a MIL-4 out there? I want it and as many men as it will safely carry with their equipment. I want it and the men ready first thing tomorrow. I am going into the field myself. And," he added, "you are going with me."

All right, he would show them what he was made of. He would have that American in his hands within hours.

He turned back to Suvarov. "That man who was seen? I want him, no matter who he is. I want him brought to me. Get some helicopters into the area. Make a thorough search. Alekhin says this is not our man, but I want to see for myself. I want to talk to that man."

Walking back to his desk, he dropped into a chair. He did not like all this running about. There were others to do that, but there was so much wasted effort, so much wasted time! Nobody really cared. That was the trouble.

No, he was wrong about that. Many people did care, and some worked very hard, for one reason or another, but not enough of them. The great problem was inertia.

By now the American was probably somewhere in the Chukchi Region or just over the line into the Koryak. It was wild country, but there were few forests, and the mountains were more icy and barren. The man would be more exposed.

They would get him now. They must get him.

The trouble was, back in Moscow they did not even grasp the sheer size of the country he had been dealing with. To find one man in all that vast area, especially one who wanted to hide and was skilled at it, was nearly impossible.

Suvarov appeared in the doorway. "Sir? I have not been able to reach Comrade Lebedev. Perhaps if I were to fly down there - ?"

You would like that, wouldn't you? Zamatev said to himself. "No," he said aloud. "I shall need you with me. Get in touch with Comrade Yavorsky at my office. Tell her that the Baronas father and daughter are not to be arrested. They are to be left strictly alone. Tell her that Comrade Lebedev is now in Iman for that purpose and must be stopped, stopped at all costs."

Emma Yavorsky had never liked Kyra Lebedev, but Kyra had to be reached somehow, and he would be off searching for the American. It was a pity. Kyra was a lovely and intelligent woman, but to fly in the face of orders would be suicidal. Emma Yavorsky would not only stop her in time, she would take pleasure in it. Maybe he could straighten matters out later, but for now Kyra must be stopped at all costs.

Suppose she did arrest them and had Stegman put them to the question?

 

 

Forty-Three

 

Throughout the day, they waited. Several times cars drove by, but usually their street was deserted. It led to nowhere, and easier routes were available to anyone going in either direction. Natalya stood often at the dusty, flyspecked window looking across the river into China and freedom. Or what she hoped would be freedom.

It was cold, and they dared have no fire. The building where they were was supposed to be an old warehouse.

"This woman you saw? You believe it was the Lebedev woman?"

"You described her to me, and the man with her."

"They are searching for us, then. There could be no other reason why she would be here."

She drew her coat more tightly about her, clasping her arms about her body. Across the street, there were other warehouses and some ramshackle buildings along the river. There were old boat landings there and a wharf from which cargo had been loaded on riverboats long ago. Now they were gray, bare, harried by the wind. It was a bleak outlook, and so was hers if Potanin failed them.

Where was Joe Mack? There had been no word of him, but she had been nowhere she would be likely to hear. There was always gossip, but one had to be around, listening, at the places where gossip was repeated.

How could he ever escape? She remembered the woods and shivered. There had been brief moments when she had loved them, moments when her father was alive and they had walked out to see the flowers, to hear the birds, to watch for small animals, but the winters were so brutally cold, and it was a fierce struggle to gather fuel, even to keep alive. Often they had starved. There had been weeks on end when they had survived on less food than was needed for a child. Yet somehow they had survived, and then he had come.

Did she truly love him? Or was it that he had brought some strange magic into their colorless, empty lives? He had given them meat, but more than that he had given them hope. If he, pursued by them all, could believe in escape, believe in a future somewhere after this, then it was possible for them to believe also.

What was it that had drawn her to him? Undeniably, he was a striking figure of a man, but it had been something more. When with him, she felt warm, secure, safe. He was not blundering, wishing, complaining, or hopeless. He was going somewhere, and he knew where he was going and how to get there, and suddenly she did, too.

It was he who had given hope to her father. She could see that clearly now. He had become resigned to suffering, resigned to working out a poor existence in the taiga. Or he was becoming resigned.

Now she was here, and across the river was China. If only her father could have lived for this moment! Even if they did not escape, they would at least have tried, and they would have at least seen freedom.

What awaited them in China she did not know, but she knew that somehow they would prevail.

"I am afraid," Evgeny said, coming up beside her. "I have staked everything on this. If I fail now, there will be no further chance for me. I cannot survive another interrogation."

"You will survive. We are going to succeed. Father." She called him so because she could see it pleased him, and how much did he have now that could give him pleasure? "We are going to escape."

Suddenly he spoke. "I think we should leave here. I have a bad feeling about this place."

She had it, too. For several minutes now she had been finding the old building oppressive. "We can go over there," she said, indicating the old wharf. "We can go over there where nobody goes."

"Now," he said. "Let us go now."

She took up her small bundle and they waited, checking the narrow street each way and then giving a quick look around to see if anything had been left. Then they went out of the door and across the street. A cold wind was blowing, and they hurried to get into the lee of the battered old structure across the way. Even as they reached the wharf, they heard a car coming. The wharf was huge and empty, and the wall of the old building fronting it was blank and closed. Suddenly her eyes saw an old path running down beside the wharf.

"Quickly!" she said and almost ran down. Then they ducked under the wharf. It was dark and shadowed there, with only occasional bits of light coming through cracks in the wharf. There was a steep bank of earth sloping down to the rim of ice that bordered the river, and two old boats were tied there, one of them half filled with water filmed with ice. The other boat was empty except for some old nets.

"There!" Evgeny pointed. "Get into the boat and cover up with the nets."

Quickly, they scrambled into the boat and pulled the old nets over them. Then they lay very still.

They could hear the roar of a motor, the screech of brakes, and then a pounding on a door. Natalya lay very still, scarcely breathing, straining her ears to hear.

A door creaked, and there were voices. Then a door closed. The room would have been cold, and they had left no signs of their occupation. The place was as it had been when they had arrived.

She heard the crunch of boots on gravel and then on the wharf overhead. Then the feet retreated. After a moment she heard boots coming down the little path and pausing, and she saw the shadow of a man, apparently peering under the dock. Then she heard retreating footsteps.

After a while came the sound of cars starting and then driving away. She started to move, but Evgeny placed a hand on her shoulder. "Not yet," he said.

They lay still while the time ticked away, and after a long time, what must have been an hour, he sat up. Carefully, they got out of the boat and arranged the nets as they had found them. He sat down on the bank, choosing a piece of plank to keep off the frozen earth. She sat beside him.

"We must wait," he said. "The less movement the better, and it will not be long now."

It was growing dark when they emerged from under the wharf. There were scattered lights across the river. Her feet were almost frozen, and she stamped them on the wharf to get them warm again. Evgeny looked at his watch.

"We will stay here a little longer," he said.

"Lieutenant Potanin said fifteen minutes to midnight," she reminded.

He nodded. "We have a way to go, and we cannot hurry. Along the quiet streets would be better."

"What about the Chinese? What if they will not accept us?"

He shrugged. "We can only try, but they are usually friendly to anyone escaping from the Soviets. This is an old, old border, and there has been much trouble along it for centuries. Once, all this was considered part of China, and it is still shown as such on some of their maps."

Lights stabbed the darkness, reflecting from the open water and from the ice along the edges and the floes. "Now," he said, "we will go."

Coming up from the river, they stopped a minute, looking across at the blank old building that had briefly been a refuge. It looked cold and gray and dismal. Together they started along the street. He used his cane, moving slowly. She thought that surely they would be recognized, for if they were looking for a crippled old man and a young woman —

She said as much. "No," he said, "they will not expect to find you with me. They will expect your father."

"Yes, yes, of course."

Her father? She had buried him herself. Unable to dig a grave in the frozen earth, she had covered him with spruce boughs and then managed to cave part of a bank over him. He had said to her once, long ago, "When I die, remember that what you knew of me is with you always. What is buried is only the shell of what was. Do not regret the shell, but remember the man. Remember the father."

There were lights on the bridge, lights over the guardhouse, a gate across the bridge for wheeled traffic, and a smaller gate for pedestrians. At the far end of the bridge, they could see another post. It was not until they were on the approach to the bridge that she saw the Volga. It was standing in the darkness just off the bridge and across from them. Its motor was running.

"Evgeny ...?" she whispered.

"Keep walking," he said. "Do not look around."

It was no more than thirty yards to the guardhouse, but it seemed the longest distance she had ever walked in her life. Why didn't the watchers in the car stop them? The Volga merely sat there, engine running, dark and threatening. At any moment, she expected it to start up, to rush toward them.

What should she do? Stop and wait? Run back toward the town? Or run across the bridge? She knew of people who had been shot trying to flee, but nonetheless, that was what she would do. She would run, run as she had never run. Maybe they would let her go, maybe she would be shot, but she would run.

"Take your time," Evgeny whispered. "We are almost there. Your lieutenant is standing up, watching us."

"Suppose he isn't on duty?"

"We will try anyway."

Now that they were so close, the old man was strong again. His fears seemed to have vanished. "I have money," he said, "in Hong Kong. You will want for nothing. I shall see to it."

"I want to go to America," she said.

"We will see to it," he replied confidently. "Now stay calm. Let me talk."

Lieutenant Potanin stepped from the guardhouse as they drew near. They could see two soldiers standing inside, warming their hands over a stove.

He looked quickly from one to the other. "This may get me into trouble," he said, "but I shall do it." He turned toward the pedestrian gate.

At that moment they heard the sound of a car. It was some distance away but coming fast. He fumbled with the lock, and the car wheeled onto the bridge.

Kyra Lebedev stepped quickly from the car. Stegman got down on the other side. "Dr. Baronas! You are under arrest!"

Evgeny turned so his face was in the light. "I am not Dr. Baronas," he said. "I am Evgeny Zhikarev."

"Ah? So it is you!" She turned to Natalya. "But you are Natalya Baronas, are you not? Where is your father?"

"He is dead. He died crossing the mountains."

"Ah? Too bad. Come now, both of you. You — "

A boot scraped on gravel, and a low, strong voice said, "Let them alone!"

Angrily, Kyra Lebedev turned. A big man in a heavy overcoat faced her. She stopped, suddenly dry mouthed and frightened.

"I am Bocharev," the big man said.

"But we have an order," Kyra protested, "an order for their arrest. The GRU"

"I know all about it. The order has been countermanded. " His eyes were cold. "You may go," he said. "You are not needed here."

Still, Kyra Lebedev hesitated. "But what shall I tell Colonel Zamatev?"

"He has already been informed, as you will hear." He pointed. "Go now! You are not needed here!"

She hesitated no longer. Stegman was already getting into the car.

From an inside pocket, Bocharev took a sheaf of papers and handed them to Natalya. "Your passport, your visa."

He glanced at Evgeny. "This is not your father?"

She explained, and he nodded. "Do not worry. I shall see his body is found and buried properly." He glanced at Evgeny again. "How about you, comrade?"

"I have papers, comrade." Evgeny's voice was trembling. "I — "

"You have assisted this young lady," Bocharev replied. He turned to Natalya. "Sometime, in a moment, remember my son."

"I shall never forget him," she replied. "Nor you."

"Go now, quickly." Bocharev turned to Lieutenant Potanin. "Pass them, Lieutenant. Their papers are in order."

"Yes, comrade!"

Bocharev stood alone, watching them go, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Then, at last, he walked back to the Volga.

At the end of the bridge a Chinese officer was awaiting them. Natalya turned and looked back, lifting a hand in farewell. She saw the lights of the car go on and saw it turn away.

"There are good men everywhere," she said, recalling another.

"Yes," Zhikarev agreed. "I only wish they had louder voices."

Then they crossed a border into an uncertain future. Natalya vowed silently to reach America, where, she dared hope, Joe Mack would somehow be waiting for her, to share the dream he had inspired.

 

 

Forty-Four

 

Within hours after his arrival at Chersky, Colonel Zamatev had motorized patrols driving slowly along the road, if such it could be called, that led from Chersky to Talovka and along that from Talovka to Ust'chaun on the north coast. The two roads cut across the country east of the Omolon River.

Several patrols would work each road continuously until further notice. There were also patrols along the river, and the guards on the few bridges had been alerted.

A very subdued Kyra Lebedev had arrived the following morning, reporting to Zamatev. He listened impatiently, his mind on other things. He waved a hand of dismissal when she completed her report.

"It is well. They will not be needed. Whatever passed between them does not matter. The Baronas woman is unimportant to us. Our man," he touched the map, "is somewhere in this area.

"Patrols will be driving these roads, passing constantly. If he is seen, they will follow and apprehend him.

"I have sent Lieutenant Suvarov to visit personally all the fishing ports and villages along the Bering Sea and the Strait, and somewhere out there is Alekhin. There are few places in which to hide out there, and we shall have him."

He paused. "A man was seen in the Kolyma Mountains north of Magadan. I have sent helicopters to find and bring him in."

"Do you believe him to be the American?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? What would anybody else be doing in that country?"

He walked to the window and stood there, hands clasped behind his back. "We must be alert, Kyra." His voice softened. "This means too much to us both. That prisoner must be apprehended. My career depends upon it." He turned toward her. "As you have surmised, yours does also. You have become too deeply involved in all this, although it was your wish. "

Her lips tightened, but she said nothing. It was true. She had insisted on being involved, and now she wished she had never opened her mouth.

"He cannot escape," she said. "If we fail, he cannot get past the Buffer Zone and the radar."

"Do not be too sure. The man is like a ghost, A dozen times we have thought we would take him, and each time he has simply vanishes. I am no longer sure of anything where he is concerned. He is not a man but a phantom!"

Kyra waited, apprehensive but determined. "Arkady?" she spoke gently. "I must talk to you. Something terrible has happened."

He turned, surprised by her tone. "What now?"

"My sister has been arrested by Comrade Shepilov. It was in connection with the American's escape." Carefully, she explained. That Zamatev was irritated, she could see. Obviously he wanted no more to do with Shepilov, and to reach him now, to ask a favor, was almost out of the question.

"What does she know?"

"Nothing, except — "

"Except what?"

"Her husband, Ostap. He was always meeting people who were on the fringe of things, black-market people and such. I went to them for you. Ostap always knows so much, so much that is talked about by such people. Much of it is probably nonsense, of course, but he always knows when something is happening. I believed he might help us to find the American. Also, to tell us what Shepilov was doing. He knew all about that."

"He did?" Zamatev was skeptical.

"You must understand, Arkady, that people like that always know what is happening. Very little is secret from them. There is always somebody who talks, you know.

"It was he who told me about Shepilov using the trappers and also that they were not anxious to help. They could, of course, if they wished. They do not like Comrade Shepilov, however."

"Where is this Ostap now?"

"He fled to the forest when Katerina was arrested. I have not heard from him or from her."

He shrugged. "I can do nothing for your Katerina now. Shepilov would simply say he knew nothing about her, and I could do nothing. It is better that we show no interest. He will discover there is nothing there, and he may release her. If she is sent to prison, well, maybe I can do something then."

Suddenly he swore. When she looked at him, surprised, he said, "It is probably this Ostap who is causing us trouble. We are looking now for a man who was seen in the forests near Magadan whom some believed might be the American."

"He could help us. He knows the trappers. He knows what is happening among the dissidents, among the Jews — "

"Do not speak to me of Jews. They are trouble. I want nothing to do with them."

"This man you are looking for? If it is Ostap, I could talk with him? He might know something, and he would tell me whatever he knows."

He shrugged. "Very well. If we catch him."

Joe Mack took his time. Every mile behind him was a victory now, but every mile before him a danger. He overlooked a vast plain now in which there were many small lakes, an area he must avoid. Up here, he could see the lakes easily and the spaces between them. Once down on their level, he would no longer have that advantage and could easily be trapped against one of their shores. The ice, if any, would be treacherous.

His map showed him he was somewhere north of a village or town named Gizhiga. Although there were few roads in the area before him, those few would be patrolled. The area of the search had narrowed, and the search would have grown more intense.

He stood now in a small cluster of larch, carefully examining the country before him, choosing a route to be followed and an alternative if something happened to force him to change.

The air was unbelievably clear, with not a cloud in the sky and no mist in any of the hollows. Far off he occasionally caught a glint of something that might be sunlight on a windscreen. If that was the case, there was an unusual amount of traffic on that road, if such it was.

Nothing moved down below, except near the closest lake, where there were several moose. They seemed to be feeding along the lakeshore.

What he did not know was that Alekhin had landed, only hours before, in Gizhiga. Another thing he did not know was that not two hundred yards away, hidden in the brush, a man was watching him.

Ostap was no woodsman. He had fled Magadan when Shepilov arrested his wife, barely escaping. He had gone to the woods, to a place where trappers sometimes met. None were there when he arrived, but there was food, fuel, and warmer clothing.

He was in serious trouble, and so was Katerina. She knew nothing, but that would not help her and might even work against her. It was always better, Ostap had discovered, to have something to tell.

On this morning he had walked out into the forest and climbed a small knoll. There, in a place sheltered from the wind, he had sat down to study the country. Almost at once he had seen the American, and from the first glimpse he had no doubt who it was on whom he looked.

The man's very caution was a dead giveaway. Frightened as well as intrigued, Ostap had the sense to remain still. Had he moved, his presence would have been revealed. His heart began to beat heavily.

Talk about luck! There he was, the man they all wanted. If he could only capture him — !

But that was foolish. Whatever else he was, Ostap was no fighter. He was a trader, a conniver, a trickster, if you will. To attempt to capture the American was out of the question. Of course, the idea had occurred, but it fled his mind in the same instant.

The point was, he knew where the American was. He knew! That kind of knowledge was worth money. It was worth a trade; it was a chance to save Katerina. For a moment he hesitated: Katerina or the money? No, it had to be Katerina. There was one thing he valued above money, and that was his personal comfort. Katerina took care of him. Above all, she understood him. She accepted his foibles, his trickiness, and his weaknesses and took care of him anyway. He could find other women, he knew. Occasionally, he had, but they were too demanding of him, of money, of his time. Katerina took him as he was, and was therefore priceless. Of course, he told himself, he might get a little money on the side, too.

But whom must he speak to? He was far from Magadan now, completely out of touch with anybody there. Besides, if he went back into that town they would arrest him.

It must be somebody nearer, somebody involved in the search. But if he were to bargain for Katerina, it must be someone in command. Someone who could actually say yes or no. That meant, as far as he was concerned, either Shepilov or Zamatev.

He could not deal with Shepilov. That one would have him up and given the treatment until he told whatever he knew. With Zamatev he might bargain, and with Zamatev he had an in. He had Kyra Lebedev.

He would watch a bit longer and see what direction the American took, and then he would head for Evensk.

He held himself very still, waiting. Would he cross among the lakes? It was a long trek, and there was much swampy country down there, still partly frozen, however.

Joe Mack edged along the woods and started off to the north. Waiting only a few minutes longer, Ostap got to his feet and ran down the dim trail toward the road below. Even as he approached it, he heard the sound of motors and saw four cars coming along the road toward Evensk. The cars slowed and stopped when they saw him, and a man in the lead car motioned for him to approach.

Wary, but unable to avoid the meeting, he went up to the man who had motioned. He had never seen him before, but he knew at once that he faced the legend. This was Alekhin.

"Where are you going?"

"To Evensk. I must speak to Colonel Arkady Zamatev or to Comrade Lebedev."

Alekhin eyed him thoughtfully, his flat, heavy-lidded eyes revealing nothing. "Why must you speak with him?"

Ostap hesitated. If he told Alekhin, he would get nothing, nothing at all. "I have information about the American." Then, firmly, he added, "It is for one of them only. Nobody else."

Alekhin stared at him. This one he could twist in his hands. He could wring him out like a rag, but no one intercepted information meant for Zamatev.

Leaning from his seat, he called to the driver behind him. "Boris! Take this one to Evensk! Call Colonel Zamatev! If you cannot, speak to Comrade Lebedev! Quick now! Then bring him back to me unless the Colonel wishes him."

He looked at Ostap. "You speak to him. Tell him. You better have good information, or I will speak to you after. Go now. "

In Evensk, the connection was not a good one, but Boris got Kyra on the phone for him. "What can you tell us, Ostap?" She sounded abrupt, impatient.

"I have seen him," he said, "the American."

"What?"

"I want Katerina released," he said, "and a little something for our trouble. You see?"

"You have actually seen him?"

"He is not waiting for you," Ostap said, "but if you move now, he cannot have gone more than a few miles."

"Describe him."

Ostap was a good observer. His description was quick, accurate and brief.

"It was one of Alekhin's men who called. How did you meet him?"

"Alekhin has gone north searching for him. I told him nothing. I want Katerina released."

"I know," she replied brusquely, "and a little something for yourself!"

"I could have called Comrade Shepilov," he replied.

"Katerina will be freed. Take Alekhin to where you saw him. I shall be there within the hour. If this is just a story — !"

"It is not."

When he left the office he said to Boris, "Take me to Alekhin. I know where the American is."

"I heard you," Boris replied. "You should have told him on the road."

"Katerina is my wife. Shepilov arrested her. I want her free."

"And a little something for yourself," Boris said. "All the Soviet Union needs is a few more such patriots."

Ostap flushed, but he did not reply. Boris was a very tough, competent-looking man. The less said to such a man the better.

Boris was speaking on the radio. Then they drove off, moving rapidly. Ostap hung on desperately as the car careened around sharp curves and raced over bumpy roads that were hardly more than trails.

Alekhin was waiting beside the road. He reached a hand into the car and jerked Ostap out of his seat. "Tell me! Where?"

Frightened, Ostap led the way to where he had stood and pointed. "Over there, at the edge of the trees."

"Stay back!" Alekhin ordered. Then he walked over. Ostap watched and then said, "By that old tree! To the left!"

Alekhin moved and then stopped and began to look around, very slowly, very carefully. The American left so little sign. He moved a step, looking, then looking again.

Yes, there was a slight indentation in the moss at the foot of the tree. Something or somebody had been there. Slowly, carefully, he began to work out the sign left by the American. As always, there was very little.

He walked back to Boris and indicated what must be done. "There are roads on three sides! I want patrols, very slow patrols! Night and day! He must not escape this area! You understand?"

"I do. It will be done."

"What of him?" Boris jerked a thumb at Ostap.

"Let him stay. We have no time to take him back. Besides, the Colonel wishes to speak to him."

Alekhin paused, thinking about it, and then he added, "If we do not have him by dark, I want cars with headlights on the road. I want him taken. I want him stopped. If you must shoot, shoot at his legs. Break his legs, but do not kill him."

By midday Joe Mack knew he was trapped. Through a gap in the scattered trees he glimpsed several cars on the road below. Moving further north he glimpsed more cars cutting him off in that direction. So they knew he was in here. Somehow they had seen him. Somehow they knew without doubt he was here. Warily he worked his way further north and west into the roughest terrain. They had cornered him in one of the few places around that had roads on three sides, even though they were scarcely more than trails.

At a steady trot, he headed north. They knew where he was, and this time they would not let him get away. He would try, but his chances were slight. They were going to get him, so what could he do?

He could try to escape again, of course, but they would give him no chance this time. They would cripple him or put him so tightly in manacles that he could not escape. Yet, suppose he could?

He would hide his bow and arrows. He would hide his knife. He would hide the little meat he had that was dried and smoked. He would hide his goatskin coat, or better still, the suit and shirt.

Soon they would be making a sweep with helicopters and then ground troops. He could, of course, fight until they killed him, until they had to kill him.

That was one way.

He moved on north into the woods, but when he had gone only a little further he saw from a mountain ridge, saw afar off, the glint of sunlight on the windshields of cars. He could try to run between them, but they would be expecting that, and they would shoot him down.

As he walked, his eyes searched for a place to hide, any place at all where they might not find him.

There was nothing but bare rocks, sparse trees, and occasional clusters of birch. North of here there were, he had heard, no trees at all.

He slowed to a walk. He had the AK-47 and some ammunition. He had the pistol. He would cache the pistol, too. But it must be soon.

Well, Joe Mack, he said, you gave them something to worry over. Now we will see. To hold out here, where defensible positions were few, would be wasted effort. He could get a few of them before they got him, but he would not get the ones he wanted.

He walked now, choosing a careful way, ever alert for a place to hide. He found nothing that they would not find within minutes. Some stretches had had many good places for concealment, but this seemed to have none.

Was it all over, then? Talya, he said to himself, you would not like to see this. But we had our dream. We had it for a little while.

He could not give up. He could not surrender. But these men were not the men he wanted. Zamatev was the one and Alekhin. These others were but tools to be used by them. Good men, some of them, men who did what they were told the best they knew how.

He fought to keep cool. Now he must think, he must plan. Night was coming, and with night there might be a chance.

From a ridge he looked down toward the road. Two cars had stopped, and the soldiers were talking. Others were scattered along the road, the road that was barely a trail.

Crouching at the base of a tree, he tried to think of something he might do, anything he could do.

Nothing. There was nothing. He was trapped.

He could expect some rough treatment. He could expect torture. They would take no more chances with him now. He thought of Pennington's family, never to know their husband and father had not abandoned them.

Never for a moment had he forgotten them or what his message to them would be.

Alekhin! The big Yakut would win after all.

Slowly, carefully, he moved down the slope, keeping from sight. He knew that Alekhin was behind him. He knew his trail was slowly being worked out, and Alekhin would have soldiers with him. There were waiting lines of soldiers and moving cars on three sides now and he was moving down toward the north. Behind him was Alekhin.

He looked at the cars and the men. Could he shoot his way through? There was no chance. There were simply too many, and they were too scattered out.

He crouched by a tree to study a route and saw a long crack in the rock. Suddenly he moved. He laid his bow and arrows in the crack, thrusting the pistol and ammunition into the quiver. When all was hidden, he placed bark over it and then leaves. The earth was too frozen to use.

They had seen him with the AK-47, so he kept it.

He could go down there shooting, but he doubted if they would let their men fire, except at his legs. They wanted him alive, and he did not want to be crippled. If he were crippled, his last chance would be gone. He was going to need his legs.

Zamatev was not down there. Neither was Alekhin.

He walked down the slope and stepped into the open.

"Are you looking for me?" he asked.

 

 

Forty-Five

 

They were wary. Slowly, guns pointed, they moved in around him. One jerked the AK-47 from his hand; another, a man in civilian clothes, struck him viciously in the kidney with a rifle butt. He started to fall, caught himself, and remained erect. His hands were jerked behind him and handcuffs put on.

Several men moved in around him, pushing the soldiers away. These were KGB, and there seemed no good feeling between them and the soldiers, who watched with expressionless faces. Joe Mack stared straight ahead, his mind busy.

What else could he have done? He was surrounded, there were too many of them, they were closing in, and up there he had no place to hide. Not even a good place to make a stand. It was bare rock, a few scattered trees, a few spots of snow.

He knew he would be beaten. He expected to be tortured. He could endure pain. He had been through that before, but what he must do was escape again. If they had shot his legs from under him, he would have had no chance. Now there was still hope.

Long ago, when his people had been captured by other Indians, they had endured torture, and as the poet had said, they 'had not winced or cried aloud.' Indians had known how to endure pain and to laugh at those who tortured them. Often, if they showed bravery, the tortures were stopped and they were adopted into the tribe. Some of the mountain men had survived the same treatment. Joe Mack had taken the greatest gamble of his life, and the chances of escape were a thousand to one against him, yet shot down and crippled he would have no chance at all.

An officer was on a radio, talking. The soldiers stood around, staring curiously. He ignored them, standing tall, looking toward the mountains where he had hoped to be. His heart was pounding heavily and he was asking himself if he was brave enough, if he was the man he wanted to be, the man he had trained himself to be. Now, he whispered to himself, you will find out. He had been told the story of a great-grandfather who had been captured by the Blackfeet and tortured and finally burned at the stake. Even as the flames rose around him, he had laughed at them. He had sung his death song in a voice that did not quaver, and the Blackfeet had marveled. An old warrior of their tribe had told him the story. Was he that kind of man?

One of the KGB men came to him. "Alekhin comes," he said. "If he leaves anything, we get our chance."

Joe merely looked at the man, and infuriated, the man slapped him across the mouth. Joe Mack's expression did not change. Angered, the man shoved him, then kicked his feet from under him. When he fell the man kicked him brutally in the ribs. Then he stepped closer, drawing back his leg for another kick. Joe Mack rolled over, the kick missed, and the man fell. The soldiers laughed.

Furious, the man lunged to his feet and caught up a heavy club. Frantically, he began beating Joe Mack, striking him on the head, shoulders, and back. Bobbing his head, Joe Mack avoided the worst of the blows, but his scalp was split and blood trickled down over his face.

Suddenly a car wheeled up and stopped. Alekhin stepped down. Joe Mack knew him at once by his size and the small blaze of white where the hair had lost color over an old scar.

Alekhin walked over. "So! We have you. Now we shall see!" He turned to the KGB men and motioned to an old stable that stood nearby. "Take him inside."

A Russian officer started to speak and Alekhin turned his back on him, saying over his shoulder, "You are not needed anymore. Go!"

Ostap got out of the Volga. He stared at the blood on Joe Mack's face and felt sick inside. He did not know what to do. Nobody had sent him away, and he had no way in which to leave. He must stand and wait for them. He was frightened.

The officer had turned away, angrily. His men were forming up and moving to their trucks. Ostap wanted to go with them, but he had not been dismissed and he feared to displease Alekhin.

It was very cold, and he wished he was back in Magadan. Was Katerina free? Had they lived up to their bargain? Why would they want her, anyway? She knew nothing.

He hunched his shoulders against the wind and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Several KGB men were standing around, talking among themselves.

Suddenly he heard a loud thump from within the stable, then more. He heard no screams. One of the KGB men came over to him, grinning. "They will teach him! They are artists! They know how to beat a man! You will hear him scream!"

He did not scream. Two men came out after a while, dripping with perspiration, their fists bloody. Two others went in. Ostap turned away, sick to his stomach. He had done this. He had told them where the American was. Many times before, when hearing of such things, he had laughed and shrugged. "Serves them right!" He had said that, said it several times.

He could hear the impact of blows, hear the grunts of the KGB men as they struck.

He walked off a little way, shuddering, wishing he dared leave, that he even had a way to leave. The KGB cars were the only ones left.

Alekhin came out and gave orders. Zamatev was coming. They were to put up a tent for him. He would ask some questions here. Then they would take the American away and fly him back to prison.

Alekhin smiled. "No more beatings!" he said. "We must leave something for the good Colonel!" He looked around, his eyes going from one to the other. "But we've softened him up! We've softened him for the Colonel! Now let's have a drink!"

The tent was rapidly going up, and some folding chairs and a table were taken inside. Alekhin breathed deeply of the mountain air. Suddenly his eyes lighted on Ostap.

"Ah? It is you! Come have a drink with us, and then I'll send you back to Evensk! I would come, too, but the good Colonel wants to see him before he is moved." He chuckled. "Not that there is much to move."

"I did not hear him cry out," Ostap burst out involuntarily. "I thought — "

Alekhin shrugged. "He did not cry. He is tough, that one." He smiled, looking at Ostap from his flat black eyes. "Zamatev will see to that, and after Zamatev, me again." He clapped Ostap on the shoulder. "It is good! Without your help, we'd not have had him! Maybe for weeks!"

Ostap glanced toward the stable. The door had been closed and an iron pin on a short chain dropped in place to keep the hasp closed.

Two KGB men loitered near the Volga Alekhin had come in. A third man stood near another Volga. "Mikhail," Alekhin said, "I shall give this lad a drink. Then you can drive him back, eh? No need for him to be here, and you won't be needed."

Alekhin took Ostap's arm. "Come! One glass of vodka before the road!" Alekhin pinched his arm. "Maybe two glasses, eh?"

It was an hour before he staggered into the darkness outside the tent. The two KGB men were sitting in Alekhin's Volga, sharing a bottle.

Ostap had to pass by the stable to get to the other Volga, where Mikhail seemed to be asleep, waiting.

What made him do it, he did not know, but he lifted the pin and let it down against the door. He opened the hasp. "Now!" he said, and walked on to the Volga.

Mikhail awoke. "Good!" he said. "I want to get into town." He glanced at Ostap. "I've a friend there, and maybe she has a friend. Do you have any rubles?"

"Some. I'd like to meet your friend."

He hunched down in the seat, trying not to think about anything at all. Why had he done that? The man was helpless, but — He shook his head to drive away the thought. If they found out, he would be the one in trouble.

Lying on the filthy floor in the freezing cold, his body heavy with pain, Joe Mack heard the pin drop, heard the low voice and the word "Now!"

His brain was fogged with pain. Some vagrant thought told him he had a concussion. What did it mean, "Now!"? Suddenly through the fog in his brain an arrow of clear light penetrated.

"Now?" And the rattle of a chain. He shook his head and almost passed out at the resulting agony.

Now! He rolled to his knees, fighting the agony the movement caused, and brought his handcuffed wrists down over his buttocks. Rolling on his back he drew his knees up to his chest and put his feet through the circle of arms and cuffs, so they were now in front of him. Somebody had lifted the pin! Perhaps the door would open. He forced himself to listen, and he heard nothing but subdued voices and, from somewhere outside, laughter.

He caught hold of one of the posts that supported the stable roof and pulled himself up. Then he leaned there, his brain swimming. He staggered and fell against the next post. He held himself there, forcing himself to listen. His face felt stiff and strange. He lifted his hands and touched it carefully. His face was caked with blood, and his hair. When he moved, pain shot through him. He thought he also had a broken rib.

He fought to clear his fogged brain. He must think. He must act. Somebody was outside. Somebody would be on guard. They believed they had beaten him into helplessness. Maybe they had. He could only try. He took a careful, trembling step to the door. Gently, he touched it with his fingers. A crack of light showed.

Ever so carefully, he widened the crack. There was a pyramidal tent opposite with a light inside and several men sitting. He could see their shadows against the light. He saw a Volga with two men sitting in it, their backs to him, talking. One man's hand hung outside, holding a bottle. Beyond, close together, stood three trucks.

His head was heavy with pain, and he had trouble bringing his eyes into focus. Inside him, something was pushing, driving, something that said, Now! Now! And something else that warned him there was no other time than now.

He took a step, staggered and almost fell, caught himself, and moved closer to the Volga. The door of the car was open, and the hand holding the bottle was outside. He could hear the man mumbling, and he heard a snore. The other man was asleep!

A step closer. Another step. His forearm slid across the man's throat, and the other hand slipped into place. The KGB man reared up, struggled briefly, then subsided. Lifting him from the car, Joe Mack frisked him quickly, expertly. He took the man's pistol and ammunition. Walking around the car, Joe jerked the drunken man from his seat behind the wheel and threw him to the ground. As the man started to rise, he kicked him.

For a moment then, Joe Mack stood still. His head was spinning and his eyes still would not focus properly. He steadied himself, and then kneeling, he searched the man he had kicked, recovering another pistol and ammunition.

At the car, he felt for the keys. They were in the ignition. He was in a fog, almost as if he were drunk himself, but some inner drive was pushing him. On the back seat of the car was a gun, different from but similar to an AK-47. He picked it up and turned toward the tent. At that moment the flap was thrown back and a man emerged. His brain buzzing, Joe Mack turned the gun toward the tent and let go with a long, continuous burst. Then, turning, he sprayed the trucks with gunfire. He shot into the nearest gas tank and saw flames leap up and the wind catch them.

Getting into the Volga, he turned the car into the road and drove away. Behind him he heard a dull boom as a gas tank exploded.

A dim road took off toward the north and he accepted it. His eyes, almost swollen shut from the beating, offered only slits from which to see. With his fingers he tried to push the swollen openings wider, without much luck. His head throbbing, his body in agony with every move, he drove north. Then, like a drunken man, he began to sing "The Frozen Logger."

The road was winding and bumpy, a mere trail most of the time, but he drove steadily, and after driving for a time he switched off the lights. The moon was up, and he could see enough to drive.

His thoughts fought for acknowledgment, but his brain was foggy. Where was he? In Siberia. He was in a Volga, on a road going — ? He did not know where. Worry intruded itself. There was something he had to do, something which he must acknowledge. It was —

He had to leave this car. It was such an easy way to travel, but it held him to a road and they would be looking along roads. They would be looking soon.

They had not taken his watch. They had searched him for a gun. The rest was left for Alekhin.

And Alekhin was probably dead.

No, he did not know Alekhin was dead. He had fired a burst or two into the tent. The light had gone out, and he had heard some scrambling, and the tent had caught fire. Several of them might have escaped.

How long had he been driving? He did not know. Too long, probably. They would have helicopters looking for him again. Miles unrolled beneath him. He was not going fast; one could not over this road.

There was a river ahead. He could see moonlight on the ice. Stopping the car, he got out and went through it carefully. Emergency rations for two, two bottles of unopened vodka, and some further ammunition. He loaded his pockets, turned the car toward the river, and drove it under some overhanging willows. There he left it and turned eastward into the mountains.

He had to have rest. His legs, body, and head were badly bruised and beaten. Every step was sheer agony, but he pushed on. Snow was almost entirely absent, but the earth was frozen and rough. There were few trees. He was going to have trouble finding cover. He plodded on, stupid with pain and whatever had happened to his brain. A concussion, he told himself. He hoped that was all it was.

He should have taken a coat from one of the KGB men. It was cold, and all he had was a fur robe taken from the Volga. He drew it tight around him and hobbled on. Twice he fell, and each time it was a struggle to rise.

He was no longer thinking well. He was aware enough to realize that. He kept thinking of Talya, expecting to see her. But how could he see her here?

He no longer had a map. What river was that where he had left the Volga? It was a large river. It could have been the Omolon.

He fell, catching himself with his hands and lacerating the palms on the rough, frozen earth. He got up. He could go no farther. He looked at the cuffs. He had to get rid of them.

He stared around, blinking slowly. He did not know where he was. He knew what to do about the cuffs. He had a shim, a bit of wire.

East, he had to go east. He must go east. That was the way his ancestors had gone, the ancient ones who had followed the game to America in the years before there was a Bering Strait.

Bering Strait? What was that? Something to be needed, to be sought for. He stumbled on, then went down into a creek bed and found a place where a bank offered shelter from the wind.

He would build a fire. He needed a fire. He did not want to freeze. But a fire would attract attention. No, not if there was no smoke.

Dry wood. He needed dry wood. Fumbling, he got the wood together. He found some dry moss, gathered some dry brown grass and bundled it together. He built a cone of thin sticks over it and struck a match. Huddling close to the fire, he got out the thin strip of metal and went to work on the cuffs. They were old-fashioned cuffs, but his hands were bruised and clumsy. When he had them off, he put vodka on the cuts. He wiped it dry with a handkerchief and the fur of his robe. He capped the bottle and huddled under the bank and tried to sleep.

 

Forty-Six

 

Three weeks later Joe Mack huddled in a cave above one of the minor tributaries of the Oklan River. The terrible beating he had taken had not sapped his courage, but something had. He was not even sure of what it was, except that he was very ill.

Day after day he had slogged along through storm and sun, working his way, mostly by night when there was any night, toward the east. He had camped in the cold, slept on boughs over icy ground. His feet were in terrible shape, and desperately he needed moccasins.

When the emergency rations taken from the Volga had given out, he had subsisted on marmots, even voles, and occasionally a ptarmigan.

Shortly after he abandoned the Volga, the country had been crisscrossed by helicopters and planes, and during most of that time he had huddled in a niche in a clay bank behind some dead poplars and a few straggling willows, a place planes flew over time and again, the searchers never imagining that even a marmot might conceal itself there. For three days he had had nothing to eat; then he caught some fish in a trap he had woven from plant fibers.

Spring was here, and the tundra was aglow with wildflowers. They were flowers found above timberline in his own country.

He made a new bow and arrows, as well as a sling, but it was the sling that served him best. He had found the cave by accident, while kneeling on an icy rock near a small stream. As he had started to rise he had seen the opening. It was not three feet wide and scarcely that in height. It was masked by some dwarfed stone pine, and when he examined it he found a spacious cave with a sandy floor.

He was not the first to use the cave. Someone else, long ago, had built fires here. He found the crack used for a chimney and gathered driftwood along the stream and broken branches from under the stone pine.

For the first time in days he was able to be warm, and in another gorge a half mile away he found some birch. He gathered bark to make a crude raincoat for himself and used some of the leaves to mix with vodka as a rubdown for his bruised legs.

Despite the fact that spring had come, the nights were piercingly cold, the skies very clear, and the stars unbelievably bright. He was always cold, huddling above his fire like some Stone Age creature. He made moccasins of the skins of marmots, but they wore through quickly, and he could find no larger animals. Occasionally he came upon the droppings of mountain goats, but saw none of them. Once he came on the sign of a very large bear, a huge beast, judging by the size of the tracks. He comforted himself with the thought that no bear of that size could get into this cave now, although once the opening had been considerably larger. Floods had piled up sand and rocks until much of the original opening had become covered.

He existed like an animal, and a poor creature at that, with little food and never enough of a fire to really become warm. Fuel was scarce, and soon he must move on.

Here and there on the smooth rocks he had seen scratches left by glaciers in the remote past, but there was no evidence of them in the low country. They seemed only to have affected the higher rock formations.

He must move on. He told himself this as he huddled, shivering over his small fire. He must move on, find another place, try to find some large animals that he might eat. How long since he had not starved? How long since he had anything but the most meager meal?

Yet it had been days now since he had seen a plane, days without seeing a helicopter. No doubt he had been given up for dead, and well he might be. He had been kicked and pounded, struck with clubs and doubled belts, but he knew that was nothing to what awaited him if he were recaptured. Such beatings were sheer brutality, not the refinements of torture that he could expect from Zamatev.

He dreaded the thought of moving. He dreaded the cold, the wind, the nights without a fire, the cold, icy rains.

It would be easier, far easier to just lie down here and die.

Why fight a losing battle? Even if he got to the coast, how could he ever get across the Bering Strait or the Chukchi Sea?

Yet when morning came he took up his bow and arrows and started once more. He had never gone back for the things he had cached. He had feared to lose the time, so he had driven the Volga until the gas was almost gone.

Had they found the car? No doubt, although he had left it hidden under the willows and standing on ice that by this time had melted.

He no longer thought of Alekhin or Zamatev. Nor did he even think of Natalya. All that was far away and in another world, a world of much meat and of at least a little warmth. For weeks now, he had been merely surviving, and for what? If found now he was in no shape to resist or even to try to escape.

He walked slowly up a shallow draw toward the crest of a low hill. He picked his way over bare rocks. Ice still lingered in shady places, and a small trickle of a stream found its way down a deep crack. From long habit, he approached the crest with infinite care and then peered over.

He had expected more of the same terrain. Instead he looked across a tremendous valley, many miles wide and through the center of which there was obviously a river. He could not see it, but he could see where one had to be, and many small lakes. Below him, there was a road or trail, and some six or seven miles away, a town and an airfield. Between himself and the town there was tundra, with no cover except along some of the smaller streams where there were clumps of Manchurian poplar and tight thickets of willow. There was simply no way he could cross without being seen. Wearily, he turned back and went down the mountain and began working his way through the low hills toward the north.

Now he must be doubly careful, for he was within the vicinity of people, and planes would occasionally be flying to or taking off from that airfield.

Remembering the map, he thought the river was the Penzhina, and if so, it flowed down from the mountains before him and he would have it to cross.

That night, descending the mountain, he came upon three goats lying among the rocks. They were accustomed to enemies coming up from below, and because the wind was from them and toward him, he was unnoticed.

His first arrow was a kill. One of the goats ran off, but the old ram stood up, head down as if to attack. He was a big fellow and surly, yet when Joe Mack began to approach, he backed off. Then with many a backward look, he went away.

He skinned out the goat to save the hide, then cut out what meat he needed. Descending into a hollow, he found a secluded nook and built a fire, roasting his meat. It was his first good meal in weeks. He packed the rest of the meat and spent some time working on the hide before rolling it up. He doubted the small smoke had drawn attention, but wished to get away from the vicinity in the event it had been noticed.

Joe Mack was alone upon the mountains, and he idled his way across vast slabs of tilled rock, edging ever north, avoiding the few villages and the fewer houses. He ate good meat again and gained in strength. In a stream where a warm spring flowed, he bathed, enjoying the warm water. That evening before sundown, he killed a deer and renewed his meat supply.

He kept to low ground when possible and walked through the larch forests when he crossed the Mayn. He was nearing the sea again. Sometimes in the morning he could almost taste the salt wind. For days he had seen nothing human, nor had he seen a plane. Yet he knew they would not have given up. They would be seeking him even more seriously.

His wounds were healed. His jaw was back to normal. His eyes could focus again, and the ache in his skull seemed to have gone away. Sometimes he would stop to lift rocks, building back the muscle he had lost.

He made pants of buckskin and a coat from the skin of the mountain goat. He made a belt to carry his pistols and a quiver for his arrows. He carried the bow in his hand, and he walked with an easier step.

How long since his escape? Spring had come, summer and now fall, and another winter lay over the edge of the world, waiting to kill him.

"Not this time, old friend," he said aloud. "I shall be gone, or killed by others."

Twice during the day he saw birds of the sea. Once he saw some gulls, and another time what he believed was a tern. He walked upon a mountain and saw the sea's reflection in the sky. He was close, and over there, across the horizon, was Alaska, was America, his country, from which he had been too long away.

This was the way by which his people had come. He only knew what the scholars said, for his people had no written language, and tales told by a campfire have a way of changing and growing or even lessening in the passage of time. In any event, that over yonder was his land, his home. There lay the mountains of his birth and the soil to which his people had given their blood and their flesh. They had fought well in their time, they had won many battles and lost a few, but they had died well when their time came.

"Do you be the same," he said. "It is the measure of a man to die well."

He was walking on the mountain, through the forest, when he saw them. "You have followed me too far," he said. "I will not be taken again."

He was within sixty feet of the soldier when he turned and saw him. The soldier did not speak, but with a kind of triumph he lifted his rifle, and he must only have seen the arrow flash in reflected sunlight before it transfixed his throat. He was the last man in line, and he fell, his hands grasping the arrow, his eyes glazing.

At the edge of the woods, Joe Makatozi ran softly on the moss. He ran and then waited, and as the next soldier appeared between the trees, he let go his arrow. The soldier cried out and fell.

The man ahead of him in the single file turned impatiently, then stared in horror at the arrow and died beside him.

There were six men in the patrol and a huge, bearlike man who led them, Joe Mack ran on, and when they stopped at a small stream, he let go another arrow. The target turned and took the arrow in the shoulder instead of the throat.

He cried out and the others turned. Joe Mack dropped his bow and drew a pistol.

He fired once, caught up his bow, and vanished into the trees, not waiting to see the effect of his shot.

It was growing dusk, as dusk as it ever became at this latitude, and he faded back among the trees.

On the soft moss, his moccasins made no sound. He moved among the trees, listening. There was no sound but a subdued murmur from a stream.

Alekhin had survived, then? He was here. "Now, my friend," Joe Mack said aloud, "we shall meet, you and I, and I am ready for you."

He circled the camp, but there was no camp, and they had no fire. They waited for him somewhere in the woods.

He crept close and lay still in the brush. How many were Siberians, he wondered, aside from Alekhin? He waited, and feeling about he found a rock and threw it, arching it high. It fell into the brush and he lay still. They would be waiting, and they would be fearful, for three or perhaps four of their mates had died.

Where was he? They did not know.

Did it mean he was there? Or somewhere near? He threw another stone and heard it land.

No sound, and he expected none. Would they remain where they were until morning? Or would one or more of them try to slip away to some further spot? He believed they would think of going but would stay.

He waited, resting easily on the moss, ears tuned to the slightest sound. Then he threw another stone. This time there was a subdued gasp, not too far from where the stone landed. There was vague light, and something stirred in the shadows; something moved. He let go an arrow and heard the thud of its strike and then a rustling in the brush. He let go another arrow. It was a miss, he believed, but a close one.

Gently, ever so gently, he eased back, went down into the hollow behind, and crossed a stream. He climbed into the rocks to a place he had seen earlier. Then he settled down to rest.

When the dawn was yet an hour away, he prepared several traps, and when he went back he left several slight tracks. Not enough to make them suspicious, but several. Then he went down the mountain toward the shore.

Major Joseph Makatozi walked along the shore in the gray morning and looked at the gray seas rolling in to beat against the rocky shore. He looked at the piled roots of great trees and at the little cove where a man worked upon some nets. He walked down to him and stood for a moment, watching.

"I have come far," he said at last, trying his English, "to see the place where once Olaf Swenson traded. He was an American, I think."

"And an honest man," replied the old Chukchi. "I knew him when I was a boy, but he traded with my father and my grandfather. "

"My grandfather was a Scot. Once long ago he sailed to these shores and traded here with Swenson."

"That was long ago. Nobody remembers Olaf Swenson anymore. They do not remember the good days of trade, nor do they remember that we Chukchis crossed the narrow seas to Alaska each year, sometimes more than once in the year."

"You caught salmon there?"

"No more. All that is gone. They will not let us go anymore, but sometimes - sometimes I wish I could go again, but I am old, old."

"I would go," Joe Mack said, "if I had a kayak."

The old man looked up. His brown face was deeply lined under the mane of white hair. He looked at Joe Mack and at his braids. He looked at his face again.

"It would need a man who knew the kayak to do it. Such a trip is not easy."

"But with a kayak, they might not know he was going. It is a small thing, made of hide only."

"It might be done. I am an old man and have not tried."

"But I am a young man, and my home is over there. I want to go home, Grandfather. "

"I have a kayak, a very good one. For the grandson of a man who sailed with Olaf Swenson — I do not know. Perhaps."

"I have some rubles. A kayak is not a small thing. It is made with craft not many possess. I would pay."

"What are rubles to an old man? The sea gives me my living, and I give it my blessing."

"Once long ago, Grandfather, it is said my people came this way, crossing when there was no water here. I follow in their footsteps."

"I have heard of this, and I have found arrowheads and bones. Yes, I believe it is true." The old man looked up from the net. "Those who watch have eyes to look where we cannot see. They have wings to fly over."

"I shall go at night, Grandfather."

"Ah? It has been done by day, and long, long ago. One must understand the kayak."

"We are not strangers. I have used them at sea, and upon rough rivers."

"When?"

"Tonight, if I live."

The old man looked at him again. "I have heard some shots fired upon the mountain."

"Yes, and today I shall go back to find one who looks for me. I do not wish him disappointed."

"There will be shooting?"

"I hope not. I wish to do it with these." Joe Mack held up his hands. "My people were warriors once. Am I to be less than they?"

"If you come in the evening when the sun is low, the kayak will be lying by those roots. What you do is your affair. "

"Speak to the spirits of the sea, Grandfather. My voice is lonely in the night."

 

Forty-Seven

 

He smelled the smoke before he saw the fire, and when Joe Mack walked through the scattered rocks, Alekhin was waiting.

Joe Mack's eyes swept the little hollow, but the Yakut said, "They have gone to recover the bodies you left."

"I came for you."

"I am here."

Colonel Arkady Zamatev took up the package the soldier had placed on his desk. Slowly, with careful fingers, he began to undo the knots.

The package was very light, and it was wrapped in the skin of some small animal, but there was something inside, part of which felt like bark from a tree.

The last knot came loose, and the package opened. Colonel Arkady Zamatev sat very still, his mouth dry, his heart beating heavily. What lay on the table before him was obviously a human scalp with a small, distinctive blaze of white on one side, white hair growing where an old scar had been.

With it was a narrow strip of birchbark, and on it, printed in neat lettering:

THIS WAS ONCE A CUSTOM OF MY PEOPLE.

IN MY LIFETIME I SHALL TAKE TWO. THIS IS THE FIRST.

 

 

About the Author

 

"I think of myself in the oral tradition — of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered — as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

 

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties — among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.