The Commissar (39 page)

‘He
was
on a course at Bamberg,’ laughs Porta, carelessly. ‘But they threw him off it before he managed to blow the whole place up. He did kill off a few ammo experts though, without getting as much as a scratch himself. Even though he went up there on the Milky Way a time or two, he still came down licking the cream off his chops!’

If we lean out over the edge of the cliff we can just see Tiny’s dark shadow moving slowly upwards, veiled in billowing clouds of snow.

‘He looks like one of those stuntmen climbing up a skyscraper,’ mutters the Commissar nervously.

‘Bit short of windows to nip through, though, if he gets tired,’ says Porta, drily.

‘If he slips now,’ mumbles ‘Frostlips’, ‘he’s got 5,000 feet under him. The rope’d cut him clean in two!’

‘Damn an’ set fire to it,’ curses Tiny from out in the snow. ‘This bleedin’ ledge ain’t no wider than a fly is between the eyes.’

‘Hang on with your toes,’ suggests Porta. ‘Bend ’em like the birds do!’

‘What do you think I
am
doin’?’ comes Tiny’s voice from out on the mountain-side.

‘Get on with it,’ shouts ‘Frostlips’ nervously. ‘Those headhunters’ll be in the valley in a minute, and at our throats before we know where we are!’

A nasty crash and a rain of powdery snow cuts him short. The rock-shelf has given way. With a howl of terror Tiny goes out into thin air but in some miraculous manner manages to hang on with his ice-axe.

Cursing and swearing he begins to work his way upwards again. We lean out and see him hanging and swaying where the ledge was before.

He hacks viciously at the snow and finally makes a hole large enough for the charges. Spitting with rage he rolls the cables a couple of times more round the explosive and forces stones and pieces of ice into the hole to wedge the charge in place. It wouldn’t be smart if we were to take it with us when
we moved the wires.

A strong gust of wind takes off his fur cap and nearly sends him down into the gulf with it. He slides down hazardously, but finds a foothold on the second ledge, which is somewhat broader.

Even though he is bear-like in size, he looks small against the tons of snow which hang, suspended, above his head. He checks the charges once more and gives the primers an extra crimp with his teeth. Balancing on the edge he takes a swig from his water-bottle. Then he starts back across the vertical, wind-blown, rock wall. A huge eagle flaps close by him. Furiously, he throws a punch at it, loses his grip and slides some way down the mountain face.

Gregor, alone on the safety rope, had become unobservant from cold and exhaustion and does not feel Tiny’s tug on the rope. It is hanging so loosely that it has become dangerous. The big man has no more than just rounded the sharp corner when the eagle attacks again. He strikes out at it and loses his footing. His hands claw at the ice, blood spurts from long gashes and nails rip away. His axe curves out over the edge of the cliff, and goes sailing on down in a cloud of snow.

The eagle gives a hoarse, triumphant scream, and dives to the attack again.

Porta lets out a terrified shout, which warns Gregor just in time. He manages to press himself in between two vertical rocks, before he is taken over the edge by the terrific pull on the rope.

‘What the devil are you up to?’ asks the Commissar, wriggling his way over to us. ‘Good Lord Almighty. He must have been killed!’

Far below we can see Tiny swinging back and forth on the rope with the raging eagle flapping around his head.

‘He’s lost his axe!’ says Porta.

The Commissar lowers his own ice-axe down to him, quickly, and he manages to grasp it after several attempts.

Slowly we tighten the rope. If we go too quickly we can risk it snapping.

As we pull him up higher and higher we can hear him cursing and swearing.

‘Got a full head of steam up,’ says Porta. ‘Gregor’d better get going till he’s gone off the boil!’

‘I’m off,’ says Gregor firmly, beginning to buckle on his skis.

None of us has noticed that Tiny is already up over the edge, foaming with rage. The Commissar gives a warning shout as he comes rushing towards us through the snow, looking for the guilty party.

‘You drop Tiny’s bleedin’ rope?’ he roars accusingly, pointing his ice-axe at me.

‘No,
no
!’ I yell, to avoid certain death. ‘It was Gregor! He dozed off!’

‘Dozed off, did’e?’ roars Tiny. He bulldozes through the snow, towards where Gregor is sitting buckling on his skis.

The Old Man throws an mpi at him. It hits him right in the face, but he carries on, without even a second’s pause.

Gregor just manages to turn around. Tiny grabs him by both skis and swings him round above his head like a hammer-thrower. When he has got speed up he lets go of him. With a crunch his body strikes a rock, his skis splintering. Then Tiny is on him again, hammering at him with his fists. They seem to be rotating as fast as propellers. Gregor knows he is fighting for his life. With the courage of desperation he succeeds in kicking upwards and hitting Tiny on the knee. Now the big man goes really crazy. With a scream he jumps up into the air, turns, and comes down on Gregor with such force that the man’s body is literally pressed down into the frozen snow.

‘Back!’ hisses the Commissar, white with rage, and pressing the muzzle of his
Kalashnikov
into Tiny’s throat. ‘Back I say, or I’ll shoot your head off!’

But Tiny is deaf to everything. Foaming at the mouth with rage he goes on beating the unconscious Gregor.

‘Let me,’ says Porta, bringing his machine-pistol down on Tiny’s neck. With a tired grunt he falls down and lies
motionless across Gregor.

‘Chuck him over the edge!’ suggests ‘Frostlips’ furiously, giving Tiny a brutal kick. ‘The mad bastard’s
dangerous
!

‘Take it easy,’ says Porta. ‘Who wouldn’t be annoyed at some idiot lettin’ him take a 300-yard sprint down the side of a mountain, and gettin’ his whole bag o’ bones knocked sideways?’

Shortly afterwards Tiny regains consciousness, shaking his head like a duck which has just been down to have a look at the bottom of its pond.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Gregor excuses himself weakly, wiping blood from his battered features.

‘We’ll discuss that later,’ Tiny promises him with a wicked look, and lumbers off towards the edge of the cliff.

‘Where the devil are you going?’ asks the Old Man, running after him with his machine-pistol at the ready.

‘Ain’t we gonna roll that snowball?’ asks Tiny. ‘Ain’t that what we crawled up on this Commie bleedin’ mountain to
do
?’

Cursing and swearing furiously he begins to climb the icy granite wall again. He is so angry that he has forgotten to attach his climbing-rope.

‘If he slips now,’ says ‘Frostlips’. ‘he’s had it! Mad as they come, he is!’

‘Don’t for God’s sake tell him it’s dangerous,’ warns Porta,’ then he’ll be sure to fall!’

It seems an eternity before he finally finds the cable. It is still attached to the explosive charge. As carefully as if it were made of glass he pulls it over to him, and winds it around his elbow.

‘God have mercy on us all!’ groans the Commissar. ‘Never in my life have I seen anything so insane!’

Twice, on his way back, he slips on the slope. Only a frozen snowdrift which is accidentally in his path stops him from going over the edge and down into the abyss.

‘What about if it’s a dud?’ asks Barcelona, nervously, when Tiny is back and has gleefully connected the wires to the batteries.

‘We’ll be paddlin’ up shit-creek.’ answers Porta. ‘Nothing left but to go straight at ’em with hand-grenades, balalaikas and guitar music!’

‘The radio.’ says the Commissar. ‘That blasted radio. They always station it at a distance from them undercover! The signaller will be screaming for help as soon as we make a move, and up’ll come the Jabos!’

‘I’m against this battery shit,’ rumbles Tiny. ‘An old-fashioned fuse, what splutters off to where you can
see
it goin’. That was better’n more fun too! Used to remind me of Christmas Eve, when old Mr Creuzfeldt used to get drunk an’ make us sing:

And when they came to’Erod’s’ouse,
’E was there in the window, an’ lookin’ out. . . .’

‘Come
on
! orders the Old Man, lowering his field-glasses. ‘
Use
the batteries! It’s a matter of minutes! Send it off when I give the order!’

‘What you talkin’ to me like
that
for?’ Tiny flares up, angrily. ‘Think I live in a bucket with a’ole in it, and’ve got me brains where me balls is, do you? I can tell you the psychopaths give me intelligence gradin’ 0.7, which is very’igh!’

‘Depends which end of the table you start at,’ grins Porta. ‘But steady on with those leads and that battery.
Would be
funny if we got the lot of it down the back of our necks ourselves. Those bloody assassins down there’d kill themselves laughing, and we’d go down in world history as the biggest dopes ever to have taken part in
any
war!’

‘
Job trojemadj
,’ mumbles ‘Frostlips’. ‘Here come those devils!’

The moon comes out like an explosion. We can clearly see a line of soldiers moving upwards on skis. They stop several times, and stare up at the peaks as if they knew we were there.

‘Must be time we sprinkled a bit of snow down on ’em.’ says Porta. ‘’Fore it’s goodbye gold an’ the life of Reilly!’

‘Wait!’ warns the Commissar. He examines the terrain through his binoculars. ‘We’ve got to take them
all
! If one gets away, up goes the alarm!’

‘There’s guests on the way up the cliffs.’ says Tiny, listening tensely. ‘I can’ear their climbin’-irons!’

‘Balls,’ says ‘Frostlips’. ‘I can’t hear a thing!’

‘No, but
I can
,’ says Tiny, wiggling his nose like a rabbit in a cabbage-patch.

The officer leading the column stops and turns his field-glasses up towards the brow of the cliff behind which we are hiding.

‘Keep
still
!’ whispers the Commissar, his voice shaking. ‘The slightest movement, those bastards’ll
see
it!’

‘I’m ready to move this mountain,’ says Tiny, grinning broadly.

‘Hell!’ whispers the Old Man. ‘No shit now, or we’re finished!’

The OGPU soldiers below us have fanned out. They have their skis on their backs and push themselves up by their staves. We can now hear, too, that there are more of them on their way up the face of the cliff.

‘What we bleedin’ waitin’ for?’ asks Tiny, impatiently. ‘Ivan’ll
be
here in a minute, shakin’’is bleedin’ balalaikas under our noses!’

Nervously, I screw the cover off a stick-grenade, and put my finger through the ring. I am ready to throw it as soon as the first Russian face appears above the edge of the cliff.

Most of the soldiers in the long single column have now disappeared along the side of the mountain, where we can no longer see them. Their voices become more and more audible, however, through the wild howling of the storm. Suddenly the tail of the column – five soldiers – stops. They point field-glasses towards the top of the great mass of granite. Some instinct must be warning them of an unknown danger. They are not recruits. They are manhunters of the most experienced kind.

‘Shall I
do
it?’ asks Tiny, moving the wires even closer to the battery. So close that we cannot understand why the
charge has not gone off.

‘Not yet!’ whispers the Commissar. ‘We’ve got to have those five come closer!’

Porta is down behind the LMG, the butt pressed into his shoulder, and his Finger on the trigger.

I open the covers of the cartridge boxes, and hold the long belts ready for use.

‘
Now
!’ hisses the Commissar, bringing his fist down in the snow.

Tiny gives out a scream of pleasure, and makes the contact.

For a moment it is as if the world stands still. Then the icy quiet of the night is split open by a series of thunderous explosions. They roll across the mountains and die away in far-distant echoes.

‘Ought to give the headhunters something else to think about,’ grins Porta with satisfaction, bringing the night-glasses up to his eyes. The OGPU soldiers have been gripped by panic, and are scattering to all sides.

It seems as if the huge overcap of snow has remained untouched by the explosions. Several minutes go by in which nothing happens.

The OGPU soldiers have also seen this. They stop, and begin feverishly to buckle on their skis. A little officer waves excitedly with his
Kalashnikov
and shouts hoarse orders.

‘Roll then, you bleedin’ snow, you!’ mumbles Tiny, shaking his fist up at the snow-cap. ‘I’m going up to see what’s wrong,’ he says, getting up on one knee.

‘Crazy sod!’ snarls the Old Man. ‘You’re staying
here
!’

There is a sound like that of distant thunder, swiftly coming closer. The first of the colossal snow-masses whirls up in a huge white cloud. For a moment it seems to hang suspended in the air: then movement commences. Hundreds of tons of frozen snow hit the opposite slope and are thrown up again as if from a new explosion. Then the first gout of snow thunders against the rocks further down the mountain.