Barak was seated at the wheel of the Mercedes. He had run it back as far as it would go. As Robbie watched him, he let in the clutch and sent the big car forward, so that it hit the bonnet of the Ford sideways on with a loud metallic clang. According to the rule of the road in Greece, a vehicle going towards Olympia on that route would have had the right to the inner side; so, had the Mercedes not blocked the way, Stephanie would have passed it on the outer. In consequence, the Ford had been halted alongside the precipice and only some four feet from it. On the Mercedes charging it, the front wheels slithered another two feet nearer the edge. Backing the Mercedes, Barak charged the Ford again. This time one of its wheels went over and it tilted sharply, retaining a precarious balance only owing to its weight. For the third time, Barak launched the Mercedes at it. Churning up a cloud of small stones and dust, its whole body lifted, showing for a moment its underside, then it disappeared without a sound into the gorge far below.
Robbie had no doubts about Barak’s reason for forcing the Ford over the precipice. He meant to account for Stephanie’s death by an accident. The battered buffers of his own car could be produced as evidence that there had been one, and Stephanie might easily have tried to jump out, or have been thrown clear, as the Ford went over.
As Robbie was thinking that he must get to the police as soon as he possibly could, a motor horn sounded. Unnoticed by him, a lorry coming from the direction of Olympia had approached to within a few hundred yards. Standing up, he waved and shouted to the driver; but the man had his eyes fixed on the road ahead and a moment later, had he glanced up, the roof of the cab would have prevented him from seeing Robbie.
Neither, to Robbie’s surprise, did the driver notice Cepicka’s body and pull up. Then, on looking over, he saw that it was no longer there. Evidently, on finding it, Barak had removed it, and either pushed it over the precipice or carried it to his car. Meanwhile, on hearing the long hoot, he had backed the Mercedes alongside the rock face and, rounding the corner, the lorry ran past him on its way, the driver still in ignorance that his arrival there five minutes earlier might have prevented a ghastly tragedy.
When the lorry had passed, Barak ran the Mercedes to and fro again several times, until he had turned it round; then, at a slow pace, he drove off towards Tripolis. As he did so, Robbie could see, through the back window of the car, a pink cropped head lolling forward and rolling limply from side to side. This confirmed his idea that Barak might have carried Cepicka’s body to the car and hoisted it into the back seat. But Barak drove no more than three hundred yards, then he pulled up and got out.
The cliff on which Robbie stood was not continuous. The edge sloped down to the level of the road further on, and it was just at that point that Barak had halted the Mercedes. By taking this longer way round, instead of struggling up the chimney, he had only to walk up the slope to reach Robbie’s redoubt. Although Robbie’s brain was still half-bemused by Stephanie’s terrible death, he realised his enemy’s intention. In his hands lay Barak’s life. As long as he remained alive, he could charge Barak with murder; therefore, to be safe, Barak dare not leave him unaccounted for. He was coming up the slope to hunt out and kill him.
Robbie knew that his enemy was carrying two pistols—his own and Stephanie’s—and neither of them had been fired. They must contain anything from a dozen to eighteen bullets. To attempt, weaponless, to face Barak would, Robbie felt certain, be to throw away his life. The only alternative was to take to his heels while there were still several hundred yards between them. As he turned to run, a sudden thought struck him. While he had been struggling with Cepicka, the Czech had dropped his pistol. Stephanie’s murder, so soon after, had put it right out of his mind. Now he swerved, dashed for the place where they had fought, and began frantically to hunt for it.
The pistol was nowhere on the barren platform of stone, so it must have fallen among the long grass and scrub growing at the head of the chimney. Going down on his knees, Robbie thrust his fingers agitatedly in among the greenery, unheeding the tears in his hands made by the long thorns of a low bush that had little yellow flowers on it. The knowledge that Barak was coming up the slope behind him made him half choke with fear. At any moment, his enemy might breast the rise and put a bullet through his back. Turning this way and that, he scrabbled in the undergrowth like a maniac, but to no avail. The automatic must have fallen further off, and to give more time to searching would prove fatal.
As he jumped to his feet, he cursed the thought that had led him to giving precious time hunting for Cepicka’s gun. By so doing, he had greatly lessened his chances of remaining alive. Had he run for it directly he saw Barak leave the road, he would have had a good lead, well out of pistol-shot, and might have got away. Now he would be easily in range when Barak appeared over the crest, and could have little hope of escaping some of the many shots with which Barak would attempt to maim, then kill, him.
His eyes staring, his mouth hanging open, he jerked his head from side to side. For a moment he even thought of jumping over the parapet of low boulders, but he knew that there could be little hope of surviving the twenty-foot drop. He would either break his neck, like Cepicka, or break both his legs, fracture a dozen other bones and die soon after from an internal haemorrhage. It was then that his eye lit on the tangle of great boulders only thirty yards away, separated here and there by gaps. Without losing another second, he dashed up the slope and threw himself headlong into a narrow opening between two of them.
Most of the tumbled rocks were no more than six feet high; so the places where they were not actually touching were narrow tunnels, rather than caves, and these formed a small, irregular maze. Some were impassable, others partly obstructed by scrub, and most of them could have been looked down into by anyone patient enough to clamber over the top of the whole area.
Robbie wriggled in for about eight feet, then found that the cleft he was in led to a small open space, where there grew a fine crop of stinging nettles; so, panting heavily, he stayed where he was. He could only pray that Barak had not seen him dive in among the rocks, but he thought it unlikely that he had. They would not have been in view until Barak had breasted the rise and, had he caught sight of Robbie, it seemed certain that he would have taken a pot shot at him.
When Robbie’s breathing eased he lay very still, listening intently. After a few minutes he heard the sound of footsteps brushing through scrub, then, to his amazement, voices. Barak’s came quite clearly; he was speaking in Greek and said: ‘He can’t be far away. He must be in among these rocks somewhere.’
The voice that replied also spoke in Greek, but it was rough and so near a patois that Robbie had difficulty in understanding it. After a moment, it flashed upon him that the speaker must be the goat-herd whom he had seen in the distance just after he had thrown Cepicka down into the road. Evidently, during the past quarter of an hour, he had made his way down the mountain-side to find out what was going on.
As far as Robbie could understand, he was saying that, had he had his dog, it would have been easy to flush out the man they were after; but he had left his dog to look after the goats. By the time he had been up to fetch him, it would be sundown. There was some further discussion; but Robbie did not catch it as the two men moved away, presumably to skirt the tangle of rocks and see if they could find any traces of him.
It occurred to him then that, now Barak was no longer alone, it would be safe to come out, as his enemy would not dare to shoot him in front of the goat-herd. But, on second thoughts, he decided that to be a rash assumption. Only by killing him could Barak save himself from being charged with Stephanie’s murder. To escape that he might well be prepared, after shooting Robbie, to shoot the goat-herd, too. Afterwards, he would have only to carry their two bodies into the middle of the tangle of rocks, wedge them into two of the narrow tunnels and block up the entrances; then, in that incredibly desolate country, the odds would be a hundred to one against anyone finding them until they had long since become uniden
tifiable skeletons. Restrained by this grim possibility, Robbie remained where he was for the next ten minutes.
When he did crawl to the entrance of his tunnel and peep out, he could not see Barak; but on emerging a little further, he caught sight of him and the goat-herd going over the crest of the rise in the direction of the Mercedes. Having given them another few minutes, Robbie crawled through the scrub on his hands and knees until he could see over the crest. By that time, the two men had nearly reached the car; then, much to Robbie’s surprise, the goat-herd got into it with Barak and it drove off in the direction of Tripolis.
At last, Robbie was freed from the fear that he was fated to die out there on that lonesome mountain-side, riddled with bullets. But, mentally, he was still in a state of distress that defied description. Although Cepicka had been gunning for him and he had acted in self-defence, the fact that he had actually killed a fellow human being had, as he had stared down on the twisted body in the road, appalled him. Yet even that had faded into insignificance beside the tragedy that had followed so swiftly upon it. He felt that his dreams would for months be harrowed by that terrible scene in which he had been powerless to intervene, and that to his dying day he would be unable to blot out from his mind the terror on Stephanie’s face as the earth gave way beneath her and she slid down the side of the precipice. That he was marooned there without transport, miles from anywhere and with night coming on, seemed by comparison of no consequence.
Instead of risking a slip and fall by going down the chimney, he walked down the slope, the way Barak had gone, and, on reaching the road, turned back along it till he came to the place where the Ford had gone over. The sideways marks the front wheels had made in the dust as the car had been forced towards the precipice were quite clear, but he did not think they would provide evidence that Barak had rammed it three times. The marks might just as well have been made had it been a genuine accident and he had crashed into the Ford when taking the corner at a fair speed.
Kneeling down, Robbie nerved himself to look over the edge. From it, evidently as part of the road’s construction, there was a slope, about ten feet wide, at an angle of forty-five degrees. Below that, the cliff dropped sheer for some two hundred feet, then the ground sloped again, but very steeply; so the car would have bounced on the lower slope, probably several times, before it was finally dashed to pieces in the distant bottom of the ravine.
To the west, the sun was now setting in a glory of gold, rose and crimson; so the bottom of the valley was already in deep shadow. Even in full daylight it might have been difficult to spot the wreckage of the car at that distance; but Robbie thought he could detect a smear of smoke lingering down there from its having been burnt out.
Looking down had already given him a touch of vertigo, and he was about to draw back. Then his heart missed a beat. Twenty feet to his right, and about six feet down, protruding round the corner of the cliff, there was something white. It looked … it was … it could only be an outflung hand and forearm.
Leaping to his feet, he ran to the corner, knelt again and peered over. Stephanie was lying there, near the bottom of the short slope. She was on her side, supported only by one elbow which had caught in the V of a tough root. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed. It looked as if she had been knocked unconscious by hitting her head on a rock, or had fainted.
‘Stephanie!’ he called to her. ‘Stephanie! Oh, thank God you didn’t go over.’
At the sound of his voice, her eyes opened. They stared up at him transfixed by terror. As he stared back, his relief at finding her still alive was suddenly submerged by a wave of apprehension. Her body was more than half-way down the slope. How could he possibly get her up? He had no head for heights. His only asset was his strength, and he had no rope or anything of that kind he could throw to her.
He drew back, stood up and looked round, his eyes searching feverishly for something which might enable him to rescue her. The long stretch of road to either side of the cliff was empty: there were no tough creepers that he might have twisted into a rope; no long, stout branch broken from a tree, one end of which he could have lowered for her to cling to. As his glance darted this way and that, an anguished cry floated up from her.
‘Don’t leave me! For God’s sake, don’t leave me!—’
The inference that he might even contemplate abandoning her angered him; yet at the same time it fixed upon him more firmly than ever the obligation to drag her up to safety, and he trembled at the thought of having to set about it. Kneeling down again, he stretched out his hands and legs until he was lying at full length, with his head and arms protruding over the edge, then he called to her.
‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. I’ll get you up somehow.’ Yet even as he sought to reassure her, he felt that he could not possibly do it. His arms, when thrust downward to their fullest extent, did not bring his fingertips within two feet of her and, each time his glance left her face for a second, it took in the yawning gulf that lay beyond her head and shoulders. From where he lay, he could not actually see down into the chasm, but the fact that no more than eighteen inches beyond Stephanie’s feet the slope abruptly ended, with nothing between it and the now shadowy far side of the valley, made him feel sick and giddy.
An inch at a time he edged forward, his chest gradually protruding further over until the weight of his hips and legs, still lying on the flat, was no longer sufficient to anchor the upper part of his body. His hands were now within a few inches of hers. He was already having to dig his fingers into the soft earth to prevent himself slipping further down the slope. Had he attempted to take her weight, they must inevitably both have gone over.
For a few moments he remained in that position, knowing that to attempt to haul her up must prove fatal, yet his mind in revolt at the thought of beating a retreat. As he stared downward, he imagined what must follow if his hands suddenly lost their grip on the earth.
He would slither head first down the slope, cannon into her, tearing her from her precarious hold, and the two of them would shoot out into space. There would be the sensation of rushing downwards more swiftly than in the swiftest lift. The plunge into the abyss would not rob them of consciousness, and time was an illusion. Everyone knew that hours spent in school dragged on leaden feet, while those spent at a jolly party sped on silver wings. It might take only seconds by the clock for them to hurtle downward the first two hundred feet with the uprush of air whistling through their hair but, in their terrorstricken minds, it would seem long minutes of waiting to be smashed to pieces. With luck, when they hit the lower slope, they would break their necks, but the odds were against their striking the mountain-side head first. It was more likely that their bodies, twisted grotesquely out of shape and tortured by splintered bones, would bounce and bound onward, accumulating still further injuries while they continued to remain conscious for several minutes longer.
As these nightmare thoughts raced through Robbie’s mind, the sight of the razor edge beyond which death lay began to have a terrible influence upon him. It seemed to be exerting a physical pull on his shoulders. He was seized with the impulse to kick out with his legs and throw himself over. A wave of nausea swept over him. He closed his eyes and somehow fought it down. But when he opened them again he knew that if he remained where he was, even a few minutes longer, he would be overcome by vertigo and that that would be the end of him. Meeting Stephanie’s eyes again, he whispered hoarsely:
‘I can’t make it. I’m sorry. There will be a lorry or car along soon. You must hang on till help comes.’
Her face was chalk-white. For the past few minutes, while he had been edging himself down towards her, she had remained silent and unmoving, courageously conserving her strength for the effort that would be needed to take as much of her own weight as possible, while he hauled her to safety.
At his admission of defeat, terror showed in her eyes again, and she gasped: ‘No! No! The earth under me may give at any
moment.’
Then, rendered desperate by her fears, she shifted her position and made an upward grab at one of Robbie’s hands. She missed it by inches; and worse. Her sudden movement snapped off one prong of the V of root that had been supporting her. With a piercing scream, she slithered down another two feet. Now on her stomach, she clawed frantically at the earth. Her fingers dug into it, getting a dubious hold, but, before she managed to check her slide, her feet and legs up to the knees were dangling over the precipice.
‘Hang on!’ yelled Robbie. ‘Hang on! Hang on!’ But there could now be no question of waiting for help to arrive. Had she not moved, there would have been a good chance that the root would have supported her until a vehicle had come on the scene with the means to rescue her. Now she was clinging to the steep slope only with her bare hands. In a matter of minutes, her muscles must tire, her hold relax and with one last scream she would disappear into the abyss.
Impelled by instinct rather than conscious courage, Robbie accepted the challenge that this crisis had forced upon him. He slithered forward until only the toes of his shoes still retained a purchase on the edge of the road above him. He could now have grasped one of Stephanie’s hands but, as she was supporting herself by them, he dared not. Instead, he seized her by the hair.
As she felt the pull on it, she only gritted her teeth and, now that he was holding her from slipping backwards, threw her hands upward, clawed at the earth again, then drew her legs in from over the yawning gulf.
For a full minute they remained like that, while the sweat poured off Robbie’s face and he could hear her breath coming in short, harsh gasps. He had saved her from going over; but for him to wriggle up the slope backwards, much less draw her after him, he knew to be impossible. It seemed that they were now stuck there, until she croaked:
Mayhem in Greece Page 41
