The Pekin Target

by Adam Hall

  I began swabbing her leg and she hissed her breath in, gripping my wrist. “The sooner we start getting you out,” I told her, “the more chance we’ll have.”

  “Oh Christ,” she said, “I didn’t know you were such a stupid bastard.”

  I finished swabbing and went for the roll of lint in the canvas bag. “Save your energy, Helen. Relax. Are you feeling thirsty yet?”

  She closed her eyes and began laughing strangely, and the sound went on until she could speak again. “Am I thirsty? Clive, I’m dying.”

  I stopped unrolling the bandage. “Of a broken leg?”

  “Of a broken leg. And the mountains.”

  There was a gash on the side of her crash helmet: I’d noticed it when I’d been feeling for damage. Perhaps she’d struck her head on the rockface, and the pain was making her irrational. But somewhere in my own mind there was a cold thought creeping: that she wasn’t being irrational at all.

  “Did you hit your head? Do you feel disoriented?”

  She struggled to move a little, lifting her shoulders and propping herself on her elbows, watching me steadily in the moonlight. I was pulling in her chute.

  “Clive, will you bloody well listen to me? I know you’re acting according to your instincts, and I understand that. You think the first thing to do is to save life. But there isn’t one to save - only yours.” She spoke with slow clarity, as if she wanted to make absolutely sure I understood. “I’m not only talking about the sheer physical impossibility of getting me through these mountains with anything left of what I am now; and I’m not only talking about gangrene and pneumonia and no chance in hell of finding competent medical aid in the nearest village, though I’ll just mention that morphine isn’t totally effective with bone trauma and that I do not intend spending the next two or three days in screaming agony before they see us from the monastery and shoot us both. I’m also talking about why I took this job on, and what they told me when I was briefed, and what I agreed to do. I agreed to give you whatever assistance was necessary in making the drop and getting a fix on the monastery, and then to make my own way out while you proceeded with your mission; those were the actual words, in writing: while you proceeded with your mission. And that’s what you’ve now got to do.”

  She went on watching me, giving me time to think over what she’d said.

  “And leave you here?”

  “And leave me here. I’ll be all right. You’re going to fix things for me.”

  “Fix things?”

  “They shoot horses, don’t they?”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “I’ve never been more rational in my life.” Her voice was perfectly steady. “All you’ve got to do is cut a wrist. I’m an awful coward when it comes to self-inflicting anything. I can’t even get a splinter out. We’re all different, aren’t we?”

  I was aware of the bandage in my hand: conscious thought was overlaying the desperate attempt to deny all she was saying, to believe it wasn’t the simple and appalling truth.

  “You’re asking me to kill you?”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, Clive. I’m asking you for your charity. I’m asking you to save me from unbearable pain, and the unbearable waiting for the time when they see us, and come for us. I’m going to be killed anyway; you’ll be more gentle than they will.”

  I thought for a long time, or it seemed long, kneeling on the loose shale beside her with the lint bandage in my hand and nothing to do with it, while I relearned the lesson that had been brought home to me rarely in my life: that to be helpless is the most subtle of all agonies.

  “What we’re going to do,” I said at last, “is to find our way out of here without being seen, and to assume quite confidently that the morphine’s going to do its job for as long as-“

  “Clive, you’ve got to face it. You’ve just got to face it.” Her small fingers were dug into my wrist. “If this were just a geological field trip I’d let you try getting me across those mountains before I went out of my mind, but it isn’t like that. When they briefed me they told me enough about your operation to let me know it’s important. I’ve worked for D 16 and I’ve worked for NATO intelligence-which is why your people trusted me with this little trip - and I know the signs of a top secret mission when I see them; I know it’s quite likely that if you reach your target you’ll save lives, maybe a lot of lives, but certainly more than one - more than this one. You - “

  “You’re just making up your own weird scenario - “

  “I haven’t finished. The thing is, Clive, that my integrity is at stake, and if you think for one moment that you can monkey with that, you’ll get a real surprise. Who the hell do you think I am? D’you think I’m the type to give my word to your people and sign the clearance form and then go back on it when the going gets rough? You know the kind of form I’ve signed - you’ve done it often enough yourself if you’re in this game. Last bequests, next of kin, the whole bit. And listen to me, and understand what I’m saying: I agreed that whatever happened to me I would do everything in my power to help you to proceed with your mission. Whatever happened. And now something’s happened; one of the many calculated risks we accepted has come up and hit me in the face; and you’re asking me to go back on my word. By God, you’ve got a nerve!”

  Her voice had begun shaking with anger because I wouldn’t understand, because I wouldn’t think it out, as she’d had time to think it out while I was looking for her. “And listen to this, Clive, and it’s all I’m going to say. If you try to carry me out of here I’m going to resist, every inch of the way. I’m going to fight you, every bloody inch and every bloody yard, till you realise it’s not worth it, and drop me, and leave me to rot.” Then the anger was suddenly spent, and she was speaking so softly that I could barely hear. “But if you’ve got any kindness in you, any humanity, you’ll face what you know you’ve got to do, and be gentle with me, and save me from all those things we all hope never to die with: pain, and humiliation, and indignity.”

  I knelt there for a time, going over it all, while the shadows in the moonlight crept from rock to rock, lengthening as the night moved on towards the dawn. I don’t know when it was that she spoke again, as softly as before.

  “Face it, Clive. Bite the bullet.”

  And at last I knew there was no argument, and no choice.

  “I wish there’d been time to know you,” I said.

  “I’ve told you quite a bit, in the last few minutes. I’m someone to be reckoned with. Are you going to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  She gave a quick shuddering laugh. “I finally got it into your thick skull.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What made it so difficult? Because I’m a woman?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then you’re a male chauvinist pig. Listen, the monastery is east of here, the other side of that long ridge with the funny-looking rock at the end. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You knew that already, but I’m just cross-checking. To climb that ridge won’t be easy, but there’s no other way to go. It’ll be easier, though, with some of the extra equipment you’ll have: you can make hay with the pitons, using mine as well - you won’t have to salvage any. And there’ll be double the food and water ration. Did you see the terrain the other side of the ridge?”

  “Not very clearly, in this light.”

  “You’re not trained. You have to watch for the shadows, and know what they mean, how deep they are, and how high the object is that’s throwing them. Listen, the terrain on the far side is almost flat, a narrow strip maybe a dozen yards wide and almost as long as the ridge itself. Are you listening?”

  “Yes.” But she knew that half my mind was still circling, looking for an escape, an escape for her that didn’t demand her life.

  “I’d say you’d be in full sight of the monastery, anywhere on that ridge, with one exception. There was a long shadow crossing it at an angle, starting just north of the midd
le and going obliquely south-east - in other words, towards the monastery. One thing I can tell you for sure: the monastery is something like five hundred feet above that ridge; six hundred at the most. Did you notice the ring formation?”

  “Where?” The only escape was an escape for me: to leave her, and let her keep her word to them in any way she wanted, and let her do it alone. There was no choice there either.

  “The rings on the mountains here,” she said. “Clive, you’d better listen - there’s no time to think about anything else. The ridges go up the mountains here in a typical ring system, though it’s been mostly obliterated by time. You might be able to reach the monastery by following the oblique cleft towards the south-east, out of sight from the ridge. Okay?”

  I was rolling up the bandage. “Yes. I’ll try that.”

  “If it doesn’t work, then you’ll have to climb straight up from the north or south. That’s when you’ll need the extra pitons. There’s no sheer rockface anywhere, except that bit we hit when we came down. You’ve got something like forty-five minutes of darkness left, to stow the chutes and conceal them.” She looked away. “And me.”

  I put the roll of lint back into the bag, and pulled the zip. One had to keep order.

  “I’ll remember what you’ve advised. I’ll try the cleft.”

  “It could work. But don’t try it while it’s still dark; there’s a nasty bit between here and where it begins; it’s where the rock goes sheer down.”

  “I’ll wait till daylight.”

  “That’s about it, then.” She turned her head and looked at me again. “Except that I’ve got a last request. I want you to make love to me.”

  I’d noticed a movement in the mist here, not long ago; there was a bluff of rock throwing its shadow across the ground where we were, and the shadow was creeping as the moon lowered towards the mountains in the west. I suppose a wind was getting up, though hardly what you’d call a wind: just a stirring of the air, its movement playing on the insubstantial vapours, giving them the life of ghosts. There’d been the hint of woodsmoke, too, before, coming from one of the villages, one of the villages that was so close that we could smell its fires, so far that she would never see it; now there was the scent of pines on the air; or it had been here too, before, but overlayed by the bitterness of the smoke. Make love, yes, a certain logic in that, the way she saw things; I was beginning to know her nature.

  I’d been quiet for too long, because she said, “Of course I might not be your type. I don’t want you to think I’m-you know - sort of soliciting.” She tried a laugh but it didn’t quite come off.

  I told her quickly, “Certainly you’re my type. You’d be anyone’s. Newcomb could hardly keep his eye on the navigation, as you must have noticed.”

  “You were very well brought up.”

  “Last dance, is that it?”

  “Last drink, or whatever. Last anything I can get. I’m not one to go out with a whimper.”

  But I knew it was more than that; it was her sense of affirmation, of life at the death. It had been a good party, and she wasn’t going to leave until the music stopped.

  “Can you smell the pines?” I asked her.

  “Yes. I wondered if you’d noticed. Isn’t it lovely?” She was lifting her hand to me and I kissed her fingers; they were deathly cold: there’d been a certain degree of shock, and I think anyone else would have passed out by now.

  “We’ll have to look out for your leg,” I said.

  “You bet. Forget the missionary position, but thank God there are plenty of other ways.” She was trying to reach for one of the haversacks, and I got it for her. “Put it under my head, Clive; there’s no need to be uncomfy.” Then the tears began, as she let everything go; there was no grief in this, I thought, and no self-pity, but just the gathering sense of loneliness that even she couldn’t hold back; and perhaps it was a sign that she could now trust me enough to let me hear tier cry, knowing I wouldn’t think of it as weakness. I remember being surprised, as I put my mouth on hers, that her tears could feel so warm against the coldness of her face, and so tender in someone so strong.

  “Clive,” she said in a moment, “we’re strangers, but it doesn’t mean we can’t find some kind of love, just while it lasts. Do what you can.”

  Her blood was black in the moonlight, pooling among the stones. My hand was over her wrist, held loosely there, and I don’t know why; to stop the rhythmic spurting from staining her flying suit - one must, yes, keep order; or to tempt me to deny all her arguments and grip with sudden force and reach with my other hand for the pressure point and then a tourniquet and somehow carry her through the mountains; or simply to ease the soreness for her, by the comfort of touching.

  “I could have done a lot worse, Clive.” The strength was leaving her voice.

  “A lot worse?”

  “Than finding you, for the last dance.”

  Her cropped head turned sideways on the haversack, but she straightened it to look up at me, like someone falling asleep and then waking because the time wasn’t right.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to be here now,” I told her.

  “It was a privilege.”

  “A privilege?” A little dry laugh came. “Oh God, I’m in such a mess.” Her lips could scarcely open now. “You must try the cleft in the ridge, Clive … the way I said … “

  “Yes.” Her head fell sideways again but this time she let it stay there, and closed her eyes. “Sleep well,” I said.

  “Dizzy … Clive?”

  “I’m here.” I lay beside her, covering her as much as I could so that she’d know she wasn’t’ alone. She felt like a child in my arms.

  “Clive … good luck … “

  The sunrise was beautiful, a filling of the sky with saffron and then rose and then a flood of blinding light across the peaks to the east.

  I had stowed the two chutes together and spread rocks over them, and sorted out what extra equipment I’d take along. Helen de Haven was over there, where the heaped stones were catching the first light of the day. I turned away and moved through the rocky terrain, keeping clear of the sheer face and the drop below it.

  In an hour I had reached the bottom of the ridge, where she had told me I should go, and rested for a moment against an outcrop; then the shot came and splinters of stone cut through the air near my face and I dropped flat.

  Chapter 18

  Hunt

  I didn’t move.

  The splinters were still falling, one of them humming through the air with the loudness of a bee, its sharp edges spinning from the impact of the bullet until it struck ground and skittered across the shale.

  Incoming data, item one: no echo to the shot.

  He was in cover. There would have been an echo, otherwise, from the sheer rockface between here and the ridge higher up. He was shooting from cover but not from the monastery or anywhere near it: from here the monastery was out of sight above the ridge and a thousand feet higher. He was shooting from a north vector: without raising my head I could see the chipped rock, a few feet south of where I was lying prone.

  Moving my eyes only, I looked for the bullet; if I could find it I could learn a lot more about him, and where he was.

  At some time during the ritual of love she had said, Don’t pity me; I can’t stand that; besides, this could be the last time for you too.

  There were grasses, higher towards the ridge, and I lay watching them; but their movement was so slight that I couldn’t hope to tell the wind’s direction; I took deeper breaths, alert for the smell of burnt powder, but as yet there was nothing; even if the wind were from the north he might be too far away for the scent to carry.

  The sun was four diameters high, north-east by east and approaching the mountain; it would clear the peak in another hour, and I couldn’t hope for shadow. The ground here was still moist from the receding mist, and I began digging into the soil between the rocks, using one of the sharp splinters his bullet had chipped fr
om the rock; no thanks to him for the convenience: that bullet had been meant for my brain.

  As soon as I had enough loose soil I began caking it over the buckles of the haversacks and the binocular case to take away the shine; then I smeared my face and hands, taking my time: he wouldn’t come close yet, in case I had a gun.

  He was using a long-distance rifle; its sound had been a heavy cough rather than a bark, and the chip in the rock was larger than a watch face. He knew I was still alive; to have placed the shot that close he must have seen enough of me to notice how I’d gone down, dropping voluntarily for cover, not spinning or toppling with an arm flung out. He would have reloaded by now, waiting to see what I did.

  There were no real options. He was waiting for me to show him any one of the four most dangerous aspects of a hunted man: movement, reflection, colour and human shape. But I couldn’t stay here; he wouldn’t wait beyond a certain time; there would be the moment when he’d believe I was wounded, and then he’d come slowly, using all available cover until he could see I was either unconscious or unarmed. I had to be gone by then.

  I checked the time at 06:17 and took my watch off and put it into my pocket before I moved. There was a wall of rock extending a long way to my left, so I covered fifty yards at a low crouch, scuffling my boots into the shale and dragging their toes across grasses to leave them bent; then as the terrain became firm rock I turned at right angles and went for a cleft running south at an angle and providing cover for twenty yards before it finished in a slope of fallen boulders. I would have to climb there, or come back if I had to climb too high.

  He might be using a scope sight; that would change things a great deal; it could mean he was farther away than it seemed, and knew there was no real cover here for me, none that could lead me clear; he’d be content to use me for sport, and watch me go from rock to rock like a rat in a maze. If he were shooting from a great distance it meant he must be on higher ground, and could see beyond my immediate cover to flat terrain where he could finally bring me down.