The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 66

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vodka," he grunted, "you are getting soft." His shirt was as sodden as

though he had plunged in the river.

He changed the slin of the rifle to his other shoulder,  lifted his

binoculars and swept the sides of the wooded gully. They appeared sheer

and unscalable, but then he picked out the stunted shape of a small tree

that grew out of a narrow crack in the face. It looked like a Japanese

bonsai, with a twisted, malformed trunk and tortured branches.

The Walia ibex had been standing on the ledge just above that tree when

the American had fired. In his mind's eye Boris could still see the way

in which the wild goat had hunched its back as the bullet struck, and

then spun around and raced away up the cliff. He panned the glasses

upwards gently, and could just make out the inclination of the narrow

ledge as it angled up the face.

"Da, da. This is the spot." He was thinking in his mother tongue again.

It was a relief after these last days of having to struggle in French

and English.

Before he began the climb, he left the trail and scrambled down the

boulder-strewn slope to the river. He knelt at the edge of the Nile and

splashed double handfuls over himself, soaking his cropped head and

sluicing the sweat from his face and neck. He drained and refilled his

water bottle, then drank until his belly was painfully full.

Then he rinsed out the bottle and refilled it. There was no water on the

mountain. Finally he dipped his bush hat in the river and placed it back

on his head, sodden and streaming water down his neck and face.

He climbed back to the main trail and followed it for another hundred

paces, moving slowly and studying the "ground. At one place there was a

rock boulder almost blocking the path. The men ahead of him had been

forced to step over this obstruction, on to a patch of talcum-fine dust

beyond it. They had left perfect impressions of their footprints for him

to read.

Most of the men were wearing Israeli-style para boots with a

zigzag-patterned sole, and those coming up from behind had overtrodden

the spoor of the leaders. He had to go down on one knee to examine the

signs minutely before he could pick out the imprint of a much smaller

and more delicately formed foot, a lighter, unmistakably feminine tread.

It was partially obliterated by other larger masculine footprints, but

the outline of the toe was clear, and the pattern was that of a smooth

rubber-soled Bata tennis shoe. He would have recognized it from ten

thousand others.

He was relieved to find that Tessay was still with the group, and that

she and her lover had not left and taken another path. Mek Nimmur was a

sly one, and cunning.

He had escaped from Boris's clutches once before. But not this time! The

Russian shook his head vehemently: not this time.

He gave his full attention to the female footprint once again. It gave

him a pang to look at it. His anger returned in full force. He did not

consider his feelings for the woman. Love and desire did not enter into

the equation.

She was his chattel, and she had been stolen from him. It was only the

insult that had significance for him. She had rejected and humiliated

him, and for that she was going to die.

He felt the old thrill run through his blood at the thought of the kill.

Killing had always been his trade and his vocation, but no matter how

often he exercised his craft the thrill was never blunted, the pleasure

never satiated. Perhaps it was the only true pleasure left to him, pure

and unjaded - not even the vodka could weaken and dilute it as it had

the physical act of copulation. He would enjoy killing her even more

than he had once enjoyed coupling with her.

These past few years he had hunted only the lower animals, but he had

never forgotten what it was like to hunt down and to kill a human being,

more especially a woman. He wanted Mek Nimmur, but he wanted the woman

more.

In the days of President Mengistu, when he had been the head of

counter-intelligence, -his men had known his tastes and had picked the

pretty ones for him. He had only one regret now, and that was that this

time he would have to do it swiftly. There could be no question of

drawing it i out and savouring the pleasure. Not like some of the other

experiences, which had lasted for hours, sometimes for days.

"Bitch," he mouthed, and kicked at the dust, stamping on the faint

outline of her footprint, obliterating it just as he would do to her.

"Black fomicating bitch."

He ran now with fresh strength and determination as he left the trail

and climbed up towards the deformed tree and the beginning of the goat

track up, the cliff.

Exactly where he expected it, he found the start of the track and

followed it upwards. The higher he climbed, the steeper it became. Often

he had to use both hands to haul himself up a gradient, or to work his

way along a narrow traverse.

The first time he had climbed this mountain he had been following the

blood spoor of the wounded ibex, but now he did not have those

splattered droplets to guide him, and twice he missed the path and found

himself in a dead end on the cliff face. He was forced to edge back from

the drop and retrace his footsteps until he found the correct urning.

Each time he did so he was aware that he was losing time, and that Mek

Nimmur might pass before he was able to intercept him.

Once he startled a small troop of wild goats which were lying on a ledge

halfway up the cliff. They went bounding away up the rock face, more

like birds than animals bound by the laws of gravity. They were led by a

huge male with a streaming beard and long spiral horns, which in its

flight showed Boris a direct route to the top of the cliff.

He tore the skin off his fingertips dragging himself up the last steep

pitch, but finally he reached the top and wormed his way over the

skyline, never lifting his head. A i human form silhouetted against the

clear, eggshell-blue sky would be visible from miles around. He moved

along behind the crest until he found a small clump of sanseveria to

give him cover, and used the erect, spiny leaves to break up the outline

of his head as he surveyed the valley a thousand feet below through the

binoculars.

From this height the Nile was a broad, glittering serpent uncoiling into

the first bend of the oxbow, its surface ruffled by rapids and rocky

reefs. The high ground on either bank formed standing waves of up-thrust

basalt, turbulent and chopped into confusion like a storm sea in a

tropical typhoon. The whole danced and shimmered in the heat and the sun

beat down with the blows of an executioner's axe, pounding this universe

of red rock into heat exhausted submission.

Though the air danced and trembled with the mirage in the tenses of his

binoculars, Boris traced out the rough trail beside the rier, and

followed it down the valley to the point where it was hidden by the

bend. It was deserted, with no sign of human presence, and he knew that

his quarry had moved on out of sight. He had no way of telling how far

down the trail they had travelled - he knew only that he must hurry on

if he were to cut them off on the far side of the mountain.

For the first time since he had left the'river, he drank sparingly from

the water bottle. He realized how the heat and the exertion of the climb

had dehydrated him. In these conditions a man without water might be

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