Fellowship of Fear (27 page)

"Don’t look so sad," Janet said, laughing. "It was only a bratwurst. There’ll be more on the boat."

"Ah, but not like Clem’s," John said.

Arm in arm, like the German tourists, the four of them ran three blocks to the pier, arriving only a minute before the ship’s departure.

   TO his initial dismay, the ship was packed with people: not only the USOC group and many German families, but two of the high-spirited, well-lubricated tour groups, one with yellow hats and one with orange hats. Nevertheless, Gideon enjoyed the trip. The finespun mist that hung in the Rhine valley, the fall colors, the vineyards running nearly vertically up from the river, and above all the castles—the ghostly, haunted, stunningly beautiful castles—all held him so enthralled that he barely noticed the racket on the boat.

After the first half hour, John and Marti went in search of wine and USOC company, but Janet stayed with him in the relatively uncrowded stern, watching the castles glide by. One after another they came, literally at every turn. There was hardly a time when two or three castles could not be seen perched high in the gorge.

When they approached the Lorelei, the great rock that juts into the Rhine like the prow of a stupendous ship, the loudspeakers squawked twice, announced
"Die Lorelei,"
and emitted a series of hollow, tinny noises that were barely recognizable as Silcher’s music to Heine’s famous poem. At first it distressed Gideon. He had loved the song since his high school German class—it was almost all he remembered—and he found the scratchy rendering tasteless and commercial. The passengers paid no attention; they continued to shout, laugh, and pour huge glasses of wine and beer.

Then, as they neared the great rock, the clamor died down. One by one, the Germans softly took up the song, so that, as they passed the towering cliff face, the mournful, surpassingly sweet melody enveloped the ship like a sad, silvery cloud. Gideon was too overcome by the beauty of it to sing. Others were weeping as they sang, and he felt the tears come to his own eyes. Janet, her eyes shining too, leaned closer from her chair and tilted her head onto his shoulder.

"Oh, you neat, crazy man," she said, her voice furry. "It
is
glorious, isn’t it?"

He squeezed her hand and leaned his cheek against the top of her head.

After a while in the hush that followed the song, she spoke again, her head still on his shoulder. "Do you know, everyone talks about how corny that is. Me, too. But in my heart I’ve always felt it was beautiful. I was afraid you wouldn’t like it, but I should have known."

He must have dozed then in the peaceful filtered sunlight, because when he felt something brush heavily against his arm he sprang up, startled and ready to fight. What he saw were several yellow-hatted tourists lurching down the deck away from him.

"Easy, easy," Janet said, a gentle concern in her voice. "They just bumped you accidentally. They’re a little pie-eyed, that’s all."

"That’s twice today," he said angrily. "Why don’t they watch where they’re going?"

"Be fair, now. It’s not as if they were the same people."

"They look the same to me. That guy on the right, he sure looks like the one that practically ran me over on the Drosselgasse."

"How can you tell? You barely saw him."

"Well," he said, knowing how childish he sounded, "he’s blond and big, and full of beer, and—"

"So are ninety percent of the passengers." She laughed, suddenly. "My, baby gets grumpy when he wakes up all of a sudden, doesn’t he?"

He smiled sheepishly and sat down. "I guess I do. I’m not sure why you put up with me." He turned over
The Skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis
. The back cover was partially torn off. "They nearly knocked it overboard, and my arm with it. Bruce will have a fit."

"Well, for all the reading you’ve done in it, you could have left it with him this morning."

"I know. I really did mean to read it, though."

"Go ahead; it won’t bother me. I should go mingle for a while, anyway. I’ll bring you back some wine later on."

After she had left, he realized that the boat was on its return trip; he had slept longer than he thought. When she returned with the wine half an hour later, the book lay on his lap, still open to page three. With a sigh, he closed it and willingly gave himself up to the Rhine, the wine, and Janet.

   GIDEON poured another glass of the superb 1971 Johannisberger Auslese from the little gray ceramic pitcher in front of him. Then he sat back, absently fingering the raised crest on the pitcher while he gazed at the famous vineyards that ran from the edge of the terrace down almost to the Rhine far below. He was utterly content. Russian spies and military secrets and threats of war and umbrella-guns were parts of another world.

At the table with him, John, Marti, and Janet looked equally relaxed with their own glasses and pitchers. In the middle of the table, two plates held some creamy white smears and a few dark specks, all that was left of a huge order of
weisskase
and black bread.

They were on the Rheinterras at Schloss Johannisberg, a few miles south of Rudesheim, refreshing themselves before continuing back to Heidelberg. The university had reserved five tables at the famous castle, home of the Metternichs since the early 1800s and prime source of one of the world’s great wines. As he did every year, according to Janet, Dr. Rufus was paying for it out of his own pocket. There had been several toasts to the chancellor, and he had returned them copiously. He was, in fact, well into his fourth pitcher of wine, and more red-faced, amiable, and bearlike than ever, moving from table to table, backslapping, guffawing, and mopping his beaming face.

"It’s a good thing he’s going to be riding home in the bus," John said, smiling, as they watched him roar delightedly over something a pretty history instructor had whispered in his ear.

"Yes," Gideon said. "It’s nice to see him have a good time, though."

Marti spoke suddenly, directly to Gideon: "Hey, who invented wine?"

"Well, let’s see," he said. "I’m not really sure. The Romans and Greeks had it—"

"Same kind of wine as this?" she said, holding up her glass.

"I wouldn’t be surprised. I think Riesling goes back to the Romans, or to Charlemagne, at least. I know he planted vines right on these hillsides about 800 a.d."

John laughed, "Doc, now how the hell would you know that? You’ve never even been here before."

"Well, Charlemagne
did
plant vineyards in the Rheingau hills—everybody knows that—and the Rheingau isn’t very big, and these are the only hills that are—"

He stopped suddenly as he was waving an arm over the scene. Two bulky men were walking onto the Rheinterras, looking casually about them. Gideon stared hard at them. Then he looked away. Janet had been wrong; he was sure of it now. The man who had bumped into him in Rudesheim and the yellow-hatted tourist who had nearly knocked him from his deck chair had been the same. And here he was again, once more with the fat bald man who had pinned his arms on the Drosselgasse.

"What’s the matter, Doc? What is it?" John spoke urgently, his eyes sweeping the terrace.

Gideon didn’t reply. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen them notice him and gesture inconspicuously at the wine glass near his hand. But why the wine glass? He looked down at the table; wine glass, pitcher, book…The book!

He suddenly remembered the envelope he’d been carrying in the inside pocket of his jacket all day. Fingers trembling with excitement, he pulled it out and tore it open.

"Gideon," Janet said, "what
is
it? What’s wrong?"

"Wait," he said breathlessly, "just let me…" He read the note urgently:
Do not let book,
Skull of Sinanthropus Pekinensis
out of your sight…
" Good God!

"Doc, for Christ’s sake—"

"John, John!" he said, his thoughts tumbling wildly. "It’s the book! The book!"

He grabbed awkwardly at the book, almost dropping it, and riffled the pages. At once, near the back he found the half sheet of memo paper with writing in pencil on it. He read it aloud in a stunned whisper: " ‘Deployment of tactical air forces. 1. Northern sector: Fighter-bombers, missile-equipped, 220 aircraft …’ God!" It finally clicked in his mind. He spun out of his chair to face the two men, and shouted to the others at the table. "Janet, watch out! John—"

He was too late. They were both running for him, scattering people and knocking over the light metal tables.

Glasses and pitchers shattered on the ground. Dr. Rufus, directly in the men’s path, stood up and reached out a hand to stop them. Without breaking stride, the blond one knocked him to the stone floor with a brutal forearm blow to the face.

"He has a gun! Watch out!" Dr. Rufus shouted from the ground through blood-smeared lips, his voice shocked and weak.

John had risen from the chair and was reaching into his jacket when they got there. The bald one rammed his gun against Marti’s throat, making her cry out. John dropped back into the chair at once, his face gray. The blond one, flat-faced and powerful, shoved Gideon into his chair and snatched the book, with the paper inside, from the table. Then, from behind, he caught Janet’s throat roughly in the crook of the same arm and forced her to rise, gasping. He jammed the gun hard into the small of her back; she winced and made a soft, frightened sound.

Gideon’s mind was raging with anger and panic. If they hurt her… He tried to speak but choked on the words. Let her alone, he thought, take the damn paper, but let her alone, let her live…

Marti was also pulled to her feet, and both women were dragged to the railing with guns pressed into their backs. The terrace was suffused with a weird, panting silence. Gideon’s heart pounded terrifically.
Let her live, let her live . .

The blond climbed awkwardly over the railing, keeping his hold on Janet’s throat. Breathing hoarsely, he began to pull her over the railing with him. Gideon gathered himself to leap, but John pushed him back down. The man looked quickly over his shoulder at the drop of three or four feet to the vineyard below. Janet, her face stony with terror, struggled suddenly, throwing him off balance. The gun gleamed evilly as he waved one arm to regain his equilibrium. The other arm shifted to get a more secure grip on Janet’s throat.

And Gideon launched himself. It seemed to him that he flew the entire ten feet without once touching the ground. Certainly he was in the air when he struck, so that the full weight of his body was behind the rigid arm and outstretched hand that caught the man full in the face. His long, powerful fingers twisted, squeezed, and shoved at the same time. The man’s arm flew from Janet’s neck as he was flung backwards off the terrace to land jarringly on his feet in the dirt below.

Gideon swept Janet from the railing and onto the terrace floor with a backward swipe of his arm, and then fell on top of her and rolled on his side to shield her from the gunman. But the gunman wasn’t shooting. He stood stunned for a second, then picked up the book, which had fallen to the ground, and began to run clumsily down the hill through the rows of grapevines.

The bald man, in the meantime, had managed to pull Marti over the railing, while keeping his gun pointed at John’s head. When he dropped with her to the vineyard below, one of her heels caught in the soft, plowed earth, tearing off her shoe and twisting her sideways toward the ground. The man had her by one arm, trying to pull her to her feet, when he looked up to see John vaulting over the railing in a great, arching leap. He stumbled back out of the way, firing one jerky shot at the big airborne body coming down on him, but missed wildly. John landed awkwardly on one foot and one hand, and staggered off balance toward Marti, who lay face-down and still. The bald man fired and missed again, then began to run down the hill after the blond man. John fell as he reached Marti, but managed to take her in his arms. She hugged him fiercely. He buried his face in her shoulder for a moment, then stood up quickly.

Gideon began to get to his feet, and to help Janet up. As he did so, he saw three figures moving diagonally across the vineyard a few hundred feet below, running in a path that would cut off the two men floundering down the slope.

John pulled his pistol from a shoulder holster and shouted at the escaping men. "Stop! Halt! Police!
Polizei
!"

They kept running. He fired once in the air, then took quick aim and shot at them.

"Oh, dear God," Janet said. Gideon pulled her to him and hid her face against his chest.

John fired again. Both men dropped into crouches behind a row of vines and returned several shots in a rapid spatter of gunfire.

The Rheinterras, which had been so strangely hushed, erupted with noise and action. Bullets ricocheted and clattered, tables overturned, people screamed and ducked. Gideon dropped to the floor again, with Janet still in his arms. On the ground just below the terrace, he could see John, seemingly unhurt, bent over low and trying to peer through the rows of grapevines. One of his hands was on Marti’s shoulder, keeping her near the ground.

Gideon heard a far-off shout, unmistakably a command. He looked in the direction of the sound. Farther down the hill, behind a low stone fence near the road, were the three men he had seen cutting across the vineyard. They were pointing squat, ugly handguns at the crouching men. The three were in identical postures. Each was on one knee, calmly sighting along the gun held in his extended right hand while the left hand cupped the right wrist.

They were a different breed, those three. Gideon could see that from two hundred feet away. Not like the tense, crouching men with the book; not like John, excitable and gallant; certainly not like Gideon himself, who could move from violent, courageous fury to hesitant timidity and back again, all within a few seconds. These three were professionals, emotionless, just doing their savage job, and terribly sure of themselves. Gideon knew the two crouching men would die. A cold droplet of sweat ran down the middle of his back.