The Angry Mountain (32 page)

“All right,” I said. “I'll have a shot at it.” But my heart sank as I committed myself to the nightmare of trying to fly again.

My recollection of the journey down to the plane is confused and vague. My mood had changed from panic to intense excitement. It had changed the moment I'd returned to the room where Maxwell lay and Hilda had told them I'd agreed to fly them out. They had looked at me then with a new respect. From being an outcast I had become the leader. It was I who ordered them to fix up a stretcher for Maxwell, to hitch George to the cart again, to bring Tu
č
ek and Lemlin down. The sense of power gave me confidence. But with that sense of power came the realisation of the responsibility I had undertaken.

I had time to think about this as we crunched down the ash-strewn track to the vineyard. And the more I thought about it, the more appalled I became. The sudden mood of confidence seeped away, leaving me trembling and scared. It wasn't death I was scared of. I'm certain of that. It was myself. I was afraid because I didn't think I'd be capable of doing what I'd said I'd do. I was afraid that at the last moment I'd funk it. I was in a sweat lest when I sat in the pilot's seat with the controls under my hands I'd lose my nerve.

I think Hilda knew how I felt for she held my hand all the way, her fingers gripping mine with a tightness that seemed to be trying to give me strength.

We were a queer cartload. The mule moved very slowly, Hacket holding the reins. Maxwell was coming round and moaning with pain under his blankets. Lemlin was
unconscious, but Tu
č
ek, propped against the side of the cart, had his eyes open. They stared vacantly in front of him, the pupils unnaturally large. The little Italian boy was playing with Zina's hair while she lolled like a courtesan against Reece, her skirt rucked up to show her naked thigh, a dreamy smile on her lips. It was insufferably hot and the sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades.

I remember as we left the villa a little mound of ash by the front door with a swarm of flies buzzing over it. I didn't have to ask what it was, for there was a hand sticking out of the ash. Roberto's grave started in my mind a picture of the twisted wreckage of a plane and the flies buzzing in clouds about our swollen bodies. It was all mixed up in my mind with the flies that had crawled in swarms over my smashed leg up there in the Futa Pass so long ago.

I felt my mind drifting over the edge of reality into fantasy. Hacket was swearing at the mule and I found myself identifying myself with the animal's reluctance to reach its destination. I wanted to go jolting on into infinity, just moving steadily on and never reaching the plane. And then I saw Sansevino watching me curiously. I could see him following the antics of my mind with a cold, professional interest. And then for a moment anger and hate blended in the sweat of the heat and I wanted to be transported in a flash to the cockpit of the plane and go roaring out over the lava with a wild shout of laughter as I proved to them I could do it.

We were down by the rows and rows of planted bush vines now and Hilda's fingers clutched more tightly at my hand. “Where shall we live, Dick?” Her voice sounded a long way away as though I was hearing her talking to me in a dream. “Can we have a house by the sea somewhere? I have always wanted to live by the sea. I think perhaps it is because my mother was a Venetian. The sea is in my blood. But the frontiers of Czechoslovakia are all land frontiers. It will be nice to live in a country that is surrounded by water. It is so safe. Dick. What sort of house shall we have? Can
we have a little thatched house? I have seen pictures—”

So she went on, talking about her dream home, trying to fill my mind with thoughts that lay beyond the nightmare of the present. I remember I said, “First I shall have to get a job—a job in England.”

“That will not be difficult,” she answered. “My father plans to build a factory. He has patents, and the money for the factory—” She stopped then. “What happened to the things that were in your leg?”

I remembered then and my mind seized with relief on something immediate and practical. I leaned forward and grabbed Sansevino by the arm. “You took something from my leg—up there on that roof. Give it to me.” I saw cunning and hesitation in his eyes. “Give it to me.” My voice was almost a scream.

He put his hand in his pocket and for one awful moment I thought he'd got a gun and I half rose to fling myself at him. But his hand came out with the little leather bag and I remembered he hadn't got a gun. He handed it across to me. It was quite light and as I shook it the contents rattled like a bag of dried peas. I undid the neck of it and poured the contents into Hilda's lap. Zina's eyes opened wide and she leaned forward with a hiss of excitement. It was like a stream of glittering fire as I poured it on to Hilda's dust-caked skirt. Diamonds and rubies, emeralds, sapphires. They lay there winking and glittering, all the wealth of the Tu
č
ek steelworks condensed into that little pile of precious stones.

I was angry then, angry because Tu
č
ek had committed me unwittingly to smuggle his wealth out of the country. He'd come to my room that night with the intention of asking me to help him, and when he'd found me drunk he'd seen my leg and slipped the little leather bag into the hollow shaft, He'd realised that if I didn't know what I carried I'd be more likely to get through. But he'd no right to do it without my permission. He'd committed me to a danger that I hadn't known about.

I stared at him angrily. But he met my stare with vacant eyes, his head rolling mindlessly with the jolting of the cart. Then I remembered the other package. I demanded it from Sansevino. And when he'd handed it to me I knew why Tu
č
ek had done it without asking me. The little oilskin roll contained a dozen small metal cylinders, light as feathers. I knew what they were at once. They were rolls of films—microfilms of blueprints. There in my hand were the details of new equipment, arms and machinery, in production at the Tu
č
ek works. He'd done exactly as he'd done in 1939. I understood then. I closed the package and passed it across to Hilda.

She stared at the tiny cylinders for a moment and I saw that she was crying. Then slowly she poured the pile of precious stones back into the leather bag, tied it up and handed me the bag and the oilskin package. “Keep them, please, Dick. Later you can give them to my father.” It was a gesture of trust and I suddenly felt like crying too.

Sansevino was talking to Hacket now and the cart lurched off the track, dragging slowly through the vineyards towards a big corrugated iron barn half-buried in an orange grove. When we reached it Sansevino jumped down and he and Hacket and Reece slid back the doors. Inside was an old Dakota, its camouflage paint worn to bright metal in places by the constant impact of air. My heart sank at the sight of it. It had been dragged in tail-first by the tractor that was parked under the starboard wing.

I sat there staring at it, quite unable to move. I was conscious of them carrying Maxwell's stretcher off the cart, of Zina clapping her hands with joy at the sight of the plane, of the child sucking its thumb and staring in awe. Even when Tu
č
ek and Lemlin had been got off the cart I still sat there. My limbs seemed incapable of movement.

“Dick.” Hilda was tugging at my arm. “Dick. Please.”

My gaze shifted from the plane to the mountain behind. It seemed to lean right over the improvised hangar, the great,
black column of gas surging up from its crater, billowing, swirling, rising till it spread like a hellish canopy across the sky. And between us and the mountain was a thick, sulphurous haze, “Dick!” Hilda's voice was suddenly urgent and my body shook as though I were possessed of some horrible devil. Memory stood at my side, the memory of the last plane I'd flown, a crumpled heap of burnt-out wreckage. “I can't,” I whispered. Panic had seized me again and my voice came like a sigh from deep down inside me.

Her hands gripped my shoulders. “You see that haze? You know what it means?” I nodded. She twisted my shoulders round so that I was facing her. “Look at me.” Then she took my hands and put them about her throat. “I can't face that lava, Dick. Either you fly that plane or you kill me—now.”

I remember I stared at her in horror. Her throat was soft beneath my fingers. And then the softness of her flesh gave me strength. Or perhaps it was her grey eyes, staring straight into mine. I got to my feet. “All right,” I said. I jumped to the ground. I stood there, trembling. But she followed, caught hold of my hand and led me towards the machine. “When you feel the controls—you will be all right then.” She looked up at me and smiled. “Are you very tired, Dick?”

I bit on my lip and didn't say anything. We walked to the plane then. I remember my feet seemed a long way away, almost beyond my control. They had the door of the fuselage open and were getting Maxwell's stretcher in. It was Reece who pulled me up into the plane. He patted my shoulder and grinned. I stood there, staring at the familiar details in the half dark. It was just as it had been when it had carried parachutists to half the countries of Europe—the canvas seats, the oxygen notices, the Mae Wests and collapsible dinghies.

A hand gripped mine. I stared at it and then at Reece, He was stammering, awkward. “I want to apologise, Dick, I didn't realise—what guts you'd got.”

I think it was that more than anything else that helped me
to get a grip on myself. I felt that here, in this plane, I was in some measure squaring my account with him and Shirer. Hilda was beside me and together we went forward to the crew's cabin. It was as though I'd stepped back into the war. Everything was familiar, ordinary. I climbed to the cockpit and sat down in the pilot's seat. A helmet hung over the control column, trailing its inter-com plug-in wire. I felt as though if I put it on I could talk to my navigator and the wireless operator.

Hilda had climbed into the second pilot's seat. Reece, who had followed us, said, “I'll let you know when we're all set.”

I ran my hand over the controls, thrust at the rudder with my feet, testing the weight of it against my dummy leg. Then I got my handkerchief out and wiped the sweat from my face and hands. It was so damnably hot and I felt sleepy. God, I felt sleepy. I stared at the dials and they seemed to be trembling in the heat of the cabin. I felt sick then.

Hilda's hand came out and gripped mine. “Are you all right?”

I wasn't all right. I felt faint. But I said, “Yes, I'm all right.” I said it violently as though to convince myself. She kept a tight hold of my hand. And then Reece was at my elbow, peering up at me, telling me they were all on board. “Do you want the motors turned over? There's starting equipment here.”

“No. They'll be all right. They shouldn't need warming up in this heat.”

“Shall I close the door then?”

“Yes. Close the door.”

The moment had come now. I looked up from the controls, looking out through the windshield to the ash-covered vineyard that was to be our runway. And then I saw George. They'd moved him to one side and he stood there, a desolate little figure standing dejectedly between the shafts of the broken cart. A violent, uncontrollable wave of anger swept
over me. “You swines,” I shouted. “You bloody swines.” I was out of my seat and down the fuselage in an instant. “Get him on board. Get him on to the plane.”

They stared at me, Reece and Hacket standing by the door, the others sitting in the canvas seats.

“Who?” Hacket asked.

“The mule, you bastard! “I screamed at him. “Do you think I'm going without my mule?”

Reece came towards me. “Steady, Farrell,” he said. “We can't take the mule.”

“You'll bloody well take him or we don't go at all. You leave him there, trailing that cart—”

“All right. We'll cut him loose from the cart. But we can't—”

“You'll get him on board or I don't fly this plane out.”

“Have some sense, man,” Hacket said. “I'm very sympathetic about animals, but, damn it, there's a limit.”

If I hadn't been so tensed-up maybe I'd have seen his point. But George was something more to me than just a mule. He'd got me out of Santo Francisco. Just as I wouldn't leave him in that building, so I wouldn't leave him now to be slowly burned up by the lava. I went down to the door and wrenched it open. And then Sansevino caught me by the arm. My flesh cringed at his touch. “You must not become upset over the mule. After all, what is a mule? He wouldn't be happy in the plane and anyway we could not get him into the fuselage.” He was talking to me like a child—like a doctor talking to a mental patient—and all my hate of the man flared up.

“How would you like to run from the lava trailing a broken cart and then at last be overrun by it and die, smelling your flesh burning?”

“You have too much imagination. That was always your trouble, my friend. You forget it is an animal, not a human being.”

I had a sudden wild idea of leaving the damnable little
doctor harnessed to the shafts of the cart. The mere thought of it brought a bubble of laughter to my lips. I heard him say, “Pull yourself together, Farrell.” He was speaking to me as though I were mad. I saw his eyes dilating in sudden fear of me, saw the way his nose had been twisted by Roberto's fist, and then I saw nothing as I drove my own fist with all the force I possessed into his face, lusting in the feel of pulping blood and tissue, the satisfying thud and crunch of impact and the beautiful pain of my knuckles. Then I was looking down at him, sprawled on the sheet-metal floor of the fuselage, his face broken and bloody. I was trembling. The details of the plane began to swim round in my eyeballs, nausea crept up my throat and into my brain. Very far away I heard my voice say, “Get the mule into the plane.” Hacket and Reece were staring at me. Then without a word they climbed out.