The Hill of the Red Fox (22 page)

He was not a big man; in fact, he was rather small and sparely built, but the power of his personality was such that it seemed to magnify his physical stature. He had deep-set grey eyes and a broad, humorous mouth, and an eager, bird-like way of holding his head a little on one side. He was wearing an old tweed suit with leather inserts patched on the elbows, and leather cuffs, and a soft shirt and plain woollen tie. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that he was a sort of super policeman, except for his unmistakable air of authority and those keen grey eyes. I had an uneasy feeling that he could see through to my backbone.

“Well, young Cameron, sit down,” he said. His voice was
surprisingly
deep for so small a man and free from any exaggerated accent.

When I sat down I noticed that the coffee table was littered with dozens of fish hooks and flies.

Sir Reginald saw my eyes on them and said, smiling a little, “You and your friends seem to have done all my work for me, so I might as well do a spot of fishing while I’m in Skye.”

I mumbled something, and he said, “D’you like fishing?”

I told him that Duncan Mòr had taught me how to fish.

“Duncan MacDonald, eh?” was all he said.

I nodded, feeling a lump rising in my throat at the mention of his name.

“I would have liked to have had the honour of meeting your friend MacDonald,” he said slowly. He paused and lit a cigarette, leaning back in the chair and blowing smoke rings, his eyes on the
ceiling. “You know he was shot at very close range,” he went on, his eyes still on the ceiling. “The doctors tell me that any normal man would have been dead within seconds, but Duncan MacDonald stayed on his feet long enough to put paid to Cassell. That was a man for you, young Cameron. He must have had the heart of a lion.”

“Duncan Mòr wasn’t afraid of anything,” I said, keeping my eyes down, afraid of making a fool of myself.

“Tell me about him,” said Sir Reginald simply. “How you came to meet him. How you got involved in this affair. Everything.”

I started off in a halting fashion, and then, as my confidence grew, I became absorbed in the telling of the tale and almost forgot that the man I was speaking to was the chief of MI5. I told him my story from the very beginning, exactly as I have set it down here, and he listened without a word, but his alert grey eyes never left my face.

When I had finished, he said reflectively, “It makes a good story. Major Cassell — or Colonel Zaborin of the Russian Military Intelligence, to give him his real name — was a very clever man. He succeeded in fooling us for a long time, but it never occurred to him that he could be out-witted by a boy and a bunch of crofters. It’s the old story of the professional despising the amateur. We were always a nation of amateurs, young Cameron, and I hope to God we always will be. I shouldn’t be saying this, but it has always been the amateurs who have pulled us through.

“Of course, we weren’t asleep. After Ransome disappeared
without
trace, we had Hunt and Reuter watched day and night. Our agent succeeded in sticking to Hunt and tracked him as far as Lochailort. Unfortunately, it was a case of the watcher being watched, and you know what happened to him. He didn’t live to tell his story.”

“There’s just one thing I’ve never understood, sir,” I said hesitantly. “Why didn’t your agent let me know that Hunt was at Achmore Lodge, instead of writing Hunt at the Hill of the Red Fox?”

“The answer to that one is simple,” replied Sir Reginald. “Our agent wasn’t even aware of the existence of Achmore Lodge. You must remember we were working in the dark. Our information was of the sketchiest. We knew that Ransome and a member of the
Foreign Office were working in Russia for the Soviet Government, and that Russian agents had succeeded in smuggling them out of the country. The one real scrap of information that we succeeded in picking up was that the leader of the Soviet espionage group went under the code name of Red Fox.

“Well then, to go back to our agent who was trailing Hunt. He knew that the train was bound for Mallaig. It was logical to assume that Hunt was making for a rendezvous, prior to leaving the country, and what better place for that rendezvous than the Island of Skye? If it were Skye, then Hunt must be making his getaway by sea. For Skye, mark you, although it is only fifty miles long, has a coastline that stretches for hundreds of miles. A long, lonely coastline.

“I think our agent must have borrowed a map from somebody on the train. A good proportion of the passengers would be going to Skye, and a fair number of them would be climbers and hikers — people who always carry maps with them. His next step, unless I am greatly mistaken, would be to study the map — particularly the coastline — to look for a likely place for getting a man away unobserved. It is my
opinion
that he saw the hill marked on the map as the Hill of the Red Fox. A hill that was only a few miles from a bay in an isolated part of the island. I think he took a chance on its name. It might have been a coincidence. On the other hand — and as events proved — it might not.

“Put yourself in our agent’s shoes, young Cameron, when he discovered that he, too, had a man on his tail. He had to shake him off, or his life wasn’t worth tuppence, and at the same time he had to try to get a message through, in case the worst happened. For all he knew, Hunt was guarded by several men. He could trust nobody. So he passed a message to you — a schoolboy. Who would
suspect
a schoolboy of carrying a message on behalf of MI5? Nobody. Unfortunately” — and here his eyes twinkled — “or perhaps I should say ‘fortunately,’ instead of handing the message over, you acted in a rather unorthodox fashion.”

I had had a question on my lips all the time he was speaking, and when he paused to light a cigarette, I presented it.

“But how did Dr Reuter get to Skye without being traced, sir?
You said he was being watched day and night.”

Sir Reginald grimaced. “We were fooled by a very simple ruse,” he said wryly. “Reuter hired a car from Marwell to London. He paid it off near Euston Station and went into a café. Our agent followed him to the café and took a corner table that commanded a view of the entire room. Reuter had coffee and biscuits, then he went to the lavatory. As you know, Reuter was an easy man to keep an eye on; he had a very distinctive limp and he was carrying a shiny new briefcase. Well, a limping man came out of the toilet carrying the same briefcase, paid his bill and took a cab to Victoria Station. From Victoria he went by train to Dover with our man hanging grimly on to his tail.

“Of course, you have probably guessed by now that the man on the Dover train wasn’t Dr Reuter at all. He was a double, made up to look like Reuter, wearing identical clothes and simulating Reuter’s limp. The switchover took place in the café’s toilet. Doubtless, once the coast was clear, Reuter made for Euston Station and followed the same process as Ransome and Hunt. Believe me, Colonel Zaborin was a most thorough organizer. I’ve been through all the documents we found in Achmore Lodge, and the whole operation was planned with military precision.”

“Did you get all the proof you wanted, sir?” I asked.

Sir Reginald nodded. “In addition to the documents we found, Reuter has made a full statement, admitting everything. It seems that the Russians were holding his wife as a hostage, although if he is to be believed, she was a fanatical Communist and had been urging him to join her. Of course, we didn’t know that his wife was living; he had told us she had died in a Nazi concentration camp.

“One of the three men who were holding out in the bothy has since died of his wounds, but the other two have made complete confessions. They were British-born Communists, and will pay the full penalty.

“The only local man involved was Murdo Beaton. He was paid handsomely for taking them out by coble to the submarine. The Sound of Raasay is a dangerous stretch of water and a local man was needed to handle the boat. Not only that, if they had been seen, the presence of a local man would have disarmed suspicion. Needless to
say, when Zaborin’s mission was completed, Beaton would have been disposed of.”

“Has he … has he been found yet?” It was difficult to put such a question into words when it concerned somebody you had known and lived with.

“No, he has not, nor is he likely to be,” said Sir Reginald firmly. “There is no doubt that he was killed in the explosion on the bridge. No man could have survived that. His body was swept out to sea, and I am told that the off-shore currents are such that it is unlikely to be recovered.”

I could not repress a shiver, thinking how close I had come to sharing the same fate.

Sir Reginald went on to give me some more
information
; information that I am not at liberty to repeat here. When he had sworn me to secrecy, he rose to his feet and stood looking down at me.

“You have lost a good friend, young Cameron,” he said slowly, “and unless I am much mistaken you will be lucky if you ever meet his equal again. I cannot speak on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, but I can tell you that when I return to London I shall be making my report directly to the Home Secretary. I shall make the strongest possible recommendation that the George Cross be awarded posthumously to Duncan MacDonald.”

“I just can’t believe that Duncan Mòr is dead,” I cried.

I suppose wise men think alike whether they be humble crofters or powerful men high up in the counsels of the nation, because Sir Reginald Gower’s reply was much the same as one that Hector MacLeod had made to me.

“The brave don’t die, Alasdair,” he said gravely. “Their deeds out-live us all.”

Neither of us spoke again, although he walked with me out of the hotel to the waiting car. I was grateful for his silence. I knew that, although he had never met Duncan Mòr, he knew him as well as any man.

A chill wind blew from the north-west sending the white clouds scudding across the sky and lifting the waters of the Sound in an angry swell. From where I was standing on top of Cnoc an t-Sithein, I could see the waves breaking over Rudha nam Braithrean in drenching clouds of spray.

Not a spade would break the ground in Achmore this morning; not a peat would be stacked, or a blade of grass cut. And it would be the same in all the townships for miles around. It would be the same in Garos across the moor, and Rigg, that lonely township watched over by the Old Man of Storr, and Ellishadder of the little loch.

But I could see people on the road. Some of them in twos; some of them in little groups of three and four. All of them making their way to the house by the river in Mealt. They came from the north and they came from the south. Over an hour ago I had seen some of them coming from the west, tiny black dots on the green of the hill as they made their way through Bealach na Leacaich from the Long Glen.

I scrambled down from Cnoc an t-Sithein and ran back to the cottage. All the men of Achmore were waiting for me, looking strangely unlike themselves in their blue suits and stiff white collars.

Hector MacLeod took a large gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and studied it.

“It is time we were making a move,” he said gravely, and with that we set off.

I shall never forget the sight that met my eyes when we passed through the gate in the dyke at Mealt and looked down to the river. There must have been over two hundred men gathered around Duncan Mòr’s house.

Hector MacLeod led the way through the waiting men,
shaking
hands here and there when he spotted a familiar face, and we
followed him into the kitchen. I sat on the bench, with the men of Achmore on either side of me, looking across at the photograph of the crew of the
Empire Rose
which hung above the mantelpiece.

Somebody must have tidied the room. There were no old coats draped over the back of the bench and the table under the window had been cleared of snaring wire and tools. The minister, a small, white-haired man, was leaning on the table looking out of the window.

More and more men filed into the kitchen, standing closely
shoulder
to shoulder, and I could see through the open door that the lobby was also packed with men. Nobody spoke. There was only the sound of breathing and the clearing of throats and an occasional cough.

The minister turned round from the window and clasped his hands, and heads were bowed as he said a prayer in Gaelic. My eyes were still closed when the voice of the precentor, a deep bass, launched into a psalm. The psalm was taken up by all the men in the kitchen and those in the lobby and all those outside. I did not
understand
a word of it, but I have never felt such sadness as was contained in that psalm. The voices rose and fell, rose and fell; the sound
sobbing
away like the wind in the dark corries of the Storr, and rose again, like the crash of the sea against the black basaltic rocks.

Then the minister read from the Bible, his voice slow and
sonorous
, rising and falling; always rising and falling, like the murmur of the everlasting sea. He closed the Bible reverently, and once again the deep voice of the precentor took up the words of a psalm.

The voices slowly ebbed away into silence, and Hector MacLeod urged me to my feet and I followed the rest of the men out of the house. The polished oak coffin was brought outside and laid across two chairs and the men of Achmore took up position on either side of it. All the other men walked up the croft in a column two abreast. After they had gone about twenty yards, the first six men halted and let the column proceed between them. They stood a few yards apart, facing one another, and I saw the same thing happen again and again, until the column was out of sight on the track leading to the main road.

Hector MacLeod took the cord from the head of the coffin and placed it in my hand.

“The son should lead the father,” he said quietly, “and Duncan Mòr was a second father to you, Alasdair Beag. It is right that you should lead him on his last journey.”

And with that the men of Achmore, three on each side, lifted the coffin from the chairs. With myself leading the way, the cord clutched tightly in my hand, we made our way slowly and solemnly up the croft.

When we came abreast of the first six men they relieved the bearers, and the men of Achmore took up their place in front of me, walking two abreast. Another twenty yards and the next six men took over, and so it went on, every man in his turn having the honour of bearing Duncan Mòr.

Down below me, where the ground sloped away from the road, I could see the river surging forward in its eager rush to the sea, and beyond the river the curving line of hills of the Storr Range. Cattle were grazing by the side of the track, and an old woman in black stood outside the door of her cottage on the other side of the river, watching that solemn procession.

And every so often another six men stepped forward to relieve the bearers. Old men and young men, some of them not much older than myself. Men I had never seen before. They came from Aird and Breackry and Culnacnock; from Digg and Ellishadder and Flodigarry. They came from Garos and Hungladder and Idrigil; from Kendram and Linicro and Maligar. They came from North Duntulm and Ord and Portree; from Rigg and Stenscholl and Totescore. They came from Uig and Valtos and distant Waternish. They came to carry Duncan Mòr and no King ever made his last journey like that.

When we came in sight of the little graveyard above Rudha nam Braithrean, the men formed up in a long, long column on either side of the path. I never saw the faces on either side of me, for my eyes were blinded with tears.

I stood by the side of the grave, no longer conscious of the people around me, the tears streaming down my face. Hector MacLeod took my arm and I did not know what to say when I saw that his cheeks were wet. We stood with heads bowed until it was all over, then we made our way back to Achmore, neither of us speaking.

I left him at his house, and he said, “You will never see his like again, Alasdair Beag; no, not if you roam the length and breadth of the wide world.”

I crept into the cottage and changed my clothes. I could hear my mother and Mairi talking in the kitchen, but I did not want them to see me so I tiptoed across the lobby to the door. Once outside I did not stop running until I had reached Cnoc an t-Sithein.

I lay back on the green turf, shading my eyes against the sun and watching the white clouds go chasing across the sky, for all the world like galleons in full sail. How often I had come to this green mound when I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

The Hill of the Fairies! If only it were true! If only I could
whisper
my wish to a little man decked all in green, and have it granted. What would we not do together on a day like this, Duncan Mòr and I. North to the Quiraing, south to the Storr, west to Loch Liuravay. We would go striding through the heather, and if you have never footed it through the Highland heather you have never lived. Not for us the long miles on weary roads, but the joyous tramp over the moors, where the miles are forgotten and there is only the scent of bog myrtle and wild thyme and the spring of the heather forever urging your feet onwards.

But there was no little man in green. He belonged to the peat fire flame and the long winter nights when tales are told.

I got to my feet and made my way across the moor to Mealt. Without any conscious thought on my part, my feet followed the track to the hill. I looked straight ahead into the dark face of Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh Ruaidh, topped by a delicate white circlet of cloud.

I crossed the river before I came to Loch Cuithir and made my way up the south side of the basin of the loch. All around me
towered
an immense wall of rock, broken here and there by shelves of green, speckled with the white dots of grazing sheep.

I climbed up the hillside by the banks of a tumbling burn until I came to the Achmore fank. I sat down with my back against the wall of the fank, my arms clasped around my knees, looking across the
moor to Achmore with the Island of Rona beyond and the hills of Applecross in the distance.

I thought of the day I had spent at the shearing. There had been laughter that day; the hills had resounded to it, and snatches of song, and the constant bleating of sheep and the steady snip-snip of shears. But now all was silent. The fank was empty and the men were gone; one of them never to return. I looked upwards and my eyes were drawn to the sheer north face of Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh Ruaidh.

It happened like that. One moment I was looking across the moor to Achmore, thinking of making my way back, and the next I had decided to climb the Hill of the Red Fox. Perhaps all the really important decisions are made like that, in as little time as it takes you to turn your head.

I scrambled to my feet and pressed on up the hill. When the ground became too steep for a direct assault, I went on in a series of zigzag paths, as I had often seen Duncan Mòr do. It took the strain off my legs and I made quicker progress for all that.

When I was more than half-way up I paused for breath, and turned to look back. I could see as far as the fertile plain of Staffin with its clusters of white houses and green crofts and Flodigarry Island lying off the coast. Looking across the moor I made out the winding course of Staffin River and followed it with my eyes to the bay. Away to the north I could see the whole serrated ridge of the Quiraing, and from where I was perched Loch Mealt, that tiny loch separated from the Sound by a narrow neck of land, looked like an inlet from the sea.

On and on I went up the steep sides of the hill. It was like
climbing
up the inside of a gigantic bowl, for the hills swept round in a tremendous, overhanging wall encircling Loch Cuithir. The only way to get to the top of the ridge was through the gap formed by Bealach na Leacaich.

As I got higher the hillside became barer and I had to scramble over patches of scree. Once, hesitating too long to secure a foothold, I slipped and started a miniature landslide. I suppose I only slid down for about fifteen or twenty feet, but I was badly frightened. I watched a boulder I had dislodged go hurtling hundreds of feet
down the hillside until it crashed against a massive rock and shattered in fragments.

I went on again, stepping quickly and lightly across the screes, the way Duncan Mòr had taught me. One light toehold, then a few quick steps before the gravel and stone could start to slide beneath my feet. Up and up I went until it seemed that I could go no higher for I was under a protruding lip of bare rock fully twenty feet high.

I glanced down and my head reeled. It seemed impossible that I could have climbed so high. I felt like a fly on a windowpane; if I were to take one foot off the ground surely I must go crashing down. Forcing myself to keep my eyes up, I saw the dip in the ridge of the hill formed by the Bealach. It lay to the south of me, and the only way I could reach it was by scrambling along under the overhanging wall of rock.

It was easier crossing the screes now that the angle of the hill was so acute, for I could balance myself with my right hand. I was afraid to look down, but I carried on doggedly, sliding on to my knees now and then, but always moving forward.

At last I came out through the Bealach, leg weary and sweating for all the cold wind that whistled around my ears. I was on top of the ridge of hills. On the west side the ground fell away in a gentle slope to Glenhinisdale. I sat on top of an old drystone wall and not even stout Cortés could have gazed around with more wonderment than I.

I was facing south and on my right lay the long valley of Glenhinisdale, cut by the silver ribbon of the River Hinisdal. I could see Loch Snizort and Loch Snizort Beag, Loch Greshornish, the slender chain of the Ascrib Islands, and even distant Waternish Point. In the far distance I made out the flat tops of MacLeod’s Tables and Loch Bracadale.

I looked round to my left, across the Sound of Raasay, and saw the blue hills of the Outer Isles topped by a long roller of white cloud. The full range of the Quiraing curved away to the north.

For all my tiredness I tramped swiftly across the green springy turf on the ridge. The wind cut through my thin clothes like a knife, chilling and invigorating me at the same time. There were sheep grazing on the ridge and they lifted their heads and gazed at me,
then wheeled round and galloped off as I drew near. Two black hooded crows circled slowly overhead then winged their way south.

The ridge narrowed as I neared the summit of Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh Ruaidh, and on the north side there was a gigantic cleft in the rock. I crawled forward on my hands and knees and lay flat on my stomach looking down the gap in the rock. It was as if it had been split with a giant axe, and I gazed down a sheer precipice to Loch Cuithir over a thousand feet below. I crawled back to the south side of the ridge, where there was a gentle slope to the moors, before I went on again.

I ran the last few yards to the summit of the Hill of the Red Fox and threw myself face down on the close cropped turf. The whole of Trotternish was spread out below me. I could see the River Mealt winding through the flats on the start of its long journey to the sea, and all the townships for miles around.

I don’t know how long I lay there. The sky was clear when I reached the summit and the mist was settling on the Storr when I turned to go. All I know is that I no longer felt lonely and miserable. I had climbed the Hill of the Red Fox, just as Duncan Mòr had said I should, and I felt a wild, unreasoning surge of joy.

It happened when I was making my way down the south side of the ridge. People say that the light plays strange tricks with your eyes in the hills, that the shadows falling on the bare rock can take on the shape of a man. Perhaps what they say is true. I only know that I suddenly lifted my eyes and saw him.

He was standing on a ledge a little way above me, the wind
rippling
his grey hair. I saw the flash of his teeth as he smiled and the sweep of his arm as he waved to me. I shouted his name and started forward, and then the sun came through the clouds and the
shadows
lifted and I was gazing at the bare rock above the ledge.