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‘Is it indeed?’ said Major Smythe.
‘Yes, and below it there is a small glacier. Very pretty, but we will climb round it. There are many crevasses.’
‘Is that so?’ said Major Smythe thoughtfully. He examined the back of Oberhauser’s head, now beaded with sweat. After all, he was only a bloody Kraut, or at any rate of that ilk. What would one more or less matter? It was all going to be as easy as falling off a log. The only thing that worried Major Smythe was getting the bloody stuff down the mountain. He decided that he would somehow sling the bars across his back. After all, he could slide it most of the way in its ammunition box or whatnot.
It was a long, dreary hack up the mountain and when they were above the tree line the sun came up and it was very hot. And now it was all rock and scree, and their long zigzags sent boulders and rubble rumbling and crashing down the slope that got ever steeper as they approached the final crag, grey and menacing, that lanced away into the blue above them. They were both naked to the waist and sweating so that the sweat ran down their legs into their boots, but, despite Oberhauser’s limp, they kept up a good pace, and when they stopped for a drink and a swab down at a hurtling mountain stream Oberhauser congratulated Major Smythe on his fitness. Major Smythe, his mind full of dreams, said curtly and untruthfully that all English soldiers were fit, and they went on.
The rock face wasn’t difficult. Major Smythe had known that it wouldn’t be or the climbers’ hut couldn’t have been built on the shoulder. Toe holds had been cut in the face and there were occasional iron pegs hammered into crevices. But he couldn’t have found the more difficult traverses alone and he congratulated himself on deciding to bring a guide.
Once, Oberhauser’s hand, testing for a grip, dislodged a great slab of rock, loosened by years of snow and frost, and sent it crashing down the mountain. Major Smythe suddenly thought about noise. ‘Many people around here?’ he asked as they watched the boulder hurtle down into the tree line.
‘Not a soul until you get near Kufstein,’ said Oberhauser. He gestured along the arid range of high peaks. ‘No grazing. Little water. Only the climbers come here. And since the begi
They skirted the blue-fanged glacier below the final climb to the shoulder. Major Smythe’s careful eyes took in the width and depth of the crevasses. Yes, they would fit! Directly above them, perhaps a hundred feet up under the lee of the shoulder, were the weather-beaten boards of the hut. Major Smythe measured the angle of the slope. Yes, it was almost a straight dive down. Now or later? He guessed later. The line of the last traverse wasn’t very clear.
They were up at the hut in five hours flat. Major Smythe said he wanted to relieve himself and wandered casually along the shoulder to the east, paying no heed to the beautiful panoramas of Austria and Bavaria that stretched away on either side of him perhaps fifty miles into the heat haze. He counted his paces carefully. At exactly 120 there was the cairn of stones, a loving memorial, perhaps, to some long-dead climber. Major Smythe, knowing differently, longed to tear it apart there and then. Instead he took out his Webley & Scott, squinted down the barrel and twirled the cylinder. Then he walked back.
It was cold up there at ten thousand feet or more, and Oberhauser had got into the hut and was busy preparing a fire. Major Smythe controlled his horror at the sight. ‘Oberhauser,’ he said cheerfully, ‘come out and show me some of the sights. Wonderful view up here.’
‘Certainly, Major.’ Oberhauser followed Major Smythe out of the hut. Outside he fished in his hip pocket and produced something wrapped in paper. He undid the paper to reveal a hard, wrinkled sausage. He offered it to the Major. ‘It is only what we call a “Soldat”,’ he said shyly. ‘Smoked meat. Very tough but good.’ He smiled. ‘It is like what they eat in Wild West films. What is the name?’
‘“Biltong”,’ said the Major. Then – and later this had slightly disgusted him – he said, ‘Leave it in the hut. We will share it later. Come over here. Can we see I
Oberhauser bobbed into the hut and out again. The Major fell in just behind him as he talked, pointing out this or that distant church spire or mountain peak.
They came to the point above the glacier. Major Smythe drew his revolver and, at a range of two feet, fired two bullets into the base of Ha
The impact of the bullets knocked the guide clean off his feet and over the edge. Major Smythe craned over. The body hit twice only and then crashed on to the glacier. But not on to its fissured origin. Halfway down and on a patch of old snow! ‘Hell!’ said Major Smythe.
The deep boom of the two shots that had been batting to and fro among the mountains died away. Major Smythe took one last look at the black splash on the white snow and hurried off along the shoulder. First things first!
He started on the top of the cairn, working as if the devil was after him, throwing the rough, heavy stones indiscriminately down the mountain to right or left. His hands began to bleed, but he hardly noticed. Now there were only two feet or so left, and nothing! Bloody nothing! He bent to the last pile, scrabbling feverishly. And then! Yes! The edge of a metal box. A few more rocks away and there was the whole of it! A good old grey Wehrmacht ammunition box with the trace of some lettering still on it. Major Smythe gave a groan of joy. He sat down on a hard piece of rock and his mind went orbiting through Bentleys, Monte Carlo, penthouse flats, Cartier’s, champagne, caviare and, incongruously, but because he loved golf, a new set of Henry Cotton irons.
Drunk with his dreams, Major Smythe sat there looking at the grey box for a full quarter of an hour. Then he glanced at his watch and got briskly to his feet. Time to get rid of the evidence. The box had a handle at each end. Major Smythe had expected it to be heavy. He had mentally compared its probable weight with the heaviest thing he had ever carried – a forty-pound salmon he had caught in Scotland just before the war – but the box was more than double that weight, and he was only just able to heave it out of its last bed of rocks on to the thin alpine grass. He slung his handkerchief through one of the handles and dragged it clumsily along the shoulder to the hut. Then he sat down on the stone doorstep, and, his eyes never leaving the box, tore at Oberhauser’s smoked sausage with his strong teeth and thought about getting his fifty thousand pounds – for that was the figure he put it at – down the mountain and into a new hiding place.
Oberhauser’s sausage was a real mountaineer’s meal – tough, well fatted and strongly garlicked. Bits of it stuck uncomfortably between Major Smythe’s teeth. He dug them out with a sliver of matchstick and spat them on the ground. Then his intelligence-wise mind came into operation and he meticulously searched among the stones and grass, picked up the scraps and swallowed them. From now on he was a criminal – as much a criminal as if he had robbed a bank and shot the guard. He was a cop turned robber. He must remember that! It would be death if he didn’t – death instead of Cartier’s. All he had to do was to take infinite pains. He would take those pains, and by God they would be infinite! Then, for ever after, he would be rich and happy. After taking ridiculously minute trouble to eradicate any sign of entry into the hut, he dragged the ammunition box to the edge of the last rock face and, aiming it away from the glacier, tipped it, with a prayer, into space.
The grey box, turning slowly in the air, hit the first steep slope below the rock face, bounded another hundred feet and landed with an iron clang in some loose scree and stopped. Major Smythe couldn’t see if it had burst open. He didn’t mind one way or the other. The mountain might as well do it for him!