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of authority. He simply did not care. He wanted nothing they could give him
and was afraid of nobody. Zamatev used him, needed him for this sort of thing,
and had often said that Alekhin, when he wished, could simply vanish into wild
country and lose himself. Just as this American seemed to have done.
He slapped his gloves against his thigh, irritated. He glanced around him,
then started forward, his own eyes searching.
What exactly did a man look for, a tracker like Alekhin? Surely, there was
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nothing Alekhin could see that he could not.
But he could find nothing on this barren, rocky slope. He looked ahead, and
along the ridge he saw jagged, serrated rocks with occasional towers, almost
like battlements in some places. Directly before him, there was a grove of
wild, wind-torn trees looking like a clutch of hags with their wild hair
blowing in the wind. Only there wasn't any wind, just those ragged trees.
He stepped carefully, for a misstep on this broken rock could give a man a
nasty fall.
What did Alekhin mean that he was finished? That his career was at an end?
Hell, if all went well he would be a general before the year was out! He knew
he was in line for promotion and knew that the right people had been spoken to
and were interested.
He smiled, mildly amused. After all, so little had changed since the time of
the Tsars! Only the names had changed, and instead of the old nobility you had
the Party members, and in place of the Grand Dukes you had the Politburo.
Only, the Grand Dukes had usually had less power.
Gorbachev had more ability than most of the Tsars, and hopefully he would do
something to build Russia internally before it came apart at the seams. But it
was hard for any man to move against the sheer inertia of entrenched civil
servants who did not want change and feared to lose their privileges.
Wild and treacherous as these mountains were, they possessed a rare kind of
beauty. He was glad he was momentarily alone. To truly know the mountains, one
should go to meet them as one would meet a sweetheart, alone.
Alone as he was now. Colonel Rukovsky looked off across incredible distances
behind him. Far below he could see a helicopter setting down. Three trucks
were tailing up the very bad road, looking no larger than ants, although he
knew the tops of their radiators were as high as his head.
Whatever else the American's escape had done, it had brought him here to this
unbelievable beauty, which otherwise he might never have seen.
A cold wind blew along the mountain, and he shivered. There were ghosts
riding this wind, strange ghosts born of this strange, almost barren land. Far
to the west and against the horizon was the Verkhoyansk Range.
He paused, hearing a bird in the brush near the larch. It was a nutcracker;
he remembered them from his boyhood.
What had Alekhin meant, saying he was through? It was absurd, but the words
rankled. They stuck like burrs in his thoughts, and he could not rid himself
of that dire warning.
He was near the haglike trees he had seen, and close up they looked even
wilder. One of the trunks was battered and beaten, struck hard by something
until the bark had been shattered into threads. Suddenly he remembered a
brother officer, a hunter of big game, who had told him of wild rams battering
such trees, butting them again and again in simple exuberance and lust for
combat.
He paused again to catch his breath. The altitude was high and the air was
thin as well as being crisp and cold.
Far off, he thought he heard a shout. Looking around, he could see nothing.
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Then, high up on the mountain, Alekhin appeared, pointing. Rukovsky ran
forward, looking across the canyon.
His men were lined out, moving in their skirmish line across that vast field
of snow above the canyon's edge.
Then, from somewhere down in the gorge, came a shot.
Colonel Rukovsky saw then a sight he would never forget. His men, twenty-odd
of them, were on the field of snow when the shot sounded in the depths of the
canyon. An instant of trembling silence when the sound of the shot racketed
away along the rocky cliffs, and then horrified, he saw that whole vast field
of snow start to move!
There was an instant of frozen stillness as the snow moved, and then his men
scattered, some running forward, some running back, a few crouching in place
looking for something they could grip. And there was nothing. The whole
mountainside seemed to be moving, and then, with a thunderous roar, the
snowfield gathered speed and swept toward the rim of the gorge.
Spilling over the lip, it fell like a Niagara of snow into the vast depths
below!
One moment he saw his men, swinging arms wildly, fighting to stem the tide;
then over they went, and far away as he was he seemed to hear their screams,
screams that he would never forget. And one of those who fell was Captain
Obruchev, engaged to his sister.
After the roar of the avalanche, silence.
Chapter 38
Major Joseph Makatozi crouched beside a giant spruce, looking up the canyon.
He was sheltered from the wind, always a major consideration, and his coat
made from the hide of a mountain goat was warm. The pelage of the mountain
goat-is the finest, softest, and undoubtedly the warmest of any animal. Being
white, it blended well with the occasional patches of snow. His pants were
made of the same material.
From beside the spruce, he had seen the patrol start across the snowfield.
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