White Eagles Over Serbia Page 8

  “You won’t forget to ring up Belgrade,” he said, “and drop any messages there are for me in the ditch as per arrangement.” Porson nodded. “On my way back. We’ll start at midnight and be with you just before light.”

  Half-way between Mladenovac and Kralevo the road began to deteriorate into patches of pitted cobbles, and then as they swept round a wooded curve Porson said: “Now watch this.” The asphalt abruptly ceased and the car wallowed on to the pitted country road of dust and loose stones. A cloud arose round them which powdered the lower branches of the trees. “Look behind,” said Porson gleefully. Methuen did so. They were throwing up a smoke-screen of bilious yellow dust—impenetrable in volume. “God,” he said, with genuine pity for the Buick-load of police which followed them. “From here on they drop about a quarter of a mile behind,” said Porson gleefully. “Sometimes we annoy them by slowing up too.”

  Kralevo passed in a cloud and the note of the car changed as they headed across the plain for the mountain-range which now loomed up at them from the south; the river sprawled to the left of them gleaming green and yellow in the flat plain. The road and river converged slowly upon the looming shadowy gorge which marked the entrance to the Ibar valley. “Pretty soon now,” said Porson in a voice which betrayed an ill-controlled excitement. Methuen puffed quietly at his cigarette before tossing it out of the window.

  At the entrance of the sullen gorge, where the mountains rise to right and left, the road, railway and river, having conducted a seemingly endless flirtation, are suddenly squeezed together and pass through the narrow rock entrance side by side. Here the Ebar becomes swift, brown and turbid; giant poplars and willows, their roots gripping the shaly banks like knuckles, shade the whole length of the road. The air becomes dense with the smell of water, for several smaller rivers have cut their way through the mountain to empty themselves into the Ibar, and the crumbling rocky walls which flank the gorge are bursting with freshwater springs. The valley for all its gloom is alive with the ripple of bird-song which mingles with the thunder of the Ibar’s waters as they roar down towards Rashka.

  The railway looked like a toy. It had been cut in the side of the mountain and the tracks passed through a series of rock-tunnels each of which was closely guarded by pickets. Methuen saw the diminished figures of these guards walking along the stone parapet, stopping to gaze down curiously at the car as it passed. Each section of tunnel had its own patrol, and the soldiers lounged in the sun on the stone balconies, idly smoking or tossing pebbles into the swift waters of the Ibar below.

  “What about them?” said Methuen, and Porson said quickly: “The part where you jump is completely enclosed with greenery. They can’t see. Only when you climb the hill you’ll have to keep out of sight. Look, a train!”

  They heard a series of muffled shrieks and a heavy rumbling across the river. The guards came to life and took up position. The rumbling increased in volume and finally an absurdly toy-like train emerged from the rock-tunnel with a puff of grey smoke—as if it had been fired from the mouth of a gun. It rolled slowly across the balcony-like parapet, trailing a long banner of sooty dust and smoke, and with a catarrhal whistle plunged once more into the rock, its wheels making a hard resonant noise, as of a billiard ball being rolled across a stone floor. Sixty yards later, before the tail of the train had come into view on the first parapet, the engine emerged once more with another cough. “In and out of the rock,” said Porson, “like a needle in cloth.”

  “Hard work cutting that railway,” said Methuen with mild professional interest; the river looked too strong for any swimmer. “It’s well guarded,” said Porson, “though one good burst in a tunnel.…”

  They rolled onwards between the flickering crowns of the trees which reached up at the road from the river bank. Behind them the yellow cloud of dust volleyed away down the road reducing visibility to nothing. Yellowhammers and magpies frolicked in the trees, and here and there the stem rock-faces to their right stood back and fanned away into dome-like mountains, steeply clad with beech and fir, and showing small pockets of cultivation. A crumbling Frankish fortress dominated one height and Methuen caught the flicker of sunlight on something which might have been the barrel of a gun at the eastern corner. He had a small but powerful pair of glasses in his kit but there was no time to train them on this tempting target. “There’s a company of soldiers up in the fort,” said Porson. “They supply the pickets for the railway. Two machine-guns. Nothing heavier.”

  He was gradually reducing speed and the great car rolled effortlessly along the beautiful river road, in and out of the shadows thrown by the trees. They turned a corner and the fort was swallowed; and here the trees grew in great clusters, chestnut and eucalyptus raising their dusty crowns to the sky. “We’re coming to it,” said Porson; round the next corner there was a white milestone by a ruined signalman’s hut which was their marker. “All set,” said Methuen quietly and gripped his bed-roll as he let down the massive window of the car. “Do you see it?” The milestone climbed out of the mauve shadows of the rock-face and came towards them like a pointing finger. “Let her go. Good luck!” cried Porson. Methuen gave a heave and tossed his bed-roll into the ditch; then opening the door he plunged out after it into the deep grass, slipping and sliding to the bottom as the great car gathered speed and covered him in a cloud of pungent dust. Porson gave a hoot on the klaxon which echoed like the wild cry of some solitary bird among the rocks.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Lone Fisherman

  Methuen lay against the steep bank, his face pressed to the moist grass for what seemed hours. The noise of the Mercedes died away gradually and was replaced by the roaring of the Ibar in its stony bed. The cloud of dust thinned gradually and began to settle, while out of a neighbouring tree came the clear fluting notes of bird-song. He felt his own heart beating against the moist cool grass. Would the police car never come? He strained his ears for the sound of its engines; his heavy duffle coat was warm. A cricket chirped in the grass beside him. Then, after what seemed an age, he heard the whistle of the Buick’s engine which gradually increased. “They’re taking it pretty easily,” he said to himself. The car swept round the corner and he heard its radio playing a Viennese waltz. Then he was engulfed once more in the impenetrable wall of white dust and taking advantage of it he climbed to his feet, gathered up his bed-roll and galloped for the cover of the trees.

  Within a hundred yards of where he had jumped a narrow gorge opened at right-angles to the main river-gorge and here the swift and shallow Studenitsa river rolled and tumbled from a series of rock-balconies, covered with slippery moss, to join the larger river. The air was dense with spray, and the trees leaned out of the sheer cliff at all angles. The cover here was plentiful and good, and avoiding the mule-track, Methuen climbed deliberately up beside the river, slipping and sliding on the loose surface of leaf-mould, and pushing his way through the dense clusters of tree-ferns towards the summit, eight hundred feet above.

  The going was hard but in the clear spray-drenched air of the valley he felt his spirits rise. From time to time he paused for a breather, gazing from some small clearing of greenery to where the road below him ran like a white scar beside the black river. At one point he came out on a spur overlooking the mule-track and saw a group of peasants driving two ox-carts loaded with wood down towards the valley. As far as his memory served him, there were only two small hamlets along the Studenitsa river, and the only human activity apart from land cultivation centred about a sawmill which flanked the monastery at the summit. Here he had camped once beside the smooth river and fished away the better part of a summer with a Serbian friend. In the evening they had walked up to the sawmill to drink plum-brandy with the monks and peasants and to share the fishing gossip of the community. Here too they had experimented with different ways of cooking trout, and he remembered clearly the taste of fish baked in the sour cream called kaimak which serves the peasant for butter.

  But these memories did not
cause him to relax his vigilance and he moved along in the shadow of the fir trees, keeping the river in sight but never venturing out into the open. In half an hour he had reached the summit and here the river broadened with the valley, while the hills opened into deeply indented upland valleys traversed by delicious footpaths which circled the squares of luxuriant maize and the dappled hayfields which lay open to the afternoon sunlight.

  Here the oak forests ran down to the water’s edge and he could walk on grass richly studded with flowers. The world seemed empty of human beings. To the east a flock of sheep grazed without a shepherd who was doubtless fishing in the shadowy river below the sawmill. Here too he came upon orchards full of plum trees and hedges riotous with blackberries so large that in spite of himself he stopped to gather some. Away to the left, hidden by a shoulder of hill lay the monastery, and from this direction he could hear the whimper of a saw; but he gave it a wide berth and struck up the valley, guided by his memories of a summer he had believed forgotten. He himself was rather astonished by the accuracy of his memory, for in his enchanted valley nothing seemed to have changed. In the silence the river ran on with its gentle rattle of water stirring pebbles—a pearly shadow of sound against which the songs of the birds rose bright and poignant on the moist air. The hedges were thick with a variety of flowers, and his quick eye detected the presence of old friends, yellow snapdragon, sky-blue flax. Here the hills ran away in a series of verdant undulations to where, softly painted against the sky, the towering mountains of central Serbia rose, lilac and green and red; and in all this lovely country there were no signs of life, no mule-teams raising dust, no bands of armed men watching from the woods. It baffled him to imagine how Anson could have got himself into trouble here, the going was so easy, the points of visibility so many, the cover so good.

  The sun was still high enough to be hot and he was still sweating profusely from the steep climb, so he bathed his face in the icy river, and allowed himself a five-minute rest in a copse while he examined the hills around him with his glasses. There was little enough to interest him. Against one remote skyline he caught sight of oxen ploughing, and to the east he picked up a peasant house with pointed gables, but for the rest the world looked newly born: unpopulated. Yet here and there were large areas of maize and barley growing which argued the presence of husbandmen, and the sheep tinkled their way across the pastures to the north of him. High up in the cloudless June sky an eagle hovered. The light skirmishing wind blew puff-balls and bits of straw across the river.

  Around one wooded curve of the river he came upon a solitary monk fishing under a tree and was forced to climb the hill from the back in order not to pass him, but even he hardly communicated a sense of life to the landscape in which he sat so motionless, back against a tree, his rod propped between his knees. Perhaps he was sleeping. Methuen watched him for a while from a clump of maize-stalks hoping to see him hook a fish, but in vain. The river ran as smoothly under his line as the grass upon which he sat. From time to time a nut dropped off the tree into the water. “Dry fishing,” said Methuen to himself, “that’s the real ticket,” and scanned the dimpled waters to see what the fish were rising to: but this was the wildest self-indulgence and he pulled himself together.

  His objective was a series of fairly large caves in the opposite bank of the river where it entered a ravine of red and yellow conglomerate. Here he had sheltered once from the rain, and here he hoped to find a ready-made headquarters where he might dump his equipment before embarking on a methodical exploration of the range of hills. Accordingly he left the trees and waded across the water at a ford, and struck a narrow overgrown path which led him gradually upwards into the thick scrub which choked the entrance to the gorge.

  There were, as far as he could see, no other fishermen about and this was surprising for it was at this point that the Studenitsa river became really fishable. Two great prongs of stone bounded the water, and here for a good way the river itself seemed all but choked by a solid floor of branches which had been washed down from the mountains above, and which had been covered by a dense carpet of green moss. Here too were huge boulders against which the water raised itself in dark pools, thrown up to right and left of its course. Peering down into the inky recesses of these pools Methuen discerned the large shadows of fishes, lounging among the shadows. But he must not indulge himself in this way, he kept telling himself, as he followed the path along the precipitous sides of the ravine; at one point, from a turn in the track, a corner of the orchard where the monk had been fishing came into view. Methuen glanced back and saw the figure still sitting there, motionless.

  He turned and was about to address himself to the path when something about the immobility of the distant figure struck him, some preternatural stillness in the pose which had not altered by a hairbreadth this last hour. Overcome by a sudden impulse he threw his pack behind a bush and turned back on his tracks, running with long strides in his heavy boots down the hill, the scrub snatching at his ankles from either side. He emerged once more behind the hillock, and once more stalked the motionless fisherman.

  From the shade of a clump of thick bushes he threw a heavy stone into the stream beside him, disappearing from sight as he did so. The stone crashed into the water startling the fish but the figure of the lone fisherman did not move, and seeing this Methuen cocked his pistol in the shoulder-sling and raced down the slope to the water’s edge. He came up beside the figure and knelt down to stare into the dead face with a gradually dawning horror which seemed to communicate itself now to the whole of that silent landscape in which they found themselves, the living man and the dead one.

  There was a trickle of blood at his mouth and through the rents of the tattered surplice Methuen could see the cause—the slash of bullet-wounds. He had been shot from directly opposite where the pinewoods came down to the river forming a thick patch of cover. Perhaps he had been asleep, for the body was leaning back against the tree; at all events the sudden death which had come upon him had not disturbed the contemplative serenity of his pose. His rod was propped over a stone and the willow passed beneath his legs as he sat. Round his neck there was a placard on which had been written in clumsy letters: “Traitor”. He had, in fact, been nailed to this tree by bullets for all the world like the body of a jay is nailed to a bam door, as a warning. It was presumed that the passer-by would know to whom he had been a traitor, and who had extracted this extreme price for his treachery.

  Methuen was like a man awakening suddenly from a dream; the whole of this radiant pristine hill landscape became suddenly filled with shadows and omens. He put out his hand, falteringly, to touch the shoulder of the corpse—as one might put out one’s hand to touch a ghost, to see if it were really flesh and blood: and to his horror it slowly toppled over. The conical black hat rolled off into the water and was borne away as swiftly as the fishing-rod of willow. He was an old man, well past sixty. He looked horrible lying there in the sunlight in his tattered soutane.

  Methuen, after taking a sounding, crossed the river on a shelf of pebbles and once he was on the opposite bank tried to calculate the firing-position of the assassin. The grass was dense enough for footprints, but higher up the stone side of the bank defeated him. But it was not footprints he was looking for. He cast about like a bloodhound gradually worming his way up the steep bank, holding on to the bushes and hoisting himself up with the branches of trees. Every now and again he took a bearing on the fatal tree which faced him across the river, and after a quarter of an hour he judged himself to be approximately in the firing-position from which the old monk had been shot. He circled among the bushes and at last came upon what he sought—a pile of ejected cartridge-cases—lying at the foot of a fir tree. Turning them over in his fingers he recognized them as the type which is used to feed a sub-machine-gun.

  He slipped them into his pocket and after a last glance at the fateful tree with the figure sprawled under it, turned back into the bushes and resumed his journey in the directi
on of the ravine, full of thoughtfulness. Nor did he turn aside to busy himself with speculations about fishing in those tempting pools, for all of a sudden the woods around seemed to have become peopled by an army of invisible eyes which watched his every movement. This brief attack of nerves he withstood with equanimity; he had often experienced it at the outset of a dangerous operation. But he was grateful in a way for the incident of the dead fisherman as it had awoken him from the feeling of false security into which he had been lulled by the landscape.

  He retrieved his pack and followed the twisting path above the river for a few hundred yards until he came to a spur shaded by a huge walnut tree which cast an inky shadow over the cliff; somewhere in this shadow was the entrance to a cave, and he quickened his steps to reach it. The entrance lay at an angle to the main cliff-wall, admirably camouflaged by scrub and the shadow of the tree.

  Delighted to find his memory still accurate, he was about to enter the cave-mouth, pistol in hand lest it should already be occupied by a man or an animal, when a thin hissing made him recoil. An enormous yellow viper, flattened among its own dusty coils, barred the entrance. Methuen paused, squinting at it along the sights of his revolver, reluctant to start the tenancy of his new headquarters by firing a shot. The viper hissed once again and its forked tongue flickered in its wicked little head. Methuen stood for a whole minute reflecting. In his heavy boots he had little enough to fear from it and from his memories of the cave he knew that there was a high stone platform which could be used as a bed. If he could live and let live: or rather if the viper could live and let live.…