He took off at once — took off at his tracker’s half-trot, and so confidently that they simply watched him. He took off along the left walkway, carrying his skis, and found it sloped upwards a little, and gave it half a minute, and got off it.
He felt over the edge with a ski and found it was a fair drop now. He sat and found he was sitting on the equipment belt. The ski holster was there, and a spare magazine for the gun, and a line and pick, and a hunting knife. He eased himself off them and dropped to the ice, and got into his skis.
He skied out seventy paces and looked back and could see nothing. The sensors had picked him up at roughly two hundred metres. That was the range he had to stay inside. They had seen him go left. Now he went right. He went fast for two hundred paces and decided he had better turn in and keep contact with the island to be sure he wouldn’t overshoot it.
The last twenty paces he took slowly until he could just make out the presence of the massive bulk in the fog. Then he continued alongside it, keeping contact. It took barely three minutes to reach what seemed to be the end. He went in closer, and found that it was. The great hump had turned inwards. He followed its fretted shape round until it turned again and straightened out, and he knew he was on the other side.
Now he took off again, long loping paces, a hundred, two hundred, very fast.
If the rock went a kilometre, another two hundred paces would get him to the middle. But he knew now he wasn’t going there. The other island was opposite — just four kilometres away, with the international line only half that distance. He could go for it immediately — a mile and a quarter! One frantic dash, and he’d be over it. Safe.
Suddenly, without further thought, he did it: left the rock behind him and headed out into the strait.
He had made fifty paces when the sirens went off.
His first thought was that he had set them off.
But almost at once a tremendous whooshing and roaring in the air told him otherwise. The helicopters were back. And this side of the island. Not only helicopters — vehicles, a confused uproar of vehicles, coming from the left and from the right.
But going where? Confused, disorientated, he stopped, trying to make out where.
Several events, at this time, were taking place simultaneously, the details of every one of them changing by the minute.
The general was changing them, in Tchersky.
He sat with two telephones, talking to the island and the airbase. A few minutes before, the hour almost up, he had confirmed his order: all forces to be ready to transfer the search to the other side of the island. Were the vehicles in contact? Yes, in contact. And the helicopters? All in contact.
Then go.
And almost immediately, chaos, confusion, contradiction.
The surface force reported they had sighted and were pursuing a man, who had turned back to the mainland.
The island reported the arrival of a tracker, requesting flares for the pursuing surface force.
The surface force reported they had requested no flares and sent no tracker. But they were missing one man.
Hoarse now, the general rapidly took a grip on the situation. Was the tracker still on the island? Yes, he was there; with a platoon of patrol jeeps waiting on the beach platform below.
Then hold him. Hold him at once. Report back at once.
And at once the report back. The tracker was not now on the beach platform. Two minutes ago he had gone on an urgent mission to inspect the defences at the north point of the island.
The general, his ears singing, absorbed this information; also, on the map, the distance to the international line. The man could be there in minutes. But not in two minutes.
Abandon the search.
This was the first change of plan.
All jeeps at once to the international line. Every available man to go there. The island’s helicopters, the air force helicopters, the surface force — all to proceed there at speed. All personnel to disembark and form a chain, blocking access to the opposite island. The man to be brought down on sight — disabled, legs shot to pieces if necessary — but not killed. Imperative he be taken alive.
Moments later, advised by the island that gunfire was not permitted within 500 metres of the line, the general amended his order.
The force would not now form up on the line. It would form up 250 metres before the line. But firing orders still to stand.
A minute later, on further advice, another change of orders. With all the activity ahead, the man might turn north or south. It would take him longer but still give him time to bypass a static force — the fog was expected to last another hour. Suggest jeeps be detached to cut him off before he could reach the line.
Agreed. Wait till the half-tracks arrived — in minutes now — then detach the jeeps. Catch the man on the ice.
But the man was no longer on the ice.
61
At first the sheer numbers had stunned him. Helicopter after helicopter, a great stream of jeeps, then the half-tracks, all thundering away out into the strait. Sent to chase after him, to pick him up before he could reach the line.
But soon he knew it couldn’t be so. They’d gone too fast − just racing to block the line before he could cross. Once the men had disembarked and the little island was sealed, vehicles would be spared to hunt him — jeeps probably, zigzagging fast on the ice between the islands. He had to get off the ice.
This side of the island was deeply fretted, eroded by tides in the narrow channel. The Eskimos had said that in summer they camped in rocky bays, that seals came up on slabs then. Perhaps there was a place to hide there. He made fast work up the coast, and came on slabs, a great line of them.
They began in a heap at one side of a small inlet, and extended out like a breakwater, huge rocks, mainly flat, all iced. He skied along the line, peering for a cavity. He could see there must be gaps between the rocks, but snow had iced up a continuous wall. There was no way into the wall, and he couldn’t climb it with his skis. He also couldn’t tell how much farther out it went. They could be at the end hunting him at any time.
He skied rapidly back to inspect the inlet, and saw the Eskimos had used it; the beach sloped sharply upwards and bits of their gear still littered the slope. A windlass for hauling boats, its tarpaulin blown open; a few nondescript humps now iced over; an abandoned lantern, hanging in an opening of the cliff face. He went in the opening, found a sizeable cave, and looked swiftly round it with his torch.
There was a fireplace; heavy seal hooks in the roof; a rock bench for handling the carcases. He’d seen this before in the north. Nowhere to hide here. He turned and went out fast, almost at once taking a tumble on the slope as he hit a couple of the humps. He picked himself up, looking at the humps.
Seabirds, frozen. There were four of them, caught by winter. And after the Eskimos had gone. The Eskimos would have taken them for bait. They’d fallen. He looked up the rock face. There would be an eyrie up there. In the torch beam a hollow showed in the pitted face, ten, twelve metres up.
No way up there, with the cave opening in between.
He shone the torch either side of the hollow, and saw there had been a rock fall to the right; a jagged ledge was exposed in the cliff face there. The ledge ran above the first tumbled slabs. From the slabs it looked possible to get to the ledge; and from the ledge, the eyrie.