Eric Ambler - Cause for Alarm

“Got it!”

I grunted. “What?”

“A Turkish bath.”

My spirits rose. “But will there be one?”

“More likely than an ordinary bath and in a town this size…” He broke off and summoned the waiter.

There was a Turkish bath. It opened at half-past seven and we spent the next four hours in it. We had left instructions with the attendant that we were to be called at half-past eleven. We slept soundly. Both of us, I think, could have slept the clock round and we were still tired when we were awakened; but we felt immeasurably better, and a cold shower apiece temporarily stifled the desire for more sleep.

It was decided that it would be wiser for Zaleshoff to go to the bank alone, and I went for a walk in the public gardens. He rejoined me there soon after twelve and displayed his bulging notecase with a grin. Over our lunch he expounded his plan of campaign.

“The first thing,” he said, “is another change of clothes. I don’t think for a minute that we’ve been traced this far, but it won’t do any harm. Besides, where we’re going, these clothes would look a bit curious.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“Up into the mountains.”

He brought the map out again. I looked at it while he traced a line north-east towards the Yugo-Slav frontier with the handle of a fork.

“That’s all very well,” I objected; “but why clamber about mountains when we can go due east towards Laibach?”

“I’ll tell you. The Gorizia-Laibach road may be more direct, but we’d have to cross the frontier between Godovici and Planina. The frontier along that line is pretty well dead straight, and there’s a road running along it on the Italian side. That means that it’s an easy stretch to guard. If we go north-east, the frontier between Fusine and Kranjska on the Yugo-Slav side is no farther away from Udine, and the country round there is better from our point of view. A mountain frontier is fine from a military standpoint, but it’s darn difficult to patrol effectively. We’ll go as a couple of hikers. Can you speak German?”

“Not a word.”

“Pity. German hikers are more usual. Still, we shall have to do the best we can with our Italian. As to the clothes, we shall need plus-fours, ski-ing boots and jerseys, and sticks-oh, and rucksacks.”

“Rucksacks!”

“All right, all right! we can bulk them with paper. Talking of paper. They’ve got my name in this morning’s issues. And what do you think? Saponi has been arrested. That makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I suppose that because they found his name on my office door they thought he had something to do with me. They’ll let him go again, but”-he chuckled-“it serves the dirty double-crosser right.” He was as gleeful as a small boy with a new catapult.

I regarded him suspiciously. “I thought you said that that hard-luck story of yours was untrue.”

“Not the bit about Saponi. He sold me a pup all right. I knew he thought he was making a sucker out of me when he sold me that agency, but I let him go on with it. It suited me to do so.”

“In your role of respectable American citizen?” I said sarcastically, and thought I saw the beginnings of a blush spreading from his neck. Without answering, he referred to a slip of paper in his pocket.

“I called in at the station. There’s a train at three-five to Villach in Germany. It stops at Tarvisio, which is about twelve kilometres from the Yugo-Slav frontier. We should be at Tarvisio at about five. It’s a slowish train. Then we can start hiking. We’ll cross the frontier after dark.” He beamed at me. “We’ve done the worst now. I said I’d get you out, didn’t I? The rest’ll be easy.”

“Good.”

I thought his jubilation a little previous, and for once I was right; but I did not voice the thought. It would have made no difference if I had done so. I remembered suddenly that I had done nothing about getting in touch with Claire. I mentioned the fact.

“You can telephone from Belgrade to-morrow. It’ll be quicker than a letter and you can have the call on me.”

That was unanswerable.

An hour later we emerged from the municipal lavatories in our new clothes. Zaleshoff had added peaked caps to the outfit. We looked, I thought, extremely silly and very conspicuous, and I said as much. He waved the idea aside.

“It’s just that you’re English and self-conscious,” he stated; “when we get up in the mountains it’ll be all right.”

For the first part of the journey we shared a compartment with an old couple accompanied by their son-in-law. They took no notice of us. The woman and the son-in-law, an unpleasant young man with a huge wart on his chin, spent most of the time brow-beating the old man. He chewed unhappily at his toothless gums as he listened first to one and then the other. They were speaking a dialect and I could understand little of what they were saying; but I felt sorry for the old man. They got out at Pontebba. A man who looked like a farmer got in and slung a bundle on the rack.

We had been following a river valley, but now we began to climb more steeply. Through gaps in the lower hills I could see great pine-clad slopes rising steeply into drifting mists that seemed to move like long filmy grey curtains hanging from a lofty ceiling. I saw Zaleshoff frowning at them. The farmer had gone into the corridor and was leaning on the rail smoking. Zaleshoff got up and followed him. I remained where I was. The scene fascinated me. The clouds were constantly shifting, forming new shapes; their movements were like those of a conjurer’s hands moving mysteriously to invoke magic. There was a dramatic quality to them drifting sulphurously like that among the hills. They made me think of illustrations to Paradise Lost. There was no sun and the sky was leaden. I noticed suddenly that it was getting very cold. The train went into a tunnel.

Outside in the corridor, Zaleshoff was talking to the farmer. By the yellow electric light I could see his lips moving, but the noise of the train drowned the words. Then I saw him nod to the other man. He came back into the compartment, slid the door to behind him and sat down facing me with his hands on his knees. He was looking worried. Suddenly we ran out of the tunnel.

“What’s the matter?”

The corners of his mouth drooped. “Bad news.”

“What is it?”

“That man comes from Fusine. It’s been snowing for the past two days up there.”

“In May!”

“Summer’s always two months late in the mountains. It’s bad, Marlow. He says it’s a yard deep above the three thousand feet mark. He tells me they’ve had snow ploughs out on the roads, but that some of the villages higher up are still cut off. It’s been freezing hard at night and all the snow isn’t down yet. There’s been no sun either to thaw what is down.” He looked at the leaden sky. “That lot’ll probably come down to-night. It’s the devil’s own luck.”

“Three thousand feet’s a long way up.”

“When you start from sea level, yes. But round about Fusine it’s over four thousand. Even if we stuck to the main road across the frontier we’d still be above the snow line. But we can’t even do that. We’ve got to keep away from the road and that means going higher still. If the weather was good the walk would give us a nice appetite for breakfast to-morrow, but with a heavy fall of snow on the mountains and more on the way, we’ll be in a mess.”

“A little snow won’t hurt us, surely.”

He snorted. “A little snow! We’re not in England now. Have you ever been in the mountains when it’s snowing?”

“No.”

“Well, then, don’t talk out of the back of your neck. It wouldn’t be a picnic if we could follow the road. Off the road it’ll be blue murder. And another thing. You see those clouds? Well, if it doesn’t snow to-night we’re going to be trying to find our way through them.”