The night was black, with no moon. My next problem was to get into the walled town. The road led along the river’s edge into the heart of the city, according to Gaston. The dictator’s stronghold lay at the edge of the city north of the highway we were on. He had fortified the area, enclosing shops and houses within an encircling wall like a medieval town, creating a self-sufficient community to support the castle and its occupants, easily patrolled and policed. It was no defense against an army, but practical as a safeguard against assassins and rioters.
“That’s us,” I said aloud. “Assassins and rioters.”
“Sure, chief,” Gaston said.
Twenty minutes of driving brought us to the bombed-out edge of the city. The rubble stretched ahead, with here and there a shack or a tiny patch of garden. To the right the mass of the castle loomed up, faintly visible in the glow from the streets below it, unseen behind the wall. To the original massive old country house, Bayard had added ramblings outbuildings, great mismatched wings, and the squat tower.
I pulled over, cut the headlights. Gaston and I looked silently at the lights in the tower. He lit a cigarette.
“How are we going to get in there, Gaston?” I said. “How do we get over the wall?”
Gaston stared at the walls, thinking. “Listen, Hammer-hand,” he said. “You wait here, while I check around a little. I’m pretty good at casing a layout, and I know this one from the inside; I’ll find a spot if there is one. Keep an eye peeled for the street gangs.”
I sat and waited. I rolled up the windows and locked the doors. I couldn’t see any signs of life about the broken walls around me. Somewhere a cat yowled.
I checked my clothes over. Both lapels were missing; the tiny set was still clipped to my belt, but without speaker or mike, it was useless. I ran my tongue over the tooth with the cyanide sealed in it. I might need it yet.
The door rattled. I had dozed off. Gaston’s face pressed against the glass. I unlocked it and he slid in beside me.
“OK, Hammer-hand,” he said. “Think I got us a spot. We go along the edge of the drainage ditch over there to where it goes under the wall. Then we got to get down inside it and ease under the guard tower. It comes out in the clear on the other side.”
I got out and followed Gaston over broken stones to the ditch. It was almost a creek, and the smell of it was terrible.
Gaston led me along its edge for a hundred yards, until the wall hung over us just beyond the circle of light from the guard tower. I could see a fellow with a burp gun leaning against a post on top of the tower, looking down onto the street inside the wall. There were two large floodlights beside him, unlit.
Gaston leaned close to my ear. “It kind of stinks,” he said, “but the wall is pretty rough, so I think we can make it OK.”
He slid over the edge, found a foothold, and disappeared. I slid down after him, groping with my foot for a ledge. The wall was crudely laid, with plenty of cracks and projecting stones, but slimy with moss. I groped along, one precarious foot at a time. We passed the place where the light gleamed on the black water below, hugging the shadow. Then we were under the wall, which arched massively over us. The sound of trickling water was louder here.
I tried to see what was going on ahead. Gaston had stopped and was descending. I could barely make out his figure, knee-deep in the malodorous stream. I moved closer. Then I saw the grating. It was made of iron bars, and completely blocked the passage.
I climbed over to the grating, leaned against the rusty iron to ease my arms. The defense system didn’t have quite the hole in it we thought it had. Gaston moved around below me, reaching under the surface to try to find a bottom edge. Maybe we could duck under the barrier.
Suddenly I felt myself slipping.
Below me, Gaston hissed a curse, scrabbled upward. My grip was firm, I realized in an instant; it was the grating that was slipping. It dropped another eight inches with a muffled scraping and clank, then stopped. The rusty metal had given under our weight. The corroded ends of the bars had broken off at the left side. There wasn’t room to pass, but maybe we could force it a little further.
Gaston braced himself against the wall and heaved. I got into position beside him and added my weight. The frame shifted a little, then stuck.
“Gaston,” I said. “Maybe I can get under it now, and heave from the other side.” Gaston moved back, and I let myself down into the reeking water. I worked an arm through, then dropped down waist deep, chest deep, pushing. The rough metal scraped my face, caught at my clothing; but I was through.
I crawled back up, dripping, and rested. From the darkness behind Gaston I heard a meshing of oiled metal parts and then the cavern echoed with the thunder of machine gun fire. In the flashing light I saw Gaston stiffen against the grating and fall. He hung by one hand, caught in the grating. There were shouts, and men dropped onto the stone coping at the culvert mouth. Gaston jerked, fumbled his pistol from his blouse.
“Gaston,” I said. “Quick, under the bars…” I was helpless. I knew he was too big.
A man appeared, clinging to the coping with one hand, climbing down to enter the dark opening. He flashed a light at us and Gaston, still dangling by the left hand, fired. The man fell over into the stream with a tremendous splash.
Gaston gasped. “That’s…all…” The gun fell from his hand into the black water.
I moved fast now, from one hand-hold to the next, slipping and clutching, but not quite falling somehow. I managed to get a look back as I reached the open air. Two men were tugging at the body wedged in the opening. Even in death, Gaston guarded my retreat.
I came up over the side, and flattened against the wall, slug-gun in my hand; the street was empty. They must have thought they had us trapped; this side was deserted. I was directly under the tower. I eased out a few feet, and craned my neck; a shadow moved at the top of the tower. There was still one man on duty there. He must have heard the grating fall and called for reinforcements.
I looked down the street ahead. I recognized the Street of the Olive Trees, the same one I had come through on my way out with Gros, ten days earlier. It slanted down, curving to the right. That was where I had to go, into the naked street, under the guns. I liked it here in the shadow of the tower, but I couldn’t stay. I leaped forward, running for my life. The searchlight snapped on, swung, found me, burning my leaping shadow against dusty walls and the loose-cobbled street. Instinct told me to leap aside. As I did, the gun clattered and slugs whined off the stones to my left. I was out of the light now, and dashing for the protection of the curving wall ahead. The light was still groping as I rounded the turn. No lights came on above me; I ran in utter silence. The dwellers in these scarred tenements had learned to sit silent behind barred windows when guns talked in the narrow streets.
I passed the spot where Gros had died, dashed on. In the distance a whistle blew again and again. A shot rang out, kicking up dust ahead. I kept going.
I heard running feet behind me now. I scanned the shabby stalls ahead, empty and dark, trying to find the one we had used the day we left the palace, where the old woman huddled over her table of clay ware. It had been tiny, with a ragged gray awning sagging over the front and broken pots scattered before it.
I almost passed it, caught myself, skidded, and dived for the back. I fought the stiff tarpaulin, found the opening and squeezed through.
I panted in complete darkness now. Outside, I heard voices as the men shouted to each other, searching. I had a moment’s respite; they didn’t know this entry.
I looked at my watch. Things happened fast in this war world; it was not yet half past nine. I had left the house at seven. I had killed three men in those two hours, and a man had died for me. I thought how easily a man slips back to his ancient role as nature’s most deadly hunter.
I felt the fatigue suddenly. I yawned, sat on the floor. I had an impulse to lie back and go to sleep, but instead I got up and began feeling my way toward the passage. I wasn’t finished yet; I was in the palace, unwounded, armed. I had all I had any right to hope for—a fighting chance.
I was no longer the eager neophyte, ignorant of the realities; I came now, steeled by necessity, a hardened fighter, a practical killer. I was armed and I was desperate, and I bore the scars of combat. I did not intend to fail.
* * * *
Half an hour later, I eased a door open and looked down the length of the same hall into which the shuttle had pitched me headlong two weeks before. It hadn’t changed. I stepped into the hall, tried the first door. It opened, and I saw that it was a bedroom. I went in, and by the faint light shining through the curtains from below, looked over a wide bed, a large desk against the far wall, a closet door, an easy chair, and through a partly open door, a roomy bathroom to the right. I closed the door behind me, and crossed to the windows. There were steel shutters, painted light green to match the walls, folded back behind the draperies. I closed them, then went to the desk and flipped on the lamp. I had had enough of groping through the dark for one night.
The room was very handsome, spacious, with a deep pile grey-green rug and a pair of bold water-colors on the wall. Suddenly I was aware of my own neck. The clothes seemed to crawl on my back. I had lain in mud, waded a sewer, crept through ancient dust. Without considering further, I pulled the encrusted tunic off, tossed my clothes in a heap by the door, and headed for the bath.
I took half an hour soaping myself, and then climbed out and got my uniform. I had nothing else to put on, and I wouldn’t wear it as it was. I soaped it up, rinsed it out, and draped it over the side of the tub. There was a vast white bathrobe behind the door, and I wrapped myself in it and went back into the bedroom.
The thought penetrated to my dulled mind that I was behaving dangerously. I tried again to shake myself alert. But alarm wouldn’t come. I felt perfectly safe, secure, comfortable. This won’t do, I thought; I’m going to go to sleep on my feet. I yawned again.
I sat down in the chair opposite the door, and prepared to wait it out. I got up, as an after-thought, and turned the light out. I don’t remember sitting down again.