"Could I, er, have a bit of your arak?" Hale asked.
"I've got Scotch," said Philby suddenly, "and gin. Both." He was looking at the floor again.
Hale gave him an uncertain glance. He had seen Philby drinking from a steel water bottle that he had topped up last night from a bottle of Gordon's gin, so Hale said, "Well, gin, actually." He clenched his teeth, then made himself say, "Thanks."
He was peripherally aware of Mammalian smiling ironically at him.
Improvise.
Hale had been improvising without cease ever since Mammalian had ordered him into the Bombard inflated motorboat in the storm surf below the Normandy Hotel on the rainy night of the twenty-third. And his calculations had become more complicated when he and his escorts had joined the rest of the team at the camp below Ararat last night.
Philby unsnapped a water bottle from a webbing harness on the floor, and Hale reached across to take it from him, willing his fingers not to tremble.
When the time came, Hale would shoot his derringer upward, into whatever form the djinn assumed; perhaps he could do it with the little gun held down by his belt, so that it would not be obvious that he had fired it, or even that the noise had been a gunshot. There might well be other, covering noises. But how wide would the shot spread, out of the gun's short barrel?-widely enough to blow Hale's face off? And then-the djinn would die? What ferocities might that involve? If he had to shoot more than twice, he would have to reload, and then aim. What would the Spetsnaz commandos make of that? Short work was what they'd make of him. And he had to save one round to fire into Philby's back.
He took a big mouthful of Philby's gin, and let it sting his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it.
"Thanks," he whispered more sincerely, handing the water bottle back to Philby.
"Up," said Mammalian, slapping his hands onto his thighs. "Fuad and Umit will stay here-we take up our rifles and...ascend!"
The big Armenian was cheerful as he stood up again and began refastening the snaps of his parka; and Hale remembered coming to the conclusion, on the St. Georges Hotel terrace eighteen days ago, that Mammalian's loyalties in this operation were to the djinn themselves, and not to the Rabkrin.
Hale got to his feet, glad that the climbing pants were so thick as to hide the shaking of his knees, and he pulled the snow-goggles down over his eye sockets and the bridge of his nose. His crampons were slung at his belt beside the head of his ice-axe, and he shuffled to the corner of the tent and picked up one of the white-painted Kalashnikovs. It weighed about ten pounds with the full thirty-round magazine attached in front of the trigger guard, but its weight was comfortable when he had slung it over his shoulder Bedu-style. Five spare magazines clicked in his pockets as he shifted to tug the leather mittens on over his liner gloves.
The tent had been cold, but he shivered when he had stepped out onto the snow and the icy wind found the gaps at his throat and wrists. Ice dust was sweeping down over the snowpack from the peak like the ghost of a fast, shallow stream, and he was glad that their route would not be taking them higher than the 14,000-foot level. Even under clouds the white glare of the snow field was dazzling, and the cornices of the Abich I glacier to the west glittered like diamonds.
He sat down on the trampled area of ice outside the tent to strap the steel-spiked crampons tightly onto the soles of his boots. Under the trampled snow the surface of the Cehennem Dere glacier was black, impregnated with lava dust-and he remembered the black glass beads he had found at Wabar, and then he thought of the oval shot pellets in his derringer.
The thought that he would be firing at least two shells of those pellets today made his belly flutter so loosely that he was afraid he might wet his pants; but he felt an aching tightness in his chest, as if his lungs were struggling against his closed throat for fresh air while he was submerged far under water. I'm forty-one years old, he thought as he took deep breaths of the frigid air to try to dispell the feeling. I didn't die at Ain al' Abd three weeks ago-will I really finally do it today?
Pot's right, no more bets, showdown.
He remembered his dismay at finding himself committed to a hand of cards without having honestly looked at the stakes, fourteen years ago. Had he been doing it again? But if the stakes were too frightening to consider, and the game was already lost, what value could there be in clear comprehension?
"All I can do is play out the hand," he whispered. "I can't change anything at forff-forfeit-forty-at my age."
He stood up, still breathing deeply of the thin, icy air, and used his teeth to tug tight the wrist strap of the left mitten. The ten Spetsnaz commandos had filed out of their larger tent, and for the moment Hale avoided looking at them. Even seen peripherally they did look bulky, and he had to assure himself that a 7.62-millimeter round would easily penetrate even the thickest layers of leather and nylon weave and kapok fiber. He tugged his bulky parka hood over his head and trudged forward behind the rocking white rifle-barrels slung on the backs of Philby and Mammalian.
One of the Spetsnaz commandos pointed at Hale and barked some syllables in Russian. Hale forced himself simply to pause, and not to shuck his right hand free of its mitten to grab the Kalashnikov stock.
Mammalian turned around to face Hale-his black beard below the gleaming snow-goggles was already powdered with ice dust, but was still a conspicuous spot in this white sky world-and he called, "He says you will kill someone accidentally, holding your gun that way. Sling it the way they do."
"Da!" yelled Hale obediently. But when he pulled the sling off over his head and then put it on again, the rifle barrel was pointed down, so that one yank on the barrel would bring it back to the Bedu position. The Spetsnaz seemed to be satisfied.
West of the tents the white slope climbed toward the tumbled chunks of ice at the foot of the Abich I glacier wall, and down here at the level of the tents one of the Russian commandos had begun axing out a square, yard-wide step in the snowpack. Another was lashing three snap-link carabiners at fifteen-foot intervals on a long white rope, and when he had finished he beckoned to Philby, Hale, and Mammalian.
He clicked the carabiners one by one onto similar links at the fronts of their climbing harnesses, so that the three men were attached to the rope.
The Russian muttered something, and Mammalian laughed and translated: "Our borscht-blooded friend says we are three babies that must be leashed."
Neither Philby nor Hale had any funny rejoinders.
The Russian who had chopped out the step in the slope was now crouched in front of it, digging at the vertical wall of snow he had exposed. When he stood up and began speaking to one of his fellows, Hale could tell by the man's tone that he was not happy. Hale peered at the exposed surface of snow, and saw that the Spetsnaz had scooped loose snow and ice out of several horizontal layers-apparently the snowpack was not uniformly dense.
Hale was the last man on the rope, and he walked up to where Philby stood, dragging the slack behind him. "Is that bad, do you suppose?" he whispered to Philby.
"This is all bad," Philby muttered. "Our father has doomed us both."