Horizon by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

Johann.
    “Come on, there,” he said quickly, over his shoulder. “Step lively.”
    “Yes, sir,” Lennox said. He looked at Stewart who was watching the departing men glumly. “You know where I’ve hidden my coat, Jock. There’s a good map, and some money and other things behind the loose board—the one that’s covered by that calendar I made. Perhaps you can use them.”
    Stewart gave him a sharp look. “I’ll find a use for them,” he said. He clapped Lennox on the shoulder as if he realised this was the last time they would see each other. “It’s a damned shame,” Stewart said. “It’s...”
    “Step lively!” the colonel yelled from the doorway.
    Lennox nodded to Stewart, and then he was hurrying between the groups of men in the hall. He followed the colonel out into the night. Seven months, he was thinking bitterly. Ashe passed two German-like sentinels in the courtyard, and heard them wish him luck, he was wondering whether he would have managed to escape this time, or whether he would have made just another ‘shot-while-resisting’ corpse. Third try was usually luck, it was said. But now he’d never know. He felt cheated. This thought was so busy rankling in his mind that he blundered in the darkness as he climbed on to the lorry, and the high mudguard struck sharply against his shin. He swore much more than was necessary, but at least he felt better. The colonel’s taut wrist pulled him safely on board, down on to a hard wooden bench, as the lorry started impatiently forward. It swung through the gateway, past the watch-towers with their machine guns and the swinging searchlights, past the masses of ten-foot high barbed wire. It jolted over the wooden bridge which spanned the deep, moat-like pit encircling the walls of wire.
    “Do you smell that?” Ferry said in great awe.
    “A tannery, I rather think,” one of the lieutenants said.
    “Maybe,” Ferry said, and his voice was strained. He drew a long breath, as if to steady himself. “But it’s free air to me.”
    The rest were silent. They huddled together as the lorry swung down the mountainside. The only sounds came from the wheels grinding over the loose stones on the surface of the road. The engine had been switched off. The lorry was running silently, depending on its brakes and Johann’s skilful driving, down towards the town.

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    Johann snapped his fingers to attract attention, and then pointed. The men’s eyes followed the quick movement of the boy’s outstretched arm, black against the dark-blue sky. The lorry was coming well down into the valley now. The road had twisted in long, serpentine loops as it descended through the vineyards. Homes had been few, and silent. All around were the dark silhouettes of heightening mountain peaks. Below them was the river Eisak, which the Italians had named Isarco, with its flat, narrow valley broadening as it reached the scattered lights of a town.
    “Bolzano,” the colonel said.
    “Bozen,” Johann insisted. Over his shoulder he said, “We shall halt the lorry soon, north-east of the town. The English officer and Lennox will come with me to see the man. That will only take ten minutes. The lorry will wait for us until we have seen him.”
    “And the barracks?” asked the colonel. Quick work, Lennox thought approvingly: the colonel was picking up Johann’s way of speaking. He didn’t need a translator now to help with the South Tyrol dialect twist in the words. Then why, Lennox demanded of the dark sky, why did he bring me down here? To reassure Johann? Or had Stewart’s premonition been right? Lennox kept his gloomy silence, and listened to Johann’s polite but adamant refusal to go near the barracks.
    The lorry should be left on a side road on the outskirts of the town. It was just there that this man from Bozen was waiting for Johann. And the man would be able to tell them whether it was safe to try to reach the barracks. (For the barracks, seemingly, lay on the south side of