Last of the Breed: Chapters 37–47

The canyons were excellent places in which to hide, but the man would have to eat, and if he killed for food he would leave a part of the carcass behind. That would attract the carrion eaters.

Vainly he searched for some evidence of a man’s passing. He found nothing but the droppings of a mountain goat and a few patches of snow.

He was an impudent fool! Yet he had been warned that Alekhin was no respecter of authority.

He looked ahead, and along the ridge he saw jagged, serrated rocks with occasional towers, almost like battlements in some places.

But it was hard for any man to move against the sheer inertia of entrenched civil servants who did not want change and feared to lose their privileges.

What had Alekhin meant, saying he was through? It was absurd, but the words rankled. They stuck like burrs in his thoughts, and he could not rid himself of that dire warning.

Suddenly he remembered a brother officer, a hunter of big game, who had told him of wild rams battering such trees, butting them again and again in simple exuberance and lust for combat.

Joe Mack could not see his insignia, but supposed him a noncommissioned officer.

Dipping down into a narrow opening between two appallingly sheer gray cliffs, he walked along a sandy floor, crawled over boulders, and wended a precarious way through a forest of tumbled rock.

Looking back down, he judged any follower would have gone on down the canyon, not thinking that a man would choose such a precipitous climb.

Climbing a promontory, he studied the country behind him.

The boulder teetered, crunched, and slowly began to turn over.
Ponderously, almost majestically, it began to roll over, and then suddenly, seized by the forces of gravity, it turned over and began to tumble down the slope.

What reward had been offered for him he did not know, or what other inducement, if any.

His gun covering the side of the helicopter, he got to his feet. Working his way toward the tail, he kept the gun in position and slowly drew abreast.

There was still forest, although the trees were not as tall, the undergrowth less, and there was more moss, lichens, and tundra.

The helicopter flight had probably given him a little respite. Even Alekhin would have trouble picking up his trail now.

He smirked, his sullen eyes showing his contempt.

Now he was no longer agile, and his poor stumps of feet were crippled and broken. To move swiftly or adroitly was impossible.

Do not think me a coward, but we are so close now, and this feeling, this sense, this foreboding—I do not like it.

She will have a bit of cheese and some sliced meat, and she makes an excellent borscht.

Speak to him of books. You will have his attention at once. You understand? He is friendly but aloof. I mean he does not mix.

However, there would be many like her here, and it was well that she would not attract attention. She must be as unobtrusive as possible.

For a long time they were silent, each thinking, frightened, understanding what impended.

Criminals were almost invariably stupid in this respect. If they escaped from the law, they returned to familiar surroundings to be close to those they knew, people who could help them and conceal them, people with whom they were comfortable.

He saw nothing but a bird now and again, and just before the sun disappeared he saw three moose come from the willows and amble slowly across the terrain.

“Just convey my message, nothing more.”

Many people did care, and some worked very hard, for one reason or another, but not enough of them. The great problem was inertia.

Now they were gray, bare, harried by the wind.

He had become resigned to suffering, resigned to working out a poor existence in the taiga. Or he was becoming resigned.

Lights stabbed the darkness, reflecting from the open water and from the ice along the edges and the floes.

“But we have an order,” Kyra protested, “an order for their arrest. The GRU—”
“I know all about it. The order has been countermanded.”

A very subdued Kyra Lebedev had arrived the following morning, reporting to Zamatev.

Patrols will be driving these roads, passing constantly. If he is seen, they will follow and apprehend him.

On this morning he had walked out into the forest and climbed a small knoll.

She accepted his foibles, his trickiness, and his weaknesses and took care of him anyway.

Ostap hung on desperately as the car careened around sharp curves and raced over bumpy roads that were hardly more than trails.

They would cripple him or put him so tightly in manacles that he could not escape.

He had sung his death song in a voice that did not quaver, and the Blackfeet had marveled.

Day after day he had slogged along through storm and sun, working his way, mostly by night when there was any night, toward the east.

Shortly after he abandoned the Volga, the country had been crisscrossed by helicopters and planes, and during most of that time he had huddled in a niche in a clay bank behind some dead poplars and a few straggling willows, a place planes flew over time and again, the searchers never imagining that even a marmot might conceal itself there.