Hel took a slow breath. Those were Le Cagot’s words in the widow’s bar that afternoon.
“I warned you,” Diamond continued, “that we would have to take counteraction of a kind that would satisfy the vicious tastes of our Arab friends. You will be a while dying, and that will please them. And I have arranged a more visible monument to your punishment. That château of yours? It ceased to exist an hour and a half ago.”
“Diamond…” Hel had nothing to say, but he wanted to keep Diamond on the other end of the line. “Le Cagot is nothing to you. Why let him hang there?”
“It’s a detail sure to amuse our Arab friends.”
“Listen, Diamond—there are men coming to relieve those lads. They’ll find us and get us out.”
“That isn’t true. In fact, it’s a disappointingly pallid lie. But to forestall the possibility of someone stumbling upon this place accidentally, I intend to send men up to bury your Basque friends here, dismantle all this bric-abrac, and roll boulders into the pit to conceal the entrance. I tell you this as an act of kindness—so you won’t waste yourself on fruitless hope.”
Hel did not respond.
“Do you remember what my brother looked like, Hel?”
“Vaguely.”
“Good. Keep him in mind.”
There was a rattling over the headphones, as they were taken off and tossed aside.
“Diamond? Diamond?” Hel squeezed the phone line in his fingers. The only sound over the phone was Le Cagot’s labored breathing.
Hel turned on his helmet light and the ten-watt bulb connected to battery, so Le Cagot could see something below him and not feel deserted.
“Well, what about that old friend?” Le Cagot’s half-strangled voice came over the line. “Not exactly the denouement I would have chosen for this colorful character I have created for myself.”
For a desperate moment, Hel considered attempting to scale the walls of the cave, maybe get above Le Cagot and let a line down to him.
Impossible. It would take hours of work with drill and expansion bolts to move up that featureless, overhanging face; and long before that, Le Cagot would be dead, strangled in the harness webbing that was even now crushing the breath out of him.
Could Le Cagot get out of this harness and up the cable to the mouth of the corkscrew? From there it was barely conceivable that he might work his way up to the surface by free climbing.
He suggested this to Beñat over the phone.
Le Cagot’s voice was a weak rasp. “Can’t… ribs… weight of… water…”
“Beñat!”
“What, for the love of God?”
A last slim possibility had occurred to Hel. The telephone line. It wasn’t tied off firmly, and the chances that it would take a man’s weight were slight; but it was just possible that it had fouled somewhere above, perhaps tangled with the descent cable.
“Beñat? Can you get onto the phone line? Can you cut yourself out of your harness?”
Le Cagot hadn’t breath enough left to answer, but from the vibration in the phone line, Hel knew he was trying to follow instructions. A minute passed. Two. The mist-blurred helmet lamp was dancing jerkily up near the roof of the cave. Le Cagot was clinging to the phone line, using his last strength before unconsciousness to hack away at the web straps of his harness with his knife.
He gripped the wet phone line with all his force and sawed through the last strap. His weight jerked onto the phone line… snatching it loose.
“Christ!” he cried.
His helmet light rushed down toward Hel. For a fraction of a second, the coiling phone line puddled at Hel’s feet. With a fleshy slap, Le Cagot’s body hit the tip of the rubble cone, bounced, tumbled in a clatter of rock and debris, then lodged head-downward not ten meters from Hel.
“Beñat!”
Hel rushed to him. He wasn’t dead. The chest was crushed; it convulsed in heaving gasps that spewed bloody foam from the mouth. The helmet had taken the initial impact but had come off during the bouncing down the rubble. He was bleeding from his nose and ears. Hanging head down, he was choking on his own blood.
As gently as possible, Hel lifted Le Cagot’s torso in his arms and settled it more comfortably. The damage he might do by moving him did not matter; the man was dying. Indeed, Hel resented the powerful Basque constitution that denied his friend immediate release into death.
Le Cagot’s breath was rapid and shallow; his open eyes were slowly dilating. He coughed, and the motion brought him racking pain.
Hel caressed the bearded cheek, slick with blood.
“How…” Le Cagot choked on the word.
“Rest, Beñat. Don’t talk.”
“How… do I look?”
“You look fine.”
“They didn’t get my face?”
“Handsome as a god.”
“Good.” Le Cagot’s teeth clenched against a surge of pain. The bottom ones had been broken off in the fall. “The priest…”
“Rest, my friend. Don’t fight it. Let it take you.”
“The priest!” The blood froth at the corner of his mouth was already sticky.
“I know.” Diamond had quoted Le Cagot’s description of the cave as a bottomless pit. The only person he could have heard it from was the fanatic, Father Xavier. And it must have been the priest who gave away Hannah’s place of refuge as well. The confessional was his source of information, his Fat Boy.
For an endless three minutes, Le Cagot’s gurgling rasps were the only sound. The blood pulsing from his ears began to thicken.
“Niko?”
“Rest. Sleep.”
“How do I look?”
“Magnificent, Beñat.”
Suddenly Le Cagot’s body stiffened and a thin whine came from the back of his throat. “Christ!”
“Pain?” Hel asked stupidly, not knowing what to say. The crisis of agony passed, and Le Cagot’s body seemed to slump into itself. He swallowed blood and asked, “What did you say?”
“Pain?” Hel repeated.
“No… thanks… I have all I need.”
“Fool,” Hel said softly.
“Not a bad exit line, though.”
“No, not bad.”
“I bet that you won’t make so fine a one when you go.”
Hel closed his eyes tightly, squeezing the tears out, as he caressed his friend’s cheek.
Le Cagot’s breath snagged and stopped. His legs began to jerk in spasms. The breath came back, rapid gasps rattling in the back of his throat. His broken body contorted in final agony and he cried, “Argh! By the Four Balls of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…”
Pink lung blood gushed from his mouth, and he was dead.
Hel grunted with relief from pain as he slipped off the straps of the air cylinder and wedged it into an angle between two slabs of raw rock that had fallen in from the roof of the Climbing Cave, He sat heavily, his chin hanging to his chest, as he sucked in great gulps of air with quivering inhalations, and exhalations that scoured his lungs and made him cough. Sweat ran from his hair, despite the damp cold of the cave. He crossed his arms over his chest and gingerly fingered the raw bands on his shoulders where the air tank straps had rubbed away the skin, even through three sweaters under his parachutist’s overalls. An air tank is an awkward pack through rough squeezes and hard climbs. If drawn up tight, it constricts movement and numbs the arms and fingers; if slackened, it chafes the skin and swings, dangerously threatening balance.
When his breathing calmed, he took a long drink of water-wine from his xahako, then lay back on a slab of rock, not even bothering to take off his helmet. He was carrying as little as possible: the tank, all the rope he could handle, minimal hardware, two flares, his xahako, the diving mask in a rubberized pouch which also contained a watertight flashlight, and a pocketful of glucose cubes for rapid energy. Even stripped down to necessities, it was too much for his body weight. He was used to moving through caves freely, leading and carrying minimal weight, while the powerful Le Cagot bore the brunt of their gear. He missed his friend’s strength; he missed the emotional support of his constant flow of wit and invective and song.