For a wild, brilliantly clear moment of despair he realized where he was. Mission successful. Too successful. Thus far.
But who else had gotten this far? Perhaps German and Japanese spies had also reached this point. Perhaps Englishmen had been shot to death on this very slope. Perhaps this was the way the Chinese agent had crept. It didn't do any good merely to get near the geographic point. He wasn't Peary. This wasn't geography. He had to look at things, see people doing work.
Almost irresolutely, he tried another foothold on the scree. The rock clattered down after he had taken his second step. On the insecure footing, his bear-paw sandals — which had been tied to ankle-high Red Army boots, two sizes too large for him — threatened to twist under him and turn his ankle. He started to move backward. Again the rock clattered.
To his right an imperfection of the darkness showed that dawn was on its way.
He could not tell where he was. The rain, which had fallen intermittently throughout the night, now began to fall again.
Carefully he edged his way along the loose rock. He found a large rock, hip-high.
Reaching along it with his hands, he discovered that the flat side faced the slope. Trying to visualize its appearance from the lower part of the slope, he decided that it was safe enough.
He huddled against it. Waiting for a little more light, waiting for the terrain to climb back out of nightmare blindness and to join him in the world of real and visible things, he remembered that not so far away — in airline distances — General Coppersmith slept in a comfortable well-sprung bed, snoring the snore of the mighty. And if he pulled night duty, Colonel Landsiedel was probably getting himself a cup of coffee in the Dai Ichi Building. Landsiedel did not have to kill anyone in order to drink a cup of coffee. He did not have to cross rain-wet mountains. He did not have to win fortunes and throw them away. He did not have to lie and cheat and betray and steal. He did not have to mock children or get innocent people in trouble. All he had to do was to reach into his pocket and take out a nickel — the lucky devil.
And Sarah — he both wanted and did not want to think of her now.
Dugan relaxed. He did not dare relax too much or his overstrained body would let him drop off to sleep. But he let his mind go down to a low level of consciousness and across the ever-returning imaginary beach of his life-long reverie he saw his mother and father — whom he had never known — walking along the seal-pup coast. What kind of people had they been? What world, not yet begotten, had they conjured up in begetting him? Aleuts were understandable; he had read every book on them that he could find. Irish were understandable.