I can’t tell you anything about the first three miles, or five kilometers, of that ride, because I saw nothing. I had already suspected that European drivers had kinks that nothing could be done about, and now concluded that Stefan’s was an antipathy for lights, when suddenly he flashed them on, and I saw why we had been bumping so much. You couldn’t have driven that road without bumping if it had been lined on both sides with continuous neons. I remarked over my shoulder, “If you’ll tell this bird to stop I’d rather get out and run along behind.”
I expected no reply but got one. Wolfe’s voice came, punctuated by bumps. “The main routes from Podgorica are north and south. This is merely a lane to nowhere.”
Podgorica again. Also he wasn’t going to have me casting slurs at Montenegro, which was pretty generous of him, considering the kind of reception Montenegro was giving us.
In another mile or so the road smoothed off a little and started up and began to wind. Wolfe informed me that we were now along the Cijevna, and on our right, quite close, I caught glimpses of the white of a rushing stream, but the engine was too noisy for me to hear it. I remembered that one evening after dinner I had heard Wolfe and Marko discussing the trout they had caught in their early days, Marko claiming he had once landed one forty centimeters long, and I had translated it into inches — sixteen. I swiveled my head to ask Wolfe if it was in the Cijevna that he and Marko had got trout, and he said yes, but in a tone of voice that did not invite conversation, so I let it lay.
The road got narrower and steeper, and after a while there was no more Cijevna, anyhow not visible. Stefan shifted to second to negotiate a couple of hairpin turns, tried to get going in high again, couldn’t make it, and settled for second. The air coming in my open window was colder and fresher, and in the range of our lights ahead there were no longer any leaves or grass, or anything growing; nothing but rock. I had seen no sign of a habitation for more than a mile, and was thinking that Wolfe must have been hatched in an eagle’s nest, when suddenly space widened out in front of us, and right ahead, not fifty feet away, was a stone house, and the car stopped with a jerk. I was making sure it was really a house and not just more of the rock, when Stefan switched off the lights and everything was black.
Danilo said something, and we all piled out. I got the knapsacks. Stefan went toward the house, came back in a moment with a can, lifted the hood and removed the radiator cap, and poured water in. When that chore was finished he got in behind the wheel, got turned around with a lot of noisy backing and tacking, and was gone. Soon I was relieved to see, down below, his lights flash on.
Wolfe spoke. “My knapsack, Archie, if you please?”
XI
We got to Josip Pasic, according to the luminous dial on my wrist, at eighteen minutes past three in the morning. I did not, and still don’t, understand how Wolfe ever made it. We didn’t actually scale any cliffs — it was supposed to be a trail all the way except the last three hundred yards — but it was all up, and at least fifty times my hands had to help my feet. I must admit that Danilo was very decent about it. Even in the dark he could probably have romped along like a goat, but he would always wait like a gentleman for Wolfe to catch up. I had no choice. I was behind, and if Wolfe had toppled he would have taken me with him.
There was no taboo on talking, and during the halts Danilo did some briefing, and Wolfe passed it on to me when he had a little breath to spare. Our destination was not the cache but a decoy. The costly and essential supplies had been moved. There were guards at the new cache, but Pasic and five others were at the old one, now empty, expecting and awaiting an invasion. It sounded goofy to me, six guys sitting in a cave asking for it, but I understood it better when we got there.