"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

"Arni Schaide," said Dov, "my old pal Arni, who likes so much to visit the Franciscan monasteries between here and Rome."
On two occasions already, Dov had tracked Schaide, who each time had led him to Rome, to the very door of the Vatican. From there, each time, Schaide had come out alone, having obviously entrusted to the Roman Curia the fugitive he had escorted. Schaide also worked for the Red Cross.
"Dov?"
For a long time, Reb had focused his binoculars down toward the first curves of the little road leading to the chalet.
"Two automobiles, Dov. But they have stopped, both of them, and they have just shut off their headlights. They are three hundred yards away."
In the dark, they looked at each other.
"Cops?"
"I don't think so," said Reb.
The two large Mercedes-Benzes certainly did not belong to the Austrian police, or to any of the occupation authorities. No, it was something else, and Dov must have thought the same thing. He left his post, retreated, and also focused his binoculars.
After half a minute, he said: "Ten days ago, when I returned from Italy for the second time, right behind Arni, I saw an identical Mercedes. With the same back left door handle broken. It was in Innsbruck. Three men inside looking like crack shots. Arni got in with them. I remember the license plate number. . . . Wait for me, kid."
He slipped down, disappeared.
Less than a minute later, the phone in the chalet rang and was immediately picked up. Three more minutes, after which there was some commotion around the chalet. Reb saw the men who until now had been talking leisurely jump up. One of them rushed outside, two others spread out, weapons in hand. They've just been alerted, he thought.
After a pause there was an almost imperceptible sound. Reb hid behind a tree, his finger on the trigger.
A whisper: "Kid? Don't shoot me, please." Dov appeared about fifteen feet away, out of breath.
"Same car and same guys. Except there are eight or ten of them. And more coming. It looks like Stalingrad all over again, my boy. And I'll bet you a rabbi for a doughnut that it's us they're after."
He smiled.
"And I wonder who the hell is in that fucking chalet. Are you sure it's not Adolf Hitler?"

A quarter of an hour later, they had proof that it was, in fact, a roundup: all around them, in a semicircle of which they were almost the center, flashlights were turned on.
"But they ended up losing, in Stalingrad," said Dov.
He and Reb were moving along the eastern bank of the little lake of Althaussee, and were already more than a thousand yards from the chalet. They were not running, yet. They went along under the trees, not really worried. Their intention, since the descent toward Althaussee was cut off, was to reach another little village, more to the east, called Grundlsee. From there, they intended to go either to Bad Aussee or for help, even to the police. But Reb, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped. Another line of flashlights had appeared, to their right. The circle was closing in, or almost.
They had no choice but to continue straight ahead, tripping halfway down an increasingly abrupt slope.
They increased their speed, and in the clear night they could see before them the snowy peaks of the Dead Mountains. "We'll never get through," said Dov. "At least not me. I don't have your young legs, kid." He was ready to mount a counteroffensive, which was in his nature, but Reb pressed him to keep going. The concentric line of flashlights was now one hundred yards from them as they moved on. They had to pass to the northeast of Grundlsee, and for an instant they saw automobiles, with their headlights on, stationed along the little road that leaves Grundlsee and ends in a cul-de-sac two and a half to three miles farther on. There were men lined up there, also, in the light of the headlights, all armed, some with rifles, their faces turned in their direction. "All the survivors of the Third Reich are here," remarked Dov, laughing.
He had already fallen twice and had lost his glasses. In the dark, he could hardly see at all. Reb must certainly have helped him. The flashlight carriers were on their heels and closing in.
More lights appeared to their right, those of Gossl. They had now been running for two hours. They were in sight of Toplitz Lake. Dov could go no farther. He screamed, addressing himself to those chasing them, that he was Dov Lazarus in person and that he was ready to fight them. .
They answered with six or seven shots, the dry, light clicking of .22 Mausers, entrusted during the war to the sharpshooters of the Wehrmacht. Neither Dov nor Reb was hit. Again they were climbing, a more and more abrupt cliff, and soon Dov refused to go any farther or any higher. The lake was beneath them, almost vertically down. Dov said that he was going to
stay right there, in this hollowed-out rock on a kind of platform "from which you have a magnificent view," and he shook his head quietly, probably smiling in the dark. He was going to remain there, he said, and he intended, even without his glasses, to prevent this Nazi army from coming too close. "Think, kid. And, anyway, I'm sure you thought of it before me, with that head of yours: we won't make it this way, by running. They run faster than we do. So, you stay calm, kid, you stay sharp. And listen to that fucking brain of yours that is so extraordinary and is telling you that that's our only chance He would hold out long enough for Reb, with his young goat's legs, to climb through the Dead Mountains and maybe get some help.
"I won't move, Reb. What are you going to do? Carry me? I weigh a good one ninety-eight, from all that beer. Beat it, kid, please. Find that guy you're looking for and put me on his bill."
And, of course, when Reb Klimrod agreed to leave him behind and began his climb, he heard, a few minutes after his departure, the first shots. He also heard Dov singing as loudly as he could-~-"My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea."
He was two hundred yards farther up, after a mad climb in the night, when he heard the thudding sound of a mass tumbling down the mountainside and falling into the icy black water of the lake. He thought Dov was already dead. But shortly after, he could hear the sound of the two .45s firing calmly and the Irish-accented voice singing again.
But it was finally interrupted, by one ultimate round of fire.

At around 3:00 A.M. he was back in sight of the chalet. There were no guards visible, but he could see a light. He climbed to the balcony, and at the sound of his footsteps someone asked in German: "Did you get them?"
"Only one," answered Reb.
The guard appeared at the threshold with a double-barreled shotgun under his arm. As soon as he saw Reb, he started to reach for the gun. Reb's bullet pierced his throat.
He went into the chalet, where he found another man, unarmed, and one of the two women, not Gerda Huber.
"Do not move, please," he said to the terrified couple.
With the barrel of his gun toward the floor, he checked to see that the other rooms were empty. The man was looking at him fixedly; he had a thin face and a hooked nose and was balding.
He asked: "Who are you looking for?"
"Erich Steyr."
"I knew an Erich Steyr who was an attorney in Vienna."
"That's the one."
"I have no idea where he might be. He may even be dead." His shiny black eyes gave him a somewhat Jewish appearance.
"Who are you?" asked Reb.
Just then, he heard, through the door he had left ajar on purpose, the sound of the engines of at least two automobiles.
"Who are you and why are you being so protected?"
"You are mistaken," said the man. "The one who was being protected left this very evening. I am only the owner of this chalet. And I never knew the name of the man who was hiding here."
Klimrod took the papers the man had on him. At that time, he had never heard the name Adolf Eichmann.

Yoыl Bainish saw Reb Klimrod in Rome around April 10, 1947. Luck had nothing to do with the meeting of the two young men, who had not seen each other for almost eighteen months. Bainish was in Italy on behalf of Haganah, to handle emigration channels. (Three months later, he was to play an active part in the embarkation of four thousand five hundred and fifteen people, on an old American cargo ship, the President Garfield, which became the Exodus.)