The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [88]
Fischer with his injured hand needed help to get back onto the upper roof level. Then, Miller somehow managed to heave me up high enough for me to claw my way over the ledge. I crawled then on my hands and knees to the shelter of the big cupola. By the time Miller reached me, I was able to stand up.
We started back, as we had started out, with Miller in the lead. This time, however, there was no turn to make. We left the White Eunuchs’ quarters on our right and went on over the kitchen roofs to the wall by the Gate of Salvation. There was one awkward place—for me, that is—by the old water tower, but I somehow got past it on my hands and knees; then we were on the wall overlooking the Courtyard of the Janissaries.
There was a row of tall plane trees close to the wall, and Miller used an overhanging branch as an anchor for the tackle. He lowered Fischer first, in the sling, and then me; but he wouldn’t use the sling himself, because that would have meant leaving the tackle in the tree. It was not the tackle itself he cared about, he said; he didn’t want to leave any traces behind of how the job had been done. He got off the wall by looping the anchor rope over the branch and sliding down it. Doubled like that, it wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, so he dropped the last six feet, pulling one end of the rope with him. He landed as lightly as a cat and began gathering in the rope. After all he had done, he wasn’t even out of breath.
Fischer took over the lead now, and headed for the outer wall on a line parallel with the road the tourist cars used during the day. Miller walked behind me. After a minute or two, we could see the lights of the guard room beside the huge Bab-i-Hümayun Gate and Fischer slowed down. We had been walking in the shadow of a row of trees, but now they came to an end. Fifty yards across the road to the right was the bulk of St. Irene; ahead the road forked, the right prong going to the gate, the left prong narrowing and curving inward down the hill towards the sea.
Fischer stopped, staring at the gate.
It was no more than fifty yards away and I could see the sentry. He had his carbine slung over his shoulder and was picking his nose.
Fischer put his mouth to my ear. “What time is it?”
“Five to ten.”
“We have time to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“We have to go left down the hill. The guard changes in five minutes. It will be safer then.”
“Where are we going to?”
“The railroad—where it bridges the wall.”
A section of the railway ran along the shoreline just inside the big wall for about three quarters of a mile; but I knew that there were guard posts at both ends of it. I said so.
He grinned. “Guard posts, yes. But no gates.”
Miller hissed a warning.
An oblong of light glowed as the door of the guard room opened. For an instant two men were outlined in the doorway. Then, as the business of changing sentries began, Fischer touched my arm.
“Now.”
He moved forward out of the shadow of the trees and cut across a patch of rough grass to the road. It descended sharply and narrowed to little more than a track. Within thirty seconds the top of the slope hid us from the sentries. Fischer glanced back to see that we were with him, and then walked on at a more leisurely pace.
Ahead was a strip of sea and beyond it the lights of Selimiye and Haydarpasar on the Asian side. Other lights moved across the water—a ferry and small fishing boats. In the daylight, tourists with movie cameras waste hundreds of feet of film on the view. I suppose it’s very beautiful. Personally, I never want to see it again—in any sort of light.
After a couple of minutes’ walking we came to another track, which led off to the right towards the outer wall. Fischer crossed it and went straight on down over a stretch of wasteland. There were piles of rubble from archaeological diggings, and part was terraced as if it had at some time