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Wondering again if I wasn’t demented, I started into the dark along the logging road. The wind blew, and the snow bit into my face. The illumination from my headlamp played feebly but adequately over the terrain ahead. I realized I should have bought a pair of those small snowshoes because in places my boots broke through the crust, and I found myself struggling, floundering, and almost foundering several times. I should also have carried a GPS device. I nearly lost heart several times, my progress seemed so slow even while on the remnant road. How could I surprise anyone if I arrived in full daylight?

I became so warm I had to open my coat. The wind picked up high in the trees, and the snow deepened the farther I penetrated into the wilderness. I stopped to rest several times. I finished the coffee and put the thermos into my backpack. The whirling snow grew so thick at times, I had difficulty keeping on the road. But I kept going. I kept thinking of Diantha. Even if I were to fail, it might be of some comfort to her to know I had tried.

After what I took to be a mile, I turned off the rough road and started through the woods in a northward direction, checking the compass as I went. The going got very difficult indeed. Beneath the newly fallen snow was an older layer, treacherous, holding firm one moment and then letting me fall through to my waist the next. Looking back, I don’t know what possessed me to keep plowing on. The wireless phone in my pocket suddenly seemed like the most important thing I had brought along. It was my out, as they say. I could always call the operator and get through to the SPD and Lieutenant Tracy. Tell him what the situation was and what I was doing.

I kept going. The hill grew increasingly steep. I stopped to strap on the crampons. In places I had to hook the spiked end of the climbing ax on trees ahead of me to pull my way up. Under a rock ledge I hunkered to eat an energy snack and drink from the canteen hanging from my belt. It was already nearly six o’clock, and I knew that, even with the snow and overcast, it would be light by the time I reached the madman’s lair; the advantage of darkness would be gone.

I kept climbing. I felt at times as though I had entered a kind of twilight zone, a realm of unreality in which I was dead and would, with the pain of hope in my heart, spend eternity climbing through snow, wind, and darkness toward an ever-receding destination.

Inwardly, as in a hallucination, I ranted at Freddie Bain and heard his smirking replies. Hitler did not triumph! I shouted at him. Then why, Norman, are we still talking about him? Hitler is dead! Then why, Mr. de Ratour, do we need to keep killing him? Because, you swine, it’s fun. Hitler was a failed artist! Not by twentieth-century standards, mon vieux. God is good! God is smiling, my friend, as you fumble toward your doom.

But the wind eased, the snow abated, and the lilac light of dawn filtered through the trees like an ethereal mist. Its subtle splendor would have enchanted me under other circumstances, would have made me ponder the mystery of so much gratuitous beauty, had it not disheartened me as an impediment to my plans. I struggled on, the dawn brightening into day, until I noticed, up ahead, through the trees, a patch of blue sky.

I came out finally onto a clearing, and my heart faltered once more. I could clearly see the twin peaks and the saddleback they formed between them. But they seemed so far away. And the sun shone in full reflected glory. Jays called. Chickadees came down to visit me. I checked to make sure I still had my revolver and continued my grim journey.

It was seven o’clock before I reached the low point between the two modest summits. I tried to keep under cover, but I’m sure anyone on the lookout could have seen me. Exhausted, but with adrenaline pumping through me painfully, I gained the actual ridge and peered down through the trees to the bastion below. It looked well nigh impregnable. Indeed, it appeared like a fortress