October War (fiction)
Helprin, Mark
Copyright © by Mark Helprin. MARK HELPRIN OCTOBER WAR Looking north from Haifa, it is possible to see the mountains of the Lebanon. That they arc only one hundred milt's distant is unimportant....
...He pulled the white cover nearly over his head and clutched his gun...
...But then the sun came up and its blood red became yellow and blazing white...
...He often had seizures and was locked in one position for an hour, his hands fused painfully about the wood and steel of his gun, his eyes far too wide, staring at an unseen horizon...
...Operating in winter and in storms, they had come to the very gates of the fortress, and their reputation kept the swaddled night patrols from sleeping...
...How did he justify shooting his horse and arresting him...
...The Alps are noted for the feeling they convey of the absence of men...
...The carrier would return in twelve hours...
...On a flat overlook above the path of two trails, he unrolled a heavy groundsheet and lay prone upon it...
...The horse snapped its head, and the golden bridle clicked...
...He heard muffled steps...
...Then he saw...
...Marshall decided to tell Frederick...
...Marshall took Lydia to the Bet She'an bus, through the barred windows of which he kissed her as dozens of North African women watched...
...Artillery pieces lined the ramparts...
...Then the bus backed out of the bay and Marshall jumped to the ground, waved to Lydia, and walked off in the direction of a motor pool in Bat Gallim, from which he got a ride to the fortress on Mt...
...It took on such colors and sounds and dreamlike qualities that at four, the most difficult hour, when he could hallucinate as easily as think, he was not sure if the Druse chieftain had been real or just an image of the moving snow...
...cut off by silence, a thin air bridge to the world of light...
...His life was war, validated by the continual presence of the enemy, the rugged sleet storms, the ail-night shelling, the commando attacks, the mines, the casualties, the problems of supply and morale...
...These mountains were Eastern...
...When the sun was high enough for Marshall to make out colors and textures in the distance, he swung a pair of tremendous military binoculars on their tripod to scan valley and plain...
...They're defensively positioned, hull-down and dug-in—against our aircraft...
...People danced in Tel Aviv, and tourists came to Haifa for the gardens and the sea...
...You haven't been through this line in five years...
...He would wait an hour and then go back to bed, or to a shower...
...Marshall decided to leave right away...
...The Druse answered in English...
...But Fortress Six was in another era...
...When the carrier came, Marshall hopped inside, the doors were closed, the heat turned on, and the next he knew he was making his way to his bed...
...Over this went a pair of pants and a shirtjack as thick and coarse as a rug, and yet another pair of socks...
...It hadn't changed...
...It resounded throughout his body, knocking him each time like a slap on the back...
...A cistern held a two-weeks supply of numbingly cold mountain water...
...The light played tricks, but he could see that something in front of him was about fourteen feet tall, with many legs and three sets of eyes, one of which flashed like a cat's...
...The hunter had come for the Syrians to find out about the patrols...
...They must have brought in all but a few of their tanks, though they have recently thinned them out...
...And then, I am not a boy, but a soldier of the Kingdom of Israel, in its northernmost place, its highest frontier...
...He stripped off the many layers of clothes and, covered with just a towel, ran through a freezing wet gallery to the showers...
...A third pair of socks overlapped the cuffs of the down pants...
...Here they come," said one of them, as the six rounded figures converged in the center of the yard...
...Besides, the soldiers of the mobile patrol—extraordinarily vulnerable in their loud armor with its arc lights—would shoot from a distance were they to see the flash of the eagle's eyes down the road, and the .50-caliber bullets would cut the Druse in half...
...How could it be that there was war in this high white pocket, and love affairs down below in the sweet peace of the cities...
...A Russian slept soundly on an upper bunk and the others were off somewhere...
...The trouble was, when he turned off the water and stepped shivering into a puddle of dirty suds, he became once again a miserable private with a toothache, vitamin deficiencies, and dirty linen...
...He spoke an Arabic command so ancient that it was Persian, and not Persian but Sanskrit...
...You mean they're just sitting there on the plain...
...An unexpected chill informed htm of his profound connection with the past as he spoke in terms which made the old Druse feel like a newcomer...
...There was no war, no peace...
...They both ordered steaks, and Marshall told the story of how he had gotten his rank...
...Frederick the Great rewarded the Georgian with a week's leave and was intensely proud...
...Marshall's sense of triumph made it so, and the Druse called his eagle...
...from a tortuous approach, underground chambers driven deep into the rock...
...asked a soldier in another steaming stall...
...Nevertheless he wrapped his head and throat in a kafiya of soft gun flannel he had stolen from the artillery stores...
...Second, you're a liar...
...He found a room in a luxury hotel, and at evening he went to a restaurant on an open terrace cantilevered over a steep green precipice...
...Then they fell upon him and sharp talons ripped into his clothing...
...And it was all embodied in the face of their commander...
...What are you doing...
...He had one flare with which to signal, and mobile patrols went by every hour or so...
...He pivoted over to view the Israeli line...
...He covered his body with a heavy down parka and the standard battle jacket—like the pants, quilted in three layers...
...The breezes across the snow were always mild and almost warm at that time of the morning...
...You may shoot the eagle if you wish...
...Marshall began to spoon his chocolate ice cream into his tea...
...A boxlike armored personnel carrier roared up to them and opened its rear door...
...The way was being prepared for a major war...
...Belatedly, or (in the larger perspective) early, Marshall began to wonder...
...And yet everyone spent his days shining equipment, as balance for the other major activity, which was to stare into the void and lire the eyes in observance of the enemy army, which one came to know well...
...LLI will cross the mountain at this point, as I have done all my life...
...Facing north, he sensed a steady rightward motion, as surely as he sensed gravity pressing him breathlessly into the snow and his acceleration lifting him away...
...That winter, 1973, saw an enormous increase in Syrian attempts to gather information...
...He strapped on an ammunition harness...
...With the light he pulled the clip from his rifle and slung the weapon over his shoulder...
...The other lieutenant didn't resent Marshall's rapid rise, for he was young, and he too had risen rapidly...
...Looking at them from the comfortable sea slopes, it is hard to imagine that men are there...
...pointing skyward with double barrels...
...Soldiers were everywhere—leaning against walls, cleaning the AA guns, tickling the mounted aerials, exercising in drill, servicing their tanks and halftracks, returning from patrol, on line at the dispensary, praying, rushing from place to place, arguing, cleaning their weapons, cleaning their boots, cleaning the ground...
...It seemed to be three or four men, moving in a group with the grace of a single animal...
...He put the grenades in front of him...
...The wings circled above him while the body of the creature advanced...
...A Coast of Palms", also an excerpt from the novel, appeared in our September issue...
...The old man, who sat as straight as a steel rod, did not move or blink an eye...
...Don't you know...
...Illuminated from before sunrise to beyond sunset, they shine with disconcerting brilliance as the rest of the land from the foothills to the sea darkens in soft night...
...They seek at their feet the Giants of Carmel...
...It climbed a ridge, and strung out the patrol like a chain of fat beads with several kilometer links...
...The Syrian Druse were not like those in Israel who with the Israelis fought against age-old enemies, but rather were closely allied with Damascus...
...He always thought great worldly thoughts in the shower after all-night patrols when he was giddy and his mind was free...
...How did the Georgian know...
...Climbing to the highest observation point, he surveyed the plain while the sun arose far behind Damascus, looking as if it were cradled in a fiery pit somewhere in Iraq...
...The hart which symbolized the Northern Command bounced on his shoulder patch...
...There were accidents...
...a British pistol hung from his belt...
...He felt happiness in the ordained hierarchy and wanted to give way, like a son to a father...
...An outer suit of drab nylon went over everything else...
...For him...
...Marshal) awoke at four o'clock on a freezing January afternoon...
...But then his muscles twitched and he felt a surge of electricity run down his back...
...Marshall let it be...
...His eyes were blue, or appeared that way in the deep blue haze...
...A foreigner does not order me off my horse...
...Otherwise he was on his own...
...Until middle morning he played and replayed the scene a thousand times...
...Marshall had been amazed at the complacency of the Israelis...
...and many deep lines fled from enormous round eyes of slate gray...
...Five more balloons emerged from other places, A bunch of NM's were ramrodding a big gun...
...After all, he had not even had the sense to arrest the Druse hunter, and had left it to the Georgian—who looked, moved, acted, and thought just like a monkey...
...Justin his own peregrinations from base to base, Marshall had seen that the planes were badly maintained (despite reputations to the contrary), ECM was nearly nonexistent, communications were antiquated, and stocks were badly situated in relation to the new borders...
...It was pitch dark when they started on their ice cream and tea...
...You know it...
...Really, there are hundreds and hundreds, and all the support vehicles, APC's, and the rest, to go with them...
...Each time they stopped, the gunner braced his back against a bulkhead and pushed out the last man in line They brought Marshall farther than usual to cover the flank...
...He was aware of a massy rotation...
...His face was flushed with blood...
...The Jews had captured the mountains and built fortresses...
...I don't know what I'm doing, but when you're in Tel Aviv, enjoy yourself...
...He had discovered that when in the shower, or in a pool, or a tub, he could make brilliant policy, predict the future, and think like a statesman...
...He was watching for As-Saiqa, the Palestinian guerrillas with links to the Syrian Army, Unlike the cowardly domestic terrorists operating in milder regions for Al-Fatah...
...Then a fourth pair of socks and heavy combat fatigues...
...As a minor example: ar-cheologists are forever excavating special places in search of legend...
...Marshall had not been watching for fifteen minutes when he saw a form moving toward him on the trail...
...It was comfortable at first, because of the thick snow...
...A few lights and fires dotting the half-dark below faded or went out as the sun got higher...
...He was shattered by the love he felt for the light...
...I suppose not, if you've been away all summer...
...But a shrill whistle echoed in the valley, the eagle lifted and Marshall was released...
...His cheeks were red, his hair white...
...Lydia too was up at dawn, wandering about with a notebook and a leaky fountain pen...
...The gages opened, and the lone APC chugged onto an ice-fleshed road...
...If it had been Golda Meir on that horse he would have done the same...
...Had Marshall been in command of the opposing forces, he would have insisted upon a winter war...
...It passed silently under the ledges...
...You have to go back...
...He knew exactly what it meant...
...His novel...
...Nobody knows what the hell is going on...
...not realizing that the magic of the place is that from it one can see great masses of land floating above the horizon in an Alpine gleam...
...These two layers provided much warmth btll were mainly to permit room for ventilation and to wick away moisture...
...He could not believe that this strange creature which moved in sidling steps was real and of the world...
...It could not be...
...Also over his chest he hung a pair of heavy weatherproofed night binoculars...
...Then he lunged into the courtyard...
...Angry, ashamed, and still frightened, Marshall jumped to his feet as best he could, aimed the submachine gun at the hunter, and commanded him to dismount...
...Marshall was honestly astounded, and put down his spoon even as the tea continued to swirl seductively in an orange maelstrom...
...What is that...
...But the earth was spinning into the path of heat and light...
...When he rushed through the yard he looked like an eighteenth-century painting...
...metal dishes were aimed at the army-choked plain...
...Perfectly impassive, he measured Marshall with his stare...
...One day it snowed heavily and the troops wore white winter tunics...
...Electronic arrays lined tall steel towers...
...He thought that he was mad when he heard a beating of wings and saw black flashes against the leaden sky...
...There were seldom enough men for patrol, and they worked outside during fourteen-hour days—sometimes in Alpine sun, and sometimes in wild storms which billowed like an explosion of gray cotton—which was just as well, for the barracks were chambers in the rock and dreadfully crowded with weapons and boots...
...He guessed that war would come in the winter, since the Israeli Air Force did not have all-weather fighters, and thus would be neutralized to an extent favorable to the Arabs—who, also unable to fly in bad weather, would be spared the agony of air combat with the Israelis...
...The air was pure...
...It was terribly cold...
...But it was not possible to allow the man within the lines...
...they were not insane revolutionaries and did not frolic in massacre after massacre...
...He was so perfectly still that it was hard to tell if he were living...
...So attired, he increased in weight from 145 pounds to 190, and he looked just like the Michclin rubber boy...
...And don't come here again...
...The Jordanian desert was tan and purple...
...Maybe I'll see you up there...
...Refiner's Fire, the Life and Adventures of Marshall Pearl, a Foundling, from which this selection is excerpted, will be published this month by Knopf...
...His breathing came fast and hard, and he sweated...
...Tell me something...
...Colored lights and paper lanterns were strung across the dining area and they swung in the breeze...
...What they did right, they did beautifully...
...Their intentions are obviously defensive...
...The plain below was still a collection of dark crags...
...Forgetting the Syrians and the cold, he felt as if he were being torn apart by elemental forces, as if he would soon crystallize into ice and dust and be flung about at random...
...The Giants of Carmel did exist, but not in caves as some have conjectured: they were the mountains to the north, forever far...
...A sentry yawned and threw off his gray blanket...
...He pulled on a complete set of fishnet underwear, including fishnet socks...
...The temperature dropped to its lowest point, and his heart beat so slowly that he thought he would not make it out of the pause...
...Quite often, civilizations turn on assumptions that they do not truly understand...
...A pair of light gloves and heavy mittens with a gap for the trigger finger protected his hands...
...Almost as if it knew what lay ahead, the eagle hopped to the ground and began to brood in sad depressed circles...
...Though it came closer, reciprocal darkness obscured it...
...Then he would sit up as if after a dreadful sickness and look out tn half-crazed relief at the rising sun...
...He pulled a white tarpaulin over himself, and arranged his equipment...
...Okay, thirty...
...They look to be a kind of heaven, and the city of Haifa is rigorously positioned so that their magic light may infill its various lucky chambers...
...Force levels were down, artillery pitifully neglected...
...Clouds of breath issued from the head in white plumes, and it seemed to change shape before his eyes...
...He had no way of telling that the Druse came to each one of us...
...From December until May, they are white, and appear to float above the horizon like a vast construction of linear cloud...
...No, he would tell Arieh Ben Barak, for he was a general, whereas Frederick was only a colonel...
...In places, anti-aircraft guns stood five in a row...
...For in places usually empty of the Syrian Army he saw tank after tank after tank, rows of artillery, netting in so many places that it looked like Verdun, and what seemed like thousands and thousands of trucks, new emplacements, new cuts in the earth, and troops who had begun to get up and mill about in hundreds of camps...
...The network of supply was overloaded and tenuous at best...
...How many seconds does it take for a tank to lift itself out of its trench...
...A Jew does not order me off my horse...
...You're not allowed to come here," said Marshall...
...Goddamnit...
...It made them feel as if they were in another time, a desperate untrammeled time, a time when cannon seemed to be the most important things in the world, when one awakened and went outside to assure oneself that the massed opposing ranks were quiescent...
...He pulled on his heavy winterized boots, and shoved his legs into an enormous pair of quilted battle pants, three layers thick...
...After staggering to the latrine, he checked himself out in the mirror...
...There was not a speck of dirt up there...
...asked Marshall, stirring his glass of hot tea...
...When you get back, we're all going to be fucked...
...The Eastern mountains suggest the presence of men even when there aren't any, and the history of ancient empires endows the thin-air passes with uncelebrated mystery...
...He posed and positioned in martial postures, trying to be like Marlborough...
...A little pair of eyes peeped from a great balloon of clothing and weapons...
...One day a truck came up from Tel Aviv, fragrant with oranges...
...A Druse chieftain sat high upon a white horse, and the eagle rode on his shoulder...
...a shotgun was slung over his shoulder...
...The sky would brighten, a wind would arise from the pressure of advancing light, and he would see in the corner of his eye that over darkened Syria the sun came up from somewhere tn the East, from a paradise perhaps near India, And from over Iraq a transient sliver would appear to Marshall's fevered eyes, blinding him in warmth and white, firing the ground and his bones, setting the world afire, steaming up the seas...
...Over this he put silk underwear and silk sucks...
...That's not the point...
...I suppose it's more of a shock if you haven't been there in a long time...
...It's purely defensive deployment...
...Eat well and see lots of movies...
...He was going home to Tel Aviv for a week...
...The Circus is in Tel Aviv...
...It made them feel like soldiers in history, completely caught up and out of control...
...The image of efficiency and strength did the work of deterrence more and more, until real power receded and most of what kept the Syrians and Egyptians back was as empty and dry as a rotten tree...
...The horse pranced like a horse in a medieval painting, and then he wheeled it into the enveloping darkness, the white mixing with white...
...One day the Syrians moved about in a frenzy, and Fortress Six came alive with alarm...
...Marshall could not but respect the Druse...
...There he stayed for a full hour under a steaming hot stream in a half-curtained stall...
...Standing on a railing at the bus queue, he was a strange sight in his colorful uniform as he grasped her through the light aluminum bars and, from most angles, appeared to be kissing and stroking the bus itself...
...Thus he abandoned the idea of informing Arieh Ben Barak of his realization...
...a scimitar was tucked into his waistband...
...How many seconds...
...Jerusalem, and Amman would come easily into view...
...I don't think so...
...It looked horrible, and it overflowed...
...Marshall was so frightened that he wanted to scream...
...Marshall closed his eyes and imagined how the vast Syrian columns must have looked rumbling past Damascus on their way to the armed camp below, which burst into life in the sun's ascent and seemed to have a will of its own as if it were a living creature spawned from steel...
...He opened the breach of his gun, took it off safety, and laid out clips of ammunition on either side of him in places to which he could roll for a change of position in a fire-fight...
...You won't recognize it up there," said the other lieutenant, who was from a strongpoint down the line...
...It had pouches in which were seven clips of ammunition, three hand grenades, and toilet paper—the impossible of impossibles...
...It stamped its feet and bellowed...
...The Jews had come so high that they had only to pivot, and Damascus, Tyre...
...Thousands of years before you . . ." Marshall's eyes sparkled and shone, "thousands of years, my King, David (it sounded pleasing in Arabic, malaki, Daoud), sent me to this high place...
...How magnificent...
...A lieutenant with insignia of the First Mountain Brigade asked if he could join Marshall, who was pleased to have his company, but who had to ask him to speak slowly...
...Undoubtedly the Army chiefs and the political leaders already knew what he knew...
...They only massacred occasionally, and were hardened soldiers, lifelong, much more professional than Marshall, and better experienced...
...and the scholars seek out its quality in close examination, combing the mountain as if it were their prize bay gelding, leaving not even spit unturned...
...Marshall put his hat down and waited for a menu...
...The wide courtyard was jammed with armored vehicles intended to control the winding roads...
...Fortress Six really was a fortress—built on a cliff, hanging over a vast Himalayan chasm, its concrete towers riddled with gun ports, heavy steel doors sealing it off Mark Helprin, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and moment, is the author of A Dove of the East, and Other Stories...
...His insignia, trees and stems in dull green, made a soft muted statement against the mountain ice...
...He was so upright, a mountain lord from an ancient time...
...two armies were stalemated in the snow...
...One clip of ammunition was inside, another was held perpendicular on a pivot...
...Because winter in the Middle East has always discouraged war, Israel tended to let down its guard, but the Arabs' Soviet equipment was suited to mud and cold...
...Strangely, they took great pleasure in seeing him worry...
...They are another world...
...They already have taken him to Northern Command...
...The Mediterranean was a foggy blue band...
...He pulled on down-lined pants and a down shirt...
...The commander, a colonel of the Second Mountain Brigade, looked very much like Frederick the Great of Prussia...
...When Marshall had passed the point at which he might have killed him, the Druse said, "A boy does not order me off my horse...
...But the silence and immobility allowed him in those hours to hear and feel the earth as it turned...
...The barracks were quiet...
...Though they did not intend their primary instrument in Columbine to be recollection of the kibbutz (but rather remembrance of what they had envisioned long before), she thought anyway to take notes on agriculture at Kfar Yona...
...There were many geraniums in carved stone boxes...
...They've built up slowly...
...Where's the Druse...
...Winds arose from nowhere and blasted at the armored doors...
...He was tentative, suspicious, always thinking, always on guard, with red cheeks like those of Frederick...
...The late morning was always difficult...
...Even in the hot shower Marshall was gripped by a chill and had to take hold of a pipe to steady himself...
...In running across Marshall, he had already found some...
...He was just getting used to being an officer and times seemed easy, though he suspected that a shock lay ahead...
...even in crowded valleys...
...Moving quietly according to the strictest code they had (not to disturb precious sleep), Marshall began to dress for twelve hours of lying at ambush in snow and sleet...
...I too go back in the centuries...
...To the north—more white mountains...
...Tsfat is in the mountains, and looks into valleys and depressions with much the same tranquillity as Delphi...
...Everyone was overconfident...
...There are terraces along the main street, and many quiet courtyards, and in fall the weather is unparalleled, being cool, clear, and dry...
...By that time, he had been still long enough for his circulation nearly to cease...
...The gunner jumped out and helped them board, pushing them into the light green interior as if they were fuel bladders or bales of cotton...
...to the south—Lake Kinneret, and, beyond a range of stratified hills, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea...
...It was something, and it went along steadily...
...Then they withdrew, leaving him fifteen kilometers from the fortress...
...great mortars were stationed below...
...As usual, a tiny red sliver churned and bent on the land horizon like molten metal...
...Sentries slept, went out with unloaded weapons, and actually deserted their posts to go to Tel Aviv and fool around with whores...
...He's from Tbilisi...
...Such a place is Carmcl...
...Guarding the northern border of the new Jewish state, within sight of a hundred thousand enemy soldiers in depressing steel brigades, nearly at the summits of snow-covered mountains, they were always active and alive...
...Just tell me...
...How many seconds...
...Soldiers had breakdowns...
...Canaan above Tsfat...
...At first he saw nothing unusual—boulders, rocky terrain, ditches, roads, an emplacement or two...
...The shadows of the hills grew severe, and green strips appeared to the northeast...
...Both the parka and the battle jacket had thick hoods...
...It would have been dark, but the altitude and the snow made for a bright bluish tinge and a strange dreamlike visibility...
...It was true...
...He was grateful, not so much for lasting through the night, but for the light itself, without explanation or implication...
...Marshall gathered his equipment from the churned-up snow and walked for half an hour to take up position in a different place...
...I don't know exactly...
...Suddenly everything fell into place—the artillery barrages, the air penetrations, the step-up in terrorism, the spying, the constant shifting of troops on the plain below...
...Morale was terribly poor, the Army divided by class and color...
...He tried, and no sound came from his lips...
...Badly trained reservists with ancient weapons were sent to hold key positions...
...building a little ridge of snow so that they would not be seen...
...He was so frightened and so hot that someone might just as well have been in his thick clothes with him...
...A flashing beak struck and tore...
...He had been up there for half a dozen years...
...A boy will not tell me that I cannot," "First," said Marshall in Arabic, "you will not cross here...
...He wore a white robe crossed with bandoliers of bullets...
...For the fifth time in a row, he was going on an outside patrol...
...Early in September, Marshall returned to Fortress Six...
...Marshall wanted to defer—youth to age, inexperience to experience, a man in soldier's clothes to one in robes, lack of ornament to careful masculine regalia, one who did not know the land to one who did, one who had not lost to one who had, a man on foot to a man on horse...
...He rolled, and the eagle kept above him...
...Utterly alone in the cold air and dim confusing light...
...The valleys, Lake Kinneret, and T'veria, were in dusk...
...Kitchener, or Churchill...
...With their great telescopes they could see palms in Damascus and Syrian soldiers on the plain below eating dinner by their tanks and howitzers, their knit caps pulled over their ears...
...Someone in the fortress turned a radio to the dawn chimes of the Army station...
...The wind was intermittent, sometimes arising to play with swirling blue chains of glassy snow, sweeping it into mesmerizing breakers and rounded waves in the air...
...The fourth one down line, a wild insane Georgian, had immediately shot the man's horse, disarmed him, tied him up in his own leather belt, and sent a flare...
...said Marshall, enraged...
...Had the whole Syrian Army come up the mountain, he would not have been able even to blink...
...But most frontiers have soldiers, and on this one...
...I-'or an instant he imagined Lydia caught up within the padded vestments, her rose-and-peach-colored skin hot and steamy against his own...
...What do you mean...
...it might as well have been the maneuver of armies in classical European war, far back in history, universal in its stroke...
...His clothes had indeed been torn, and others of the patrol had been visited by the Druse hunter...
...And I tell you now to go back...
...What justify...
...He had wondered many times how Israel hoped to hold the Golan against a full-scale assault when only a few roads led to the heights where the battle would be decided—especially if the Syrians were to make determined efforts to cut these roads with their air power and paratroopers...
...Soon its talons began to touch his skin...
...It was round and hot, and, as it climbed, Marshall thought he saw the surflike lashing of its corona...
...They would make the Jews so used to crises that they could shield the beginnings of an all-out attack...
...He slung his submachine gun across his chest...
...I'll kill you rather than see you cross...
...In a rucksack which slid over the small of his back, he put three bottles of Coca-Cola, a thermos of hot tea, and a dozen candy bars of the worst possible quality...
...I know it...
...Neither does anyone else...
...He did not get out until 2:30 and arrived at Fortress Six as dawn was beginning to break...
...Despite his nobility and his guise as a hunter, he might well have been collecting information...
Vol. 2 • October 1977 • No. 10
