Escaping Hitler by Monty Halls

Author:Monty Halls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

My guides met me on a flat stretch of road between the villages of Cansano and Campo di Giove. They presented two very contrasting figures – one was a whip-thin young man, dressed in cutting-edge equipment, unmissable in lime-green Gore-Tex and a luminous yellow headband plastered with sponsors’ logos. He flashed me a broad smile, with bright eyes and perfect white teeth set against the deep mahogany of his mountain tan, before springing forward with an outstretched hand.

‘Ah, Monty, it is my pleasure to meet you. I am Marco.’

He spoke in English with a heavy Italian accent, and looked every inch the alpine guide, the sort of chap who would bound up precipitous slopes all day then do something clever with a belay and a tiny hissing stove before retiring into a sleeping bag for the night to write epic poetry about the wind.

‘And this is Nico. He is local to here, so he has great knowledge of the region.’

This was – of course – one of my main rationales for doing the trek. To truly follow the footsteps of Len and Nick, I needed an Alberto. And here he was, a man as craggy as the craggiest crag. He looked as if he had been roughly hewn from granite and then left outside to gently erode for a century or two. His face was deeply lined, his bald pate shaved clean, and a wisp of a grey beard sprung from his lower lip like a tiny stalagmite. When he smiled, he revealed a row of peg-like teeth, dark with nicotine, and his palm was so rough his handshake elicited an audible rasp as he pulled his hand back. His clothing was more basic than Marco’s, his rucksack simple. His legs bowed gently like banded steel, and I immediately felt very safe and slightly intimidated in his presence, which is an odd combination but I’m sure reflected the feelings of Len and Nick when they first met Alberto (even if he was fairly drunk at the time).

After exchanging the briefest of pleasantries, we set off at a clip, leaving the road quickly behind us. It was early in the morning and the mountains were shrouded in low cloud, which was probably not a bad thing as the highest point on my immediate horizon was a row of thirty-foot-tall pine trees, as opposed to the glowering peak of Monte Amaro in the distance, hidden behind the mist. All I knew was that beyond the trees lay a long trek, most of it – in fact, all of it – uphill. I would be constantly moving in two dimensions – distance and height. Every step took me closer to the summit and lifted me into air that grew ever thinner.

The lower reaches of the trek took us through beech forests, with Nico and Marco moving fast and easily ahead. I silently prayed that we wouldn’t end up with an ‘old bull vs young bull’ race between them, as in that case there would only be one casualty (and it wouldn’t be either of them).

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