The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 54

Regrettably, my escape from the Argentinian forests was not, I suspected, going to be in quite the same league as leaving Pietrok-112. Certainly, the actual leaving of the facility should present no problem, for there was no reason for the guards to suspect my purpose and there is nothing as reassuring as a friendly face, a polite wave and a man heading about his–presumably vital–business. It would be once outside, in the big beyond, that movement would become difficult. Acquiring an easy means of suicide would be vital, I decided, should it seem that capture was likely. The decision which remained was this–did I risk an overland route, striking out through the vast emptiness of northern Russia, using size and space to deceive my inevitable pursuers, or did I follow transport lines and try to lose myself in the Russian transit networks, creeping my way through cities and towns towards the western borders? I was more comfortable with the latter option, but rejected it. There were too few transport networks out of Pietrok-112, too many bottlenecks which could be sealed with a simple phone call, and even were I to somehow make it to a populated area and lose myself in the crowd, I doubted if national borders or state treaties would hold back the search. I knew too much, and was both too valuable and too much of a risk to the secrecy of Vincent’s project.

Overground it would be, surviving to the best of my ability in the tundra. I had experience of living off the land, of both reading the simplest path and hiding my own trail. However, these were not the fertile lands of northern England where I had been raised, but a thousand-mile hostile nothingness. Suicide was still a firm option on the table, but death by starvation was unacceptable.

Did I have time to plan?

Time to prepare a stash, gather together the necessary tools?

I doubted it. There had been a look in Vincent’s eye. He knew, as I knew too, that I was no longer his man. I did not doubt that the man who had torched the Leningrad Cronus Club would soon strike against any threat to his security. I had to get out before he could take action against me, and time would be short.

I threw together only what I’d need to survive. Money was irrelevant, as was a change of clothes beyond a pair of socks to keep dry. Paper for kindling, matches for fire, electric torch and spare batteries, a penknife for cutting wood, a metal cup from beside my bed, the plastic sheeting from my rubbish bin, needle and thread. I packed fast but carefully, slung my bag over my back and headed to the lab to pick up a small lump of black magnet and a length of copper wire, waving cheerfully at the lab assistant as I did so, for I was often to be seen grabbing random bits. I broke the lock into the canteen stores and grabbed as many tins of salty food as I could find, burying them in my bag, but was interrupted by a sound in the dining room outside, forcing me to scurry for cover. The noise went by and I marched upwards, heading back through the cold corridors of Pietrok-112 towards the armoury. I would need a weapon, light and reasonably adaptable. No Kalashnikov this time; a revolver would do. The armoury was guarded, but the sergeant on the door knew me and smiled as I came up to him, right up to the moment where my arm went across his throat and a tin of sardines crashed down against the side of his skull, plunging him into darkness. I fumbled for the keys on his belt, and found none. Cursing, I turned to the armoury door. Unconsciousness in humans is usually of two sorts–brief or terminal–and I doubted if my sardine-led assault on the sergeant was going to buy more than a few minutes. Was there time to pick the lock? I tried, using the copper wire from the lab and my penknife, cursing at the crudity of my implements, biting my lip every time a tumbler slid into place. A click, a turn, the darkness of the armoury beyond. I stepped inside, turned on the light and…

“Hello, Harry.”

Vincent stood right there, calm as anything, leaning against a box of grenades. For a moment I was frozen in his stare, a thief caught red-handed: no denial, no chance to beg or run. I said, “In the time it takes me to load and fire one of these guns…”

“No,” he agreed. “You won’t make it.”

He didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me. I sighed. At the end of the day, having nothing better to do, I had to try. I grabbed the nearest pistol, had the safety off and the empty magazine out in a click, reached down for the live ammunition on the shelf below, grabbed a fresh magazine, pushed it into the butt, felt it lock, raised it to fire–not at Vincent, but at me–when several thousand volts administered from behind sent my body first into paralysis, then convulsions, then nothing at all.