The snow fell close and thick, hiding them. Sweet, perfect snow dropping in the confetti of tickertape.
To cross the compound they used the safety of the huts, hugging the long shadows. From Hut 2 they scurried to the dark pall of the Bath and Laundry block. A panting pause there, and ears cocked for sounds of movement and voices.
Then the short sprint to the front of Hut 6, and they sheltered against the stilts of brick that supported the building while they calmed the frantic breathing. A few stumbling, running metres and they found the padlocked, recessed door of the Store. That was the waiting place, that was the last place where they would stop before the charge at the fences.
They had made the sheets into crude cloaks. The fastening on each of a single safety-pin left a hole for the head to dip through, and the sheets would hang down and lie secure over their backs. Like two children engaged in unimaginative fancy dress.
God, the snow helped them, the snow that cascaded from the low cloud ceiling.
God, Holly, that was luck.
Holly waited until the searchlight on the corner tower arced away along the length of the fence. The snow made its beam mottled and disturbed. He looked up at the tower, saw it as a fleeting image, checked like a chess-board, dark shape on white snow. He saw the barely distinct outline of the torso of the guard. Far back, the bastard, where he could warm himself. The guard would have to move forward on his platform each time that he varied the aim of his searchlight, but he'd do that rarely enough. He'd move the beam when he had to, when it was necessary, he'd not be hanging through the window.
He grinned, something mad in his eyes.
'Ready, Adimov…?'
"Course I'm ready.' A snarl from Adimov.
'Stay close to me.'
'Right up your arse.'
Holly reached out in the blackness, found Adimov's hand, felt through the wool of their gloves the trembling of the fingers. He squeezed Adimov's hand, squeezed it tight, dropped it.
'We shouldn't hang a b o u t… '
Holly turned again towards the angle of the compound.
He looked up again at the watch-tower. He waited, and Adimov's body was pressed against him as if to propel him forward. Holly waited, and was rewarded. The shadow of the guard came to the window, and the searchlight rotated across the huts and the inner compound, swung in a great sweep before coming to rest on the opposite fence.
Holly was gone. The very speed of his movement seemed to catch Adimov unprepared. Adimov chased after the billowing white back. Snow in their faces, in their eyes, melting in their mouths, settling on their capes. Hard to keep the eyes open when they were running, when they were bent, when the iced snow landed on them. Holly stopped, he crouched, Adimov crashed against him. A second of awkwardness, balance failing, but the discipline held. No words, and the white sheets blanketed their bodies and they froze to a statue stillness. They were at the angle of the perimeter path, on the ice of the tramped walkway where the snow now painted over the boot marks. Holly had been here many times. Now the new route, now the magic road.
God, he was tired. Shouldn't have been tired. Not at the start. He felt the lights all around him, the lights that stood back from the far fence, suspended from poles. And this was the most naked place, the most dangerous. This was where the guard-towers had been sited to provide maximum vision. The low wooden fence was beside him, peeping over the snow that had been taken from the perimeter path. The low wooden fence that acted as a marker for the killing zone. Have to get past the fence, have to get into the wire.
When is the best time? No time is best, every time is awful
… Shift yourself, Holly, shift yourself, or turn round and head back for that stinking bloody hut.
He looked up once, directly up towards the tower. He saw the falling snow flakes lively in the beam of the searchlight. He saw no movement. For a moment he wondered about the visibility of the guard on the next corner's watch-tower. Dead, weren't they, if that guard looked, if that guard was not huddled too at the back of his platform. He saw the barrel of the machine-gun, depressed so that the snow flakes could not penetrate its muzzle: The black eye of the barrel with a crest of snow lying on its foresight, the eye that laughed at him. Shift yourself.
He rose halfway to his full height. He stepped over the low wooden fence.
Into the killing zone.
His feet plunged down into the virgin snow, where no boots had trod that winter. Gentle, giving snow. He lurched three, four, five steps towards the first wire fence. There was a howl from the wind. God, bless you for the wind.
He felt Adimov's hand clasping at his sheet and the tail of his tunic. He had told the bugger to stay close, close he was, close as a bloody ball and chain. He was beside a post from which the wire was stretched. Old, rusty wire with ochre sharp barbs. He turned towards Adimov, and the man had remembered. Adimov had released his hold on Holly's back and now leaned away from him and crudely swept with his gloves the snow back over the chasms that their boots had left. God bless the snow, let it fall in the gouged holes and smooth away the sharp lines of recent movement. Holly fumbled in his pocket for the wire-cutters. Not much more than heavy pliers, the best that could be provided, and they were Adimov's ticket… Adimov alone could have provided him with the cutters… Everyone tries to go out in the short nights of summer. Only a fool, only Michael Holly, would try to go out in deep winter. That's your bed, Holly, lie on the bastard. He sank to his knees, grasped the cutters in both fists, cursed the impediment of the gloves. Adimov rearranged the sheet across Holly's back. Holly shivered.
No time is best… every time is awful.
Close to them, close enough for them to feel the jarring impact, were the sounds of stamping feet on the boards above. The bastard who was in the watch-tower, belting his feet on the platform, trying to cudgel some warmth into his toes. Come down here, bastard, come and feel the cold when the snow is wet through your trousers. The guard coughed, hoarse and raking, then a choking sound. God, and the bastard's crying, crying up there because it's cold, because the wind is hooked to his body. Crying for his home, crying for his mother. Keep warm, bastard, keep warm against the back of the platform.
Holly clamped the cutters on the first strand of wire.
Stretched, taut wire that had been applied in patterns of six-inch squares. No wire to spare for coils. That would have finished them, if the wire had been coiled. Cut low, cut close to the snow line. Holly froze. The wire snapped. The first strand was broken. He felt the slackness, behind him was the hiss of Adimov's breathing. Holly's hand groped for the next strand. He would cut out a box, a square box that had the width of a man's shoulders. There would be a tumbler alarm wire above the line where he cut, set to explode a siren if a man bucked the fence and climbed. He was below it, he was safe from it. About the only bloody thing he was safe from.
Holly made the hole. As he crawled through, Adimov's hands protected the material of the sheet from the wire's barbs.
Holly first, Adimov following. They had crossed the killing zone, they had broken through the first wire fence.
Remember what Mikk Laas had said… they're thorough, these pigs, good and thorough. In front of them was the high wire fence, and then the high wooden fence. Above them was the watch-tower where a young guard trembled with cold, where a machine-gun rested on its mounting. He closed his eyes, tried to flourish some deep strength from far inside himself.
He reached forward to feel the first strand that he would cut of the high wire fence.
A deadly, lifeless audience.
A humourless, witless speech.
She spoke against a wall of noise offered by scraping feet, moving chairs, hacking coughs. Yuri Rudakov did not always attend his wife's monthly Political Lecture, sometimes said to himself that it was good for her to shoulder a burden alone. She had privileges enough, it did her no damage to stand on her own feet. He was with her tonight because she had bitched so loud in the privacy of her own kitchen about the dinner invitation to Commandant Kypov.
If she had spoken well, that would have given him pleasure, but she had hidden her pretty face behind her spectacles, buried herself in her script and read with a droning mono-tony. .. For many of the countries of the emerging Third World, the Soviet Union is the only friend to whom they can turn for genuine help and guidance. From the West all they will find is the desire to reimpose the chains of servility that were the way of life under the old imperialistic rule. The countries of the West have never accepted the de-slavement of the peoples whom they regard as inferior and of value only if they can be exploited. But the Soviet Union offers true friendship. I would like to tell you of some of the agricultural development programmes that have been originated in Ethiopia, just one country that has rejected and expelled the yoke of American cold-war politics..
Rudakov winced, wondered from where she had rifled the text. Pravda? Izvestia? And the eyes of the pigs were on her. Almost dribbling, those that sat at the front. Not watching her face, not listening to her words. Staring at her knees and the skirt was too short. Prising open her thighs, they'd be, the filth and the scum that sat in front of her.
Elena should not have worn that skirt, not in the Kitchen hall. Then he thought of the Orderly who would bring Michael Holly. They would start early, straight after roll-call. He'd have the coffee again… That made him smile…
He would speak to Elena about her skirt. Not tonight, not so that he provoked a row with the Commandant coming to dinner, not with the precious excitement of the morning beckoning. But he would find a time to speak to her about the length of skirt she wore in front of the scum.
Holly had taken between his fingers the last strand of wire that he must cut to fashion the hole in the high wire fence.
Behind him Adimov sighed in impatience. What did the bugger expect. He wasn't snipping bloody roses. Bloody life and death wasn't it? And each time that the cutters bit down on the wire and separated it, then there had been the crack of the parting and they had lain still for a moment, covering their breath, not able to believe that the sounds would not be heard. They were almost underneath the watch-tower now. The bastard would have to forsake his shelter, he'd have to lean through the open window to see them, he'd have to peer down at the base of the wood stilts if he were to notice the twin crouched figures. For Christ's sake, Holly
… there's a path across the killing zone, smoothed a bit, cosmeticized by Adimov's efforts and by the steady falling snow, but for all that a path. There's a hole in the inner wire fence. If the bastard goes to the window, if he looks out in front of him… if he sees nothing then he's blind.
The strands were loose, the square of wire could be bent back to make space for them.
The high wooden wall was in front.
Yes, Mikk Laas, yes, they're thorough. A killing zone, two wire fences, a high wooden fence, and the prisoners that the barricades have been built to hold are half-starved, half-dead from tiredness. Yes, they're thorough, old Mikk Laas from Estonia. You never forget Mikk Laas, the encyc-lopaedia that made it possible, you always remember him.
But if you remember Mikk Laas then you remember a partisan, and a partisan means reprisal, and reprisal is a road to a zek in the Central Investigation Prison at Yavas.
That man will die, Michael Holly. And if you remember him then you remember also a letter in the pocket of Chernayev
… God, God… and all the memories lead to a hole cut with heavy pliers in the high wire fence.
His legs were wet, his trousers sodden. Water slopped in his boots.
Dreaming, Holly, and dreaming is death. Adimov was pushing him. Adimov who was the fellow-traveller was heaving, shoving, persuading Holly into the hole. Holly snapped the images from his mind. His elbows edged forward, he dragged himself through the gap. He heard the gasp of relief from Adimov.
He was through.
He rested for a moment against the thick beam support of the watch-tower. Only the high wooden fence, only that barrier left. What did they say? That the little camp was only a microcosm of the big camp, and the big camp stretched for ever, the big camp compound was a thousand miles across, wasn't that what they said? Wrap i t… He took Adimov's hand, pulled him a few inches, released a wire barb from Adimov's sheet. Adimov joined him, slumped on top of him.
They tried together to catch their breath, to subdue the pounding. They lay together in the snow under the high wooden fence. Holly could no longer feel his toes and his fingers were brilliant with pain.
It was Adimov who heard the ice slither of the skis.
First the skis, then the patter of the dog's feet and the panting of his breath. It was Adimov who reacted, pressing Holly face-down into the snow. Skis and a dog approaching on the far side of the high wooden fence. A scuffling of paws on the far side of the high wooden fence. Was this where it finished, gin-trapped between an attack dog and a belt-fed machine-gun.
'All quiet?'
'Yes, sergeant, all quiet… ' A chilled, unhappy voice from above.
'Fucking awful night.'
'Yes, sergeant.'
'All right for you in your shelter.'
'Yes, sergeant.'
'Fucking awful night to be o u t… and the dog, silly bitch, doesn't notice it. Have you been throwing food down?'
'Perhaps, perhaps a bit of sandwich, sergeant.'
'You eat your food in the barracks, you don't take bloody sandwiches on duty. Right?'
'Right, sergeant. I'm sorry, sergeant.'
'Don't let me catch you again… come on, you stupid bitch, you're fed enough without having to dig the snow for a crust… '
The dog growled, a soft rumble in her throat.
'I'm sorry, sergeant.'
Then the hiss of the skis and the oath for the dog to follow, and the stamp of the feet above them. Holly and Adimov held each other for comfort. Holly grinned, Adimov bit his lip to suffocate a laugh of relief.
The high wooden fence was dark with creosote. The top was two feet above Holly's head when he stood. He reached up with his hands, felt the rough-cut wood through his gloves. It was the last mountain to be climbed. He stood a long time, waiting for the strength to return.
The words had passed him by. Chernayev cared nothing for the lecture of Elena Rudakov. He had sat for near to an hour rigid in his seat. He had listened only for the hammer of gunfire, the agony scream of the perimeter siren. The letter burned in his pocket, the letter he had been charged by Michael Holly to hand to Captain Yuri Rudakov on the following afternoon. And Holly was running… Holly who had no words for the thief once he had returned to the hut from the SHIzo block. Happy enough to talk with Chernayev before he went to the SHIzo, glad enough then to hint of revolution. But the SHIzo had changed him… How many times had Chernayev tried to talk with him since he had come back? Half-a-dozen times, a dozen times? And nothing given in return, nothing until the last. When the letter had been passed, that had been the Holly he knew.
The man who was going to the wire, the man who could crack a grin, the man who was going to run and who asked a friend to give a letter to the Captain of KGB. Shit, that was style. Chernayev had been seventeen years in the Dubrovlag and had never known of a man succeed in running loose from the camps.
There was no applause when she finished her speech.
The senior man from Internal Order shouted for them to come to their feet and they stood in silence and watched the departure of the Political Officer and his woman. He was smart in his uniform greatcoat, she was velvet in the warmth of her fur. And she wore her scent, the bitch, because her scent would save her nose from the smell of the men that gaped at her. Chernayev flopped again to his chair and waited for a film to be shown – and for the gunfire, and for the sirens.
Run with the wind, Holly. They'll hunt you as they would a rat in a chicken coop. And in winter… Run hard. An old thief was allowed to cry. There was no shame in crying for a young man who ran at the wire.
'What's the film called?' Chernayev asked.
'The title is irrelevant. The important thing is that it lasts two hours,' replied Poshekhonov comfortably.
He had needed Adimov to push him up. Without Adimov he could not have found the muscle necessary to scale the high wooden fence. When Holly jumped, Adimov grasped his shins and forced them up so Holly could swing his leg and straddle the summit of the fence. For a moment Holly was silhouetted on the top of the fence, and he ducked his body down and tried to lie along its length. He pulled at Adimov's wrist. Adimov was strong. The man who was at the front of the food queue in the Kitchen, who had not spent fifteen days in the SHIzo block on half-rations. He could climb for himself. They were together on the fence. A deafening noise they seemed to have made. Holly saw the ski tracks and the footprints of the dog. He held the top of the fence in a steel grip of his hurt fingers, he swung the other leg, he hung from his fingers.
He fell and his body crumpled on the snow and the blood flushed to his head and his ears screamed with the noise of his landing. He thought of a guard who stood a few feet above him, he thought of a balaclava and a forage cap with ear muffs… Adimov fell beside him.
They crouched low. Each for the other they spread out the sheet-tangle to cover their backs. The camouflage of the white winter fox.
The guard shifted on his platform, his feet beat on the planked flooring. Over the fence and the high wire and the low wire came the drift of voices, the spill from the Kitchen, those who were leaving before the start of the film. Incredible, to hear those voices from beyond the fences.
It was as though Holly had performed his task. Adimov's fist rested on Holly's elbow, ready to propel him towards the darkness of the tree-line. Holly had said he would take Adimov out, Holly had been good to his word. Like a team that could work in tandem, the leadership was exchanged without question. Adimov pointed to the snow surface, made a smoothing motion with his hand.
Forty metres to the treeline.
Adimov went first, awkward, charging.
Holly watched him go. His legs shook. He lost Adimov in the haze of trees.
Holly's turn. But he must go backwards, his back to the trees. He must be bent so that he could push the snow again into the holes that their feet had left. Forty yards to cover while his glance wavered between the snow pits and the back of the guard in the watch-tower. Don't turn, you bastard, don't turn. He remembered Feldstein's question: if you had known that this place waited for you would you have done what you d i d? '… and a miserable answer he had given. Of course he hadn't known of ZhKh 385/3/1, of course he hadn't known of two wire fences and a high wooden fence and a guard above him with a machine-gun and clear fire field…
Did Alan Millet know? Holly wanted to shout the question, found it rising in him. Did the man who gave him sandwiches and beer in a pub near the Thames and a package to take to Moscow, did he know? When he was out
… when… he'd find Alan Millet.
Adimov clutched him, twisted him towards the abyss of the woods. No gun had been cocked. No siren button had been depressed.
At first they went in caution, doubled beneath the lower branches of the firs and larches and wild birch. Sometimes where the trees were set thickest there was little snow, but when they came to places of more open planting they would fall up to their waists into drifts. They blundered in the blackness with an arm raised to protect their faces from the whiplash of loose young branches. When the lights over the perimeter of the camp could no longer be seen, they went faster. They cared less for noise now. The pace increasing, the exhaustion surging. And through all the hours of darkness they must never stop, never break the rhythm of distancing themselves from the fences.
'We're going north?'
'As I said we would, Holly.'
'How far, like this?'
'Till we reach the railway that runs north from Barashevo.'
'We will go along the line?'
'The line is safer than the roads.'
'I thought… I thought there would be a greater excitement…'
Adimov leading, not looking back, the snow falling from the branches that he disturbed onto Holly's face and body.
'Excitement at what?'
'At getting out. Stupid, I thought I'd be singing.'
'Stupid, Holly… it's not a bloody Pioneer ramble…
You want to know what chance you have of getting out, right out, over the frontier? None. You've done all this just to be brought back, and when you're back it will be worse
… And for me, what is there?'
'There is your wife, Adimov…'
'My wife who is dying. To see her, should that make me excited?'
In morose silence they trudged on through the woods.
There were tears in the sheets where they had caught against branches. Neither man was willing to stop to remove the drapes, and they would need them when they came to the railway line.
No excitement, Holly. Only the pain, only the waiting for the siren to reach out for them.
He missed little. He noticed everything that broke the pattern of the hut.
Mamarev had strolled with an inoffensive innocence the length of the aisle between the bunks.
As he had gone by the bunks he was watched but not spoken to. They all knew which was the 'stoolie' amongst them. And they tolerated him because his person was sacrosanct. He was protected by the death penalty, he was kept safe by the threat of the SHIzo block. A nine-year stretch – a stretch for taking a girl into a truck park. Loud and clear she'd said 'yes', till her fucking knickers were at her ankles. A nine-year stretch and they'd said they'd halve his time. He had been a clerk, he had worked in the offices of the administration of Transport in Novosibirsk. He was not a part of this place, he owed nothing to these creatures in the bunk beds of Hut 2, he owed it only to himself to get clear of this stinking cesspit camp.
Two bunks were empty when the ceiling lights were switched off. Adimov and Holly. He had seen them together earlier at the perimeter path, and now their bunks were empty.
The Englishman was nothing, he had no fear of the Englishman, but Adimov was different… Adimov carried a knife.
The trustie from Internal Order slept at the far end of the hut to the bunks of Adimov and Holly, a double bunk-frame to himself, and a curtain to shield him from the common zeks. Mamarev had allowed an hour to pass from the dousing of the lights before he slid from his bed and went on his toes towards the drawn curtain. A wraith moving along the rough-floored aisle of the hut. Let the bastard trustie inform on the bastard 'baron'. He drew the curtain aside, he insinuated himself behind it. He shook the shoulder of the sleeping man until he woke. He whispered into the ear of the trustie.
'There are two beds that are empty. Adimov's and Holly's…'
'You little shit
With the 'baron's' help the trustie could run an easy hut.
Not that they could be friends, of course, but they need not cross each other. A 'baron' was a bad enemy, even for a trustie.
'Two beds are empty. I've told y o u.,. what are you going to do?'
'Fucking strangle you, that's what I could do about it.'
'And lose your precious curtain, and Good Conduct, and your red stripe, and your fucking life.'
'Get back to your bunk… ' the trustie spat the words in a rare savagery.
The trustie heard the fall of the curtain, the drift of a light footfall. He had no choice. He pulled on his boots. He slipped into his anorak with the bright red band on the upper right arm. He switched on his torch and walked the length of the hut. He saw the two folded blankets. He cursed quietly, sadly. When he came back between the bunk ends his torch showed him Mamarev sitting upright on his mattress, smiling. No choice. The trustie opened the door of Hut z, bent his head and began to walk to the Guard House.
They had reached the railway line. Behind them were the blurred lights of Barashevo railway station. In front the twin rails stood out in the half-gloom between the black cloud and the whiteness covering the sleepers and chip stones.
Holly put his hand on Adimov's shoulder. 'Well done… well done.'
Adimov did not reply.
The wind was at their backs. The sheets were pressed against their bodies. Two ghosts going north from the village along the railway track. Outside the confines of the camp Holly felt the terrible nakedness of the fugitive. And the little camp was exchanged for the big camp. It was a thousand miles to the perimeter path of the big camp. Into the night, into the driving snow, into the short horizon of the narrowing railway lines.
The sergeant was sprawled in a chair in front of the stove of the Guard House. His dog lay beside his feet close to the opened doors where the flames curled from the heaped coke. The sergeant was near to sleep, the dog snored. On a better night he would have gone out again, toured the fence a second time as midnight approached. Buggered if he would on such a night. Get himself soaked and half-frozen, and he could lose a good dog in a snow blizzard, get her cold again when she'd not dried out her fur, that was the way tc kill a good dog. The radio played quietly on the table besidt him. He had his tobacco. He had mugs of tea brought by one of the kids each time he shouted for it. Buggered if he'd go out again. His skis stood against the outside wall of the Guard House and they'd stay there.
'Sergeant, the Internal Order prisoner from Hut 2 wishes to speak with you… '
The sergeant straightened, swung in his chair to face the Duty Orderly. His fingers flicked nervously at the buttons of his tunic. The dog stirred. When the sergeant saw the snow-covered, muffled shape of the trustie framed by the doorway he felt the premonition of crisis. i am sorry to disturb you, sergeant. I thought you should know. Two men are missing from Hut 2.'
'So tomorrow you have the Englishman?'
'Tomorrow I have him.'
'You've played it strangely, I'll say that Rudakov, bloody strangely… and now you are to be rewarded for your eccentricity.'
'For each fish there is a different bait.'
'And when you've milked him, will he be on his way?'
'He thinks so, that's what he believes.'
The Commandant laughed. Major Vasily Kypov shook in merriment and his shoulders heaved and his jaw wobbled, and the burst of his amusement splayed out over the small front garden of Yuri Rudakov's bungalow. Rudakov laughed with him, and the cigars glowed from the porch. On the road beyond the white-painted palisade the Commandant's driver started the engine of the jeep.
'That's what he believes… That's very good… very funny. Bloody spy. An excellent evening, Rudakov. I'm more than grateful to your wife. Fine meal, and damn good hospitality afterwards… Won't be forgotten, not by me.
Shit, we dented those bottles.'
Kypov swayed against Rudakov. The Political Officer wondered how the Commandant would negotiate the snow-bound path to the gate. it's been my pleasure and my privilege to entertain you, Major. Vasily, please… Again my best wishes and my thanks to your wife.'
He made it to the jeep, not easily, but he arrived. The lights sparked, the engine roared-Rudakov smiled, sweetly, privately, went back into the bungalow and locked the front door. He was hurrying now.
Through the living-room and the kitchen to turn off the lights, to make up the fire for the night, to peel off his tunic and kick off his shoes. The bedroom was in darkness. He could hear Elena's breathing, erratic and excited. More of the scent that he had bought for her, that she knew he liked her to wear. Shaking out of his trousers wriggling from his shirt, discarding his socks. Elena would have sensed his mood, known the anticipation that gripped him while the banalaties were traded with a boring fool on the front porch. Her arms greeted him, slender and naked. Naked as her breast and her stomach aand her thighs. He swam beneath the bed duvet, he slid over the sheets warmed by her body. Beautiful, wonderful, dry, clean skin resting, rolling against his. Her hands finding the sinew in the small of his back, his fingers scouring for her nipples. Her hands diving over the flatness of his belly, his fingers plunging for the richness of heat and moisture and opened legs. Her hands holding and squeezing, his fingers prying and searching.
And he had sat with the file open, with the typed words battering his mind, when this was waiting for him. Idiot, Y u r i… her mouth was over his, her tongue forced his back.
There was a whisper in her ear, an entreaty. He began to climb onto her, to submerge her beneath him.
He heard the siren.
Turn the bastard thing off • • •kill it. But the siren at Camp 3 can never be switched off- It must scream its course.
The softness had fled Elena. He felt her rigid against him. A new sound with the siren call, sharper and more urgent. He might have sobbed, and Elena pulled the bed clothes around her as he reached for the telephone.
'Rudakov… '
He listened.
The hand that had gloried in the skin of Elena was now white and clenched on the telephone. Abruptly he replaced it, then sagged back onto the bed. Though the room was dark his hands covered his face. For a full minute he lay quite still on the bed, not caring to cover his nakedness, then he dragged himself from the coverlet and started a hapha-zard search across the floor for the items of his uniform. He let himself into the living-room where he would dress.
Because Elena Rudakov's head was deep beneath her pillow he did not hear her weeping.
He had lost a jewel, a jewel that would have adorned his crown.
On the railway line, beyond the reach of the village lights, two men heard the far cry of pursuit, the siren's howl, and tried to run faster.