Kolchak's gold

16

On Tuesday* Pudovkin brought a parcel into my cell and unwrapped it with a certain voila flair-it contained the clothes I was to wear.

“We’ve laid on the truck for tonight,” he told me. “See if everything fits.”

“We’re going out tonight?”

“We’re starting tonight.” He had a dry deflating manner sometimes. I had learned that Pudovkin’s character was summed up largely in his Scandinavian thoroughness and impartiality: a cautious man with the patience for details. It had probably kept him alive. He seemed stolid but he had a good quick imagination; you needed that too if you were to anticipate the opposition’s movements. Pudovkin’s other persona-the visible portion of his iceberg existence-was that of a retired foundry official. Because he was retired from daily employment he enjoyed a certain freedom of time and movement which made him invaluable to Bukov; I gathered Pudovkin rarely had time to relax but that was the way he wanted it. He reminded me of the retired police lieutenant who can’t stand being out of harness and sets up his own security-detective agency-“just to keep a hand in,” but ends up working twice as hard as ever before.

For Pudovkin there was the added spice of illegality and the added strength of having a cause. Like Bukov he was not himself a Jew but to Pudovkin that was beside the point.

He had brought food also and I cut into the fresh loaf; the rich heavy smell invaded my nostrils and I ate while I unfolded the garments.

Several plans had been studied and rejected. At first there was the idea of smuggling me down to the Black Sea resort of Sochi and shipping me out as a deckhand on a tramp, but I had no nautical experience and we had to scotch that one. In any case there were too many checkpoints and bottlenecks; and the constant reinforcement of the Mediterranean Red fleet through the Dardanelles meant the waters would be alive with navy vessels practicing their boarding techniques on every passing freighter.

Our scheme was limited by the variety of OVIR blanks and forged passports available in the Bukov cell’s collections. It was also limited by my physical and linguistic markings: for instance I could not pass as a Cuban or Chilean, nor as a Russian for that matter-not only because of my height and coloring but also because the Soviets are far more meticulous in examining their own citizens who try to leave the country than they are about foreigners.

Bukov was adamant about one thing. I was not to cross through any international checkpoints in the Crimea. In the first place the Crimea was where they were looking for me; in the second place if I were caught too close to home it could bring down Bukov and his entire cell and he was quite right in refusing to take that risk. But it made our planning far more difficult because it meant I had to get to the mainland across the narrow isthmus at Armyansk, or cross Karkinitskiy Bay by small boat, or ride the train across the causeway from Dzhankoy to Genichesk-or, and this was what we settled on, due east across the length of the Crimean peninsula to the Kerch Straits and across to Taman by small boat. Once in the Georgian heights of the Caucasus it would be possible to motor southeast along the mountain roads above the Black Sea to the rugged Turkish border country; slip across into Turkey and escape through Asia Minor.

It meant a journey of nearly two hundred miles across the Crimea by road, followed by a ten-mile boat crossing and then the run down through the Caucasus which would be about five hundred miles of mountain roads to the Turkish border. There were OVIR barriers at several points to check travelers’ internal passports; we would be able to avoid some but not all of them and I had to have papers. Therefore I became Georges Lapautre, a Communist labor-union functionary from the St. Chamond small-arms factory near Lyon. I was visiting the Soviet Union to learn about the fine points of worker organization in small-arms plants, of which there are a great many in the southern part of the USSR.

The suit was a cheap ready-to-wear one of Marseille manufacture; the hat was marked Italie-indicating it had been imported into France-and I asked Pudovkin where the devil they had found it but he only shrugged it off as if the wardrobe department had ten warehouses of clothes for every specification. That was not the case and I knew it and after a while it occurred to me that perhaps they had chosen the French identity because that was the one they had clothes for.

The shirt and underwear were French products but the shoes were Russian. “I’m afraid your feet were the wrong size,” Pudovkin said. “If you are asked, you mistakenly stepped in fresh tar and it ruined your old shoes, and you bought these here. You won’t be asked.”

I had a look at the French passport-the photo was mine, Bukov had taken it. The rest looked completely authentic except for a few details. According to the passport Georges Lapautre was forty-two, where I was thirty-four; Lapautre was some two inches shorter than I, but weighed nearly the same; Lapautre had blond hair.

I considered the evidence before me. Finally I said to Pudovkin, “Georges Lapautre is real, isn’t he.”

“Why?”

“The only false thing about this passport is my photograph in it. And the suit is a little too big in the waist and a little too short in the trousers. And it’s an ensemble-he bought the tan shirt and the brown tie to go with the brown suit. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Pudovkin smiled. “You don’t think we would murder a man merely to provide you with a suit of clothes and a French passport?”

“I’m not too happy about wearing a dead man’s clothes.”

“They’re not contaminated. He wasn’t diseased. Anyhow we’ve cleaned them.”

“How did he die?”

“He fancied himself a swimmer. He died in the Black Sea last summer-of drowning. It happens every few weeks in the resorts. I’m afraid we make it our business to make off with the property of such people. It’s a bit ghoulish-but no one’s harmed.”

“Don’t the Soviet authorities know he’s dead? Hasn’t this passport been canceled or revoked or something?”

“This one died in Sochi,” Pudovkin said. “The commissar of the police in Sochi is one of us. The deceased was buried under some other name. Of course his OVIR visa expired months ago, and his travel permits from point to point. Yours are forgeries.”

“Where are they?”

“We’ll have them ready by the time we leave tonight.”

“I’ll be passing right through Sochi. What if I meet someone who knew him?”

“He only went there for a week’s holiday at one of the pensions. I believe he died his third day there. Not many people would have known him-or are likely to remember.”

An hour later Pudovkin returned to collect my own clothes. “What do you want with them?”

“One of our people will leave them in the lavatory of the railway station in Sebastopol.”

I felt I was in competent hands.

The hair bleach was crude stuff but it made me blond enough. I had been using it since the day before Bukov had taken my picture for the Lapautre passport. “You’ll have to shave as often as you can. The darker stubble would give you away.”

“I’ll remember,” I said. He’d packed a razor in my kit. I was to wear heavy-rimmed glasses at all times: they contained plain glass lenses. Pudovkin instructed me to slouch my shoulders and walk with short strides; it would make me appear shorter. And to let my mouth hang open all the time. “It gives you a vacant expression of innocence-and it changes the shape of your face.”

He wrapped the razor and my notes in brown paper and tied it with string. “You’ll have to leave the briefcase. Do you have everything?”

I had transferred things out of my old pockets. I said, “Everything I need, yes.”

“We might have made it a suitcase but a man with a package draws less attention.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

“Let’s hope we have.”

Pudovkin wore black stovepipe boots up to his knees. Cord trousers and a heavy short coat and a soft motoring cap. He looked like a truck driver; he was supposed to. “Let’s go down,” he said, and we left the chamber. I found I was moving with a prowler’s predatory silence, my heart pounding, watching the deaf informer’s door; we slipped past it and went down the stairs into Bukov’s flat.

The lights were out and it was dim, the windows defined by dreary winter twilight. Pudovkin shut the door and produced an automatic pistol-one of those flat dull nine-millimeter guns stamped out in a Czech works. He popped the clip into his hand and worked the action with the air of a man who knew his weapons. When he put it away again I saw that he carried it in his belt, without a holster. That was according to the rules: it’s not impossible to ditch a gun but you can’t hide a holster when it’s attached to your belt.

Bukov was an amorphous shape in the poor light. “It’s time.”

I said, “I don’t know how to-”

“Never mind that. You’d better come over here.”

He led us to the front window and pointed across the way. I had not been out of the cell in three full days and the heavy lie of snow on the square took me by surprise. It was not snowing at the moment. The shadow was where he had to be, on the right-hand side of the square just inside the window of a cafe, at a table near the door with money by his wine so he could leave instantly without arousing the waiter’s ire.

Bukov said, “He wouldn’t recognize you as you are now, but he knows everyone who’s entered this building. He didn’t see you enter it. He can’t see you leave it.”

“Is there a back door?”

“No. There are windows.”

“All right,” I said.

“Pudovkin will have to leave alone by the front door-the man saw him come in. You understand?”

I turned to Pudovkin. “Where do I meet you then?”

“Remember where you parked Timoshenko’s car?”

“Of course.”

“That street. Fifty meters farther along it. You’ll find an old grey lorry standing there. Get in behind the wheel and wait for me.”

Bukov said, “If you’re challenged you’re just waiting to pick up a friend. The cargo is wool coats, the destination is Kerch. If anyone wants to see the shipping documents they’re in the glove box with the keys to the truck.”

“That gun you offered me when I first came. Maybe I’ll take it now.”

“No,” Bukov said. “We can’t have shooting here.”

The three of us went down to the ground floor. I shifted my grip on the paper-wrapped parcel; my palms were slick. Pudovkin stopped at the foot of the stairs and watched Bukov guide me to the rear of the corridor; the sill was low but the building was constructed on a slope so that it was a good ten-foot drop to the bank of snow beneath.

Bukov frowned. “Wait here a moment.” Then he left me; I saw him circle past Pudovkin and then his heavy shoes thudded the stairs going up. I bit my lip; what if someone should enter just now, or pop out of a doorway along the hall?

Bukov came trotting down with a high pair of rubber overshoes. “You don’t want to ruin your shoes, do you.”

“Are these your own?”

“I’ll get another pair. Put them on.”

“Thank you.”

I balanced myself against the window jamb and tugged them on over my shoes. Bukov slid the window open. “All right?”

“I’ve been privileged to know you,” I told him. “Isn’t there anything I can-”

“Just don’t lead them back to me if you can help it. They know what I am but they think if they leave me free to operate I’ll lead them to others. I won’t, but they don’t know that.”

“They won’t leave you alone forever.”

“I know that. But in the meantime we’re getting a great many people out. I’ll have no regrets when they come-I just don’t want to hurry them.”

“I understand.”

I thought he smiled; in the dimness it was hard to be sure. He offered his hand. His grip was firm and quick. “Give Nikki my love.”

“I-”

But he urged me out the window. I hung by my fingers and let myself drop. The snow cushioned the fall but I lost my balance nonetheless and had to brush myself off; when I looked up the window was sliding shut.

The truck swayed when Pudovkin put his weight on the running board and swung himself into the cab. The door chunked shut and he reached across my knee into the glove box for the keys. “I’m sorry it took so long. I had to throw him off the scent, that fellow in the cafe.”

“Did he try to follow you?”

“No, but he knows who I am. I couldn’t let him see me come this way. I had to come the long way round.”

The dusk had turned to night. He ground the starter and the engine caught; I heard the ratchet of the handbrake.

The truck had been driven to pieces. We rattled around the village and went bucking and pitching down the country lanes, snarling through the gears. He said, “We’re a little heavy. It really is a cargo of coats. I’m afraid it won’t be a fast journey-we’ll be lucky to make the coast by dawn. I’ve got to stay on the back roads.”

“Then we’ll be crossing the straits by daylight.”

“No, it’s better to lay over and cross by night. There’s a house we’ll use.”

It began to snow again. Through the batting windshield wipers I saw the forests slide past. We snored and growled up the low hills, the truck shuddering with the strain. There are thick woods inland on the peninsula; at the crests the wind has made the trees hunchbacked. The wind of our approach stirred the trees and pillows of snow fell with plopping crunches, now and then on our hood; several times we had to stop and get out to clean it off. Pudovkin said, “I have tire chains but I hope we won’t need them.” His voice was thin against the racket.

There was nothing for me to do. He had to concentrate on his driving; the roads were narrow and steeply treacherous. I tried to doze. Into my inert grey weariness fell the occasional pebble of apprehension and retrospection: I was a fool, there was no way out of this, I’d been unforgivably callous in involving Bukov and his people in this because it meant I was no longer risking merely my own life but theirs as well.

We ran on into the snowy night along the narrow hill tracks. We crossed above a lake, faintly shining in the night-the ice on it gleamed where the wind had cleared the snow from it. The truck was not insulated and had a poor heater and its window seals were all gone; the wind bit my ears.

During the past three and a half days I had numbed myself with introspective rationalizing and fantasizing. At times I’d had to fight an overwhelming yearning for Nikki, whom I had tried to put out of my thoughts until then; I could see her clearly, her movements and poses and faces-I remembered the way her hair had looked against the pillow; I could hear the cadences of her voice. She was personal and specific in my vision. The nerve ends of my hands and lips remembered with exquisite agony the sweet warm textures of her body. Now Bukov’s parting comment brought it all back again and I drowsed fitfully in the lurching truck with Nikki on my mind, wanting her and blaming her, loving and hating, and now wondering: would I seek her out, once I was out of the Soviets’ reach? Would we meet-and how would it go? Did I have anything to say to her beyond accusations?

My anguish was the torture of questions without answers. The faces moved across the screen of my eyelids: MacIver. Haim Tippelskirch. Zandor. Timoshenko. Karl Ritter. Vassily Bukov. And Nikki. The faces I had never seen-Kolchak, Maxim Tippelskirch, Heinz Krausser-and the dream of gold.

The snow stopped falling before dawn but it had dropped heavily on the hills and we had to use the chains; it took a long time to wrestle them onto the tires and we were still west of our destination when the light came.

The dawn sky had a bruised coloration and it promised to be another oppressive grey day; the trees were limp and heavy, the crumpled folds of the hills were blue with dull shadows. The truck’s window crank, designed by some sinister idiot, hammered the side bone of my knee.

A small stone farmhouse on the left: Pudovkin swung the wheel and we angled across into its yard. I stiffened.

“We’ll lay over here.”

He drove it right into the barn and a man came down from the house, a big man with his face glowing in the chill wind. We dismounted from the truck and Pudovkin smiled but the farmer did not. Pudovkin had begun to utter a greeting but now suddenly his voice stopped, as if someone had shot it.

I said, “What is it?”

The farmer only shook his head and closed the barn behind us and took us to the house. He was reaching for a wide rake when I went inside with Pudovkin.

The woman was stout and I heard the cry of an infant somewhere in the house. Pudovkin and I stood in the kitchen stamping and blowing through our cheeks. Pudovkin pulled off his gloves and blew on his hands. “Hello, Raiza.”

“You’re still too thin,” she said.

“Boris has a long face.”

“He heard something. I don’t know.”

Through a steamy window I saw the farmer raking the yard, obliterating the tracks our truck had made.

Pudovkin said, “We haven’t eaten all night.” He took me through the house and showed me the bathroom. I heard his footsteps recede; the farmer banged into the house and they talked in the kitchen. I could hear the voices, not the words.

I let the water run until the rust cleared out of it. The trickle spiraled down an icicle that hung from the spout. When I turned it off the waterpipes banged. I found a towel and scrubbed my face warm.

I found Pudovkin at the kitchen table, his jaws ruminating bread. “We’ve had a little trouble. The man I was to turn you over to-he was to take you across to the mainland and drive you down the Caucasus. He’s been arrested.”

I sat down very slowly as if the chair might break under me. “Then they know.”

“No. The man’s a Jew, they arrest them for sport. It doesn’t mean this has anything to do with you.”

The farmer stood at the stove, brooding, his nose tucked inside the upturned collar of his coat: “Perhaps you’d better change your plans, Mikhail.”

Pudovkin said, “The car is ready on the other side?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll have to go as planned. Our papers go with that car, not with any other.”

“Suppose Leonid gives them the plate number?”

“Will he?”

The farmer turned. “He won’t volunteer it. But if they put pressure on him.… You can’t hold that against a man. Anyone would break.”

Pudovkin said, “But they’d have to know what to ask him.”

“They may know that he arranged for a boat. I don’t altogether trust the man he got the boat from. The man’s a gentile.”

“So am I,” Pudovkin said.

“I trust you, Mikhail, I do not trust this man who has the boats.”

“Then why use him?”

“In the winter our usual man takes his fishing boats to the yards at Yalta for refinish.”

They excluded me. I was apart but not aloof. I couldn’t interfere; in any case the only thing I could do to change things would be to walk out. I considered it: at least it would take the burden off these people. It was none of their blame.

Pudovkin said, “Suppose we tried to get a different boat tonight. From someone else.”

“We might try. I doubt it would throw them off.”

“It might keep us out of a trap. If the man’s informed they’ll be watching to see who comes to use his boat.”

The farmer left the house almost immediately and without any further talk; it was settled.

Pudovkin took me into a bedroom. “You’d better try to sleep. We’ll be leaving at night fall. I’m afraid you’ll be burdened with my company for another few days. I’ll have to take Leonid’s place with you. It will be all right.”

I said, “You were planning to turn back here-do it. Just tell me where to find the car on the other side. I can drive myself.”

“You wouldn’t get fifty kilometers. Put it out of your mind. And don’t be gallant-don’t run away to save the rest of us. If you’re caught we’re all caught. You need my help and I need yours. You see?”

He was right; I had to give that one up.

I slept through a snowfall and at dusk we had to shovel the barn doors clear before we could bring out the truck. A surly wintry evening; we ate quickly and washed down the food with strong local wine. I shook hands gravely with the farmer’s wife and then the three of us set off in the truck. I rode in the middle and tried to keep my knees out of the way of the shift lever. Boris, the farmer, was driving: he would drop us and take the truck back to his farm to await Pudovkin’s return.

I said, “What about the load of coats?”

“I delivered them this afternoon,” Pudovkin said.

“You’ve had no sleep at all then.”

“There’s plenty of time to rest when we’re dead.” He seemed pleased with himself.

We reached the coast several miles south of the city of Kerch. A man stood on the stony beach holding the bow rope of a dinghy. The farmer introduced him and Pudovkin shook his hand; I saw money change hands and then Boris was bear-hugging all around and walking back up to the road. I felt lucky to be still wearing Vassily Bukov’s knee-high rubbers; we shoved the dinghy into the surf and clambered into it and the boatman picked up the oars. Above us the truck began to move back up the road and the weather swallowed its lights quickly. We pitched out through a crashing froth that soaked us with freezing spray but the boatman was superb with his oars-we never shipped a wave.

The fishing boat lay at anchor without lights; we climbed over the low transom and the boatman fixed the dinghy to its davits and went forward to start his engine. Pudovkin and I went below. The crew cabin was tiny; there were four hammocks and it stank of fish. The engine came alive with a guttural growl and we heard the anchor cable scrape; a few moments later the cabin floor tipped underfoot as the stern went down with the screw’s bite.

“It’s twenty-four kilometers by the route we’ll take,” Pudovkin said. “We’ll be about four hours.”

“You’d better sleep, then.”

“I intend to.”

I left him cocooned in a hammock; I went up to the wheelhouse. I’ve never been a good sailor and I knew I couldn’t take the confinement of that stinking closed crew cabin; on deck in the air I might make it without losing my stomach.

We ran without lights and the boatman kept her throttle at something like half speed because he didn’t want excessive noise and he didn’t want to throw too much of a visible wake. We were quartering across the current that flowed through the strait from the Sea of Azov into the Black Sea; it was a rough ride and I clung to handholds.

For two hours we rode the bucking deck together and never learned each other’s names; I think we both felt it was better not to know. We exchanged meaningless small talk, neither of us giving anything away. He told me a little about fishing and a little about the waters hereabouts.

In mid-channel we hit a crosschop of conflicting currents that was too much for me and I had to hang over the stern rail at one side of the dinghy and cat up my dinner. The rest of the ride was agony.

Once he throttled down and I looked up in alarm; after a while I caught sight of lights moving past our port side in the distance. The boatman identified it as the night ferry to Kerch. We pitched derelict in the sea’s short chop until distance absorbed the ferry.

After midnight we went ashore in the dinghy and Pudovkin paid the boatman the second half of his money. Again the handshake-in contrast to the ritual bear-hug of friends-and then Pudovkin and I climbed the steep rocks in a frigid wind. I could hear the chatter of my own teeth.

“I’m afraid we have a walk ahead of us. I didn’t trust him enough to have him put us down too close to the car. Are you up to it?”

“Is there a choice?”

He laughed and went striding toward the coast road, setting an example I’d have been embarrassed not to follow since I was half his age. On the boat I’d been convinced I could survive anything so long as it was on dry land but now I found the bite of that arctic wind and the lash of driven snowflakes to be equally painful. I’ve never thought myself a hypochondriac but that night I had visions of trenchfoot and frostbite and pneumonia.

I don’t know how long we walked. I had passed the point of exhaustion and had made a fine discovery: there was no such thing as second wind. But it was still dark when Pudovkin led us down a snow-covered side road that appeared to be nothing more than dirt-track ruts with tufts of weed sprouting from the center hump. We had a limited amount of light, reflecting down from the underbellies of the clouds; it had stopped snowing at some indeterminate time in the night and Pudovkin said the lights were those of a town beyond the ridge inland of us. Whenever the wind let up we could hear the crash of surf below to our left. There was a gothic wildness to the night: snow-mists swirled around us and the wind had a dismal voice.

I bumped into Pudovkin’s shoulder before I realized he had stopped; belatedly I saw that the snow-covered mound in front of us was a car-a Volkswagen by its shape. We batted the two-inch white cake off the windshield and rear window and then Pudovkin opened the door to release the catch of the front hood.

He stood looking into the orifice. “You’d think there’d be a shovel. Well we’ll have to make do.” He handed me the jack handle and went at it with his gloved hands. It was impossible not to admire his self-control. We shoveled snow clear of the exhaust pipe and scraped purchase-tracks for the wheels and then we let the wind blow us back to the car. At least there were chains on the rear tires.

Pudovkin found the key under the seat and we had some trouble before the car would start. From the diminutive size of its oval rear window I assumed it was very old-early nineteen-fifties at best-but after a great deal of weak grinding it caught and Pudovkin revved it mightily. He made sure it was warmed enough not to stall before he tried putting it in gear.

The night’s coat of granulated-sugar snow treacherously concealed an underlayer of glazed ice; we skidded loosely all the way out to the main road but the chains kept us moving. When we reached the road I said, “Shouldn’t we sweep over our tracks?”

“The wind will do it for us.”

We jingled slowly south and in a little while daylight began to flood across the ridges, scattering the shadows.

I tried to navigate but the map of Georgia and the Caucasus was not of the finest scale and did not show all the back roads; often we reached intersections not indicated by the map and had to guess. We were trying to avoid the seaside resorts but at the same time we could not afford to take the main inland routes because they were summer roads high up in the Caucasus and if you got stuck in snowdrifts up there they would be carrying your body out in the spring. The late snowfall had been a bad break all around; it restricted our choices of routes, it slowed our travel and it left tracks.

On the stretches between resort towns we tried to get down onto the main roads because they were plowed clear; along here we removed the chains and Pudovkin drove too fast for the roads, the tires leaving black smears on the oil-smudged curves, the beetle running along with a complaining rubbery whine.

On the northern approaches to Tuapse we stopped at a government pump to fill the tank and put oil in the crankcase and Pudovkin asked the attendant about the weather to the south. There had been less snow down there, the man said; he heard Sochi was completely snow-free.

We had come only a bit better than a hundred miles since dawn and it was already late afternoon. We’d last eaten at midnight-food we’d carried ashore from the boat-and we were famished; we bought bread and tinned herring and beer and I purchased a cheap composition suitcase because my paper-wrapped bundle had been ruined by last night’s weather. When we returned to the car Pudovkin said, “If we run straight through we’ll reach the border by tomorrow night. What do you say?”

“I’ll take another turn at the wheel, then.”

He’d been reluctant to let me drive before; he was still reluctant-he loved to drive, particularly on bad roads. “I should have been a taxi driver or a racer,” he said. “Isn’t it childish?”

We ate on the move and then he spread the map across his knees and directed me to the left up a steep pitted asphalt street; we had to get around Tuapse because at this time of year the police would notice any strange car in the deserted streets.

The detour took us well back into the hills before we could turn south again and the snow was deep along the shoulders; we had to put the chains on again.

Darkness fell and there was no moon-the clouds were still with us. We crawled because it was hard to see: the line of definition was poor between what was road and what was not road. The country there is jagged and humpy and the hills are studded with low scattered trees. Down below along the coast it is semitropical with palmlike vegetation and white-roofed seaside houses but these hills, footing against the mysterious Caucasian Mountains, are as primitive as something in Nepal. It is twenty miles between habitations and there are no towns; the roads at best are farm-truck tracks and our game antique beetle had as much trouble as it could handle.

Go a little higher in the mountains to the left and you would find yourself in valleys inhabited by tribes of prehistoric persuasion among whom the people grow to fantastic ages and technology is unknown. The hold of Soviet civilization is precarious on these fringes and nonexistent in the interior: like the role of colonial forts on an African frontier in the eighteen fifties. Bukov had elected this route for that very reason but it didn’t make the journey any less alarming: only the fragile heartbeat of our antique Volkswagen kept us alive. Chilled beyond the poor heater’s capacity we labored through the hills and I think privately both of us prayed, each in his own way, although I doubt Pudovkin was any more religious than I.

In predawn murk we reached a signpost and found we were several miles southeast of where we thought we were. We had to backtrack to an intersection and turn west toward the coast to avoid being forced up into impassable mountains.

We were beyond Sochi now, somewhere above Sukhumi, and there was no alternative but to drop straight along to the main coast highway and follow it south.

“There is a checkpoint below Sukhumi. Too many arms smugglers trying to sell in Turkey. They have deliberately made this bottleneck-everyone who goes south must go through there. The alternate back roads have been closed off by explosives.”

“Then we’ll just have to find out if our papers are good enough.”

“I’m not concerned about the papers. But we’ve left possible leaks behind. Leonid, the one the police arrested. The man who has boats-the one Boris doesn’t trust. Or that one who took us across the straits. The checkpoint may have been warned.”

“Why don’t you turn back, then. I’ll go on through alone. If they take me at least you’ll have time to get out of the country yourself.”

He said, “I don’t wish to leave. It’s my home.”

Ten minutes later he broke the silence again. “I had better tell you the plan in any case. You will have to do the last of it yourself since I am not going to cross the border with you.”

“I thought I was just going to walk across through the fence.”

“That used to be possible. But on account of the arms smuggling they have mined the border.”

I took my eyes off the road to glance at him. Bukov hadn’t said anything about mines. I suppose he’d seen no point in alarming me more.

“Batumi is the Soviet border city. A village, really. Just before you reach it there is a fork, and we will take the Armenian route to the left, toward Leninakan. At one point about five kilometers south of Batumi the road skirts very close to the fence. There are guard towers-machine guns and searchlights. About one kilometer past that point, I will let you out of the car and you will be on your own. You will be about five hundred meters from the fence. There are a good many trees but not close together enough to be a forest. There is a metal culvert in the road which marks our spot. If you walk toward the fence from that culvert you will find a narrow foot track marked by four trees which grow along an exactly straight line. You have to be looking at them from the culvert to see the line because from any other angle they are just four trees among many. If you walk that straight line, keeping just to the left of the trees-within arm’s length-you will not step on a mine. It is a route we have used several times. We had to dig up two mines and de-activate them, and replace them.

“Now the time to cross is at dusk, because the searchlights are least effective and daylight is poor. If you move slowly and watch the lights you’ll get through. The nearest searchlight tower is about two hundred meters from the point where you will cross. The fence itself is nothing, a few strands of barbed wire like a cattle fence, but the top strand is electrified with a very high charge. You must go through between the bottom strand and the middle one. Then you are in Turk territory but you must cross about twenty meters of open ground into the trees beyond. You are safe once inside those trees. You understand all this? I’ll give it to you again before we get there, but I want you to be making yourself ready in your mind. The trick of survival is to move slowly. Slowly. Every muscle screams to run but you must remember to be slow. All right?”

“Yes. I’ll remember.” My pulse thudded just thinking about it.

“There is a goat track up the river valley on the Turk side. Follow that path to the left about three kilometers and you will come to a road. A dirt road, but it has a fair amount of traffic from the coast. From there you should be able to get a lift into the town of Trabzon, only be sure it is not a Turk army vehicle you try to flag down. You have the Turkish visa among your new papers?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should have no trouble, but avoid the army while you are close to the border. Sometimes they tend to throw refugees back across to ingratiate themselves with the Soviets.”

“I understand.”

“In Trabzon there is a taverna run by a man called Pinar. Remember the name.”

“Pinar,” I said, and repeated it.

“He has worked with us for many years. He will see to your needs and provide transport for you at least as far as Ankara or Istanbul. After that you must make your own decisions.”

At half-past ten that morning, freshly shaved, we approached the checkpoint and were halted in the stalled queue of traffic awaiting clearance. There were half a dozen lorries and two or three cars ahead of us.

Pudovkin was rehearsing what he would say. He wasn’t speaking aloud but I could hear the tongue drumming against his palate.

He had the wheel now; he thought it would look better. He had an Intourist identification card and was going to try to pass as my guide and overseer.

It was raining now, the downpour slanting into the glossy pavement and melting what snow was left; the Soviet guards stood at the zebra-checked crossbar steaming in their heavy wool uniforms. I was rigid with fear: what if they didn’t like the look of the contents of my suitcase? The water-soaked note cards, the admixture of Russian and English script.…

We had scraped off our stubble in melted snow with hand soap for lather and my cheeks stung with shaving rash; my feet were frozen even though I had dried them repeatedly; we had eaten the last of the bread and herring and my stomach growled incessantly; I knew they would take one look at the pair of us and yank us out of the car.…

From the side of his mouth Pudovkin said, “Mainly they will look for weapons. The south of Russia has many arms factories-as you are supposed to know, Monsieur Lapautre-and this means that guns are easier to obtain here than in any other part of the Soviet Union. Workers try to sell them on the black market in Turkey.”

“What about that pistol of yours?”

“I left it where we shaved,” he said.

It only chilled me more: now we were weaponless. Then I realized how foolish the thought was. There were six guards at the checkpoint and each was armed with an automatic rifle slung across his back. One light pistol wouldn’t have made a tinker’s difference if it had come to shooting.

Then it was our turn. In their grey uniforms buttoned to the choke collars they leaned down at either door and asked us to step out of the car. The guard on my side was young, red-faced; I noticed the frayed cuffs of his uniform.

“Bumagi,” he said-papers.

Several of them were glancing at us. I tried to keep my hand steady when I reached for my-Lapautre’s-passport and documents. I heard Pudovkin saying we had nothing to declare, we were on our way to the small-arms assembly plant at Tblisi. I tried to find belief or disbelief in the soldiers’ faces but they only looked professionally stern. Beside me a lorry driver was offering one sentry a Russian cigarette while another sentry climbed into the back of the truck; evidently the driver was a frequent passerby and the sentry nodded and smiled in response to something he said, but then that sentry’s eyes came around toward me and his face turned cold. I endeavored to look impatiently bored with the bureaucratic idiocy of it but I was convinced the contrivance was transparent.…

The youth didn’t give the passport back to me. He held it in his hand and walked around to the front of the Volkswagen. I thought he was staring suspiciously at the front number plate and my throat turned hollow but then his partner reached in past Pudovkin to pull the release and the youth opened the trunk.

He removed my suitcase and set it down on the wet pavement, and pried up corners of the trunk lining. He took out the spare tire and shook it, weighed it in his hands and put it back. Then he opened my suitcase. I tried not to stare. He pawed through the single shirt and pair of wet socks I had replaced last night; he riffled two stacks of notes and then put one finger on the floor of the suitcase while he reached around under it with his other palm-testing the thickness for a false bottom. Finally he closed the suitcase and politely laid it back in the trunk. I breathed.

His partner was down on one knee on the far side of the car looking at the understructure, his rump showing past the front-sloping fender.

Pudovkin, yawning, patted his lips and turned to glance at the clock mounted on the side of the checkpoint shack. The truck beside me growled through, the gate came down again and another truck pulled in.

They gave us back our papers. Pudovkin had to sign something and then we got back in the car and drove through the raised gate. Sixty yards beyond it was a cafe-bar and Pudovkin pulled in there. “Hungry?”

“My God, I never want to go through that again.”

He grinned at me. “You get used to it.”

“I’d rather not have to.”

The place was obviously a popular pit-stop for those who had had to wait on the queue at the checkpoint; we had to wait again but finally we bought wine and cheese and bread and went outside to get in the car.

A sentry at the checkpoint shack was talking into a telephone, looking up and down the road. I began to freeze up. Pudovkin went around the front of the car to the driver’s door. I saw the sentry’s arm come up, pointing our way; he took the phone away from his ear and shouted something.

Pudovkin said under his breath, “You didn’t hear him. Get in-quickly.”

I jackknifed into the car and Pudovkin had it rolling before I had the door shut. We swung out into the road and his foot was on the floor. We were nearly through the bend before the first bullet starred the glass of the rear window.

We had a jump on them because they had to get to a car to chase us but the road ahead ran right into the town of Poti; they would telephone ahead to put us in a vise. We had to get off the coast highway and I unfolded the map with badly shaking fingers while Pudovkin wheeled recklessly past slow lorries on blind bends.

“Not the first left,” I said. “It loops back. Take the second turning.”

He pulled out to overtake a bus and there was a van coming toward us but Pudovkin kept the throttle down and the van nosed down under pressure of panic brakes; we squeezed through ahead of the bus and when I threw a wide-eyed glance at him Pudovkin’s lips were peeled back in a fierce glowing rictus. I clung to the strap with one hand and tried to keep the map in focus with the other. “It ought to be soon.”

The old car had a top of not more than a hundred kph-about sixty miles per hour-and Pudovkin was getting every ounce of that out of it. Once we hit the hills we wouldn’t be able to make even that much speed.

I kept glancing to the rear but the starred window made it hard to see. Pudovkin had an outside mirror on the door and he was using that. He said, “No sign yet. Those trucks are holding them on the bends back there.”

We had a straightaway now and at the end of it was the fork; I pointed wildly and he said, “I see it,” but he hadn’t even lifted his foot off the gas. He wanted every inch of space he could get between us. At the last instant he jabbed the brake and we swung up the hill violently, weaving on the springs, the tires wailing.

On the map there were choices and I said, “We could take the first right-it runs parallel to the highway. But they might look for us there.”

“What else is there?”

“If we stay on this road it bends south. There’s a turning about-” I measured the map’s scale indicator with my eye and transferred it to the road’s black line-“about fifteen kilometers. It goes back in the mountains but the map shows a river there-it may be a valley. It cuts back across toward Batumi beyond that.”

“Batumi’s what we want.”

“Have we got any chance at all in this thing?”

“We have with me driving.” He grinned like a lunatic.

The tires snickered on the curves and Pudovkin drove at breakneck pace, using his horn on the blind turnings. We were climbing steadily into the foothills of the Caucasus range above the widening coastal plain of Poti and looking off to the right I could see the patchwork of farms on the flatlands-and a spume of spray on a wet road arrowing up toward a bisecting point somewhere ahead of us. It was quite distant; I looked away and looked again and it was still there, the wake of a fast-moving car. I pointed and shouted. Pudovkin nodded.

It couldn’t be accident. That one was coming up to block our route; he’d been signaled from the checkpoint. They’d have other cars on the other roads by now as well.

Pudovkin said, “We’ll just have to beat him to the crossing.”

The transmission was whining in third. Pudovkin cut across the insides of all the bends without taking his foot off and we were on two wheels more than once. The rain had quit but the surfaces were still wet and there were patches of mist; we burst through them like a projectile.

At intervals the road lipped out and we had glimpses of the flood plain from ever higher points. The car was out of sight in the lower hills somewhere. I tried to judge his course by the map but there were too many roads out of Poti. Most of them crossed the one we were on.

I saw the first intersection coming at us and I jammed feet and hands forward to brace but Pudovkin roared straight through it and the lorry to our left hit his brakes with an indignant yelp of horn. We rammed through a stand of timber and crossed a ridge and I saw the pursuit off to our right angling toward us from below. It was a big Skoda, black with four doors, a heavy Czech saloon climbing the steep rises with the arrogant power of its two-and-a-half liter engine.

The roads met at the head of an open meadow and we were watching each other as we squealed toward it. I saw one of the windows roll down and a weapon appear-something squat and ugly, a submachine gun.

We were into the crossing ahead of them and then the road made a painful turn: Pudovkin down-shifted for it and we almost rolled over but the wheels came down on the high crown and he accelerated us out of it.

We had a third of a kilometer’s straight run and Pudovkin disengaged his seat adjustment lever and pushed the seat all the way back; slid down until he was sitting on the back of his neck, eyes just high enough to see over the wipers through the crescent of the steering wheel. “You’d better get down.”

I followed his example and my knuckles went white gripping the hand strap. He had his driving: I had nothing but hopeless panic.

The big saloon closed rapidly on the straightaways but we had quicker brakes and better turning balance and Pudovkin regained the lead every time we hit bends. He had the engine full-out and I was waiting for a piston to burst through the engine block. In the end it wasn’t the Volkswagen which kept us out of their range-it was Pudovkin’s skill. A better driver at the wheel of the Skoda would have made better miles out of the big car’s horsepower. As it was, we’d hit the intersection nearly a quarter of a kilometer ahead of them and they’d lost a little ground making the turn but since then we’d lost a little bit of our lead with every hill.

It was their climbing power that made the difference and Pudovkin saw that. He spun the wheel at the first right-hand intersection and that put us into a downslope of ruptured third-class mountain road. Rocks and stunted trees whipped by my door handle at shoulder height and one uncertainty would smash us on the narrow bends but here the horsepower was equalized and we had gravity on our side.

But instinct made me grope for the map and when I had it before me I yelled at him desperately: it was a dead-end road.

“How far?”

I had squirmed around to peer out the back; through the splintered glass I had glimpses of the black snout of the Skoda. Not far back-not far at all: on a straight run they’d have been shooting, at this range. I could almost read the number plate.

“How far?”

“Not more than five kilometers.”

Now we ran out onto a shelf, close under the windward side of the mountains with a sheer cliff dropping away on the open side to our left; the tires chattered and whimpered on the bends and I saw the Skoda sway out onto the cliff-cut road behind us. And suddenly I realized we were losing speed and I stared at Pudovkin in horror. “What’s the matter?”

He didn’t answer but I saw his foot was off the gas. He had his right hand wrapped around the handle of the handbrake between the seats but he hadn’t lifted it yet. Ahead of us the road swept out of sight to the right around what appeared to be a very sharp bend-hairpin on a pivot of rock, and no guard rail at the outside. I spun my head to search for the Skoda but it took no finding: on the straight run it was barreling down on us like a black locomotive.

“Now hold tight.” Pudovkin was pulling the handbrake and I knew instinctively why: for some reason he wanted to slow us down without flashing the red brake-warning lights on the back of the car. At the same time we were swinging out into the left-hand lane of the road-the outside lane above the drop-and at first I thought he was giving himself the widest possible angle from which to hit the right-hand hairpin bend ahead. But it gave the Skoda its chance and I saw dust squirt from beneath its rear tires as the driver gave it full speed and I shouted at Pudovkin because I was sure he hadn’t seen the Skoda’s move:

“They’re going to overtake on the inside.”

“I know. Hold tight.”

A runoff ditch skewered the road and we crashed through it with a jar that made the beetle jump and scrabble but Pudovkin kept it away from the lip of the cliff. He was still far over to the left and the Skoda was within a hundred feet, roaring down the inside lane; the snout of the submachine gun appeared at the rear left-hand window and I shrank down in the seat.

The bend was coming at us and Pudovkin had the brake up several notches in his fist; we were slowing disastrously and the Skoda pulled almost even with us and I knew they were going to push us over the edge. I heard the submachine gun and then I felt the terrifying first touch of the Skoda’s bumper nudging our rear fender and I knew we would go over.

But then Pudovkin yanked the handbrake all the way up and because the emergencies were rear-wheel brakes we didn’t lose traction: we were stopping precipitously and I saw the Skoda shoot past and suddenly its driver must have seen the trap because I heard the wicked grab of his tires on the gravel when he jabbed his footbrake. The submachine gun roared virtually point-blank in my ears and I hunched my head down into the corner between the seat and the door; I did not see the rest but I heard the sickening shriek of burning rubber and the long jangling crunch when the Skoda went over the hairpin edge ahead of us-the bouncing impacts as it went down the mountain, the brittle shattering of glass and the long echo of crumpling steel as she hit bottom. Then I could hear the insistent steady cry of the jammed horn and I knew it had to be final.

Only then did I realize that we were not moving: the ratcheted handbrake had pulled us to a halt within six feet of the lip.

My skin crawled when my emotions realized how close it had been. I turned to Pudovkin.

He was dead. The submachine gun.

* March 27, 1973. Bristow had arrived at Bukov’s on the night of Saturday, March 24.-Ed.