Kolymsky Heights

41

And now what am I to say to you? It was a lifetime ago we met. And now I am an old man, and will not get much older. I will show you what I have to show, and you will take back what I have to give. It’s all done now, everything complete.

That you are here, I know, and you will tell me how it happened. That you would come I never doubted. It was not light-hearted, that discussion of ours those years ago. My own part I kept immediately and I know you took advantage of it — although I saw no result. As you see, I have followed your career …

As to my own …

My own is so bound up with the events of this land, it cannot be separated. Over seventy years the Soviet Union lasted — a mighty structure, solid as rock. Now, like an optical illusion, all gone.

Only two things of value, I believe, ever came out of it, and of these one would have happened elsewhere. The other could only have happened here.

‘I will have two things to show you,’ Rogachev said.

They had spoken for a few minutes but Porter still stared at him, trying to recollect the man. The red hair had gone. All the hair had gone. The skin had gone, too — just great blotches left on scalp, face, hands. And the big body, once so robust, was shrunken away, wrapped in a shawl.

‘What the hell happened to you — the explosion?’ he said.

‘The satellite saw the ruins, did it?’

Porter told him what it had seen, what both satellites had seen, and the scarred forehead wrinkled.

‘The rollcall, eh? And the bandages. Not bad. Still, it’s nothing, nothing at all, the earliest subjects. But now we have to move. There’s a lot to do.’

He was steering towards the gallery.

‘My electric chair,’ he said, ‘once my predecessor’s, who gave a name to the device. You won’t know of him.’

‘Zhelikov? Sure I know of him,’ Porter said.

‘You do?’ Rogachev glanced at him. ‘Well, you’re going to learn more,’ he said.

He was opening a door under the gallery. A small cloakroom led off it, all its surfaces insulated with padding. Fur coats hung from the hooks. Rogachev carefully bolted the door behind them.

‘Help me up,’ he said. ‘We are going somewhere cold, and must clothe ourselves.’

Porter helped the old man into a coat, also a fur hat and gloves, and did the same for himself.

‘You’ll find goggles in a pocket. Maybe you don’t need them — I can’t stand the cold any more.’ He strapped a pair round his own head, and opened a door in the far wall. A blast of icy air emerged. Beyond the door a line of strip lights had come on, revealing a long ramp descending into a tunnel. The wheelchair hummed softly down the ramp and Porter held on to the back. Frost glittered everywhere; abnormal frost, huge multi-coloured wafers, delicate and glassy, that clung trembling to the walls and fell in tinkling showers as they passed.

‘I accustom in a minute or two,’ Rogachev said, his voice muffled. He was holding a glove over his mouth and nose. ‘But I can’t stay below more than ten minutes, anyway.’

They were going evidently into permafrost, unchanging, unthawing, so that the frost had vitrified. At the bottom, the tunnel levelled out into a wide chamber. Here the lighting was not only on the roof but also set into the tube-like walls; the whole place brilliantly illuminated, sparkling with crystal.

A block of ice stood in the middle and Rogachev steered towards it.

Except that it wasn’t ice, Porter saw. Some kind of plastic; its upper section hollow. A coating of frost wafers had fallen on it, and Rogachev took a little spatula from his coat and carefully removed them. A transparent case was beneath, embedded with a network of fine hairlines.

‘A temperature control,’ he said, ‘to prevent shrivelling.’

Porter couldn’t at first be sure, but it looked to him as if a girl was in the case.

‘It opens quite easily — a silicon seal. Just give me a hand to hold it,’ Rogachev said, and raised the lid.

A girl was in the case.

She was on her back, eyes closed, very pale. A white sheet covered her from abdomen to knees but she was otherwise naked. Blonde braids of hair were draped at either side of her breasts, and her closed eyes, slightly slanted, were set above high cheekbones, the lips a little open as if breathing. Her wrists were crossed on the sheet, right over left. She was tall, shapely, very handsome.

Porter looked from her to Rogachev’s goggles.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

‘A young woman, perhaps seventeen. We had to carry out some operations on her, as far as possible from the back. But also a Caesarean section — she was eight months pregnant. Hold the lid.’

He leaned over and very carefully drew down the sheet, exposing a row of sutures above fair pubic hair; there was no reddening of the skin and the neat stitching looked new. ‘The scar couldn’t heal, of course. But the baby was there, perfectly formed. As you see, the girl is fair. Her eyes are grey. In life her colour would be better, but that’s how we found her so we kept her the same shade.’ He drew the sheet back in position.

‘Who is she?’ Porter said.

‘We call her Sibir, after the country. This is how I found her.

She had died instantly and was preserved instantly — quick frozen. Don’t be afraid, you can touch her. She’s well embalmed now.’

He reached forward himself and raised the upper wrist. The hand came up quite flexibly. It was a broad hand, the fingers long but square, the nails short and ragged.

‘The arm underneath is broken, the left one. She fell on it — she was a left-hander. The finger pads and the palm are quite deeply scored there. Leave that alone, but touch her, make contact. You won’t get another chance.’

Porter drew off a glove and gingerly felt the girl’s face. It was smooth, full, by no means cold — indeed, to his own chilled hand, it felt warm. He stroked the skin, the nose, felt the ear lobes beneath the braids.

‘I can’t stay much longer — it needs heated suits, from the labs,’ Rogachev told him. ‘That door at the back leads up there. This is my own entrance. I come often. Take a good look — walk round her. She’s tall, isn’t she? Distinctive. A good face — Slav, would you say?’

Porter walked round the case. The slant of the eyes didn’t look to him Slav. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. The legs were scratched, but the nails on her toes better than on her fingers: she had worn footwear. ‘What’s the story?’ he said.

‘A unique one. You’ll never see anything like her. She’s been in that state for forty thousand years. Before Slavs, before any of the present races of the world. I found her in a block of ice. She’s one of the two types we all spring from, perhaps the matriarch of millions — she had given birth before. I don’t know what became of her earlier offspring, but the child she was carrying I know a lot about. Oh yes!’

He closed the lid and turned his chair and set off immediately, and Porter followed him.

A few steps up the ramp Porter stopped and looked back. He could still see her in her case, alone in the brilliant tunnel; could see her lips a little open, and for a moment had the illusion that they were moving. But it was only the crystals, again fluttering down.

Rogachev had braked the chair and turned, his goggled eyes also looking down. His mouth was twisted slightly in a smile.

‘Do you know the story of King Saul?’ he said. ‘His father sent him out to find lost donkeys, and he found a kingdom. Zhelikov sent me to find a mammoth and I found a lost world. As a matter of fact I found something more — something quite … incalculable. But where to start?’

42

Where does it start? At Pitsunda, with the accident that led to my appointment? Or a little before, the chance meeting at Oxford? Or long before, the first meeting with Zhelikov? Well, say that one. 1952.

In 1952, suddenly, inexplicably, I found myself under arrest. I had done nothing wrong — nothing at all. The director of my institute had perhaps done something, although I doubted it. But the whole research team was rounded up, and sentenced, and scattered to the four winds, myself to the Kolyma and the little camp at Panarovka.

At that camp, Zhelikov; met for the first time.

Zhelikov, already most eminent, was also by then a most seasoned prisoner with many terms and many camps behind him. At Panarovka just then he was preparing a series of lectures, and on my arrival — a young low-temperature specialist — he obtained permission for me to assist him.

Those lectures were a great success, with camp officials and prisoners alike; but afterwards he told me he had given them only to get off onerous camp duties. He also confided how he had come by this useful trick, and of the events surrounding it.

At another camp, during the war, Zhelikov had found a most interesting pair among the prisoners, Korolyov and Tupolev. Both were ‘enemies of the people’, Korolyov’s particular crime being sabotage: the misuse of munitions for making fireworks. This pair had got up a seminar, on the subject of aerodynamics, which had relieved them of hard labour for a considerable time — the source of Zhelikov’s later inspiration.

Which was only the beginning of the story. For when Tupolev one day was unexpectedly released, he immediately pulled strings to get his friend Korolyov released also. Tupolev then went on to make the bombers bearing his name that helped win the war, and Korolyov returned to his fireworks: the model staged rockets that preceded his ballistic missiles and enabled him, some years later, to put the first man in space.

Even that isn’t the end of it. For Korolyov had planned to put not a man but a monkey first in space; and for this purpose he later secured Zhelikov’s release. Zhelikov’s work on the conditioning of monkeys was of course well known, and he sped off right away to start conditioning this monkey.

Of that particular development nothing came. For one reason or another not a monkey but a dog was ultimately chosen (the celebrated Laika), and Zhelikov’s public protests at the decision won him another sentence. This time to Panarovka … and the course of lectures.

From Panarovka, not long after the lectures, Zhelikov was suddenly plucked one night, for reasons I did not know, but which I learned years later at Tcherny Vodi.

There were three reasons — the first a freakish idea of Stalin’s.

In his late-night reading, the restless insomniac had come upon a little book of Zhelikov’s on the subject of hibernation. He had become interested in hibernation. This was partly for the purpose of preserving the lives of cosmonauts in future space voyages, but mainly with a view to preserving his own. The body of his predecessor Lenin he had had embalmed as a lasting icon for the people. His own he thought of having hibernated so that at some future time it would be of greater benefit to them.

With his security chief Beria he had discussed this idea.

A corps of the most faithful guardians would be required to maintain his body, as he himself had maintained Lenin’s. But even more urgently work had to begin, by the leading experts, and in the greatest secrecy, on how he should be hibernated.

The leading expert on hibernation was Zhelikov, and the most secret place in the Soviet Union was Tcherny Vodi.

This was the craziest of the reasons.

The other reasons were not crazy, and the second concerned Tcherny Vodi itself.

In 1952 the research station was engaged solely with work on chemical and bacteriological warfare; its activities covered by a weather station that had stood on the site for many years. The work required large numbers of test animals, and the severe climate combined with a shortage of air transport had seriously reduced the stock, hampering the military programme. A project for breeding hardier test animals had begun, but the methods were primitive and not successful.

On examination (by Minister Beria and his assistants) it was found that the prisoner at Panarovka could be the man for this, too. As well as being a world expert on hibernation he was also one on the conditioning of animals: as early as the 1920s he had worked in this field with his great mentor Pavlov.

But the third reason — Zhelikov’s own — was one he had already raised in his lectures. It concerned Siberia.

Some little while before, a large-scale geological survey had shown the land to be, without question, the richest on earth. It had more oil than Arabia, more gold and diamonds than Africa, more mineral value than anywhere else on the planet; the vast bulk of this treasure being locked in permafrost, dormant. The attempts to exploit it, always with forced labour, had been inefficient; and in any case had barely scraped the surface. It seemed unlikely that people would ever come in useful numbers to work in this hostile territory. Zhelikov’s idea was to enhance the intelligence of animals to do it.

His own last work had been with the most intelligent animals. At his station in the Caucasus he had got chimpanzees solving problems on an abacus, having first conditioned them to that place from their habitat in the tropics.

This idea he suddenly found himself discussing in the most bizarre circumstances, and at the highest level. The night he was plucked from the camp he was taken by helicopter to an airfield. In an aeroplane he was given a decent suit — for he had left camp in his prison footcloths and tunic — and presently found himself, dazed, being driven through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin, and the dictator’s lair.

Stalin watched him eat a meal, and then had talked with him throughout the night. The dictator was in his field jacket with pockets and he walked slowly round the room smoking his pipe. ‘Well — enough,’ he said at last, waving his pipe. ‘Now give your opinion on the proposal for hibernation.’

The proposal for hibernation is horseshit, Zhelikov said, but he did not say this aloud.

‘Yosef Vissarionovich,’ he said aloud, ‘I must tell you frankly that this is a very good proposal. It needs much work. I would first have to hibernate many other subjects, and be assured of their complete resuscitation before beginning to think — this goes without saying — of hibernating you.’

He had worked himself up to such an extent over the other proposals that it only then dawned on him (so he told me) that this was the one to buy all the rest.

‘First-class laboratories, proper conditioning chambers, the highest degree of security, and the whole work under my own direction! Enemies are always about, prying for information — which on any subject concerning you should on no account be given. On that my stand would have to be inflexible. Whichever place is chosen, I need to have charge of it.’

Stalin had emitted puffs of smoke and a series of grunts at these remarks, and he now took a long squint at Zhelikov.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said. ‘But what of this place they talk about, Tcherny Vodi? Is it a suitable place?’

‘I don’t know this place,’ Zhelikov said. ‘When the plans and a map become available I could give an opinion.’

Stalin picked up the phone and called Beria, in bed.

At a quarter to six in the morning Minister Beria arrived with the plans and a map, having roused his ministry for them.

Zhelikov scanned the map and whistled.

‘So near Panarovka — and I knew nothing of it!’ he said, ‘Well, the place is good. But the station … ’ He was turning over sheets and decided he could now expand himself. ‘The station is horseshit.’

‘How horseshit?’ Beria said.

‘All on top. Where would I put my conditioning chambers?’

‘Where do you have to put conditioning chambers?’

‘Below. It would mean excavating the mountain.’

‘Excavate the mountain,’ Stalin said.

‘And shifting the present station to do it. Shift a whole station? And have engineers sink laboratories in a mountain?’

‘Shift the station, sink engineers in a mountain,’ Stalin said, and laid down his pipe. ‘I will take a nap now.’ He patted Zhelikov on the shoulder. ‘You will stay some days, Lev Viktorovich. We will talk more of this,’ he said.

Zhelikov stayed a week in the Kremlin, and during the following one he took over at Tcherny Vodi.

In the summer and autumn of 1952 engineers levelled and removed the top of the mountain, and began mining inside it. Zhelikov supervised these operations.

At this time the research station had been a sharashka — a special camp for scientists. Some scores of these establishments were scattered about the Soviet Union, together with fifty reserved cites for less secret work. All of them came under the administration of the Ministry for State Security. The cities were normal cities, containing shops, apartment blocks, schools, and they were for free employees: the only restrictions being that permits were needed to get in or out.

The sharashkas, on the other hand, were for prisoners serving sentences. Some of the sentences were quite short — eight, ten years; although in the special case of Tcherny Vodi it was understood that nobody would ever get out. A man coming to the end of a ten would merely get another ten for accumulated infringements; or in exceptional circumstances he might get off and become a free worker with privileges. But he would never get out. This was because certain advances in bacteriology could also not be allowed to get out.

Zhelikov made this the first of his changes. All the workers became free workers, although still unable to leave; and he had inquiries made by the security service to attract other specialists, people whose particular situations made them suitable for a life that, while cloistered, offered the highest scientific freedom together with unparalleled living conditions.

The living conditions he set about making.

And he had his chimpanzees flown in from the Caucasus.

In this period Stalin died (of a heart attack, March 1953) and Minister Beria was shot. Their successors had no interest in hibernation but a large amount in Zhelikov’s other developments; and these by now had cost several billions.

The original installation he had had shifted back into position, although now underground. In this he had no interest, but he had its laboratories attached to his own on Level Three. On Level Four he had installed the living quarters — the studio apartments, library, gymnasium, tennis courts, swimming pool and gardens — with special solar lamps, to his own design, roofed in the ‘outdoor areas’ and controlled to give night and day inside the mountain. He also made the first hybrid apes.

‘Is this real?’ Porter said.

‘Of course.’ Rogachev watched him pouring a drink and nodding up at a Rembrandt. They were back in the library.

‘I choose the pictures from old state catalogues. If they’re available I get them on loan for a few months. We get anything we want — films, music, books, papers. The staff join me here for social evenings occasionally. Or I look into their club. They have their own library, of course; this one is Zhelikov’s, built up over his twenty-five years here.’

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have wasted his time.’

‘He didn’t waste it anywhere. A truly great man, as history will one day acknowledge. His fellow jailbird, Korolyov you know, they acknowledged only at his state funeral. Then the world knew who had made the satellites. The man himself was kept secret before. His. space station they kept secret even for years after his death. But he began the exploration of space. That’s one of the things that came out of the Soviet Union.’

‘Zhelikov’s ape being the other?’

Rogachev smiled.

‘No, no. What I have found is the other. Zhelikov was certainly the better scientist. But my discovery came by chance — as the momentous things do. Of course it couldn’t have come without his work, which was in every way remarkable. Yes, he made apes. But he also made problems.’

Zhelikov’s apes, by the early 1960s, were far ahead of anything in the world. This he knew for certain, for he was receiving all research papers, and he also knew the reason for it.

Although still in its infancy, genetic manipulation was causing concern abroad. The scientists engaged in it were finding difficulty in raising funds, were uncertain where the work would lead, and were worried at possible damage to their future careers.

Zhelikov was unconcerned about his future career, had no budget worries, and knew exactly where his work would lead. It would lead to a hardy animal that could live in Siberia and perform intelligent tasks. He had no ethical doubts at all.

He had a further advantage. The foreign workers, almost to a man, had no special training in physiology. In his own extraordinary life he had trained with the greatest physiologist of his age. Pavlov was noted not only for the ‘Pavlovian reflexes’ of dogs but for his brilliant studies on all mammalian structure.

At Tcherny Vodi Zhelikov had dozens of his unpublished papers, on which they had worked together, with careful sketches of embryonic development. Pavlov had urged him always to study the embryo for an understanding of limbs, organs and other structures, and had passed on his own exceedingly dexterous methods of doing so.

By the mid-1960s Zhelikov had not only a hardy chimpanzee but one that walked upright; that could drive home a nail with a hammer, select and use a nut for a bolt, dress itself in warm clothing, go and find a chosen package in a cold conditioning chamber, and return to unpack and then correctly repack the package.

He bred from the animals, and encountered his problem.

Although his apes reproduced they did so divergently. The intelligent ones proved to be not hardy; the hardy ones not intelligent. This problem occupied him into the next decade, and his advances — all in intelligence — became increasingly self-defeating. An intelligent ape was of use in the Arctic only if it was hardy; there was no present need for one elsewhere. The problem was to combine intelligence with hardiness, and reliably reproduce it, generation after generation.

He began a fundamental review of hardiness: of cell behaviour at low temperature — and also, again, of hibernation, as an aspect of it. He examined a hibernating bear, and the foetus of a bear. He examined what was known of mammoths, close relatives of elephants, adapted to ice ages. A whole mammoth was not obtainable but he obtained the best-preserved museum specimen, and found it useless. Without the required soft tissue it was not possible to learn anything from a skeleton. (Not at that time. Only a few years and it would be possible; although not for him.)

For him some more dramatic events intervened. In 1976 he developed a virulent cancer, and some months later urgently asked to see his chosen successor — a specialist in low-temperature work. (He had been following my career, had heard of my misfortune.) And in the week that I was due, in February 1977, he heard something else. A fresh mammoth had been discovered. A very fresh one, entombed in ice: quick frozen.

‘He never saw the result, of course — what you have seen. But now —’ Rogachev was looking at his watch, ‘it’s almost three in the morning. Stepanka still has to get you back.’

‘You said you had two things to show me.’

‘Yes. The other is … not quite ready. Tonight you had the pre-history, in both senses … What the satellite saw was mainly Zhelikov’s work — a few modifications by me. The steam age! What I have done, you will see for yourself. The subject will demonstrate it to you.’

Porter looked at him.

‘The subject is an ape?’ he said.

‘You’ll tell me. I’m not sure that I know. You will chat together. Perhaps I’ve made a soul — sacrilege, you see … But it’s not all I’ve done. Soon enough you’ll understand.’ He was smiling. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to come down again. And I have thought how this is to be managed.’

He explained how it was to be managed.

‘Now I’ll get Stepanka. Remember, you have not met me.’

His chair whined out of the room, and presently Porter heard the sound of a key turning. Then silence for several minutes, and a shuffling sound and Stepanka came in, very rumpled. He had a big watch in his hand.

‘By God! Almost three o’clock.’ He was dazed. ‘You were with him half the night. You’ve got the letter?’

‘No.’ Kolya was very serious. ‘He’s rewriting the letter. He says I have to come again.’

‘What!’

‘Stepanka — this man isn’t normal! He wanted every detail, all the years between. Every kind of thing that happened to the girl. Then he would break down and question me again. He doesn’t seem able to accept it — which doctors, which tests, have we done this, that.’ He shook his head. ‘He says he will bring me a ring — the mother’s wedding ring. I am to take it back, it’s to go to the grave. Tell me, is he mad?’

Stepanka’s mouth had fallen open.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never met him,’ he said. He licked his lips. ‘The Chief will have to arrange it again, then. And he isn’t well himself. He said nothing about the Chief?’

‘Nothing. Only about the girl.’

‘Well. I don’t know.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘But come — we’ll just catch the guards. Or we can stand and freeze there for half an hour.’

He produced the torch and the piece of paper from his pocket and attended to the lock in the grille. Then they were out in the cement passage again and going up the stairs. ‘It’s a part of the building they never used. I knew nothing of it.’

In the tiny room above, Stepanka looked through the periscope, and he motioned Kolya to look.

Through the periscope the brightly lit corridor was quite empty. ‘In one minute they’ll come,’ Stepanka whispered. ‘Don’t make a sound. You can hear through the wall. The moment they’ve gone is the safest. It’s what I did before.’

Kolya remained looking through the periscope, and in a minute the two figures appeared. They materialised suddenly, from the far end of the corridor, one behind the other, a few paces apart. The leading guard peered through each spy hole, and then checked each bolt; and the second made a mark on a clipboard. As they approached he could hear their footsteps and their voices repeating the name of each room checked.

They checked the dormitory, and they checked the washroom. Then they tried the laundry, and that was the last. Now they were only a few feet away, and through the periscope Kolya watched them; and as their backs retreated he gave place to Stepanka at the periscope.

Stepanka remained peering intently through it, and then he nodded and manipulated the lock, and switched the torch off and opened the wall.

Like a mouse he scurried to the washroom and drew the bolts, and Porter swiftly entered and closed the door, and heard the faintest scrape as the bolts went home again. He stood for some minutes with his ear to the door but heard nothing more; neither the shuffle of footsteps nor any other sound.

He went quietly into the dormitory.

A little snoring there; the Evenks all asleep. In the blue lighting he undressed and returned to his bunk, and for some moments, drifting off, thought of the girl in the tunnel, and of a night with Stalin, and prison camps and the exploration of space. Then he thought what he could say to an ape and what the ape would say to him.

43

‘Ludmilla — Ludmilla, my dear, how are you?’

‘Thank you, I am well.’

‘I have brought a visitor. You don’t mind seeing a visitor, Ludmilla?’

‘No, I don’t mind,’ the ape said, and put her glasses on.

She smiled at them from the bed. She had a sweet face, although her eyes were bandaged. She was wearing a nightie; and also, Porter saw, a number of other bandages. Like Rogachev she seemed to have lost much hair and skin. It took him a moment to realise that the glasses had gone on over the bandaged eyes and that she was now shielding them slightly with her hand.

‘Is the light too strong for you?’

‘Only for a moment, when it came on.’

‘They don’t hurt — your eyes?’

‘No, they don’t hurt, Uncle.’

‘She has no eyes,’ Rogachev said, in English. ‘A result of the explosion. We could have restored them but I wouldn’t put her through the operation. She hasn’t long to live. You are seeing well, my dear?’ he asked in Russian.

‘Yes, I am seeing well, Uncle.’

‘This visitor is Raven. Are you pleased to meet him?’

‘I am pleased to meet you,’ Ludmilla said, and extended her hand.

‘Ludmilla. I am very pleased to meet you,’ Porter said, and shook the hand. The palm was brown, the back of it a blotchy pink, tufted with down. The face was similarly blotched and tufted. It was finely boned and there was a sweet docility about it, a thoughtful docility as she gazed through her spectacles. But she was certainly an ape.

‘You were hurt, I hear,’ he said.

‘Yes, I was hurt.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘In the fire. Uncle made me better.’

‘Was it a long time ago, the fire?’

‘She hasn’t much idea of time,’ Rogachev said in English. ‘It was a long time, Ludmilla — days and days. But it didn’t hurt for long. Tell Raven how nicely you see now.’

‘I see nicely now,’ Ludmilla said, smiling.

‘Take your glasses off, my pet.’

Ludmilla took them off, and Rogachev shone a torch at the bandages. ‘Now we’ll play a game again,’ he said. ‘Have I put the light on?’

‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Ludmilla was smiling.

‘All right. Now,’ Rogachev said, and switched the torch off. ‘Now what have I done?’

‘Silly! You haven’t done anything,’ Ludmilla said, giggling. She felt for his hand, and he moved it, and she groped in the air until he gave her it. She squeezed the hand and kissed it, and he bent and kissed hers and then her blue lips.

‘My little sweetheart — you’re so clever! Stay in the dark a moment. I want Raven to examine you. It won’t hurt.’ He parted the sparse hair behind Ludmilla’s ears. ‘The glasses are her eyes,’ he said in English. ‘And these are the terminals.’

A small metallic strip was set behind each ear.

‘It’s a very small implant, smaller than a pacemaker. The trick is to make the right junction. She has practically 20–20 vision now — the lenses self-focus, like the quite cheap video cameras. These are set in a plasma. Take a look at them.’

Porter picked up the glasses. There was a vague flutter of movement in the lenses as he raised them, and at the end of each arm he saw the metal connecting strip.

‘Of course with the same principle you can fabricate an eye in its natural socket — much more complex. Put the glasses on again, my dear,’ Rogachev said, and put them in her hand, and Ludmilla slipped the glasses on, smiling at him.

‘Will you show Raven how well you read?’

‘Yes, I will show him,’ Ludmilla said, slowly.

‘Ah, my little sweetheart, you’re tired. Is it this room? Don’t you like this room?’

‘It’s … a nice room,’ Ludmilla said, gently.

‘It’s only for tonight, so that Raven can see you. We won’t read, then. She reads,’ he told Porter. ‘Just simple sentences. We won’t read. We’ll look at pictures. You like pictures. Raven hasn’t seen this book. Show him the pictures.’

He handed Porter a book from the bedside table.

‘Well, this looks a nice book,’ Porter said.

‘Oh, it’s a nice book,’ Ludmilla said.

‘I wonder − what’s this?’ He had stopped at a page. There was a big picture on every page.

‘This is a sledge,’ Ludmilla told him.

‘Oh, of course! Is it — a blue sledge?’ he said, peering.

‘No! A red sledge,’ Ludmilla said.

‘I was only playing games.’

‘I know you were,’ Ludmilla said, and laughed at him.

‘Well, this one I know. A water tap! I can wash myself.’

‘No — silly!’ Ludmillia said and giggled again, covering her mouth. ‘It’s a samovar! With a samovar you make tea.’

‘She’s so clever. You’re so clever, my pretty,’ Rogachev said. ‘But now you must sleep. Raven wanted to see you so much, so I brought him. Do you like Raven?’

‘Yes, I like him,’ Ludmilla said.

‘I like you,’ Porter told her.

‘You can kiss her. She likes being kissed,’ Rogachev said. ‘But no pressure on her body, she is very fragile.’

Porter kissed Ludmilla’s hand and then her face, and Ludmilla smiled and kissed him back.

‘Now it’s late for you, my precious. I’m sorry it’s so late. Raven couldn’t come any earlier. Tomorrow you can go back to your room. Say good night to him now.’

‘Good night, Raven,’ Ludmilla said.

‘Good night, Ludmilla.’

‘And take your glasses off. It’s time for sleep. Good night, my little sweetheart.’

‘Good night, Uncle.’

‘Well, then,’ Rogachev said, as they left the room, ‘so now tell me what I have made. And this is only the half of it.’

But Porter remained silent, watching him relock the door.

He had had a long day. A bitter wind had blown on the mountain top, the snow flurries whirling like devils over the compound. But the Evenks had remained cheerful and understanding of his lost sleep, seeing to it that he was allotted only indoor tasks in the morning.

He had told his news — of the distraught father, the letter to be rewritten, the ring that had to go to the grave — and they were certain that Stepanka would soon be up with new instructions.

But by afternoon Stepanka had still not come, and at two o’clock all of them had been ordered outside. A freighter plane was coming in, and urgent unloading had been requested before the weather worsened. For this the storage sheds had to be reorganised.

By three o’clock the plane had come and gone; and by four, though not all the cargo was yet inside, a cheery Major Militsky had called the men in from the wind and the snow.

A name had been chosen for the baby! Stepan Maximovich had an announcement to make.

‘Ten o’clock,’ was Stepanka’s whispered announcement to him. ‘One hour earlier than before.’ He didn’t know why. But by 9.55 Kolya was to be in position.

And by 9.55 Kolya was: in the washroom. And by ten was going through the wall again.

‘And this is only the half of it,’ Rogachev said. They were now in his study. The study adjoined the library and was part of a suite that included an apartment for Stepanka and his wife and also two bedrooms. The second bedroom was for a security official who visited regularly; and Ludmilla was now in it.

‘It’s not even a half of it! There’s more — far more. And yet we had set out to do something totally different … ’

44

We had set out to copy parts of a foetus: of Sibir’s foetus.

The father of the foetus had been a Neanderthaloid — not Neanderthal of Europe, which was in many ways a regression, but the earlier stock, not yet specialised, with higher vaulting to its skull. Of this there was no doubt. Sibir was typically ‘Cro-Magnon’; her child, broadly Neanderthaloid. And the differences between them were very remarkable.

Sibir was 1.89 metres in height, and her brain capacity 1300 ccs. Her child would have grown much shorter, but with a brain much larger — 1500 ccs, our calculations showed. Since a modern brain is roughly 1350 ccs, Neanderthaloid had 11 per cent more. This curious fact, already speculated on from earlier skull finds, was in itself exciting. But here we had an actual brain — unborn but whole, easily projectible from standard scales.

From hundreds of computer studies, we observed many differences in this brain. Zhelikov in his work had accumulated a large stock of brains (the heads of executed criminals) and these we used for comparison.

An immediate difference was in the visual-receptor areas — here very large. This was expected, for the foetus’s eye sockets were also large. Neanderthaloid was a nocturnal creature: he came out in the dark and had to see in the dark. For us this had important implications. Half the year we are in the dark here and Zhelikov had sought with his ‘worker’ apes to improve their darkness vision, but without success.

So, an extraordinary opportunity had opened up: to copy what we could of this new/old visual system.

Our own system is barely understood to this day. We know that the brain receives its signals in symbolic form − the optical cells sending thousands of digits of information that the receptors can decode and assemble. But the method of transmission, the network of transmission, the receptor areas themselves, were by no means clear.

These receptor areas (set beside our criminals’) were altogether clearer; as were the visual channels, making the network as a whole more comprehensible.

The network; although not its functioning.

Bodies function, as you know, largely by electro-chemical reaction — the optical system primarily by photo-chemical reaction. But its further circuits were little understood.

With the foetus’s brain we had so well-defined a circuit (and of a night-sighted primate!) that we were almost beside ourselves. The aim of course was to improve our apes: by providing more channels and larger receptors in the brain. This was certainly possible — for here nature had done it — and plenty of capacity still exists in the brain.

We set about it in this way.

(All our genetic work is this way.)

First, trials are conducted on the lower animals, rats, mice, etc. Required portions are excised and later replaced, to establish the surgery and its effect. The effect of removed visual ganglia is blindness, and it took many animals before we learned the technique of reinsertion. Then we moved on to the brain; the receptor areas here yet more complex.

It took us seven years, until 1985, to get a result. But in that year we got a good one — a 20 per cent visual improvement with test rats. Then we moved to the apes.

This was an altogether more critical undertaking.

The trained animals were valuable, their brains larger, the visual ganglia more complex. Also they were semi-human, able to express themselves. Even for the first stage — the trial removals and reinsertions — two full-scale operations were necessary; with recuperation after each one, and eyes kept bandaged until after the boost to restore vision.

The technique of boosting we had perfected with the rats; and vision will not resume without it. The visual chain is in fact a chemical chain. Some of its reactions code the signal, others open gateways for it, others transmit it. But whatever they do (and they all do it at once) they do electro-chemically. The strip we excise is therefore a chemical strip. And this strip will not on reinsertion resume function by itself.

It needs a boost, from a crystal-regulated frequency (as quartz in a watch or silicon in a computer.) Light will not do the job and can produce permanent blindness, for the network must be intact and operational before the eyes are allowed to work.

The boost is delivered by terminal to the skull, the animals’ eyes remaining sealed; and by means of instruments we observe the effects on a screen.

The frequency we use is a ‘harmonic’ (the so-called doppelganger or ghost echo of a frequency); and to get this echo we vibrate two crystals simultaneously.

With the rats this method had won us a straight run of twenty successes, and in every case the screen view had been the same. Initially the network greys out, although with continued seething (the molecular activity you see through an electron microscope), and after an interval of ten to fifteen minutes its outline returns, the activity of the network now at ‘dream level’ — the animal not seeing, for its eyes are closed, but with the inserted material accepted and the system restored.

With our first ape a very different story — in fact a disaster, and the reason you are here.

No grey-out but a white-out. An instant flash, spreading like lightning through the network. Followed by black-out, and from the animal a cry of pain. The pain was momentary, and he told us so. But the network was now blank, neither greying nor seething, the whole circuit dead.

This was catastrophic. We had no idea what to do. The harmonic was a safe one — our specialist had selected a band of ten — and this band we had used on the rats.

We watched the screen for one hour, two. We tested the crystals, remeasured the harmonic, checked all the instruments. Nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. We returned to our records, and there found what was wrong.

The selected band had been used on the rats, but not this harmonic. (The harmonics that we generate, I should explain, do not exist in nature. They are modulations, calculated mathematically.)

Our specialist had selected from the lower end of the band; these harmonics were the ghosts of ghosts. And the one just used was the lowest, the most remote from its original frequency. With the rats we had started from the top; it had been unnecessary to try so far down the scale.

Needless to say we tried then. We tried twelve rats — normal rats, with normal vision — and blinded each one. Then we tried the other harmonics in the band. No ill effects. Just this one, a freak, we had used on the ape, and had blinded it.

Blinded rats, of course, are destroyed. But we could not destroy an ape; the trained animals are still of use. In this case, after a few days, we simply removed the bandages and put the animal (his name was Anton) on an instructional course. He was in no discomfort but needed eye patches, for the muscles controlling blinking had also been damaged.

And now a very strange incident occurred.

At that time the animals were engaged in a simulated post-nuclear exercise. They were required to enter a maze, perform a number of actions, return by a different route and then report what they had done. Anton was participating in this (for blind animals could be useful after such accidents). He emerged from the maze and reported, and it took his trainer some moments to observe that he had taken off his eye patches. He asked why he had done this and Anton replied that he saw better without.

‘But Anton, you are not able to see.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Anton said.

It seemed that he took off the patches to shower in the morning, and that morning he had found that he could see. He had put the patches back on again because he had been instructed to keep them on. But in the maze he had taken them off.

I was told at once and we rushed to test him. Through instruments we saw that every part of his visual system had regenerated. This happened ten days after the boost.

To understand what happened now I must explain something of our organisation here. We come under the aegis of a Moscow body called the Scientific Directorate, and this Directorate I keep informed of our work.

Every few weeks a member of the Directorate visits me: a security official but a well-informed scientist, a friendly fellow. This man now called me up and asked me to repeat the experiment with the rogue harmonic. He wished to see for himself how the circuit regenerated — the last couple of days of it, that is, for we had only Anton’s account of the timing.

I set up the experiment, my friend arrived, we started up a machine to record the events, and in the 230th hour (after the boost) it began. First the ‘seething’ and then the emerging outline. In four hours we had full function; the same timing, within good limits, as Anton had reported.

My friend took copies of this recording, and he left me some papers I had asked for. These were the latest studies in another field of optics; for in the days when Anton was blinded I had brooded on other possibilities.

The network we had blasted out was a chemical network — enormously complex but one we had been able to follow (at least to clone in part). I wondered now if we could back it up in some way, as a safeguard against other accidents.

Science had long backed up hearts, kidneys, many other systems, by copying the action of the systems. With the visual system our only sure knowledge was how it began, which was electro-optically. Perhaps it could be backed up electrooptically; with fibre optics.

Our experts studied the latest papers on fibre optics. Extra filaments were required, many grafting techniques learned — all this work quite new. But we mastered it, standardised a procedure, and presently moved from bench work to rats.

Here we had first to try to get a signal through the fibre. In the laboratory we had got one — nothing ‘visual’, but a measured change in a bit of brain material. With a real rat, a functioning brain, this would be very different. We stripped the rat’s network, grafted in our own, allowed it to heal and delivered the boost (still a necessity after any intervention).

What followed was a moment of history.

It was something, I should say, almost beyond belief.

On the screen a blank network. Which within minutes began to seethe and then to grey. In fifteen minutes we had a full outline! The brain understood the fibre, had accepted it.

This stunning success — we had looked only for an instrumental blip — held us at the screen for hours. A whole day passed before we dared expose the rat’s eyes and allow it to see. But there was no doubt it did see. It saw not well for we had been unable to tune fibre to a real eye. But it saw! For the first time a blind creature saw — through fibre!

From Moscow, my friend made three urgent visits.

His first was to watch us do the whole thing again. And then again — this time with the rogue harmonic. (The bureaucrats still had our harmonics programme on their agenda!) We did it — and with the expected result. The rogue harmonic ‘blinded’ optical fibre too, although again, as with Anton, only temporarily; as a re-test some days later showed.

This work interested us not at all, but once it was over my friend’s visits became serious. We had found an answer to blindness! A synthetic channel had connected to a brain. To complete the circuit we needed only a synthetic eye, and a framework in which to use it.

The framework was obvious, for it already existed — the familiar spectacle frame. And the eye posed no great problem.

At that time rapid advance was going on with superfast self-focusing lenses, both commercially and militarily (they are used in the nose cones of missiles). We asked for and got whatever we wanted. And very soon had made extraordinary progress. For a start, we found it unnecessary to strip a whole network: it could remain in place, with just a ‘patch’ inserted.

We moved rapidly to apes. (All this data you will be taking with you; here I give the sequence.) We make the incision above the ear and the patches — for stereo vision — auto-graft to a junction. With a protein gel this takes a week to unite.

A patch goes in with extra fibre already attached, and its terminal is set behind the ear for the spectacle arm to make contact. Inside the arm matching filaments lead to the regulator chip for the lenses. The lenses, though cased in glass, consist of thin-film layers, a few microns each. (This last is a later refinement: I will shortly tell you how it came about.)

We now had something of a problem. A scientific advance of great magnitude had been made and the question of publication arose. Nobody doubted that it had to be published, or that a Nobel and other prizes must follow. Just as obviously I could not be the one to take them. But who then could? No respected academic could take credit for work he had not done — which his colleagues knew he had not done!

To this, after a time, my friend thought up an answer.

For years we had been receiving help from various research bodies. (Unknown to them, of course; their papers came to us through the Directorate.) The suggestion was for these bodies to be fed bits of our work and steered to the same conclusions. An idea acceptable to me, although obviously it would take time.

As indeed it did. Two years passed — no papers — and my impatience grew. I understood the problem. People on major work will not rush to publish until sure of their results. And not everything could be fed to them at once! All the same, my friend determined to steer more strongly; and in another year was able to advise that a promising paper was on the way from the Voronsky Institute (of Electro-Chemistry — they had done the early work on the visual chain I have mentioned).

This paper I saw, and it was a good one, although still a long way from the necessary breakthrough into optics. Patience! advised my friend. He had several lines out. Very soon now we would have news of optical developments.

And so we did. But not, I think, in the way intended.

It happened just then that a specialist in optics, whose work I had been following, became unexpectedly available. I asked for him to be approached, he accepted, and joined us. This man was greatly surprised at our advanced work, and especially with the boosting techniques.

In the week of his arrival he asked for a private tête-à-tête and told me the following story.

Some time before, while touring facilities, his plane had been forced to land in a remote area where the only accommodation was a certain rocketry centre. He had stayed the night and one of the staff, hearing of his speciality, had asked his opinion on some recent work. This man was a designer of circuits and the question he was interested in concerned optical fibre.

In the designer’s laboratory miniature rockets were used for the testing of firing programmes — rather precise and exacting work. Missiles must constantly correct themselves in flight, and their terminal homing devices depend for accuracy on very brief rocket bursts. This requires exceedingly rapid start-up and shut-down procedures: the man’s particular field.

Some weeks before a party of officials had arrived with a new device for test. The device was an electronic circuit, boxed with two quartz pellets, apparently for frequency modulation. The device was placed in the laboratory, the man instructed to install a programme for one of the bench rockets; and they all retired to an adjacent observation room.

From here the rocket was activated — a normal ten-minute programme, allowing for many timed and recorded bursts — and after some minutes the electronic device was also remotely activated. The firing programme instantly changed. Firing did not stop. The device had been activated while it was actually going on, and it continued, not following its programme — a single prolonged burst until burn-out.

When it was safe to strip down the rocket, nothing was found wrong with it. The circuits were intact, contacts and breakers all as they should be, the heat-protected wiring (of optical fibre) perfectly cool. The designer was asked to pass a signal through the fibre. He could get no signal through it. In some way it had been rendered inactive. All the same he was asked to leave it in position for a certain number of days, and then repeat the programme. This he did. And everything worked; the optical fibre again quite operational.

He now asked, with much curiosity, what optical theory could explain such a thing …

This was the story the specialist told me, and he said that having now heard of the incident with Anton he wondered if there could be some connection.

I asked if he had told anyone else this story, and he said he had not. Optical fibre was not his field; he had almost at once forgotten it. His stay at the rocketry centre had been a mere overnight accident. A chance event.

I asked him to let me think over this event.

I thought it over, and I thought most soberly. Three years had now passed, with publication of our discovery no nearer. And far more, of course, since the work with the rogue harmonic — all that well behind us.

But not evidently finished with.

The quartz ‘pellets’, the remote boost, the ‘certain number of days’ of waiting … all this had surely to do with our rogue harmonic. The use of harmonics is not original. But this harmonic was original; it was not a thing come by accidentally. Somebody was using it.

I asked the specialist to remain silent a little longer and waited for my Directorate friend to visit.

When he did, I asked if work was going on with harmonics.

Yes it was going on, he said.

When was it intended to publish this work?

In time, Efraim, in time.

Had a use been found, perhaps, for the rogue harmonic?

He gazed at me. ‘Why do you ask?’

I told him why, and he sighed. ‘I am very sorry, Efraim. You should not have been embarrassed in this way.’

But he explained everything to me — and very frankly.

We had come on a principle of extraordinary military value. And to explain it he had first to outline the phenomenon of EMP — electro-magnetic pulse. This pulse, a side-effect of nuclear explosions, halts all electrical current in its vicinity — all current flowing in wires. Power stations stop, cars stop — and telephones, radios, lifts, lights; everything depending on electricity stops. Including, significantly, military command and control centres: no counter action could be ordered.

The answer to this paralysis was found in optical fibre; a material not susceptible to EMP but very efficient in conveying signals. Because missiles in flight could also be affected — the firing circuits and fuses immobilised by nuclear blasts in nearby orbit — they too had been re-equipped. Now every nuclear power was invulnerable to EMP.

To EMP but not — now — to everything. For our chance discovery had opened a new window of vulnerability.

At the simplest level it could physically blind ground forces — on foot, in tanks, or in bunkers; for the frequency penetrated all structures. With missiles, and nuclear activity generally, its potential was incalculably greater …

At present the tests were at laboratory level, but it was hoped to conduct them later on a missile in flight. Under current agreements the flight-testing of missiles had to be internationally supervised. Plainly, this test could not be supervised. But as it happened, China was not a party to these agreements, and a new guidance system was under development there. It would be flight-tested to their base at Lop Nor; indeed the commander there, a General Liu, had already been given advance instructions. Means were now being considered of ourselves supervising this test, by satellite …

And how, I asked him after a moment, would this affect our discoveries for sighting the blind.

‘Efraim,’ he said gently, ‘you know what is needed to sight the blind, and how that operation is completed. To produce a paper showing the harmonics would lead to an investigation of all that band of harmonics. And then?’

He went on much longer — in fact with good arguments.

(Ours was a military establishment. It had produced a military weapon. We knew other weapons developed here — disgusting ones. This one had all their potency but none of their vices. Our country was in a state of great instability, a beggared giant with nuclear rivals on all sides. The people might yet be exposed to horrors. The Directorate had a duty to protect the people. Sighting the blind was a magnificent thing. But for the moment this must have priority. People lived with blindness, but could they live after events that this was designed to prevent?)

‘Come — think it over! You’ll agree!’ he said.

I did agree — why not?

But all I thought was: they aren’t going to publish.

Not now, perhaps not ever. It was slowly sinking in.

‘Efraim,’ he urged me, on leaving next day, ‘forget this military application. Your achievement is very great and no resources will be spared for you to complete it — and the world one day to have it! Each one of us at the Directorate, I assure you, is absolutely aware of what you are doing. Press on with it!’

They were by no means aware of what I was doing. (For that same night I thought ‘To hell with them all!’ For everything they had an argument, and everything could be used for good or evil. Now the good must have a chance. It had come to me by chance. Now it would have another; and I embarked on the course that you know.) But we certainly pressed on!

Our lenses at the time were bulky, heavy, quite awkward in use. This our specialist soon changed, for he was already a leader in the field of thin-film layers. And soon too we were engaged on improvements to the insertion procedures, trying them out on a batch basis (the operation is quite reversible); and were still doing it at the time of the explosion.

Of our military work here I will not speak, so I say nothing of the explosion; except that it was calamitous. We lost the genetics lab. We lost the apes’ quarters — also their adjoining sick bay. Several apes were in it then recovering from operation, their eyes bandaged, and those who survived the blast we got outside as soon as possible, for a rollcall — although they were very few in number.

The situation was now altogether desperate. Those apes still alive were badly contaminated. In a few weeks, only one of them was left — as it happened the least representative one; a testimony to my own hubris, and of a line that must not be crossed.

This creature I had made myself, in a Petri dish: a non-hardy female. By then we could identify early the non-hardy and should simply have washed her away. But I was then working with the foetus and investigating what else we could draw from it.

Since the contents of the dish (now fifteen years old, by name Ludmilla) would not be hardy, there would be ‘intelligence’. I decided to discover how intelligent this cell cluster could be made by copying cerebral material from Sibir’s foetus and trying to incorporate it. And this experiment was a great success — but a frivolous one, an unforgivable one, and one that must never be repeated! For Ludmilla is neither ape nor human. (In fact she is part Sibir, part Neanderthaloid, and part ape: an animal of a kind, but with a mind that I think is human.) The apes did not accept her and she lived apart, attached only to me. I gave her lessons which, alas, she found tiresome. On these occasions she had to sleep the night in a room kept for my Directorate friend; which room by association she also disliked!

This she was doing on the night of the explosion — in safety. I rushed out myself, ordering her to stay in safety. And an ape would have done so, for they obey instructions. But she was concerned only for my safety and ran crying after me — into the secondary blast. This happened as I picked my way through the genetics lab. I had put on the mask and goggles we always wear in this lab, but the poor child was without them …

Well, but see how things turn out.

She was contaminated, of course, and also horribly blinded — her eyes requiring urgent removal for they were destroyed and infected — and thus became our first real patient. The others, remember, were experiments, still with their own eyes. Ludmilla had none; and so became the first true case of blindness in the world to be sighted by our operation.

Well, it’s quite standardised now, the operation — simple and brief. All the parts of it are here: the incisions, the junction, the graft, the fibre, the regulator chip, the lenses. And the boost — the good and the bad, you see. All here.

‘All here.’

Porter thought at first he was being offered a chocolate. The old man sat looking at it in his open palm: a gilt-wrapped dinner mint. Then he took another out of the drawer, silver-wrapped.

‘On disk. Four-centimetre disks. The silver one is by way of a history. A personal one, for you. The other has the technical information, a few hundred pages. It’s compressed — they’ll know what to do with it, the people you give it to.’

Porter looked at the fancy coins.

‘What do I do with it?’ he said.

Rogachev poked again in the drawer and withdrew two slim pouches, themselves not much wider than dinner mints.

‘They go in here. And the pouches in a belt.’ He found the belt, too, a canvas one. ‘And the belt next to your skin. The disks won’t deform or break. They’re encased, but don’t try to open the cases. It needs laboratory conditions to open them — below minus 24 °Centigrade anyway, or they’ll be erased. There’s a temperature lock. That’s the most important thing to remember. Now — it’s late. Do you want a last drink?’

It was indeed very late. It was almost three, and again they had talked the night away.

Porter went and got himself a drink, and when he came back found the old man sitting with his eyes closed, deathly tired. But the disks were in the pouches, and the pouches in the belt, and on the desk under his hand was an envelope.

‘Here’s the letter. You’ll need it to show the Evenks. It’s just blank paper — a few sheets.’

‘How about the ring — I tell them it couldn’t be found?’

‘No. It’s here.’ He opened his hand. ‘My wife’s, actually … There’s no one to send it to, and they’ll cremate me in a few weeks. You have it. You may find the inscription a little sentimental.’

He turned it over and over in his hand for a few moments, smiling rather crookedly, and offered it with a magnifying glass.

Through the glass Porter examined the gold band. The engraving was on the inside, its Russian words very worn: As our love the circle has no end.

He read them silently.

‘Her death is why I’m here,’ Rogachev said simply. ‘This is how it happened. A funny circle, life, eh? Well, that’s the ring. And here’s the book. Put the belt on.’

Porter put it on, under his clothing.

‘You’ve remembered the temperature?’

‘240 degrees.’

‘Minus 240. Even below that. Say liquid hydrogen, it’s easier. That’s to allow it to be opened. Once safely opened, no special conditions are needed. They’ll figure out how to read it. Remember, the gold one has the technical information. Now … Do I thank you again, or is it just goodbye?’

It was just goodbye, without words. And it was in the library; their four hands clasped for long seconds. Then the chair was whining out of the room, and Porter’s last view was of a single arm raised. Vale!

In ten minutes, goodbye to Stepanka too, and hello to the washroom. And soon after, to his bunk.

All done now. Everything accomplished. Under the covers he felt the belt. Just a few hours to go. And in two or three days he’d be gone for good. He thought over the arrangements, but the day had been long. Up most of last night, little rest after it, and none at all since they’d been called in from the wind and the snow. He closed his eyes, drifting into darkness.

45

At the time that Kolya Khodyan and the Evenks had been summoned from the wind and the snow to learn that a name had been chosen for the baby, another man was learning some news, far away.

It was eight time zones away, and eight o’clock in the morning. And it was a very curious piece of news.

He knew he must have read it wrong.

He read it again. The print was so poor, it was hard to read anyway. His eyes were bad today. He looked up from the newspaper and blinked at the sea. It was at the other end of the short side street and he could see just a bit of it, beyond the promenade, the water a surly lead colour. A palm tree was lashing about there.

He had drunk a lot last night, for his cold. It hadn’t done anything for his cold but it had given him a bad head. God, how he hated the Black Sea!

Alexei ‘Alyosha’ Ponomarenko sat under the flapping awning outside the café and longed for the north. He’d never had a cold in the north. Wonderful Green Cape. Wonderful Kolymsky. Pure, pure snow; good comrades, plenty of money. New frost outside every morning. Good dry heat inside. Not draughty, not damp. He longed for the princely apartment he had left behind in June. Here he lived like a pauper. Above this shitty café! Him! Even apart from the civil war now messily spluttering on here, his money was running out and he’d had to move from his decent place on the front to this back street.

He lit a cigarette but left it smouldering in the ashtray, and went in to get another cup of coffee. A kerosene stove was stinking away inside, which was why he was sitting outside. Nowhere in the place was there central heating.

‘Put a shot of brandy in it,’ he said.

‘Cash,’ the surly proprietor said.

Ponomarenko slammed the cash on the counter. The coffee he’d poured himself: it came with the breakfast.

‘And who gave you exclusive rights in the newspaper? Others are waiting for it.’

‘Buy another paper,’ Ponomarenko told him. He hung on to the paper.

‘There’s no hurry,’ one of the other guests said. A few disconsolate individuals were sitting about eating their lousy breakfasts; ghosts, wrecks, pensioners. ‘It’s all lies, anyway. They tell you what they want to tell you. Who’s winning today?’

‘Everybody’s winning,’ Ponomarenko said, and took the newspaper and his coffee out with him.

The paper was full of tanks going here, there. Sod the tanks. He swallowed the improved coffee and felt his eyes improve. He concentrated on what interested him. The two panels were side by side, one in Georgian, one Russian. He read the Russian one again. Edict of the Government: Ministry of Justice.

He read it twice more. Very tricky, the bastards here. Very. There was bound to be a catch in it somewhere.

He lit another cigarette and thoughtfully smoked it, blinking in the distance at the threshing palm tree. Then he folded over a few pages so they wouldn’t figure out what interested him and took the paper inside.

‘Tell me,’ he said to the fellow behind the counter, ‘is there a respectable lawyer anywhere in this town?’

The lawyer was a small man with a very large moustache, and he was an Armenian, which made Ponomarenko anxious; he had wanted a Georgian, one who knew all the shifts and changes of Georgian law anyway. He was also not impressed with the premises. To enter the lawyer’s office he had had to walk through a room with a dentist’s chair in it. The man reassured him on both points. He had practised for twenty years, he said, both in Batumi and Tbilisi; this was his week in Batumi. The dentist’s chair was his brother-in-law’s, who was this week in Tbilisi.

The lawyer first of all had a point of his own to make. He understood his visitor had come to consult him on behalf of a friend. Did the friend understand that such consultations were on a cash basis, and the cash was US dollars?

Ponomarenko put twenty down and when the man merely looked at it explained that his friend wanted only one simple question answered before deciding whether to go further. The lawyer remained looking at the money, but he nodded, and Ponomarenko told him the question.

There had been a government announcement in the paper that an amnesty was being offered to drug offenders who disclosed the source of their supply; what was the meaning of this announcement and what was the catch in it?

The lawyer nodded again.

The meaning of the announcement was that the government had recognised that an enemy of good government was organised crime. For the maintenance of law and order in the present turbulence it had identified it as a principal enemy. Organised crime was based in this region upon powerful drug rings. To isolate the rings it had been decided to pardon lesser offenders. That was the meaning of it. There was no catch.

Ponomarenko remained silent for some moments.

‘Your friend is known to the police?’ the lawyer quietly suggested.

‘No.’

‘Is being blackmailed, perhaps, forced to continue with … certain activities?’

‘Not exactly … ’

‘It’s a well-known squeeze. Speak freely.’

‘Well — what if certain things came to light — after he’d gone and said everything — things that aren’t really, sort of, to do with it?’

The lawyer looked at Ponomarenko and then he looked quite hard at the twenty dollars.

‘That’s not the same simple question,’ he said.

Ponomarenko put another twenty on the table.

‘If I understand you,’ the lawyer said, leaning back more comfortably, ‘your friend is worried that the police might start investigating other misdemeanours, once they’ve got him. Forget it. They’re interested in drugs. They want to eliminate the small offenders. A fault of the previous system was the harsh sentencing — capital punishment, life terms. They want to wipe the slate. Once the facts are given, that’s the end of it. Finish. Nothing on the record. Have no fear — for your friend. Unless it appears, when they look into it,’ he said jovially, ‘that he’s committed a couple of murders. Has he?’

‘Christ, no!’ Ponomarenko said indignantly. ‘Not that. But supposing, if they look into it, they find out he has a wife and — various things. That maybe he hasn’t kept up with, like payments. Things like that.’

The lawyer laughed heartily. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘they are interested in powerful forces challenging the state. Once your friend has reported the facts regarding drugs, he will be pardoned. It’s guaranteed. Take my word for it.’

‘Well, I would,’ Ponomarenko said. ‘But there’s my friend. How do I get him to believe this guarantee?’

The lawyer leaned back and hoisted a telephone directory from a shelf. He leafed through the pages. ‘You read Georgian?’

‘A bit.’

‘What does it say here?’

‘Ministry of Justice.’

‘Call them.’ The lawyer pushed the phone across. ‘Ask for the Chief Prosecutor’s office. When you’ve got somebody — I’ll talk.’

Ponomarenko dubiously dialled the number and followed instructions. He got the deputy prosecutor, and handed over the phone.

The lawyer identified himself and spoke affably to the deputy prosecutor. He said that on behalf of a client he would like today’s amnesty announcement for drug offenders explained in simple terms, and listened, nodding for a few minutes.

‘Quite so … Well, I have here, Deputy Prosecutor, a friend of the client. He would like it confirmed that no action whatever would be taken against his friend once the full facts have been given. And that a pardon would be automatic — nothing on the record, and no other areas investigated. Exactly. And the same with revenge evidence? … Oh, I expect the usual — photographs, tape-recordings. Yes. Yes. Destroyed and no copy taken — very good. Well then, Deputy Prosecutor, if you would not mind repeating that to my visitor I think I can deliver the first success in your campaign. Eh? Very good, ha-ha. Yes. Here he is.’

He handed the phone to Ponomarenko who asked a few husky questions, and listened intently.

‘Satisfied?’ asked the lawyer, when he had hung up,

Ponomarenko lit a cigarette. He was not so much satisfied as stunned with relief. The slimy little bastard blackmailing him had been met barely two weeks after his first joyous arrival in Batumi. Six nightmarish months ago — in June!

He let out a great lungful of smoke.

‘Actually,’ he said, slowly, ‘there isn’t any friend. It’s for me. I’m the client.’

‘No!’ the lawyer said, opening his eyes very wide. ‘You surprise me!’

But what Ponomarenko had to tell him soon surprised him much more.

The lunch hour was twelve to two in Batumi, but half a chicken each was sent up to the prosecutor’s office and they talked right through it. By then the discussion was exclusively on the agent who had trapped Ponomarenko, and on making arrangements to meet him again. In this matter, too, Ponomarenko had been given immunity, and was gladly cooperating.

His earlier statement — on handing over the keys to his apartment in Green Cape, on the detailed information he had given of conditions there, on the strange interest the man had shown in a chance Asiatic companion — had already gone off to Tbilisi.

With regard to the chance Asiatic, Ponomarenko could remember very little. He had met him in a bar. His name was Kolya, also a driver from the north. The agent had seen them drinking together; had been very interested; had wanted every detail about him. God knew why; Ponomarenko didn’t. But Kolya had been glad to talk about himself and he had let him talk and had later given the details.

Kolya what? Couldn’t remember. What details? Couldn’t remember those, either. Something about Chukotka and his background, he vaguely thought, and various places the guy had been. He was a native, a Chukchee. Only stayed a few days, anyway. Hadn’t seen him again.

But at two o’clock a fax arrived from Tbilisi that threw more light on this chance-met Chukchee. It also threw Ponomarenko into something like a stupor. The name of the Chukchee was Khodyan — Nikolai Dmitrievich Khodyan — and he was presently occupying Ponomarenko’s apartment in Green Cape.

The fax, transmitted via Yakutsk and Irkutsk, had originated in Tchersky.

Tchersky was in the same time zone as Tcherny Vodi.

There it was now 10 p.m., and Kolya Khodyan was just going through the wall.

46

The Evenks were especially jovial to Kolya Khodyan on this, his last morning at Tcherny Vodi.

One of them, cleaning Major Militsky’s suite, had heard that the lower guard post was being opened up at eleven. Medical Officer Komarova would be at the camp before noon. And surgery would be held as usual in the guards’ barracks: which had occasioned so much winking and chuckling that Kolya was apprehensive that even the thickest of the staff must notice it.

Major Militsky noticed it.

‘They’re cheerful today, Sergeant,’ he said, on his rounds.

‘They are, Major. No accounting for these fellows.’

‘This baby’s name, is it — making them so happy?’

‘Ah. That. Never thought of that, Major. I think you’ve got it. Childish people.’

‘Yes. They are childish,’ the major confirmed, with a nod. ‘Respect their traditions, though, and you get good work out of them. Makes for order.’

‘Well, that’s certain. I’ve known ’em turn very awkward, otherwise. Oh yes, that’s certain.’

‘Yes,’ the major said. He was never more certain of anything in his life. To be congratulated on his tactful handling. He felt tactful. He felt well braced. His face was rosy as an apple this morning. ‘Good morning all,’ he said in the storage sheds. ‘Everything in order here?’

‘All in order, Major.’ The corporal of the stores detail saluted him. ‘Empties stacked. Got them ready for a quick hitch in case the medical officer has to take off fast again.’

‘Ah well, she won’t be in such a hurry today,’ the major said, smiling. ‘That was a special situation before.’ Although said with a smile there was nothing particularly humorous in the remark, so that he was surprised at the great explosion of mirth it drew from the Evenks. He continued nodding kindly at them. ‘Very good news — that the baby now has a name. Excellent!’

‘Yes. Excellent, Major!’ agreed the Evenks, grinning.

‘My congratulations again,’ the major said, and took his leave; but somewhat puzzled. There was something anticipatory in all the grins as though they expected him to say something even funnier. Well, they just felt good, and it made them smile. He felt good and it made him smile.

It had not, however, made Kolya Khodyan smile. There was a childish delight in guile among tribal people that he knew too well. He hoped the guards didn’t know it so well. Just a few hours more to get through. He felt very tense. He had a sense of premonition. Something wasn’t right today. He scented the freezing air. Something not right.

He had shown them the sealed letter, and the ring. They knew, and very joyfully, what they had helped him do; and what still had to be done. And an unexpected problem had arisen. In the guards’ barracks, where the surgery would be held, the rule was ‘hats off’. The Evenks in the general business of the camp remained always covered but here, as a courtesy in the guards’ quarters, they did uncover. Obviously he couldn’t uncover. The matter had been debated. Since the present squad of guards had only seen them covered they couldn’t tell whether or not one of them had a shaven head. But it would draw attention to him, at the last moment, and he could do without that.

Then what?

Then they would all keep their hats on.

And say what?

‘We’ll see,’ they said.

This happy-go-lucky attitude filled him with foreboding. He wondered if it was responsible for his feeling. He didn’t understand the feeling. He was very tense.

But he continued at work. Yesterday’s plane had again filled the storage sheds, and the tractors were kept on the go to the delivery bay at the rear. A good deal more snow had fallen and he wondered if she could even make it today; whether the thing wouldn’t be cancelled at the last moment. But at a quarter to twelve, returning to the sheds, he saw the small convoy appear at the perimeter gates, and his heart leapt.

He carried on working. The guards would be attended to first at the surgery; and the dinner hour was being staggered so that everybody would see the doctor in turn. Already it had been agreed he would be among the last.

He had his dinner. He had trouble eating it, but he ate it; and while doing so was joined by the first returning Evenk patient, grinning.

‘It’s okay with the hats.’

He looked up inquiringly.

‘For the baby!’

He didn’t inquire any further, wiped his mouth, and went out to take his place. A guard stood in the porch outside the barracks keeping the few Evenks in line. As one came out he sent another in. Kolya evaded the grinning eyes and looked around him. It was dark, but under the floodlights he could see the bobik. It stood outside Major Militsky’s office and a guard was standing by it, beating his hands together. The motor was running and the driver was sitting inside out of the cold.

‘Okay, next.’

An Evenk had come out, and the first in line went in.

She was taking them very briskly. Within three or four minutes another man was going in; and Kolya had been joined in the rear by two more. One further man was still to come; this had been arranged. The further man arrived at just the moment when Kolya was at the head of the line.

‘Next man inside.’

He went inside.

The guards’ dormitory was exceedingly tidy; iron beds, not bunks, and all made up with military precision. There was also a long table and a few comfortable chairs but these had been moved to the far end of the room, beyond reach of contaminating Evenks. The only piece of furniture for the Evenks was a bare form, and three of them sat on it, with their hats on. A guard stood beside them, his uniform fur hat held ostentatiously under his arm. They moved up, winking, and made room for the new man, and Kolya sat.

There was a small sauna off the dormitory. It had running water, and here the surgery had been set up. Another guard, hat under his arm, stood sternly outside it. The door was a little ajar and he could hear her voice. She dealt just as briskly with the new patient, and soon another man had come in and he was moving along the form. In no time he was at the head of the form — the last three Evenks shuffling along with him and grinning so broadly that even the guards began to stare. He couldn’t tell what they made of it. No sense was expected of the Evenks; what sense was there, after all, in keeping hats on because a baby had been named? But it kept him on tenterhooks, until it was his turn to go in.

He saw at once that something was wrong.

Her face was tight, stiff, paler than ever.

She sat at a table with a pile of papers, her medical case open. A sheet had been spread on another table and a pillow placed on it. She was writing.

‘Well? Any medical problems?’

‘I’ve pulled a muscle, Doctor. Here, in my back.’

‘All right. Let’s see. Take your top clothing off.’

He did so, and she shook her head at him as he opened his mouth. ‘Yes. I can feel it. I’ll give you an injection, and a preparation to be rubbed in. Guard!’

The guard outside the door looked in.

‘Send my driver in.’

The guard looked at her, and shook his head.

‘Can’t do that, Doctor. If there’s something you want, I’ll send for it.’

‘Yes, very well. It’s the diethylamine salicylate solution, camphorated, and quickly, please.’

‘The — what was that?’

‘The diethylamine sal — Just a minute.’ She irritably shook her head and wrote swiftly on a slip of paper. ‘It’s in the fixed brown compartment, left upper quadrant. And I want a spare 100-millilitre bottle. And funnel. Lift your arm,’ she said to her patient.

‘Fixed brown compartment, hundred millilitres, upper quadrant and a funnel,’ the guard said and went bemusedly out of the room with the slip of paper. This he gave to the guard outside the barrack door, who went with the instructions to the bobik. He returned presently and conferred with the surgery guard, who tapped on the door and put his face in again.

‘He doesn’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t know what — How many patients are out there?’

The guard had a look.

‘Three,’ he said.

‘Still three? Send that driver in!’ she said, with fury.

‘Doctor, I — Well, for a moment,’ he said, seeing her mouth open again; and in a minute or two the driver was lounging in, with his fancy balaclava and his fine hat, chewing gum. ‘Sorry, Doctor, I couldn’t make out —’

‘God above! … Just a minute — you! Leave the room!’ she said abruptly, noticing that the guard had come in with the man.

‘Doctor, he can’t come in here unaccompanied.’

‘And you can’t come in when I have a patient!’ The patient was now bent over the sheeted table with his shirt up, and she was bent over him. ‘Get out at once!’

The guard hastily vacated the room, and the medical officer slammed the door on him, and stood against it, while the two remaining occupants swiftly changed places, and clothes. Papers, too, passed.

‘A bottle, a funnel, and solution from the brown case!’ her voice rang out. ‘Here, written in the largest letters. Does it take so long to understand a simple —’

It didn’t take so long, and the driver was soon out again with the paper, ruefully shaking his head. He was not allowed to remain unaccompanied for long. The surgery guard accompanied him outside. The barrack guard accompanied him to the bobik. And the bobik guard watched closely as he unlocked the rear of the vehicle. The rear was now stacked with cases of empty jars and drums, but the fixed compartment was accessible and it took him no time to pick out the large jar of liniment, with an empty medicine bottle and a funnel.

These he was not allowed to take back in himself, so he returned to the driving seat; from which, less than ten minutes later, he hopped out to open the passenger door for Medical Officer Komarova. She was leaning on her stick and carrying the file of medical papers, one guard holding her medical case and another the liniment jar and the funnel.

Major Militsky, forewarned, hurried out of his office.

‘I can’t tempt you to stay for a bite, Medical Officer?’

‘No, thank you, Major. I must get on — the weather is very threatening.’ She handed over the file. ‘And thank you for facilitating the matter of the baby’s name. The Evenks are happy about it. It means a great deal to them.’

‘We must respect their traditions. It was a pleasure.’

‘Very good. Is everything ready here?’

Everything was ready. The funnel and the liniment were back in the fixed compartment; the rear shut; the escorting jeep waiting.

‘Goodbye, Medical Officer.’ Major Militsky handed her gallantly into the bobik, and snapped off a most happy salute.

‘Goodbye, Major.’

‘Until next time … Off you go, Sergeant.’

And off they went, through the two sets of gates and down the icy path.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

‘Yes. I’ll tell you later. I feel sick.’

He slowly followed the jeep down. They halted at the lower checkpost to be signed out, were saluted off the premises, and entered the creek.

‘What is it?’ he said.

She had heard the news this morning at a settlement where she and the driver had spent the night — both nights had been spent at European settlements: the man unknown at either. Her secretary had telephoned to say that Tchersky militia wanted the Chukchee driver, Khodyan. Why? The secretary didn’t know, but they had asked for the medical officer to call them.

This she had done immediately.

The militia chief was an old patient, and he had told her that a small matter had cropped up: an inquiry late last night from Batumi on the Black Sea. A man called Ponomarenko was being held there, and Tchersky had been asked to find out who was at present occupying his apartment. He had told them it was Khodyan and they’d asked for him to be held and his papers checked. From the transport company he had learned that Komarova had him for a few days. Was she coming back now?

Yes, some time today. Was this man a criminal?

Not as far as the police chief knew — probably just needed to confirm some aspect of Ponomarenko’s story. They’d be sending him more information on it. Anyway, get him to look into the station with his papers when they returned.

They drove for some minutes in silence.

‘You can’t go back to Green Cape,’ she said.

‘No.’

He kept silence and she looked at him.

He was like an animal, scenting.

‘If they’re inquiring who’s in his apartment,’ he said at last, ‘that’s a funny inquiry. Why should anybody be in it? Why should they want to know? He’s told them. He’s told them how he was fixed. I’m blown.’

He stopped the car suddenly.

‘You spoke to this policeman soon after nine? Now it’s two. Call your office. See if he’s been in touch again.’

She switched on, got the crackling, and called in.

No. Nothing. No messages.

‘You may be delayed,’ he told her, softly. ‘You want to know if the militia call.’

‘Irina, I may be delayed a little. Let me know if there’s anything — or if the militia call again, right?’

‘Right, Medical Officer.’

He lit a cigarette.

‘Soon they’ll have photographs,’ he mused. ‘Of Khodyan. They won’t match mine.’

‘Things don’t happen so fast here.’

‘Faxes happen fast. They’ll transmit them … Why didn’t they get in touch with Tcherny Vodi? They knew you were going.’

‘They can’t get in touch with Tcherny Vodi. Only the medical office can do that, and on medical business. It’s a sealed line, teleprinter. The commandant can make calls out, the militia certainly can’t call in.’

He nodded, thinking.

‘The inquiry came late last night, from the Black Sea?’

‘That’s what the Chief said.’

‘Then, there it must have been earlier. They’re some hours back, surely — four, five?’

‘Eight, I think.’

‘Eight. Then the inquiry was made during the day. And now it will be, what, six in the morning there? Maybe nothing happened in the night. After all, they’d have to get hold of photos, probably from other regions. We could still have a couple of hours.’

‘For you to catch a plane?’

‘A plane to where? No, no. If Ponomarenko told them who fixed him, maybe they have the agent. I don’t know how much he knew, but I can’t risk … I have to think this out. Well run into Tchersky — to the outskirts, and you’ll call, again. I’ll think it out as we go.’

He started the car again and they proceeded in blackness along the creek. He stopped before the end and took the pouches out of the body belt and gave them to her.

‘What are they?’

‘I’ll tell you later. If I don’t get the chance, hide them. Don’t try to open them, they will be destroyed. They aren’t any danger to you. But keep them safely,’ he said.

She handled the tiny pouches uncertainly. ‘What do I do with them?’

‘For now, put them in your bra. They’re no danger to you,’ he repeated, and got the car moving again.

Outside Tchersky she called in once more. It was now after three o’clock.

Nothing. And also no concern expressed. He listened carefully to the voice on the radio.

‘You’re calling because you want the car unloaded right away,’ he told her, quietly. ‘You’ll be in soon.’

This message she passed; and now he told her what they would do.

Lights were on in all windows of the administrative building in Tchersky, and he drove once round the square looking for any sign of unusual activity.

There was none, so he drove through the gates at the rear to the packing bay of the medical centre. His own bobik was still standing there, and a rubbish truck, and that was all, the dimly lit yard with its stamped snow quite deserted. He helped her out and went in through the swing doors of the packing room. The two packers there expected him and came cheerfully out to unload the van.

‘Kolya, remember the militia,’ she said, as they did so. ‘And don’t forget your papers.’

‘I’ll do it when I’m through.’

‘You don’t have to unload — they can do it themselves.’

‘It’s all pretty light now. I’ll just help finish.’

And this he did, carrying in the very last drums.

‘That’s the lot. See you again, boys.’

‘Sure. And thanks, Kolya.’

He went out and found her in the dim light fiddling with the car keys at the open rear doors. He swiftly entered the back of the bobik, and she locked the doors and went into the building.

It was almost four o’clock, and she didn’t stay long.

The expected headache, she said, after a three-day trip … She glanced over the new paperwork, inquired into a few cases, saw that everything was under control, and left.

Back in the bobik she drove the short journey home. She parked in the shed, and let him out of the back; and he waited there until she had unlocked the front door. She didn’t switch the light on but returned to close the shed, and in the dark he went ahead of her into the house.

47

The militia telephoned at six o’clock, and fifteen minutes later were ringing at the doorbell. The lieutenant and a sergeant found her in her dressing gown.

‘I’m sorry, Medical Officer. A few things the Chief couldn’t go into on the phone. There’s something funny about this fellow who was driving you.’

‘Good God, Lieutenant, you haven’t woken me for that? I’ve been travelling three hard days — I need some sleep!’

‘We can’t find him. He didn’t go home.’

‘Maybe he went to a friend’s.’

‘Not to any we know about. And his bobik is still at the medical centre. He left it there.’

‘Well — he knew he had to go and report with his papers. I think I even reminded him.’

‘You did. The packers at the medical centre remembered it.’

‘Then — probably he found a bottle, and is sitting over it somewhere. You know how it is with them.’

‘Yes, it’s what I think myself,’ the lieutenant said. ‘And he’ll turn up with a sore head in the morning. The thing is, they’re worrying us at Irkutsk for a report. They don’t understand how things are here. Can we sit down?’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. Help yourself to a drink.’ She got a couple of glasses. ‘Irkutsk?’ she said, puzzled.

‘Counter-intelligence,’ the sergeant contributed. ‘They run about looking for spies there. It keeps them happy. Your good health, Doctor. The leg’s improving?’

‘Yes. It’s nothing. A Chukchee spy?’ she asked in surprise.

‘I know, it’s crazy,’ the lieutenant agreed, raising his glass. ‘But this fellow isn’t who he says he is. They sent in some pictures, from Magadan, where he was supposed to have worked. It’s a different man. The chances are, this one stole Khodyan’s papers. It’s how he got in here. The papers are okay — the Transport Company checked them in with us, of course, when he started — but he’d changed the photo. No way we could tell that. A Chukchee’s a Chukchee.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘Who knows? Trouble with a wife, a paternity suit? He must have met Khodyan on the Black Sea. What he’s doing with Ponomarenko’s apartment is a puzzle. They’ve told us nothing yet. To them it’s espionage, of course, so they’re giving nothing away. What these people can think up — a spy from Chukotka!’ he said, drinking, and wiped his mouth. ‘Anyway, if you’ll just give a statement, the sergeant will take it down.’

‘What else is there I can tell you?’

She watched as the sergeant took his book out.

‘Maybe his reaction — when he heard we wanted him.’

‘Well — he was irritated. He thought people were picking on him because he was a Chukchee. I’d had to take him off long-distance journeys, you know — his medical record showed he had a heart murmur.’

‘Yes. He was due for hospital tests next week, I understand.’

‘Cardiological. For the murmur. That annoyed him too.’

‘He didn’t want it?’

‘Well, he wasn’t too happy about it.’

‘Ahah. Did he talk about that?’

‘A little. He understood I had no choice — from his record. I couldn’t risk allowing him on long journeys, whatever they’d allowed in Chukotka. They asked me to arrange a hospital test for him, and I did. He accepted that.’

‘He did, eh? Well, they think a bit slow, you know, these natives, but they’re very crafty. I guess he’d have skipped, even without this inquiry. Still, it must have worried him, being called in. You say he was just irritated?’

‘Well. He cursed.’

‘He cursed,’ the lieutenant told the sergeant. ‘And what then? He asked questions?’

‘He asked what I thought it was about. I said it was a routine check of his papers.’

‘Did he want you to find out more?’

‘Well, I called the office for any messages.’

‘Did he ask you to do that?’

She thought. ‘Maybe. I’d have done it, anyway.’

‘How many times did he ask?’

‘Oh now, Lieutenant, I don’t know how many times.’

The Lieutenant had leaned over and was turning back a page of the sergeant’s book.

‘You called in at two o’clock,’ he said. ‘And again at five past three. Did he ask you both those times?’

‘Lieutenant, I’ve got a splitting headache, and I can’t remember what he asked me or how many times.’

‘I’m sorry, Medical Officer. But with these natives — if a problem isn’t so serious, they’ll wait for it to happen. I’m wondering how serious he thought it was … This last time, now, you must have been pretty near Tchersky, and he’s driving you in. He knows he’s on false papers and will have to produce them … Didn’t he seem nervous at all?’

‘Well … not that I could tell. He just drove into the yard and went in to get the packers, and helped unload the van. Then he came out and asked if there was anything else I wanted, and I said no, and he went.’

‘Where?’

‘Out of the yard, I suppose.’

‘And left his bobik standing there?’

‘What would he want with the bobik? The militia station is almost next door.’

‘He didn’t go to it. Where the devil could he have gone on foot?’

‘Look, Lieutenant, I’m tired. Probably he’s drinking somewhere now, wondering what to do.’

The lieutenant nodded. ‘He’ll be in Tchersky, anyway. He won’t have walked four kilometres to Green Cape. He could have hitched a lift, of course … Still, thanks for your help. If he calls in — which he might, when he’s had a few — find out where he is and calm him down. Let us know.’

‘All right.’

She waited till the noise of the car had receded and went and opened the cellar door.

This was Friday night.

They left at nine o’clock when traffic had ceased and it was silent outside. He was certain that a house-to-house search would begin and knew he had to be off immediately.

She had three ten-litre jerricans of petrol in the shed. These he put in the back of the bobik, with a small extra one of kerosene for the stove. He packed some clothing in a grip, took a sleeping-bag and food, and the remainder of a bottle of vodka.

The route to Anyuysk she knew, and he stayed under a blanket in the back while she drove. But once they were off the river and on to the made track he took over the wheel.

The dark was intense and in the featureless country the headlights showed no sign of the turnoff to Provodnoye. He had clocked it at nine kilometres, and at the eighth he slowed so that she would see. Next time she would be doing it on her own.

They made the tributary, and he took the bends slowly so that she would know them. From the entry, fifty-five kilometres to the cave; this too he had clocked, and she had to remember.

The overhanging willow came on a sharp bend — the bend where spring floods had eroded the cave in the first place — and if not spotted at once it could be missed while negotiating the bend.

At fifty-four kilometres he slowed again, and she made it out for herself.

He turned the nose of the bobik into the cave. The tarpaulin had been left hanging, and it draped over the windscreen. They got out and in the headlights she saw the place for the first time: all as he had left it, last weekend, when he had turned up at the house at five in the morning.

His own spirits sank as he took in the skeleton of the car. It was more of a mess than he remembered. He started the generator and backed the bobik and parked it and switched the lights off. They began unloading in the dark and he took the jerricans.

In the naked lights the cave was exceedingly dismal, the walls gleaming with ice, the bare chassis strewn with half-fitted parts. She came in with the food and bedding, and looked around.

‘Oh, my darling — you’ll freeze here!’

‘I’ll survive.’ He lit the stove and examined the tarpaulin at the entrance, frowning.

Then he went outside, and came in again.

‘The light shows. There’s a glow,’ he said. ‘Anything changing down at the bend would see it … With the generator going I’d never hear what’s coming.’

‘What should be coming here?’

‘Trucks could be running regularly to Provodnoye now. I’ll have to put the blanket up as well.’

‘All right, I’ll bring another.’ I’ll put it on the list.’

The list was growing. He already had four jerricans of petrol stacked in the cave. Her three made it seven; and he now calculated he needed at least three more. He also needed a map and a compass and extra batteries for the torch, and more provisions.

‘Okay, don’t wait now,’ he said. It would take her at least two and a half hours getting back, and it was now almost midnight. Tomorrow she had to let her Yakut cleaning woman in; she would put in only an hour or two at the medical centre, and then go out to the stores. ‘Have you remembered the turnoffs?’

She had remembered them: nine kilometres off the Anyuysk road for the tributary, fifty-five more to the cave.

‘Okay. Tomorrow night. Be very careful,’ he said.

‘Oh, Johnny!’

‘Kolya! Only that!’ he said, removing her arms. ‘And no goodbyes, just go. Tanya-Panya.’

He waited outside while she turned the bobik, and watched the rear lights recede, and went back in. Now, on his own, it looted starker than ever. To turn this mess into a car! But he would have to turn it into one, and by the time she returned. Whatever state it was in, he’d start the engine when she appeared, anyway; it would give them both a boost. But then he realised he couldn’t start the engine. The last item taken from Vassili was still in the shed at the house. The car battery was there, charging. He had hidden it under a sack, and it was not on the list, and his stomach turned to lead.

48

With the December solstice so close there was now no daylight at all.

A little after one in the afternoon the sky greyed faintly for an hour as the sun rose and set below the horizon, but this was only when there was no overcast. For some days before and after the blizzard there had been heavy overcast, perpetual night. Despite this, normal hours were kept in the region, and he took account of this in figuring when trucks could pass.

He was midway between Green Cape and Provodnoye.

From either point it would take the heavy vehicles three hours to the cave. From Green Cape they would leave at eight in the morning, so around eleven they could be outside. By then his lights had to be off. Even with the blanket a faint glow was noticeable in the dark. He couldn’t tell when they would return from Provodnoye — but it was unlikely to be the same day. He himself had stayed overnight and returned in the morning.

Eleven in the morning was the time, both coming and going. The generator had to be off then.

He would grab three hours’ rest, from ten o’clock to one; all lights out.

He worked through the night, worked solidly; but at ten in the morning he hung the bobik’s floor panels, took a good swig of vodka, spread the sleeping-bag, and got in.

In the biting cold he got all of himself in, including his fur hat, and slowly warmed up and dozed. And was glad of the precaution when after an hour he heard the distant sound of a truck. He listened carefully.

From Green Cape.

He could plot the bends as it slowed and picked up.

It ground slowly past; a few metres from him. A big Kama. They were using them now. In the blackness he went off to sleep, and slept soundly, and woke abruptly. One o’clock, he saw on his watch in torchlight: one in the afternoon. As planned.

He got out and started the generator, and topped up the little tank of the kerosene stove. It had been going all night Then he gave himself something to eat: bread, cheese, a cup of coffee from the flask. He hesitated over pouring a drop of vodka into the coffee, and decided against. There was not much left and it was going to be a long day. She was leaving later, and he didn’t expect her till one in the morning, another twelve hours.

He relieved himself outside, and shifted his production, immediately frozen, to a crevice in the opposite bank with the bobik’s little snow shovel: it came with the kit.

Then he got to work again.

The short sleep had done him good and he felt considerably more cheerful. He had passed some gloomy hours considering his prospects. Ponomarenko would have led them to the agent, and the agent, however little he knew, must have received instructions from somebody. He himself had a number to call at Tbilisi — perhaps the agent’s own number.

Tbilisi, bordering on Turkey, was one of two exit routes planned for him. Both exits involved a trip first to Yakutsk, where new papers awaited him. Now Tbilisi was out. But Yakutsk was still good. The Tbilisi agent (so he had been told) knew nothing of Yakutsk. All he had to do was get himself there. But not from Tchersky airport. That too was out now.

Perversely, this cheered him. The idea of the bobik had occurred as a means of avoiding Tchersky. Too much security at that airport: the gateway to the Kolymsky region. It had seemed best, if he had to leave in a hurry, to find some other airport, a more relaxed one. And he had found it, at Zirianka, a few hours along the river.

Zirianka was the distribution centre for the summer barges sailing south: a sleepy small place, with a sleepy small airport. This sleepy small airport, as he had discovered when running a load to it, had regular services to Yakutsk.

That had been the idea — wheels to take him fast out of Tchersky’s control. But Zirianka too was not on now. For though away from Tchersky, it was still on the Kolyma, within the region; and soon the hue-and-cry for him would be region-wide. He needed an airport outside the region. And the reasoning still held good — a bobik could get him to one.

A bobik with a battery could get him to one.

The battery, obviously, was going to hold him up. She would have to make an extra journey out.

But after some hours he saw it wouldn’t be the only holdup. Assembling the parts was one thing. One after the other, he found he had been assembling them in the wrong order. the book showed the exploded parts; it showed how to take them down for repair and how to put them back. It didn’t show how they had to go in in the first place. He leafed there and back. Each section covered a different one of the bobik’s systems. At the back there was a two-page plan of the whole thing complete. There was no plan showing how you got the thing complete.

He struggled and cursed, dragging the chassis out and dragging it in again, to get at one part or another with the block and tackle. The transmission came in and out, and the differential. The engine was twice hoisted out. But slowly, by trial and error, the logic of the thing became clearer. The rugged little beast, apparently so simple, was in fact highly complex.

At a quarter to seven in the evening, with the best part of another six hours’ work behind him, he stopped again. If the Kama had decided to return after just a couple of hours at Provodnoye — unlikely but possible — it would have left at four, and would pass here again at seven.

He hung the floor panels back, laid his sleeping-bag out, had a snack, still left the vodka alone. Then he turned the generator off and got back in the bag.

Seven o’clock. No Kama. He listened for an hour, decided to sleep anyway.

He woke at ten o’clock, as he had planned — no novelty but it still pleased him for he had been very exhausted. He got out, started the generator and lit up. And now he had the vodka. He drained the bottle, a good whole measure, and felt it lighting up his whole body. Wonderful.

The bobik didn’t look so bad now. Still only at chassis level and with a mountain of work to do, but it was beginning to look real. She would be here in three hours. He decided to make it look more real.

He sorted through the body panels and saw how to put them on — a couple of hours’ work. The whole thing could be taken down again in no time. But it would look a real bobik and cheer them both up. He drank the last of the coffee and got moving.

Again, the little bastard was perverse: no section fitting as expected. There was a lower frame bar that obviously had to go in first. The book showed the parts attaching to this bar. But how?

He swore, kicked the thing, crawled underneath. Found the little holes presently, at regular intervals in the steel pockets of the frame — well concealed, wisely concealed, against the snow and the weather. Located the right bolts for them in the pack. Fitted the frame bars, and started with a side.

Half an hour’s work showed you couldn’t start with a side.

The rear had to go in first.

The framework for the rear doors had to go in first.

The constant problems, one after the other, exhausted him again, and by half past midnight he still hadn’t finished. He put a spurt on. He had the back and the sides loosely in position by one — no point in tightening anything since it all had to come down again — but she had not turned up, so he hung the hood too. The windshield had to go in with mastic so he didn’t bother with it, or with any of the glasswork, or the lighting array, or even the catches and handles. But the thing looked real.

He lit a cigarette and walked round it.

He could do with a vodka. Well, soon. It was nearly half past one, she was taking it slowly. He finished the cigarette and decided to fit the catches and handles.

By a quarter past two she had still not arrived and worry began to gnaw at him. Had she missed the turnoffs? But she knew the way to Anyuysk. After a few kilometres she’d realise the mistake and turn back.

Or had she got on to the tributary and passed the cave? With the generator going, he wouldn’t have heard. Well, it was possible. She’d done it only once. But how far would she go? Not more than twenty, thirty kilometres. Half an hour, three quarters. And back again. Well.

He smoked another cigarette, fiddled some more with the catches. He couldn’t concentrate. At half past two he went outside. It was pitch black, unbelievably cold; at least sixty below. In the cave, the kerosene stove going for over twenty-four hours had had some effect. Here a thick mat of frost was growing by the minute, dragging at his boots. He looked both ways for some hint, some glancing reflection, of a car’s lights. Nothing.

Had they stopped her maybe, on the main river? Perhaps stopping cars there now … And she’d dreamed up some excuse and gone back. Or an accident. Or a breakdown. She was stuck somewhere. But she had her radio phone. Except she couldn’t use the radio phone. How would she explain …

He began walking along the track to Provodnoye. He didn’t know why he was doing it and he only walked as far as the next bend. Nothing. Blackness. His face froze; eyelashes stuck with frost. He walked back again. A faint glow from the cave, and he could hear the generator chugging away. He got to the cave and passed it and walked to the farther bend. Still nothing. Not a hint of light. If she was coming, there’d be some faint flicker down from the overcast.

She wasn’t coming.

He went back to the cave.

He didn’t know what to do. A quarter to three in the morning. Even if she came now, it would be six before she got back.

She wouldn’t be coming.

The stove needed replenishing, and the generator. He attended to these things, brooding over the situation.

If she couldn’t come now she would come tomorrow. She wouldn’t leave him like this. He had nothing to eat or drink. He was trapped here, stuck, couldn’t leave the place. Had there been an accident? She couldn’t have got lost. Not for this amount of time. Something had held her up. It would be another whole day and night.

There was no point in doing anything now — all the bodywork to come down first. The truck would be back from Provodnoye at eleven — eight hours to go. He had better sleep a while, and start again.

He laid the sleeping-bag back in the bobik, switched the generator off, and got into the little van. The loose structure swayed and creaked with his weight, and he had barely settled himself when he heard the sound of a motor. He lay for a moment listening, and raised himself, and grasped a heavy wrench and got slowly out.

A bobik engine. And from the direction of Green Cape. He went to the entrance, raised the layers of curtain and peered through the branches. He saw the flicker in the sky and suddenly the headlights, swinging blindingly round the bend The car came on, very slowly. He couldn’t see who was in it how many were in it. Then it slowed further, and he saw the shape of her head, peering, and he switched the torch on.

‘God!’ She got out and hugged and kissed him. ‘I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, my darling! I couldn’t leave before. They were searching.’

He took her inside, and got the lights working, and unloaded what she had brought and right away took a long pull at the vodka while listening to her hurried story.

The militia had started in the afternoon. She thought they were now at Green Cape, searching the Transport Company. Her own house had been the last in Tchersky and they had not started till 10.30. They thought he had broken in somewhere and was lying low. They had gone through every nook and cranny — the shed, the cellar. It was midnight before they’d left and they were still poking about the area so that it was another half hour before she had dared take the bobik out.

She had got everything: full jerricans from the pump at the ambulance depot. Sausage, cheese, blackbread, two bottles of vodka, more coffee. From the little general counter at the post office, torch batteries and a child’s compass, it was all they had; from the same place a school atlas of Siberia — there was no public map of this reserved area. If he could delay a little she might lay hands on one in the ambulance section or her own administrative office: it had been locked when she had realised the lack. And a blanket.

‘But you’ve finished it!’ She was tired and dazed from the journey, and had only now noted the transformation in the bobik.

‘No. I haven’t.’

He explained about the bobik. Also the battery.

She stared at him. ‘Oh, God! I didn’t even know it was there. I didn’t see it … They didn’t, either … Maybe people keep spare batteries … Well — I’ll bring it, then.’

He saw she was swaying, deathly pale, and he held her. He opened the rear of the bobik and sat her there, and poured a little vodka into the vacuum flask cap. But she took only a sip.

‘I’ve still got to get back … Well, maybe I’ll be able to get you a proper map now … But no, I can’t — how?’ She shook her head, still dazed. ‘The office won’t be open today.’

‘What day is it?’

‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Sunday?’ He had lost a day somehow; both of them dazed. ‘Okay, you’d better go. You’ll make it before anything’s moving in Tchersky. But take it easy. You’re very tired.’

‘Yes. I’ll come earlier tomorrow — that is, tonight.’ She dragged herself up. ‘I’ll try to get here by midnight. And I’ll find out what I can.’

He turned the bobik for her on the river and saw her into it, and she smiled wanly as he kissed her. ‘With all these mechanical activities — the disks are safe?

‘Yes. They’re safe,’ he said.

She stroked has face and he kissed her again.

‘Go safely, Tanya-Panya.’

‘Yes.’

He watched the lights recede and went back in the cave; on his own again.

He ate a little and took another swig of vodka and turned the generator off and got back in the bag. As he dozed off to sleep he felt the body belt. Through all the activities, safe.

49

By noon on Sunday an embarrassing situation had arisen in Tchersky. The native driver posing as Khodyan had driven into town at 4 p.m. on Friday, had helped to unload a van in the yard of a building next to the militia headquarters and had men vanished into thin air.

Almost forty-eight hours ago.

There was nowhere that he could have gone. The militia had searched every building where he could have gone; they had even searched buildings where he couldn’t have gone. They had searched the jail, the schools, the old women’s baths, the militia chiefs own home, apart from all other private dwellings.

He wasn’t in Tchersky.

But if he wasn’t in Tchersky, how had he got out of it? He hadn’t taken his own vehicle, and he hadn’t taken anybody else’s. No vehicles were missing. Apart from Green Cape, four kilometres away, there was nowhere else to go.

He could have walked to Green Cape, or taken a lift. Nobody had knowingly given him a lift, although he could have grabbed one; hidden in the back of something. But once arrived there, then what? He wasn’t in any private dwelling, or in the basements or boiler rooms of any apartment blocks. He wasn’t in the supermarket or its warehouse; or in any of the premises of the port authority.

That left the sprawling sheds and stores of the Transport Company above; and the militia chief thought this was the most likely. By some means or other he had got himself there. Plenty of booze crated in the place, and food. He was familiar with it and he was resting up there, deciding what to do. He couldn’t escape, and there was nowhere to go if he did. But you could look a long time before finding him there; and this was a problem for the chief who did not have a long time. He was being driven mad by urgent calls and faxes from Irkutsk.

Irkutsk was 3400 kilometres away and it was a big town; they didn’t understand there how it was possible to lose someone in a little settlement of 10,000 people stuck out in the taiga. In particular, they didn’t understand the nature of the people here. Oddballs, many of them, running away from something; but not bad. There was no crime here, no theft or fraud. Everybody knew each other. The jail was for drunks, fighting mad at night but best of friends in the morning.

This particular individual had been the best of friends with everybody. No one had a bad word to say of him; only that he could be touchy, if picked on as a Chukchee. Well, here he’d been picked on, for having funny papers. Knew someone had told on him. Plenty of people here had funny papers; the militia chief knew that. But this one had gone broody. A broody native hid himself. With a bottle. Obvious. He was holed up, would come out when it suited him. Explain that to Irkutsk!

He had tried to explain it, on the telephone, and had been asked to put the details more concisely in a fax.

This he had done, setting the matter out with clarity and authority. It annoyed him that his competence seemed somehow to be under question at Irkutsk.

The person concerned, he dictated, had almost certainly smuggled himself in a vehicle into the premises of the Tchersky Transport Company. The premises covered a vast area, stacked with hundreds of thousands of crates, many containing alcohol and canned food. The person was a native person, brooding on a slight. To find him in this maze was a matter of time. But in his own good time he would come out anyway. This was the way of natives. There was nowhere for him to go, and the situation was under control.

The chief signed his memo and faxed it off, and ten minutes later got one back. He got a series of questions back.

If the wanted person had smuggled himself in, Irkutsk said, why couldn’t he have smuggled himself out? Of the premises of the Tchersky transport Company? What routes were taken by vehicles of the company? How many of them had left since 4 p.m. on Friday? What communications were mere with these vehicles?

The militia chief looked up at his lieutenant. Both of them had been staring down at the fax as it rolled out.

That was the embarrassment at noon on Sunday.

By 1 p.m. it was established that seventy-three vehicles of the Tchersky Transport Company had left its premises in the relevant period. Communication with the ones on long-distance journeys was by means of the road stations. The road stations were spaced one hundred kilometres apart — roughly three-hour intervals for the big trucks.

Within three hours all those still travelling were being searched and their cabin crews questioned.

The short-haul trucks presented a different problem. On the shorter distances there were no road stations. But there had been far more journeys. The purely local ones could be ruled out, but many had not been purely local. Ambarchik, Anyuysk, Provodnoye were not local, yet trucks had visited all of them. The police posits there were contacted and inquiries started.

By 5 p.m. all the road stations had reported negative, and so had most of the police posts, a few half-constructed buildings had still to be checked in outlying parts. But within an hour all this was tied up, too; to the militia chiefs great relief. There was nothing in it, and he told Irkutsk so.

Since they liked faxes he gave them a fax.

He added that the drivers had been quite astonished. The man had not been up front in any of the cabs, and behind he would have frozen to death; any driver in these parts knew this, and this experienced driver certainly knew it. A knowledge of local conditions was necessary. The warehouse search was continuing.

His message was curt, and he was pleased with it.

The fax went off soon after six and he waited for a reply.

From Irkutsk replies were very prompt, if not immediate. This one took two hours and the message, when it finally came, was even curter than his own. Control of the operation was being assumed, with immediate effect, by Irkutsk. A major-general of the security service was flying in. All vehicles of Tchersky Transport Company were to be halted. Details and locations of all other vehicles within fifty kilometres were to be prepared. Acknowledgment of these orders required immediately. In shock, Tchersky’s chief of militia acknowledged the orders, and then he set about halting all the vehicles of the Tchersky Transport Company.

Such a thing had never happened before. The economy of north-east Siberia had not been so disrupted before. And a major-general of the security service! Obviously he had underrated what he had been told so far. But he had been told very little so far. He was totally dazed.

‘What is it with all other vehicles in the area — not everything to be halted surely?’ he asked his lieutenant.

‘No. No,’ the lieutenant said, looking at the message again.

‘Details and locations only. Just the company’s vehicles to be halted.’

This was as well for it was now 9 p.m. and Medical Officer Komarova was just setting off in her own. She had the battery aboard.

While the commotion had waxed and proliferated all Sunday in Tchersky, the lost man spent a productive day in the cave.

He had slept and worked, and slept and worked, with meals in between. He was pretty sure now that he had got the hang of the thing and he proceeded confidently.

By eleven at night, after a meal and a drink, he went round the bobik, shaking the structure, bouncing the suspension. All solid. Everything that had to be greased was greased. The various grades of oil had gone in. Fuel was in the tank. He had left the seats and the floor panels out, so that he could look down at the works. the works looked as they looked in the book.

Everything looked as it did in the book. The windshield and wipers were in; lights in; doors and windows in; everything opened and shut properly. He thought he had done it.

He turned the engine over with the handle. It was very stiff; no oil circulating yet. Nothing could properly circulate without the electrics in. But the gears slotted in place. The brakes worked − as far as he could tell, jacking the wheels and spinning them. Even after he’d got the battery, hours of testing still had to be done. But nothing more could be done now.

He went out and chipped ice and made himself a pan of lukewarm coffee on the stove. Then he put the floor panels in, switched the generator off, and got back in the sleeping-bag — and again, almost as soon as he’d stretched out, heard the approaching note of the bobik.

He got out and waited at the entrance; saw the flicker in the sky, then the headlights, and she was there again, bundled up in furs, pressed close to him, her nose in his neck.

She was alert now, not dazed or tired, for she had slept well.

And she had a budget of news. The militia were combing the warehouses of Green Cape. They knew he was hiding there. But Irkutsk had ordered them to look further afield. All the trucks were being searched as they pulled into road stations, and even short-haul drivers were being questioned.

She had spoken earlier to Bukarovsky, the company boss, and he thought all this was tremendous nonsense. He agreed with the militia: the Chukchee had got hold of a bottle or two; he had even summoned twenty of the warehouse staff to help with the search and call out to the fellow not to be such a fool. Nobody was going to shoot him! If they shot every driver who had funny papers here … He had always known the Chukchee must be in trouble at home. Why was he here instead of at Chukotka? But it would certainly take time to find him in all the warehouses.

She related this with excitement, and was disturbed at the fox-like scenting look that came over his face again.

‘This isn’t good news?’ she said, uncertainly.

‘Yes. It’s good news,’ he said, and kissed her again. There was no point in explaining now that it wasn’t. He went and collected the battery. He lowered it into position and fitted the terminals. Then he checked that everything was in place, and drew a breath.

‘Well. Here goes,’ he said, and with the hood open pressed the solenoid for the starter.

He got the first jump, and a croak, and tried again. The engine was very stiff, but it turned. At the fifth try the thing caught and roared into life. The row was immense in the cave, and he knew right away it was running too fast. The timing was going to need fixing. He left the engine running, tried the lights, the wipers. All okay.

‘Look, I have to move it, while you’re here. I might need a tow back.’

He closed the hood, fixed a seat in position, got in, reversed slowly, and braked. He tried this operation again, there and back, braking sharply. Then he took it out on the river, and drove a short distance, in first and second, and stopped. He tried the brakes going forwards and backwards, and made an awkward many-point turn, everything very stiff, the engine racing hard. This he did twice, left and right, and drove back into the cave.

‘It’s okay,’ he said.

‘Oh, darling. Lovely man!’ She embraced him as he got out, smothering him in her furs.

‘Tanya.’ He nuzzled her, thinking how to put it without panicking her. ‘We have to talk a little. You mustn’t stay long here, but there are a few things to say.’

‘I love you.’

‘Yes, that. But listen to me. You’re going to be seriously questioned — not by the people here. Probably they’re already out of it, and don’t know yet. But if Irkutsk told them to look for me elsewhere, and they still think I’m here, then Irkutsk hasn’t told them everything. The chances are people will fly in, senior people, professionals. You must be prepared for it. Tell me — Tcherny Vodi is the one secret place here?’

‘So far as I know.’

Then that’s what I’ve come for — they must know that. They don’t know how I got here. But they know a place was prepared for me — they know the whole Ponomarenko angle now. He doesn’t know why, the agent who fixed him doesn’t know. I’m certain of that. But they know. They know there was an explosion here, and that a satellite observed it. And a few months later, I arrived. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Who is allowed to go to Tcherny Vodi from here?’

‘I am — you know that.’

Exactly. Only you. Who drove you there?’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes. Now remember — I made all the running. I volunteered. I struck up acquaintance with you, asked if I could drive you — to anywhere, to Panarovka, to settlements. I hung on to you, made myself available, was very willing. You didn’t ask for me. That’s the first thing. Now Tcherny Vodi — could they find anything out from there?’

‘Find out what?’

‘Are they entitled to ask them questions? Could they question the Evenks on what happened?’

‘They wouldn’t get far with the Evenks.’

‘No.’ He thought for a moment. ‘When you left, the first time, you went to a couple of European settlements and stayed the night. What happened to the driver there?’

‘They gave him a room.’

‘Did he eat with them? Did they get a good look at him?’

She thought. ‘No — he took a tray to his room, he didn’t eat in the dining hall. The same both nights. He kept himself to himself. And in the mornings, too. I remember there was only comment on his fine hat, his fancy balaclava. That’s all they’d remember — a native. They can’t tell one from another. I’m almost certain.’

‘Okay.’ He thought about this. ‘Now, they’re going to assume I had help here — that at the least someone must have helped me skip from Tchersky. They need steering away from you. You will have to mention a couple of things.’

He told her what they were, and she listened seriously.

‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes, I’ve got it.’

‘Stay very alert. They’ll be professionals. In another life I’ve had experience of the type. Unexpected questions come up. I wish I could think of some more for you. You’ll be stuck with this, after I’m gone, and I can’t help.’

‘Oh God, darling, sweetheart.’ She had opened her coat and enfolded him in it, pressing them close together. ‘Only go safely! Please be safe. Lovely one! I want you. And we’ll be together again. When this is over, when all the craziness in the country is over, we’ll be together — why not? Everything is changing. I’ll move from here. At some time I’ll move, and we can be together, in another place. I love you!’ She was caressing his face, kissing him. ‘You’re necessary for my life! And you love me. Say it to me. Tell me.’

‘Yes. I love you,’ he said, and meant it. He was moved by her, and she had fallen very much in love with him. But now he only wanted her away.

And presently she grew more practical. ‘I brought you more food and two flasks of coffee. I couldn’t get a map. Can you manage with that?’

‘Yes, I’ll manage.’

‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘No,’ he said. But he did. ‘I have to work it out, and go where I can. When I’ve got this working properly — it isn’t anything, I can do it.’

‘Is there anything more you could want?’

‘I don’t know, I hope not.’

‘I’ll come back to see. I’ll come tomorrow night.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly, ‘if that’s so wise.’

‘I’ll be very careful. If it isn’t safe, then as soon as I can. But I will come. If you’re gone will you leave me a sign?’

He kissed her hard, wishing her away. ‘Yes, I’ll leave you a sign,’ he said in her ear.

He turned the car on the river, and got her into it and, as she clung to him, felt the tears on her face.

‘Sweetheart, darling. It’s only goodbye for now, isn’t it?’

‘It’s only for now,’ he said.

‘I love you for ever and ever, my lovely lover. You know that. Say it to me.’

‘For ever and ever — I love you, lovely Tanya-Panya.’

He watched her lights recede, and went in and had a stiff drink, and to his surprise found his own eyes were moist.

Then he lit a cigarette and looked through the book. Engine. Timing.

50

As she drove on to the main river, the aircraft passed overhead, and she saw its lights emerging through the overcast. But in the river’s curve it went out of sight, dropping lower and lower.

Ahead, many kilometres ahead, unusual activity was taking place on the river; cars milling, headlights swinging.

Although it was almost three in the morning, a full reception committee was awaiting the major-general of security; who was not in the best of tempers. He had slept the last hour of the long flight and had awoken bilious.

‘What’s this — have the fools turned out the town band?’ he said, peering out of the window as the plane taxied.

Not the town band, but senior town hall staff and all the headquarters staff of the militia were tumbling out of cars and lining up as the plane came to a halt, its engines whining down. The general had a team of four with him and they went slowly down the steps, shielding their eyes in the powerful glare of headlights. In this glare the general’s shoulder-boards were very prominent, and the chief of militia had no difficulty in identifying him. He stepped forward and snapped off a smart salute, receiving a nod from the general.

‘Are you head of the militia here?’

‘Yes, General.’

‘You’ve got me an apartment?’

‘Of course, General.’

‘Come with me to it. Which is my car?’

A fine apartment had been secured for the general, and two more, not much less fine, for his four aides, who included a colonel. In fifteen minutes all of them were at the general’s.

He had brought a set of large-scale maps with him, and on the journey had ringed a number of areas. He took a glass of bismuth while casting a sour eye over these.

‘The routes you sent were not so clear. On these short hops, the drivers seem to have a choice. Who determines it?’

‘It depends on the load, General, and what’s to be dropped off. They can stick either to the river or to the made tracks. To Ambarchik, for instance —’

‘Forget Ambarchik. He hasn’t gone to Ambarchik. He’s gone south or east.’

‘General, I don’t think he’s gone anywhere. He’s an experienced driver. He knows there isn’t anywhere to go. He’s a native, drinking his way through a problem. I know his type. When you see the warehouses you’ll appreciate —’

The general halted him, with a shake of the bismuth.

‘You know this fellow, do you?’

‘A hundred people know him! I have their testimony.’

‘He’s a foreign agent,’ the general told him bleakly. ‘His operation was set up in June. Khodyan’s papers were stolen in June.’

‘General, there are many people here with stolen papers. We need skilled workers — we don’t inquire too closely whether they’re using stolen —’

‘His papers aren’t stolen. I said Khodyan’s were stolen.’

The chief of militia blinked at him.

‘General?’

‘Khodyan’s papers were stolen at Batumi six months ago. He reported the matter to the police. Thirty-six hours later they turned up in a pocket of his suitcase. End of inquiry. You’ve seen this fellow’s papers?’

‘Of course, General. When the Transport Company took him on we naturally —’

‘All correct, were they? Stamped? Right-coloured seals, red, blue, green?’

‘Certainly. Magadan papers. We’re familiar with Magadan papers.’

‘They were copied. Colour-copied, overnight — and properly bound and embossed, I expect, if you noticed nothing out of the ordinary. And the originals returned. That’s a foreign operation. Khodyan gave us the benefit of his reminiscences. He’s in Magadan, working. Your Chukchee with a hundred friends is a spy.’

The chief of militia listened aghast to this, and to the story of Ponomarenko.

‘There will be many things for me to look into here,’ the general told him forbiddingly, ‘but Tchersky’s warehouse facilities — fix this in your head — are not among them. He’s got away. These trucks are all halted?’

‘Every one, General.’

‘Too late, I expect. I’ll have every manjack re-questioned all the same. He knows of a vehicle somewhere. You’ve got a complete list of all those in the area?’

‘All of them, General. Full details, within fifty kilometres. All surrounding areas contacted also, according to your last instructions.’

‘And nothing’s missing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well. Every one of those to be rechecked, too — confirmed. These short-haul routes you say he knows best — I’ve been looking them over. A lot of scattered developments. This one here — Anyuysk. What’s doing there?’

‘Various works. We had the local police check them out.’

‘Hmm. And beyond it?’

‘South — a few small places. They were all checked. And east, nothing till Provodnoye. Also checked — a truck delivered a load there Saturday.’

‘This river in between, the ice road. What’s near it?’

‘Nothing — the odd trapper’s hut.’

The general looked up and stared at him. Then he turned to his aides. The colonel was stretched on the sofa, the others in easy chairs; all hollow-eyed, but alerted now at his gaze.

‘The odd trapper’s hut?’ the general asked, quietly.

‘Tiny shelters,’ the chief of militia said placatingly. ‘Maybe three or four. Spread over a hundred kilometres — well away from the banks. For trappers. He couldn’t get to them.’

‘Do the trappers have vehicles?’

‘No, General. Trappers don’t have vehicles.’

‘What do they have — dogs, sleds?’

‘Yes. Dog sleds. Where could he go with a dog sled?’

‘God knows where he could go with a dog sled! Find out! Trappers scout around. Maybe they’ve seen something. Go there. Cover that area. Cover this stretch from — where is it? Anyuysk. Anyuysk to Provodnoye. Volodya, I believe I could manage a drink now,’ he said to his junior aide. ‘And you — sit down. There are more areas like this. Have you got a notebook? Start writing down in your notebook.’

It was well after 4 a.m. before the chief of militia got away but before five the sturdy vehicles of his force, their searchlights mounted on top, were off on their missions, the first of them bound for Anyuysk, and for the little tributary that branched off to Provodnoye.

In the cave, he had done what he could. A screwdriver at the carburettor, and a series of fiddles with the distributor, had brought down the revs and evened out the note.

He still didn’t like the sound of it. It was too noisy. He knew he had to get it out on the track for a proper test, but was nervous about moving it at all. It could let him down after half a kilometre.

He bent over the engine, revving up and down. After all, a new engine … Maybe it had to settle in.

He let it run for five minutes and took it out.

He ran on his sidelights, eyes adjusting to the dark. He went towards Provodnoye, made a kilometre, tried all the gears, tried the brakes. The bobik slewed left when braked hard. And the suspension was too stiff; it would give trouble on rough ground. He reversed a fair distance, stopped, turned, went back, passed the cave. On a high bank beyond he tried out the lights. Also a bit out of true. He decided to forget the lights. They worked, high beam and low, it was enough.

He drove back to the cave. It was now 2.30 a. m., and he needed a rest. But the brakes and suspension had to be attended to first. He knew them inside out but it still took time. And another test outside. Then it was finally done, as final as it was going to be, and he got into the sleeping bag: 4 a.m.

But now he couldn’t sleep; and at five he gave up and went into the last routines.

He climbed on the bobik and took down the block and tackle. He fixed the other seat. He stowed everything he had brought with him in the back; all the loose cartons and packing, the engine harness, the stove, all his supplies.

Then there was only the curtaining, and the lighting. He dismantled the circuit — the flex, the plugs, the bulbs — until there was no light and he used the torch. The generator went in last.

He took the bobik out, directed its headlights into the cave and walked in for a final inspection. In the harsh beam he could see the plug holes showing in the roof and the walls. But frost would soon cover them.

Six a.m. on his watch.

He went, and didn’t look back.

By 6.30 the Tchersky militia were threading a tortuous way down the tributary from Anyuysk to Provodnoye, and cursing hard. Even with the big headlights, even with the top-mounted searchlight, it was difficult to see the bends until you were on them. The navigator was counting bends.

‘Cut the lights!’ he shouted suddenly.

The driver cut the lights and stopped.

‘What the fuck!’ he said, alarmed.

‘There’s a car!’

‘Where?’

‘A flicker. Stop the engine.’

The driver stopped the engine, and they both sat peering in the dark. The navigator opened his window. Dead silence.

‘You’re seeing things,’ the driver told him presently.

‘There was a flicker.’

‘Our flicker. Where is it now?’

‘It’s gone now.’

‘That’s right!’ The driver switched everything on again and got moving, swearing.

But there had been another flicker. Porter had cut his lights, and now sat watching those of the militia. They were moving again and he could hear the engine note. He was barely half a kilometre away. He had made it just in time.

In the dark he found a cigarette and lit it.

A few minutes more and they’d have met head on! He’d been going slowly, searching for the stream. And by God’s grace had found it — minutes before!

He had noticed the stream first a few weeks ago, between the cave and Anyuysk. He had looked it up on the wall map in the Despatch depot. There it was shown as unnegotiable for trucks. From what he could see it ran from the north-west, but at some point it changed direction and meandered east. On the map he had traced the meander. It ran miles and miles, through rising ground, through mountains, to a highway. He couldn’t see how it got to the highway. But it was the Bilibino highway; and above the word Bilibino was the sign for an airport, a major one.

He had tucked this away in his mind as a possible, a remote alternative. But now, with what had happened, there was no other. He didn’t even know if there was this.

In the school atlas the long range of peaks showed up in purple, with only a general title: Kolymsky Heights. A tremendous journey. He didn’t know if a bobik could do it. And this was a Mickey Mouse bobik, untried, put together in a cave.

But if it couldn’t?

He let the militia go and started the engine.