Kolymsky Heights

51

By 10 a.m., with only forty-two kilometres on the clock, he had discovered why the stream was unnegotiable for trucks. No part of it was wider than two metres and it was littered with boulders. The boulders were iced, blanketed in snow and he had slithered over or squeezed past them. But some were not visible, and into these he had thudded as if into a wall. He was still in first gear, peering behind his lights.

He thought he must have gone halfway. On the wall map it hadn’t looked more than eighty kilometres. The powerful heater kept the windows defrosted, but he could see nothing beyond the headlights.

Presently, uncertain even that this was the right stream, he stopped, got out and climbed the shallow bank. In the freezing wind, the shapes of mountains showed, still climbing. They told him nothing, and he got back in and drove on.

A little after 1 p.m. a dark outline loomed ahead, and he put the lights off and got out to inspect it.

A bridge; spanning the stream.

He mounted the bank and found himself on the Bilibino highway.

It couldn’t be anything else: six metres wide, levelled, a made road. The Bilibino highway. But where on it? Left must go to Tchersky, and right to Bilibino, but how far either way? He couldn’t remember the position on the map. During the journey with the convoy he must have passed scores of such bridges.

Nothing was moving on the highway.

He went down again and drove the bobik up. The road ran straight, no flicker of light visible. For the first time he put the car properly through its gears, through second, through third, to top — and for the first time the bobik began to hum. It hummed through seventy kilometres an hour, and eighty, and eighty-five. He watched the needle, and remembered prising the bare frame off the ground, remembered bolting every part of it together. Oh you sweet little bastard, he told the bobik.

The big trucks wouldn’t stop, he knew, just flash their lights. But there would not only be trucks. On the earlier journey, there had been the odd recovery vehicle, occasional supply bobiks. And these he had seen stopped, their drivers chatting. Well, he would have to pull off somewhere if he saw them ahead; or keep going and chance raising suspicion.

Somewhere he would have to rest. There were laybys on the road, but he couldn’t stop there. Other vehicles might also stop. No stopping at the road stations, either. He would have to get off the road. In the mountains there was nowhere to get off it. He would have to rest before the mountains; if he knew where the mountains were; if he could first fix his position.

The next road station might give a clue; but without a map even this was in doubt. The school atlas was useless. For this reserved area it showed no details; just main rivers, towns, the red line of the highway and nothing else.

Presently he saw the lights of a road station far ahead, and he cut his headlights. As he approached it he cut the sidelights too, and coasted slowly in.

A huddle of big trucks, bobiks, a tracked recovery vehicle. All still.

He switched the engine off and opened the window. Faint music came from the log hut. He peered at it. The huts were very similar, all the early ones of wood; only a few, farther along the route, of concrete. This was one of the early ones. It couldn’t be the earliest?

With a sinking feeling, he realised that it could be; that it probably was. He suddenly recalled that it was only after the first road station that the switchback had started. There had been no switchback yet. This was the first road station — 600 kilometres still to go …

He got moving again, and worked this out. The clock showed 180 kilometres — the stream more than double the length he’d thought. A lot of fuel had been used. In rough going; but the big engine was heavy on gas any way. Even at best it gave only seven kilometres a litre — twenty miles a gallon. He wasn’t getting anything like that. He couldn’t make Bilibino on what he had.

The route was beginning to look familiar, and he recalled that this stretch he’d driven himself, had taken the wheel from the first road station. Under Vanya’s tuition he had swung the big rig into line in the convoy. The steep climb into the high passes would start soon, and then the switchback.

And soon the first pass came — the peaks on either side no longer visible in the midwinter dark. Ahead the ice road shone clear for miles, not a thing on it. He came out of the pass on to a straight plateau, stopped the car and got out, with the torch.

A savage wind nearly took his head off. He hunched through it to the edge. Stanchions and solid railings guarded the edge. Only flanks of icy rock gleamed in the torch beam, and below blackness. Here he was over half a mile high, and below was a gorge. The first task.

He went back to the bobik and collected the debris — the engine harness, the block and tackle, the cans and cartons, everything that could lead back to its origin — and in three journeys pitched it over, together with Ponomarenko’s lumber jacket, the mink hat, the balaclava, the stove.

He was very hungry and he ate, and drank coffee from a flask, watching the road both ways, and then started off again.

Next would be the switchback, and somewhere along it Road Station No. 2. Another task there. And beyond the one after it, a place to rest before the mountain labyrinth. More and more the little bobik was taking the route in its stride. The joking in the stream had done it good: the engine note settling, the eager bark yelping when he stepped on the gas. And he was making excellent time — no lumbering convoy, and a clear road.

The switchback came: rise and fall, rise and fall, a ribbon of ice but running dead straight. And presently Road Station No. 2. He doused his lights, approached carefully, and sat and watched it a while.

Lighted windows, music faintly audible, and in the parking area a dark huddle of trucks and bobiks. He coasted slowly in and cut the engine.

From the back he collected two empty jerricans, the plastic tube, and a wrench. The trucks ran on diesel: no use. He kept his eye on the hut door and tackled the fuel cap of the first bobik. Iced up. He got the wrench to it, inserted the tube, sucked, got the siphon going and filled the jerricans. It took no time, and he was away.

Two jerricans weren’t going to be enough.

Twenty litres — 120, 140 kilometres. Needed more. What he had in the tank would get him past the next road station and he’d refill from the jerricans when he found a place to rest.

Stars were visible now; the overcast dispersed. Another weather system. He’d gone a fair way. He lit a cigarette to stay awake; and, as he did so, saw a vehicle approaching, far off.

It was moving fast, not a truck; headlights coming rapidly up and down the switchback. As it neared he saw it was a bobik, and that it was slowing and stopping. They’d both dipped their lights, and now he briefly flicked his and kept going, and in the rear-view mirror saw the other car had started again. They’d raised a hand to each other in passing. All okay. The other bobik didn’t belong to Tchersky; some other kind of plates on it.

He suddenly realised he didn’t have any plates.

He couldn’t run into Bilibino without plates.

He worked this out, and had found a solution before he saw the lights of the next station, in a hollow of the switchback far ahead, Road Station No. 3.

He stopped on the hill above it, doused his lights, and took what he needed out of the back. Then he coasted down and went in, in the dark.

Fuel first, and he took it from a bobik. The car was backed in tight to a snowbank. Too tight for the next task. He had decided he needed only one plate — and a rear one was the least likely to be missed.

He found his target, and got to work. Fixings iced solid, and he didn’t bother with them. He muffled the chisel with a rag and thumped it with the wrench. In a few minutes he had prised the plate off, and had it with him in his own bobik.

Road Station No. 3; goodbye. 5 p.m.

He was making fast time; but also tiring fast. Eleven hours of driving since he’d left the cave. And the mountains would be coming up. He had to find a place soon.

He drove slowly, looking for it. If he’d left it too late, he could turn and go back to one he had already spotted. But this he didn’t have to do. In starlight, from a hilltop, he saw it: at the foot of the slope, a dark hollow in the expanse of white. He drove down, and took a look at it.

Barely noticeable when travelling; a little culvert with a bridge over it, one of many. In the darkness underneath was a frozen stream, a couple of metres below the road, the same kind he’d driven out of hours before. The bridge was the width of the road. The bobik would tuck easily under it.

The bank sloped gently, and he drove down, on to the stream and under the bridge.

He slept two hours there, with the heater off to save fuel. The bobik was a deep freeze when he came out of the bag, and he started the engine and the heater. Eight o’clock.

He unwrapped the bread and sausage. The hard salamis had been separately wrapped when she’d brought them. Now they were in one coarse sheet of paper. He ate, and drank some coffee from the flask; and in torchlight took a look at the number plate.

One bolt was still bent in it. He had spare bolts in the tool kit. The whole ingenious vehicle was put together with only a few types of bolt. He sawed this one off presently, and got out and fixed the plate on the front. Then he filled up the tank, and attended to a few needs of nature.

He hadn’t washed much since leaving the house on Friday, and it was now Monday night. He chipped a bit of ice and did the best he could with his hands and face, and then his teeth. Then he climbed up and had a look at the road. All clear.

By ten, despite the constant zigzagging in the mountains, he had made Road Station No. 4.

He had decided to take four jerricans here. That should see him to Bilibino, with some extra in case of a detour. He hadn’t seen the airport there. In the mountainous area it could be way out.

He drove in without lights, and got out with the first pair of jerricans. He filled them rapidly, and returned with the second. Only one other bobik was in the car park — too near the hut, but shielded by a truck. He siphoned a can out of it and started the next, and stopped abruptly. The hut door had opened.

Two men, roaring with laughter, were coming out. And coming to the bobik. He had no time to get the cap back on. He hid behind the truck and heard them exchange cheerful obscenities with others still at the hut door. Then the men got in the bobik and he watched it go, across a huddle of trucks. Light from the hut door gleamed off the truck hoods, and then the door closed and he stood for some moments, quite still.

He first secured the jerricans in the car and then went back and looked at the trucks. In the dark their hoods no longer gleamed, but he went round them one after the other, and there was no doubt of it. A thick coat of ice was on the hoods. The engines hadn’t been used for hours — probably not all day.

He had seen no trucks on the road all day.

He got back in the bobik and took off fast.

He had to get out of the mountains. There was nowhere to squirrel himself away here. He thought the next station was still in this labyrinth. That would be Road Station No. 5. Only one more after that to Bilibino. He had gone almost two thirds of the way to Bilibino. And obviously all convoys to Bilibino had been halted.

He was stunned by the revelation.

Tchersky’s militia couldn’t have done this — not so far out of their region, not on their own authority. Only a supra-regional authority could have done it. Irkutsk had done it. Their investigators were already in Tchersky then.

And they had figured he was going to Bilibino. What other reason could there be for halting all the traffic to and from it? From it, presumably, in case he’d already dropped off, and they wanted information. But the only reason for Bilibino could be the airport. So they’d figured that too.

He couldn’t go to Bilibino airport.

For the first time since arriving here — for the first time since leaving Japan — he was truly at a loss.

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t just stop. But there was no point in going on.

Road Station No. 5 came up, still in the labyrinth, and he passed it with his lights off, not knowing what else to do.

As he switched on again, hanging in tight to a bend, a thought of a kind came to him. They could figure this and they could figure that. But there was one thing they couldn’t figure.

How could they figure the bobik? It didn’t exist. He’d conjured it out of parts that didn’t exist, a phantom. And the little bastard was going better than ever, thriving on all difficulties. Since he didn’t know what else to do, he let it.

52

By early afternoon the general had gone far to shaking up the midwinter lethargy of Tchersky. He was a burly, vigorous man, and he detested lethargy. To a certain extent he could understand it here. Where he had come from, it grew light at eight and dark at four. Here it was dark all day. Such street lights as there were were on all day. The people crept about like dormice. Everything they did had to be rechecked. Everything the militia did had to be rechecked.

The first assignments he had delegated briskly, taking over the militia chiefs desk for the purpose. Helicopters had gone off, driving crews were being interviewed, scores of phone calls made. Now, with the transport question in hand, he could concentrate on other matters.

Principal among them was what the fellow had been doing here, and where he had been doing it. Early on he had discovered that he had not been where he said he had been. His neighbour, his girlfriend, his workmates, all said he had spent much of his time at a nearby collective. At this collective they’d never heard of him. He had not been there. But he had been somewhere.

A place had been arranged for him here: it was likely that cover had also been arranged. Or he had arranged it for himself. He had certainly in a short time made many contacts. In any case, somebody was covering for him now. That much was obvious.

He had arrived back in Tchersky at 4 p.m. on Friday and immediately disappeared. The man was a professional — knew he had to leave in a hurry, and before the local comedians could guess he had gone. He hadn’t wasted time hiding himself. He had gone; out of the area, fast. This meant an air trip. An air trip meant an airport.

How, stepping out at 4 p.m. in this hole of a town, could he get to an airport — and not Tchersky airport, since Tchersky militia wanted him? In a vehicle. An early thought had been a Transport Company vehicle; but now the general thought otherwise. This artist would already have arranged a vehicle for himself.

But where? Since the vanishing trick had been performed in Tchersky the answer seemed to be — in Tchersky. But no vehicle was missing from Tchersky; at least had not been reported missing, which was another matter. If the vehicle had not been in Tchersky, then he had been taken to it.

In either case, someone was helping him.

That was one thing. Another was why he was here at all. This was much easier. He was here to get into Tcherny Vodi. And a curious fact had emerged, one the general had only learned on arrival; it seemed he had managed to get to it.

The general had tried to get to it himself, and had found this needed special permission from the establishment. This ridiculous situation he had promptly ordered Irkutsk to deal with, and was still awaiting some action. Now he decided to wait no longer. All other persons interrogated had been summoned to his office. On this one he decided to pay a personal call.

The medical officer did not rise as he entered, and he took off his hat and greatcoat, sizing her up.

‘I am afraid, Medical Officer, this fellow has duped you,’ he said.

‘So it seems.’ She was screwing the top on her fountain-pen, her smile frosty. ‘Not a common occurrence, I assure you.’

‘Yes. I hear you’re not easily fooled.’ His own smile was considerably warmer as he eased his bulk into a chair. An efficient-looking person, he saw; the first he had met in the place. ‘I am hoping you can put me right on a few points.’

Her intense nervousness she covered with an air of impatience, glancing at her watch, at the many papers on her desk. She knew the way this conversation had to be steered and the two points that had to be dropped into it. But this burly individual did not look very steerable and, as Johnny had warned, he knew his business.

She was astonished at how much he knew. He knew of the trips to Panarovka, to the Evenk herders, to Tcherny Vodi — and in detail the militia had not asked her. He had even that morning had someone interviewing Viktoria Eremevina!

He paused over his notes for some moments.

‘The man has a contact here, Medical Officer. Someone is helping him. This trip to the herders, for instance — how did he come to get that for himself?’

‘I am afraid I helped him to it. I couldn’t drive at the time − a sprained ankle. Of course, anybody could have driven me to the helicopter. But he’d expressed interest in them, and just then was pestering me for jobs to do.’

The general looked at her. ‘How did he do that?’

Her heart faltered.

‘He telephoned me. Here.’

‘Did he? I don’t seem to have a note of that.’

‘I am sorry to have to tell you, General,’ she said crisply, ‘that we don’t keep an account of every telephone call here. The girls were busy so I answered myself. I told him of my ankle and said he could come with me to the herds if he wanted.’

The general continued staring.

‘Where was he phoning from?’ he said.

‘Where from? I don’t know.’

‘Was it a public phone?’

‘I’ve no idea. Is there some relevance to this?’

‘The relevance is where he was.’ The general looked at his notes, ‘He told various people that he was at a collective. We know that he wasn’t … It says here that he returned with you from Panarovka on a Sunday, and went to the herds the following Friday. That’s five days in between. The source of a call during those five days is the relevance.’

‘Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

The general considered.

‘He wouldn’t have been far. On the other hand, he wasn’t at home. But he was somewhere … Let’s try another tack. On the. way to Panarovka you picked him up at his apartment. But it seems you didn’t take him back there. Is that right?’

‘Yes. Quite right.’

‘Did he have some other means of getting back?’

The first of the points was coming up and she felt her pulse quicken.

‘No. I drove him part way and dropped him.’

‘Why?’

‘He asked to be dropped off.’

‘Where was this?’

‘On the outskirts of Green Cape.’

‘Did he say why he wanted dropping there?’

‘No. I assumed he was seeing a friend.’

‘Was this a residential area?’

‘Well, not the most salubrious — a few sheds, the town rubbish dump — but yes, people live there.’

‘How far would it be from here, from the medical centre?’

‘I would say … a kilometre, maybe one and a half.’

The general made a note, and frowned at it.

‘A kilometre, one and a half … All right, so you drop him there on Sunday, and five days later he picks you up and flies out to the herders … Where he stayed overnight, I believe.’

‘Yes. Weather. You have it there,’ she said impatiently.

‘Did he know these natives worked at Tcherny Vodi?’

‘Yes, he would have known that.’

‘What could they have told him about it?’

‘Nothing. They know nothing themselves.’

‘The security aspects — guard routines?’

‘Well that, yes. If it was of any use.’

He pondered.

‘You made two trips to Tcherny Vodi, I believe.’

She nodded. ‘During the first I had an emergency call and only stayed to unload medical supplies — perhaps twenty minutes. The second was a normal surgery.’

‘How long did that take?’

‘I suppose an hour and a half.’

‘What happened to him on these occasions?’

‘He remained under guard. Almost certainly they’d have kept him in the vehicle. Security is very tight up there.’

‘Yes … Well, it doesn’t seem,’ the general said slowly, ‘that he can have gathered much. But to have got up there at all was a very serious breach. Also a puzzling one … On these other trips, he’s off work, hanging about. But this time he’s back at work. How does he come to be driving you there? Did someone ask for him specially?’

‘No. We asked for a driver. They sent him. Of course I see now he must have been angling for the job.’

‘Could he have known you were going there?’

‘He could have guessed. They were told it was a three-day job — we group out-of-town trips — and I go regularly. Yes, he could have guessed.’

‘But you’d never used a driver there before.’

‘No. I have been fortunate enough,’ she said dryly, ‘not to have sprained an ankle before.’

‘Ah, the ankle. He knew about it. Tell me one thing more. You spent two nights of this trip at settlements in the area. Did he know anybody there?’

‘No. He’d never been before.’

‘Did anybody seem to know him?’

‘Not that I could tell.’

‘At both places — my officers have visited them — it seems he ate by himself, in his room. Doesn’t that seem strange?’

‘Perhaps it embarrassed him to eat in public’

‘Or perhaps he wished not to embarrass somebody else. There’s something funny about this. He keeps out of sight … Somewhere here, Medical Officer, he has a helper. A helper with a vehicle. These places have vehicles — running in and out of Tchersky.’

‘Well, I know nothing of this, General.’ She had glanced at her papers again.

‘But perhaps we can go into it a little … He had a vehicle here. Or expected one to be waiting for him here. He knew he, would be back in three days, and that his mission was over. I think that’s all it was, incidentally — a look at the place, at the security arrangements. A trial run. And now he had to leave. Obviously he had made plans. But now they needed altering — the militia wanted to see him. Which meant he had to leave very rapidly. And he did. In a vehicle.’

The second point was coming up and again she felt her pulse begin to pound. She looked at her watch.

‘General, I don’t think I can help you with this.’

‘Perhaps you can.’ He smiled at her. ‘Let me explain it to you. When he left you, we know he can’t have gone far in the street. The militia have questioned people who were in it and nobody saw him. A familiar figure, quite distinctive, recognisable to everybody — but nobody saw him. I think because the vehicle he wanted was right there, close by the medical centre. When you came into town — try to think about this — did he seem to be looking for something?’

‘Well.’ She thought. ‘He was certainly looking for the turning — the turning into our loading bay at the rear. He missed it once. We had to go all round the square again.’

‘Did you, now? Cars parked there, I suppose. Did he look at the cars?’

‘He was looking for the turning.’

‘Yes. Did any of the cars flash their lights?’

‘Not that I remember.’

The general remained looking at her for some moments.

‘All right, so you go into the yard. And here he behaves strangely. We know he must be in a great hurry. Yet he doesn’t act in a hurry. He carefully helps them unload the van. He takes in the last of the stuff. Tells them it’s the last. He comes out, asks if you want anything more doing. Doesn’t that seem strange?’

‘Well, I agree — it does.’

‘As if he’s getting everybody off the premises?’

‘Perhaps. Yes.’

‘Had anything come in behind you, another vehicle?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘Some activity going on in the yard — someone fiddling with an engine, cars manoeuvring about?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. There was nothing there. Just his own bobik — and the rubbish truck.’

‘Which rubbish truck?’

‘The regular one, for our waste disposal.’

‘Where does the rubbish truck go?’

‘Well, I don’t know where —’

‘Is it there every day?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. And now, really, General —’

She had risen, and he rose with her.

‘Well, you have been very patient,’ he said, shrugging into his greatcoat. ‘And also very helpful. You have given much useful information.’

And so she had, and she sat shaking, listening to his boots march briskly down the corridor. She had offered the wrong end of the stick, and he had gladly accepted it. But where would it lead?

The wrong end of the stick; but a stick. And this general, a persistent man, was not going to let it go. Where it would lead, at the end, was to the right conclusion; but that was not yet.

The town rubbish dump, just outside Green Cape, stank so evilly that the general shielded his nose. He observed that the garbage was in a three-sided compound, conveniently open to the highway of the river.

Lights were strung and he saw that the enclosed sides were occupied by sheds and cabins. Two great garbage heaps were in the middle, a tipper-truck distributing its load on one, and several natives picking through the other.

‘These fellows live here?’ he asked the chief of militia.

‘Yes. In the cabins, with their families. Yakuts.’

‘Call one over.’

The chief did so, and introduced the dignitary.

The man grinned at him affably.

‘All well here?’ the general asked, himself very affable.

‘Yes. All well.’

‘A good life?’

‘Sure. Good life. Anything I do for you, General?’

‘Just looking around. Kolya thought it interesting. You know — Kolya, Kolya Khodyan. Nice fellow. Remember him?’

‘Khodyan? No. Don’t know this name.’

‘Show him the photo,’ he said to his young aide, Volodya.

The man looked at the photo.

‘Nice photo of him,’ the general said.

‘Yes, nice.’

‘Been here lately?’

‘Who been here?’

‘This man.’

‘No. Don’t know this man.’

And the same with the others, and with their families, the general observing that the ladies first of all consulted their husbands before disclaiming knowledge of the nice man.

The sheds, however, produced better results.

They were large sheds, used for the storage of selected pickings; and the pickings of one of them were motor parts. Doors, seats, exhausts, wheels, tyres: all these not heaped on the ground but stacked quite neatly around the walls. On the ground, in the vacant centre, was an oil stain, and the marks left by four wheels.

Half an hour later, the general had still not managed to discover how these marks came to be there; but he left not at all displeased.

On the way back the chief of militia explained some local regulations to him, and he had the first glimmerings of how the trick had been pulled.

Over a late dinner the general sat with his staff and explained the situation. His senior officers had been flying about all day and were tired. But his explanation was brief.

Vehicles out of use in the Kolymsky region had to have their registration plates and documents returned; and those past repair needed a Certificate of Destruction: vehicles must not be abandoned or left to lie about. This regulation, dating from 1962, was intended to control all means of movement in the area, and in early years had been strictly enforced.

With the area’s rapid development, however, some laxness had crept in; although full records still existed. The militia had identified twenty-seven vehicles long out of use — their plates and papers returned, but without Certificates of Destruction. These were now being investigated.

‘What is likely,’ the general said, ‘is that this man found something he could put together. And then he found a place to put it together. Perhaps the rubbish dump, perhaps not. They’ve certainly had a vehicle standing there recently. Well, natives stick together, we can look into it later. What’s important now is to find a disused vehicle which has gone missing. Get a profile of it and we could be halfway to finding him.’

And so they could be, he thought, settling into bed. It had been a long day and he was very tired himself. Late in the evening Irkutsk had got him permission and he had helicoptered to Tcherny Vodi. A hundred per cent security there, all as the medical officer had said An excellent woman, nobody’s fool. The agent could have seen nothing — a trial run, as he’d thought. Well, he wouldn’t get far. Profile of his vehicle …

Another thought occurred, and he reached for the phone.

‘Volodya?’

His aide yawned loudly at the other end.

‘Volodya — another thing. It’s possible there’ll be more than one vehicle missing … This fellow could get at parts. The same parts don’t fit all vehicles. If we know what parts he used that also gives a profile of the vehicle. Get them moving at that transport company. Do it now. Get them out of bed. Let them search repair sheds, storerooms, whatever. Anything interesting, call me immediately. If necessary, wake me up.’

Two o’clock, and he put the light out.

And almost at once was woken up. He stared at his watch: 6 a.m. A moment ago it had been only two. But they were quite right to wake him. Something very interesting had turned up.

53

At two in the morning Porter passed Road Station No. 6, and ahead now there was only Bilibino.

An idea had come to him of what could be managed if only he could get through it. But it was now six hours since he had wakened under the bridge, and the mountain bends and anxiety had totally exhausted him again.

He drove slowly, his eyes sore, looking for somewhere to shelter. On the final stretch to Bilibino there would be buildings and mine workings — he remembered them. The convoy of a few weeks ago had kept parallel for some kilometres with a stream. The gold beds ran often near streams and across country. But that had been close to town, too near in. He needed something earlier, and soon.

He passed presently under big overhead cables and saw a pylon: the power line from Bilibino. It served the goldfields and some surrounding installations. He was already too near.

Fifty or sixty kilometres back the road had crossed a stream, and he wondered if he should turn and go back to it. It would eat up a lot of gas. He didn’t know what was for the best and meanwhile let the bobik chug on, too tired to think.

He saw a glow coming up in the sky on his left. The first of the outlying goldfields? If the goldfield was near a stream, and the stream led to — where did the streams lead to here? He was now far from the Kolyma. Some other river. A river south of him. Which meant to his right. If there was a river to his right and streams ran down from the left …

He drove on, watching the glow come nearer, until it was no longer a glow but lights, floodlights, just a kilometre or two ahead and to his left, and he knew now he had better go back. And then he knew he had just crossed a bridge.

He had crossed it and was at the other side.

Jesus Christ! He was too tired to turn. He reversed.

He reversed over the bridge and looked down at a lovely, wonderful, frozen stream, and drove down to it, and got under the bridge, and switched everything off, the lights, the engine, himself; and just sat there in the dark for a minute.

Then he got out and climbed the bank and had a look.

Yes, the first of the goldfields, not a kilometre away; the din of its machinery carrying in the air. He could even see, silhouetted against the lights, the skeletal housings of the mine lifts. As he looked two trucks lurched out on to the road a few hundred metres ahead and turned towards Bilibino.

Too much activity, and too near. But he couldn’t be seen and he also by now couldn’t care. He simply had to rest.

He went down and gave himself a huge vodka, and drank it with his eyes shut. He tore off a chunk of black bread and ate it, and in his sleeping-bag he ate more.

He slept an hour and woke still tired. But there was no time to linger. It was getting on for 4 a.m. The best time to be in town was between five and six, the dead point of any road security, but with the place just stirring into activity. He recollected almost nothing of it except that during work hours it had been a mess; slow-moving traffic, the local drivers leaning out and chatting across to each other. He wanted a clear run through, with no curious eyes looking him over.

He drank some coffee and looked at the school atlas in torchlight. He was already off one page and on to the next.

Pevek showed up next, another familiar destination for Tchersky drivers. Still a colossal distance away; double the distance he had already travelled. He wasn’t going there. Big security installations at Pevek, and big security to go with them. Yura had promised it to him, he remembered: ‘You’ll go to Bilibino, Baranikha, Pevek, everywhere!’

Pevek was the end of the route. But where the hell was Baranikha?

He searched for and found Baranikha, three or four hundred kilometres away: in the tiniest type, a dot. But the atlas was a school one, in use for many years. From what he had seen in the Despatch Depot, big loads were going to Baranikha, heavy construction in progress there. So much construction needed engineers, architects, workers; who all needed flying in. There would be an airport of some kind at Baranikha, at least a strip.

The idea had come to him while negotiating the mountain bends. If major airports were out of bounds, he could try little cross-country ones. Cross-country hopping, from one to another, could take him a long way — and he knew now he had to go a long way. And not at all the way that had been planned for him. No Yakutsk, no Black Sea, no Turkey. He had to take a route that nobody expected. And there were still some options …

They didn’t know how he had come in. They couldn’t know how he would go out. Light years ago he remembered the CIA man telling him he couldn’t go out the way he had come in. But why could he not? He had come in from Japan. Why not go back that way? From Nakhodka, far down on the Pacific seaboard, ships ran regularly to Japan. One way or another he could try to get himself on one. For months now he had lived on his wits. Were they going to desert him at the last?

He looked up Nakhodka in the atlas; and his heart sank. Farther even than he thought — an incredible distance, 4000 kilometres at least. Well … From Tchersky, even if anyone remotely thought of the idea, it would seem impossible for him to get there. By land it probably was impossible, range upon range of mountains in between. But hopping it, a bit at a time? Would security be so tight at little out-of-the-way strips? If he could only get beyond Bilibino …

He went up on the road for another look.

Still bitterly cold, but with some change evident in the air; a sharp thin snow was falling, hazing the goldfields lights and muffling the continuous clanging. As he watched, a truck lumbered out, and shortly after it another one, heading for Bilibino. Local field trucks. Nothing else on the road — all long distance traffic still halted. He went down and started the bobik and got back on the highway.

He picked up the trucks after a kilometre, and stayed well behind, running only on sidelights, wipers going. Now he could see the frozen stream on his right, running beside the road as he remembered. It had come down from high ground and taken a sharp turn on meeting some rock barrier. All of the ground here was high; rich gold-bearing land.

Presently the trucks began slowing, and he watched their rear lights turning in at the opposite side of the road. He cut his own lights, and slowed to a crawl. A big compound, evidently a processing plant, with a huge conical tip and a line of sheds, all well floodlit. He crawled nearer, and stopped, out of range of the lights.

Noisy activity was going on in the compound. A trolley train was moving around and trucks were manoeuvring. He couldn’t see what had happened to the two he had followed but others were slewed round and facing him, their drivers out and chatting. He had seen no trucks going the other way. They evidently didn’t go back that way. They must return some other way.

When he had driven this section weeks before, Vanya snoring beside him, he had noticed little of the route, too busy keeping station in the convoy. But over dinner the drivers had told him a loop road ran through the goldfields; that if you were driving beyond Bilibino, you had to take care to avoid that road or you could get hopelessly entangled. Maybe these trucks took the loop road, at the other side of town, to return through the strung-out goldfields. He watched and waited, and presently one of them moved; and a few moments afterwards, another.

He started up and followed, keeping well behind, again using only sidelights. The trucks ahead were empty and now going at a brisker pace. In barely twenty minutes he saw another glow appearing ahead, which soon became town lights.

Bilibino.

Time to move. He switched to headlights, overtook the first truck and cut in between the two. And not a moment too soon. Almost immediately the road curved, and ahead he saw a barrier strung with amber lights, and the truck in front slowing.

The barrier was down but, as they appeared round the bend, it was already being raised. The man in front had opened his window and stuck a raised thumb out as he went slowly through, and Porter did the same. He saw uniforms — militia uniforms and others he didn’t recognise — and looks of mild curiosity turned on him in the light hail of snow. But peering in his rear-view mirror he saw that already they had turned to the next truck, and he was in. In and sailing into Bilibino.

He remembered it only vaguely. An administrative building like Tchersky’s, a cinema like Tchersky’s; all the buildings — post office, supermarket, apartment blocks — built to the same design in this north land. He saw the hostel he had slept in; the goods centre, the car park. Big trucks were lined up in the car park, Tchersky trucks. All still halted, no activity there. Just a little activity elsewhere: a few light trucks and bobiks trundling about town, postal vans, food vans; the odd militia car parked, cigarettes glowing inside.

He drove with his window a little open and could hear the drone of aircraft above, and saw one coming in to land, well ahead and to the right. Stay away from that area. He continued following the truck that had led him in, dazzled by the glare of the one behind. Ahead, the truck suddenly pulled in and stopped; at a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall, an all-night bar or café. He passed it and pulled up himself, and in his mirror saw the other truck stop and both drivers get out and go into the place.

Shit! He had planned to follow until they turned off. If the Tchersky drivers had warned you had to take care to avoid the loop road, it evidently wasn’t signposted. Nothing was signposted in Green Cape or Tchersky, either. You had to know.

He switched his lights off, kept the wipers going, and lit a cigarette. He needed a vodka himself but decided to wait until he needed it more. Five-thirty. The time was right; the town just sluggishly stirring into life, the police sitting out the last half of their shift. He’d been lucky — with the two trucks, the barrier. Would he be as lucky on the way out?

A militia car cruised slowly past and he saw, through the drizzle of snow, faces turned towards him. The wipers. He should have turned the wipers off. The car went on, but they had noted him. He couldn’t stay here; they’d be round again. He waited till they were well away, switched on, and took off. He kept on the way he’d been going.

The town square passed behind him. He couldn’t tell if he was on the main road; other roads had run off the square. This one had a few large buildings, apartment blocks, depot-type stores; but thinning now, dwindling. Definitely going out of town. Headlights came suddenly towards him round a bend, and dipped in acknowledgment, and he dipped his own. A bus.

POLAR AVIATION, he saw, as it passed.

Christ! He was going to the airport, after all. The road went to the airport. There would be checks before the airport.

Which now, rounding the bend, he could clearly see. It was on a large flat plate of land, slightly below, ringed with orange sodium lamps. Through the snow drizzle he could even make out a lit-up runway.

More to the point, and worse, dead ahead and downhill he could also see a barrier, and men in dayglo stripes and a waving torch. There was no way of stopping or turning off or going back. He’d been seen. And the barrier was firmly down. He drew slowly up to it, and opened his window.

‘Where to — airport?’ A militia man; there were two of them, also another, in the unfamiliar uniform; all bundled up, scowling in the snow. They had come out of a hut, he saw.

‘No. Loop road.’ He hoped to God this was the way to it.

The torchlight examined him.

‘Where’s your field badge, then?’

‘Fuck the field badge! It’s not even my job,’ he said, scowling. ‘I’m off in a couple of hours, and I win this. All through the fucking fields — for a breakdown! What’s up here, no one can fix a machine themselves?’

‘Where you from, old-timer?’

His number plate was being inspected, he saw.

‘Road stations, way back. I’m on equipment. Not my job, this! Got sent up here a couple of weeks, and now every shitty number comes up I get it. Go on, send me back! The bastards know I’m off in a couple of hours. Do me a favour!’

As his scowl increased he saw that those outside were mellowing into smiles.

‘Okay, big mouth. You know you lost a rear plate? Replace it as soon as possible. What you got in the back there?’

‘Fucking tools! What you think I got? A cabaret?’

‘Go on — move.’ The barrier had been raised and one of the men was waving an illuminated baton. A few hundred metres ahead he saw there was another barrier. He slammed into gear, swearing hard at the now-merry faces as he passed.

Through.

He tooled slowly downhill.

The wide opening to the airport passed with its exit and entrance signs. the only signs he had seen so far on the road. Just inside, he saw, there were more guard posts, and he sailed past and on to the next barrier; now also miraculously raised.

Then he was on his own, and the street lights ran out, and he drove on in the dark.

The road curved sharply again and forked, and he took the main branch and curved round with it; and then slowed and stopped. Was this where you got tangled up?

He reversed to the fork and took a look at it again.

There was no doubt he’d taken the major road. But was it the right one? No sign of any kind, no warning of the fork even.

A large mound of grit was dumped at the roadside before the fork, with a deep ditch behind it; evidently a runoff for the spring thaw. He left the engine running and scrambled down to the ditch. Wide enough, and no rocks in it.

He drove the bobik down, sheltered behind the pile of grit, and switched everything off. The sounds of the airport were still near: helicopters chattering, a jet warming up. They flew the bullion out, he’d heard, in ingots.

He waited twenty minutes before the two trucks came round. They passed and he watched their lights; saw them keep steadily to the broad main track. Exactly. It was the one he’d taken himself: the loop road into the goldfields. Where he would have lost himself. The through route was the narrower one.

He started up and pulled out of the ditch.

Okay. Baranikha. Three or four hundred kilometres. Six o’clock, he saw.

54

By six fifteen the general was stepping into his car. They’d asked if the transport company’s vehicles could now be allowed to move. The route to Bilibino and beyond was still paralysed. Yes, he said, on consideration. He had totally forgotten it.

They had also asked if he wanted the people ahead warned that he was coming. In no way! Catch them unprepared. The night’s work had already warned them enough. Give them time and they’d soon dream up a story to account for the discrepancy.

A highly interesting vehicle had emerged — or rather not emerged — at the collective. The native collective, Novokolymsk. Where they’d claimed never to have heard of the fellow. As the garbage workers had also claimed … Well, he’d been had, and he saw it now. Natives stuck together.

The man had made dozens of journeys up and down this route. Was it likely that he’d never even looked into the collective — full of natives? For certain he’d looked into it, had clapped eyes on the vehicle, and had taken it away. Probably on a truck, back to Green Cape.

Which argued that he’d done it that way round: first of all prepared a secure place to work, and then taken the work to it. The general was beginning to get an outline of the man. Well, now for an outline of his vehicle.

They found the helicopter warming up, and before seven had landed at the collective. The row had wakened some of the inhabitants, and from them the general’s aides routed out the half-asleep secretary of the place and also the individual in charge of its vehicles.

The information required was simple — yet it took three hours to get to the bottom of it.

Nobody knew Khodyan, of course — photo passed around, heads shaken. All as expected.

The vehicle was a one-ton Tatra; it had stood for years at the back of a shed used for storing fertilisers. They had noticed it missing only when the police had phoned in the middle of the night. The secretary had roused the mechanic and the mechanic had gone out and had a look.

When was the last time it had been seen? The last time — probably August just before winter. Fertilisers weren’t needed in winter, nobody had need to go to the shed. Could anybody have got into the shed? Yes, anybody could have got in — no padlocks, just this bit of string here.

A thorough search of the collective and its environs showed no trace of the Tatra. It had been a wreck, kept only for parts. Had meant to get a Certificate of Destruction for it, never got round to it. Had no trouble getting a new one; authorities knew this would be turned in some time. Could it be moved? Well it had been moved. Maybe some members had stripped it, shifted it, and didn’t like to say. Or maybe just kids, messing about.

The general’s party breakfasted at the collective, and took stock of the situation.

From Tchersky news arrived that all other defunct vehicles had now been located. Only this one was missing.

Yes, this was the one. He’d hauled it away, rebuilt it with parts from the transport company, laid in a few jerricans of fuel — and had it ready and waiting in his workshop; perhaps at the rubbish dump. To which he had been transported, almost by chauffeur-service, right from that yard. While the fools had wasted time searching warehouses he had been buzzing away, fast, on the highway of the river.

But buzzing where?

Volodya had brought the maps, and they were studied. With a head start, the man would have taken the most direct route out. The most direct route was the river. The first sizeable airport on the river was at Zirianka. South. He had gone south. A call to Zirianka elicited the news that its air services south had been halted for days by blizzards.

The general was pleased to hear this. On the way from Irkutsk he had flown over the blizzard himself, had flown high in his service aircraft. Now he gave his orders personally. A 1966 one-ton Tatra, farm-truck body, probably very battered, was to be found and held. Its driver, a native, perhaps travelling under the name Khodyan, was also to be held.

Yes: what registration plates, the Tatra?

The general paused. The Tatra had no plates, of course; they had been handed in. But he would have got himself plates. The plates, he told Zirianka, would be out-of-town plates, details unknown; but engine and chassis numbers as follows.

And the native, his description?

The general paused again.

The man would very possibly have changed his description. Hold all natives, he said. He would be coming immediately.

To Zirianka a long-distance helicopter was required, at present not available at Tchersky; which meant using the general’s own jet. The pilot and first officer of the jet, anticipating another day of hanging about, had awakened to titanic hangovers. Further delay. The general used it to issue a series of orders.

Because of disruption to flights south, the man might try some criss-cross method, involving smaller airports. All airstrips in north Siberia to be warned. Natives without pre-booked flights to be held until details reported to Tchersky.

Wherever he was, the man would now have out-of-area plates. All vehicles with such plates to be stopped and details reported to Tchersky.

The first order involved air control at Yakutsk, the only authority in contact with the smaller strips. The second involved several dozen calls to police and militia posts.

One o’clock when the general stepped aboard, and he was tired. Only four hours’ sleep last night.

Medical Officer Komarova had also lost sleep last night. She had left late, and with a prepared story if stopped. A providential accident at Anyuysk: she had ordered the patient to be kept where he was until seen. She would see him at the earliest moment.

No activity along the main river, no watch being kept, so before Anyuysk she had turned off, driven fast to the cave, and entered with her torch.

Gone. And with no trace left that he had ever been here. Curtains, lighting, block and tackle, all away; no sign even of where they had been. Vapour from the kerosene stove had created new frost, bulging on every surface. No drop of oil, no stain, no scrap of anything left. Well, he’d been careful. Yet he had promised …

She searched with the torch, but there was nothing, only frost. Except one small hump that turned out to be not entirely frost. She recognised it at once, the wrapping paper from the salami, and opened the many folds for the message. No message but as she turned it this way and that something fell, and on the ground was the ring. In the torchlight she couldn’t decipher the engraved motto but she knew it anyway — As our love the circle has no end — and felt the tears again on her cheeks.

At Zirianka there was no 1966 one-ton Tatra — which meant only that the cautious fellow could have left it outside — but there were eighteen ill-tempered natives stopped from boarding their flight to Druzhina. Druzhina was north, on the Indigarka river, and the general wasn’t interested in it, or in the eighteen natives, after quickly looking them over.

Copies of the photo had been brought and they were passed round all employees of the airport.

Two recognised the man, and four didn’t. The truth was, the manager said, many such natives passed through. At flight times the place was very busy, particularly for flights south.

When was the last flight south? The last flight south had been Saturday morning, 0900.

Saturday 0900. Well, leaving Tchersky Friday evening he could have made it. Records were checked of that flight, and flights to all other destinations since. Numbers of natives showed up; racial identity listed from internal passports. No Khodyans.

Which meant he probably now had other papers.

All flight destinations were contacted; details of all natives given and follow-up inquiries authorised. At the same time, the local police were engaged — and had been for some hours — in a sweep of the area in search of a 1966 one-ton Tatra.

By evening, replies had come thick and fast from flight destinations, and from local police posts. All negative.

The general took dinner with his staff and reviewed the situation again. If the man had caught a flight, or even if he hadn’t, he had still had to get himself here somehow.

If he had come here.

Maybe he hadn’t come here.

Or if he had come, maybe it wasn’t in the Tatra.

The Tatra was the likeliest, the only, vehicle they had to go on. But perhaps it wasn’t the Tatra. Had Tchersky reported Tatra parts missing? What the devil had they reported?

Tchersky was contacted and reported that the transport company was still checking discrepancies. As yet nothing pointed significantly to any particular type of vehicle. When it did they would call in immediately.

The general decided to hang on till midnight. But half an hour later two calls from Tchersky changed his mind. The first was a response to his order for out-of-area vehicles, and it came from a strange area. A militia post at Bilibino had reported a native passing through in a bobik soon after five this morning. The man had claimed to be a road mechanic on goldfield duties, but no road station had any knowledge of him, or of his bobik.

The second related to country air strips, and was from a source still stranger. The general took the phone himself and his eyebrows shot up. ‘They’ve found him where? Say it again. Spell it.’ But even as spelt, he’d never heard of it and he looked round at his staff. ‘Baranikha?’ he said.

55

For Porter, pulling out of the ditch at six o’clock that morning, Baranikha had still been far ahead. He was not clear how far ahead. Something over 300 kilometres, the little atlas showed; but with mountains all the way and a twisting road it could be very much farther. In any case, he needed more fuel.

By 10 a.m. he had it, and two more road stations were behind him. He had also had a fantastic surprise. All the trucks were running here! Not in his direction, for he had overtaken nothing, but the other way. The road to Bilibino had been the danger — all long-distance traffic halted there. They hadn’t expected him to get beyond it. But now he was beyond it, running free. And here everything was normal.

The exhilaration had temporarily lifted his fatigue; but now exhaustion had set in again. He had driven over a thousand kilometres. He was light-headed, seeing double.

Somewhere ahead and to the right a halo of light became two haloes, and one again. Then two. In the snow flurries he tried to focus. He was running beside a frozen stream but there had been no bridges for the past hour. The fuzzy light ahead showed activity of some kind; there had to be a linking track to it over the stream.

Presently, almost abeam, he saw there were two haloes: a floodlit aerial railway on a mountain slope above, and below it a bucket chain dumping ore into a line of trucks. He saw also that the track from this operation ran to the stream, and the highway and, thank God, to a bridge connecting it with the highway. He took himself under this bridge, leaden with fatigue, and immediately switched everything off and got into his bag.

A quarter to eleven. Two full hours’ sleep, he decided.

And before one, to time, awoke. There was still half a flask of coffee left, and he swilled a mouthful round. He was faint with hunger. Plenty of food left, he saw, as he pulled the bag towards him; he had moved too fast, too continuously. He cut himself some bread, and unwrapped the salami, and looked at the coarse paper for a moment, wondering if she’d found the other one yet …

A lifetime ago.

He chewed his food and tried to think when it was. All Sunday he had worked on the bobik; Sunday night she’d brought the battery. Early Monday he’d left. Had driven all day, all night.

Only yesterday. And already over a thousand kilometres away. And with two more road stations behind him he must be nearing his destination.

He pulled the atlas across and found Baranikha again.

All the contour shades still purple. He traced the road he was on. A major river must be coming up. Once he hit the river, the road ran beside it straight to Baranikha — the river itself carrying on to the Arctic. He had turned north again. Now he had to fly south. Several short flights south.

He followed the pages south through the atlas. Nakhodka was so far there was no point in plotting it yet. But he saw where he had to head. Magadan first. Not the place itself but some small spot near it. Polar Aviation’s flights touched down at many country stops. And Magadan wasn’t so far now, maybe 1500 kilometres. Two or three hops. He could make it today.

He checked out the road and in a few minutes was moving again, into snow.

Twenty kilometres along, the headlights of a convoy came towards him: a Tchersky convoy. The big Kamas flashed their lights at him as they lumbered past, and he flashed back.

2 p.m.

At 2.30 he picked up the river, pulled in and checked with the atlas again.

The scale was so small it was hard to tell but it looked no more than thirty or forty kilometres to Baranikha now. The colour faded to green in the area around the dot, indicating some kind of valley; probably accounting for the siting of the town. The airport would be in that valley. He started up again and proceeded more slowly, looking for security checks. So far he had seen nothing, but still — his registration plate was a strange one here.

The river coiled away presently, not so straight as on the map, but the road ran dead straight. The river was now below, still to the right. It dropped quite far below, yes into a valley, wide-ish, flattish. The high ground was to his left, fold on fold of it, an occasional frozen waterfall showing the chasms in between. The road had been built on a straight ledge of rock running between what was evidently a marsh on the right and the jagged peaks on the left.

It rose and fell slightly now with the contours, and quite suddenly, on a rise, he saw the lights of the town below. And very close below. Hazy in the snow, but not more than three or four kilometres. The road ran straight downhill to it: a toytown neatly laid but in the valley. Smoke-pluming factories; lit-up apartment blocks. And an airport, with runway, control tower, adjacent buildings, car park.

He sat and watched it for some minutes. There didn’t seem to be a barrier. He drove cautiously down, entered the car park and cruised round. No militia; no people even; just a few vans and battered work buses, all crusted with snow. He stationed the bobik nose out, put a few necessities into the grip, and picked his way across the rutted ground into the airport building.

A shabby hall, very grimy, crammed with people. His heart sank at the sight. They had all, obviously, been here a long time. Every seat was taken and everywhere people were sleeping — on chairs, benches, the floor. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and a hubbub of noise. A knot of men bunched round the check-in desk, and a denser crowd round a bar at the far end of the hall. There was a canteen there, all the tables full; card games, domino games, a man playing an accordion.

What the hell! All flights stopped, evidently. Were they looking for him here, too?

He made his way to the check-in desk, saw the flight board on the wall. A list of destinations: all times blank.

A heavy smell of sweat rose from the gang here; working men, many of them native, short skis and rucksacks strapped to their backs. He picked one who looked like a Chukchee.

‘What’s going on, brother?’ he asked.

‘They’re giving out the tickets. For Mitlakino.’

‘What’s the hold-up?’

‘No hold-up. The blizzard isn’t heading there.’

A blizzard: not him, then. ‘How about Magadan?’ he said.

‘Magadan?’ The man stared at him, and he saw now that he was drunk. ‘Magadan out. Everything south been out for days. And for another thirty-six hours. They laid you off here?’

‘Sure, laid off. What’s this other place — Mitla what?’

‘Mitlakino. Work there. See a notice.’ The man was swaying, and was jostled aside by others returning through the crush with papers.

He pulled out of the mob and looked for the notice. It was beyond the desk, on the wall between it and the canteen. Men were sleeping here on bundles on the floor. He leaned over them and read it.

Chukotskiy Poluostrov. The Chukotka Peninsula. Way east; as far east as you could go. It was south he wanted. But there would be no way south for thirty-six hours. With this mob stuck here for days there was no guarantee he’d get a flight even then.

He pondered this and pushed through to the bar. The bar, he saw right away, was out of hard drink: crates of empties were stacked behind it, the two women working there in angry argument with men leaning over to see what was beneath. Some of the men, he saw, had formed tight drinking groups of their own and were taking swigs from personal bottles passed around.

The end wall of the canteen was papered with an enormous map of Siberia and he made his way to it, trying to think what was for the best. To get as far away as possible was obviously best — but as far east as the Chukotka peninsula? Still, if it was the only place planes were flying. From there, with the blizzard over, he should be able to fly south — and to Magadan. Its supplies probably came direct from Magadan: the principal town for the Chukotka region. Better than staying here, anyway.

Mitlakino he had never heard of, but he saw its position, on the peeling edge of the map, the sheet greasily fading out by the light switch, but ringed in red ballpoint. The name itself had been handwritten in, partly on the wall — evidently nothing there yet, still in course of construction.

From Baranikha, also ringed on the map, it was a long way. According to the scale, something over 800 kilometres. But what of it? A direct flight would take only a couple of hours.

‘What’s a problem, brother?’ The drunk had found him — had found him abruptly, pushed backwards out of a ring of drinkers. ‘Greedy bastards!’ he told the drinkers. ‘What’s a problem?’

‘No problem,’ Porter said. ‘You going to Mitlakino?’

‘Sure going Mitlakino. Know plenty fellows Mitlakino. Good fellows, Chukchees, not greedy bastards. Listen, what kind a fellow you, brother? You not Chukchee?’

‘No,’ Porter said. The man strongly stank. ‘Evenk.’

‘Evenks all right. Listen, you got something to drink?’

‘I got something for me,’ Porter said.

‘You good fellow. Let’s have drink. Call a plane soon.’

‘How soon they call the plane?’

‘Soon. On a board. Just time little drink.’

‘Just a minute,’ Porter said, and went to see the board, the man dragging behind him. On the board the Mitlakino time was now up, the only one up. It wasn’t so soon.

Mitlakino 1800.

The airport clock showed 1615.

‘Okay,’ Porter said, ‘we’ll have a little drink. Only put your papers away, you’ll lose them.’ The man was still clutching the sheaf in his hand. ‘And we don’t want anyone sharing, we’ll find a place of our own.’

They found a place in the boiler room. The notice on the door said keep out, but it wasn’t locked. The one he’d tried first had electrical flashes on it and was firmly locked.

The boiler room was hot and he helped the Chukchee off with his backpack and skis before settling on the floor and producing the bottle from his grip. It was his last bottle, only one swig gone, and the man’s eyes lit up. ‘You good fellow,’ he said.

By ten to five only a quarter was left in the bottle and the Chukchee, after a little desultory singing, was nodding.

‘I like a man can take a drink,’ he said.

‘You a man can take a drink?’ Porter asked him.

‘Sure I take a drink,’ the Chukchee said.

‘I take a drink,’ Porter told him, and glugged at the bottle. He took nothing from it but he held it up, examining it owlishly. ‘That’s a good drink,’ he said. ‘I don’t see you take a good drink.’

The Chukchee took a good drink. He took all of it and showed the bottle, and smiled foolishly, sliding sideways. Porter watched, awaiting the first snore.

Yes. Out for the count. And for some hours.

It was just on five, and now there was little time.

He took the Chukchee’s papers, checking to see the ticket was there, and also the backpack and skis. He collected his grip, switched the light off, and went rapidly back through the crowded hall.

1705 on the wall clock. 1800 on the flight board.

He stowed everything in the bobik and drove out of the car park. The snow was still gusting, but now at him, from the south. He went back up the hill, to the rise from where he’d first seen the town; the river and the valley now on his left. The rock cliffs were to his right and he searched them, looking for a gap. He remembered there had been frozen waterfalls, dropping into a chasm, and soon he saw one.

He got out of the car and peered down, with the torch. Smooth icy bulges in the rock. No obstructions. And no sign of bottom. But deep. It wouldn’t be seen for months, if then; smashed to nothing by the summer torrent.

He transferred what he needed to the backpack. Almost nothing left in the bobik’s tank, but one jerrican still full. This he threw into the chasm, together with the grip. Then he took the keys out of the ignition, pulled the wheel hard over, let the brake off and pushed it backwards downhill. It ran slowly away from him, ran easily, and went over easily — good little bastard, good to the end, and he watched as it simply went, vanished, without trouble. Above the wind he heard a muffled thud, and another, and then nothing.

He hitched the backpack on, and undid the skis. They were work jobs, short and wide, for rough ground; the sticks bound up with them. He buckled the skis to his boots, had a look at his watch — 5.25 — and took off.

He was back in the car park in fifteen minutes, took two more to get the skis off and strapped under the backpack, and was inside the airport building in time to hear an announcement boom from the loudspeakers.

‘Mitlakino — final call! All passengers for Mitlakino, Mishmita and Polyarnik, go at once to the aircraft! Last call for Mitlakino. Departure in fifteen minutes for Mishmita, Polyarnik and Mitlakino. Passengers go at once to the aircraft.’

A knot of stragglers was still going through and he joined them. Not a direct flight, then. And something puzzling in the names. Mitlakino he’d only heard of a couple of hours before, and Polyarnik not at all. But Mishmita? Vaguely familiar.

He handed in his ticket and filed through. The plane was an ancient three-engine Yak, the short-take-off crate of the north. Inside was pandemonium, a struggling mass of skis and backpacks. Sixty or so men were aboard and he found himself crammed next to a buttoned-up Russian, evidently a professional man, lips pursed at the noisy and undisciplined natives.

‘Go inside — I get off first,’ the man gruffly ordered, and took the aisle seat.

‘Where you get off?’ Porter asked him, companionably.

‘Mishmita.’

‘Don’t know Mishmita. What’s Mishmita?’

‘Mys,’ the Russian curtly told him. ‘Not mish. Mys. Mys Schmidta.’

‘Ah.’

Mys Schmidta — Cape Schmidta! Last seen on the chartroom table of the Suzaku Maru; he’d watched a plane take off from the air strip there; had drawn the captain’s attention to it while checking the ship’s position on the chart himself. From there to the mouth of the Kolyma, forty-seven hours. Now he was reversing his tracks — truly going back the way he’d come.

An idea began slowly to dawn.

Tell me, ‘he said humbly to the Russian,’ were you ever in Mitlakino?’

‘Yes, I’ve been in Mitlakino.’

‘As an educated man — excuse me, I’m ignorant — is it on the sea, the Arctic?’

The Russian thawed slightly. ‘Not on the Arctic, no. Inland a little. From a cape — Cape Dezhnev. The sea there we call a strait — the Bering Strait. You’ve heard of it, perhaps?’

‘Ah, no.’

But ah yes. Christ Almighty, yes! It hadn’t shown up on the airport map, all peeled away there. But of course the Bering Strait. Go far enough east and you … He couldn’t wait to get his hands, on the little atlas. He couldn’t get at the atlas, stuck in the backpack with a great pile of other luggage. He waited for the first stop and the plane to thin out.

To Mys Schmidta was an hour’s hop, and the Russian got off and others on, in the same confusion; then on to Polyarnik, another forty minutes, and more off and none on. And at last, with the upheavals over and the plane thinned out, he got at the backpack, and the atlas, and hungrily turned east.

Page after page, and there it was: end of the peninsula, Cape Dezhnev. End of the peninsula but not of the map, or of Russia. For the deeper knowledge of Kolymsky students the school atlas showed the boundary of Russia, and of its nearest neighbour. The boundary was in the sea, eighty-five kilometres wide at this point: the Bering Strait. The neighbours had forty-two and a half kilometres each and the boundary ran through the middle. It ran between two islands. The Greater Diomede Island was Russian, the Lesser Diomede American. Only four kilometres between them …

He absorbed this and looked back at the mainland. Inland from Cape Dezhnev, the Russian had said. Mitlakino didn’t show up there. Just a wilderness, with a marsh, a lake, a small mountain range. North of the cape a coastal dot said Uelen, and south of it Lavrentiya. There would be others in between. At the place itself there’d be a bigger scale map, a work map.

Soon enough a dim haze of light below showed the place itself, with the straight line of an airstrip.

They landed on it at nine o’clock and snow tanks were waiting to take the forty-odd men to the workers’ barracks. The journey was short, but snow was now falling quite heavily.

He got himself into the last of the tracked vehicles. No one had questioned his presence so far and the absence of the other man had not been noticed, but it was as well to see what happened ahead. As they neared the building the first arrivals were already filing in, the lead tank moving on to an adjoining shed. Again he positioned himself as last man in the mob outside. Some hold-up was going on inside, and presently there were complaints, and a great heave and they were all in.

Inside, in the tightly packed lobby, an angry telephone conversation was going on. A wrong permit had been provided, and the matter was being checked with Baranikha. An official barked to the clerk at the desk that papers would be processed in the morning, and the mob began to thin. Again he saw to it that he was at the end. The men were being handed tags — for their skis and bunk numbers — in exchange for their documentation. He had his papers in his hand but was not anxious to have the name overheard by the man’s comrades.

Now he felt himself on edge; time going fast. Nine-thirty. Four and a half hours since the Chukchee had taken a sleep. He could be waking up.

He gave in his papers at last — the very last — and was allotted a bunk and a locker. ‘Just dump your stuff and go right to supper. The kitchen will close.’

He found his bunk, looked into the dining room and saw that tags were being shown for meals. He went outside again.

The telephone line was coated with snow and he’d seen it on the way in. It disappeared into a plastic conduit and he traced it down the log-built structure to the junction box. With his knife he prised apart the join where it met the box, cut the wire, and pressed the conduit back in place. No more talk with Baranikha. He decided to skip supper.

56

In the air the general was in heated conversation with Tchersky. They’d garbled the story; it was obvious now. The Chukchee found at Baranikha was not the Chukchee he was after. The man at Baranikha had been found in the airport’s boiler room, drunk. From his incoherent account it seemed that some other native had stolen his flight ticket and papers and flown off with them. He had flown off with a gang of native workers to a construction site. The location of the site was now providing a problem.

The name of the place was Mitlakino, and it was not on the general’s maps. It was not on Tchersky’s, either.

‘What the devil! Doesn’t Tchersky supply this place?’

‘No, General. According to Baranikha, Magadan does.’

‘Magadan? Is there an air service from it to Magadan?’

Yes, apparently there was.

‘This bastard,’ the general informed his staff, ‘is making for Magadan. He’ll go south from there. Now listen,’ he told Tchersky, ‘that airstrip at Mitla — at that place — is to be closed down. Issue the order at once. Will he have landed there yet?’

Yes, he would have landed there. The plane had reported landing two hours ago, at 9 p. m., and was staying the night due to heavy snow. There was now no radio contact with it, or with. the small control tower which had also gone off for the night. And the telephone line at the camp was out of order; Baranikha was still trying to get through.

‘Goddam it!’ the general said. ‘Well close it down when they do get through. That plane is not to take off, whatever the weather, and nothing else is to be let in except military craft. Contact the nearest airbase to it. Get a clear location for them from Baranikha — a precise map reference with co-ordinates. I’ll talk to them when I land. He’s bottled up there, at least. That’s one thing. Now here’s another.’ The general took breath.

‘This bobik. He went through Bilibino in a bobik. He will have arrived in Baranikha with it. How the hell is it that a bobik has not been reported missing? What details have they given of it in Baranikha?’

Baranikha had not given any details of it. They hadn’t found it — not at the airport, or as yet anywhere in the town. They were still looking for it.

In that case, the general thought, they weren’t going to find it. He had got rid of it; no evidence left. Increasingly it was looking as if he’d left Tchersky in the bobik. He might have used the Tatra to get to the Bilibino highway, and there snatched a bobik, a likelier vehicle for mountains than a farm truck. But there was no stolen bobik on the Bilibino highway: his officers had earlier covered it intensively, had covered every long-distance route. In which case where had the bobik come from?

Tchersky. He hadn’t simply picked one up on the way. The man was a planner. He had planned the bobik. In his workshop. Had taken some wreck there, and then the spare parts to rebuild it. Where had the spare parts come from? The Tchersky Transport Company. Where had the wreck come from? Same place. Not a Tatra. A bobik. Any number of crocks must be hanging about there — a big garage, for God’s sake. But with big garages there were routines. Was this just sloppy supervision or had someone actively … Who was responsible for such things? And who was responsible for parts?

‘Tchersky — are you there?’ The general had brooded for some minutes, only a discreet crackle coming from the other end.

‘Yes, General.’

‘Who’s in charge of bobik parts there, that company?’

‘Bobik parts would be the Light Vehicles Depot.’

‘Do they work at night?’

‘No, not at night. They lock up at five, General.’

‘Good. Get a key. Have the director of the place there when I land. Don’t tell him why. See my car is waiting. And have you remembered that about the co-ordinates?’

‘Yes, General. You want them when you land.’

‘I don’t want them. The airbase will want them. Give them to the airbase.’

Idiots!

Vassili had been very silent all night, his eyes on the TV, and his wife’s eyes on him. He had known she would say nothing unless he said something; and he had said nothing at all.

Now he settled himself into bed.

‘All right, what?’ he said.

‘Will we lose the apartment?’

‘No.’

‘Will you get into trouble?’

‘No.’

‘They say he’s bad.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘They know someone helped him.’

He grunted. He should never have told her of the bobik. It had been in that romantic period when she had advised that Kolya should fuck an Evenk. He put his teeth in the glass.

‘Could they find out anything?’ she said.

‘No.’

He sincerely hoped not. He had gone through the duplicate order forms from March; delivery advices from July. His stock and deficit books had needed attention, too, and a razor blade. None of the parts showed up now. They’d never been ordered; delivery not advised; no deficits. The rumpus would come later, and he would sort it out later. If Kolya hadn’t fixed him. Got himself found. Or left the bobik to be found. He wouldn’t have done that. No. But he was depressed. He had been used.

Eleven o’clock, and he put the light out.

At militia headquarters the general hung on, waiting for the flight controller of the airbase to return to the phone.

His raid on the transport company had not been a success. A haggard director, evidently an old camp survivor, had savagely accused him of being spy happy, of wishing a return to old times. One Liova, the manager of the Light Vehicles Depot, also an old lag, also summoned, had demanded the presence of a native storeman; vetoed by the general. They had inspected the stores, and various books, all incomprehensible … A job for an expert later. For now –

‘Hello, yes?’

‘Okay, General. Meteorological conditions are difficult at the moment — there’s a white-out.’

‘But you can land there?’

‘Of course. What do you want doing?’

‘Just get him. You’ll need to liaise with Magadan, they supply the place. I have no clear idea of it here −’

‘I’m looking at air photos of it now.’

‘Ah, you have some. It’s isolated, is it?’

‘Yes, just a single structure. Is he armed?’

‘Assume that he is. When can you be there?’

‘Say 0100. I’ve lifted a squad of airborne now, in helicopters. You want him held there or brought back here?’

‘First get him. I’ll let you know,’ the general said, and hung up, satisfied.

A right decision to come himself from Irkutsk. The idiots here could still be combing warehouses. Upon arrival he had been two days behind the man. By issuing decisive orders — militia posts, air strips — he had reduced that gap to two hours. Now, twenty past twelve on his second night here, the two hours had been reduced to forty minutes.

He had a drink while waiting.

57

At twelve-thirty Porter climbed out of his bunk, tidied the rolled-up bedding, and took his boots and the backpack. The dormitory was snoring; he had made sure everyone was snoring before even entering it for a rest.

He had heard one shift go out at midnight and another return, evidently to some other dormitory. Now the place was dead. He peered out into the lobby.

All deserted; semi-dark.

Behind the counter, a single lamp. In the recess by the door, the ski stack, now tidied up.

He stood quite still, reviewing the scene, and waited some moments to be sure he had it to himself. Then he went behind the counter. There was a chair there and he sat and put his boots on, looking about him. A few notices pinned to a board: work schedules; a plan showing block numbers of work areas. Nothing more. There had to be better than this, and he looked under the counter, and found it.

All below the counter was pigeon-holed, and in the holes charts. The holes were neatly labelled. Camp Plan, Mining Works, Geological Survey, Topography.

Topography had a dozen rolled-up charts and he found the right one. They were inland from the cape forty kilometres: Dezhnev to the north, Lavrentiya to the south. In between, a curving bay showed several coastal villages — Naukan, Tunytlino, Leymin, Veyemik, Keyekan … Inuit villages: Eskimos.

The tiny marsh and lake of the atlas were here hugely magnified. The camp was exactly midway between them. The works were a kilometre to the west, in the foothills of a small mountain range; the chart squared off so precisely he could place himself to 500 metres.

The islands were not on the chart — on this scale too far out. But he knew that from midway in the bay they were directly east.

Midway in the bay … It looked like Veyemik. The compass bearing on the chart showed Veyemik as due south-east of the barrack block.

He dug in the backpack, found the school compass, and checked it, first finding north. North, according to the chart, should be the adjoining shed where the snow tanks had pulled in, the whole block laid out on a precise north-south axis.

He pointed the compass there, and saw it was several degrees out. No means of resetting the tinny little job so he made the adjustment in his head, and scanned the chart again.

There were three main tracks: to the works, the lake, and the nearest coastal village, Tunytlino. This one he examined carefully.

Tunytlino was thirty kilometres away. No track led from it to the next village, Leymin, twelve kilometres below it, but the ground looked flat. After that, Veyemik.

Veyemik was another fourteen kilometres, but surrounded by a whirl of contour lines. The place was on the far side of a creek; frozen now … If he hit the coast at Tunytlino, kept the sea on the left, Veyemik was twenty-six kilometres below it. The whole journey, from where he sat now, fifty-six kilometres. Thirty-five miles.

Okay.

He slipped the chart back in its pigeon-hole, went to the ski stack and found the pair he had arrived with, tagged by bunk number. He removed the tag, hunted in his pocket for its twin — this one looped to a locker key — and took them back to the desk. They’d come out of a drawer, he remembered. In the night’s confusion the deskman had hastily stuffed the papers in the same drawer. He opened the drawer and found his own papers, the tag number scrawled in one corner. He took the papers, dropped the tags in among a jumble of others and closed the drawer.

With backpack and skis he went out through the double doors. The outer one had a simple latch and it clicked securely behind him.

Outside the wind was howling, snow blowing horizontally.

He hunched through it to the shed and shone his torch. Four snow tanks, three bobiks. He looked over the best bobik; then the other two. No keys in any of them. He swore. A snow tank, then. Cumbersome; also very noisy. But nothing for it. He inspected the snow tanks, and found none of them had keys.

Jesus Christ! He wasn’t going thirty-five miles in a snowstorm on little work skis; not in view of what else he had to do tonight. He shone the torch around and saw the snow ploughs — one actually out in the snow, shrouded in it. He had a look at the other. It was at the mouth of the shed, a tracked vehicle, big tracks like a tank; its shovel raised and pointing out. High, with an enclosed cabin. He climbed up and opened the door.

Keys in.

He shone the torch round the cabin. He had driven a snow plough before but the arrangement of levers was unfamiliar here. To hell — there was a gear stick, accelerator, wipers, lights, brake. He’d figure it out on the move.

He settled the skis and backpack, closed the door and turned the key. It took several turns before the thing clanked hideously into life. He didn’t know if it could be heard above the wind. Just move.

He slipped the gear in and moved. Got it out of the shed and well away from the building before turning right to pick up the track at the north side. In the dark he couldn’t see the track. He flashed the lights briefly, but the broad shovel was sticking out, blocking the view. Just a dazzle of snow, twin embankments hazily visible ahead. Evidently that was the track, swept by the snow plough.

He drove between the embankments, and switched the headlights on again. In the glare, high walls of snow passed slowly on each side; and presently began curving right — east. Yes, this was it. On the chart the only track east led to the coast: Tunytlino. He ran for another minute, and stopped.

He switched the interior light on and inspected the controls. Found the lever for the shovel and lowered it out of the way. Now, the wipers going, he could see clearly — at least the two embankments he had to drive between. Ahead the lane ran straight, no signs of the plough’s earlier tracks. With the heavy snow falling there would soon be no sign of his own. All to the good. The thing had no speedometer and was certainly not a racer. Still, only thirty kilometres to the coast. It was just before one o’clock; he thought he could make it in an hour, and started again. And almost immediately stopped again.

He switched off the engine; and then the lights, too.

A helicopter was chuntering overhead. Even above the engine he’d heard it. A big one. There seemed to be more than one. Or was it the same one, circling to find the landing strip?

He opened the window and looked up. Through the whirling hail of snow he could see, intermittently, the hazy beam of a searchlight. The landing strip was switched off; the pilot was hunting for it. Maybe a telephone crew to see to the fault Strange, at one in the morning. But communication crews worked round the clock. He started up again and drove on, with the lights off. From the air, he knew, he couldn’t be seen, the vehicle shrouded now in snow.

He drove for several minutes, and stopped and cut the engine again. the clatter was still in the air, but distant now. The guy hadn’t landed yet, or if he had was making a hell of a row, his rotors still going. But no sign of a beam through the heavy snow and the helicopter was well behind him, so he switched on the sidelights and got moving again, pensively.

The line crew had arrived unexpectedly fast. He’d been right to move fast. The Chukchee at Baranikha would be awake by now and raising hell. He drove on, musing; the track dead straight, glaring white between the snow embankments, the sidelights for the time being sufficient.

At ten past two the first village appeared, Tunytlino.

A semi-circle of shacks, their backs facing him, chimneys smoking. The smoke was coming towards him. No lights showed and he couldn’t make out the sea; all frozen now, of course.

He switched everything off, opened the window, and listened. No dogs. The wind hissed only a little now, but it was coming from the sea. And the snow was definitely less. Already, from the sea, a different weather system.

A single street ran behind the shacks — a cleared stretch, at least. A path had been made from it to the track he was on, which simply petered out a hundred metres ahead, the embankments falling away. There he had to turn right.

He thought he had better get down and see how.

Coal smoke was in the air, acrid, from the sleeping houses. He crunched through the new snow, the village dead silent, and walked beyond it until the houses stopped and the cleared path ran out. Now he saw the sea. The beach shelved, a long way, perhaps two hundred, metres, and the flat plain began. Utterly featureless. The Bering Strait.

To the right, everything similarly featureless. Another white plain, set above the sea. All the way along, the shore line shelved. The temperature had definitely risen here, some mistiness in the air, a few snowflakes whirling. Between the flakes and the snatches of mist he could see a star or two. All the land flat ahead. Okay.

He turned and went back.

In the silence, switching on the engine, he gritted his teeth at the racket Couldn’t be helped. He kept the lights off, drove the last bit of track, turned right along the coast and kept going. The mirrors, all the glass areas, were snowed up and he leaned out of the cab to look back. A light had come on in one of the houses, but soon went out. He had been heard; but without interest. He switched to headlights and drove on.

The last few days he had slept little. But even sleepless, he seemed to be dreaming. He was driving a snow plough along the Bering Strait. Out in the darkness was America. In between, the two islands, locked in ice. All he had to do was walk there. Just get himself in position.

Leymin next, twelve kilometres.

Patches of mist, sudden squalls of snow; the weather changing every few minutes. But a night of changing drifts would cover his tracks anyway.

Just under the half hour, Leymin.

He turned inland, kept distance with the village until the shacks had passed, and returned to the coast.

To Veyemik, another fourteen kilometres. The chart had shown wavy contour lines here, but he could see no contours.

In a few minutes he came on them. The ground rose suddenly, the shore dropping below. And now on his right, snow-covered rocks, rising. The rocks became a cliff, and he was wedged between it and the drop on his left. He slowed to a crawl. No way of turning here. And no point in backing anyway. To return and go inland would mean only some other kind of contours, perhaps impassable: the chart had shown a chain of them.

He kept on, at a walking pace.

Veyemik was on a creek, so there had to be a descent to it: sea level. Whether you could drive down was another matter; it could be a precipice. Get as near as possible, have a look at the place. If necessary ski to it — not so far now. But there was the problem of the vehicle. He couldn’t abandon a snow plough, leave evidence of where he’d gone.

He crawled on, peering ahead. The frozen strait was now a long way below, and the track very narrow. It could simply peter out and he’d be over the side.

And then, in a minute, everything had changed again.

The track veered seawards, a sudden squall blew in, snow spattering the windscreen, wipers working double time. And gone. Calm. Flakes twirling in the air, and below, the creek. He could see it clearly, the shoreline broken, quite a wide inlet. At the other side of it, a huddle of houses: Veyemik. And a long easy slope to it.

He drove down, dropped smoothly on to the creek, crossed it to the other side, and came out behind the houses.

Three o’clock.

He switched the lights and the engine off, and got out to have a look.

To seaward, nothing — a great plain of ice, snow-covered. This was it. The islands were now due east. In the plough he could go the whole way. Except, of course, he couldn’t. The thing would be detected at once. Both islands were certainly observation posts full of electronic devices. It would have to be on foot. From here the distance was greater than from Cape Dezhnev; perhaps fifty or sixty kilometres, but a simpler run, less chance of error — due east. Even with the little skis he could do it in five, six hours. Totally exposed, of course, if anyone knew where he’d gone. Time to lose the snow plough.

A stream cut down from the hills backing the creek. He’d seen it on the chart and now he could see its banks. He climbed up into the cab again, made the stream and drove up it. The track soon lost itself, twisting and turning in the tangle of hills. He drove for twenty minutes without finding anywhere to ditch the plough; no cave, no gorge. It began snowing again while he peered. He decided to leave it anyway. No one would find it here before next summer. And time was going fast.

He switched off, climbed out, attached the backpack and skis and was down again quicker than he’d gone up.

His face was crusted with snow, his gloved hands numb as he came out on to the creek. He poled himself across the ice to the mouth. The little broad skis made hard work of langlauf striding, but they were better than nothing. He stopped to beat the feeling into his hands before taking his position.

No shelving beach here. Just the creek running out flat with the strait. The great void stretched before him. The Russian island came first, three times the size of the American and masking it completely. He had to hit the larger one and work round it before taking a position for the other. From now on, it would be dead reckoning, his bearing checked every few minutes, for in the ocean of darkness he would be totally blind. He unhitched the backpack and dug out the torch and compass.

He could scarcely feel the little compass. He took his gloves off and breathed on his hands and shone the torch down on it. He couldn’t steady it with one hand, so he gripped the light under his chin and got both hands to it. Even so the needle was hard to steady. He found after some moments that it wouldn’t steady. It fluttered and swung, and fluttered and swung, ten degrees, and twenty, and thirty. It swung round the dial. He saw it wasn’t merely swinging, but pulsing. Radar pulses, some bloody pulses, from somewhere.

He watched it a full three minutes to see if there was a pattern. The pattern was a continuous pattern: the needle, in fluttering jumps, going round the dial, round and round.

This was the position at four o’clock, when he realised he had no compass and no vehicle, and nowhere to go if he had one.

The nearest shelter before he froze was the village of Veyemik, and as he trudged there he racked his tired brain.

The first house was also the largest house. He hammered on the door, and continued hammering till he heard babies crying and shouted oaths, and presently an Eskimo stood before him in a suit of long Johns.

‘I stole nothing!’ Porter told this Eskimo.

‘What?’

‘I swear to God! They’re chasing me. They’ve chased me all the way!’

‘Who’s chasing you?’ said the Eskimo. ‘From where?’

58

From Tchersky, the general was again on the phone to the airbase. It was 2 a.m.

‘What the hell are you saying?’ he said.

‘He isn’t there. They’ve searched the camp block, they’ve searched the whole site. He’s nowhere on it.’

‘But he’s got to be there. What else is there there?’

‘Mine workings, a kilometre away. He didn’t go there — at least not with a crew. They send them out in snow tanks, it’s snowing like hell. Do you want the mine workings searched?’

‘Of course search them. He could be hiding there. We know he’s there somewhere. He flew out there.’

But this was by no means so certain. The camp said it had no record of him. He had slept in no bunk, eaten no meal, had been allotted no tags and had deposited no papers. There were also no skis or luggage for him.

‘But he was on that plane,’ the general said. ‘He stole a ticket to get on it.’

Again this was not certain. Another worker might have stolen the ticket and papers — unintentionally, in the course of a random robbery. But the thief would have had his own ticket. He didn’t need this ticket. And he certainly wouldn’t have handed in the papers. Which would account for them not being there.

The general thought.

‘The flight crew that’s staying there — don’t they know if the ticket was used?’

Again — no. It had been a madhouse on the plane. And no tickets had been handed in on it. They had been handed in at Baranikha. Should they check with Baranikha?

‘I’ll check with Baranikha. You check the mine workings.’

The general checked with Baranikha and he found that the ticket had been handed in and the man had got on the plane. He had got on it but he had not apparently got off it; not, anyway, at two intermediate stops, for they had checked and no natives had disembarked. The man had certainly proceeded to Mitlakino but what happened to him there they didn’t know.

‘They chased me with a snow tank! They chased me from Mitlakino. Ask them in Tunytlino — a tank roaring after me in the middle of the night!’

‘From Mitlakino you skied — from the mining camp?’

‘What could I do? They’d have killed me. I’ve skied all night, I’m exhausted. They hate Evenks — and the Inuit too.’ He was speaking Inuit with the Eskimos. ‘The Chukchees don’t trust us. In Chukotka it’s only them — no jobs for Evenks.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ The Eskimo was a plump individual with a mild manner, and his house was large because he was the headman. He stroked his round face and looked with bewilderment from the hysterical Evenk to the other members of the household. Eleven of them gazed back with similar bewilderment.

‘You’d better sleep now. You can sleep by the stove. In the morning we’ll work it out.’

‘But you’ll speak for me? You won’t let them take me?’

‘I’ll speak for you. I don’t understand it yet. Where do you get the tongue?’

‘Up north. I worked some seasons … But you won’t give me up? They know I’m here. They chased me all the way to Leymin. They couldn’t get past it, not on that track in the snow. But I got past it. You’ll speak for me in the morning?’

‘In the morning we’ll see. It’s still snowing. It shouldn’t be snowing now. In the morning there could be fog. For now, everybody sleep — it’s gone four!’

It was gone four, and at six everybody got up again, and there was fog.

And the Evenk, after his sleep, was altogether calmer. He was apologetic about his hysteria of the night. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed him, but they would have beaten him badly. A man had lost money in the mine and immediately they had accused him — the only Evenk. He could prove he had stolen nothing. He had nothing. When they came looking for him today –

‘Look,’ the headman told him, ‘nobody will come looking for you today. They can’t. It’s a fog. And if they should, the women will hide you.’

At this the Evenk showed alarm again. Why women? Why would women have to hide him?

Because the men would be away, working.

Where away? How far away?

On the ice. The sea.

Sealing by the shore? No farther than that?

The Eskimos smiled. Not sealing. Not at this season. Fishing. At their fishing station. Out in the strait. They would be out all day.

At this he showed even greater alarm. He wasn’t staying all day with women. He would ski on down the coast, then. Unless the men would take him with. Would they take him with?

If he wished, but there was no danger. Nobody could get here in the fog. Still, if he was nervous …

He was very nervous, and he asked nervous questions. Could anybody follow them? How far were they going?

Fifty kilometres, they said, amused; and nobody could follow. You needed a signal. The authorities fitted it in your vehicle, a tracked vehicle. The signal told them on the island who was coming — there was an island out there. And it also guided you to your station. There was a beacon at. the fishing station, also fitted by the authorities. You’d never find it otherwise. Nobody could follow — no need to be nervous!

This calmed him completely, and as they briskly set off after taking only steaming tea he showed a lively interest in the fishing. The best grounds, they told him, lay where the seabed shoaled near the islands. There were two islands there, but you couldn’t go to the second, it was American. The first you could go to only in summer. The military let you camp in the small rock bays then — that’s where the seals came up, on slabs.

So what kind of fishing did they do now?

Ice fishing, through holes, two metres square. You had to know where to cut. Mainly the ice was two metres thick out there but in some places it ran to twenty. You cut it in layers with an electric saw, off the car’s battery. The authorities came and checked your holes from time to time, and they had to be near your beacon. The signal directed you there — see it?

The signal was an amber light on the dash which pulsed at wider intervals if they veered off course. They veered a bit to show him how it worked, and laughed at his astonishment.

It was crowded in the vehicle; eight men in it, all loudly instructing the interested Evenk. Another vehicle had set off a few minutes before them to set up camp, and a third was keeping company close beside, its headlights dimly visible in the fog.

Did people come out from the island to check the holes? he asked.

Sure. They checked your beacon too, and usually you gave them a bit of fish; they always needed fresh stuff there.

They drove over in cars, did they?

Sometimes — if recruits were being trained. They trained the soldiers in ice manoeuvres. Native guys, some of them — they used them as trackers. But mainly it was in a helicopter.

They kept a helicopter on the island?

A helicopter? An army of them. See, the place was just a big hump of rock, about a kilometre long, and they’ d taken the top off and made a whole landing ground up there. If they all took off at once you couldn’t hear yourself speak.

Was it that near?

Ten kilometres from the fishing station. In summer, in the boat, you could see it from right here — not far to go now.

It wasn’t far to go. And then they were there: the fishing station.

Lanterns burned at the fishing station — seal oil lamps, on stakes, in a large square. Much activity was going on in the square. In the dense fog spectral shapes from the advance party were rigging a tent; others going round refilling the lanterns. All of them were on short skis, and now he put his own on. The backpack he had left in the village, and all he had taken from it was the torch, now rammed inside his anorak.

Various bits of gear came out of the vehicles; a winch, fishing lines, ropes, fish boxes. The men bustled at the work, and he followed a party of them to the first hole. Lamps burned here too and from all four sides tethered ropes slanted into the hole. The men tugged the ropes, assessing the weight in the basket traps suspended there, and each hole was visited in turn. Once the traps were hauled in they could do line work for bigger fish, they said. You dangled hook baits down through the holes; all this after breakfast.

They went to breakfast in the tent, and as they ate he asked how long the fog would last.

It depended. Snow was rare at this season, but when it snowed you got a fog. It hadn’t snowed long so the fog wouldn’t last long. Maybe only a few hours. You waited for the wind.

Did it affect their work?

No. Out there it affected them, the island. They didn’t like fog. Just in darkness, they could see — they had special glasses. But in fog they saw nothing.

What was it they wanted to see?

The Americans — just four kilometres the other side of the island. They watched each other. That’s what they did, while the rest of us did the work.

The men were cheerful at breakfast and cheerful as they went to work, and the headman jovially told him he could stay and help wash the dishes to pay for his keep. He shovelled snow in a bucket and put it on the stove and observed the day’s chef cocking an ear.

‘That’s funny — there’s one up there,’ the man said.

‘A helicopter?’ Faintly now he could hear it himself.

‘Yes. Not one of the island’s, though.’

‘You can tell the difference?’

‘It’s from the mainland. A big one, going there and back, can’t you hear? No business being up in the fog.’

Porter moodily cleared the tin plates and scraped leavings from the pot.

‘Fat and rinds go in the basket. It’s bait,’ the chef told him. ‘Hello — they’ve started up now!’

A harsher clatter was suddenly rending the air.

‘The island?’

‘That’s them. Going up in the fog!’

‘Where is it, the island?’

‘Out there … What are you doing with your skis?’

He was strapping them on. They had all removed their skis as they’d sat round the trestle for breakfast.

‘I’ll just go out and take a look,’ he said.

‘You’ll see nothing in this … The island’s over there, past our first hole, a straight line. Jesus — more going up! Hey, stay inside the lights! It’s easy to get lost. Don’t go more than a hundred paces!’

‘Okay.’

For the first fifty paces he couldn’t see the dimly lit hole, and then he saw it. At the hole the men were busy hauling in and didn’t notice him. Looking back he could just make out the dim haze of the camp. He started counting again. He counted fifty, and sixty, and seventy; and looking back now could see neither the hole nor the camp. He had not moved his skis as he turned, and when he started again he kept on in the same straight line, and he also kept on counting. His paces on the skis were just about a metre, so after a thousand he had done a kilometre; the air black; the blackness now all roaring.

59

By 4 a.m. the airbase reported that the man was not in the mine, not on the site, that no vehicle had been removed from the site, and that there was no sign whatever that he had ever arrived.

The flight controller went further. He had been growing steadily more sceptical all night, and he now said that they had wasted enough time and he wished to withdraw his men.

The general considered this. Unable to talk to the godforsaken camp himself, his communications had been entirely with this little air force shit; who was becoming a peremptory shit, and an increasingly insolent one.

‘How many men have you got there?’ he said.

‘Twenty-four. In three helicopters. Eight-man squads.’

‘Isn’t there one among them who can mend a telephone?’

‘There’s a signals staff, yes. But they’re in a blizzard there. The line could be down anywhere.’

‘Have they tested the one in the building?’

‘I’ll ask them. But this is your last request, General. I will give it one hour.’

‘Request? What request? It’s an order! You will report to me in one hour,’ and he had slammed the phone down.

But the man was right, he knew. Four hours of air force time wasted … And the bastard had slipped away again, it was certain; could by now be halfway to Magadan.

He decided not to speak again on the phone himself.

But when the next call came, in under the hour, he took it most eagerly, having heard where it came from.

‘Mitlakino! You’ve found the fault?’

‘Yeah. A break. See, they have this conduit, running into a junction box, and what we —’

‘Was it cut?’

‘Well, it doesn’t look frayed. Only nobody said —’

‘All right. You. What’s your rank?’

‘Sergeant, sir.’

‘Stay by that phone. Tell the director of the camp, from me, to check his vehicles again. Every one of them has to be checked. He is to inspect them himself, including anything they have at the mine. He will report to me personally, and he had better not miss any. Do that now. I’m waiting here, I can hear you. When you’ve done it I have another order.’

The other order was for the civilian aircraft on the air strip to be inspected again. It was to be inspected from nose to tail, every centimetre of it; every seat, under every seat, the cargo space, the toilets, any hollow part of the fuselage.

‘But stay by the phone yourself. Somebody will talk to you. If they don’t talk, still stay on the phone. Keep this line open. Don’t let anybody else use it.’

This was at five o’clock.

At five-thirty the director of the camp asked permission to come on the phone, and the general gave it.

‘Well?’

‘General, there’s no actual vehicle missing —’

‘What actual? What are you talking about?’

‘Not a vehicle. We checked them all hours ago. It’s just — a snow plough isn’t here. It could have broken down and the driver be spending the night at Tunytlino. They don’t have a phone there but what I’ll do right now is send —’

‘Tuny what? Have they any vehicles there?’

‘Yes, they have vehicles. They have special tracked vehicles for going out to −’

‘How far to Magadan from there?’

‘To Magadan?’ There was a puzzled silence. ‘Well, I don’t know. I would say maybe — two thousand kilometres?’

‘Two thousand —’

For the first time the general was aware he didn’t know exactly where Mitlakino was. Since nothing of note existed there and it wasn’t on Tchersky’s maps nobody had given him the location. But the airbase had the location. He had thought the airbase was near Magadan. He had thought Mitlakino was …

‘Where the devil are you?’ he said.

‘Where am I?’ the director said in a strange voice. ‘I’m at Mitlakino. Above Lavrentiya. Below Cape Dezhnev.’

‘Cape Dezhnev!’ The general’s flapping hand had summoned maps. ‘Dezhnev … Dezhnev. You mean — the Chukotka peninsula?’

‘Yes, certainly. The Chukotka peninsula.’

‘I see a lake. And a marsh, is it?’

‘The lake and the marsh. Yes, General, we’re between them.’

‘With Tuny — Tunytlino, away on the coast?’

‘Thirty kilometres away. That’s where I think the driver of the snow plough —’

‘The coast of the Bering Strait?’

‘Certainly the Bering Strait.’

‘Good God! Good God!’ the general said. ‘He’s not going south. He’s going — Is that sergeant there? Give me that sergeant.’

By six o’clock, the helicopters were airborne again and making for the string of coastal villages between Tunytlino and Keyekan. Their orders were to land at the villages and search them.

By six-thirty all were reporting dense fog over the coastal area. They could see nothing on the ground, and nothing of each other. They asked permission to return.

‘No! Refused. Absolutely not!’ the general told the airbase. ‘They are to land at those villages.’

‘But they can’t see the villages.’

‘Let them go down lower and look.’

‘General, I can’t endanger my men or their aircraft in these conditions. You’ll see on your map there are hills in that vicinity.’

‘And you’ll see on yours there’s also a strait there. The Bering Strait! Let them fly over it, a little offshore. The villages will have lights. If they get out on their feet they’ll find them.’

By six forty-five a helicopter had found Tunytlino.

It reported that nothing was known of the man there but the villagers had heard a vehicle passing in the night. It had passed soon after 2 a.m. It had passed in the direction of Leymin.

Shortly afterwards Leymin called in.

Nothing of the man there, either, and no vehicle had passed through.

‘He’s made his try in between, then,’ the general said. ‘Or he went inland a bit.’ He was tracing the route on his map. ‘Let them search both villages. But I think he went on to the next, Veyemik. From there he has a clear run, due east, to the islands. But not with the snow plough — too soon detected. He’s on skis. He took them with him! But on skis he couldn’t have made it yet. And in the fog … I think he’s still there. He’s either spun them a yarn or he’s hiding there. He’s in Veyemik!’

At six fifty-five Veyemik called; and the general’s heart sang.

A stranger had come in the night to Veyemik. A terrified stranger. He said a vehicle had chased him. It had chased him from the mines at Mitlakino where he had been accused of stealing money. He had been in fear of his life and they had taken him in. Their menfolk were looking after him. Had they done wrong?

In no way! Lay hands on him immediately; subdue him, take him back to the base, keep him bound at all times! And promptly report his arrival. He would come himself as soon as notified.

Very good. One squad would remain there until the fog lifted. Then they’d go out and get him. The menfolk of Veyemik were presently at their fishing station. The man was with them.

He was where?

It took some minutes, the babble going there and back from the helicopter, for the general to gather that the fishing station was fifty kilometres out in the strait. That it was only ten kilometres from the first island. And that the party would not yet have reached it. They had left twenty-five minutes ago.

Twenty-five minutes!

‘Go out now!’ the general said. ‘Go immediately, don’t delay! He’ll slip off — this is what he’ll do!’

Go where? How could they find the fishing station in the fog? The Eskimos found it by beacon. The beacon was controlled from the island. The helicopters couldn’t be directed to it by the island because –

‘All right. I’ll manage the island. The helicopters are to take off immediately — all three of them. Sweep behind him, go due east. He’s still in a car, going there! From fifty metres they’ll see the car, even in a fog. Get them down to twenty metres! I’ll call out aircraft from the island. You’ll find him between you. If he tries to slip away and go left or right he’ll miss the island, and he’s lost in the fog. Then we pick him up at leisure. How long is the fog due to last?’

The fog was due to last, according to latest information, another two to three hours … But if aircraft took off from the island there could be mid-air collisions — visibility was zero! The best instrumentation couldn’t –

So arrange a corridor. The fishing station was fifty kilometres out? Fly forty-five. The island would be informed accordingly. Keep communication with them. He was contacting them himself immediately.

Which, immediately, he did.

From the island, after a few minutes’ delay, he learned that the Eskimos’ vehicles had already arrived at their fishing station. Three vehicles had been monitored arriving. Yes, island aircraft could reach the station very shortly. With the beacon, fog was not a problem.

The general asked what mobile forces were available on the island.

Twelve helicopters, he was told; augmented in winter by a company of patrol jeeps. Also sixteen personnel carriers, half-tracks, in four platoons. Four vehicles to a platoon, four men to a vehicle. Sixty-four men.

The general ordered a deployment of these forces.

The helicopters would surround the fishing station and search it. If the man had already skipped they would lift off again and support the surface force of personnel carriers. The surface force would leave at once. Six kilometres from the island it would assume its blizzard formation: the troops off — boarded fifteen metres apart. With the vehicles they would form a line of one kilometre, to sweep forward at ski-walking pace.

In case the man tried to slip back to the mainland, air force helicopters would sweep the area between. To avoid risk of collision in the fog, five kilometres would be kept between the two forces.

The fog was expected to last two to three hours. In that time the man could make a try for the American island. But first he had to find it; which he could only do from the Russian side. Was any audible signal used by the Americans in fog conditions?

No, no audible signals were used. But when the fog lifted the island was easily visible, only four kilometres away. Its masts and aerials had blinking hazard lights, and the satellite dishes were clearly illuminated.

But there was also another factor. The island was four kilometres away, but the international line was only two kilometres. On skis it could be reached in no time.

The general agreed another plan.

In one hour’s time, if the man had not been taken, all forces would proceed at speed to the other side of the island. The man must not be allowed to leave it. If he made a dash for the American side he was to be brought down — brought down, not killed. At all costs he had to be taken alive.

While he was still speaking, urgent news arrived. The helicopters had reached the fishing station, and the man was there! He was washing dishes, in a tent, with the chef. A moment later this report was amended. He had been washing dishes, but at sound of the helicopters he had gone outside to have a look at them; he didn’t seem yet to have returned.

When had he gone? When?

Three or four minutes ago, the chef thought. On his skis.

‘Good God!’ the general said. In the rapid turn of events he had been saying it repeatedly, but now he said a few things more. From two days he had reduced the gap to two hours, and then forty minutes, and then twenty-five. Now it was only three or four! If they merely hovered over his route, they would catch him now. How far, in three or four minutes, could he have gone?

60

At his second kilometre the roaring in the air was deafening and continuous. They were directly over his head now. Hovering; going on a little; hovering again.

The rotors thrashed away, a shattering row, but disturbing the fog very little. He could see the yellow haze of their searchlights. He couldn’t see the machines. And he knew they couldn’t see him. They were keeping altitude. And he now understood the reason why. The same reason was giving him problems.

The strait was no longer flat. Towards the centre of it huge hummocks had begun to appear, windswept snow funnelled between the mainland and the islands, now turned into pillars of ice. They loomed suddenly, disappearing up into the fog, very high, high enough anyway to keep the helicopters off him. But in side-stepping them he had lost his track.

Twice when the racket above had gone ahead he had taken a risk with the torch and shone it back to see the ski marks, had even gone back to check them. But the ice pillars were enormous, ten metres wide at least, and in pacing sideways from them he couldn’t be sure he was still parallel.

Now, the ground itself was exhausting him. The stubby skis were too short, sinking into the recent snow. The row, the exhaustion, the uncertainty had addled his brain, as he suddenly realised. He didn’t have to worry about direction. The bloody helicopters were directing him.

Their job was to stop him rounding the island. They knew that first he had to reach it. Only eight kilometres to go. The two kilometres he had done in under ten minutes, despite the conditions. He was sweating under the anorak, could feel it trickling under his fur cap. He gulped the freezing fog, poled himself rapidly on, one ski after the other; still counting.

980 … 990 … Another kilometre. Seven to go.

The machines hammered and swished above his head. Hovering; advancing; hovering. Hazy blurs, bobbing there, searching. Keeping pace with a man on skis. When he was too close to the island they would have to land and face him. Or if the ice was flat, come at him at ground level. And they surely wouldn’t be alone. The place was a garrison. Men could be lining up there now; a final barrier. But what else was there for him? No other place to go now.

Because there was no other place to go, he planned this one. He had scarcely any idea of it. A kilometre of rock, the Eskimos had said; and on the other side of it, the American island — only four kilometres farther. When the fog lifted it should be visible. But when the fog lifted, he would also be …

Well, to hell. While there was fog he had to use it − at least get himself in position …

First ski within reach of the island.

Then turn left or right, to the end. And go round it and up the other side. At five hundred paces the opposite island would immediately face him. If trouble was waiting there, other noise, the Americans would probably respond with their own, which also could direct him. Even now he was only minutes away. Another kilometre had passed, the fourth. In under the hour he could be over the international line.

He was aware suddenly that there was other noise. Not aircraft noise. A steady rumbling ahead. And dimly through the fog saw the hazy glow of headlights; and in the same moment recalled what the Eskimos had said. There were vehicles on the island. They came out on ice manoeuvres. They had come out for him.

He went flat on the ice immediately. And immediately saw a line of them ahead. In line abreast ahead, not more than a hundred metres ahead. And in the same instant, from the ground, saw that something was happening to the line. The two sets of headlights facing him had stopped and the others were fanning out. From the vehicles facing him lights began to flicker, hazy stars descending in arcs; which after a moment he translated into men with torches. They had jumped out of the vehicles, were strapping on skis.

He was rapidly getting out of his own skis — spreadeagled too obviously on the ice. And also out of his anorak — too visible on it. He swiftly got the white fleece lining uppermost and went flat under it. The men on skis were spacing into a formation. The other vehicles had faded into fog, only the two facing him now visible. And they too were spacing out. The men, the machines, seemed to be placing themselves fifteen metres or so apart. Lining up for a ground sweep. Jesus! He’d been right to drop. A moving figure would soon enough have been seen. He couldn’t outflank vehicles. Half-tracks, he now saw, personnel carriers. But what now?

The line was taking time to assemble. Even above the helicopters he could hear the tinny quack of radio talk.

The men were stamping up and down on their skis. In padded white snow rig, he saw, hooded; automatic weapons slung round their necks. They were beating themselves with gloved hands in the biting cold. With his anorak merely stretched over him he was freezing up himself, the sweat instantly gone.

But the spacing between them, he saw, was very murky. And they would be looking, after all, for a hurrying figure on skis. If he could get them to pass him … He began manoeuvring himself sideways between two of the stamping figures. And had not yet made it when the line stiffened suddenly and moved forward, and he went prone, skis underneath him, anorak drawn over his head.

He was just a hump of ice, he prayed. And they had only now started, not yet accustomed to the task; were seven or eight metres on either side of him.

He heard the rumble of engines, the swish of skis, and held his breath. And they were past. They’d passed. He held it a while longer before daring to get his head up and look back. Yes. Fading into fog. He buckled the skis on, got back in the anorak, and immediately set off, very fast, on the tracks left by the vehicles. And at once stopped. No! His own tracks! They’d spot them. Were certain to — maybe not right away. But soon, not a doubt of it. Would come chasing after him. Vehicles would get to him long before he could reach –

He turned and went back. Went rapidly, in the ski tracks, and in a minute had caught up with them, saw the flickering line of torches, the wide hazy beams of the vehicles. The drivers would be peering ahead. A skier next to a vehicle, immediately next. He came behind the man, careful not to tangle skis, and hooked him at once, one arm round his neck, a glove in his mouth as it opened. The neck he could have broken immediately, but the face as it hinged back was that of a Yakut lad, maybe eighteen, the eyes innocent and astonished.

He caught the boy’s heavy torch, and hit him with it. It struck only the padded hood and, swearing, he left the glove rammed in the mouth, and wrenched the hood back and hit him again, two solid thuds, and had him on the ice. He wrenched the gun off his neck and smashed the stock hard against the boy’s temple. The tunic top was in one piece and he yanked it off him and got it on himself. It was weighted, equipment dangling at the back. He couldn’t do anything about the trousers. He left the trousers, also his own anorak, took his glove, hung the gun around his neck and set off rapidly after the patrol. In a couple of minutes he had reached it and taken up position next to the half-track.

All as before, the line swishing steadily forward, torches pointing ahead. He got the boy’s torch pointing that way.

With gloves on, he couldn’t feel the parts of the little automatic weapon. He’d done a course on it at the camp. He fumbled with it, identified the safety, snicked it off, found the trigger and pulled. A rapid burst spat out — and with immediate effect. The torch nearest in the fog turned towards him and he saw the half-track driver peering sideways out of the window at the white-hooded figure now waving frantically beside him.

He was signalling with the torch, shouting. ‘He’s there! Just turned — going like hell! Going back!’ He put another burst ahead, saw his neighbour do the same, was aware the half-track driver had increased speed, shouting into his radio, and that gunfire was now sounding off along the line.

He let it go and turned and sped back, keeping to the tracks. Fifteen minutes at least, maybe twenty, for them to sort out the confusion, longer still for them to decide what the hell to do about it — also where the missing man had got to.

He came on the man very rapidly, still crumpled on the ice. The slender young face was solemn in sleep, mouth open, breath gently steaming. He wrapped him in the anorak, shoved his head in the fur hat. The boy’s gloves had been half pulled off, and he pulled them on again. Frostbite, hypothermia — he couldn’t do anything about it. I’m sorry, he told the Yakut.

The boy was still attached to his skis, now crossed on the ice — an altogether better pair. He quickly took them off him, with the ski sticks looped round the wrists, and got them on himself. There was a torch lying on the ice — his own, he saw; evidently fallen out when he had left the anorak. Now he switched it on and left it, for the Yakut to be found, and told him again he was sorry, and took off.

It had taken no more than two minutes and now he went fast, on good skis, unworried by the ice pillars, in no doubt where the vehicle tracks were leading; and after another kilometre was aware that the helicopters had gone. He could hear them well behind. They’d been called off, were now giving support to the men hunting him.

Soon he had stopped counting; no longer any point. His paces had greatly lengthened, a thousand of them now obviously much more than a kilometre. And going very much faster. In only minutes the island would be there in front of him. He could almost feel it, the solid mass of it, all his senses alert, all his exhaustion dropping away.

There would be men lined up, he had no doubt. And sensing devices. It was after all the most advanced of the electronic outposts, right on the border. The equipment would mainly face the other way, but the extremities of the place would certainly be covered. It struck him that he wasn’t going to make it out on the ice: no question of simply going round it. He would be located immediately. He would have to get on it, behind the sensors, a thought that lit up in him suddenly like a bonfire.

Which in the same moment took material form immediately over his head. Amid a great whooping of sirens a flare had gone up. It arced obliquely, descending over him, and from a dozen points others instantly arced. The fog all round him became a brilliant aquarium green, shot through suddenly by a blinding narrow-beam searchlight. He skied crazily through it, waving his torch and yelling.

‘Hey, hey! We’re on to him!’ He was panting hard. ‘He’s doubling back there. You got the flares ready?’

‘Flares? What flares?’

Behind the beam, white-hooded figures had materialised, guns at the ready. Several military jeeps were standing by, he saw.

‘Christ, we yelling for them! This man moving fast — already he broke the line once! I tell you, we don’t move it here, we lose him. What’s the cockup with the radio?’

‘Operations! Operations!’ One of them was shouting into a handset. ‘They’re calling for flares out there. They’ve spotted him and they need — What? Wait a minute. Who’s saying this — what mob you from?’ he said.

‘We’re all split up. They send me back — a tracker, I’m to lead a jeep there, with plenty flares for Christ’s sake! Here — I go to Operations myself.’ He blinked around him, dazzled. ‘Where they keep the Operations here?’

While the man shouted into the handset, others were now surrounding the tracker. ‘You one of the new recruits, then?’

‘Sure. Know the country, don’t know too much this army. Where they put the Operations?’

He was already slipping out of his skis. In the many lights that had now come on he saw that all of them had skis strapped to their backs. The whole company was standing on a wide platform, cleared of snow, under the overhang of a cliff. A ramp, evidently for vehicles, led up from the platform, and at either side of it a walkway faded away into the fog.

‘They sent back a tracker!’ The man was still shouting into the handset. ‘Some fuck-up with the R/T, he says … Well, I can’t fix up — Okay, check it out … They’re checking it out. You can’t go up there,’ he said.

‘Jesus Christ — they’ll lose him! Is too slow here. Is slow picking me up, even! How soon you see I’m coming, man?’

‘Corporal — you call me corporal,’ the man said. ‘And the sensors picked you up, animal! They’re heat sensors. What do you understand?’

‘This fucking island I understand — is why they pay me. This fellow get through, you’ll see. I go take a look round the point. I think maybe needs men there − not sensors! When I fire off a few shots you know I beat the sensors, eh? I’m back four, five minutes. For the car and the flares!’

He took off at once — took off at his tracker’s half-trot, and so confidently that they simply watched him. He took off along the left walkway, carrying his skis, and found it sloped upwards a little, and gave it half a minute, and got off it.

He felt over the edge with a ski and found it was a fair drop now. He sat and found he was sitting on the equipment belt. The ski holster was there, and a spare magazine for the gun, and a line and pick, and a hunting knife. He eased himself off them and dropped to the ice, and got into his skis.

He skied out seventy paces and looked back and could see nothing. The sensors had picked him up at roughly two hundred metres. That was the range he had to stay inside. They had seen him go left. Now he went right. He went fast for two hundred paces and decided he had better turn in and keep contact with the island to be sure he wouldn’t overshoot it.

The last twenty paces he took slowly until he could just make out the presence of the massive bulk in the fog. Then he continued alongside it, keeping contact. It took barely three minutes to reach what seemed to be the end. He went in closer, and found that it was. The great hump had turned inwards. He followed its fretted shape round until it turned again and straightened out, and he knew he was on the other side.

Now he took off again, long loping paces, a hundred, two hundred, very fast.

If the rock went a kilometre, another two hundred paces would get him to the middle. But he knew now he wasn’t going there. The other island was opposite — just four kilometres away, with the international line only half that distance. He could go for it immediately — a mile and a quarter! One frantic dash, and he’d be over it. Safe.

Suddenly, without further thought, he did it: left the rock behind him and headed out into the strait.

He had made fifty paces when the sirens went off.

His first thought was that he had set them off.

But almost at once a tremendous whooshing and roaring in the air told him otherwise. The helicopters were back. And this side of the island. Not only helicopters — vehicles, a confused uproar of vehicles, coming from the left and from the right.

But going where? Confused, disorientated, he stopped, trying to make out where.

Several events, at this time, were taking place simultaneously, the details of every one of them changing by the minute.

The general was changing them, in Tchersky.

He sat with two telephones, talking to the island and the airbase. A few minutes before, the hour almost up, he had confirmed his order: all forces to be ready to transfer the search to the other side of the island. Were the vehicles in contact? Yes, in contact. And the helicopters? All in contact.

Then go.

And almost immediately, chaos, confusion, contradiction.

The surface force reported they had sighted and were pursuing a man, who had turned back to the mainland.

The island reported the arrival of a tracker, requesting flares for the pursuing surface force.

The surface force reported they had requested no flares and sent no tracker. But they were missing one man.

Hoarse now, the general rapidly took a grip on the situation. Was the tracker still on the island? Yes, he was there; with a platoon of patrol jeeps waiting on the beach platform below.

Then hold him. Hold him at once. Report back at once.

And at once the report back. The tracker was not now on the beach platform. Two minutes ago he had gone on an urgent mission to inspect the defences at the north point of the island.

The general, his ears singing, absorbed this information; also, on the map, the distance to the international line. The man could be there in minutes. But not in two minutes.

Abandon the search.

This was the first change of plan.

All jeeps at once to the international line. Every available man to go there. The island’s helicopters, the air force helicopters, the surface force — all to proceed there at speed. All personnel to disembark and form a chain, blocking access to the opposite island. The man to be brought down on sight — disabled, legs shot to pieces if necessary — but not killed. Imperative he be taken alive.

Moments later, advised by the island that gunfire was not permitted within 500 metres of the line, the general amended his order.

The force would not now form up on the line. It would form up 250 metres before the line. But firing orders still to stand.

A minute later, on further advice, another change of orders. With all the activity ahead, the man might turn north or south. It would take him longer but still give him time to bypass a static force — the fog was expected to last another hour. Suggest jeeps be detached to cut him off before he could reach the line.

Agreed. Wait till the half-tracks arrived — in minutes now — then detach the jeeps. Catch the man on the ice.

But the man was no longer on the ice.

61

At first the sheer numbers had stunned him. Helicopter after helicopter, a great stream of jeeps, then the half-tracks, all thundering away out into the strait. Sent to chase after him, to pick him up before he could reach the line.

But soon he knew it couldn’t be so. They’d gone too fast − just racing to block the line before he could cross. Once the men had disembarked and the little island was sealed, vehicles would be spared to hunt him — jeeps probably, zigzagging fast on the ice between the islands. He had to get off the ice.

This side of the island was deeply fretted, eroded by tides in the narrow channel. The Eskimos had said that in summer they camped in rocky bays, that seals came up on slabs then. Perhaps there was a place to hide there. He made fast work up the coast, and came on slabs, a great line of them.

They began in a heap at one side of a small inlet, and extended out like a breakwater, huge rocks, mainly flat, all iced. He skied along the line, peering for a cavity. He could see there must be gaps between the rocks, but snow had iced up a continuous wall. There was no way into the wall, and he couldn’t climb it with his skis. He also couldn’t tell how much farther out it went. They could be at the end hunting him at any time.

He skied rapidly back to inspect the inlet, and saw the Eskimos had used it; the beach sloped sharply upwards and bits of their gear still littered the slope. A windlass for hauling boats, its tarpaulin blown open; a few nondescript humps now iced over; an abandoned lantern, hanging in an opening of the cliff face. He went in the opening, found a sizeable cave, and looked swiftly round it with his torch.

There was a fireplace; heavy seal hooks in the roof; a rock bench for handling the carcases. He’d seen this before in the north. Nowhere to hide here. He turned and went out fast, almost at once taking a tumble on the slope as he hit a couple of the humps. He picked himself up, looking at the humps.

Seabirds, frozen. There were four of them, caught by winter. And after the Eskimos had gone. The Eskimos would have taken them for bait. They’d fallen. He looked up the rock face. There would be an eyrie up there. In the torch beam a hollow showed in the pitted face, ten, twelve metres up.

No way up there, with the cave opening in between.

He shone the torch either side of the hollow, and saw there had been a rock fall to the right; a jagged ledge was exposed in the cliff face there. The ledge ran above the first tumbled slabs. From the slabs it looked possible to get to the ledge; and from the ledge, the eyrie.

He went to the slabs, knowing it was a crazy risk to take. But the breakwater effectively stopped him from skiing farther anyway. He rapidly got out of the skis, holstered them on his back, and tackled the slabs.

Icy smooth, no footholds. He reached behind him for the coiled rope in the tunic belt. The plaited nylon was hooked to its little ice pick. He slung the pick, managed at the fourth try and hauled himself up the slab.

High; three metres. From the top he could see the outline of the eyrie. Still seven or eight metres above, and to his left. Hazy in the torch beam but with a long shadow inside.

He looked up at the ledge, and flung the pick — flung it repeatedly until it caught. He tugged hard on it with his full weight: a long, long drop this time. Then he twisted the gun on its strap round to his back, and started up.

The battered rock had footholds, slippery, unreliable, but giving purchase. He walked up the cliff face, hand over hand on the rope, and when his head came level with the ledge felt carefully with his feet for a hold and swung himself up.

He knelt there a moment, released the pick, gathered the rope in his hand and slowly raised himself.

The ledge was glassy with ice, very narrow; no room to turn. He faced into the cliff, and edged sideways along it, watching his feet.

He couldn’t see the eyrie until he was at it. The cliff bulged out slightly and suddenly there was no more ledge.

He stood quite still, his arms on the cliff, and looked sideways at the eyrie. An irregular hole, very jagged; a metre wide, about the same high. It had its own small ledge, slightly below, evidently the perch from which the birds had fallen, and above it another, like an overhanging brow.

He kept his arms on the cliff, extended a foot sideways and lowered it to the perch. The brow above was so slight there was almost nothing to hold on to. He got a gloved hand on the icy rim, steadied himself, got the other foot quickly on the perch and threw himself in. The skis snagged behind him in the opening and he was held for a moment before he wriggled them, and himself, inside and found he was on his knees on a floor.

He stayed there panting for a while. Then he took the gun and the skis off his back, helped himself to one of the Yakut’s cigarettes, and sat and smoked it with his eyes closed.

This was a few minutes after eight in the morning, and he had some thinking to do.

The Greater Diomede island, on its east-facing cliff, is dotted with bird eyries and Porter was in three of them while the fog lasted. The first, above the so-called Seal Causeway, he decided was too obvious a place to hide in, and he didn’t stay long. The second was where he hid what was in the body belt. (A half of it, for one disk was still on him when he was cornered.) The third was where he was brought down.

His account of what happened here is not totally coherent. But he knew that, although he couldn’t see it, a tape recorder was running at the time and that his words, necessarily distorted, would all the same be subjected to careful analysis.

He was in this last place some time after half past nine. (The gilt-wrapped disk, containing the data, he had just hidden. He had got away from it fast; but now he was wondering whether he should bury the silver one too.) The helicopters were then still grounded but he could hear their rotors slowly turning; also the sound of vehicles, less muffled by fog now and evidently patrolling to north and south of the opposite island. From this he knew that the strait was covered for miles and that he had no chance of skiing across.

He also knew that survival on the icy cliff was impossible; that he would be trapped on it when the fog lifted, and that his options were either to give himself up or to be caught.

A jeep had turned up below at this time and he heard the crew get out and search a cave. The man in charge had shouted:

‘Remember, lads, he’s to be taken alive. But put a few in his legs — he’s a wriggly bastard, can still make it, give him half a chance.’

This had given him pause. He was to be taken alive. And he was a wriggly bastard who could still make it.

He wondered.

He had his pick and line. He had his skis, his gun.

A few minutes later he also had a fantastic view.

The breeze, already snatching at the fog, turned suddenly into a blasting wind that blew it away entirely. In minutes the air was crystal clear, and the other island stood immediately before him. It looked no distance at all — a huge skyscraper of rock, laced with lights.

Helicopters were going up and down on it, taking a look at the disturbance before them.

Before them was the disturbance facing him.

He counted sixteen half-tracks; the flickering torches of some scores of men; many jeeps skimming on the ice; and helicopters fluttering, a long line of them, now too beginning to lift off.

He saw three long-bodied ones thundering away, evidently back to the mainland. The smaller ones went blinking up into the sky, to land somewhere above him. The half-tracks and the flickering torches remained.

The place he was in had a low roof and the floor was covered with debris. This slit in the rock — for this was all it was — was four or five metres deep, and wider inside than out, the walls at either side of the opening hollowed in.

From the opening he observed something new happening.

A helicopter had evidently lifted off above, and presently he saw it flittering like a daddy-longlegs along the coast, its searchlight examining the cliff face. As it drew closer he hid himself in the hollow by the opening and stayed there as the eyrie lit up. The searchlight looked in for half a minute, and moved on.

A little later, he saw that two vehicles were following the helicopter on the ice. Some banging had been going on, but it took him time to figure out what it was. One of the cars was a jeep. The other seemed to be a fire-fighting vehicle. It had an articulated ladder, and at each cave where the helicopter had lingered the ladder was raised.

Porter watched as, in the beam of a searchlight, a man went up the ladder, in a gas mask. At the top he flung in what seemed to be a stun-grenade, producing the bang, and shortly afterwards a canister of tear gas — smoke streamed out, anyway. Then the man paused, head well down, before suddenly rushing the place; with a sharp rat-tat, and another pause, before he reappeared and came down the ladder.

Porter positioned himself in his own eyrie to be nearer fresh air, prepared to take a deep breath and hold it. He knew he could hold it for two minutes. The man hadn’t taken as long as two minutes.

He was waiting there when it happened. He saw the walls turning milky white, heard the scrape of the ladder and the man coming up. He gave it ten seconds, filled his lungs, and actually saw the stun-grenade come arcing in. It struck the low roof, bounced sharply on to his chest and exploded in his face.

For some moments, the flash was the last thing he saw. It blinded, deafened, almost paralysed him.

He still hung on to his breath.

The second canister he didn’t see or hear. He knew it was there by the stinging of his lips and a prickling round the eyes. He was aware, through the smoke, of a bulky presence at the opening, a pig’s snout emerging there. He smashed the man’s head with his gun and yanked him swiftly in; remembering to rap off a quick burst at the roof. He had the gas mask off in seconds and put it on himself, exhaling and inhaling. He still could hear nothing at all. He waited some moments more, breathing quickly in the gas mask, and went out backwards.

It was the trousers (this he did not learn) that gave him away. He didn’t hear the order to face around, didn’t even hear the warning burst chattering round his head; was aware only of the solid jolt in his right leg, that he no longer had the use of the leg and was tumbling off the ladder.

By this time he had less than two metres to fall and he landed in a heap, but with the gun in his hands. He got off a short burst with it, and saw the men standing there take cover.

In the brilliant beam he had almost a flashlight picture: of the fire vehicle’s driver staring out of the window; of the man at the ladder mechanism gaping at him; of the jeep, its offside doors standing open.

Two armed men had been positioned by the jeep, both now down on the ice and peering at him from underneath the car. One was yelling at him, he could see the mouth going but couldn’t hear what it said. The man had his gun levelled, so Porter shot him and saw the man punched back flat on the ice; and in another soundless moment saw the other man wriggling his gun out from underneath, and he put a burst into him too.

The driver of the jeep was still in it; he now saw his legs emerging. He put two single shots near them, tore the gas mask off and yelled, ‘Stay where you are! Get back in!’ He could just, now, above the ringing in his ears, hear his own voice, and he saw the legs go back in.

He crawled to the offside door, poked the gun in, and kept it on the man while he pulled himself in.

‘Don’t shoot me,’ the man said.

He was very frightened.

‘Just drive.’ He had the gun at the man’s chin.

‘Drive where?’

‘To the line — get going!’

‘We can’t make it. They’ll blow us to pieces!’

‘I’ll blow you to fucking pieces!’

He fired under the man’s chin, shattering the window.

The man was trembling very badly, but he put the car in gear, and moved, bumping over something.

He said shakily, ‘Give yourself up — they won’t kill you. There’s orders not to kill you. We can never make this.’

This seemed very likely. From nowhere jeeps had come spinning — from the left, from the right.

‘Go faster!’

‘We’re going as fast as we can.’

Maybe they were. He wasn’t seeing too well. When he looked ahead his left eye couldn’t see the man beside him. (This was because his left eye was in the eyrie, blown out by the stun-grenade.) The other jeeps were not going any faster: they had come out fast, trying to cut them off, but seemed now only able to keep pace and automatic fire was coming from them. He understood they were not trying to hit him but to immobilise the car. The firing was at the engine, at the wheels.

And some of the half-tracks ahead, he saw, were moving. Their headlights were on and their searchlights now came blindingly on. The ones that weren’t moving had also begun firing; puffs of smoke came from them, and a few metres ahead the ice began to erupt: small grenades, propelled grenades — again intended evidently just to stop the car.

The effect of the grenades was to detach the jeeps closest to him, which turned rapidly aside — giving them, so it seemed, a final lucky burst, for the car jerked suddenly and slewed, the driver wrestling with the wheel as they tilted and slithered round in a complete half-circle.

‘We’re hit, they’ve got us — give it up now!’

‘Keep going!’ His balance, his spatial sense had gone; couldn’t tell which side was down. ‘Where are we hit?’

‘Your side — we’re all down there. See it!’

He took a look, and saw they were down. ‘Give it left wheel,’ he said, and turned back and saw the man was no longer at the wheel. He was no longer in the car. His door was open and he had flung himself out.

‘Jesus Christ!’ The back doors too were open, and now banging to and fro as a jeep struck them. He got his gun up and put a burst in the jeep’s windshield. The magazine ran out with this short burst and he levered himself, in great pain, behind the wheel. His right knee was now in torment, no movement in the leg. He carried the leg over the seat and got his other foot down.

The car hadn’t stalled, was still slowly circling, in first gear. He stepped on the accelerator, shuffled his foot to change gear and straightened out. Two more jeeps had slammed into him and his lights had been shot out. But there was light enough, he didn’t need lights; and in the frantic minutes had barely even noticed the collisions.

One wheel was dragging in the soft surface ice, and the steering was heavy. He had little speed and now was being banged again and again by the jeeps. In the brief interval when he’d appeared to stop, the RPG firing had ceased and the jeeps had closed in. But now, straightened out and on track again, he saw the grenades restarting, the jeeps again sheering away.

The moving half-tracks had come closer, their searchlights dazzling him. He saw the intention was to ram him, to catch him between two of them. He pressed the pedal to the floor, squeezed the last bit of speed and found, with the motion, the wheel dragging less, the steering coming lighter. He didn’t turn away, went directly at the converging lights, waited till he was almost at them, and spun the wheel. But now, hammer blows coming from his left eye, his distance was all out, and he was jolted out of his seat as he hit the rear end of one. He clutched on to the wheel as the car lurched left, right, skittering on the ice.

His foot had come off the pedal, and he found it again, hunching back in the seat. Firing had started behind him, a hail of it hitting the rear end, low down. And ahead now, perhaps no more than two hundred metres, the stationary half-tracks were puffing at him, the ice spuming up. But they were far apart, he saw, a gulf apart, and the line of torches in between was wavering. They could not fire at him, not in the car, could only try to stop the car.

He aimed at the gap between two half-tracks, saw the men on the ice there scattering, turning carefully to fire — and he was through. But Jesus, Jesus — caught once more! Now, at the last, another wheel. The car dragged, slithered. He was through the waiting line, but crippled, two tyres at least gone. And the half-track engines were now roaring into life behind him; an iron voice rasping over a bullhorn there.

‘Stop! Stop while you can! You’ll be blown off the ice!’

He kept going: swearing, coaxing, willing the thing to move. He was moving, moving, six or seven miles an hour maybe, the wheels churning, moving only when zigzagged. His eye, his knee were now alight with white fire — the ice also alight, lit up, spuming with small geysers popping in front of him.

Distantly now there were other lights, racing about. The American side, surely not far now. With nothing following him — and he was sure nothing was or it would easily have overtaken him — he thought he must now be over the international line.

[In fact he was not yet over it. The vehicles behind had been ordered to remain 250 metres from the line, and this they did; a fact confirmed by watching American helicopters. But they had also been ordered to continue firing up to it, and this too they did; the subject of later official complaint.]

For the men on the half-tracks the job was now very difficult. Even at one hundred metres RPGs could not hit a target with any great accuracy. And this target, a man in a vehicle, was not to be hit — at least not with a grenade — but only halted. The only way to halt him now was to hit his engine. If this could be achieved before he reached the line, men could go out on skis and get him. Probably at this time some small mortars were used.

The geysers that had been popping in front of the slowly zigzagging vehicle now came closer; and with his zigzag now established and predictable, they scored, and a cheer went up.

‘Hit! Stopped him! Okay, boys, go out there.’

The boys went out there, but to their consternation the target, though stopped, did not remain stopped.

The thing had landed with a whoosh, a metallic clang and a cascade of glass. The clang was the ripped-apart hood of the jeep, sections of which, and of the grenade, came through the shattered windshield and into Porter. The furnace in his head roared briefly and went out, leaving him in the dark. It had also bounced his foot off the pedal, stopping the car.

Still in the dark, he started the stalled engine again, twisting the wheel this way and that, and rocking the car in and out of reverse, which got it sluggishly crawling again.

The blast seemed to have stunned him completely. He couldn’t see anything. And the shock was making him pant. The glass had exploded in his face and must have cut his mouth. He tasted blood there. The panting he recognised after a minute to be not panting but something like choking. This nightmare — quite a familiar one — he had often had. Driving a car, choking, and unable to see where he was going. He knew he must be going right, that he hadn’t turned completely. When the car stuck and churned he wriggled the wheel and got it moving again, very slowly, a crippled insect, stumbling, stopping, wriggling on.

The US aircraft watching from above stated that it took him eight minutes and that he halted when he was told to.

A loudhailer told him to, in English, and presently some closer voices were bawling at him to open the door and step out with his arms raised. He opened the door but didn’t manage the arms or even the step, flopping out like a bundle on the ice. Many big amplified voices were sounding off all round him, and from the island itself, and among them he picked out, weirdly, the mellifluous one of Bing Crosby, hoping that his days would be merry and bright, and all his Christmases white.

62

The medical facilities on the island were found to be not adequate for Porter’s injuries and a helicopter was readied to take him 120 miles down the Alaskan coast to Nome. He was fully conscious and urgently demanding a tape recorder; which the radio room made available to him, together with a throat microphone — this last a requirement of the military surgeon who didn’t want him shouting over the engine.

At Nome, the facilities were also found to be insufficient and he was jetted another 600 miles south to Anchorage. Here in the early afternoon of 25 December he was admitted to the Providence Hospital.

Because of the festivities only a skeleton staff was on duty at the hospital, but Nome had informed them of the case and specialists had already been contacted.

The specialists drove in, and they agreed that immediate surgery was needed. The patient was still conscious but now in great difficulties. Apart from possible neurological complications, the more obvious damage was very extensive. One eye was missing, he was blind in the other, had two shattered legs, and severe injuries to most of his upper body.

In stripping him for examination, the staff had found a body belt which he refused to give up. During the X-rays he insisted on holding it himself under a protective lead apron. The tape recorder had been taken from him (the tape, after being turned for him on the aircraft, had now run out), but he insisted that he had to give some immediate instructions about it to a man in Washington.

This man could not be reached, but at a redirected number somebody promised that he would call in as soon as possible. He had still not called in when Porter, now speechless and unmoving, had to be taken down to the operating theatre. By then, however, he had made his instructions understood: the belt and the tape were to be locked in the hospital’s safe, and if he was incapable of speech for any length of time after the operation the man from Washington had to hear the tape before touching the body belt.

These instructions were observed: the belt and the tape went into a safe and Porter himself to surgery.

The man in Washington was his CIA escort Walters, with whom he had established, at the ‘camp’, a fair working relationship. Walters was not, at this time, in Washington but in Seattle, where he was spending Christmas with his in-laws. Seattle, though well north — the most northerly town of the United States proper — was still 1500 miles south of Anchorage.

Transport was made available, his journey notified, and he arrived at the Providence at nine o’clock. Porter was by then long out of the operating theatre, but not expected to live. His visitor identified himself, had his identification confirmed, and signed for the tape and the body belt. He had been keeping contact with Langley and was now instructed to go there at once. Langley was another 2500 miles. But by lunch time next day, which was Boxing Day, the material he brought with him had been duly processed. By then, however, the Providence’s morgue had received its expected corpse.

The voice on the tape was a husky whisper, not always understandable, but quite understandable about the body belt.

Inside the belt was a pouch, and in the pouch a foil-sealed case.

When manipulated in a vessel of liquid hydrogen the case sprang easily open and popped out its disk. The disk was four centimetres in diameter, and the material on it highly condensed. The technicians soon unravelled the protocol and transferred the contents to a screen.

The information on the disk was known to be addressed personally, but even so the directness of the opening caused surprise as the lines began streaking, one after the other, across the screen.

‘ How long, dear friend — how long? I await you with eagerness … ’