Kolymsky Heights

EPILOGUE

The man who had been awaited with eagerness was given no name at the inquest held at Anchorage.

The medical witnesses said he had died of multiple injuries, and the military ones that he had sustained them in a vehicle that had halted, damaged, on the sea ice of north Alaska.

He had entered US territory from the Russian side of the border, perhaps having strayed there in fog. He had evidently been caught in crossfire during a military exercise — at present the subject of official complaint. For the exercise had taken place within 500 metres of the international line, and gunfire within 250 metres of it: a clear violation of treaties.

The man was non-caucasian. He had carried no identification and had given none. The coroner found he had been unlawfully killed, and ordered the body held until its identity was known and culpability for the death established.

The inquest was fully reported in the town’s two papers, the Anchorage Times and the Daily News.

In Irkutsk the general read these reports and added them to his own for a tribunal he would shortly be attending. The Americans, he had been informed, would be producing clear and certifiable photographs of the violation. A fig for the Americans! His only regret was that he was unable to produce their agent — a counter-violation. But the man had got away, if only to die. He read through the evidence of the civilian surgeons again, and decided there was no doubt about that. He was dead. And nothing had come of his mission.

The fact of the mission was very amply confirmed, however (evidence from Batumi, from Ponomarenko, from the many forged papers). And that nothing had come of it was equally plain. Major Militsky, the guards, the Evenks — the testimony of all of them showed that. It was impossible for the man to have made contact with anybody on the mountain. And obviously he had never intended to. A reconnaissance only.

How he had arrived in the Kolymsky region was a problem, and how he had left it was another; as yet unresolved. But the action at the strait (bearing in mind the high security issue involved) was unquestionably justified. The object was to catch the man, discover who had sent him — and how. Unfortunately it had not been achieved. But the next best thing had. Meanwhile, inquiries were still continuing.

At Green Cape many inquiries were continuing.

Ponomarenko turned up and was soon appearing about town, with a variety of explanations. As was Lydia Yakovlevna, with a black eye.

At the Tchersky Transport Company the inquiry into missing parts continued for weeks, ending with a new set of rules for the disposal of dismantled vehicles. Too many of them had been found about the works, and the removal of parts without signed authority was now strictly forbidden.

In these weeks Vassili relaxed and his wife also relaxed, for she knew he was no longer worried. He whistled a bit, and winked, and she thought he was himself again. And this was true, for he was. Some small problems still lay ahead, relating to his deficit book, but these were familiar and unimportant ones, very minor. The one that had darkened him had gone. For though the Chukchee had used him, he had not let him down, and his faith in the man was restored.

At Murmansk there was the question of a missing seaman.

Two Norwegians, who had been in transit with him at the International Seamen’s Hostel, thought he had gone to the red light district. A trawl of the girls there turned up nothing; and the arrival of his ship, some days later, produced no other evidence.

The man had not left with the ship, and he couldn’t have left any other way, for his passport, his papers, his belongings, all were still at the hostel. These the police retained for three months in case he turned up floating in a dock. But when he didn’t (and in the current crime wave there had been many permanent disappearances) marine agents were advised that his possessions could be sent, not at Murmansk’s expense, to the ship’s owners at Nagasaki.

At Nagasaki the Suzaku Maru, after circumnavigating the globe, was again in dock.

She had arrived, like her sister ship of the preceding year, on Christmas Day — at roughly the time that Porter had crossed the Bering Strait. At various points on his voyage home the captain had learned he would be facing a Board of Inquiry relating to some events at Otaru. These events he and the mate now had in good order, and the two officers appeared before the Board and explained them.

Seaman Ushiba’s illness had seemed just serious enough for an extra hand to be shipped in order to spare the patient deck duties. This the captain had set in hand, as Otaru radio station could confirm. At Otaru, Ushiba’s condition had necessitated sedation and prompt medical care, and he had ordered an ambulance. Adverse weather reports had also impelled him to seek an early departure, forgoing a lucrative cargo of tuna — a commercial loss but necessary for the good of the ship and the voyage.

When, in the Arctic, the new hand too had become ill, he had stopped off the mouth of the Kolyma for medical assistance. The man had been removed to hospital, the ship allowed to proceed, and at Murmansk he had signed bills for the man’s expenses. This was all he knew. He had acted throughout with prudence and good sense. He hoped the Board would recognise it.

This the Board did, and another inquiry was completed.

With all his bills signed, the Korean seaman was of no further interest to Tchersky Health Authority. However, a note at last arrived from Murmansk acknowledging receipt of his discharge from the Kolymsky region. It pointed out that since no application had yet been made for the man to board a ship, it was presumed other arrangements had been made and he had flown home. If this was the case Murmansk had no need to hold his papers and, unless specifically requested, would not do so.

At the medical centre this bureaucratic confusion caused no surprise. But since the man was unlikely to worry them again, it was decided his papers need not clutter up Tchersky’s either, and they were destroyed.

No record now remained in the Kolymsky region of a sullen Korean seaman, nor any connection, if there had ever been one, with a cheerful Chukchee who had driven to Tcherny Vodi.

At Tcherny Vodi the new year was sombre.

Before January was out a small coffin was taken for cremation (the last of the ape programme); and weeks later a larger one. The Administrator of the Buro was advised that the Director’s personal effects and his ashes need not be sent, for there was no one to send them to. Under a new Director the programme would resume, for Moscow still held all records.

In Oxford, Lazenby, without knowledge either of the Korean seaman or the Chukchee driver, was thinking of a third character.

His mind had been led in that direction by Miss Sonntag, whose farewell party he had just attended. Her departure had been planned for June (for she was now nearing sixty-five) and a successor already chosen. But her sister Sonya had fallen ill and needed attention, and now, after Easter, she would not be returning.

At the party they had reminisced a little and she had reminded him, slightly flushed over her second glass of sherry, of the day they had rummaged together through a bin and found only cigarette papers.

He thought of these papers on his solitary walk home and of what had come of them; and of an interrupted fishing trip on the Spey and what had come of that. A grotesque few days … and a grotesque individual met in the course of them. He remembered very little of him. An austere staring face; a face on a totem pole. As at that village. The one with the odd name — what was it now …?

Kispiox; Easter.

And for Jean-Baptiste Porteur, one further journey.

Anchorage had released the body two months before, with the coroner’s verdict amended from ‘unlawful killing’ to ‘death by misadventure’. For a misadventure it was. The deceased had strayed in fog, and in the same fog units involved in a military exercise had also strayed.

The Russians had made handsome apology, and offered handsome amends, with only a simple condition. No compensation could be paid, naturally, until the identity of the deceased had been discovered. But the identity of the deceased had not been discovered …

For the journey to Kispiox, Walters had been in attendance. He had flown with his burden to Hazelton, in the specially-adapted plane, and then had sat silently in the long, sombre vehicle on the slow drive to Kispiox. There he remained for some hours before returning to Langley, where he discussed the matter with the keeper of Lives.

‘Well,’ W. Murray Hendricks said, gazing down at the file before him, ‘it looks to me as if we got away with it.’

‘I’m sure we did,’ Walters said. ‘Nobody special was there, and nobody has been there. No visitors of any kind. They’re in the dark — totally.’

Two months before, at the funeral in Anchorage, special visitors had been present, visitors from the Russian consulate, to convey their government’s regret at the sad accident — and to examine the other mourners. But apart from the grave diggers and a Unitarian minister there had been no other mourners, only two reporters to record the burial of the unknown man; and Walters, watching from a window above the chapel.

‘How is he now?’ asked Hendricks.

‘Coming along. You can’t see a lot of change.’

‘He’s surely changed since you saw him at Anchorage!’

‘Oh, since Anchorage —’ When Walters had seen him at Anchorage — a glimpse only in the private intensive care room — Porter had been connected up to machines and swathed from head to foot in bandages. Walters had not, then, flown directly to Anchorage but to Elmendorf Air Force Base, a few miles away. The air base also had a hospital − without the full surgical facilities of the Providence but with some other facilities, less orthodox. A corpse had been flown in there, of another noncaucasian male, unknown, unclaimed, a road accident victim; a boon for Langley. For it had been decided that Porter’s body, dead or alive, should not remain in civilian jurisdiction, but be removed to a more secure kind. From Elmendorf medical personnel had visited to examine the patient, and the order of his wrappings.

The switch had been arranged that same night; during a fire alarm that had also been arranged. The new shift, of night staff and night physician, had not been surprised at the brain death shown on the monitors, and no autopsy had been required for the bandaged man — only his removal to the hospital’s morgue, where he remained for two months until the coroner’s final release. But the man in the morgue, so unceremoniously buried, was not Porter. Porter himself had been swiftly transported, doctors in attendance, to the air base, where he stayed on a life support machine until he could be flown farther south, to another military hospital, of Langley’s nomination.

‘Can he receive proper care up in that Indian village?’ Hendricks asked.

‘All he needs. There’s a health service in Kispiox, and district visitors. It’s what he wanted − he’s sick of hospitals. They’ve got some sight back in that right eye and it’s supposed to improve, though he’s got it covered now. His legs are wired up and there’s a lot of new parts in his body. He’ll be in that chair for some time. But he still has a lung — and a sense of humour. He calls himself bionic man.’

‘He’s talking now, is he?’

‘Not really — not yet. He can write a bit, but of course he can’t see and it’s just a scrawl. There was a big stack of mail for him there. The postmaster will be answering for him — I told him what to write.’

The letters were from colleagues and students at McGill and Victoria. Both universities had been informed of the accident — of the nonstop truck that had hit him as he stepped out of Quebec woods. From both establishments he was now on sick leave.

‘Another thing,’ Walters said. ‘I saw his mother up there. A strange old woman — wailing. She said she’d warned him years ago against going to college — that though he’d bring light to the world, he’d the in the dark, and it would all end in tears.’

‘Well. He didn’t die,’ Hendricks said. ‘And as yet it hasn’t ended — in tears or otherwise.’

‘The light, though … A strange remark, wasn’t it?’

‘Sure. And about that she could be right.’

‘Was it any use, that disk of his?’

‘Apparently. Harmonics theory is brand new. And fibre optics is an advancing field. The Russians always led in those fields — very unconventional, their science. It’s possible to make a start, even with what he brought. A cure for blindness … We certainly never foresaw this. It wasn’t in vain, you know, his journey.’

‘Did anything new come up on the eyrie?’

‘It isn’t there.’

In the spring gales many of the eyries were no longer there on the east-facing cliff of Greater Diomede island. There had been landfalls, erosion, the usual seasonal changes on this heap of granite. But the position of Porter’s was well-marked: a clear fix had been taken of its location. Whether the eyrie remained or not, the data disk would remain, deep in the cliffs back wall, secure in its crevice; perfectly recoverable when time and chance offered. On the tape, Porter had been quite clear on that.

It was not the only thing he had been clear on. He had been concerned about an addition he wanted made to a forthcoming book. It had been edited for him by a young woman in Prince George. He had spelt out the addition and Walters had passed it on. This he mentioned now.

‘That other young woman, eh?’ Hendricks smiled. ‘Well, he had no shortage of them. He was very attractive to women. He was married to an Indian girl once, you know — she was blind.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Walters said, staring. ‘I didn’t know that at all. We were together for weeks in camp, and talked a lot. I never understood that.’

‘No. Well. There’s a lot not understood about him. I doubt if anybody understood him,’ Hendricks said, and closed the file. ‘He had no real attachments, you know,’

But there had been an attachment.

Medical Officer Komarova was now sick of the Kolymsky region.

From the Chief of Militia she heard that the villain was likely dead. Not certain — Irkutsk hadn’t yet deigned to tell him — but there were rumours, and it was likely.

Through the winter she had observed her mother failing. And from the Evenks she knew that Tcherny Vodi’s Director (so a grieving Stepanka said) had failed; her beloved Misha-Bisha. Soon only unhappy memories would remain in this place, and she thought it well to look for another.

In June, barely spring at Tchersky, she flew west and found summer. The Karelskaya region needed a medical officer, district of Lake Ladoga; interview St Petersburg. She had trained in Petersburg, knew the remote area where services were required. It had many attractions, chief among them distance — 6000 kilometres of distance — from the Kolymsky region.

A room had been booked for her, and in it she took out her ring. She hadn’t worn it in Tchersky, and now she examined it again.

As our love the circle has no end …

She tried it on her third finger but it was too small and she slipped it on the little one and slept with it.

In the morning she was out early, before seven, restless in the big city. Her interview wasn’t until eleven, and she walked for hours.

In the Nevsky Prospekt, still only a quarter past ten, she looked, into a bookshop and wandered round it and was in the foreign section; and suddenly, almost fainting, she saw him. Saw his face. On the back of a book. She picked it up.

J-B PORTER. The Inuit: Life & Legend.

The book was new, there were three copies, face down, somewhat dusty from unpacking, and an irritable assistant snatched the one from her hand, and pencilled a price inside, and in the other two, and wiped them, and left them right way up.

There was nowhere to sit and she could hardly stand. She leaned against a wall and looked at the book again. The flyleaf said it was the author’s latest and most significant contribution to a field already illuminated by his powerful …

The English words blurred before her eyes but she read on.

In his completion of earlier studies Dr Porter had provided the definitive account … his text supplying in particular all known versions of the reverse-narrative technique of this supposedly unsophisticated people …

And not only the text, she saw, turning a page. There was a one-line dedication: To ahsib ahsim & aynap aynat.

She stopped twisting her ring and wiped her eyes, and tried it again. Right to left. Yes. Yes. But the price of the book, rouble-pencilled, was astronomically beyond her and she left, stumbling out into daylight.

And three months later, her mother at last laid to rest in the small cemetery at Panarovka, she left the Kolymsky region for good; her new posting noted by all relevant medical authorities; and also by Langley.

Three months more, settled but melancholy in the Karelskaya region, she returned one day from a trip, and looked briefly through the mail that lay open on her desk. One envelope was not opened, and she paused over it. A long business envelope, the address handwritten. And unopened, evidently, because it was marked Private. The postmark read St Petersburg. She knew few people in Petersburg, and didn’t recognise this hand at all. She opened the envelope, and at first could make no sense of the contents. A slim sheaf, bearing the logo Aeroflot. A flight ticket. She had booked no flight ticket. A mistake, obviously. But stapled to the cover of the ticket, an immigration department slip; and on the slip her name and passport number, all correct. Inside, the ticket was undated, an open flight: the destination, Montreal. No note came with the ticket, no explanation at all. She opened the envelope wider, and at the bottom saw it, a tiny slip of cigarette paper. A single line of writing was on it, somewhat irregular, but the Russian quite legible: As our love the circle has no end.

All year, with its many losses, she had remained on the whole dry-eyed. But now, the slip of paper shaking in her hand, she stared about her and found her face in a wall mirror, and saw it begin to disintegrate there. For now they came. In the end, tears. In such streams, such floods, that it was hard to tell, in the distorted image, if the face was laughing or crying; and to the assistant who hurried into the room, alarmed at the noise, it seemed, weirdly, that the medical officer was doing both.