Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

SEVENTEEN

Carrie judged the gaunt, skeletal man vomiting bile on the floor of the gymnasium to be about forty. He had the sunken eyes of an addict. His name was Tommy Tulamuk, and she suspected a mix of alcohol and a synthetic marijuana drug, maybe even heroin. He was just back from Teller, a settlement on the Alaskan mainland. He shivered as palpitations passed through him. He had a fever and stared at Carrie confused. Cold turkey was a horrible state for any human being. She would ask the Russians for methadone, or if not that, morphine.

She turned him over, bending his legs, and laid a plastic sheet under his mouth. ‘Stay here. You’re with friends,’ she said, looking around for the English-speaking Colonel Yumatov. ‘Call me Ruslan,’ he had said after Rake left, oozing charm, but with one of those expressions that could switch between kindness and anger in moments.

Soon, the medical checks would be finished and then this would be exposed as the hostage situation that it really was. The cover of health care would become thinner and thinner minute by minute. The gymnasium was a cocoon. The only windows were too high to see out of. Twice she had heard jet fighters. There hadn’t been a helicopter for almost an hour. Restlessness was creeping through. But, more than that, over the past few minutes a fresh tension had taken hold among the soldiers and medics.

In the sand wars, as her colleagues called the Middle East conflicts, she had learned how to read soldiers’ faces. Something bad had happened. A soldier opened the double doors at the end of the gymnasium. Yumatov walked in, talking on the phone. He ended the call and beckoned Carrie to come over.

‘We need morphine over there,’ she said, pointing to the man curled up on the floor. ‘He’s on narcotic withdrawal.’

Yumatov told a paramedic to handle it and looked at Carrie, his expression angry at first, then it became quizzical and confused. ‘What is it, Colonel?’ she asked amicably, smoothing down her smock, pushing hard on the material as she realized it must be something to do with Rake. Had he tried to escape as she had asked? Was he captured or dead?

‘Is it Rake?’ she stammered as the thoughts crowded in on her, realizing, too late, that she was using his nickname.

She could tell because of the softening of Yumatov’s expression. ‘How well do you know him?’ he asked.

‘He’s a colleague.’

‘Are you lovers?’

‘Just tell me if he’s OK.’

A coldness entered his gaze. ‘Yes and no.’ He turned curtly and walked down the two flights of steps towards the main entrance. Two soldiers took her arms and steered her to follow. She began shaking them off, but their hold was locked. At the school entrance, a dozen troops checked weapons and spoke on radios, tough men about to go out. Off the entrance was the small dining room with three gray steel trestle tables and benches where they had waited with Akna. Sitting on a bench at the middle table was a seven- or eight-year-old boy in a green jacket smeared with dirt from the ice. His eyes were fixed on a school poster about walruses and marine life. He kept still, arms folded, as if in a trance. He had a bruise on his right cheek and a fresh cut on the knuckles of his left hand.

‘Do you know him?’ asked Yumatov.

‘I don’t. No.’ Carrie started to move forward to treat him. Soldiers pulled her back. The boy’s eyes were like misted glass, hiding God knows what behind.

‘He’s traumatized because of what he saw,’ said Yumatov. ‘His name is Timothy. Everyone calls him Timo. We think he’s the brother of the pregnant girl, Akna.’

Carrie impatiently ripped her arms out of the soldiers’ grip. On a signal from Yumatov, they allowed her. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s happened, Colonel?’ she demanded.

‘Why don’t you tell me about Captain Ozenna?’

Carrie bristled. ‘When foreign soldiers mix with civilians you get trouble. You’re smart enough to know that.’

‘There’s something you need to see.’ Yumatov turned away towards a stainless-steel counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen, where there was a gas stove and in a corridor beyond that freezers and cupboards. A green canvas tarpaulin was spread over the large workbench. Yumatov peeled it back to show the face of a dead soldier. He looked so young. There was blood in his white blond hair and bruising around his eyes. The nose had been badly fractured and the head, although adjusted, was slightly skewed to one side. It looked like a broken neck.

‘His name was Private Boris Syanko, aged eighteen, from a small place called Kiya up on the White Sea. We’ll make him look better before we send the body back to the family.’ A soldier handed Yumatov a small red leather pouch. He pulled out photographs of children, snow, dogs, and finally a portrait of the whole big family, Syanko in the middle. He looked like the youngest. ‘He was a kid,’ Yumatov went on. ‘A conscript. Never wanted to be a soldier. But he turned into one of our most promising. That’s how it often works. I blame myself. I should never have put him with a monster like Ozenna.’

Carrie took the photograph, looked at it quickly. How could Rake have been responsible for such a brutal murder? A wave of emptiness washed through her. She knew his background as a soldier, knew he could kill. But it was hard to accept that he was behind the death of this boy. She handed the picture back.

Yumatov’s voice became steel. ‘Your fiancé murdered this young man in cold blood. See the nose. He used a technique of pushing the heel of the hand up against the nose so that splinters from the cartilage embed in the brain. It is cruel and unnecessary. He did that, broke his neck, and threw him down the trash chute.’

‘There was another soldier. There were two of them.’ Carrie knew she sounded desperate, the innocent clinging on to a belief that the bad cannot be true.

‘Yes. Ozenna stabbed him to death. He shot dead another of my men on guard duty outside.’ He put his hand on Timo’s shoulder. ‘We think he did that in front of this little boy, which is why he is so quiet.’

Timo didn’t move. He didn’t utter a word. He kept his gaze fixed, a feral look, like a waiting wolf.

‘The boy’s distressed,’ said Yumatov. ‘No child should witness what he did. Come. I’ll show you myself.’ He led her through the entrance hall to a small office room at the foot of a flight of stairs. A soldier stepped next to her, carrying her cold-weather gear.

‘And take a look at this, Dr Walker,’ said Yumatov. On a wall television, an American news channel showed a blackened building, its windows blown out, police and flashing ambulance lights outside. ‘The chairman of your Central Bank has been assassinated in a terrorist bombing in Washington, DC. Seven others are dead. They’re blaming Russia, saying the chairman of our own Central Bank was visiting the building just hours before.’

Carrie had seen many bomb-blasted buildings and it took a moment to grasp that she was looking at the center of Washington, DC. She took it in, but managed to show no reaction of horror to Yumatov. ‘Looks like this is getting bigger than both of us, Colonel,’ she said, pulling out the office chair. She sat down to lace up her boots.

Yumatov took a stool next to her. ‘I don’t know what this killer Rake told you about who he is. But now you’ve seen his work.’

Carrie finished lacing her boots and put on her jacket. Yumatov muted the television sound, zipped up his jacket, and fastened its belt. He tried again to break Carrie’s resolve. ‘You are right. You and I are very small in all this. Something big is happening and we are part of it and we can’t run away. We must help each other.’

Carrie didn’t waver. First, she’d faced horror, now his smarmy manner was beginning to piss her off. ‘If you want us to help, Colonel, why don’t you and your soldiers leave this island?’

‘You’re smarter than that. Another colonel would take my place and I would be put out to beg on the streets, or shot.’ He pulled his hood over his head and the protective mask over his face. She did the same. ‘Be careful out there. The weather has turned for the worse.’ He glanced back at his men. ‘Bring the boy.’

The pressure and energy of the wind hit as soon as she stepped outside. Each gust threatened her balance. Yumatov moved to take her arm to steady her. She shook him off. He led them up the walkway. The mist was erratic. One moment the village was moonlit. The next, she could barely see in front of her.

A soldier’s flashlight lit up a green hut with a sign on the wall that read Alaska Army National Guard. They went inside. Immediately, there was quiet from the weather. Timo came in with a short wiry man in a different type of uniform. The Russian soldiers were in military green. This man was in white and when he took off his mask she saw he was an Eskimo. He spoke gently to Timo. Yumatov snapped on a flashlight which showed two bodies lying uncovered, as if they had just been dragged in.

‘The one on the left is Sergeant Matvey Golov,’ he said. ‘Your fiancé murdered him by stabbing him in the neck. Then he stabbed him again through the eye.’ He turned the corpse’s head to show congealed blood around the right eye. ‘The other one is Corporal Adam Razin, shot in the neck.’

He shone the beam straight at Carrie, making her squint. ‘Ozenna used your phone, Carrie. We traced it to you.’ Yumatov recited the Brooklyn number with the 718 prefix. ‘He sent a message to a number that we have traced to a Mrs Stephanie Lucas, British Ambassador to the United States. Before that, she was ambassador to Moscow.’

The oppression of a surveillance state closed in on Carrie. Russian security would have tracked her visits to Moscow. She had talked on medical panels there. They might even have her night on the town with Stephanie. There was no point in not telling Yumatov. ‘I gave the phone to Captain Ozenna.’

Yumatov dropped the flashlight beam, then brought it straight back again into her eyes. ‘You need to help me bring your lover in, to stop things getting worse.’

‘Then you go find him,’ Carrie said calmly, keeping her rage in check.

Yumatov’s tone steeled with anger. ‘He committed murder in front of a seven-year-old boy. You cannot love this man. For God’s sake, Dr Walker, help me before he kills more people.’

‘Don’t sound so lame, Colonel. Rake’s a soldier and that’s what soldiers do: kill people.’

Real fury flickered across Yumatov’s face. Carrie’s refusal would be putting his job and the comfortable lives of his wife and young children at risk. Soldiers tried to take her arms, but Carrie ripped herself free and quickly put on her mask and hood before she was led outside into a curtain of cold. It was now so clear she could see the hillside and flashing red lamps on top. A soldier handed Yumatov a microphone. He tapped it. A clicking sound came from public address speakers placed around the village.

‘Captain Raymond Ozenna, Rake, this is Colonel Ruslan Yumatov.’ His voice was crisp and firm. ‘You need to give yourself in. You will be treated fairly, according to law.’

The wind had gone. They could hear the hum of the generator and a Russian helicopter in the distance. Yumatov let the microphone dangle, then lifted it again and said, ‘I understand you won’t listen to me, Rake. But Carrie is here, and she will speak to you.’

He held out the microphone to her. Carrie didn’t move.