Honaker wasn’t a happy camper, but he could see that nobody was going anywhere without Ramsey. Giving in, he grudgingly introduced the team to the two escapees.
“Let’s move out," he said, once the introductions were over. "Vaska, you lead the way."
They expected Vaska to strike out into the surrounding taiga. To their surprise, Vaska brought them back toward the sleeping village. They kept to the road at first, heading toward the houses, then made a wide circle around the village before setting off to the east, directly across the taiga.
"What the hell?" Again, Honaker wasn't happy. He fell into step beside Cole and said in a low voice, “We just walked in a circle. What a goddamn waste of time. What the hell kind of guide have we got?"
Cole had seen right away that Vaska was covering their tracks by taking a roundabout route. “If they put dogs on our trail, all the smells from the village will keep them confused,” Cole said. "It will take them a while to figure out which direction we took. That's good. We need to put some distance between us and them. Once they figure out that their prize American prisoners done run off, the Russians will come after us with everything they got. We can use a head start. We need all the help we can get."
Honaker looked doubtfully at the group. He snorted. "All the help we can get sounds about right. That's because this other guy is gonna slow us down, not to mention that woman."
"Ain't nothin' we can do about that."
"It's not too late to leave them behind."
"Wouldn't be right," Cole said with finality.
“Then they are officially your problem,” Honaker said. “I wash my hands of those two. If we have to carry Ramsey, then I expect you to do it. Look how weak he is."
Cole quickened his pace to break stride with Honaker. He had long, rangy legs that were used to eating up the miles. Even loaded down with gear and a rifle, Cole managed to walk with the easy lope of a coyote. It wouldn't be any problem for him to walk clear to Finland.
Honaker was right, even if Cole hated to admit it. Ramsey would definitely slow them down. The jury was still out on Whitlock, but if Cole had to issue a verdict, he would guess that Whitlock was more than likely a soft, rich boy whose feet would blister up after a couple of miles.
Cole was less worried about Inna because he had the impression that the half-Russian, half-American woman could hold her own. Those two halves had made a pretty good whole.
Whitlock fell in beside Cole. "I can't thank you enough," he said. "Inna has told me everything that all of you did to get here. It's amazing."
"Don't thank us yet," Cole said. "We ain't even out of sight of the Gulag."
Goo-lahg. It was another one of those foreign words that Cole had come to know since landing in Normandy more than a year ago. The way it sounded made it catch in your throat like a bad piece of meat, matching the bleak atmosphere of the Soviet prison camp perfectly.
"Listen, I wanted to thank you for sticking up for Ramsey back there," Whitlock said. "He's tough, but he hasn't been well. It doesn't help that these goddamn Russians have been working him nearly to death and feeding him scraps. I know Honaker isn't thrilled about it, but I couldn't leave Ramsey behind."
A few paces back, they could hear Ramsey coughing. He moved quickly enough, keeping up, but he walked with a stiff gait.
"You done the right thing," Cole said.
"So what's the plan?"
"We walk east for the next six days. When the sun comes up, that's the direction we move in. We stay ahead of the Russians, then get across the border into Finland. Simple. Sound all right to you?"
Whitlock nodded. "Simple is good," he said.
They continued to walk mostly in silence, until faint streaks of pink showed on the horizon. The wind had a bitter edge, chilling them all to the bone, despite the exercise. On the Russian plain, the weather felt more like December than mid-October.
Finally, Honaker called for a halt. "Let's get some sleep, maybe get some food," he said. "It looks to me like Whitlock and Ramsey could use it. Hell, we could all use it. Then we'll head out again when we have some daylight."
The group flopped down as if the ground was covered with a rich carpet, rather than the brown and withered grass. Samson broke out some food, just black bread and cheese courtesy of Mrs. Vaska, but the two former prisoners devoured it. Their faces had that too-thin look brought on by constant hunger. Cole had seen plenty of that among the mountain people before the war. The Depression had hemmed them in, starving them out. He reckoned there were all kinds of Gulags in this world.
Cole sat apart from the others and put his rifle to his shoulder, scanning the horizon through his scope. Although it was dark, he figured that whoever was coming after them would have lights. Vaska lit a pipe and stationed himself a few feet away, his ancient hunting rifle across his knees.
"You need to relax, Hillbilly," Honaker complained. "There's no way they caught up to us that fast."
"I just want to see them before they see me," Cole said.
As the light grew, the surrounding taiga was revealed for the first time. Since leaving the village, the landscape had grown more hilly and rugged. Rocks and boulders pushed up from the frozen ground like the knuckles of an old man's hand. In between the high ground lay swaths of swampland. Nearby, a pool of standing water had formed between the rocks. A skim of ice reached most of the way across. Trees marched down the slopes toward their camp: spruce, pine, and a kind of tree that Vaska had told him earlier was a larch. In the United States, it would not have been unusual to find a few hardscrabble homesteads in the most remote area, but most Russians lived in villages. Away from the village, the land was an uninhabited wilderness.
Vaska sucked at his pipe. He had noticed Cole surveying the landscape. "It is what we call pustynya," he said. "Nothingness."
Cole nodded. He didn’t mind pustynya. He thought that he and the Russian taiga would get along just fine.
Honaker got them all up an hour after sunrise. Cole had never gone to sleep, but had kept watch. They were still too close to the Gulag camp for comfort.
He hadn't been alone. Vaska sat nearby, nursing his pipe, his old rifle across his knees. Watching the horizon for any sign of light or movement.
"Barkov will be the one coming after us," Vaska explained. "It would be just like him to come sneaking through the dark. He moves quietly, for such a big man."
Cole kept his eyes trained on the darkness. “Just who is this Barkov?”
“He is a deadly shot. In Stalingrad, the Germans called him the Red Sniper.” Vaska spat. "He is also a throat cutter."
Cole thought that Barkov cast a long shadow. Inna clearly feared him, and he even seemed to worry Vaska. It would be just fine with him if he never got to experience Barkov for himself.
Now that it was full daylight, they felt more secure. The horizon was nearly unbroken under low clouds. They would see anyone coming from a long way off.
The laika dog raised his head and sniffed the air. Vaska nodded. "He smells the change in the wind."
"Coming out of the southeast now. Smells like snow."
"We will get some snow, maybe a dusting. That will help to cover any tracks that we left."
"Early for snow," Cole said.
Vaska laughed. "You are in Russia, my friend. First it will snow a little, then it will get cold. If the wind shifts around to the northeast we will have a bigger snow. That is how the winter begins."
"Good thing I wore my long johns."
The others were getting up. As soldiers, Vaccaro and Samson had long since learned to sleep wherever they could, whenever they could. They awakened instantly when Honaker kicked at their boots. Inna and Whitlock were more sluggish. Cole noticed they had slept side by side, but not touching. Ramsey took a while to wake up, like he was dazed. Finally, Whitlock had to reach down and shake him roughly.
Cole thought that what Ramsey needed was to sleep for a week straight in a decent bed, with someone to give him soup every time he woke up. His mama’s rabbit stew would have fixed Ramsey right up. His mama hadn't been much of a cook, but she could make a damn good rabbit stew with onions, carrots, potatoes. Cole provided the rabbit. His stomach rumbled at the memory. Most of the time, there had been more broth than meat or vegetables. Even so, a few bowls of that would have Ramsey back on his feet.
They didn't have stew. Or a bed. Ramsey coughed so much that the air frosted around him like it was smoke.
"All right, we have got to get a move on," Honaker said. "We don't know how much of a lead we have on the Russians, but we want to stay ahead of them. We'll keep moving as long as there is daylight."
A few miles away, Barkov looked out over the empty taiga. "Which way?" he asked the Mink.
He and Barkov had been in pursuit since not long after dawn, when the guards had discovered the escape after assembling the prisoners for the walk to the work site. The Mink sent the guard to check the barracks, fully expecting to find the Americans’ dead bodies in their bunks. The Americans wouldn’t have been the first to die of exhaustion, and wouldn’t be the last to be worked to death.
The guard came back shaking his head.
The Mink couldn’t believe it. How did the Americans even have the strength to get more than a few kilometers?
Barkov questioned the other men in the barracks, using his whip as encouragement, but no one seemed to know anything.
Then someone had found one of the guards locked in a storeroom at the infirmary. The young man was nearly naked. He had a wild story about being tricked by Inna Mikhaylovna.
She was nowhere to be found.
Barkov had the growing realization that the bitch had helped the Americans to escape. He’d had his suspicions that she had grown too fond of the American, Whitlock. Foolishly, she must have acted on that.
Then, a woman’s scarf was found tied to Gate 3. Inna’s scarf. He recognized it by the color — it had been red once, but washed so many times that it had faded to pink. It was clearly a signal of some kind. Together with her absence and the young soldier’s story of seduction, it was damning evidence.
When informed of the escape, the commandant had simply ordered Barkov to handle it. He was a soulless bureaucrat who saw each prisoner as a unit to be accounted for, like a can of beans in a storeroom. He busied himself with ledger books that tallied camp expenses and work output. He kept careful records on how many miles of track were laid each month. In the eyes of Moscow, it made him the perfect commandant.
Quickly, Barkov assembled a team to pursue the escaped Americans and Inna. In between barking out orders, he hummed happily to himself. Someone else could lead the work party today; he and The Mink were going hunting.
Prompted by Barkov’s question, the Mink considered the empty landscape. There was no indication of the direction taken by the girl and the escaped prisoners. The Mink thought about that as he smoked an unfiltered cigarette that seemed to be one part cheap tobacco and three parts sawdust. What lay to the north but arctic wastes? Hundreds of miles to the south lay Moscow, which seemed an unlikely destination. China and Mongolia were hundreds of miles distant. But to the east, Finland was barely two hundred miles away.
If you were an American, your only hope lay in that direction.
The Mink jerked his chin that way, then exhaled a cloud of the foul cigarette smoke toward the sun, still hovering above the eastern horizon.
"Ah, that makes sense," Barkov said. He waved his arm toward a squad of soldiers in a follow me gesture. “They won’t have gone far.”
Barkov led the way. They did not get far because there was no clear trail to follow.
Along with Barkov and the Mink there was Bunin, a local tracker who had brought his dogs, and six soldiers detailed from the Gulag garrison. Barkov hardly thought that they would need half a dozen soldiers to help catch the escapees — he and the Mink could do that handily — but the soldiers would be good workhorses to carry back any bodies. Normally, he wouldn’t have bothered with that. However, the Americans were special prisoners, so the Gulag commandant might need bodies to show some commissar if there was interest from Moscow. Barkov sighed. If he had been given his way, those annoying Americans would have been dead some time ago. That was politics for you.
One of the soldiers detailed to Barkov’s squad was Dmitri, the luckless boy whom the witch Inna Mikhaylovna had tricked into abandoning his post.
"You are growing soft," the Mink said, nodding at the young man, who by all rights should have been taken out and shot.
"This is a much better punishment," Barkov said. "Besides, do you think he is the first young man to be misled by his khuy?”
Barkov was thinking about the incident in Berlin that had got them sent to this Gulag camp months before. Most commissars would have shot them to avoid the paperwork. They had gotten a second chance — Barkov was willing to give Dmitri a similar opportunity. He was young.
"Soft," the Mink repeated.
"The war is over. We can afford to be generous."
The Mink was not so sure. "If he gives us any trouble, I will cut off his khuy for him."
Barkov laughed. "Cheer up, my friend. We are on a hunt! What could be better?"
Barkov was in an ebullient mood. There was nothing that was so much sport as chasing a prisoner. His only concern was that this hunt would be over all too soon. He doubted that the Americans or Inna had gotten very far. In fact, he was surprised that they were not visible somewhere on the horizon. He put his German-made binoculars — a prize from the sack of Berlin — to his eyes. Nothing but trees, rough open ground, and more trees.
He turned to Bunin, whose trio of dogs sniffed halfheartedly at the ground. No trail yet. They had expected to pick up the trail near the gate, but that had not been the case. The frozen ground was inscrutable. Not so much as a footprint to give them a clue.
"Those dogs of yours are worthless," Barkov said. "Don't expect me to pay to feed them."
Bunin grunted. He was a big man — as tall as Barkov, but not as heavy through the shoulders. From a distance, it would be easy to mistake one for the other. But size was where the similarity ended. Though Bunin had a fierce face, weathered by sun and wind, he was soft and gentle at heart, known to prefer the company of his beloved dogs to that of people.
"There is no scent," he said simply.
Barkov had given him the scarf that Inna had tied to the gate, and Bunin had made sure that his dogs got a snout full of her smell. The dogs had followed the scent toward the village, then lost it.
"The village?" the Mink wondered. "Do you think they are hiding there?"
Barkov shook his head. "Who would be foolish enough to hide them? Besides, the Americans wish to escape. It would be like a fish hiding in a net. No, there is nothing for them in the village."
What Barkov did not admit, even to the Mink, was that he was reluctant to search the village. The Gulag compound relied on the village much more than the village relied on the compound. Some of the prison guards, right up to the commandant, had taken "outpost wives" there. No one would take kindly to a disruptive search. Barkov knew better than to kick a hornet's nest.
"No, they are on the run. Let us give chase! Ha, ha!"
He called Bunin over and had him work his dogs between the prison gate and the village on the eastern side. First, they moved a couple hundred feet off the road that connected the Gulag camp and village so that they could pick up a fresh trail away from the well-traveled road. Then the dogs worked back and forth, back and forth, moving in expanding circles as Bunin nudged them along with low, gentle words. Barkov was no expert on dogs, but he had to admit that it was fascinating to watch them work. Grudgingly, he thought that perhaps Bunin did know what he was doing, after all.
Barkov looked up at the leaden sky. "We haven't got all day, Bunin!" he called.
"You cannot make bread bake faster," Bunin said.
The Mink laughed. He was simple that way, Barkov thought.
Instead of laughing, Barkov cursed. They were losing precious daylight hours to Bunin's lazy dogs while the prisoners increased their lead.
The nights were getting colder. He sent Dmitri back for rations and blankets in case they had to spend the night on the taiga, telling him to run all the way.
Finally, one of the useless dogs had a hit. The dog yelped with a new, excited tone. Bunin raised an arm aloft with the scarf, as if to mark the spot.
The other dogs joined in. At first, they followed the road toward the village, which confounded Barkov and the Mink. Had the prisoners escaped into the village, after all?
But the trail did not go as far as the houses. Bunin called the dogs back to where they had first caught the scent.
"Clever," Barkov admitted, seeing what the prisoners had done. They had muddled their trail by backtracking to the village, partially circling it, and then striking out at a random point. It created a confusing trail to follow. They had anticipated the dogs and bought themselves more time with that simple maneuver. Barkov had the niggling thought that perhaps he had underestimated his quarry. Where did an American pilot learn to outsmart hunting dogs?
No matter — Bunin had found the trail. Now they had to wait until Dmitri returned with supplies.
“What took you so long?" Barkov demanded in frustration, once the young soldier returned. Barkov took out his whip and beat him a few times for good measure.
Then he shouted to Bunin, his voice like a starting gun at a race: “After them!"