The Tightrope Men

Twenty-Four

Carey lit his pipe and said, ‘Slow down.’

Armstrong eased his foot on the accelerator and hastily wound down his side window. He wished Carey would not smoke at all in the car or, at least, change his brand of horse manure.

‘See that tower over there?’ asked Carey. ‘To the right.’

Armstrong looked past him. ‘A water tower?’ he hazarded.

Carey grunted in amusement. ‘A Russian observation tower. That’s Mother Russia.’

‘We’re that close to the frontier! It can’t be more than a kilometre away.’

‘That’s right,’ said Carey. ‘You can turn round now; we’ll go back to Imatra and book into the hotel.’

Armstrong came to a wide part of the road and slowed to a halt. As he turned the car, he said, ‘Are there many of those towers around here?’

‘All along the frontier. I suspect they’re linked with electronic detection devices. The boys in those towers can record every footfall.’ He looked at the spindly tower with a critical eye. ‘The Russians have a suspicious nature — always trying to look over other people’s walls. They’re a funny crowd.’

Armstrong was silent, but his mind was busy with speculation. The trouble with Carey was that he was uncommunicative about his plans until the last moment, an idiosyncrasy apt to unnerve his subordinates. He wondered how they were going to cross the border.

He drove back into Imatra under Carey’s direction and pulled up outside the entrance to the hotel. It was a big, rambling building constructed of stone with turrets and cupolas and towers. He thought it looked like a fairy tale castle as designed by Walt Disney had he been a more controlled artist. ‘Some place!’

‘The Valtionhotelli,’ said Carey. ‘Built at the turn of the century and genuine Art Nouveau. Come on.’

The hotel foyer was elaborately luxurious in an old-fashioned style. The stonework of the entrance was carved with grotesque mythological beasts and was panelled in dark wood. They registered and entered a lift accompanied by a porter carrying the bags.

The porter unlocked a door and stood back deferentially. Carey strode in, followed by Armstrong. He led the way along a wood-panelled corridor into a very large circular bedroom. ‘I’ll take the bed on the left,’ he said as he tipped the porter.

Armstrong looked about him. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all.’

‘Nothing but the best for us civil servants,’ said Carey. ‘Let’s go upstairs and have a drink.’

‘There’s an upstairs?’

They climbed a broad winding staircase leading off the corridor. Carey said, ‘This hotel was built back in 1902 when Finland was still a part of Russia. The Finns will give you arguments that it was never a part of Russia, but facts are facts. Imatra was a playground for the St Petersburg aristocracy. The Czar stayed in the hotel — probably in this apartment.’

They emerged into another large circular room with windows all round. It was furnished with half a dozen easychairs and a long, low table of highly polished wood. A bear skin decorated the wall. Carey strode over to a built-in refrigerator while Armstrong looked through one of the windows. ‘We must be at the top of the main tower.’

‘That’s right.’ Carey pulled out a bottle. ‘Skâne — that’s Swedish; Linie — it’s funny the Norwegians think that shipping their booze to Australia and back improves it. Koskenkorva — that’s local. Stolichnaya — what the hell is that doing here? I call it damned unpatriotic. Ah, here’s the beer.’

Armstrong turned and looked at the array of snaps bottles. ‘Are we expected to be poured into Russia?’

Carey winked. ‘The perquisites of the job. Besides, we might have to do a little entertaining.’

‘Oh!’ He held out field glasses he had found on a window ledge. ‘Someone must have left these behind.’

Carey shook his head as he uncapped a beer bottle. ‘Part of the room fittings. This apartment is where they bring the V.I.P.s to give them a little thrill.’ He picked up a glass and joined Armstrong at the window. ‘See those chimneys?’

Armstrong looked out of the window at the smoking factory chimneys. ‘Yes?’

‘That’s Stalin’s Finger,’ said Carey. ‘Svetogorsk!’

Armstrong put the binoculars to his eyes. The chimneys jumped closer and he could almost distinguish the separate bricks. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘It’s nearly part of Imatra.’ He stared for a long time then slowly lowered the glasses. ‘What did you say about Stalin?’

‘Stalin’s Finger — that’s the local name. After the war the Russians wanted the frontier pushed back so there was the usual conference. Svetogorsk — or Enso, as it was then — is quite a nice little industrial town making paper. One of the Russians was drawing the revised frontier with a pen on the map but when he got to Enso he found that Stalin had put his finger in the way. He looked up at Stalin and Stalin smiled down on him, so he shrugged and drew the line around Stalin’s finger. That put Enso in Russia.’

‘The old bastard!’ said Armstrong.

‘Sit down and have a beer,’ said Carey. ‘I want to talk to you about procedure. I’ll just nip down and get my briefcase.’

Armstrong took a beer from the refrigerator. When Carey came back he indicated the bear skin on the wall. ‘Could that be a Russian bear with its hide nailed to the wall?’

‘It could,’ said Carey with a grim smile. ‘That’s part of what I want to talk to you about.’ He put the briefcase on the table and sat down. ‘As far as I’m concerned Svetogorsk is Svetogorsk — I’m a realist. But we’ll be talking to some Finns and we’ll refer to the town throughout as Enso. They’re a mite sensitive about it.’

‘I can understand that,’ said Armstrong.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Carey flatly. ‘This has been my stamping ground all the time I’ve been in the service, so listen to some words of wisdom from the old man. Back in 1835 a man called Lönnrot gathered together a lot of folk tales and issued them in verse form — that was the Kalevela, the Finnish national epic. It was the first major literary work the Finns ever had of their own, and it formed the basis of the new Finnish culture.’

‘Interesting,’ said Armstrong. ‘But what the hell?’

‘Just listen,’ said Carey sharply. ‘The heartland of the Kalevela is Karelia — which is now in Russia. The village of Kalevela itself is now Russian.’ He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘There’s no exact English parallel, but it’s as though the French had occupied Cornwall and Nottingharnshire and taken over all the King Arthur and Robin Hood legends. Of course, it runs deeper than that here, and some Finns are bitter about it.’

‘They think the Russians pinched their national heritage?’

‘Something like that.’ Carey drained his glass. ‘Now to politics. After the war President Paasikivi adopted a foreign policy that was new to Finland, and the idea was to remain strictly neutral, rather like Sweden. In actual practice it’s a neutrality in favour of Russia — at all costs no offence must be given to Big Brother in the east. This is known as the Paasikivi Line, and it’s followed by the current President, Kekkonen. It’s like walking a tightrope but it’s difficult to see what else Finland can do. They already have the example of what happened to Estonia and the other Baltic States.’

He got himself another beer. ‘We’re going to meet some Finns tonight who don’t agree with the Paasikivi Line. They’re Right Wingers and, personally, I’d call them bloody reactionaries, but they’re the boys who are going to get us into Enso. If Kekkonen knew what we were doing here, what little hair he has left would turn white. He’s getting on with the Russians reasonably well and he wants it to stay that way. He doesn’t want any incident on the frontier that could cause a diplomatic breach and give Moscow an excuse for making demands. Neither do we — so to the Finns we meet tonight we talk softly, and when we’re in Enso we walk softly.’

He fixed Armstrong with a firm eye. ‘And if we’re caught over there we’ve done it on our own hook — no Finns were involved. That’s bloody important, so keep it in mind.’ ‘I understand,’ said Armstrong soberly.

‘Of course, the whole idea is not to get caught’ Carey unzipped his briefcase. ‘Here is a street plan of Enso, dated 1939.’ He unfolded it and spread it on the table. His finger wandered over the surface and then went down. ‘This is the house in which Hannu Merikken lived. He buried his box full of papers in the garden which is something under half an acre — but not much under,’

Armstrong bent his head over the plan. ‘That’s quite an area. How big is the box?’

‘Meyrick described it as two feet by one-and-a-half by one.’

Armstrong did some mental, arithmetic. ‘If we dug a hole at random the chances against hitting it would be over eight hundred to one.’

‘We can do better than that,’ said Carey. ‘The original idea was to have Meyrick point out the spot — he was present when the box was buried. But after all these years his memory had slipped a few cogs.’ He dipped into the briefcase again. ‘All he could come up with was this.’

Armstrong examined the large scale plan which was drawn meticulously in Indian ink. Carey said, ‘There are four trees and the box is buried under one of them but he couldn’t remember which one.’

‘At least that’s cutting it down to a maximum of four holes.’

‘1944 is a long time ago,’ said Carey. ‘Three of the trees are no longer there. Look at these.’ He produced some photographs. ‘These were taken by our Finnish friends about three weeks ago.’ As Armstrong looked at them, Carey said, ‘I had hoped that taking Meyrick back would jog his memory, but we don’t have Meyrick any more, so what we’re left with is half an acre of ground and one tree.’ He peered over Armstrong’s shoulder and pointed, ‘I think that’s the one, but I’m not sure.’

‘So we dig,’ said Armstrong. ‘It will have to be done under cover of darkness.’

Carey stared at him. ‘What darkness? I know we’re not in the Arctic Circle, but even so, there’s precious little darkness at this time of year. The most we’ll get is a deep twilight.’

‘Do we have to jump in now?’ asked Armstrong. ‘Why not wait until later in the year?’

Carey sighed. ‘Apart from the fact that these papers are of overwhelming importance, there’s one very good reason why we have to go in now.’ He tapped the street plan. ‘When Merikken was living in this house it was in a good class suburb. But Enso has been expanding, the area has become run-down, and it’s due for redevelopment. The bulldozers will be moving in before the autumn. We’ve got to get in first.’

‘A pity Meyrick didn’t make his great discovery a year earlier,’ commented Armstrong. ‘Anyone living in the house?’

‘Yes; a Russian called Kunayev — he’s a foreman in one of the paper mills. A wife and three children; one cat — no dogs.’

‘So we just go along and start to dig holes all over his garden in broad daylight. He’s going to like that!’ Armstrong tossed down the photograph. ‘It’s impossible!’

Carey was unperturbed. ‘Nothing is impossible, my lad. To begin with, the papers are in a tin trunk. That’s a misnomer — a tin trunk is made of sheet steel and I have a natty metal detector, small but efficient.’

‘Like a mine detector?’

‘Something like that, but smaller. Small enough for us to take over the border without much risk. I had it specially made up. According to Meyrick’s dicey memory there’s not much more than two feet of earth on top of the box. I’ve tested this gadget with a smaller box and even three feet under it gives a signal that blasts your eardrums.’

‘So we get the signal and start to dig. What’s Kunayev going to be doing while this is happening?’

Carey grinned. ‘With a bit of luck he won’t be there. The comrade will be toiling like a Stakhanovite in his bloody mill, reeling up the toilet paper, or whatever it is he does.’

‘His wife will be there,’ objected Armstrong. ‘And his kids — and probably the next-door neighbours.’

‘It won’t matter. We’ll take them all by the hand and lead them right up that bloody garden path.’