The Tightrope Men

Twenty-Eight

The bus rocked as it rolled along the narrow country road in the early morning. It was cold and Carey drew his coat closer about him. Armstrong, next to him, looked out of the window at the tall observation tower. It was drawing nearer.

The bus was full of Finns, most of whom were quiet at that early pre-work hour. Two seats ahead of Carey, on the aisle, sat Huovinen. He turned his head and looked back; his eyes were expressionless but Carey thought he could detect worry. Huovinen had been drinking again the previous night and Carey hoped his hangover did not get in the way of his efficiency.

Brakes squealed as the bus drew to a halt and Carey craned his neck to look through the forward windows. A soldier in Finnish uniform walked up and exchanged a few words with the driver, then he smiled and waved the bus on. It jerked into motion again.

Carey took out his pipe and filled it with steady hands. He nudged Armstrong, and said in Swedish, ‘Why don’t you have a cigarette? Have you stopped smoking?’

Armstrong looked at him in surprise, then shrugged. If Carey wanted him to smoke a cigarette then he would smoke a cigarette. He felt in his pocket and took out a half-empty packet of Finnish cigarettes as the bus stopped again.

The bus drived leaned out of the cab and called to the advancing Russian soldier, ‘Kolmekymmentäkuusi.’ The soldier nodded and climbed into the bus by way of the passenger door and surveyed the work party. He looked as though he was doing a head count.

Carey struck a match and lit his pipe, cupping his hands about the bowl and shrouding the lower part of his face. He seemed to be doing his best to make a smokescreen. Armstrong caught on fast and flicked on his cigarette lighter, guarding the flame with his hand as though the draught from up front was about to blow it out.

The Russian left the bus and waved it on and it lurched forward with a clash of gears and rolled past the frontier post. Armstrong averted his face from the window as the bus passed an officer, a square man with broad Slavic features. He felt a sudden tightening in his belly as he realized he was in Russia. He had been in Russia many times before, but not as an illegal entry — and that had been the subject of a discussion with Carey.

Armstrong had argued for going into Russia quite legitimately through Leningrad. ‘Why do we have to be illegal about it?’ he asked.

‘Because we’d have to be illegal anyway,’ said Carey. ‘We couldn’t get to Enso legally — the Russkies don’t like foreigners wandering loose about their frontier areas. And they keep a watch on foreigners in Leningrad; if you’re not back at the Europa Hotel they start looking for you. No, this is the best way. Over the border and back — short and sharp — without them even knowing we’ve been there.’

Black smoke streamed overhead from the factory chimneys as the bus trundled through Enso. It traversed the streets for some minutes and then went through a gateway and halted outside a very long, low building. The passengers gathered up their belongings and stood up. Carey looked at Huovinen who nodded, so he nudged Armstrong and they got up and joined the file behind Huovinen.

They went into the building through an uncompleted wall and emerged into an immense hall. At first Armstrong could not take in what he was seeing; not only was the sight unfamiliar but he had to follow Huovenin who veered abruptly to the right and out of the main stream. He led them around the end of a great machine and stopped where there was no one in sight. He was sweating slightly. ‘I should be getting twice what you’re paying me,’ he said.

‘Take it easy,’ counselled Carey. ‘What now?’

‘I have to be around for the next hour,’ said Huovenin. ‘Laying out the work and a fifteen-minute conference with Dzotenidze. I have to put up with that every morning.’ He coughed and spat on the floor. ‘I can’t lead you out before then.’

‘So we wait an hour,’ said Carey. ‘Where?’

Huovinen pointed. ‘In the machine — where else?’

Carey turned and looked at the half-constructed machine. Designed for continuous paper-making it was over three hundred yards long and about fifty feet wide. ‘Get in the middle of there and take your coats off,’ said Huovinen. ‘I’ll bring you some tools in about ten minutes. If anyone looks in at you be tightening bolts or something.’

Carey looked up at a crane from which a big steel roller hung. ‘Just see that you don’t drop that on my head,’ he said. ‘And don’t be longer than an hour. Come on, Ivan.’

Armstrong followed Carey as he climbed inside the machine. When he looked back Huovinen had gone. They found a place where there was headroom and Carey took off his coat and looked around. ‘In this snug situation a British working man would be playing cards,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about the Finns.’

Armstrong bent and peered through a tangle of complexity. ‘They’re working,’ he reported.

Carey grunted. ‘Then let’s look busy even if we’re not.’

Presently a man walked by and stooped. There was a clatter of metal on concrete and footsteps hastened away. ‘The tools,’ said Carey. ‘Get them.’

Armstrong crawled out and came back with a selection of spanners and a hammer. Carey inspected them and tried a spanner on the nearest bolt. ‘What we do now,’ he announced, ‘is to take off this girder and then put it back — and we keep on doing that until it’s time to go.’ He applied the spanner to a nut and heaved, then paused with a thoughtful look on his face. ‘Just pop your head up there and see what happens when we remove this bit of iron. I don’t want the whole bloody machine to collapse.’

An hour and a half later they were walking through the streets of Enso. Armstrong still wore his overalls and carried a spade over his shoulder, but Carey had removed his and was now more nattily dressed. He wore, he assured Armstrong, the regulation rig of a local water distribution inspector. In his hand he carried, quite openly, the metal detection gadget. To Armstrong’s approval it had a metal plate attached to it which announced in Russian that it was manufactured by Sovelectro Laboratories of Dnepropetrovsk.

As they walked they talked — discreetly and in Russian. Armstrong noted the old-fashioned atmosphere of the streets of Enso. It was, he thought, occasioned by the Russian style of dress and he could be in the nineteen-thirties. He always had that feeling when he was in Russia. ‘I nearly had a heart attack when that bloody man wanted to know where Virtanen was,’ he said.

It had been a tricky moment. The Chief Engineer, Dzotenidze, had stood by the machine quite close to them while he interrogated Huovinen as to the whereabouts of Lassi Virtanen. ‘Those screens aren’t right,’ he said in Russian. ‘Virtanen isn’t doing his work properly.’

An interpreter transmitted this to Huovinen, who said, ‘Virtanen hasn’t been feeling too well lately. An old war wound. In fact, he’s not here today — he’s at home in bed.’

Dzotenidze had been scathing but there was nothing he could do about it. ‘See that he’s back on the job as soon as possible,’ he said, and stalked away.

Armstrong said, ‘I could have stretched out my hand and touched him.’

‘Huovinen could have come up with a better story,’ said Carey grimly. ‘What happens if that engineer checks back and finds that the bus came in with a full crew? Still, there’s nothing we can do about it.’

They walked on for five minutes in silence. Armstrong said, ‘How much farther?’

‘Not far — just around the corner.’ Carey tapped him on the arm. ‘Now, Ivan, my lad; you’re a common working man, so let your betters do the talking. If you have to talk you’re slow and half-witted and as thick as two planks as befits a man who wields an idiot stick.’ He indicated the spade.

‘The heroic worker, in fact.’

‘Precisely. And I’m the technician controlling the magic of modern science and haughty to boot.’ They turned the corner. ‘There’s the house.’ Carey regarded it critically. ‘It looks pretty run-down.’

‘That’s why it’s being demolished.’

‘Just so.’ Carey surveyed the street. ‘We’ll start on the outside just for the sake of appearances — right here in the street.’ He took a pair of earphones from his pocket and plugged the lead wire into a socket on the metal detector. ‘Do I look technical enough?’

‘Quite sweet,’ said Armstrong.

Carey snorted and switched on the detector, then adjusted a control. Holding the detector close to the ground like a vacuum cleaner he walked along the pavement. Armstrong leaned on his spade and looked on with an expression of boredom. Carey went for about fifty yards and then came back slowly. There was a worried look on his face. ‘I’m getting quite a few readings. This street must be littered with metal.’

‘Maybe you’ve struck gold,’ suggested Armstrong.

Carey glared at him. ‘I’m not being funny,’ he snarled. ‘I hope to hell the garden of that house isn’t the same.’

‘You’re arousing interest,’ said Armstrong. ‘The curtain just twitched.’

‘I’ll give it another run,’ said Carey. He went through his act again and paused in front of the house, then took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled in it.

Armstrong lounged after him just as a small boy came out of the house. ‘What’s he doing?’

‘Looking for a water pipe,’ said Armstrong.

‘What’s that thing?’

‘The thing that tells him when he’s found a water pipe,’ said Armstrong patiently. ‘A new invention.’ He looked down at the boy. ‘Is your father at home?’

‘No, he’s at work.’ The boy looked at Carey who was peering over the garden fence. ‘What’s he doing now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Armstrong. ‘He’s the expert, not me. Is your mother at home?’

‘She’s doing the wash. Do you want to see her?’

Carey straightened up. ‘I think it runs through here,’ he called.

‘Yes,’ said Armstrong. ‘I think we do want to see her. Run inside and tell her, will you?’ The boy dashed into the house and Armstrong went up to Carey. ‘Kunayev is at work; Mrs K. is doing the wash.’

‘Right; let’s get to it.’ Carey walked up to the front door of the house just as it opened. A rather thin and tired-looking woman stepped out. ‘This is the... er—’ Carey took out his notebook and checked the pages — ‘the Kunayev household?’

‘Yes, but my husband’s not here.’

‘Then you’ll be Grazhdanke Kunayova?’

The woman was faintly alarmed. ‘Yes?’

Carey beamed. ‘Nothing to worry about, Grazhdanke Kunayova. This is merely a technicality concerning the forthcoming demolition of this area. You know about that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’ The faint alarm turned to faint aggression. ‘We’re having to move just when I’ve redecorated the house.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Carey. ‘Well, under the ground there are a lot of pipes — gas, water, electricity and so on. My own concern is with the water pipes. When the demolition men come in there’ll be bulldozers coming through here, and we don’t want them breaking the water pipes or the whole area will turn into a quagmire.’

‘Why don’t you turn off the water before you start? she asked practically.

Carey was embarrassed. ‘That’s not as easy as it sounds, Grazhdanke Kunayova,’ he said, hunting for a plausible answer. ‘As you know, this is one of the older areas of Svetogorsk, built by the Finns just after the First World War. A lot of the records were destroyed twenty-five years ago and we don’t even know where some of the pipes are, or even if they connect into our present water system.’ He leaned forward and said confidentially, ‘It’s even possible that some of our water still comes from over the border — from Imatra.’

‘You mean we get it free from the Finns?’

‘I’m not concerned with the economics of it,’ said Carey stiffly. ‘I just have to find the pipes.’

She looked over Carey’s shoulder at Armstrong who was leaning on his spade. ‘And you want to come into the garden,’ she said. ‘Is he going to dig holes all over our garden?’

‘Not at all,’ said Carey reassuringly. He lifted the detector. ‘I have this — a new invention that can trace pipes without digging. It might be necessary to dig a small hole if we find a junction, but I don’t think it will happen.’

‘Very well,’ she said unwillingly. ‘But try not to step on the flower beds. I know we’re being pushed out of the house this year but the flowers are at their best just now, and my husband does try to make a nice display.’

‘We’ll try not to disturb the flowers,’ said Carey. ‘We’ll just go around to the back.’

He jerked his head at Armstrong and they walked around the house followed by the small boy. Armstrong said in a low voice, ‘We’ve got to get rid of the audience.’

‘No trouble; just be boring.’ Carey stopped as he rounded the corner of the house and saw the garden shed at the bottom of the garden; it was large and stoutly constructed of birch logs. ‘That’s not on the plan,’ he said. ‘I hope what we’re looking for isn’t under there.’

Armstrong stuck his spade upright in the soil at the edge of a flower bed, and Carey unfolded a plan of the garden. ‘That’s the remaining tree there,’ he said. ‘One of the four Meyrick picked out. I’ll have a go at that first.’ He donned the earphones, switched on the detector, and made a slow run up to the tree. He spent some time exploring the area about the tree, much hampered by the small boy, then called, ‘Nothing here.’

‘Perhaps the pipe runs down the middle,’ said Armstrong.

‘It’s possible. I really think I’ll have to search the whole area.’

Which he proceeded to do. For the benefit of the small boy every so often he would call out a number and Armstrong would dutifully record it on the plan. After half an hour of this the boy became bored and went away. Carey winked at Armstrong and carried on, and it took him well over an hour to search the garden thoroughly.

He glanced at his watch and went back to Armstrong. ‘We have two possibilities. A strong reading — very strong — on the edge of the lawn there, and a weaker reading in the middle of that flower bed. I suggest we have a go at the lawn first.’

Armstrong looked past him. ‘Mrs K. is coming.’

The woman was just coming out of the house. As she approached she said, ‘Have you found anything?’

‘We may have found a junction,’ said Carey, and pointed. ‘Just there. We’ll have to dig — just a small hole, Grazhdanke Kunayova, you understand. And we’ll be tidy and replace the turf.’

She looked down at the straggly lawn. ‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ she said dispiritedly. ‘My husband says the grass doesn’t grow as well here as down south where we come from. Would you like something to eat?’

‘We brought our own sandwiches,’ said Carey gravely.

‘I’ll make you tea,’ she said decisively, and went back to the house.

‘Nice woman,’ commented Carey. ‘It’s midday, when all good workers down tools for half an hour.’

They ate their sandwiches sitting on the lawn, and drank the glasses of lemon tea which the woman brought to them. She did not stay to make small talk, for which Carey was thankful. He bit into a sandwich and said meditatively, ‘I suppose this is where Merikken and his family were killed — with the exception of young Harri.’ He pointed to the house. ‘That end looks newer than the rest.’

‘Was there much bombing here?’ asked Armstrong.

‘My God; this place was in the front line for a time — the sky must have been full of bombers.’

Armstrong sipped the hot tea. ‘How do we know the trunk is still here? Any keen gardener might have dug it up. What about Kunayev himself?’

‘Let’s not be depressing,’ said Carey. ‘It’s time you started to dig. I’ll give you a reading and then let you do the work, as befits my station in life.’ He walked across the lawn, searched the area briefly with the detector, and stuck a pencil upright in the ground. ‘That’s it. Take out the turves neatly.’

So Armstrong began to dig. He laid the turves on one side and tried to put each spadeful of soil into as neat a heap as he could. Carey sat under the tree and watched him, drinking the last of his tea. Presently Armstrong called him over. ‘How deep is this thing supposed to be?’

‘About two feet.’

‘I’m down two and a half and there’s still nothing.’

‘Carry on,’ said Carey. ‘Meyrick could have been in error.’

Armstrong carried on. After a while he said, ‘I’m down another foot and still nothing.’

‘Let’s see what the gadget says.’ Carey put on the earphones and lowered the detector into the hole. He switched on and hastily adjusted the gain. ‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘Must be a matter of inches. I’ve just had my ears pierced.’

‘I’ll go down a bit more,’ said Armstrong. ‘But it’ll be difficult without enlarging the hole.’ Again he drove the spade into the earth and hit something solid with a clunk. ‘Got it!’ He cleared as much as he could with the spade and then began to scrabble with his hands. After five minutes he looked up at Carey.

‘You know what we’ve found?’

‘What?’

Armstrong began to laugh. ‘A water pipe.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Carey. ‘Come out of that hole and let me see.’ He replaced Armstrong in the hole and felt the rounded shape of the metal and the flange. He dug away more earth and exposed more metal, then he got out of the hole.

Armstrong was still chuckling, and Carey said, ‘Fill in that hole and go gently. It’s an unexploded bomb.’

Armstrong’s laughter died away thinly.

‘250 kilograms, I’d say,’ said Carey. ‘The equivalent of our wartime 500-pounder.’