Kolchak's Gold (43 page)

We had a straightaway now and at the end of it was the fork; I pointed wildly and he said, “I see it,” but he hadn't even lifted his foot off the gas. He wanted every inch of space he could get between us. At the last instant he jabbed the brake and we swung up the hill violently, weaving on the springs, the tires wailing.

On the map there were choices and I said, “We could take the first right—it runs parallel to the highway. But they might look for us there.”

“What else is there?”

“If we stay on this road it bends south. There's a turning about—” I measured the map's scale indicator with my eye and transferred it to the road's black line—“about fifteen kilometers. It goes back in the mountains but the map shows a river there—it may be a valley. It cuts back across toward Batumi beyond that.”

“Batumi's what we want.”

“Have we got any chance at all in this thing?”

“We have with me driving.” He grinned like a lunatic.

The tires snickered on the curves and Pudovkin drove at breakneck pace, using his horn on the blind turnings. We were climbing steadily into the foothills of the Caucasus range above the widening coastal plain of Poti and looking off to the right I could see the patchwork of farms on the flatlands—and a spume of spray on a wet road arrowing up toward a bisecting point somewhere ahead of us. It was quite distant; I looked away and looked again and it was still there, the wake of a fast-moving car. I pointed and shouted. Pudovkin nodded.

It couldn't be accident. That one was coming up to block our route; he'd been signaled from the checkpoint. They'd have other cars on the other roads by now as well.

Pudovkin said, “We'll just have to beat him to the crossing.”

The transmission was whining in third. Pudovkin cut across the insides of all the bends without taking his foot off and we were on two wheels more than once. The rain had quit but the surfaces were still wet and there were patches of mist; we burst through them like a projectile.

At intervals the road lipped out and we had glimpses of the flood plain from ever higher points. The car was out of sight in the lower hills somewhere. I tried to judge his course by the map but there were too many roads out of Poti. Most of them crossed the one we were on.

I saw the first intersection coming at us and I jammed feet and hands forward to brace but Pudovkin roared straight through it and the lorry to our left hit his brakes with an indignant yelp of horn. We rammed through a stand of timber and crossed a ridge and I saw the pursuit off to our right angling toward us from below. It was a big Skoda, black with four doors, a heavy Czech saloon climbing the steep rises with the arrogant power of its two-and-a-half liter engine.

The roads met at the head of an open meadow and we were watching each other as we squealed toward it. I saw one of the windows roll down and a weapon appear—something squat and ugly, a submachine gun.

We were into the crossing ahead of them and then the road made a painful turn: Pudovkin down-shifted for it and we almost rolled over but the wheels came down on the high crown and he accelerated us out of it.

We had a third of a kilometer's straight run and Pudovkin disengaged his seat adjustment lever and pushed the seat all the way back; slid down until he was sitting on the back of his neck, eyes just high enough to see over the wipers through the crescent of the steering wheel. “You'd better get down.”

I followed his example and my knuckles went white gripping the hand strap. He had his driving: I had nothing but hopeless panic.

The big saloon closed rapidly on the straightaways but we had quicker brakes and better turning balance and Pudovkin regained the lead every time we hit bends. He had the engine full-out and I was waiting for a piston to burst through the engine block. In the end it wasn't the Volkswagen which kept us out of their range—it was Pudovkin's skill. A better driver at the wheel of the Skoda would have made better miles out of the big car's horsepower. As it was, we'd hit the intersection nearly a quarter of a kilometer ahead of them and they'd lost a little ground making the turn but since then we'd lost a little bit of our lead with every hill.

It was their climbing power that made the difference and Pudovkin saw that. He spun the wheel at the first right-hand intersection and that put us into a downslope of ruptured third-class mountain road. Rocks and stunted trees whipped by my door handle at shoulder height and one uncertainty would smash us on the narrow bends but here the horsepower was equalized and we had gravity on our side.

But instinct made me grope for the map and when I had it before me I yelled at him desperately: it was a dead-end road.

“How far?”

I had squirmed around to peer out the back; through the splintered glass I had glimpses of the black snout of the Skoda. Not far back—not far at all: on a straight run they'd have been shooting, at this range. I could almost read the number plate.

“How far?”

“Not more than five kilometers.”

Now we ran out onto a shelf, close under the windward side of the mountains with a sheer cliff dropping away on the open side to our left; the tires chattered and whimpered on the bends and I saw the Skoda sway out onto the cliff-cut road behind us. And suddenly I realized we were losing speed and I stared at Pudovkin in horror. “What's the matter?”

He didn't answer but I saw his foot was off the gas. He had his right hand wrapped around the handle of the handbrake between the seats but he hadn't lifted it yet. Ahead of us the road swept out of sight to the right around what appeared to be a very sharp bend—hairpin on a pivot of rock, and no guard rail at the outside. I spun my head to search for the Skoda but it took no finding: on the straight run it was barreling down on us like a black locomotive.

“Now hold tight.”
Pudovkin was pulling the handbrake and I knew instinctively why: for some reason he wanted to slow us down without flashing the red brake-warning lights on the back of the car. At the same time we were swinging out into the left-hand lane of the road—the outside lane above the drop—and at first I thought he was giving himself the widest possible angle from which to hit the right-hand hairpin bend ahead. But it gave the Skoda its chance and I saw dust squirt from beneath its rear tires as the driver gave it full speed and I shouted at Pudovkin because I was sure he hadn't seen the Skoda's move:

“They're going to overtake on the inside.”

“I know. Hold tight.”

A runoff ditch skewered the road and we crashed through it with a jar that made the beetle jump and scrabble but Pudovkin kept it away from the lip of the cliff. He was still far over to the left and the Skoda was within a hundred feet, roaring down the inside lane; the snout of the submachine gun appeared at the rear left-hand window and I shrank down in the seat.

The bend was coming at us and Pudovkin had the brake up several notches in his fist; we were slowing disastrously and the Skoda pulled almost even with us and I knew they were going to push us over the edge. I heard the submachine gun and then I felt the terrifying first touch of the Skoda's bumper nudging our rear fender and I knew we would go over.

But then Pudovkin yanked the handbrake all the way up and because the emergencies were rear-wheel brakes we didn't lose traction: we were stopping precipitously and I saw the Skoda shoot past and suddenly its driver must have seen the trap because I heard the wicked grab of his tires on the gravel when he jabbed his footbrake. The submachine gun roared virtually point-blank in my ears and I hunched my head down into the corner between the seat and the door; I did not see the rest but I heard the sickening shriek of burning rubber and the long jangling crunch when the Skoda went over the hairpin edge ahead of us—the bouncing impacts as it went down the mountain, the brittle shattering of glass and the long echo of crumpling steel as she hit bottom. Then I could hear the insistent steady cry of the jammed horn and I knew it had to be final.

Only then did I realize that we were not moving: the ratcheted handbrake had pulled us to a halt within six feet of the lip.

My skin crawled when my emotions realized how close it had been. I turned to Pudovkin.

He was dead. The submachine gun.

*
March 27, 1973. Bristow had arrived at Bukov's on the night of Saturday, March 24.—Ed.

T
he bullets had taken him straight through the temple and the neck. I had never seen a man shot dead but there was no question he might still be alive; nevertheless I tried to find a pulse and of course there was none.

Breathing deeply and regularly in a feeble attempt to calm myself, I left the car and staggered to the crumpled edge of the road where the Skoda had gone over. I doubted any of them in that car could be alive; something else concerned me and I needed to check it because I didn't trust my memory—all I'd really had were frightened glimpses of the car.

The wreckage was crumpled and distorted. It had come to rest on one side wedged into the boulders more than a hundred feet below me. It was too steep a pitch to climb down without wasting a great deal of time. Nothing but boulders and loose sliding shale chips of rock, slightly reddish in the grey daylight. At the bottom a sinuous stream glittered and on the opposite slope a high tower of raw stone loomed like a gallows.

What I was looking for on the Skoda was a whip aerial; I didn't recall seeing one but I needed to know. If it had an antenna then it had a two-way radio.

There was none in sight but then I realized it would have been the first thing to break away.

The Skoda had been crushed flat; its entire front axle had come away with one wheel and tire attached—it lay in the stream below—and the squashed condition of the roof left no likelihood anyone had been left alive. The doors had sprung open but from this angle I couldn't see inside the wreckage: the rear deck-lid had come awry and lay across the upper side of the car.

On rubber knees I climbed back to the Volkswagen. We had left great ruts in the soft road. They veered close to the edge at several points. I remembered in a jumbled way that the gun had been firing before we stopped and I realized that Pudovkin had died while we were still moving: only the ratchet on the handbrake had kept us from going over after his lifeless thumb had gone slack on the button.

The bullets had shattered both windows, his and mine; the interior of the car was jagged with splintered glass and I had no recollection of that happening. When I touched my cheek my fingers came away sticky with blood that was already beginning to congeal in scabs: I had a number of small cuts and hadn't even noticed.

Of course the engine had stalled out—the car was still in third gear—and I didn't know if it would run again. I saw no bullet holes in the rear engine area. Both sides of the car were riddled and when I began to pull Pudovkin out of the car I saw that the expanding bullets had exploded away fist-sized chunks of the driver's door. He had great wounds in his upper chest and shoulders that I hadn't seen earlier. The gun had been firing down and I had been slumped below the sill of my window; the bullets had angled above me and down.

I handled the old man with gentle care—it's odd how gently we treat the dead—and now my mind was working with a curiously cool detachment: my reasoning was ruthless and clear. I couldn't take the time to bury him, I thought, but then I knew I couldn't leave him in the road for the birds to pick at. I carried him to a trough in the shale above the road and piled some rocks on him and then went up above him and kicked at the shale until a little slide started. It covered most of him and I did the rest with slabs of loose rock.

The car started and I jockeyed back and forth to get it turned around. I had a last look at his grave and dragged a hand down my face and then I began to go to pieces: the shakes hit me.

I had to sit there with my fists locked on the wheel and ride it out. The car stalled but I didn't try to restart it. I went a little mad. Flashing visions like DTs veered kaleidoscopically across my eyes. I was like something at sea in a hurricane. The only thing to do was hold on tight.