Kolymsky Heights (33 page)

Half an hour later, the general had still not managed to discover how these marks came to be there; but he left not at all displeased.

On the way back the chief of militia explained some local regulations to him, and he had the first glimmerings of how the trick had been pulled.

Over a late dinner the general sat with his staff and explained
the situation. His senior officers had been flying about all day and were tired. But his explanation was brief.

Vehicles out of use in the Kolymsky region had to have their registration plates and documents returned; and those past repair needed a Certificate of Destruction: vehicles must not be abandoned or left to lie about. This regulation, dating from 1962, was intended to control all means of movement in the area, and in early years had been strictly enforced.

With the area’s rapid development, however, some laxness had crept in; although full records still existed. The militia had identified twenty-seven vehicles long out of use – their plates and papers returned, but without Certificates of Destruction. These were now being investigated.

‘What is likely,’ the general said, ‘is that this man found something he could put together. And then he found a place to
put
it together. Perhaps the rubbish dump, perhaps not. They’ve certainly had a vehicle standing there recently. Well, natives stick together, we can look into it later. What’s important now is to find a disused vehicle which has gone missing. Get a profile of it and we could be halfway to finding him.’

And so they could be, he thought, settling into bed. It had been a long day and he was very tired himself. Late in the evening Irkutsk had got him permission and he had helicoptered to Tcherny Vodi. A hundred per cent security there, all as the medical officer had said An excellent woman, nobody’s fool. The agent could have seen nothing – a trial run, as he’d thought. Well, he wouldn’t get far. Profile of his vehicle …

Another thought occurred, and he reached for the phone.

‘Volodya?’

His aide yawned loudly at the other end.

‘Volodya – another thing. It’s possible there’ll be more than one vehicle missing … This fellow could get at parts. The same parts don’t fit all vehicles. If we know what parts he used
that also gives a profile of the vehicle. Get them moving at that transport company. Do it now. Get them out of bed. Let them search repair sheds, storerooms, whatever. Anything interesting, call me immediately. If necessary, wake me up.’

Two o’clock, and he put the light out.

And almost at once
was
woken up. He stared at his watch: 6 a.m. A moment ago it had been only two. But they were quite right to wake him. Something very interesting had turned up.

At two in the morning Porter passed Road Station No. 6, and ahead now there was only Bilibino.

An idea had come to him of what could be managed if only he could get through it. But it was now six hours since he had wakened under the bridge, and the mountain bends and anxiety had totally exhausted him again.

He drove slowly, his eyes sore, looking for somewhere to shelter. On the final stretch to Bilibino there would be buildings and mine workings – he remembered them. The convoy of a few weeks ago had kept parallel for some kilometres with a stream. The gold beds ran often near streams and across country. But that had been close to town, too near in. He needed something earlier, and soon.

He passed presently under big overhead cables and saw a pylon: the power line from Bilibino. It served the goldfields and some surrounding installations. He was already too near.

Fifty or sixty kilometres back the road had crossed a stream, and he wondered if he should turn and go back to it. It would eat up a lot of gas. He didn’t know what was for the best and meanwhile let the bobik chug on, too tired to think.

He saw a glow coming up in the sky on his left. The first of the outlying goldfields? If the goldfield was near a stream, and the stream led to – where did the streams lead to here? He was now far from the Kolyma. Some other river. A river south of him. Which meant to his right. If there was a river to his right and streams ran down from the left …

He drove on, watching the glow come nearer, until it was no longer a glow but lights, floodlights, just a kilometre or two ahead and to his left, and he knew now he had better go back. And then he knew he had just crossed a bridge.

He had crossed it and was at the other side.

Jesus Christ! He was too tired to turn. He reversed.

He reversed over the bridge and looked down at a lovely, wonderful, frozen stream, and drove down to it, and got under the bridge, and switched everything off, the lights, the engine, himself; and just sat there in the dark for a minute.

Then he got out and climbed the bank and had a look.

Yes, the first of the goldfields, not a kilometre away; the din of its machinery carrying in the air. He could even see, silhouetted against the lights, the skeletal housings of the mine lifts. As he looked two trucks lurched out on to the road a few hundred metres ahead and turned towards Bilibino.

Too much activity, and too near. But he couldn’t be seen and he also by now couldn’t care. He simply had to rest.

He went down and gave himself a huge vodka, and drank it with his eyes shut. He tore off a chunk of black bread and ate it, and in his sleeping-bag he ate more.

He slept an hour and woke still tired. But there was no time to linger. It was getting on for 4 a.m. The best time to be in town was between five and six, the dead point of any road security, but with the place just stirring into activity. He recollected almost nothing of it except that during work hours it had been a mess; slow-moving traffic, the local drivers leaning out and chatting across to each other. He wanted a clear run through, with no curious eyes looking him over.

He drank some coffee and looked at the school atlas in torchlight. He was already off one page and on to the next.

Pevek showed up next, another familiar destination for Tchersky drivers. Still a colossal distance away; double the distance he had already travelled. He wasn’t going there. Big security installations at Pevek, and big security to go with them. Yura had promised it to him, he remembered: ‘You’ll go to Bilibino, Baranikha, Pevek, everywhere!’

Pevek was the end of the route. But where the hell was Baranikha?

He searched for and found Baranikha, three or four hundred kilometres away: in the tiniest type, a dot. But the atlas was a school one, in use for many years. From what he had seen in the Despatch Depot, big loads were going to Baranikha, heavy construction in progress there. So much construction needed engineers, architects, workers; who all needed flying in. There would be an airport of some kind at Baranikha, at least a strip.

The idea had come to him while negotiating the mountain bends. If major airports were out of bounds, he could try little cross-country ones. Cross-country hopping, from one to another, could take him a long way – and he knew now he had to go a long way. And not at all the way that had been planned for him. No Yakutsk, no Black Sea, no Turkey. He had to take a route that nobody expected. And there were still some options …

They didn’t know how he had come in. They couldn’t know how he would go out. Light years ago he remembered the CIA man telling him he couldn’t go out the way he had come in. But why could he not? He had come in from Japan. Why not go back that way? From Nakhodka, far down on the Pacific seaboard, ships ran regularly to Japan. One way or another he could try to get himself on one. For months now he had lived on his wits. Were they going to desert him at the last?

He looked up Nakhodka in the atlas; and his heart sank.
Farther even than he thought – an incredible distance, 4000 kilometres at least. Well … From Tchersky, even if anyone remotely thought of the idea, it would seem impossible for him to get there. By land it probably was impossible, range upon range of mountains in between. But hopping it, a bit at a time? Would security be so tight at little out-of-the-way strips? If he could only get beyond Bilibino …

He went up on the road for another look.

Still bitterly cold, but with some change evident in the air; a sharp thin snow was falling, hazing the goldfields lights and muffling the continuous clanging. As he watched, a truck lumbered out, and shortly after it another one, heading for Bilibino. Local field trucks. Nothing else on the road – all long distance traffic still halted. He went down and started the bobik and got back on the highway.

He picked up the trucks after a kilometre, and stayed well behind, running only on sidelights, wipers going. Now he could see the frozen stream on his right, running beside the road as he remembered. It had come down from high ground and taken a sharp turn on meeting some rock barrier. All of the ground here was high; rich gold-bearing land.

Presently the trucks began slowing, and he watched their rear lights turning in at the opposite side of the road. He cut his own lights, and slowed to a crawl. A big compound, evidently a processing plant, with a huge conical tip and a line of sheds, all well floodlit. He crawled nearer, and stopped, out of range of the lights.

Noisy activity was going on in the compound. A trolley train was moving around and trucks were manoeuvring. He couldn’t see what had happened to the two he had followed but others were slewed round and facing him, their drivers out and chatting. He had seen no trucks going the other way. They evidently didn’t go back that way. They must return some other way.

When he had driven this section weeks before, Vanya
snoring beside him, he had noticed little of the route, too busy keeping station in the convoy. But over dinner the drivers had told him a loop road ran through the goldfields; that if you were driving beyond Bilibino, you had to take care to avoid that road or you could get hopelessly entangled. Maybe these trucks took the loop road, at the other side of town, to return through the strung-out goldfields. He watched and waited, and presently one of them moved; and a few moments afterwards, another.

He started up and followed, keeping well behind, again using only sidelights. The trucks ahead were empty and now going at a brisker pace. In barely twenty minutes he saw another glow appearing ahead, which soon became town lights.

Bilibino.

Time to move. He switched to headlights, overtook the first truck and cut in between the two. And not a moment too soon. Almost immediately the road curved, and ahead he saw a barrier strung with amber lights, and the truck in front slowing.

The barrier was down but, as they appeared round the bend, it was already being raised. The man in front had opened his window and stuck a raised thumb out as he went slowly through, and Porter did the same. He saw uniforms – militia uniforms and others he didn’t recognise – and looks of mild curiosity turned on him in the light hail of snow. But peering in his rear-view mirror he saw that already they had turned to the next truck, and he was in. In and sailing into Bilibino.

He remembered it only vaguely. An administrative building like Tchersky’s, a cinema like Tchersky’s; all the buildings – post office, supermarket, apartment blocks – built to the same design in this north land. He saw the hostel he had slept in; the goods centre, the car park. Big trucks were lined up in the car park, Tchersky trucks. All still halted, no activity there. Just a
little activity elsewhere: a few light trucks and bobiks trundling about town, postal vans, food vans; the odd militia car parked, cigarettes glowing inside.

He drove with his window a little open and could hear the drone of aircraft above, and saw one coming in to land, well ahead and to the right. Stay away from that area. He continued following the truck that had led him in, dazzled by the glare of the one behind. Ahead, the truck suddenly pulled in and stopped; at a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall, an all-night bar or café. He passed it and pulled up himself, and in his mirror saw the other truck stop and both drivers get out and go into the place.

Shit! He had planned to follow until they turned off. If the Tchersky drivers had warned you had to take care to avoid the loop road, it evidently wasn’t signposted. Nothing was signposted in Green Cape or Tchersky, either. You had to know.

He switched his lights off, kept the wipers going, and lit a cigarette. He needed a vodka himself but decided to wait until he needed it more. Five-thirty. The time was right; the town just sluggishly stirring into life, the police sitting out the last half of their shift. He’d been lucky – with the two trucks, the barrier. Would he be as lucky on the way out?

A militia car cruised slowly past and he saw, through the drizzle of snow, faces turned towards him. The wipers. He should have turned the wipers off. The car went on, but they had noted him. He couldn’t stay here; they’d be round again. He waited till they were well away, switched on, and took off. He kept on the way he’d been going.

The town square passed behind him. He couldn’t tell if he was on the main road; other roads had run off the square. This one had a few large buildings, apartment blocks, depot-type stores; but thinning now, dwindling. Definitely going out of town. Headlights came suddenly towards him round a bend,
and dipped in acknowledgment, and he dipped his own. A bus.

POLAR AVIATION
, he saw, as it passed.

Christ! He was going to the airport, after all. The road went to the airport. There would be checks before the airport.

Which now, rounding the bend, he could clearly see. It was on a large flat plate of land, slightly below, ringed with orange sodium lamps. Through the snow drizzle he could even make out a lit-up runway.

More to the point, and worse, dead ahead and downhill he could also see a barrier, and men in dayglo stripes and a waving torch. There was no way of stopping or turning off or going back. He’d been seen. And the barrier was firmly down. He drew slowly up to it, and opened his window.

‘Where to – airport?’ A militia man; there were two of them, also another, in the unfamiliar uniform; all bundled up, scowling in the snow. They had come out of a hut, he saw.

‘No. Loop road.’ He hoped to God this was the way to it.

The torchlight examined him.

‘Where’s your field badge, then?’

‘Fuck the field badge! It’s not even my job,’ he said, scowling. ‘I’m off in a couple of hours, and I win this. All through the fucking fields – for a breakdown! What’s up here, no one can fix a machine themselves?’

‘Where you from, old-timer?’

His number plate was being inspected, he saw.

‘Road stations, way back. I’m on
equipment
. Not my job, this! Got sent up here a couple of weeks, and now every shitty number comes up I get it. Go on, send me back! The bastards
know
I’m off in a couple of hours. Do me a favour!’

As his scowl increased he saw that those outside were mellowing into smiles.

‘Okay, big mouth. You know you lost a rear plate? Replace it as soon as possible. What you got in the back there?’

‘Fucking tools! What you think I got? A cabaret?’

‘Go on – move.’ The barrier had been raised and one of the men was waving an illuminated baton. A few hundred metres ahead he saw there was another barrier. He slammed into gear, swearing hard at the now-merry faces as he passed.

Through.

He tooled slowly downhill.

The wide opening to the airport passed with its exit and entrance signs. the only signs he had seen so far on the road. Just inside, he saw, there were more guard posts, and he sailed past and on to the next barrier; now also miraculously raised.

Then he was on his own, and the street lights ran out, and he drove on in the dark.

The road curved sharply again and forked, and he took the main branch and curved round with it; and then slowed and stopped. Was this where you got tangled up?

He reversed to the fork and took a look at it again.

There was no doubt he’d taken the major road. But was it the right one? No sign of any kind, no warning of the fork even.

A large mound of grit was dumped at the roadside before the fork, with a deep ditch behind it; evidently a runoff for the spring thaw. He left the engine running and scrambled down to the ditch. Wide enough, and no rocks in it.

He drove the bobik down, sheltered behind the pile of grit, and switched everything off. The sounds of the airport were still near: helicopters chattering, a jet warming up. They flew the bullion out, he’d heard, in ingots.

He waited twenty minutes before the two trucks came round. They passed and he watched their lights; saw them keep steadily to the broad main track. Exactly. It was the one he’d taken himself: the loop road into the goldfields. Where he would have lost himself. The through route was the narrower one.