Kolymsky Heights (35 page)

An idea began slowly to dawn.

Tell me, ‘he said humbly to the Russian,’ were you ever in Mitlakino?’

‘Yes, I’ve been in Mitlakino.’

‘As an educated man – excuse me, I’m ignorant – is it on the sea, the Arctic?’

The Russian thawed slightly. ‘Not on the Arctic, no. Inland a little. From a cape – Cape Dezhnev. The sea there we call a
strait
– the Bering Strait. You’ve heard of it, perhaps?’

‘Ah, no.’

But ah yes. Christ Almighty, yes! It hadn’t shown up on the airport map, all peeled away there. But of course the Bering Strait. Go far enough east and you … He couldn’t wait to get his hands, on the little atlas. He couldn’t get at the atlas, stuck in the backpack with a great pile of other luggage. He waited for the first stop and the plane to thin out.

To Mys Schmidta was an hour’s hop, and the Russian got off and others on, in the same confusion; then on to Polyarnik, another forty minutes, and more off and none on. And at last, with the upheavals over and the plane thinned out, he got at the backpack, and the atlas, and hungrily turned east.

Page after page, and there it was: end of the peninsula, Cape Dezhnev. End of the peninsula but not of the map, or of Russia. For the deeper knowledge of Kolymsky students the school atlas showed the boundary of Russia, and of its nearest neighbour. The boundary was in the sea, eighty-five kilometres wide at this point: the Bering Strait. The neighbours had forty-two and a half kilometres each and the boundary ran through the middle. It ran between two islands. The Greater Diomede Island was Russian, the Lesser Diomede American. Only four kilometres between them …

He absorbed this and looked back at the mainland. Inland from Cape Dezhnev, the Russian had said. Mitlakino didn’t show up there. Just a wilderness, with a marsh, a lake, a small mountain range. North of the cape a coastal dot said Uelen, and south of it Lavrentiya. There would be others in between. At the place itself there’d be a bigger scale map, a work map.

Soon enough a dim haze of light below showed the place itself, with the straight line of an airstrip.

They landed on it at nine o’clock and snow tanks were waiting to take the forty-odd men to the workers’ barracks. The journey was short, but snow was now falling quite heavily.

He got himself into the last of the tracked vehicles. No one had questioned his presence so far and the absence of the other man had not been noticed, but it was as well to see what happened ahead. As they neared the building the first arrivals were already filing in, the lead tank moving on to an adjoining shed. Again he positioned himself as last man in the mob outside. Some hold-up was going on inside, and presently there were complaints, and a great heave and they were all in.

Inside, in the tightly packed lobby, an angry telephone conversation was going on. A wrong permit had been provided, and the matter was being checked with Baranikha. An official barked to the clerk at the desk that papers would be processed in the morning, and the mob began to thin. Again he saw to it that he was at the end. The men were being handed tags – for their skis and bunk numbers – in exchange for their documentation. He had his papers in his hand but was not anxious to have the name overheard by the man’s comrades.

Now he felt himself on edge; time going fast. Nine-thirty. Four and a half hours since the Chukchee had taken a sleep. He could be waking up.

He gave in his papers at last – the
very
last – and was allotted a bunk and a locker. ‘Just dump your stuff and go right to supper. The kitchen will close.’

He found his bunk, looked into the dining room and saw that tags were being shown for meals. He went outside again.

The telephone line was coated with snow and he’d seen it on the way in. It disappeared into a plastic conduit and he traced it down the log-built structure to the junction box. With his knife he prised apart the join where it met the box, cut the wire, and pressed the conduit back in place. No more talk with Baranikha. He decided to skip supper.

In the air the general was in heated conversation with Tchersky. They’d garbled the story; it was obvious now. The Chukchee found at Baranikha was not the Chukchee he was after. The man at Baranikha had been found in the airport’s boiler room, drunk. From his incoherent account it seemed that some other native had stolen his flight ticket and papers and flown off with them. He had flown off with a gang of native workers to a construction site. The location of the site was now providing a problem.

The name of the place was Mitlakino, and it was not on the general’s maps. It was not on Tchersky’s, either.

‘What the devil! Doesn’t Tchersky supply this place?’

‘No, General. According to Baranikha, Magadan does.’

‘Magadan? Is there an air service from it to Magadan?’

Yes, apparently there was.

‘This bastard,’ the general informed his staff, ‘is making for Magadan. He’ll go south from there. Now listen,’ he told Tchersky, ‘that airstrip at Mitla – at that place – is to be closed down. Issue the order at once. Will he have landed there yet?’

Yes, he would have landed there. The plane had reported landing two hours ago, at 9 p. m., and was staying the night due to heavy snow. There was now no radio contact with it, or with.
the small control tower which had also gone off for the night. And the telephone line at the camp was out of order; Baranikha was still trying to get through.

‘Goddam it!’ the general said. ‘Well close it down when they
do
get through. That plane is not to take off, whatever the weather, and nothing else is to be let in except military craft. Contact the nearest airbase to it. Get a clear location for them from Baranikha – a precise map reference with co-ordinates. I’ll talk to them when I land. He’s bottled up there, at least. That’s one thing. Now here’s another.’ The general took breath.

‘This bobik. He went through Bilibino in a
bobik
. He will have arrived in Baranikha with it. How the hell is it that a bobik has not been reported missing? What details have they given of it in Baranikha?’

Baranikha had not given any details of it. They hadn’t found it – not at the airport, or as yet anywhere in the town. They were still looking for it.

In that case, the general thought, they weren’t going to find it. He had got rid of it; no evidence left. Increasingly it was looking as if he’d left
Tchersky
in the bobik. He might have used the Tatra to get to the Bilibino highway, and
there
snatched a bobik, a likelier vehicle for mountains than a farm truck. But there
was
no stolen bobik on the Bilibino highway: his officers had earlier covered it intensively, had covered every long-distance route. In which case where had the bobik come from?

Tchersky. He hadn’t simply picked one up on the way. The man was a planner. He had
planned
the bobik. In his workshop. Had taken some wreck there, and then the spare parts to rebuild it. Where had the spare parts come from? The Tchersky Transport Company. Where had the wreck come from? Same place. Not a Tatra. A bobik. Any number of crocks must be hanging about there – a big garage, for God’s sake. But with big garages there were routines. Was this just sloppy supervision or had someone actively … Who was responsible for such things? And who was responsible for
parts
?

‘Tchersky – are you there?’ The general had brooded for some minutes, only a discreet crackle coming from the other end.

‘Yes, General.’

‘Who’s in charge of bobik parts there, that company?’

‘Bobik parts would be the Light Vehicles Depot.’

‘Do they work at night?’

‘No, not at night. They lock up at five, General.’

‘Good. Get a key. Have the director of the place there when I land. Don’t tell him why. See my car is waiting. And have you remembered that about the co-ordinates?’

‘Yes, General. You want them when you land.’

‘
I
don’t want them. The
airbase
will want them. Give them to the
airbase
.’

Idiots!

Vassili had been very silent all night, his eyes on the TV, and his wife’s eyes on him. He had known she would say nothing unless he said something; and he had said nothing at all.

Now he settled himself into bed.

‘All right, what?’ he said.

‘Will we lose the apartment?’

‘No.’

‘Will you get into trouble?’

‘No.’

‘They say he’s bad.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘They know someone helped him.’

He grunted. He should never have told her of the bobik. It had been in that romantic period when she had advised that Kolya should fuck an Evenk. He put his teeth in the glass.

‘Could they find out anything?’ she said.

‘No.’

He sincerely hoped not. He had gone through the duplicate order forms from March; delivery advices from July. His stock
and deficit books had needed attention, too, and a razor blade. None of the parts showed up now. They’d never been ordered; delivery not advised; no deficits. The rumpus would come later, and he would sort it out later. If Kolya hadn’t fixed him. Got himself found. Or left the bobik to be found. He wouldn’t have done that. No. But he was depressed. He had been used.

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

At militia headquarters the general hung on, waiting for the flight controller of the airbase to return to the phone.

His raid on the transport company had not been a success. A haggard director, evidently an old camp survivor, had savagely accused him of being spy happy, of wishing a return to old times. One Liova, the manager of the Light Vehicles Depot, also an old lag, also summoned, had demanded the presence of a native storeman; vetoed by the general. They had inspected the stores, and various books, all incomprehensible … A job for an expert later. For now –

‘Hello, yes?’

‘Okay, General. Meteorological conditions are difficult at the moment – there’s a white-out.’

‘But you can land there?’

‘Of course. What do you want doing?’

‘Just get him. You’ll need to liaise with Magadan, they supply the place. I have no clear idea of it here −’

‘I’m looking at air photos of it now.’

‘Ah, you have some. It’s isolated, is it?’

‘Yes, just a single structure. Is he armed?’

‘Assume that he is. When can you be there?’

‘Say 0100. I’ve lifted a squad of airborne now, in helicopters. You want him held there or brought back here?’

‘First get him. I’ll let you know,’ the general said, and hung up, satisfied.

A right decision to come himself from Irkutsk. The idiots here could still be combing warehouses. Upon arrival he had
been two days behind the man. By issuing decisive orders – militia posts, air strips – he had reduced that gap to two hours. Now, twenty past twelve on his second night here, the two hours had been reduced to forty minutes.

He had a drink while waiting.

At twelve-thirty Porter climbed out of his bunk, tidied the rolled-up bedding, and took his boots and the backpack. The dormitory was snoring; he had made sure everyone was snoring before even entering it for a rest.

He had heard one shift go out at midnight and another return, evidently to some other dormitory. Now the place was dead. He peered out into the lobby.

All deserted; semi-dark.

Behind the counter, a single lamp. In the recess by the door, the ski stack, now tidied up.

He stood quite still, reviewing the scene, and waited some moments to be sure he had it to himself. Then he went behind the counter. There was a chair there and he sat and put his boots on, looking about him. A few notices pinned to a board: work schedules; a plan showing block numbers of work areas. Nothing more. There had to be better than this, and he looked under the counter, and found it.

All below the counter was pigeon-holed, and in the holes charts. The holes were neatly labelled. Camp Plan, Mining Works, Geological Survey, Topography.

Topography had a dozen rolled-up charts and he found the right one. They were inland from the cape forty kilometres: Dezhnev to the north, Lavrentiya to the south. In between, a curving bay showed several coastal villages – Naukan,
Tunytlino, Leymin, Veyemik, Keyekan … Inuit villages: Eskimos.

The tiny marsh and lake of the atlas were here hugely magnified. The camp was exactly midway between them. The works were a kilometre to the west, in the foothills of a small mountain range; the chart squared off so precisely he could place himself to 500 metres.

The islands were not on the chart – on this scale too far out. But he knew that from midway in the bay they were directly east.

Midway in the bay … It looked like Veyemik. The compass bearing on the chart showed Veyemik as due south-east of the barrack block.

He dug in the backpack, found the school compass, and checked it, first finding north. North, according to the chart, should be the adjoining shed where the snow tanks had pulled in, the whole block laid out on a precise north-south axis.

He pointed the compass there, and saw it was several degrees out. No means of resetting the tinny little job so he made the adjustment in his head, and scanned the chart again.

There were three main tracks: to the works, the lake, and the nearest coastal village, Tunytlino. This one he examined carefully.

Tunytlino was thirty kilometres away. No track led from it to the next village, Leymin, twelve kilometres below it, but the ground looked flat. After that, Veyemik.

Veyemik was another fourteen kilometres, but surrounded by a whirl of contour lines. The place was on the far side of a creek; frozen now … If he hit the coast at Tunytlino, kept the sea on the left, Veyemik was twenty-six kilometres below it. The whole journey, from where he sat now, fifty-six kilometres. Thirty-five miles.

Okay.

He slipped the chart back in its pigeon-hole, went to the ski stack and found the pair he had arrived with, tagged by bunk
number. He removed the tag, hunted in his pocket for its twin – this one looped to a locker key – and took them back to the desk. They’d come out of a drawer, he remembered. In the night’s confusion the deskman had hastily stuffed the papers in the same drawer. He opened the drawer and found his own papers, the tag number scrawled in one corner. He took the papers, dropped the tags in among a jumble of others and closed the drawer.

With backpack and skis he went out through the double doors. The outer one had a simple latch and it clicked securely behind him.

Outside the wind was howling, snow blowing horizontally.

He hunched through it to the shed and shone his torch. Four snow tanks, three bobiks. He looked over the best bobik; then the other two. No keys in any of them. He swore. A snow tank, then. Cumbersome; also very noisy. But nothing for it. He inspected the snow tanks, and found none of them had keys.

Jesus Christ! He wasn’t going thirty-five miles in a snowstorm on little work skis; not in view of what else he had to do tonight. He shone the torch around and saw the snow ploughs – one actually out in the snow, shrouded in it. He had a look at the other. It was at the mouth of the shed, a tracked vehicle, big tracks like a tank; its shovel raised and pointing out. High, with an enclosed cabin. He climbed up and opened the door.

Keys in.

He shone the torch round the cabin. He had driven a snow plough before but the arrangement of levers was unfamiliar here. To hell – there was a gear stick, accelerator, wipers, lights, brake. He’d figure it out on the move.

He settled the skis and backpack, closed the door and turned the key. It took several turns before the thing clanked hideously into life. He didn’t know if it could be heard above the wind. Just move.

He slipped the gear in and moved. Got it out of the shed and
well away from the building before turning right to pick up the track at the north side. In the dark he couldn’t see the track. He flashed the lights briefly, but the broad shovel was sticking out, blocking the view. Just a dazzle of snow, twin embankments hazily visible ahead. Evidently that was the track, swept by the snow plough.

He drove between the embankments, and switched the headlights on again. In the glare, high walls of snow passed slowly on each side; and presently began curving right – east. Yes, this was it. On the chart the only track east led to the coast: Tunytlino. He ran for another minute, and stopped.

He switched the interior light on and inspected the controls. Found the lever for the shovel and lowered it out of the way. Now, the wipers going, he could see clearly – at least the two embankments he had to drive between. Ahead the lane ran straight, no signs of the plough’s earlier tracks. With the heavy snow falling there would soon be no sign of his own. All to the good. The thing had no speedometer and was certainly not a racer. Still, only thirty kilometres to the coast. It was just before one o’clock; he thought he could make it in an hour, and started again. And almost immediately stopped again.

He switched off the engine; and then the lights, too.

A helicopter was chuntering overhead. Even above the engine he’d heard it. A big one. There seemed to be more than one. Or was it the same one, circling to find the landing strip?

He opened the window and looked up. Through the whirling hail of snow he could see, intermittently, the hazy beam of a searchlight. The landing strip was switched off; the pilot was hunting for it. Maybe a telephone crew to see to the fault Strange, at one in the morning. But communication crews worked round the clock. He started up again and drove on, with the lights off. From the air, he knew, he couldn’t be seen, the vehicle shrouded now in snow.

He drove for several minutes, and stopped and cut the engine again. the clatter was still in the air, but distant now. The guy
hadn’t landed yet, or if he had was making a hell of a row, his rotors still going. But no sign of a beam through the heavy snow and the helicopter was well behind him, so he switched on the sidelights and got moving again, pensively.

The line crew had arrived unexpectedly fast. He’d been right to move fast. The Chukchee at Baranikha would be awake by now and raising hell. He drove on, musing; the track dead straight, glaring white between the snow embankments, the sidelights for the time being sufficient.

At ten past two the first village appeared, Tunytlino.

A semi-circle of shacks, their backs facing him, chimneys smoking. The smoke was coming towards him. No lights showed and he couldn’t make out the sea; all frozen now, of course.

He switched everything off, opened the window, and listened. No dogs. The wind hissed only a little now, but it was coming from the sea. And the snow was definitely less. Already, from the sea, a different weather system.

A single street ran behind the shacks – a cleared stretch, at least. A path had been made from it to the track he was on, which simply petered out a hundred metres ahead, the embankments falling away. There he had to turn right.

He thought he had better get down and see how.

Coal smoke was in the air, acrid, from the sleeping houses. He crunched through the new snow, the village dead silent, and walked beyond it until the houses stopped and the cleared path ran out. Now he saw the sea. The beach shelved, a long way, perhaps two hundred, metres, and the flat plain began. Utterly featureless. The Bering Strait.

To the right, everything similarly featureless. Another white plain, set above the sea. All the way along, the shore line shelved. The temperature had definitely risen here, some mistiness in the air, a few snowflakes whirling. Between the flakes and the snatches of mist he could see a star or two. All the land flat ahead. Okay.

He turned and went back.

In the silence, switching on the engine, he gritted his teeth at the racket Couldn’t be helped. He kept the lights off, drove the last bit of track, turned right along the coast and kept going. The mirrors, all the glass areas, were snowed up and he leaned out of the cab to look back. A light had come on in one of the houses, but soon went out. He had been heard; but without interest. He switched to headlights and drove on.

The last few days he had slept little. But even sleepless, he seemed to be dreaming. He was driving a snow plough along the Bering Strait. Out in the darkness was America. In between, the two islands, locked in ice. All he had to do was walk there. Just get himself in position.

Leymin next, twelve kilometres.

Patches of mist, sudden squalls of snow; the weather changing every few minutes. But a night of changing drifts would cover his tracks anyway.

Just under the half hour, Leymin.

He turned inland, kept distance with the village until the shacks had passed, and returned to the coast.

To Veyemik, another fourteen kilometres. The chart had shown wavy contour lines here, but he could see no contours.

In a few minutes he came on them. The ground rose suddenly, the shore dropping below. And now on his right, snow-covered rocks, rising. The rocks became a cliff, and he was wedged between it and the drop on his left. He slowed to a crawl. No way of turning here. And no point in backing anyway. To return and go inland would mean only some other kind of contours, perhaps impassable: the chart had shown a chain of them.

He kept on, at a walking pace.

Veyemik was on a creek, so there had to be a descent to it: sea level. Whether you could drive down was another matter; it could be a precipice. Get as near as possible, have a look at the place. If necessary ski to it – not so far now. But there was the problem of the vehicle. He couldn’t abandon a snow plough, leave evidence of where he’d gone.

He crawled on, peering ahead. The frozen strait was now a long way below, and the track very narrow. It could simply peter out and he’d be over the side.

And then, in a minute, everything had changed again.

The track veered seawards, a sudden squall blew in, snow spattering the windscreen, wipers working double time. And gone. Calm. Flakes twirling in the air, and below, the creek. He could see it clearly, the shoreline broken, quite a wide inlet. At the other side of it, a huddle of houses: Veyemik. And a long easy slope to it.

He drove down, dropped smoothly on to the creek, crossed it to the other side, and came out behind the houses.

Three o’clock.

He switched the lights and the engine off, and got out to have a look.

To seaward, nothing – a great plain of ice, snow-covered. This was it. The islands were now due east. In the plough he could go the whole way. Except, of course, he couldn’t. The thing would be detected at once. Both islands were certainly observation posts full of electronic devices. It would have to be on foot. From here the distance was greater than from Cape Dezhnev; perhaps fifty or sixty kilometres, but a simpler run, less chance of error – due east. Even with the little skis he could do it in five, six hours. Totally exposed, of course, if anyone knew where he’d gone. Time to lose the snow plough.

A stream cut down from the hills backing the creek. He’d seen it on the chart and now he could see its banks. He climbed up into the cab again, made the stream and drove up it. The track soon lost itself, twisting and turning in the tangle of hills. He drove for twenty minutes without finding anywhere to ditch the plough; no cave, no gorge. It began snowing again while he peered. He decided to leave it anyway. No one would find it here before next summer. And time was going fast.

He switched off, climbed out, attached the backpack and skis and was down again quicker than he’d gone up.

His face was crusted with snow, his gloved hands numb as he came out on to the creek. He poled himself across the ice to the mouth. The little broad skis made hard work of
langlauf
striding, but they were better than nothing. He stopped to beat the feeling into his hands before taking his position.

No shelving beach here. Just the creek running out flat with the strait. The great void stretched before him. The Russian island came first, three times the size of the American and masking it completely. He had to hit the larger one and work round it before taking a position for the other. From now on, it would be dead reckoning, his bearing checked every few minutes, for in the ocean of darkness he would be totally blind. He unhitched the backpack and dug out the torch and compass.

He could scarcely feel the little compass. He took his gloves off and breathed on his hands and shone the torch down on it. He couldn’t steady it with one hand, so he gripped the light under his chin and got both hands to it. Even so the needle was hard to steady. He found after some moments that it wouldn’t steady. It fluttered and swung, and fluttered and swung, ten degrees, and twenty, and thirty. It swung round the dial. He saw it wasn’t merely swinging, but pulsing. Radar pulses,
some
bloody pulses, from somewhere.

He watched it a full three minutes to see if there was a pattern. The pattern was a continuous pattern: the needle, in fluttering jumps, going round the dial, round and round.