by Jeremy Duns
Luckily, the mist was holding, and as we moved deeper into the woods I found I could cover ground a lot faster than before, when I’d had to stop every five seconds to find the next spot of cover. Unfortunately, I could see that Sarah’s stamina was already flagging, and she was stopping not for cover but to catch her breath. I wasn’t faring as well as I’d hoped I would, either. Earlier I had all but forgotten the ache in my hand, but now it came back as a stabbing pain and I found myself feeling disoriented.
I blinked to try to snap myself out of it. This was no time to start hallucinating. Well, at least I no longer had my Nigerian fever slowing me down. It was quite a year I’d had: I’d caught a deadly African disease, been shot at, tricked, exposed as a traitor, tortured by a madman in a dungeon in Sardinia and hunted to within an inch of my life. And now here I was, with the world on borrowed time, crouching by a pine tree in Russia with a woman I barely knew – and just a few miles away from the West again.
It was colder now, perhaps below freezing, and Anton’s clothes didn’t offer much protection. It was getting darker with every passing moment and the temptation to stand up in the ground mist was enormous, but we were safest here, creeping along side by side. Ahead of us, finally, I saw the criss-cross structure of the traditional wooden watchtower, and I tried to block out everything as I made the additional effort to keep as low as possible and move in fluid, unnoticeable movements, elbow over elbow, feeling the grass beneath me respond almost as though I were a snake, or a fish swimming through a current.
As the feet of the watchtower came into view, I felt something on my back. I turned, thinking someone had touched me, before I realized it was rain. My spirits sagged. Rain was good in one sense, in that it worsened the border guards’ visibility. But in another sense it was terrible, because it released the body’s natural scents, and dogs might pick up on those. But I couldn’t see or hear any dogs around here. Perhaps they were taking it easy on a Monday on this part of the border. Perhaps this wouldn’t be quite as difficult as we had…
The bark came suddenly, and made my shirt vibrate on my back.
I froze, and heard a rustle next to me as Sarah froze too.
It came again, and this time I located it – it was about twenty yards away, to our right. Two barks from two different dogs. They worked in pairs.
Do not panic. Now is not the time to panic.
Elbow over elbow. Move away, to cover. I could no longer see Sarah, but hoped she was doing the same.
There was a shout from somewhere above. The sentry in the tower wanted to know what was happening, talking either to the dogs or to a colleague on the ground.
‘He’s heard something!’ It was his colleague replying, and he was close, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away.
Shit.
The rain was coming down in sheets now, and it was starting to hurt as it hit my spine and my calves. It was loud, as well, but that was good, because any senses it overrode for those hunting us helped. Elbow over elbow, elbow over elbow – just a few more yards to go. I couldn’t see where the dogs’ handler was, but border guards wore green uniforms precisely so they wouldn’t be seen.
Finally, I made it under the watchtower. I was dry, at least, and hopefully that would mean my scent didn’t get any stronger. But I had no real cover: no bushes, no trees; nothing but the wooden stilts holding up the tower. I squinted out into the darkness but couldn’t see any sign of Sarah in the low mist. I grabbed hold of one of the stilts to lessen my own visibility, pressing myself into it, every muscle tensed. I clamped my eyes shut: children do it and think they cannot be seen, and we laugh at them. But I didn’t dare open them, partly because the surface of my eyes might reflect light and give me away, partly through fear.
‘Which way, boy?’
It was just one of the dogs that had picked up the scent, then. The voice was harder to locate now, but that was because the sound of the rain was drowning him out, rather than the distance. They might be even closer now – not yet close enough to see through the mist and rain, but close enough to smell or hear me.
There was a faint padding noise behind me, and I opened my eyes a fraction and saw the outline of Sarah’s head emerging through the darkness. She had made it under, too. I reached out a hand and caught hold of her, and then pulled her in to the stilt. She was shaking very gently, and I covered her with my arms and pressed against her, urging her to control her fear, and thus her movements.
There was another vibration in the ground, and the front of my skull tingled as I realized it was the dog coming across the grass. It was heading straight for us. Gooseflesh formed on my arms and neck, as I waited for the animal to pounce on us. And then the vibrations stopped. It must be able to see us now, surely? I could hear it panting over the sound of our own breathing.
I stayed as still as I could, breathing through my mouth. Dogs see in monochrome and find it hard to focus over distance, so I hoped it saw four fuzzy grey wooden stilts holding up the tower through a screen of mist and rain. As a result of their vision, dogs mainly react to sources of movement, after which they investigate sound and scent. But in this case I thought the dog had been alerted by scent, the smell of our bodies brought out by the rain and exacerbated by our physical exertions over the last few hours. Now it was waiting to see if any of the stilts moved.
Judging by its reactions so far, this was a guard dog rather than a tracker. If so, it would be relying on air scent rather than following ground scent over a distance. That was an advantage, because air scent disperses more quickly. Now that we were under the tower and out of the rain, our scent would be harder to locate again. On the other hand, this type of dog would also have been trained to attack once it found its quarry.
It took a few steps closer to the tower, and barked again.
‘Where are you, boy?’
I tried not to take too much hope from the question. It suggested the handler couldn’t see through the rain either, and he would have much better eyesight than his dog. But it wasn’t necessarily sight that would give us away. I could feel Sarah’s heart hammering through her chest, as she could no doubt feel mine. The dog would be able to hear our heartbeats once it was within five feet of us.
If he found us, I’d have to kill him, because his training dictated he would try to kill us. Attack dogs are often overconfident – in training, they always win – and that might lead to mistakes. But it was a slim hope. I clasped my fist around the twig I’d been using to check for trip-wires. Could I use it? No, it would snap. I would have to use my hands. But then we would have to deal with the handler as well. And where was the other dog?
I had to calm down, because my heart was now thumping like a Salvation Army drum and I didn’t want to add to the pheromones of fear and stress we would both be giving off. I tried to find a pleasant memory to latch onto, and the warmth of Sarah’s skin reminded me of how she had looked that night in the embassy in Rome – her honey-blonde hair, eyes ringed with kohl, the white evening gown… But then I heard her catch her breath, and I thought instead of her in the Lubyanka, and saw a man attaching electrodes to the same arms that now held onto me in the darkness. She was here because of me and my actions. I’d promised myself I would keep her from harm in Moscow, and I’d failed. I had to get us through this. I couldn’t fail her again.
Calm. Think of pleasant memories, pleasant memories… It was useless – all my memories ended badly. But I had to find one. And then it came to me: Miss Violet, the old tabby cat my parents had adopted off the street in Cairo; I’d played with her on school holidays. I thought of her great piles of fur, and running my hands through it to make her purr, and the way she had jumped on my lap, narrowing her eyes in pleasure…
Vibrations under my feet. I tensed, ready to leap up and strike.
But the vibrations were getting softer, fading.
The dog had turned around.
‘Come on, boy. Let’s get back into the hut, shall we, and stop playing games?’
*
&
nbsp; I stood there, holding Sarah in my arms against the thin wooden strut. Above us, the sentry continued making his rounds. Sweat started pouring off me, as if in delayed reaction to the stress, and then it began to cool, sticking to my skin.
After a few minutes, Sarah very gently turned around. Her hands reached for my face, and then her lips grazed mine, and an electric current ran through me. I reached for her hands, and placed my fingers on her mouth. We weren’t out of this yet. We were still in the Soviet Union.
Once the rain had subsided a little, I crouched down in the mist and indicated with my hand in hers which direction we were to go in. Once I was satisfied she understood, I set off, making sure I could hear the sound of her breathing. After we had inched forward like this for what seemed like hours, I finally made out the first fence, a wire one. After watching for some time, I concluded that there were two border guards patrolling this stretch, but neither had dogs and after they passed each other there was a three-minute gap before either of them reappeared again. If the mist held, we should be able to get across the stretch in that time.
While scouting the situation, I’d crept up to the fence where the shadow was deepest and had shovelled away some of the earth with my hands. As soon as the guards passed each other, I turned on my back and, using a stick to prop up the wires, shimmied my way under the lowest line of wires. I could see the whites of Sarah’s eyes against the darkness, following my every move, and I watched as she carried out the same manoeuvre, a fraction of a second behind me. Once we were through, we began crawling to the other side, and carried out the same procedure. I’d lost count in my head and didn’t want to waste any time looking at my wristwatch, but I reckoned we were already approaching the three-minute mark.
But we had made it through, and it seemed that the game was now more a test of our stamina. There were two other fences, and they were of the same type. The first only had one patrol guard, and was much easier to get through as a result, but the final fence had three guards. By now I was exhausted and could tell that Sarah was as well. But we had come this far.
She helped me dig the earth away and then we waited for the guards to pass and shimmied under as we had done before. But this time we’d been a little careless, because there was more of an incline here and we hadn’t dug deep enough, so that just as we were coming free on the other side one of the coils of wire caught on my cheek and pulled at it. Without meaning to, I let out a cry, which I immediately muffled. But at once there was a bark. It was followed by the sound of footsteps and raised voices. The game was up.
‘Run!’ I whispered to Sarah, clambering to my feet. But I couldn’t obey my own instruction, and was conscious of a searing pain and blood dripping down my face. There was a line of trees in the near distance and I watched as Sarah’s silhouette stumbled towards it, but I was struggling to follow – my feet were slipping on the grass and my knees were shaking, and I fell before I’d gone even a few yards. Seconds later I was helped up by my arm, and I took in that the sleeve holding me was camouflaged. Somewhere to the left there was a dog on a leash, and the dog seemed interested in me. But I wasn’t interested in the dog.
‘I’m a geologist,’ I said pathetically, placing the palm of my hand against my cheek to staunch the flow. ‘I’m a geologist.’
There was no reply, and I looked up and saw that there were several men standing around me. My vision was starting to blur now, perhaps as a result of the fall, but a chill ran through me as I took in that they were all wearing gas masks. The masks were painted a sickly grey colour, and as a result it was like looking at a shoal of monstrous underwater creatures. It was all the more monstrous because the fact that they were wearing them could mean only one thing: a warning had been given.
This realization was confirmed by their behaviour. Without another word, they took hold of me, strapped me to a stretcher and carried me aboard a vehicle. As I came up the ramp, I saw another stretcher was already in there, and on it lay a beautiful woman in a grey dress with short hair, her eyes closed. My heart sank. Sarah hadn’t made it more than a few yards farther than I had. There was no hope, then – none at all.
The engine started up and we set off at great speed. I closed my eyes and tried not to panic, focusing instead on the pain in my cheek, and when that wasn’t enough I located the pain in my hand and thought about that as well.
Minutes later, my eyes opened again, my senses jarred by the squeal of metal: the doors of the jeep were opening, and I was being lifted out. It was still raining, and large drops splashed against my face. I could hear frantic but muffled orders being shouted around me, along with some sharp scraping sounds I couldn’t identify. The angle of my body suddenly inclined steeply. Directly ahead I caught a glimpse of a bizarre structure, made of enormous blocks of stone covered in moss and camouflage – a bunker. I looked up at the sky, the water pouring from it, and the cloud directly above me seemed to redden and expand. As the stretcher entered a dark, cool space and began descending a flight of steps, I knew that I had failed, and that Brezhnev had finally done it.
XIV
I was being hunted by a pack of wolves through a ravaged countryside, but there was something wrong with my face. It was slowly peeling away. Somewhere behind me, Colin Templeton shouted orders at men wielding spears, laughing as they chased me. Anna was there, too, caring for the dead on the battlefield, men without eyes. I watched as she leaned down to kiss one on the mouth…
I woke, sweating, and when I tried to move realized instantly that my hands and feet were manacled. It was dark, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and work out what was directly in front of them: the ceiling, made out of concrete, just a couple of inches away, and an exposed wire jutting out of it. With my nightmares still fresh in my head and no idea where I was, I cried out in terror. I stopped immediately, because the proximity of the ceiling meant that the sound bounced back, nearly deafening me. And I was aware that there was someone in the room with me.
‘Sarah?’
There was no reply for a few moments. Then: ‘Yes.’
She was in the bunk beneath me.
‘Are you all right?’
Silence.
‘It’s happened, hasn’t it?’
She started sobbing and I looked up in despair, feeling as if I might cry too, but finding I was unable to.
*
We lay there in the darkness for a time, trying not to think of what the future might hold, balanced between a nightmare and reality. Then, as if by magic, light crept into the room – someone had entered. A hand reached over and loosened the manacles on my ankles, and then released Sarah. After being pulled down a small stepladder, I found myself standing next to Sarah on a cement floor, facing two stocky men armed with machine-pistols.
They prodded us out of the room and along a narrow corridor, past rough concrete walls. One of them opened a thick steel door and we were pushed into a tiny room that contained nothing but a small wooden desk, a couple of plastic chairs and a naked bulb. I was pressed down into one of the chairs and Sarah into the other, and then the men took up position by the door, their hands on their weapons, their eyes expressionless. They hadn’t said a word to either of us.
I stared at both of them with amazement. The country above us had just been destroyed, yet they were still gamely following orders as though nothing had happened. I hadn’t thought the discipline went that deep, even here. Perhaps it was something to do with the training – or the bunker we were in. While the British ones had reserved space for cabinet ministers, royalty and civil servants, this one seemed to have been designed for the military, and infantry at that. Pack them in like sardines in a tin, with an inch’s breathing space – I couldn’t understand the logic of it. Perhaps they were intending to wait until the fallout had dissipated and then emerge and strike back, swelling over the border in their tanks and street-sweepers. Well, it wouldn’t surprise me. All the British contingency plans had been riddled with holes, because nobody had had the
balls to point out the truth: there was no possible way to survive a nuclear attack.
Not in the long term, anyway. Civil servants had wasted years writing documents and setting aside budgets for depots that would contain tons of flour, yeast and even sugary biscuits. But the brutal reality was that much of the world had been destroyed, and nobody was going to live long enough to rebuild it.
Most people would have been killed instantly in the first strikes. But the minority who had survived, like me and Sarah and whoever else was in this bunker, would suffer a much worse fate. We would struggle on for a couple of months down here and in other places like it, fighting among ourselves over the rapidly dwindling water and food supplies. At some point, someone would insist that the only option left was to go outside again and see if more water could be found, or search for those holes in the ground with the sacks of flour in them. A few souls would venture out, only to die slowly of radiation poisoning. The rest of us would sit down here waiting for them to return, gradually going mad. People would soon start to kill each other, and then themselves. But there would be little or no life on the surface for hundreds and hundreds of miles – and that meant that there was no way to survive in the long term. It didn’t matter how many bunk beds you had.
The door opened and a man marched into the room. He was wearing a leather coat over his uniform so I couldn’t make out his rank, but the sentries saluted him so he was obviously the bigwig. He was a tall man, completely bald, and with cheekbones so pronounced that his head resembled a skull. He somehow seemed precisely the sort of figure to meet in this situation: a god of the underworld. He pulled out a chair on the other side of the table, seated himself in it and leaned across the desk, staring at the two of us with bright blue eyes.
‘We have little time,’ he said, ‘so I will dispense with the preliminaries.’ He spoke in heavily accented English, which took me by surprise. ‘I have the following information about you, which I wish you to confirm. You are British spies by the name of Paul Dark and Sarah Severn, and you have escaped from imprisonment in Moscow. My understanding is that you escaped from a moving car while being transported to the Lubyanka.’
