‘But it is now too . . .’
‘Now? I don’t know what it is now. I want everything to be as clear as before again. I don’t do it just for the sake of it, I’m not a bandit. I’m not a murderer! It’s for people’s good. I tried living without people, to keep them safe . . . But I got scared. I was forgetting myself really fast . . . I had to get back to people. To protect them, to help them . . . To remember. And then at Sebastopol . . . They accepted me there. That’s my lair. I have to save the station, I have to help them. No matter what price I might have to pay. I think if I can do it . . . When I neutralise the threat . . . That’s something really big, something genuine. Maybe then I’ll remember. I must. That’s why I have to move fast, or else . . . It’s moving faster and faster now. I have to get it done in twenty-four hours. Get everything done – reach Polis, collect a squad together and get back . . . But in the meantime, you remind me, all right?’
Homer nodded stiffly. He was afraid even to imagine what would happen when the brigadier forgot himself completely. Who would remain in his body when the former Hunter fell asleep forever? Would it be that . . . Would it be whatever he was defeated by in today’s phantom combat?’
Polyanka was far behind them now: Hunter was racing on towards Polis like a wolfhound that has scented quarry and been let off its chain. Or like a wolf trying to shake off his pursuers?
Light appeared at the end of the tunnel.
They managed to drag themselves to Culture Park and Leonid tried to make peace with the guards again, inviting them all to ‘an excellent restaurant’, but the guards were wary now. He almost wasn’t even allowed to go off to the privy. After an exchange of whispers, one of the escorts agreed to guard them and the other disappeared.
‘Got any money left?’ the man on guard at the door asked bluntly.
‘A little bit,’ said Leonid, setting five cartridges on his outstretched palm.
‘Give it here. Kostya’s decided to shop you. He thinks you’re a Red agent. If he’s right – there’s a passage through to your line here – well, you should know. If he’s wrong, you can wait here for a bit, until counter-intelligence comes for you, and barter with them.’
‘Unmasked me, have you?’ said Leonid, trying to suppress his hiccups. ‘Okay! So be it . . . We’ll be back again! Thanks for the assistance!’ He flung his arm up in an unfamiliar greeting. ‘Listen . . . To hell with that passage. Just take us to the tunnel, will you?
The musician grabbed Sasha and set off in front at an amazing pace, even though he was stumbling.
‘How kind of him!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘There’s a passage through to your line here . . . How would you like to go up on the surface? Forty metres down. As if he didn’t know everything there was blocked off ages ago . . .’
‘Where are we going?’ Sasha didn’t understand anything at all now.
‘What do you mean, where? To the Red Line! You heard – they’ve caught an agent provocateur, exposed him . . .’ Leonid muttered.
‘Are you a Red?’
‘My dear girl! Don’t ask me any questions right now! I can either think or run. And running’s what we need more . . . Our friend will raise the alarm any moment now . . . And he’ll shoot us for resisting arrest . . . Money’s not enough for us, we want a medal too . . .’
They dived into the tunnel, leaving the guard outside. They ran forward towards Kiev Station, hugging the wall. We won’t have time to get to the station anyway, thought Sasha. If the musician was right, and the second guard was already pointing out which way the fugitives had gone . . .
Then suddenly Leonid turned left into a well-lit side tunnel – as confidently as if he was walking home. A few minutes later flags, metal gratings and sandbags heaped up into machine-gun nests appeared ahead in the distance and they heard dogs barking. A frontier post? Had they already been warned about the fugitives? How was he planning to get out of here? And whose territory started on the other side of the barricades?
‘I’m from Albert Mikhailovich,’ said the musician, thrusting a strange-looking document under the sentry’s nose. ‘I need to get across to the other side.’
‘The usual rate,’ said the sentry, glancing inside the hard binding. ‘Where are the papers for the young lady?’
‘Let’s make it double,’ said Leonid, turning out his pockets and shaking out the last cartridges. ‘And you didn’t see the young lady, okay?’
‘Let’s just do without “let’s make it”,’ said the border guard, putting on a stern air. ‘D’you think you’re at the market? This is a law-abiding state!’
‘Oh don’t be like that!’ the musician exclaimed in mock fright. ‘I just thought, since it’s a market economy, we could bargain . . . I didn’t know there was a difference . . .’
Five minutes later Sasha and Leonid – mauled and dishevelled, with a graze on his cheekbone and a bleeding nose – were tossed into a tiny little room with tiled walls.
The iron door clanged shut.
Darkness fell.
CHAPTER 16
In the Cage
In pitch darkness a person’s other senses become more acute. Smells become more vivid, sounds become louder and more three-dimensional. The only sound in the punishment cell was from someone or other scratching at the floor, and there was an unbearable stench of stale urine.
After drinking so much, the musician didn’t even seem able to feel his own pain. He carried on muttering something to himself under his breath for a while, then he stopped responding and started snuffling. He wasn’t alarmed that their pursuers were bound to catch up with them now. He wasn’t bothered about what would happen to Sasha, without any papers or justification for trying to cross the Hansa border. And of course, he was absolutely indifferent to the fate of Tula.
‘I hate you,’ Sasha said quietly.
He couldn’t care less about that either.
Soon a little hole appeared in the absolute gloom enveloping the cell – it was the glass spyhole in the door. Everything else remained invisible, but even this tiny gap was enough for Sasha: carefully groping her way through the blackness, she crept over to the door and unleashed her light little fists on it. The door responded by rumbling, but the moment Sasha stopped hammering it, silence returned. The guards refused to hear the din or Sasha’s shouts.
Time flowed on as slow as syrup.
How long would they hold them prisoner? Maybe Leonid had deliberately brought her here? Maybe he wanted to separate her from the old man and from Hunter? Tear her out of the team and lure her into a trap? And all of this only in order to . . .
Sasha started crying, burying her face in her sleeve – it absorbed the moisture and the sounds.
‘Have you ever seen the stars?’ asked a voice that still wasn’t sober.
She didn’t answer.
‘I’ve only ever seen them in photographs too,’ the musician told her. ‘The sun can barely break though the dust and the clouds, and they’re not strong enough for that. But your crying woke me up just now and I thought I’d suddenly seen a real star.’
‘It’s the spyhole,’ she answered, after swallowing her tears.
‘I know. But here’s the interesting thing . . .’ Leonid coughed. ‘Who was it that used to watch us from the sky, with a thousand eyes? And why did he turn his back on us?’
‘There never was anyone there!’ said Sasha, shaking her head abruptly.
‘But I’ve always wanted to believe that someone was keeping an eye on us,’ the musician said thoughtfully.
‘No one’s bothered about us, not even in this cell!’ she exclaimed and the tears welled up in her eyes again. ‘Did you arrange this specially? So we’d be too late?’ She started hammering on the door again.
‘If you don’t think there’s anyone there, why bother knocking?’ asked Leonid.
‘You couldn’t give a damn if all those sick people die!’
‘So that’s the impression I give, is it? That’s a shame,’ he sighed. ‘But
as far as I can see, you’re not so desperate to get to those sick people either. You’re afraid that if your lover goes off to kill them, he’ll get infected himself, and there isn’t any cure . . .’
‘That’s not true!’ Sasha had to stop herself from hitting him.
‘It is, it’s true . . .’ said Leonid, mimicking her squeaky voice. ‘What’s so special about him?’
Sasha didn’t want to explain anything to him, she didn’t want to talk to him at all. But she couldn’t hold back.
‘He needs me! He really needs me, without me he’s doomed. But you don’t need me. You just haven’t got anyone to play with.’
‘Okay, let’s suppose he does need you. Not exactly desperately, but he wouldn’t say no. But what do you need him for, this ravenous wolf? Do you find villains attractive? Or do you want to save his lost soul?’
Sasha lapsed into silence. She was stung by how easily the musician could read her feelings. Perhaps there was nothing special about them? Or was it because she didn’t know how to hide them? That subtle, intangible something that she couldn’t even frame in words sounded quite banal, even crass, on his lips.
‘I hate you,’ she forced out at last.
‘That’s okay, I’m not so fond of me either,’ Leonid chuckled.
Sasha sat down on the floor and her tears started flowing again, first from anger, then from helplessness. She wasn’t going to give up, just as long as something still depended on her. But now, isolated in this cell, with a companion who was deaf to her hopes and fears, she had no chance of being heard any longer. Shouting was pointless. Banging on the door was pointless. There was no one she could try to convince. Everything was pointless.
And then suddenly a picture appeared in front of her eyes for a moment: tall buildings, a green sky, clouds scudding along, people laughing. And the hot, wet drops on her cheeks seemed like drops of that summer rain the old man had told her about. A second later the apparition disappeared, leaving only a light, magical mood behind.
‘I want a miracle,’ Sasha told herself stubbornly, biting on her lower lip.
And immediately a tumbler switch clicked loudly in the corridor, and the cell was flooded with unbearably bright light.
A blissful aura of peace and prosperity extended out for dozens of metres from the entrance to the marble shrine that was the sacred capital of the Metro – together with the white radiance of the mercury lamps. They weren’t sparing with light in Polis, because they believed in its magic. An abundance of light reminded people of their former lives, of those distant times when man was not yet a night animal, not yet a predator. And even barbarians from the periphery behaved with restraint here.
The checkpoint on the border of Polis was more like the front entrance of an old Soviet ministry than an armoured guard post: a table, a chair, two officers in clean staff uniforms, wearing their peaked caps. A check of documents, an inspection of personal effects. The old man fished his passport out of his pocket. Visas had supposedly been abolished, so there shouldn’t be any problems. He handed the little green folder to an officer and squinted sideways at the brigadier. Absorbed in his own thoughts, Hunter didn’t seem to have heard the border guard’s question. And did he have passport in any case, Homer wondered doubtfully. But if he didn’t, what had he been hoping for, hurrying here so fast?
‘I’m asking you for the last time,’ said the officer, placing one hand on his gleaming holster, ‘present your documents or leave Polis territory immediately!’
Homer wasn’t sure if the brigadier still hadn’t understood what they wanted from him and simply reacted to the movement of the fingers creeping towards the press stud of the holster. Instantly emerging from his strange dormant state, Hunter flung his open hand forward with lightning speed, staving in the sentry’s Adam’s apple. The man wheezed, turned blue and collapsed flat on his back, together with his chair. The other man tried to bolt, but the old man knew he wouldn’t make it. The implacable burnished pistol appeared in Hunter’s hand like an ace out of a cardsharp’s sleeve and . . .
‘Wait!’
The brigadier hesitated for a second, and that was enough for the fleeing soldier to scramble out onto the platform, go tumbling over and hide from the bullets.
‘Leave them! We have to get to Tula! You must . . . You asked me to remind you . . . Wait!’ The old man gasped for breath, not knowing what to say.
‘To Tula . . .’ Hunter repeated dully. ‘Yes, best to be patient until we get to Tula. You’re right.’ He sank down heavily onto a chair, put his heavy revolver down beside him and lowered his head. Seizing the moment, Homer raised his hands in the air and ran forward towards the guards who were darting out of the archways.
‘Don’t shoot! He surrenders! Don’t shoot! In the name of all that’s holy . . .’
But even so they twisted his arms behind his back and hurriedly tore off his respirator before allowing him to explain. The brigadier, who had fallen back into his strange lethargy, didn’t interfere. He allowed them to disarm him and walked submissively through into the holding cell. He sat down on a bunk, looked up, found the old man and gasped out:
‘You need to find a certain man here. He’s called Miller. Bring him here. I’ll wait . . .’
Homer nodded, fastidiously gathered up his things and started squeezing his way through the sentries and curious bystanders crowding round the door, when suddenly he heard his name called.
‘Homer!’
The old man froze in astonishment: Hunter had never called him by name before. He walked back to the lengths of reinforcing rods welded into unconvincing prison bars and looked enquiringly at Hunter, who was hugging himself with his massive hands, as if he were shivering with cold. And the brigadier spoke to him in a dull, lifeless voice:
‘Not for long.’
The door opened and a soldier looked in timidly – the same one who had lashed the musician across the face several hours earlier. A kick in the backside sent him flying into the cell and he almost tumbled over onto the floor, then straightened up and looked round uncertainly.
A lean-bodied soldier wearing glasses was standing in the doorway. The shoulder tabs on his tunic were covered with stars, his sparse, light-brown hair was sleeked back.
‘Gone on, you dumb beast,’ he hissed.
‘I . . . It’s . . .’ the border guard bleated.
‘Don’t be shy,’ the officer encouraged him.
‘I apologise for what I did. And you . . . you . . . I can’t do it.’
‘That’s an extra ten days.’
‘Hit me,’ the soldier said to Leonid, not knowing which way to look.
‘Ah, Albert Mikhailovich!’ said the musician, screwing up his eyes and smiling. ‘I was starting to get tired of waiting.’
‘Good evening,’ said the officer, also hitching up the corners of his lips. ‘See, I’ve come to restore justice. Are we going to take our revenge?’
‘I have to take care of my hands,’ said the musician, getting up and kneading his waist. ‘I think you can punish him.’
‘With all due severity,’ said Albert Mikhailovich, nodding. ‘A month in the guardhouse. And naturally, I add my apologies to this blockhead’s.’
‘Well, don’t get too spiteful with him,’ said Leonid, rubbing his bruised jaw.
‘Is this going to remain just between the two of us?’ The officer’s metallic voice grated treacherously, giving him away.
‘As you can see, I’m smuggling something out,’ the musician said with a brief nod in Sasha’s direction. ‘Can you relax the rules a bit?’
‘We’ll arrange it,’ Albert Mikhailovich promised.
They left the guilty border guard right there in the cell: after closing the bolt, the officer led them along a narrow corridor.
‘I won’t go any further with you,’ Sasha told the musician in a loud voice.
‘What if I told you that we really are going to that Emerald City?’ Leonid asked her after a moment’s pause, speaking in a vo
ice so low she could barely hear it. ‘If I told you it’s no accident that I know more about it than your granddad? That I’ve seen it for myself, and not just seen it? That I’ve been there, and not just there . . .’
‘You’re lying!’
‘You know what?’ Leonid asked her angrily. ‘When you ask for a miracle, you have to be prepared to believe in it. Or you’ll miss it when it comes.’
‘And you also have to know how to tell miracles from conjuring tricks,’ Sasha snarled back. ‘You taught me that.’
‘I knew from the very beginning that they’d let us go,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that I didn’t want to hurry things.’
‘You just wanted to drag things out and waste time!’
‘But I wasn’t lying to you. There is a cure for the disease!’
They reached the frontier post. The officer, who had occasionally looked round at them curiously, handed the musician his belongings and returned his cartridges and documents.
‘Right then, Leonid Nikolaevich,’ he said, saluting. ‘Are we taking the contraband with us or leaving it with the customs?’
‘Taking it.’
‘In that case, peace and blessings upon you both,’ said Albert Mikhailovich. He accompanied them past a triple row of fortifications, past teams of machine-gunners who leapt up off their seats, past metal grilles and tank traps welded together out of rails. ‘I suppose no problems will arise with importation?’
‘We’ll break through,’ Leonid told him with a smile. ‘I shouldn’t say this to you, but honest bureaucrats don’t exist, and the harsher the regime, the lower the price. You just have to know who to pay it to.’
‘I think the magic word will be enough for you,’ the officer chuckled.
‘It doesn’t work on everyone yet,’ said Leonid, touching his cheekbone again. ‘As they say, I’m not a magician yet, I’m still studying.’
‘It will be a pleasure to do business with you . . . When you complete your studies.’ Albert Mikhailovich bowed his head, swung round and strode away.
The last soldier opened a small gate through the thick bars of a grille that blocked off the tunnel from top to bottom. The stretch of line that began beyond it was brightly lit, and its walls were scorched in some places and chipped in others, as if from long fire-fights: at the far end of it they could see new bands of fortifications and the broad swathes of banners stretched between the floor and the ceiling. The sight of them was enough to set Sasha’s heart pounding.
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