Death in Siberia f-4

by Alex Dryden

  From the deck she sniffed the breeze coming off the land. The acres of timber wharves, timber roads, timber houses – miles of sawn planks, lakes of floating logs – gave off a sweet scent of pine and the more pungent odour of sawdust. There seemed nothing else. Just the trees, dead or alive. And, behind the town, the Arctic tundra had finally replaced the taiga further south.

  She turned and looked up at the bridge. She saw the Wolf and two crewmen behind the windows. There seemed to be no further activity now that the anchor had been dropped. She guessed he was waiting for something, most likely the arrival of someone more senior. A decision was to be made that he couldn’t take responsibility for. All she knew now was that she had to get off the ship.

  She turned back and saw Oleg. His wispy beard and sunken cheeks were raised towards the shore as if he, too, were judging distances, times, the chances of success and failure. She had a sense that he’d been waiting for her near the exit from the hold. She approached him and leaned on the guard rail and he turned and smiled as if at some sort of triumph.

  ‘They didn’t get my gun,’ he said. ‘Too well hidden for those ignorant pigs.’

  ‘Nevertheless, there are thirty sapari with thirty automatic rifles trained on us,’ she replied.

  ‘So we have to get off the ship, haven’t we?’ he said, grinning. Then he looked directly into her eyes and she saw the flame of unbowed determination flare briefly. He was suddenly serious. ‘There are six of us,’ he said. ‘With you, that makes seven. A crewman told me they’re going to lock us in the holds before long. They’re waiting for others to arrive. We’ll be here until they’ve checked up on every one of us back in Moscow. Tomorrow may be too late. We have a few hours.’

  ‘And even if we did get to shore, what then?’ she asked.

  ‘Siberia’s a big place,’ he said.

  ‘They have dogs, helicopters,’ she replied. ‘We don’t even have darkness. It’s light here now for almost twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘And we have the forest,’ Oleg stated, as if it were poised to reach across the water and come to their aid.

  He watched her silently. ‘I know you have to get off the ship,’ he said. ‘Just like us. But we’ll do it better together than apart.’

  She considered this. One person might – just – avoid detection in the river if they threw themselves over the side without being seen doing so. But seven wouldn’t. She worked alone, anyway, and certainly not with a bunch of star-struck kids inflated with their own sense of immortality and some purpose she’d yet to define.

  She looked down and watched the river’s current. Even here, in the slower part of the river, it must still be moving at three knots or so. A swimmer would be swept away from the ship at around thirty yards a minute, she estimated, maybe double that using their body to propel themselves with the current. The current curved towards the bank about half a mile away. Half a mile in freezing water. It was unlikely. Even if they weren’t spotted from the deck or the shore.

  She looked to the left, past Oleg, at the anchor cable, two-inch chain links attached to a drum somewhere in the anchor hold. She studied where it entered the water and imagined where it was lodged somewhere in the mud below. The ship swung away downriver from the cable as the current swept past it.

  ‘All we have to do is get out of this prison before morning,’ he said. It was as if sheer will were going to achieve this feat.

  And now, as she looked towards the bank, she saw three men, one shouting instructions, the other two flailing in the water at the river’s edge with long metal boat hooks. They were gesticulating and trying to reach towards an object floating in the water.

  She looked up at the bridge and saw the Wolf had spotted this scene on the bank too. He was watching closely through binoculars, eyes steady, mouth set in a thin line.

  On the bank, she saw that the men were launching an aluminium boat. The object was too far out for the boat hooks to reach. They started the outboard and moved slowly, following the object in the current until they drew level. One of hooks snagged on something, one of the men gave a shout, and the other two hauled with both hooks until they had it alongside. Then they reached down. It was heavy. She didn’t need binoculars to see what it was. It took all three of the men to lift out the dead body of Ivan from the current and land it inside the boat like a game fish that had given up the fight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MIDNIGHT ON THE Rossiya and the hallowed quiet of a silent ship at anchor. Only the distant hum of the generator that operated the lights for navigation, as well as the constantly blazing bulbs of the gang walks below deck and the radio communications room, rolled across her consciousness. But the hum of the generator itself had become a part of the silence.

  Anna waited until the deadest hour of the night, between midnight and one in the morning in the northernmost climes, before the sun began to tip the rim of the world at 2 a.m. She lay listening to the sounds of sleep in the women’s hold, the occasional grunts and sighs, the cries from dreaming sleepers, the turning of bodies in the darkness. She didn’t so much rise from her sleeping place as roll to the side, careful not to disturb her neighbour, and then she crawled away, standing only when she found a space that wound between prone bodies and led to the latrines at the far end of the hold in the direction of the bow. She picked her way carefully, stopping when a sleeper turned or emitted a noise, then waiting for deep sleep to claim them again.

  She knew the only way out of the hold was from the direction she was going, the latrines themselves. The soldiers had battened down the hatches of the holds which contained everyone on the manifest, all of the workers. The hired hands on their way to summer work were now truly like slaves in the hold of the ship. The soldiers’ orders were clear and had been broadcast throughout the ship on loud speakers; only MVD troops were to be in the open during the brief period of darkness.

  When Anna was clear of the bodies, she tiptoed towards the latrines and hoped there was no one else there. There was no door between the ‘sleeping’ area and where the women relieved themselves. Even in the dark she could follow her nose towards the stench of the uncleaned latrines. The faintest light coming from a bulb outside a porthole showed her where to place her feet.

  Once in the confined space with its basic twin shit holes in the floor that led to pipes which twisted their way through the lower depths of the ship to eject the waste a few feet above the plimsoll line, she waited as her eyes became accustomed to the greater darkness. There were no portholes in here, just the twin holes in the floor and a boxed steel ventilator shaft that protruded above her head through the bulkhead to the next section of the ship. And the disused pipe where she’d hidden the gun and ammunition. She emptied the pipe cautiously and found the gun. It was carefully wrapped in plastic. Then she retrieved the ammunition.

  She took a tool from her pack which she unslung now from her shoulders and instead hung it loosely over her right shoulder alone, easy to free when the moment came.

  There were two small one-inch pipes, shut-off pipes from the ship’s water system that came out of the bulkhead below the ventilator and were sealed closed. She would stand on these to get to the ventilator. But it was a big reach for her leg to get to the left-hand one of these short pipes. She had to use one arm to lift her left leg up while balancing herself with her right arm against the side wall above the holes in the floor, so that when she finally had her foot on the water pipe it was almost at the level of her head. How could she get the leverage to haul herself up so that both feet were balanced on the twin pipes? She took some cord from her pack and looped it around the ventilator, hoping the thin metal casing wouldn’t come crashing down with her weight. With great effort, hauling with her arms and pressing with her left foot against the water pipe, she slowly, agonisingly, pulled herself up the side of the steel bulkhead, listening to the metal casing of the ventilator groan and waiting for the snap or twist of metal to shatter the silence. But with the greatest effort she
finally reached the precarious standing position, five and half feet above the wet, urine-swilled floor, without generating more than a squealed complaint of strained metal.

  She steadied herself, her feet on the two inches of pipes that protruded from the bulkhead and her hands clasping the ventilator shaft, which was now just above her head. When she was calm and rested again, she took the tool from her pocket and felt with the hand that held it for the bolts that joined the ventilator casing sections together, and hoped the builders a hundred years before hadn’t welded rather than bolted it. With one hand holding the ventilator casing and the other hand holding the tool, she located six bolts, painted over so long ago she guessed that the paint would no longer be an obstacle to their release.

  It was a tortuous process, balanced on the balls of her feet on the pipes as she was, one hand holding the ventilator for support, the other slowly guiding the tool over the first bolt until she felt it lock, and then using all the weight of her right arm to turn the bolt. There was no response at all at first. She tried again, but it wouldn’t budge. She then jammed the tool over the bolt and hammered it with the ball of her hand until she felt the bolt nudge slightly, and all the time praying the tool wouldn’t fall with a clatter into the darkness below and possibly slide into one of the latrines’ holes and be lost. But once the first bolt was loose, it was easy to release.

  One by one, with great care and enormous pressure on her wrist and arm, her left arm clinging all the time to the ventilator, she loosened each bolt. The last but one of the bolts was the worst. She hammered the tool with the ball of her hand, but it was on top of the casing and the leverage she could get was very little. She was sweating profusely, the muscles of both arms taut and strained to the maximum, her calves equally strained from standing on the balls of her feet, but finally she felt it loosen. And then when that penultimate bolt came free, eventually she was able to remove the last bolt with ease. Each time she placed the bolts into her pocket so that they wouldn’t clatter to the steel floor.

  She was at the end of her strength, stretched and pulled and strained to the limit. She simply stood and clung on to the ventilator with both hands now until she felt her muscles ease a little, lifting one foot, then the other, from each of the pipes in order to give her calves a rest. She felt herself panting in the darkness, inhaling the foul stench of the latrines with each gasping breath. She shuddered with the pain and with the effort of keeping herself balanced, but slowly she felt her heart pounding less frantically and her breath coming more easily.

  When she felt ready again, she pocketed the tool, and prepared for the last, desperate throw of the dice – the sliding of the metal flange away from the rest of the fixed ventilator’s casing. It was the hardest part from the point of view of her wilting strength. She could no longer cling to the ventilator as she had done, or it wouldn’t slide away. She searched blindly with her right hand and finally found a handhold, on the far side of the ventilator where it disappeared into the steel bulkhead. It was just a small hook and it dug into her hand, and she clung on to the hook with three fingers – all that would fit from her hand. With her left hand she then began to push and pull the end of the loosened ventilator from side to side, knocking it with the ball of her hand on one side, then on the other, trying to free it from any paint that still clung after the decades.

  There was inevitably some noise now, her hand ringing a hollow, dull echo from the empty ventilator, but she couldn’t help that. Once she thought she felt it loosen, but then it stuck again. With only one hand she couldn’t guide it out straight, but only tap it from one side to the other. She felt it loosen a little, then come away slightly, and then she knew it was free.

  Clinging to the hook with her right hand, she now lowered her left hand and found the cord in her pocket, looping it with that hand around the end of the loose casing and tying a firm knot. The loosened casing was directly above her head. Once she was satisfied with the knot, she let the other end of the cord fall over her shoulder behind her and raised her left hand again to nudge and push the casing further and further away from the bulkhead until she could feel the edge of the main casing. She now picked up the loose end of the cord and, gripping it in her left hand, she nudged the casing with the same hand towards and above her until she felt the whole of the end of the casing begin to fall.

  Her right hand dug into the hook and she felt the blood flowing freely down her wrist and up her arm. The heavy casing fell towards her head. She leaned away fast, gripping the cord tightly, and wound around her left hand, until it snapped taut with the weight of the casing and jolted her whole body, jarring all the muscles and bones down its whole length. Her left arm was wracked with the pain and stress of holding the fallen casing, but she held on, her right hand’s fingers digging deeper into the hook on the bulkhead.

  But she felt the casing swinging safely below and behind her now, away from the steel bulkhead and she somehow held its weight. She swiftly and silently lowered it to the floor. Now her left hand was free to hold the gaping hole of the ventilator shaft and give her right hand a rest. She hung there, sucking the blood from the wound in her hand, panting with the effort.

  After a few minutes of gasping and shaking, she recovered sufficiently to push her pack into the ventilator hole and shove it well down inside. She then placed both elbows inside the hole and began to haul herself up to the opening. Everything was agony now. The hole of the shaft was large – maybe two and half feet across – but was it large enough to take her body with her elbows supporting her weight? With a final supreme effort, she felt the point of balance in her body mass shift from hanging down the bulkhead wall to resting on the lip of the ventilator, her head twisted sideways in the hole to fit. Once she had her weight right, she kicked her legs and inched into the ventilator shaft.

  She must have lain concealed inside the ventilator for fifteen minutes, she thought. It was more than pitch-dark now, but she could do no more than slump, her whole body stretched along the shaft, the pack pushed ahead of her. She might have fainted for a minute or two and thought she had, waking with a start, her heart beating with surprise at the total blindness that almost rose to panic. And then she began the long, slow crawl down the ventilator shaft in the direction of the bow of the ship.

  The ventilator dog-legged twice and it was hard to turn in a right angle. She had to turn herself on to her side so that she, too, could make a right angle with her legs twisted from the waist. There was a grille to her left that showed, in the light of another bulb outside a porthole, the men’s section. She eased herself past this, fifteen feet above the sleeping male forms on the floor beneath her. Another grille was bathed in light and she inched carefully past it. The room inside was brightly lit and four or five MVD troops sat playing cards or dozing against a wall. She slid by, silently hauling herself on her elbows, her clothes providing a smooth passage on the pristine metal of the inside of the ventilator.

  She guessed it was about thirty yards from the start point when she came to another grille dead of her. Whatever was beyond was in pitch-darkness, but it had to be the anchor room.

  Anna tapped at the grille with the palm of her left hand, the unwounded hand. The grille was stiff and she removed the tool again from her pocket with great difficulty and tapped with it until she felt the grille begin to come away from the casing. It was simply fitted without bolts. She hooked the fingers of her right hand through the grille to hold it and kept tapping until it was free. Then she turned it and drew it inside the ventilator shaft at an angle and deposited it gently behind her. She inched forwards and looked over the edge into the blackness.

  There was no way she could turn in the shaft and drop her legs down first and she saw at once that it was too risky to go down head first without knowing what was below. It was a danger, but she knew she had to use the small pen torch in her jacket pocket. She fumbled until she found it and turned it on first into the palm of her hand to see how badly wounded it was. There was a dee
p hole at the base of the fingers which had gripped the hook. There was nothing she could do about it now. As she turned the torch on to the floor of what she hoped was the anchor room, she saw a length of coiled rope twelve feet below her. Flicking the torch up a little, she saw the far side of the room, where the ship’s bow was, narrowing the space where the anchor chain was locked in position around the drum. She switched off the torch.

  There was approximately a twelve-foot drop, of that she was sure. There was no time to delay now. It had taken a long time loosening the casing at the beginning of the ventilation shaft. She dropped her pack down on to the coiled rope and then began to inch her body through the opening. If she landed right she could take the initial shock of the fall with her arms and then go into a roll. There was no other way. It was now all or nothing. She waited in order to calm her mind and prepare herself mentally. Then she edged her body mass further into the black void. When she fell, she felt her shins scrape across the shaft’s sharp edge but all her concentration was on the landing.

  She hit the coiled rope with outstretched arms, immediately bending the elbows to absorb the shock and almost instantaneously going into a roll. Her head hit the steel floor, but by that time her fall was broken by her arms and shoulders and the roll took her cascading over the coiled rope, turning her over three times before she came to rest against the anchor chain’s drum. She was winded, hardly able to breathe. Her wrists had taken more force than she’d intended, but she thought nothing was broken. Only a spreading pain that went from her head down the side of her body on which she had fallen, all the way to her legs and the scraped shins. She realised that she had barely survived the fall intact and lay still again, concentrating on the pain, focusing her mind on to it until it receded slightly in the face of her focused attention. Then she dragged herself upright.