Bearpit

by Brian Freemantle

  And then the car in front turned. It was abrupt, with no signalled warning, and Yuri braked hurriedly, jerked forward against the wheel by the suddenness of the manoeuvre. And because he was closer against the windscreen he saw the helicopter. It was hovering some way to his left but as he watched it began a series of gradually expanding circles in the middle of one of which it pulled away in his direction. Yuri’s instant fear was that it was coming towards him but sharply it turned upon itself and from its position Yuri guessed it had isolated the car he had been following, minutes earlier, and was flying some sort of aerial escort. It stopped practically at once, hovering again, and Yuri memorized a clump of trees darker than the forest around them.

  Hurriedly Yuri put the car back in gear, knowing he had to move before the machine resumed its circling and expanded the survey sufficiently to isolate him on the road. It only took him minutes to reach where the other car had turned; Yuri had hoped for a driveway but it was not. It was a minor dirt raod and at the speed he passed Yuri was unable to see any name sign. It wasn’t necessary: he wouldn’t have any difficulty finding it again. And he would locate it again, he thought, the decision hardening in his mind. He still needed to understand why Kazin had given him the assignment, but having got this close Yuri determined to complete it absolutely.

  Yuri’s intention had been to drive back to Torrington for what he wanted but he saw the signpost to Thomaston giving a closer mileage, so instead he headed there. A part of his KGB instruction he’d never imagined he would need, reflected Yuri. But perhaps the most vivid to recall, and not just because of its savagery. It had been the nearest he’d come to failing any of the tests: how near only he knew. The parachute drop had been twenty miles from Bryansk, which was one of the few map references he had been given, because that was the city he had to reach undetected in an exercise which purported him to be a denounced agent pursued by a hostile enemy. And his pursuers had been hostile, spetsnaz commandos whose own fail-or-be-dismissed exercise had been to prevent his reaching the sanctuary of the city. To achieve which they were permitted to employ every and any method they chose. There had been a hunt from behind and a cordon ahead and the bullets and the booby traps had been real, not faked. Yuri had not intended the commando to be maimed in one of his own traps, after he intentionally triggered an alarm: merely to create a diversion sufficiently distracting for him to get past the country road barrier. The mine had been specifically placed to prevent that being possible. Had the man not stumbled on it himself, Yuri would have trodden upon it and been crippled, if not killed. Later, at the KGB academy in Moscow, he heard rumours that deaths were very frequent during such exercises.

  In Thomaston he protectively spread the purchases, buying the waterproof rucksack and hiking boots from the obvious sports store but obtaining the other things – the thick socks, jeans, anorak, torch, sports shirt, woollen hat and binoculars – from various shops. He parked the car in a multi-storey park on a deserted level where he was able quickly to change, packing his suit in the rucksack, and left by the least conspicuous side entrance.

  He forced himself at the beginning of the walk back, knowing from his careful observance on the way into the town that there were seven miles to cover and anxious for the maximum amount of remaining daylight. Sure of the way, he did not need the map he’d taken from the car and put in a side pocket of the rucksack, along with the camera. Yuri was confident he had followed the first rule of that murderous field exercise and merged inconspicuously into the background. This was going to be much easier than Bryansk.

  He reached the humped road in just under an hour and slowed, trying to find as much cover as possible from the bordering trees, which was not as easy as he had hoped it would be. There was a wide, separating verge and in places a ditch. Before he rounded the corner just prior to the dirt road into which Petr Levin had been driven, Yuri saw the helicopter: it was making tight circles now. Wanting to establish its pattern, Yuri jumped the ditch and ran into the treeline, entering only far enough into the forest to be hidden from the road, equally sure he was sufficiently concealed from the air. He squatted on the rucksack, back against a moss-covered fir, focusing upwards with the binoculars, the adjustments of which were stiff with newness and difficult at first to move. Gradually the machine widened its sweep, as it had been doing when it picked up the boy’s returning car. Yuri calculated it to be five minutes from the point of stationary hover until the helicopter was directly over the road and a further seven minutes before it reached the apogee of its manoeuvre and tightened the circle to return to what had to be directly over wherever the Levin family were being kept. Yuri acknowledged that aeronautically the surveillance was absolute and therefore professionally expert: unprofessionally it provided an almost perfect method of identification.

  Yuri watched the manoeuvre twice more, to confirm his timings, and at the instant of hover went back to the road and managed to get within ten yards of the turning before having to run again into the trees to avoid detection. Near enough, he decided: from that point he would go entirely through the forest, avoiding any open area. And even here be careful: the eye follows movement, not stillness, had been another field edict. He chose a fir again because of its permanent covering and waited patiently beneath it for the helicopter to fly outwards and then in again, only moving when it neared the unseen house. From the outset the gradient was increasingly uphill and matchingly steep. With the self-imposed stop-start precaution and the snagging thickness of the undergrowth, it took Yuri almost a further hour to reach the peak and having done so he was still much farther away from the now visible building than he had expected to be. There was an odd, U-shaped rift caused by a river and although it was not a barrier between him and the house the land broke sideways, creating a valley before him.

  With nothing intervening he had a perfect view of his objective, however. And was able, too, to see that the sun was already close to a mountain top beyond. The last hour before darkness, Yuri estimated: maybe a little more.

  From the map he decided that the mountain later to obscure the sun was called Prospect and that the river was named Bantam: it appeared to feed into a huge lake of the same name, but he could not see that from where he crouched. He had slight difficulty again adjusting the binoculars but through them finally obtained a greatly enlarged view of the mansion-like house. And more. As he watched he saw two men come from a coppice within the ground, one with a telescopically-sighted gun crooked under his left arm. The other waved to the helicopter pilot on a return run and Yuri followed the path of the machine. Into view came a separate group of guards, three this time, one with a Doberman restrained tightly on a leash. The downdraft of the helicopter upset the dog, which began to fight against the lead and to bark: the sound did not reach Yuri.

  Another man in the group made a gesture of greeting to someone out of Yuri’s vision and he shifted direction, perfectly to see the boy he’d observed leaving the Litchfield school. Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin was by his side. Yuri was just in time to see the defector respond to the wave. Yuri snatched his camera from the rucksack and managed three exposures, despite the focus being blurred. He tried the infinite setting but was still unsure if the man would be identifiable from that distance.

  Yuri was about to press the button again when he heard the sound, the soft noise of something moving carefully against detection. Momentarily he stayed motionless, seeking the cause within his immediate vision, not daring even to turn his head. There was nothing. He lowered the camera, but to the cushion of pine needles and not the rucksack where it might have scraped against the canvas, looking as he did so to the left and then the right. Still nothing. It came again, closer this time. Behind him then. Yuri pressed himself against the bole of the tree, trying to assess his vulnerability. Bad, he decided; very bad. Wrong to make the slightest shift; safety in stillness, he remembered. He swallowed, thinking he could hear himself do it.

  The doe snuffled into view from his left, nuzzling beneath th
e leaf mould. The animal saw Yuri as he saw it. Its head came up, in startled alertness: for several seconds it regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity and then hurried away, not panicked but at a trot. Yuri released his breath, shivering with the tension.

  He looked back to the faraway house, still able to see Levin and his son. He needed to be closer, he thought. There would be just enough light, for about another half an hour. He let the helicopter clear the house and started at once down the hillside, not waiting for it to get as far away as he had earlier, finding an animal path and using it instead of trying to make his way through the delaying undergrowth. As he descended lower, where the trees were thicker, Yuri occasionally lost sight of the house and realized he could not descend too far, because he needed the elevation. Twice he had to halt when the aerial surveillance was directly overhead and on the last occasion, waiting, Yuri confronted his error. The dusk was making it difficult to see more than a few yards in the fast-darkening forest: the helicopter was already using lights. Just ahead was a knoll, from which he was sure he would be able to see over the valley floor into the house for the last opportunity.

  And in deciding to make that one final attempt Yuri made his greatest miscalculation. The helicopter had passed and the Russian was actually starting up the incline when the siren screamed and the searchlight stabbed out from above, whitely illuminating the animal track only yards behind him.

  Yuri kept going, to increase their mistake and get further away from the light, pulling into the undergrowth when the probe began splaying back and forth, gauging the sweep when it went uphill to plunge on down into the valley, fleeing from it. No safety in stillness now, he decided, panted breath burning into him: the only thing now was to run. But towards what? The siren sounded again, an obvious alert to the armed and dog-handling guards below, towards whom he was running.

  He thrust sideways, off the track, stumbling over roots and fallen wood he could not see, face whipped by branches that stung and tore at him. He could actually feel the torch against his hip, through the rucksack, the light he needed but could not use because it would immediately show where he was. Going in the proper direction, he told himself: parallel with the slip road but away from its junction with the larger highway, the obvious place to block. Was there another linking road, the way he was heading? He could not remember, from the map: possible but the line could have indicated another tributary into the lake he’d not been able to see. And if it were a road, wouldn’t they block that exit, too? The rucksack was an encumbrance, the straps and buckles easily entangled, but Yuri refused to discard it, not wanting to leave any evidence of his detecting Levin.

  Not easier than Bryansk. The same: surrounded by a hostile enemy, guns that weren’t fakes. As the thought came Yuri believed he heard shouts from the road below and a dog, perhaps several dogs, barking. The helicopter’s lights still darted and searched above him, once so close in front that he had to stop against a tree, to prevent stumbling into it. Definitely voices. And dogs. The dog sounds were closer: he guessed the animals had been let loose, to hunt him down. He’d forgotten a knife: anything at all that might have served as a weapon. He needed a stream, any wetness, to blur the scent. Wouldn’t be tracking him by scent, he realized, starting forward again. All they’d need would be his noise. The barking was definitely closer: he thought he could hear their crashing through the undergrowth.

  Yuri was fleeing with both hands outstretched, to detect the trees, but only his right hand struck the obstruction and it wasn’t wood and he stopped, frightened by the unknown, feeling out and touching the coldness with both hands. It was, absurdly, the seeking helicopter light which briefly illuminated it and even showed him the commencement of the culvert, where it opened to the stream. He groped along its length, in the darkness again, to its beginning and felt around it, trying to assess the size. Big, he determined: huge, in fact. He’d have to bend but it would be possible to walk in. Maybe even run. No, couldn’t run. There was the stream. Water. What he needed to defeat the animals whose yapping and barking was very close now. The water’s flowing would actually disguise any sound.

  The helicopter returned, again briefly illuminating. The stream emerged from somewhere above, about a foot across, but a much wider path and a concrete receiving sluice had been built at the entrance to the pipe which ran in the open for about fifty yards. And then disappeared into the hillside. The wideness of the stream had given Yuri the clue: it was a drainage pipe to carry off the melted winter snows (‘there are lodges and good skiing all around’) from a river that had been eroding the hillside through which it passed. How far was it buried, before re-emerging? Yuri definitely heard a man’s voice this time; an irrelevant question, then.

  He slipped out of the rucksack and, thrusting it before him like a shield, entered the total darkness of the pipe. The water came up above his ankles, soaking very quickly through his boots and numbing his feet. He scuffed along, bent double, feeling the slime underfoot. It was greasy to his touch when he reached sideways for support to the wall of the drain and he pulled his hand quickly back again, offended. He was aware of a sound above the hiss of the water, a squeaking, and recoiled when something brushed against his leg, above the waterline. The smell – wet decay and decomposing rot – was so repugnant Yuri gagged, choking back vomit. After several hundred yards he turned but was unable to see the slightly lighter circle marking the entrance so he decided at last to risk the torch.

  Dozens of reflective spots of light came back at him. Eyes. He’d expected rats but not so many. They swarmed either side, unafraid, but were avoiding the water. Just rats? He couldn’t see anything else. Surely the water would have prevented it being habitable to snakes! The slime virtually encircled the pipe, showing the volume of water at the height of the snow thaw. How did the rats survive then? Yuri put the rucksack back on, to free his hands, and waded on, directing the torchlight straight ahead, desperately anxious for some sign of the tunnel’s end. Total blackness stretched ahead of him. A rat squeaked and made as if to jump at him and Yuri whimpered away, shuddering. And not just with revulsion. The coldness was moving up from his feet, actually making it difficult for him to walk properly and he clamped his mouth closed against the distraction of his teeth chattering. He moved the torch up again, away from his immediate path. Still total blackness but at least there were fewer rats: far fewer. He supposed it was obvious they would congregate around the beginning of the tunnel because of the need to forage outside for food.

  Attuned as he was to sound after the forest manhunt it was the change in the rush of water which registered first, louder and faster, and expectantly he pointed the torch again, looking for the outlet to the river into which the stream fed, but couldn’t see it. He drove himself forward, wanting to get out of the foul place, and had there been more feeling in his feet and legs he might have detected the change underfoot, because it was not abrupt but graded. It was not until he began to slip on the slime that he became aware that the pipe was curving increasingly downwards. And realized the sound wasn’t a river but the fall of water and that was why there were no longer any rats. By then it was too late. Yuri clutched out but there was no purchase in the slippery walls and then he fell, awkwardly, losing the torch. The rucksack became a float beneath him and the rush of water hurried him down the now virtually perpendicular pipe. Everything was black. He was engulfed in rushing, choking water but he fought against choking because he could not breathe, either. Yuri was not conscious of hurtling out of the pipemouth. The indication was a lessening of the water’s push, where it spread into a man-created waterfall and of falling differently and helplessly through space, without the hardness of the concrete tube around him. He tried to correct himself, to get as near as he could into the parachute landing position he had been taught, but the rucksack unbalanced him and he cartwheeled, out of control. It was only later, in daylight and from the bank to which he hauled himself, that Yuri realized how close – hardly more than a foot – he had come t
o being thrown against the sharp-ridged granite cliff face that would almost certainly have killed him. Instead, propelled from it by the thrust of the water, he landed actually in the river, but from the height from which he fell it was practically the same as striking solid ground. His left wrist twisted under him and he felt a sear of agony and what little breath he still held was knocked out of him.

  It was the rucksack, still acting like a float, which prevented his drowning in those first few minutes. He groaned breath back into his body and, unable to use his left arm, paddled instead with his right, combining the rucksack’s support and the river’s current to get himself to the pebbled bank.

  Yuri lay for a long time unmoving, recovering, at last with his right hand groping along his left arm, trying to assess the damage. The wrist was already swelling but he could just move his fingers: sprained, not broken, he decided. He tore the sleeve of the shirt away at the shoulder, soaked it further in the water, and then bound it as a cold compress around the wrist with his good hand and his teeth before pulling himself further away from the river to drier ground.