“Were animals effected?” I asked.
“No,” he said, shaking his head violently. “That struck the thinking people as really strange. It almost looked like it had the exact opposite effect, like it helped them to thrive, to expand-”
“The thinking people?” I said with a smile.
“Yes, I call them that. In their white coats and their degrees. They think things up like that. I like my life simple, trees and tracks and hunting.”
“So go on, you were saying...”
“Yes. When I came here during those years, I think maybe three times, I saw the animals breeding, I saw you and your Papa happy and content, and I tried to understand what was happening in my home. Had this thing been an American weapon used against us? To crush our spirit? To prepare us for invasion? All these things I thought but could not reconcile. Not until now.”
“You're think of Saska and Alex.”
“Yes, Miller. I'm thinking they know what's happening and are either trying to stop it or...” He gave me a knowing look and I nodded.
“So are you blaming the Yanks for it?”
“At first I did and so did the General. Then we realised the same thing is happening over there - and not just there. China. Israel. Even Australia. Some of the remotest places are all showing the same signs though at different stages.”
“But you haven't seen it here?” I asked.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But it follows me still.”
Silence. He sipped his tea. “What is it like, Piotr?”
“I... It is like Death is behind you, whispering in your ear. Telling you things... telling you how worthless you are, how unimportant you are... I...”
He slid into the wordless void and when I looked back from the stove there were tears streaming down his weathered face.
“How long have you felt it?” I asked.
“Too long. The people on the boat, they all felt it. The General, everyone, they all knew it was coming...” I felt uncomfortable, unable to respond or offer any comfort to him other than more bloody tea. I felt nothing of what he was describing and yet here he was, sick in a way none of us could understand. Would it spread to me too? To Claudia? If it could, it would be too late to do anything now.
“Is there anything that can be done?” I asked. He shook his head, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Nothing. Only a faint hope that-”
“This is why he sent you here to find Saska.”
“Yes. But not to bring her back.” Piotr suddenly looked old and tired and I felt a wave of pity for him. “If she is somehow responsible, or is in any way helping who ever is...”
“I see.”
“You know, I think you do, Miller. I think you do.”
After showing Piotr to the room he usually took when he came to stay, I went for a walk around the grounds in my big coat with the hood up and the rain beating down on me, pushing me down, pressing me into the dirt. I'd never seen a man react like that before and it bothered me. I felt nothing of this depression and nor had my Dad when he was alive. Was it a man-made thing? Or had nature decided to clean house? I had a lot of questions that I didn't have before Riley and her mission showed up. It wasn't her fault of course, but life had been a lot simpler before.
I passed the student huts and stopped to look at the sheep who'd wandered in again and were nibbling the sparse grass. They didn't look too depressed from where I was standing. I left them, walking along the old fence, checking some of the various nests I knew about, most of them empty now.
I found myself near the southern edge of the land that stopped just short of a series of cliffs where chalky white stone burst through the soil like fractured bones. They glistened in the wet and the odd brave sheep ventured across them, heading around the western slopes. From here I could look towards the distant towns I'd long since begun avoiding when, after a brief time looking for bits for the house, one of the buildings had collapsed, almost burying me alive. Since then I'd stayed away from it and the land had started swallowing it whole. Only the old church spire remained untouched by the parasitic moss that crawled imperceptibly across the faces of all the other buildings and from here I could just make out the hands of the clock, stopped between 12 and half-past.
I stayed there until I could feel the rain in my boots and then returned to the house. I got undressed in the drying room, stripping down to my shorts and under shirt, then padded bare-foot into the house, mopping up Piotr's boot prints as I went. I made myself two slices of toast, topped them with honey and went to my Dad's library with a cup of tea in one hand and the toast balanced in the other. I lit the fireplace, sat down in his chair and took up his notebook again - the one about the bunkers.
It seemed like he'd never set foot in any of them whilst he'd been exploring but had taken the time to note down the location of each one anyway. It seemed odd as I sat there, slowly getting warm, and I felt that somewhere there was something I was missing, something he'd wanted me to know but yet...
I ate the toast and dusted the crumbs off my lap but still no solution presented itself. The fire crackled and spat and my legs began to feel hot. I turned page after page of handwritten notes, all done with meticulous sketches, diagrams and information about each area he'd encountered over a six year period. Nothing leapt out at me. But it was there. I knew it. I just couldn't place it.
I must have dozed off in the chair because I woke to the sound of the front door slamming shut. The fire had turned to smouldering embers and I got up in time to see Riley heading out into the drizzle, jogging away as the evening came in, no doubt to relieve some of the tension through her dance. By now the rain was spent and as I went to check on the stove I saw that the water had run down my improvised funnel system and almost filled the water drum by the back door.
I made up a pot of coffee and sat there staring at the notebook, willing it to yield some answers. It reminded me of a trip me and Dad had gone on with a troop of G.I's once. They'd been hard work at first, refusing to listen to what Dad had had to say to them. It sometimes happened that way; arrogant lads who think they know it all show up and have to be put down like little kids. Dad had a great way of doing it though. He'd take them as far north as he could, usually in winter, then lead them around the old slate mines until they were so disorientated that they had no hope of finding their way back. He'd make sure they had enough kit to last them four days, then we'd lose them around a hillside, double back and watch them struggle from a distance with binoculars. From time to time we'd intervene and grab one of them who'd managed to get cut off from the others. One by one their numbers would drop and they'd panic even more. By the end of the fourth day they were so lost that when we showed up they were almost in tears.
Dad would lead them back and they'd be quiet as mice with their heads bowed. It would be 'yes sir' all the way home and once they'd had a hot meal and dry clothes he'd sit them down and show them the map. It would be criss-crossed with red ink where they'd blundered around in circles, killing members of their own team as they'd been left behind. It was a sobering exercise designed to show them how serious his teachings needed to be taken.
That's how I felt at that moment as I looked at the notebook. I felt like I was blundering around the mines, trying to get a sense of something and Dad was somehow there watching me, laughing, hoping I'd see the obvious answer like any good teacher does when he has a stubborn student.
I lost track of time leafing through the pages and before I knew it Riley had returned, sweating and panting as she came into the kitchen.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she said, sitting down opposite me. She had a bottle of water which she was emptying with long gulps.
“I'm trying to make sense of this,” I said and pushed the book towards her.
“Your Dad's work?” she asked.
“Yeah. He went to a lot of effort to write all this down, but I can't figure out why. I can't escape the feeling that he thought it was import
ant for me to know something in here - but I can't grasp exactly what that something is!”
“Leave it with me. I might be able to see something you're missing. I'm good at puzzles,” she said.
“Really?”
“Fuck yeah. I try and do a Sudoku every morning on my tablet.”
“A what?”
“Don't tell me you've not heard of Sudoku?”
“I thought that was Japanese suicide?”
“Wait here.” She took the notebook and ran upstairs, coming back down with her tablet which she put in front of me, tapping away at the icons on the screen. She pulled up a chair right next to me. She was close enough that the few strands of her hair that'd escaped the tie-back brushed against my cheek and I felt my stomach knot. She smelled of pine and soil and soap and the combination set my heart racing.
“Is this supposed to clear my mind or make it worse?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
“Look, I'll show you...”
We spent the next hour or so going through how the puzzle worked before I could manage on my own. She was half right - it took my mind off Dad's cryptic notebook but left me more confused than ever.
“Is this meant to be fun?” I said.
“It helps exercise the fucking mind, man. No good being a physical Goddess without the brains to back it up, my friend.”
“I see,” I said. “The power is going.”
“Yeah, maybe we could light that stove of yours and generate a bit of wattage, eh? I'll get changed and meet you at the door.”
I checked on Piotr who'd fallen asleep on his bed; his gear had been neatly unpacked onto the table. Then I met Riley at the bottom of the stairs and together we went out to the student huts. By now the rain had stopped all together and dusk was settling on the house. The air was turning chilly and I expected a cold night with a beautiful morning to follow.
“You've known the Russian for a while?” she asked.
“Yeah, he knew my Dad for as long as I can remember. Look, I know you have your issues, but not all Russians are your enemy. In fact, I'm not sure any Russian is your enemy. You left the Rangers, remember?”
“Does the leopard change his fucking spots?” she said.
“Russia doesn't have the monopoly on dishonourable behaviour, does it? I seem to remember a few American 'incidents' that made it into the history books.”
“Yeah, I know, but don't you think it's a bit fucking odd that he shows up now? And are you buying this bullshit cover story too? It stinks, man.”
“I'm happy with it. For now,” I replied, feeling a little defensive of the old Russian. “If that changes I'm sure you'll be the first to know.”
“I hope I won't be the last.”
We reached the huts and I showed her how the power-generator worked when the fire was lit. Once we had a good flame going she began collecting wood from my stores and piling it up next to the opening.
“I'll stay out here tonight,” she said. “I'll keep it going and get everything charged. I want to get back out there as soon as possible. No point sitting idle.”
“I agree, Riley. Best to keep busy. Stops dangerous thoughts.”
“Very funny,” she replied, deadpan. “Sudoku in the morning?”
“We'll see.”
7.
I stayed up most of the night with a book and a bottle of wine by the library fire and occasionally stuck my head out of the window to check on Riley who was in one of the huts with a lamp on. Maybe she was in there enjoying the novelty of electricity, I thought, as I watched the sun rise into an azure sky. Winter in England had a mystical quality to it, a kind of energy that despite the cold brought a beauty to life hard to match anywhere else. It made living far more vibrant and pleasurable.
I took a pot of coffee, a stack of toast and a plate of hot bacon out to the huts on a tray while Piotr had only just risen. Riley met me at the stove where the picnic benches were, her thick jumper and hat on with a pair of sunglasses for the glare.
“Good morning,” I said, setting breakfast down on the table. She straddled the bench and rubbed her hands together.
“Howdy,” she said, pouring herself a cup of steaming black coffee. “All charged and ready to go. That thing is fucking awesome.”
“Any word from home?” I said.
“Nothing. All signals are down. I spotted one satellite still active and I’ve locked it in on the off chance someone tries to contact us.”
“How do you feel about that?” I asked.
“No knife and fork?” she asked, looking around the tray as if they might appear by themselves. When they didn't, she folded the toast over to make a pathetic looking sandwich. She looked at the stack of bacon between my two slices of bread and shook her head. “Brits.”
“We invented this kind of thing,” I said.
“I'm sure you didn't.”
“That's rich coming from a rebel nation. Give us our colonies back.”
“Fuck you,” she said, laughing. “Nice bacon though - not like the stuff at home.”
It struck me that Riley had a knack for avoiding answers to tough questions. I put it down to a lifetime competing with the guys in a Ranger unit who would care less than nothing about how she felt. I'd seen them during training, I'd seen the lack of open emotion - even for Americans, as if it was frowned upon. Dad told me that there'd been a time when they'd had help for trauma, for dealing with grief, but for some reason that had long gone now. Riley seemed to be the product of that.
“Is my crazy Russian friend up?” she asked.
“He was the last time I saw him. I left him to his tea. Mornings need coffee in my opinion.”
“Ain't that the fucking truth?”
She ate like it was her last meal and reached across the table for more, filling her coffee cup for a third time. I nursed my first and started my second sandwich before Piotr emerged from the front door and brought his cup over to us.
“Good morning,” he said. “Boy did I sleep!”
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“A lot better, thank you. It was good to sleep in a bed for a change. Do we have a plan? Are we to travel to the next bunker?”
Riley wiped her hands on her thighs and started gesturing whilst she finished chewing her food. Then she rooted around in her pack and brought up Dad's notebook, laying out my crude sketch alongside it.
“I think I worked it out,” she said, flattening out the creases and spreading grease across the paper. “I think your Dad was looking for something in these bunkers, something he didn't want to write down in obvious words in case they were found.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“I went from cover to cover, trying to make sense of a pattern I knew was there but, like you, I couldn't nail down. Then it fucking hit me...” She flipped through the pages until she was near enough in the middle. “Here, look at that and tell me what you see.”
It was a sketch, a very basic sketch but one that had a lot of detail - more detail than any of the others. It was a set of double steel doors, four metres high according to Dad's dimensions, eight metres wide and they were marked with many warnings and numbers that were unknown to me. Down each side of the sketch were notes on codes, door combinations and wiring diagrams - none of which made sense.
“Doors. I'll guess they're to a bunker but am I looking for something particular?” I said, passing the book to Piotr.
“I'm not saying this is THE bunker because I don't know that. What I do know is that this was drawn first,” she said.
“It's in the middle though,” I replied.
“Yeah, exactly - the EXACT middle where the bindings are. It's exactly middle of this notebook. The ink is older than all the other sketches.”
“There's a date from when he visited it though and it's in sequence with the others,” said Piotr.
“It was written afterwards - the ink is different to the sketch itself. This was the first sketch and he put it in the middle as a pointer
to show how important this one was compared to all the others without it being too obvious.”
“Okay, I'm with you so far. So what does this mean to us?”
“After that, I examined all the other sketches and I think he wrote outwards from the centre - working to the beginning and the end. In ancient literature it was a pretty useful way of showing a reader what the writer thought was important when they didn't have the punctuation that we have now.”
I cocked my eyebrow. “You have hidden depths,” I said.
“Sunday school teaching,” she replied. “Some parts of the bible do the same thing. The middle of the passage is the key, the other bits are just pointers to it.”
“Okay, so what do you think?”
“I think it's a long shot but we should try this one first. I’ve circled it on your map. Am I right in thinking that these bunkers were just thrown up before the Panic in order to give local authorities somewhere to fall back to?”
“Yeah,” I said, “They weren't protection against anything more serious than missile strikes. A nuclear explosion would have turned them into ash. They were hastily built - like the one we visited.”
“So we can expect this one to look the same,” said Piotr, studying the notebook.
“Yeah, but it won't be - if I'm right. And I have a hunch that Alex and Saska will have at least been there, if they aren't there already.”
We were a little more hopeful now that it seemed that Riley had discovered part of something Dad had wanted me, or someone, to eventually discover. I cleared away the breakfast things whilst the two of them began packing their gear, ready to set off. I wanted to take my time, to make sure the house was in order - the journey would take a couple of weeks on foot and the Land Rover was still out of the question. It'd mean leaving it somewhere out there, without fuel and without a hope of getting it back. It made more sense to leave it in the garage for emergencies. We'd just have to try and make the best time we could and hope that if Alex and Saska were there then their work would keep them there until we arrived.
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