by Henry Morgan
‘Another bottle?’ It was the hotel manager. ‘Food?’
‘Yes, both,’ stammered Justin, surprised at his sudden appearance. ‘Whatever you’ve got.’
He returned with a bottle of crystal-clear vodka and two cabbage turnovers. ‘May I?’ he said, inviting himself to sit down.
A nervous Justin motioned towards a couch on the other side of the fireplace.
‘Have you been in Russia long?’ he asked straightaway.
‘A while, yes,’ said Sabrina. ‘It’s a lovely country. We’re setting up some trading links. Komi and Lapp products; clothing, trinkets, that sort of thing. We want to sell them back in Britain.’ She got all that out first so that Justin would know what story to sell.
‘That’s very good news,’ said the manager, apparently sincerely. ‘Many of the Komi are very poor.’ He rose to leave and then added, ‘I’m sorry, I forgot to ask for your passports when you booked in.’
‘They… they’re in our rooms,’ Justin blurted. ‘I’ll drop them down later.’
‘You haven’t been to your rooms,’ the manager calmly pointed out.
‘That’s right,’ Sabrina put in. ‘They’re outside in our car.’
The manager went to the window and looked up and down the snow swept street. ‘I think your car has been stolen,’ he said, then smiled broadly at the look of panic on their faces and sat back down. ‘Do not worry,’ he continued. ‘That soldier, he is looking for you, isn’t he?’
‘Captain Vasili Leskov,’ said a resigned Sabrina. ‘Yes.’
‘I will not tell,’ the manager said to great relief. ‘The military,’ he added with disgust. ‘Strutting around in their uniforms. They do not know what a day’s work is. No, they only know how to force others to work for them.’ He was in full flow and issuing a tirade of abuse against the state, which, it turned out, sent his family to Siberia in Stalin’s time. ‘And your friend David, he is wanted also. Is he not?’
Sabrina and Justin sat up and took notice. ‘David?’ she said, trying to hide her excitement. ‘He’s been here?’
‘Yes,’ the manager said, ‘with his two girls. We had great fun.’ He winked at Justin. ‘They were very friendly. He said they could only stay a day, but what fun we had. They stayed for a few days. He only left yesterday morning. You have just missed him.’
Sabrina filled up her glass and pushed it towards their new friend. ‘What a shame,’ she groaned. ‘We keep missing each other.’
‘It is a big country,’ said a rapidly inebriating manager.
‘Tell us about it,’ she persisted. ‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘East,’ was the reply, and he grabbed for the bottle.
‘Any particular east?’ Justin asked.
The manager seemed to magically sober up. ‘I told him not to go,’ he said. ‘Very dangerous.’
‘Did you tell the captain where David was going?’
‘Of course,’ he said with false dignity and his hand on his heart. ‘I told him they were going south – to Kazakhstan.’ He held a finger to his lips and then motioned them forward as if about to impart some secret. ‘It was a little lie.’
Sabrina leaned forward and put her hand on his knee. ‘Where is it very dangerous?’ she asked soothingly. ‘We want to help David.’ She looked at Justin and added contemptuously, ‘and his little Lapp girls.’
‘Chukotskiy Poluostrov,’ he finally managed to disclose, along with a loud smelly belch. ‘You say Bering Strait, I think. That is where Chukotskiy Poluostrov is.’
‘What of the danger?’ asked Justin, always the more cautious of the two, but before he could receive an answer the manager fell asleep.
Chapter 14
For two whole weeks, it could have been more but David had lost count, they struggled ever eastward. On through central Siberia and into the east. Across endless tracts of tundra and the bleak, almost nondescript landscape of the far Arctic north. When only five days out from Norilsk David had considered turning back, but he thought they must be nearing the Bering Strait and freedom, and so he pushed on.
He was wrong, and when it seemed that the whole country of Russia was behind him another huge expanse always seemed to lie in front. Supplies of food and fuel were running low, and he’d noticed the engine on the ski sled was beginning to tug on occasion – a bad portent.
For their part the girls were faring well. More at home in the ice than he, they had taken the monotonous landscape in their stride. David was not so well equipped. Each morning he woke he saw only the same scenery and was no longer able to discern any difference in the featureless wastes. It took all his character to continue on or even to believe in his own decision-making. For several mornings now the girls had risen to find their master, unshaven and unkempt, staring intently to the horizon, wondering when the end would come. He longed for the sight of the ocean, frozen over with a magical bridge of ice. Russia, for David, had become a nightmare and he hungered for the land of the free – for America.
The travelling was no different for Justin and Sabrina, but at least they had the thrill of the hunt. They had left Norilsk the following day after using Justin’s money to equip themselves well for the journey. After a few days they had realised that tracking their prey was not as difficult as they had thought. Paths through the ice were often self-evident, there being only one way through. With increasing confidence they pushed on.
For his part David had given up any thoughts of being pursued and his journey lost momentum, sometimes making only half the distance in a day that they would have normally. Then, on the fifth morning, Justin spotted some marks in the ice. They looked quite nondescript at first, but as they travelled he noticed they were uniform and appeared to follow the same path as they were travelling.
‘What do you think of those?’ he asked Sabrina.
Desperate for any sort of stimulus she jumped to the obvious conclusion. ‘We’re getting near.’ She let out a whoop and punched the air, then looked forward, her face a study in determination. Justin also found himself smiling. His newly found confidence had him more outgoing, more aggressive. When they set up camp at night he had started to take Sabrina without request. She was no longer cold towards him and welcomed his nightly attentions. Strangely though, Justin’s desire for her had changed. She was still very important to him and he would always thank her for strengthening his character, but it was a one-dimensional strength; one that knew only aggression and selfishness. Catherine had shown him that he could be strong and still be a decent human being; compassion was not a sign of weakness. Although he enjoyed sex with Sabrina it had lost the intensity it once had. He was no longer the pursuer of her; she was beginning to need him.
The excitement created by the sight of the tracks increased several-fold when the pair came across an obvious camp. There was blood on the ground where a meal had clearly been prepared and, worryingly, Justin spotted a bullet casing. David obviously had a rifle. He and Sabrina had thought them unarmed and so they only carried the side arms from the assault at Cheka 3. Their pace accelerated.
For the next two nights Justin found himself peculiarly aroused from the pursuit. During these nights his treatment of Sabrina had been quite brutal. The previous evening he suspended her naked from the roof of their tent. He watched her for a long time in the flickering of the fire, as she dangled helplessly in front of him. He realised then that they were in the middle of nowhere, literally. Some parts of the region did not even have adequate maps. He had a naked woman suspended and at his mercy. There was no one to rescue her, no one to prosecute or condemn him. It was an incredibly powerful and stimulating thought. When Sabrina, who enjoyed being subjugated, had asked to be let down because her arms were beginning to ache, Justin got up from his bed of furs and simply gagged her with a leather strip. He then sat down again and continued to eat and drink.
When he finished he wiped
his hunting knife on his trousers and closed in on Sabrina. She saw the knife pointed threateningly towards her and experienced exactly the same thoughts of isolation that Justin had. The knife had one very sharp edge, which terminated in a pointed tip. Justin touched the tip lightly on Sabrina’s clitoris. She understood perfectly the need not to move. Justin dropped to his knees and took hold of her sex lips. He squeezed the two together, and Sabrina screwed her eyes shut and endured the discomfort of being dry-shaved.
When he had finished Justin rubbed a generous amount of horse liniment into her tender mound. It burned so badly that she screamed into the gag, and again when Justin prodded a finger coated with the embrocation into her vagina. With a sex that felt on fire Sabrina began to writhe in her bonds. To increase her discomfort Justin gripped her legs firmly and tied them together with a belt. The lips of her sex were now rubbing together and she had no way of relieving the heat between her legs. All she could do was swing her joined legs backwards and forwards in an effort to distract her mind.
Justin watched closely, enjoying her suffer for the torments she had put him through, and finally Sabrina’s flailing subsided and her head fell forward in a faint. Several hefty slaps on her bottom failed to revive her, but she was clearly unharmed. Justin then remembered a story he had read about the French aristocracy. If a lady fainted it was the custom for some kindly gent to blow tobacco smoke up her bottom. Just how this was discovered Justin didn’t know. He was also ignorant as to whether the operation was performed in some private room or the woman’s bloomers simply pulled down in full gaze of everyone and the perfunctory cloud of smoke blown bowel-wards. He decided to discover if the French were leaders in circulatory medicine or simply perverts who took their chance to sniff a rich woman’s arse, no matter what the excuse.
Taking his knife, Justin cut Sabrina down from her restraints. Unconscious she was a deadweight, but he managed to arrange her into position and hogtie her with her knees drawn against her chest and her wrists tied to her ankles. In this way he could prop her up on her knees with her breasts and face pressed to the fur-strewn floor. He left her in that position while he retrieved his tobacco pouch and set about rolling a cigarette. When he was done he leant against one of the travelling rucksacks and enjoyed a few pulls on his smoke while he observed Sabrina’s tight bottom. She was a remarkable young woman, a beautiful young woman, and she was now learning to accept him as the dominant one in their relationship. Her sex lips protruded rudely between her legs. ‘How many men got between them in Lubyanka?’ he asked himself, before deciding he didn’t really want to know.
He leaned forward and caressed her taut and very smooth skin. Slowly he parted her bottom to reveal the dark pursed muscle of her anus. He inhaled a lungful of smoke and blew into her bowels. It was a difficult procedure and he didn’t even know if any smoke had gone up inside her. He reclined back against the sack and noticed tiny wisps of smoke curling out of her bottom. Sabrina stirred and proved the Frenchmen right, although it still didn’t explain how they discovered it. It also failed to relieve the heat burning within the girl’s vagina and she began to squirm again, only this time her bonds were even tighter.
Sabrina’s eyes ran with tears and she pleaded beneath the gag for some release. Finally Justin relented and went outside to collect some snow, and when he returned he fed the icy particles into her simmering pouch. The relief was instant, but the shock of the cold released a stream of urine that soaked one of the furs. Justin decided that she needed a belt for that, and proceeded to unleash a torrent of strokes that raised several red weals on her bottom. When he was done he untied her and took her outside to sit upon the ice.
The next day Sabrina was very attentive towards him, smiling every time she saw him glance at her and touching him affectionately whenever she got the chance. He felt strong and in control again, and it was he who became the major force in the pursuit – a pursuit that had paid off when, across the great flat wastelands of the north, they spied a small group several miles in front of them.
Justin and Sabrina hurriedly ducked behind a snowdrift in case they were themselves spotted.
‘This is it,’ he gasped, then poked his head above the snow and peered through his binoculars.
‘Is it them?’ Sabrina asked agitatedly.
‘It’s them,’ he confirmed, then reached into his heavy Arctic coat and pulled out his gun. Sabrina did likewise.
‘What now?’ she asked, proving that she really had relinquished dominance in the relationship; not long ago it would have been her who made the decisions.
‘We wait,’ Justin decided. ‘Keep behind them and out of sight. If David sees us he could let fly with that rifle and we’d never get near him. Let’s wait until they make camp. When he’s snuggled up nice to his girls we’ll move in.’ He replaced his gun, satisfied it was all okay. ‘Give them a few minutes to get over the horizon and we’ll follow.’
Light turned to dusk and the pair closed in nearer to David and the girls in case they lost them in the dark. The night was crisp and clear and the stars blinked down from a cloudless sky. There was a crescent moon that gave some light, and the snow reflected it in shades of deep blue. The pair edged closer to their prey, finding them camped in a depression in the ice. Outside David’s tent hung an eerily glowing chemical light. A lime green phosphorescence glowed from it, illuminating the surrounding area like some secret ray from a flying saucer.
Sabrina and Justin kept up their watch. Everything was silent; the world appeared cold and dead.
Then there was movement in the camp. It was Mishka, tall, dark-haired and beautiful. She was swathed in furs and studded with amber jewellery. The hunters waited and watched. Mishka went to the sled, threw back the protective leather covers and took a piece of jerky from a bag. She bit on the strip of beef and walked to the edge of the light, where she squatted and relieved herself while still chewing nonchalantly. On the way back to the tent she picked up the bag and took it with her.
‘It’s going to be a while yet,’ Justin informed Sabrina. She looked frustrated and moaned before curling up into a ball to wait it out.
Justin let her sleep. There was no point in both of them keeping watch, and she wouldn’t complain this way.
Another two hours passed and the cold was beginning to creep through his clothing. The camp was perfectly still and the chemical light continued to burn. It was time. Justin stretched out his arms and legs to relieve the cramps and shook Sabrina. She was slow in coming round, so he gave her a moment or two.
‘Ready?’ he whispered.
Sabrina didn’t answer, and Justin turned to ask again. She was staring out into the darkness, eyes wide open, as was her mouth.
‘What’s the matter?’ Justin hissed. ‘We’ve got to do it now.’
There was no response. Suddenly he felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. Something was wrong. Slowly he turned, and pointed at his neck was a vicious barbed bone tethered to a short pole. To move would have meant death.
Justin and Sabrina were force-marched for over an hour at the tip of bone spears. The Chukchi tribesmen had arrived silently, as if out of nowhere. Justin had not even the time to consider his gun before he was disarmed, tethered and made to walk. Sabrina was tied in similar fashion and the two were urged up a hill by sharp jabs of the spears. Escape did not look an option. At the top of the hill they saw what David had been racing to find – the Bering Strait. It was frozen over, an icy bridge between America and Russia. In a week or so the ice would begin to break up and the connection lost. Already the lengthening days were beginning, unseen, to soften its crystalline structure. It looked like David was going to make it after all.
What was to happen to them Justin could only surmise, although the treatment they had so far received didn’t augur well. The pair were marched down to a beach where the Chukchi had made camp of a dozen or so tepees huddled beneath the bluff and ill
uminated by several fires of washed-up wood that burned blue-green. It was savage, frightening, and very isolated.
Justin and Sabrina were thrust into a tepee and the flap closed behind them. A thin vein of morning light threaded down into the tent from the smoke escape. It revealed a bare floor of stone and sand and a bundle of dried seaweed that was intended as bedding. A few large stones became seats, until tiredness overcame them and they moved silently onto the bed and fell into troubled sleep.
Justin was the first to wake, and through the gap in the top of the tent he noticed that the night sky had returned. Something was obviously happening out on the beach. Raised voices that faded on the fresh wind and feet that stumbled over icy pebbles alerted him first. The sounds grew louder and Sabrina must have heard them too, because she stirred and finally opened her eyes. She soon realised her predicament and a groan escaped her lips.
‘Why did I wake up?’ she complained, and sluggishly sat up. ‘I just can’t take much more of this country.’ She got to her feet and made to leave the tent, but a spear met her head and she retreated quickly.
‘I want to take a piss!’ she shouted, but there was no reply and she was forced to pee on the floor.
‘Did you see anything?’ Justin asked.
‘They’ve picked up our sled. It’s over by the large tent.’
‘Good,’ Justin said. ‘Then we’ve got a chance at least. What’s the noise all about?’
‘I don’t know. There’s an avenue of fires leading to the big tent. But it’s dark out there.’ Sabrina finished peeing and took up a seat on one of the large stones. ‘How long have we slept?’
‘Must be all day,’ Justin guessed.
Sabrina took his hand. ‘Sorry about this,’ she whispered sincerely. ‘I should have listened to you.’
‘Well, it’s too late now,’ he said. Then he heard the grinding of pebbles as someone approached. The tent flap was thrown open with a flourish and a short stocky Chukchi entered with the ever-present spear, which he waved in the direction of the tent opening. They passed the unkempt and wild looking tribesmen and stepped into the icy evening air. The Chukchi stabbed menacingly in the direction of the large tent and Justin and Sabrina made their way to the avenue of fires.
