Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  He hitched the backpack on, and undid the skis. They were work jobs, short and wide, for rough ground; the sticks bound up with them. He buckled the skis to his boots, had a look at his watch – 5.25 – and took off.

  He was back in the car park in fifteen minutes, took two more to get the skis off and strapped under the backpack, and was inside the airport building in time to hear an announcement boom from the loudspeakers.

  ‘Mitlakino – final call! All passengers for Mitlakino, Mishmita and Polyarnik, go at once to the aircraft! Last call for Mitlakino. Departure in fifteen minutes for Mishmita, Polyarnik and Mitlakino. Passengers go at once to the aircraft.’

  A knot of stragglers was still going through and he joined them. Not a direct flight, then. And something puzzling in the names. Mitlakino he’d only heard of a couple of hours before, and Polyarnik not at all. But Mishmita? Vaguely familiar.

  He handed in his ticket and filed through. The plane was an ancient three-engine Yak, the short-take-off crate of the north. Inside was pandemonium, a struggling mass of skis and backpacks. Sixty or so men were aboard and he found himself crammed next to a buttoned-up Russian, evidently a professional man, lips pursed at the noisy and undisciplined natives.

  ‘Go inside – I get off first,’ the man gruffly ordered, and took the aisle seat.

  ‘Where you get off?’ Porter asked him, companionably.

  ‘Mishmita.’

  ‘Don’t know Mishmita. What’s Mishmita?’

  ‘Mys,’ the Russian curtly told him. ‘Not mish. Mys. Mys Schmidta.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Mys Schmidta – Cape Schmidta! Last seen on the chartroom table of the Suzaku Maru; he’d watched a plane take off from the air strip there; had drawn the captain’s attention to it while checking the ship’s position on the chart himself. From there to the mouth of the Kolyma, forty-seven hours. Now he was reversing his tracks – truly going back the way he’d come.

  An idea began slowly to dawn.

  Tell me, ‘he said humbly to the Russian,’ were you ever in Mitlakino?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been in Mitlakino.’

  ‘As an educated man – excuse me, I’m ignorant – is it on the sea, the Arctic?’

  The Russian thawed slightly. ‘Not on the Arctic, no. Inland a little. From a cape – Cape Dezhnev. The sea there we call a strait – the Bering Strait. You’ve heard of it, perhaps?’

  ‘Ah, no.’

  But ah yes. Christ Almighty, yes! It hadn’t shown up on the airport map, all peeled away there. But of course the Bering Strait. Go far enough east and you … He couldn’t wait to get his hands, on the little atlas. He couldn’t get at the atlas, stuck in the backpack with a great pile of other luggage. He waited for the first stop and the plane to thin out.

  To Mys Schmidta was an hour’s hop, and the Russian got off and others on, in the same confusion; then on to Polyarnik, another forty minutes, and more off and none on. And at last, with the upheavals over and the plane thinned out, he got at the backpack, and the atlas, and hungrily turned east.

  Page after page, and there it was: end of the peninsula, Cape Dezhnev. End of the peninsula but not of the map, or of Russia. For the deeper knowledge of Kolymsky students the school atlas showed the boundary of Russia, and of its nearest neighbour. The boundary was in the sea, eighty-five kilometres wide at this point: the Bering Strait. The neighbours had forty-two and a half kilometres each and the boundary ran through the middle. It ran between two islands. The Greater Diomede Island was Russian, the Lesser Diomede American. Only four kilometres between them …

  He absorbed this and looked back at the mainland. Inland from Cape Dezhnev, the Russian had said. Mitlakino didn’t show up there. Just a wilderness, with a marsh, a lake, a small mountain range. North of the cape a coastal dot said Uelen, and south of it Lavrentiya. There would be others in between. At the place itself there’d be a bigger scale map, a work map.

  Soon enough a dim haze of light below showed the place itself, with the straight line of an airstrip.

  They landed on it at nine o’clock and snow tanks were waiting to take the forty-odd men to the workers’ barracks. The journey was short, but snow was now falling quite heavily.

  He got himself into the last of the tracked vehicles. No one had questioned his presence so far and the absence of the other man had not been noticed, but it was as well to see what happened ahead. As they neared the building the first arrivals were already filing in, the lead tank moving on to an adjoining shed. Again he positioned himself as last man in the mob outside. Some hold-up was going on inside, and presently there were complaints, and a great heave and they were all in.

  Inside, in the tightly packed lobby, an angry telephone conversation was going on. A wrong permit had been provided, and the matter was being checked with Baranikha. An official barked to the clerk at the desk that papers would be processed in the morning, and the mob began to thin. Again he saw to it that he was at the end. The men were being handed tags – for their skis and bunk numbers – in exchange for their documentation. He had his papers in his hand but was not anxious to have the name overheard by the man’s comrades.

  Now he felt himself on edge; time going fast. Nine-thirty. Four and a half hours since the Chukchee had taken a sleep. He could be waking up.

  He gave in his papers at last – the very last – and was allotted a bunk and a locker. ‘Just dump your stuff and go right to supper. The kitchen will close.’

  He found his bunk, looked into the dining room and saw that tags were being shown for meals. He went outside again.

  The telephone line was coated with snow and he’d seen it on the way in. It disappeared into a plastic conduit and he traced it down the log-built structure to the junction box. With his knife he prised apart the join where it met the box, cut the wire, and pressed the conduit back in place. No more talk with Baranikha. He decided to skip supper.

  56

  In the air the general was in heated conversation with Tchersky. They’d garbled the story; it was obvious now. The Chukchee found at Baranikha was not the Chukchee he was after. The man at Baranikha had been found in the airport’s boiler room, drunk. From his incoherent account it seemed that some other native had stolen his flight ticket and papers and flown off with them. He had flown off with a gang of native workers to a construction site. The location of the site was now providing a problem.

  The name of the place was Mitlakino, and it was not on the general’s maps. It was not on Tchersky’s, either.

  ‘What the devil! Doesn’t Tchersky supply this place?’

  ‘No, General. According to Baranikha, Magadan does.’

  ‘Magadan? Is there an air service from it to Magadan?’

  Yes, apparently there was.

  ‘This bastard,’ the general informed his staff, ‘is making for Magadan. He’ll go south from there. Now listen,’ he told Tchersky, ‘that airstrip at Mitla – at that place – is to be closed down. Issue the order at once. Will he have landed there yet?’

  Yes, he would have landed there. The plane had reported landing two hours ago, at 9 p. m., and was staying the night due to heavy snow. There was now no radio contact with it, or with. the small control tower which had also gone off for the night. And the telephone line at the camp was out of order; Baranikha was still trying to get through.

  ‘Goddam it!’ the general said. ‘Well close it down when they do get through. That plane is not to take off, whatever the weather, and nothing else is to be let in except military craft. Contact the nearest airbase to it. Get a clear location for them from Baranikha – a precise map reference with co-ordinates. I’ll talk to them when I land. He’s bottled up there, at least. That’s one thing. Now here’s another.’ The general took breath.

  ‘This bobik. He went through Bilibino in a bobik. He will have arrived in Baranikha with it. How the hell is it that a bobik has not been reported missing? What details have they given of it in Baranikha?’

  Baranikha had not given
any details of it. They hadn’t found it – not at the airport, or as yet anywhere in the town. They were still looking for it.

  In that case, the general thought, they weren’t going to find it. He had got rid of it; no evidence left. Increasingly it was looking as if he’d left Tchersky in the bobik. He might have used the Tatra to get to the Bilibino highway, and there snatched a bobik, a likelier vehicle for mountains than a farm truck. But there was no stolen bobik on the Bilibino highway: his officers had earlier covered it intensively, had covered every long-distance route. In which case where had the bobik come from?

  Tchersky. He hadn’t simply picked one up on the way. The man was a planner. He had planned the bobik. In his workshop. Had taken some wreck there, and then the spare parts to rebuild it. Where had the spare parts come from? The Tchersky Transport Company. Where had the wreck come from? Same place. Not a Tatra. A bobik. Any number of crocks must be hanging about there – a big garage, for God’s sake. But with big garages there were routines. Was this just sloppy supervision or had someone actively … Who was responsible for such things? And who was responsible for parts?

  ‘Tchersky – are you there?’ The general had brooded for some minutes, only a discreet crackle coming from the other end.

  ‘Yes, General.’

  ‘Who’s in charge of bobik parts there, that company?’

  ‘Bobik parts would be the Light Vehicles Depot.’

  ‘Do they work at night?’

  ‘No, not at night. They lock up at five, General.’

  ‘Good. Get a key. Have the director of the place there when I land. Don’t tell him why. See my car is waiting. And have you remembered that about the co-ordinates?’

  ‘Yes, General. You want them when you land.’

  ‘I don’t want them. The airbase will want them. Give them to the airbase.’

  Idiots!

  Vassili had been very silent all night, his eyes on the TV, and his wife’s eyes on him. He had known she would say nothing unless he said something; and he had said nothing at all.

  Now he settled himself into bed.

  ‘All right, what?’ he said.

  ‘Will we lose the apartment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you get into trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They say he’s bad.’

  ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘They know someone helped him.’

  He grunted. He should never have told her of the bobik. It had been in that romantic period when she had advised that Kolya should fuck an Evenk. He put his teeth in the glass.

  ‘Could they find out anything?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  He sincerely hoped not. He had gone through the duplicate order forms from March; delivery advices from July. His stock and deficit books had needed attention, too, and a razor blade. None of the parts showed up now. They’d never been ordered; delivery not advised; no deficits. The rumpus would come later, and he would sort it out later. If Kolya hadn’t fixed him. Got himself found. Or left the bobik to be found. He wouldn’t have done that. No. But he was depressed. He had been used.

  Eleven o’clock, and he put the light out.

  At militia headquarters the general hung on, waiting for the flight controller of the airbase to return to the phone.

  His raid on the transport company had not been a success. A haggard director, evidently an old camp survivor, had savagely accused him of being spy happy, of wishing a return to old times. One Liova, the manager of the Light Vehicles Depot, also an old lag, also summoned, had demanded the presence of a native storeman; vetoed by the general. They had inspected the stores, and various books, all incomprehensible … A job for an expert later. For now –

  ‘Hello, yes?’

  ‘Okay, General. Meteorological conditions are difficult at the moment – there’s a white-out.’

  ‘But you can land there?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want doing?’

  ‘Just get him. You’ll need to liaise with Magadan, they supply the place. I have no clear idea of it here −’

  ‘I’m looking at air photos of it now.’

  ‘Ah, you have some. It’s isolated, is it?’

  ‘Yes, just a single structure. Is he armed?’

  ‘Assume that he is. When can you be there?’

  ‘Say 0100. I’ve lifted a squad of airborne now, in helicopters. You want him held there or brought back here?’

  ‘First get him. I’ll let you know,’ the general said, and hung up, satisfied.

  A right decision to come himself from Irkutsk. The idiots here could still be combing warehouses. Upon arrival he had been two days behind the man. By issuing decisive orders – militia posts, air strips – he had reduced that gap to two hours. Now, twenty past twelve on his second night here, the two hours had been reduced to forty minutes.

  He had a drink while waiting.

  57

  At twelve-thirty Porter climbed out of his bunk, tidied the rolled-up bedding, and took his boots and the backpack. The dormitory was snoring; he had made sure everyone was snoring before even entering it for a rest.

  He had heard one shift go out at midnight and another return, evidently to some other dormitory. Now the place was dead. He peered out into the lobby.

  All deserted; semi-dark.

  Behind the counter, a single lamp. In the recess by the door, the ski stack, now tidied up.

  He stood quite still, reviewing the scene, and waited some moments to be sure he had it to himself. Then he went behind the counter. There was a chair there and he sat and put his boots on, looking about him. A few notices pinned to a board: work schedules; a plan showing block numbers of work areas. Nothing more. There had to be better than this, and he looked under the counter, and found it.

  All below the counter was pigeon-holed, and in the holes charts. The holes were neatly labelled. Camp Plan, Mining Works, Geological Survey, Topography.

  Topography had a dozen rolled-up charts and he found the right one. They were inland from the cape forty kilometres: Dezhnev to the north, Lavrentiya to the south. In between, a curving bay showed several coastal villages – Naukan, Tunytlino, Leymin, Veyemik, Keyekan … Inuit villages: Eskimos.

  The tiny marsh and lake of the atlas were here hugely magnified. The camp was exactly midway between them. The works were a kilometre to the west, in the foothills of a small mountain range; the chart squared off so precisely he could place himself to 500 metres.

  The islands were not on the chart – on this scale too far out. But he knew that from midway in the bay they were directly east.

  Midway in the bay … It looked like Veyemik. The compass bearing on the chart showed Veyemik as due south-east of the barrack block.

  He dug in the backpack, found the school compass, and checked it, first finding north. North, according to the chart, should be the adjoining shed where the snow tanks had pulled in, the whole block laid out on a precise north-south axis.

  He pointed the compass there, and saw it was several degrees out. No means of resetting the tinny little job so he made the adjustment in his head, and scanned the chart again.

  There were three main tracks: to the works, the lake, and the nearest coastal village, Tunytlino. This one he examined carefully.

  Tunytlino was thirty kilometres away. No track led from it to the next village, Leymin, twelve kilometres below it, but the ground looked flat. After that, Veyemik.

  Veyemik was another fourteen kilometres, but surrounded by a whirl of contour lines. The place was on the far side of a creek; frozen now … If he hit the coast at Tunytlino, kept the sea on the left, Veyemik was twenty-six kilometres below it. The whole journey, from where he sat now, fifty-six kilometres. Thirty-five miles.

  Okay.

  He slipped the chart back in its pigeon-hole, went to the ski stack and found the pair he had arrived with, tagged by bunk number. He removed the tag, hunted in his pocket for its twin – this one looped to a locker key – and took the
m back to the desk. They’d come out of a drawer, he remembered. In the night’s confusion the deskman had hastily stuffed the papers in the same drawer. He opened the drawer and found his own papers, the tag number scrawled in one corner. He took the papers, dropped the tags in among a jumble of others and closed the drawer.

  With backpack and skis he went out through the double doors. The outer one had a simple latch and it clicked securely behind him.

  Outside the wind was howling, snow blowing horizontally.

  He hunched through it to the shed and shone his torch. Four snow tanks, three bobiks. He looked over the best bobik; then the other two. No keys in any of them. He swore. A snow tank, then. Cumbersome; also very noisy. But nothing for it. He inspected the snow tanks, and found none of them had keys.

  Jesus Christ! He wasn’t going thirty-five miles in a snowstorm on little work skis; not in view of what else he had to do tonight. He shone the torch around and saw the snow ploughs – one actually out in the snow, shrouded in it. He had a look at the other. It was at the mouth of the shed, a tracked vehicle, big tracks like a tank; its shovel raised and pointing out. High, with an enclosed cabin. He climbed up and opened the door.

  Keys in.

  He shone the torch round the cabin. He had driven a snow plough before but the arrangement of levers was unfamiliar here. To hell – there was a gear stick, accelerator, wipers, lights, brake. He’d figure it out on the move.

  He settled the skis and backpack, closed the door and turned the key. It took several turns before the thing clanked hideously into life. He didn’t know if it could be heard above the wind. Just move.

  He slipped the gear in and moved. Got it out of the shed and well away from the building before turning right to pick up the track at the north side. In the dark he couldn’t see the track. He flashed the lights briefly, but the broad shovel was sticking out, blocking the view. Just a dazzle of snow, twin embankments hazily visible ahead. Evidently that was the track, swept by the snow plough.