‘It’s insane,’ said Suvorin, holding up his hand. ‘I know that. I’ve been telling myself all the way over that it’s crazy. But then, he was crazy. And he was a Georgian. Think about it. Why would he go to so much trouble to check out one girl? He had her medical records, apparently. And he wanted her checked for congenital abnormalities. Also, why would he keep her diary in his safe? And then there’s more, you see –’
‘More?’ Arsenyev was no longer punching the front seat. He was clutching it for support.
‘According to Zinaida, there are references in the girl’s journal to Trofim Lysenko. You know: “the inheritability of acquired characteristics” and all that rubbish. And apparently he also goes on about how useless his own children are, and how “the soul of Russia is in the north”.’
‘Stop it, Feliks. This is too much.’
‘And then there’s Mamantov. I’ve never understood why Mamantov should have taken such an insane risk – to murder Rapava, and in such a way. Why? This is what I tried to say to you yesterday: what could Stalin possibly have written that could have any effect upon Russia nearly fifty years later? But if Mamantov knew – had heard some rumour years ago, maybe, from some of the old timers at the Lubyanka – that Stalin might deliberately have left behind an heir – ’
‘An heir?’
‘ – well, that would explain everything, wouldn’t it? He’d take the risk for that. Let’s face it, Yuri, Mamantov’s just about sick enough to – oh, I don’t know –’ he tried to think of something utterly absurd ‘ – to run Stalin’s son for the Presidency, or something. He does have half a billion roubles, after all …’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Arsenyev. ‘Let me think about this.’ He looked across the airfield to the line of helicopters. Suvorin could see a muscle like a fish hook twitching deep in his fleshy jaw. ‘And we still have no idea where Mamantov is?’
‘He could be anywhere.’
Archangel?’
‘It’s a possibility. It must be. If Zinaida Rapava had the brains to find Kelso at the airport, why not Mamantov? He could have been tailing them for twenty-four hours. They’re not professionals; he is. I’m worried, Yuri. They’d never know a thing until he made his hit.’
Arsenyev groaned.
‘You got a phone?’
‘Sure.’ Suvorin dug in his pocket and produced it.
‘Secure?’
‘Supposedly.’
‘Call my office for me, will you?’
Suvorin began punching in the number. Arsenyev said, ‘Where’s the Rapava girl?’
‘I got Bunin to take her back home. I’ve fixed up a guard, for her own protection. She’s not in a good state.’
‘You saw this, I suppose?’ Arsenyev pulled a copy of the latest Aurora out of the seat pocket. Suvorin saw the headline: ‘VIOLENCE IS INEVITABLE’.
‘I heard it on the news.’
‘Well, you can imagine how pleasantly that’s gone down –’
‘Here,’ said Suvorin, giving him the phone. ‘It’s ringing.’
‘Sergo?’ said Arsenyev. ‘It’s me. Listen. Can you patch me through to the President’s office … ? That’s it. Use the second number.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘You’d better go. No. Wait. Tell me what you need.’
Suvorin spread his hands. He barely knew where to begin. ‘I could do with the militia or someone up in Archangel to check out every Safanov or Safanova and have the job finished by the time I arrive. That would be a start. I’ll need a couple of men to meet me at the airfield. Transport I’ll need. And some place to stay.’
‘It’s done. Go carefully, Feliks. I hope –’ But Suvorin never did discover what the colonel hoped, because Arsenyev suddenly held up a warning finger. ‘Yes … Yes, I’m ready.’ He took a breath and forced a smile; if he could have stood up and saluted, he would have done so. ‘And good day to you, Boris Nikolaevich – ’
Suvorin climbed quietly out of the car.
The tanker had been unhooked from the little aircraft and the hose was being wound up. There were rainbows of oil in the puddles beneath the wings. Close up, the dented, rust-streaked Tupolev looked even older than he expected. Forty, at least. Older than he was, in fact. Holy Mother, what a bucket!
A couple of ground crew watched him without curiosity.
‘Where’s the pilot?’
One of the men gestured with his head to the plane. Suvorin pulled himself up the steps and into the fuselage. It was cold inside and smelled like an old bus that hadn’t been driven for years. The door to the cockpit was open. He could see the pilot idly pressing switches on and off. He ducked his head and went forward and tapped him on the shoulder. The airman had a pouchy face, with the sandy, dull-eyed, bloodshot look of a heavy drinker. Great, thought Suvorin. They shook hands.
‘What’s the weather like in Archangel?’
The pilot laughed. Suvorin could smell the booze: it was not only on his breath – he was sweating it. ‘I’ll risk it if you will.’
‘Shouldn’t you have a navigator or someone?’
‘There’s nobody about.’
‘Great. Terrific.’
Suvorin went aft and took his seat. One engine coughed and started with a spurt of black smoke, and then the other. Arsenyev’s limousine had already gone, he noticed. The Tupolev turned and taxied across the deserted apron, out towards the runway. They turned again, the sawing whine of the propellers falling then rising, rising, rising. The wind whipped the rain like dirty laundry, in horizontal sheets across the concrete. He could see the narrow trunks of silver birches on the airfield perimeter, grown close together like a white palisade. He closed his eyes – it was stupid to be scared of flying, but there it was: he always had been – and they were off, scuttling and swaying down the runway, the pressure pushing him back in his seat, and then there was a lurch and they were airborne.
He opened his eyes. The plane rose beyond the edge of the airfield and banked across the city. Objects seemed to rush into his field of vision, only to dwindle and tilt away – yellow headlights reflecting on the wet streets, flat grey roofs and the dark green patches of trees. So many trees! It always surprised him. He thought of all the people he knew down there – Serafima at home in the apartment they couldn’t quite afford and the boys at school and Arsenyev trembling after his call to the President and Zinaida Rapava and her silence when he left her in the morgue –
They hit the sudden underside of the low cloud and he was permitted one, two, three last glimpses through the shreds of thickening gauze before Moscow was blanked from view.
Chapter Twenty-five
R. J. O’BRIAN STOOD on the street corner at the end of the alleyway leading to Vavara Safanova’s yard, his metal case on the ground between his legs, his head bent over the map.
‘How long d’you figure it’ll take us to get there? A couple of hours?’
Kelso looked back at the tiny wooden house. The old woman was still standing at her open door, leaning on her stick, watching them. He raised his hand to wave goodbye and the door slowly closed.
‘Get where?’
‘The Chizhikov place,’ said O’Brian. ‘How long d’you figure?’
‘In this?’ Kelso raised his eyes to the heavy sky. ‘You want to try to find it now?’
‘There’s only one road. See for yourself. She said it was a village, right? If it’s a village, it’ll be on the road.’ He brushed a dusting of snowflakes off the map and gave it to Kelso. ‘I’d say two hours.’
‘That’s not a road,’ said Kelso. ‘That’s a dotted line. That’s a track.’ It wandered eastwards through the forest, parallel with the Dvina for perhaps fifty miles, then struck north and ended nowhere – just stopped in the middle of the taiga after about two hundred miles. ‘Take a look around you, man. They haven’t even made most of the roads in the city. What d’you think they’ll be like out there?’
He thrust the map back at O’Brian and began walking in the direction of the Toyota. O’Brian
came after him. ‘We got four-wheel drive, Fluke. We got snow chains.’
‘And what if we break down?’
‘We got food. We got fuel for a fire and a whole damn forest to burn. We can always drink the snow. We’ve got the satellite phone.’ He clapped Kelso on the shoulder. ‘Tell you what, how about this: you get scared, you can call your mommy. How’s that?’
‘My mommy’s dead.’
‘Zinaida then. You can call Zinaida.’
‘Tell me, did you screw her, O’Brian? As a matter of interest?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I just want to know why she doesn’t trust you. Whether she’s right. Is it sex or is it something personal?’
‘Oh-ho. Is that what all this is about?’ O’Brian smirked. ‘Come on, Fluke. You know the rules. A gentleman never talks.’
Kelso huddled further into his jacket and increased his pace.
‘It’s not a question of being scared.’
‘Oh really?’
They were within sight of the car now. Kelso stopped and turned to face him. ‘All right, I admit it. I am scared. And you know what scares me most? The fact you’re not scared. That really scares me.’
‘Bullshit. A bit of snow –’
‘Forget the snow. I’m not bothered about the snow.’ Kelso glanced around at the tumbling houses. The scene was entirely brown and white and grey. And silent, like an old movie. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘You don’t understand. You’ve no history, that’s your problem. It’s like this name “Chizhikov”. What’s that to you?’
‘Nothing. It’s just a name.’
‘But it’s not, you see. “Chizhikov” was one of Stalin’s aliases before the Revolution. Stalin was issued with a passport in the name of P. A. Chizhikov in 1911.’
(‘Are you excited, Dr Kelso? Do you feel the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave?’ And he did. He did feel it. He felt as if a hand had reached out from the snow and touched his shoulder.)
O’Brian was quiet for a few seconds, but then he gave a dismissive sweep of his metal case. ‘Well, you can stand here and commune with history if you want. I’m going to go and find it.’ He set off across the street, turning as he walked. ‘You coming or not? The train to Moscow leaves at ten past eight tonight. Or you can come with me. Make your choice.’
Kelso hesitated. He looked up again at the tumbling sky. It wasn’t like any snowfall he had ever known in England or the States. It was as if something was disintegrating up there – flaking to pieces and crashing around them.
Choice? he thought. For a man with no visa and no money, no job, no book? For a man who had come this far? And what choice would that be, exactly?
Slowly, reluctantly, he began to walk towards the car.
THEY headed back out of the city, along a minor road, and northwards, so at least there was no GAI checkpoint to negotiate.
By now it must have been about one o’clock.
The road ran alongside an overgrown railroad track lined with ancient freight cars, and to start with it wasn’t too bad. It could almost have been romantic, in the right company.
They overtook a gaily painted cart being pulled by a pony, its head down into the wind, and soon there were more wooden houses, also bright with paint – blue, green, red – leaning in a picturesque way out in the marshland at the end of wooden jettys. In the snow it wasn’t possible to tell where the solid ground ended and water began. Boats, cars, sheds, chicken coops and tethered goats were jumbled together. Even the big wood pulp mill across the wide Dvina, on the southern headland, had a kind of epic beauty, its cranes and smoking chimneys silhouetted against the concrete sky.
But then, abruptly, the houses disappeared and so did their view of the river. At the same time the hard surface gave way beneath their wheels and they began jolting along a rutted track. Birch and pine trees closed around them. In less than fifteen minutes they might have been a thousand miles from Archangel rather than a mere ten. The road wound on through the muffled forest. Sometimes the trees grew high and fine. But occasionally the woodland would thin and they would find themselves in a wilderness of blackened, blighted stumps, like a battlefield after heavy shelling. Or – and this was oddly more disconcerting – they would suddenly come across a small plantation of tall radio antennae.
Listening posts, O’Brian said, eavesdropping on Northern NATO.
He started to sing. Walking in a Winter Wonderland.
Kelso stood it for a couple of verses. ‘Do you have to?’
O’Brian stopped.
‘Gloomy sonofabitch,’ he muttered under his breath.
The snow was still falling steadily. Occasional gunshots cracked and echoed in the distance – hunters in the woods – sending panicky birds flapping and crying across the track.
They went through several small villages, each smaller and more dilapidated than the last – a barracks in one with graffiti on its walls, and a satellite dish: a little chunk of Archangel dropped in the middle of nowhere. There was no one to be seen except a couple of gawping children and an old woman dressed entirely in black who stood at the roadside and tried to wave them down. When O’Brian didn’t slow she shook her fist and cursed them.
‘Hag.’ O’Brian looked back at her in the mirror. ‘What’s eating her? Where are all the men, anyway? Drunk?’ He meant it as a joke.
‘Probably.’
‘No? What? All of them?’
‘Most of them, I should think. Home-made vodka. What else is there to do?’
‘Jesus, what a country.’
After a while O’Brian began to sing again, but under his breath now and less confidently than before.
‘We’re walking in a winter wonderland …’
ONE hour passed, then another.
A couple of times the river came back briefly into view, and that, as O’Brian said, was a sight and a half – the swampy land, the wide and sluggish mass of water and, far beyond it, the flat, dark mass of trees picking up again, only to dissolve into the waves of snow. It was a primordial landscape. Kelso could imagine a dinosaur moving slowly across it.
From the map it was hard to tell exactly where they were. No habitations were recorded, no landmarks. He suggested they stop at the next village and try to regain their bearings.
‘Whatever you want.’
But the next village was a long time coming, it never came, and Kelso noticed that the snow on the track was virgin: there hadn’t been any traffic this far out for hours. They hit a drift for the first time – a pothole disguised by snow – and the Toyota slewed, its rear tyres flailing, until they bit on something solid. The car lurched. O’Brian spun the wheel and brought them back on course. He laughed – ‘Whoa, that was fun!’ – but Kelso could tell that even he was starting to feel unsettled now. The reporter slowed the engine, switched on the headlights and shifted forwards in his seat, peering into the swirling flakes.
‘Fuel’s low. I’d say we’ve got about fifteen minutes.’
‘Then what?’
‘Either we head back to Archangel, or we go on and try to find some place to stay the night.’
‘Oh, what? You mean a Holiday Inn?’
‘Fluke, Fluke –’
‘Listen, if we try to stay the night here, we’ll end up staying the winter.’
‘Oh, come on, man, they have to send a snow plough, don’t they? Surely? At some point?’
‘At some point?’ repeated Kelso. He shook his head. And there would have been another row if, just then, they hadn’t rounded a curve and seen, above the snow-topped trees, a smudge of smoke.
O’BRIAN stood in the doorway of the Toyota, leaning on the roof, staring ahead through his binoculars. It looked as if there might be a settlement of some sort, he said, about half a mile off the road, along a rough track.
He slipped back behind the wheel. ‘Let’s take a look.’
The passage through the trees was like a tunnel, barely wide enough
for a single vehicle, and O’Brian drove down it slowly. The branches clawed at them, slapping the windscreen, raking the sides of the car. The track worsened. They rocked sharply – hard left, hard right – and suddenly the Toyota plunged forwards and Kelso was thrown at the windscreen; only the seat belt saved him. The engine revved helplessly for a second, then stalled.
O’Brian turned the ignition, put the car into reverse and cautiously pressed the accelerator. The back wheels whined in the loose snow. He tried it again, harder. A howl like an animal trapped.
‘Get out, could you, Fluke? Take a look.’ He couldn’t quite keep the edge of panic out of his voice.
Kelso had to push hard even to open the door. He jumped out and immediately sank up to his knees. The drift was axle-deep.
He banged on the back door and gestured to O’Brian to switch off the engine.
In the silence he could hear the snowflakes pattering in the trees. His knees were wet and cold. He trod awkwardly, bow-legged, through the deep drift round to the driver’s door and had to dig away the snow with his gloved hands before he could drag it open. The Toyota was tilted forwards at an angle of at least twenty degrees. O’Brian struggled out.
‘What’d we hit?’ he demanded. He waded round to the front of the car. ‘Jesus, it’s like someone’s dug a tank-trap. Will you look at this?’
It was indeed as if a trench had been laid across the track. A few paces further on the snow became more solid again.
‘Maybe they were laying a cable or something,’ said Kelso. But a cable for what? He cupped his hands above his eyes and stared through the snow towards the huddle of wooden huts about three hundred yards ahead. They didn’t look as though they were connected to electricity, or to anything else. He noticed that the smoke had disappeared.
‘Someone’s put that fire out.’
‘We’re gonna need a tow.’ O’Brian gave the side of the Toyota a gloomy kick. ‘Heap of junk.’
He held on to the car for support and edged round to the back, opened it up and pulled out a couple of pairs of boots, one of green rubber, the other of leather, high-sided, army-issue. He threw the rubber boots to Kelso. ‘Get these on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go parley with the natives.’
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