One hour ten minutes after Stok left the phone rang. ‘The hell with you,’ I said to the phone, but after the third or fourth ring I answered it. The phone said, ‘Western clothes. Secure; two extra shirts. Komsomol Boulevard near October Bridge.’
‘I’m staying right here,’ I said. ‘I’m sick.’
‘That’s all,’ said the phone.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ I said. I replaced the receiver and said it again. I walked across to the bedside table and poured myself a large, large shot of whisky. The hell with them all. An operation like this must be a write-off, the odds against it were too great to make it worth pursuing. But I didn’t drink the whisky. I sniffed it and whispered an obscene word to it, then I put on my coat and overshoes and walked out of the hotel.
I walked through 17th June Square, and the Domsky Cathedral was shiny with moonlight and snow. Parked outside the Polytechnic there were two small taxi-vans that are hired at ten copecks
per kilometre. Near by were two men talking. Each was taking an unnatural interest in a view beyond his companion’s shoulder. One of the men called to me in German as I passed them. ‘Do you want to sell any Western clothes?’ It was the bald man I had spoken with on the video trunk-call screen.
‘I have a couple of extra shirts,’ I said. ‘Woollen ones. I could sell those if it’s permitted.’
‘Good,’ said the man. He opened the door of one of the taxi-vans. I got in. The driver revved up enthusiastically and turned on to the October Bridge. On the far bank the sky was red, for the heavy industry of the Lenin region doesn’t close down at midnight. On the river bank a huge sign said, ‘The Baltic Sea is a Sea of Peace.’
The van was crowded with men in damp overcoats, and their weight made it difficult to control over the hard bumpy ice. The wipers began to wheeze as the snowflakes built up into hard wedges of ice, and some of the men in the back were stamping feet on the floor of the van trying to improve their circulation. No one spoke. The headlights of the taxi-van behind us flashed as it hit bumps in the road and the interior lit up the faces of the men in the van with me. The bald man popped a clove of garlic into his mouth.
‘You like garlic?’ he asked, breathing it over me.
‘Not second-hand,’ I said.
‘I have a cold,’ said the bald man. All Russians believe that garlic cures the common cold. I picked at a crust of ice that condensation had
formed upon the window. The whole world was white: a great canvas backdrop untouched by paint. Here and there a faint pencil line indicated where a line of trees or a valley would one day appear. And all the time the snow fell; not once but many times, scooped up by the wind and hurled back in huge opaque whirlpools that obliterated even the pencil lines. We drove for an hour. In the tiny villages just one or two lights still burned. Twice we nearly drove into a horse and cart and we passed three lorries. When we finally stopped the van behind slid on the hard ice and narrowly missed colliding with us. We were in open country.
‘Get out,’ said the bald man. I opened the door and wind flicked against my exposed flesh like steel-tipped whips. The two vans parked under the trees. The bald man offered me a cigarette.
‘You’re an American?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. There was no point in providing him with facts.
‘I’m a Pole,’ he said. ‘So is my son there.’ He pointed towards the driver. In Latvia Roman Catholics refer to themselves as Poles. ‘The others are Russians,’ he said, ‘I don’t like Russians.’ I nodded.
The bald man leaned closer and spoke very quietly. ‘You, me and my son are the only ones working for Midwinter. The others are…’ He made that sign of two fingers laid across two fingers. It meant prison bars.
‘Criminals?’ I asked. I shivered from the cold.
He sucked at his cigarette and then wet his lips distastefully. ‘Businessmen,’ he said. ‘That’s the arrangement.’
‘What is?’
‘An Army lorry is due along this road in a few minutes. We’ll wreck it. They take the contents, we take the documents.’
‘What are the contents?’
‘Rations. Food and drink. No one here ever steals anything but food or drink. They’re the only things that you can dispose of without a permit.’ He laughed garlic at me.
‘What documents?’ I asked. ‘The ration strengths?’
‘That’s right,’ said the bald man. ‘Best way to check the man-power of the units along the coast here.’ He threw the stub of his cigarette into the snow and walked into the centre of the roadway. I followed him. Two men were staring at the road. The bald man extended a toe and slid it experimentally across the glassy surface of ice. They had melted the snow with a little water from the car radiators and now it was freezing into a mirror of ice. ‘The lorry will be helpless on it,’ said the bald man. Some of his confidence rubbed off on me. Just for one moment it all seemed possible. I’d like to see those ration strengths, perhaps it would go well. I pulled my scarf tighter and shivered; who was I kidding? From the top of the rise a torch flashed twice.
‘Now,’ said the bald man. ‘It will have to do.’ He tapped the ice with his toe. ‘The lorry is coming.’ We all crouched behind the trees. I could hear a heavy lorry in low gear.
‘You don’t think we can do it,’ whispered the bald man.
‘You’re damn right, I don’t,’ I said.
‘We’ll show you. Clean, cheap, fast and not a firearm in the vicinity.’
I nodded. The bald man looked around to make sure that none of the ‘businessmen’ were in earshot. ‘You tell Midwinter,’ he said, ‘not to send them any guns. It’s the
promise
of guns that makes them co-operate with Midwinter. If they ever
got
guns…’ He smiled. The reflected light from the snow underlit his face. His nose was red but his grin was tired, like a clown without greasepaint. Behind his head the lights of the lorry were flashing as it bumped over the hard ridges of ice.
There was something nightmarish about the slow approach of the lorry. I could help these lunatics or I could fight them on behalf of Stok; neither of those ideas appealed to me. I thought of all the warm beds that I could have been in and I kneaded my fingers that were going numb with cold. The lorry changed into a lower gear as it reached the final slope. The driver must have seen the prepared patch of ice reflected in the moonlight, for I saw his white face lean close to the windscreen. The front wheels began to slip, and then the rear wheels hit the ice patch and they too
began to spin. The lorry stopped. The driver revved the motor but that only made things worse. The lorry slid sideways across the road. Eight of the men came running out of the trees and heaved at the sides of the lorry. It moved slowly towards the drainage ditch. The driver gunned the motor but that only threw off sprays of fine snow, and the motor howled until I thought it would burst. The lorry tipped gently into the ditch and wedged there, its offside front wheel clear of the ground. With appalling crudity they had disabled the lorry. The engine stopped and for a moment there was the silence that can only exist in a forest. Then there was a clang as the driver opened the door and climbed down. He showed no surprise.
His arms were raised above his head but not raised so far that he showed any fear either. Someone brushed a hand across him for a gun, but finding none pushed him to one side. They began to untie the canvas at the rear of the lorry. There was a sudden sound of compacted ice falling from the underside of the lorry and some of the men looked startled. The soldier grinned and reached for a half-smoked cigarette behind the earflap of his fur hat. His movements were slow but his eyes were quick. I threw him my matches. He lit the cigarette, keeping both his hands high and visible.
When the canvas was open one of the men climbed inside.
‘That’s Ivan,’ said the bald man, ‘he’s a dangerous bastard.’ There was a glow from a flashlight
and Ivan’s voice read off the markings on the boxes. The bald man translated his words to me. There was a babble of Russian. ‘Dried milk,’ said the bald man. More Russian: ‘Tea,’ said the man ‘and a sack of fresh lemons.’ More Russian: ‘Excrement,’ said the man, ‘he has found a machine-gun.’ He leaped over the tailboard of the lorry like greased lightning. It didn’t need a Russian scholar to understand that the bald man was claiming that the documents and the guns were for him, only food and drink for the ‘businessmen’. They both jumped down from the lorry, they were still arguing loudly. Ivan was carrying the machine-gun. He began to prod the bald man with the barrel of it. They stood swearing at each other, both aware that everyone was watching. The bald man said, ‘The Americans see what you do.’ He pointed at me. ‘There will be no more money from the Americans.’ Ivan grinned and stroked the gun. The bald man repeated his threat. I wished he would shut up. It seemed like a good argument for eliminating me. The other men were standing well to one side expecting violence and the soldier finished his cigarette and put his hands into his pockets instead of holding them high. The bald man screamed loudly at Ivan. They were both standing very still and the snow built a lace-like pattern over them. For one moment it seemed that the bald man would carry the situation through by sheer force of character. But he didn’t. He aimed a swift blow at the gun. It wasn’t swift enough. A burst of fire cut the bald man in two at point-blank
range and propelled him headlong into the ditch like a blow from a sledge-hammer. Ivan fired again, short experimental bursts as if he’d got a new power-drill from the Christmas tree. The magazine ended and there was only a faint click from the trigger mechanism. The smoke drifted on the air and the sound echoed like a football rattle across the silent snow. Only the bald man’s foot was visible over the ditch. Ivan lifted the sling of the gun and slipped it over his head. He wore it like a sommelier’s key, an order of merit or a symbol of kingship. From his pocket he produced a new magazine. He fitted it with care.
No one spoke; they began to unload the cases from the lorry. They made the driver help them, but I stood to one side stamping my feet to keep warm and watching the horizon with keen interest.
Two heavy bombers moved across the sky at about ten thousand feet. Ivan brought me a battered metal box from the driver’s cab. He opened the lid to show me a batch of dirty, dog-eared cards inside. He gave me a flamboyant salute. I smiled. He smiled too, and stabbed me in the gut with the gun-barrel hard enough to make me suck in my breath. He still smiled. His friends called to him, they had finished transferring the boxes from the lorry to the two taxi-vans. I could see no reason for keeping me alive. So I smiled nervously and slammed him in the mouth with the metal box, trying to kick him in the groin as he sagged, but his heavy overcoat protected him well. I held
the metal box and chopped at him with the side of my hand, but it struck the sharp metal of the gun and I felt the flesh tear as one round fired. The men scattered and the bullet whined away into the snowflakes. Ivan backed away from me. I kicked at his leg but almost overbalanced. Ivan smiled. There was blood on his mouth but he kept smiling because he had the machine-gun. Boy-wonder karate expert, I thought, and I hoped that my sister would get the hi-fi and the record collection; some of the Goodman discs were valuable.
That was when the soldier hit Ivan with a tyre lever. Ivan toppled towards me, creaking like a rusty hinge. I ran. I didn’t look behind. I blundered through the dark forest bumping into tree trunks and stumbling over roots. The Russian soldier was just ahead of me. From the road came the sounds of men shouting and then a long burst of machine-gun fire. The soldier dropped. I went flat. There was more firing and I could hear chips of wood being torn from the trees. I crawled over to the soldier. His eyes were closed. The gun fired again. It seemed closer. The forest was dark and low upon me, and only the gunfire gave me any sense of direction. I remained still. There was more shouting, and about twenty yards to my left a man ran noisily. More shooting, then there was no movement. I guessed it was the bald man’s son. I had cut my hand on the gun: it wasn’t bleeding much but the little finger was bent sideways and I couldn’t move it. I wrapped a clean handkerchief round it.
It was black under the trees and a white mist of dislodged snow hung close to the ground. It was quiet. I prodded the inert soldier, but he seemed pretty dead so I got to my feet and moved slowly and quietly away from the noise and excitement.
I walked almost to the edge of the forest, then I heard the voice. Something was moving through the trees. Something larger than a man. Something much larger than a man. I stared into the gloom. The noise of breaking twigs stopped but the breathing continued. It wasn’t human breathing. I hugged a tree-trunk, and became as thin as a Blue Gillette. The large breathing thing out there began to speak. The voice was metallic and resonant. It spoke Russian. It came nearer, still speaking and almost invisible: a white-cloaked cavalry officer on a horse.
‘Approach carefully,’ said a metallic voice, ‘they have guns.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the rider. He was speaking into a two-way radio-phone.
Through the trees I could see the valley. A large cavalry patrol moved across it stage by stage like bedbugs across a clean sheet. I put the metal box containing the army ration-strengths down on the ground.
The horseman was watching me, he switched off the radio and nudged his horse closer. The leather creaked but the hooves were silent in the snow. Built into the saddle was a small Doppler radar set. Above his head the aerial sang gently in the cold wind and the screen shone blue in the
rider’s face. It was not a pleasant face. He moved his heels slightly and the horse edged towards me like a police horse controlling a crowd. I pushed against its hard muscles, the nerves twitched under the smooth coat. The icy metal of the stirrup stuck to my fingers and the sour breath of the horse was hot upon my face. The rider swung his map-case away from his thigh and opened his revolver holster. I knew a few useful words of Russian.
‘Don’t shoot,’ I called. The horse, reluctant to hurt me, fidgeted and kicked up clods of snow, but the rider urged him nearer until the pistol was inches from my face. He raised the gun and without hurry brought it down upon my skull. The horse shied a little and the butt cleaved into the side of my head, almost taking my ear off. My vision went red and I groped towards the stirrup and stuck to the icy metal. Frost-bite, I thought, then the gun butt came down more accurately and everything split into two like a badly adjusted range-finder, and I slid into the black snow.