The Reluctant Contact

by Stephen Burke

  ‘Pyramiden still your home?’ she said.

  ‘Something like that,’ he replied.

  She took a step towards him but he kept his distance from her. Afraid that if he did hold her he might not let her go. It was ridiculous to even think about it. He would never trust her again. She had been wronged and she had wanted revenge. He was not so saintly that he did not understand those feelings. Yet, Semyon was dead because of her. He had not deserved that. Timur too was dead because of her. Perhaps he did deserve it. And she had abused his own feelings for her in order to set the whole chain of events in motion.

  ‘So that’s it then,’ she said. ‘Nothing more to be said?’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Better that way.’

  He wondered if, after all, she might feel an apology was necessary. But none came. He hadn’t really expected one.

  She looked him in the eye for the last time, and nodded. Then she turned on her heel and walked back to where she had left her belongings. As she struggled with the weight of the suitcases, a man offered to help her. She would not be short of admirers wherever she ended up. He decided not to stay and watch the boat depart.

  He left the dock and walked back into town. He knew he would never hear from her again. He would have liked to know how Grigory was getting on. The unexpected defector deserved the red carpet treatment in the west. He was a resourceful old bastard, and Yuri was confident he would survive whatever life threw at him. Perhaps he was playing chess somewhere with a new challenger. Part of him was jealous.

  A few days later, he sat with Catherine as they watched the melting ice-water rush down Pyramiden mountain. It had started as a slow trickle two days before and had gradually expanded to what it was now, a river. The falling water picked up speed on the slopes until it levelled off and bashed against the man-made dyke. This defence system was one of the last things Yuri had worked on with Semyon. For now, their hard work looked like it might hold.

  ‘I think it’s going to keep it back,’ said Catherine.

  Yuri was not so sure. The water level was still rising fast. It was easier for the river to flow straight through town. That’s what it wanted to do. The dyke forced it to make an unnatural turn to the right, and on down to the fjord without troubling Pyramiden’s buildings. But water preferred the easy route, and would take it whenever it could.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Yuri.

  If the dyke was breached, they were in for a wet day’s work putting it right.

  ‘Can you swim?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re not much of an optimist, are you?’

  ‘These days I expect the worst.’

  Catherine gave him a knowing glance.

  ‘I suppose no one can blame you for that,’ she said.

  As they waited, the flow of water seemed to ease off.

  ‘There, look,’ said Catherine. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I thought you were leaving in the spring,’ said Yuri. ‘Why weren’t you on the first boat?’

  ‘I am not leaving after all,’ she said. ‘They said I could stay as long as I wanted.’

  Yuri turned to look at her, and she smiled.

  ‘After everything, you still want to be here?’ he asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘I like it here,’ said Catherine. ‘It’s not without its challenges, I’ll admit.’

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ said Yuri.

  ‘And you still need an assistant, don’t you?’ she asked.

  Yuri grinned. ‘I wouldn’t say need, as such. But you’re welcome to hang about, if you’ve nothing better to do.’

  Catherine punched him hard on the shoulder. ‘You deserve that. I work my ass off all winter and this is the—’

  ‘All right,’ Yuri interrupted. ‘I need an assistant. I’d be very pleased if you stayed. Although you would have to be a bit mad to.’

  ‘Pleased! That’s quite the compliment coming from you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘Almost unheard of, and most likely never to be repeated.’

  Catherine smiled. ‘Going soft in your old age.’

  They heard a loud noise above them on the mountain, and they looked up in time to see a large section of snow sliding off a cliff that had been supporting its weight.

  ‘You miss her?’ asked Catherine.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Sorry you met her in the first place?’

  He pondered this for a moment. ‘No. The sex was amazing. Really exceptional.’

  ‘Hey! I don’t need to hear details,’ she said. ‘And now we’re both single.’

  ‘Yes. And I intend to stay that way,’ said Yuri. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll see,’ said Catherine, looking away. ‘Never say never.’

  ‘It pays to check out the new arrivals off the boat,’ he offered. ‘Before the good ones are all taken.’

  Catherine laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ll be doing that, do you?’

  Yuri watched the water level at the dyke rising as the newly fallen snow began to melt.

  ‘You know I’m surprised you are staying on after everything that happened. I thought it would put you off us for life.’

  Catherine became pensive. ‘It certainly gave me pause for thought. As you said to me once, I had a picture in my head of what it was like here, and it turned out not to be like that. It’s not so different from home after all. You had a workers’ paradise, and you’ve all made a mess of it. Communism was supposed to put an end to personal ambition and selfish motives.’

  ‘Was it?’ said Yuri.

  ‘Yes,’ said Catherine. ‘Lenin himself said …’

  While she was talking, in a matter of seconds, the water level rose too high and breached the town’s defences. The course of the river took a sharp turn to the left, flowing over the dyke. It flooded freely down past Lenin’s statue, making a muddy mess of the town square and the Street for the 60th Anniversary of the Great October.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Catherine.

  ‘Come on,’ said Yuri. ‘We have work to do.’

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Francine Toon at Hodder and Stoughton and Caroline Wood at Felicity Bryan Associates. And to readers Paul Fitzgerald and Jane Doolan.

  While this story is fictional, Pyramiden does exist, and was a functioning mine until the 1990s.

  S.B. April 2017