by John Lawton
Janis Bell shook her head like a wet dog on the threshold.
“Hmmm … Sort of leaves me breathless. Dumb admitted here. What does that mean?”
“It means that its radioactivity diminishes by half every 5.27 years. Anywhere the fall-out from a cobalt bomb lands will be radioactive and uninhabitable.”
“For … 5.27 years.”
“No … halving the radiation every 5.27 years still leaves you with a toxic level a hundred odd years later. It can’t be outlasted. You can’t live in a fallout shelter for three generations.”
“So our American cousins digging big holes in the ground are wasting their time?”
“Yep.”
“And how many of these … er …”
“They’re known as dirty bombs.”
“How apt. How many dirty bombs would it take to wipe out life on Earth?”
“Not many … trade winds would do the work the bomb couldn’t do for itself.”
They’d reached a natural break. Wilderness poured himself a drink and listened to the wheels of cognition engage in Janis’s mind.
“OK. Dumb again. So I shall ask the silly question. What’s all this got to do with your pal Kostya?”
Wilderness was still wondering whether to answer. He had an answer. He’d been kicking an answer around for two days now and still was not convinced of it. It made sense. It did not make sense. It added up. It did not add up.
“He’s not spying, he’s buying.”
§72
“Russia has suffered disasters in nickel mining. As a result it is not producing cobalt. China is, but relations with China are not what they were. China will not sell to Russia. For Russia to buy on the open market, from the Congo or Zambia, risks alerting the British and hence the Americans. The simple solution is to buy next door, which just happens to be the world’s largest producer of refined cobalt.”
“Surely it has other uses than just making bombs more deadly?”
“Yes, it has. X-ray technology uses cobalt. Cobalamine, which is cobalt-derived, is also known as vitamin B12—”
“—OK. OK. Even I’m not naïve enough to think Russia is running a covert vitamin programme. But.”
“But what?”
“But you still have no connection to Kostya or to Lapland.”
“Did you find out where the Finns’ other nickel refineries are?”
“Bugger. Not yet.”
“You forgot?”
“Yes. I forgot. Sentence me to typing Ma Burton’s letters for the next thirty years!”
§73
Wilderness set out his theory in a long, coded letter to Eddie.
The replies:
—I said I didn’t have figures for Russian cobalt production. You might deduce that as they’re stuffed for nickel they may well be stuffed for cobalt. But equally you might not. And just because Russia isn’t producing cobalt right now it doesn’t mean they haven’t got stockpiles of the stuff. Are you sure about this?
—No.
—Okey dokey. So what, in your uncertainty, do you mean to do about our old pal?
—Confront him.
—I get the feeling you’ve been putting that off?
—I asked once and he just dodged the bullet.
—That’s a metaphor, right?
—It was last time. It won’t be this time.
—Oh fuckin’ Ada.
§74
He arrived in Persereiikkä early. Not yet five and only vaguely dark as a full moon turned snow and frost into winter’s wonderland. He had a couple of hours before Kostya would show up.
Pastorius arrived minutes later, sat opposite him in a booth in the bar at the White Nights. Plonked down a martini for each of them.
“Cheers.”
“Are we celebrating something?”
“Of course. Did you think olives grow on trees? Yes. End of term. We break up ‘for the hols’ as you English say. Let’s drink to that.”
“What are you on about?”
“Look outside, Joe. Frost everywhere. The lake’s frozen over. It froze six weeks ago, not long after your last visit.”
“Have I really been gone that long? I’ve shown mouldy old British films in so many one-horse Karelian villages since then I’ve lost track of time.”
“Well—the Beaver’s out of the water. No more Russia runs.”
He seemed inordinately pleased at the prospect. Held out his glass to clink. Wilderness didn’t match him. His drink sat untouched between them.
“I’m still expecting Kostya.”
“I’m afraid he won’t be getting any more moonshine this winter.”
“I told him I’d be here today. He thinks we have one more run left.”
“Well … you’ll have to disappoint him—if he comes. And I suppose he might. If he hasn’t driven out to the far side of the lake, it’s just possible he may not know it’s frozen … he’s Russian after all—what do they know about snow and ice? Or does he not realise the Aussies won’t fly once it’s frozen?”
“He’s a city kid. And he does sort of define naïve. He always has.”
“But you don’t. You knew the lake would be frozen.”
“Of course.”
“Then why did you arrange to meet him today?”
Wilderness said nothing.
Pastorius stared out of the window
“Look at it. Would you take a plane up in this?”
At the second bidding he did look. Snowflakes the size of half crowns floating weightlessly in midair. In the west a plume of white vapour was winding its way into the moonlit sky, a floating stairway to the stars. He’d never noticed it before.
“Niilo, what’s that?”
“What’s what? Oh, you mean the smoke or steam or whatever. That’s Hirviämpäri. About ten miles away.”
“Hirviämpäri what? I’ve seen no heavy industry this far north.”
“A nickel smelting plant. It’s been shut down for the last eighteen months.”
“Why have you never mentioned this?”
“You’ve never asked … and there has been … no, there still is … an element of secrecy.”
“About what?”
Niilo seemed to shrug, stared down into his martini for a few moments.
“I know we are as nothing to you, to the Americans and possibly less to the Russians, but we are a nation, however small, however young—after all we are not yet fifty—and we have our secrets just as you do. Not, perhaps, the secrets of world annihilation but secrets nonetheless.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Are you going to beat it out of me?”
“Of course not.”
“An accident. Nothing sinister. An accident.”
“I’m listening.”
“A leak into the river. One hundred thousand kilos of nickel. It rendered the river toxic. Raised the nickel levels in the water to five hundred times what is held to be normal and then swept out into the Gulf of Bothnia. You couldn’t drink the water, you couldn’t wash in it and every life form that lived in it died. Do you understand now why we kept this secret?”
“Yes, and I’ll keep your secret.”
“The clean-up took more than a year. All this summer, right up until the end of last month the Hirviämpäri plant has been subject to modifications and checks and rechecks to ensure it never happens again. The men in suits we see in the bar here, time after time—remember you said they didn’t look like tourists? They’re not. They’re engineers, executives and government officials—all here to get Hirviämpäri up and running again. It reopened ten days ago. We are once again producing nickel—”
Not spying, buying.
“And cobalt?”
Not spying, buying.
“I’m not so hot on chemistry, but yes I believe that is a by-product.”
Not spying, buying.
Wilderness excused himself. Put a phone call through to chancery and caught Janis Bell just as she was leaving for home.
“This won’t take long. Does the name Hirviämpäri ring any—”
“Bells? Irony upon irony. Yes. That’s the name I couldn’t remember.”
“OK. That’s all. I know everything I need to—”
“Joe, she’s on the prowl!”
“What?”
“Burton’s bitten my head off a dozen times today. She knows something. Dunno what, but she knows. Maybe she’s worked out you’ve gone north not east? Whatever you do next … and I’ve no idea how that sentence should end.”
Wilderness had. He knew exactly how it was going to end.
§75
“Niilo, can you get up to Joeerämaa first thing in the morning?”
“Of course.”
“Tell Momo and Bruce to make themselves scarce. You too. I’ll be there about noon.”
“Should I be asking you why?’
“No.”
“And now?”
“Now, I play one last game of chess.”
§76
Another copy of the Paris Herald Tribune slid across the table to him.
“A hundred and twenty? Or is that too many?”
Wilderness stuck out his fists, a pawn concealed in each.
“No, that’s fine. Tap.”
Kostya took white.
They played for over an hour and a half. Wilderness dug in. Losing struck him as far too symbolic. He sought new reserves of tenacity.
“Well played,” Kostya said as his king fell to a bishop-knight pincer.
They met again at breakfast.
Wilderness glanced at the men in suits, the executives, the engineers, the government officials, once more outnumbered by the tourists as Christmas loomed.
Kostya looked at no one and nothing. They might have been invisible.
“Leave your car and come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Up to the lake, to Joeerämaa.”
“Why?”
“Something you should see.”
“Something or someone? Joe, it would not be wise for me to meet your Supo man.”
“That’s OK. He doesn’t want to meet you either.”
Out on the snow, the Mog warming up, minutes before they set off, the receptionist came out and handed Wilderness a note:
Urgent. Call me. JB.
Bad timing.
Jenny Burton the Brocken Witch could go to hell.
§77
The morning was crepuscular. Nothing was light or dark enough. A dawn that refused to break and preferred to remain cracked.
Wilderness could see, had seen for weeks now, why the Finns got stuck on, and also probably stuck in, Lapland. It was strangely beautiful—he resisted words like “ethereal”—and even with the chugging of the Mog’s engine strangely quiet. He doubted he could ever adapt to it—he was a city boy through and through, London … Berlin—but he could see why Momo and Bruce had.
Kostya looked slightly bored. The other city kid—Leningrad, Moscow. He said next to nothing, asked far too few questions, as though his curiosity for the landscape and for Wilderness himself had been muted. When they hadn’t played chess they’d usually talked books—but even that seemed exhausted.
About an hour out Kostya said, “Joe, did you ever really think I might be defecting?”
“Probably not.”
“You know, the only reason I make these trips in person is to get out once in a while. I thought I would enjoy being in a foreign country. I haven’t been out of the Soviet Union for more than twenty-four hours since Berlin. If I’d had more time I might even have visited Helsinki. I would never defect. I’m loyal to my country, Joe. Whatever deals we have done—in Berlin or here—I remain loyal. Finland might be dull … and Murmansk is duller. But I’d never defect. Think of the embarrassment it would cause my mother. If I weren’t loyal to Mother Russia I’d still be loyal to my mother.”
At the lake, engine off, he heard the crunch of his boots on the snow. It was said you could tell how cold it was by the tone registered in the crunch. But one look at the lake told him. It was frozen solid.
“Is this where you take off?”
“It was.”
He’d no idea where Bruce and Momo had their cabin, but hoped it was far enough away.
The Beaver was under the corrugated tin roof about thirty feet from the water—the plane Wilderness couldn’t identify sat on the shore where it had always been, and there was no sign of the Bobcat.
“Is no one here?”
“Looks that way?”
“The men you said I should meet? The pilots?”
“Gone. The lake looks solid. I don’t think you’ll be getting a shipment today.
At this point Wilderness had been sure Kostya would smell a rat. Instead he put a foot on the ice and then another. Stamped as though proving its solidity to himself.
Wilderness had his last payment in a brown envelope, closed by a rubber band.
“You’d better have your money back, Kostya. No deal, no dollars.”
Kostya stopped stamping on the ice and looked up. He was about six feet from the shore now. Wilderness threw high and badly. Kostya spun rapidly in an attempt to catch the package, slipped and slid another ten feet on his backside.
Kostya laughed to himself, bent to pick up the money, and when he turned Wilderness had his Smith & Wesson aimed at his chest.
“Joe?”
“Have you read War and Peace, Kostya?”
“Have you read Oliver Twist?”
“Touché. The chapter when Dolokhov leads his squadron out onto the frozen lake. The ice breaks. They drown. He survives. Tolstoy never explains how he survives, but it’s obvious. Despite his wounds he reaches the other side of the lake. Abandons everyone else to their fate. Bit of a bastard, really.”
“Joe, what is wrong?”
Wilderness put a bullet into the ice about a yard to Kostya’s left. The ice cracked and the shot echoed for several seconds.
“Tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
Another bullet a yard to the right.
“Vodka my arse. Tell me why you’re really here.”
“That is why I’m here.”
Three more bullets, rapidly, all around him. The echoes rebounding and rebounding.
Now Kostya clapped his hands to his ears. Now the ice beneath him began to move.
“I’ve wondered all along why you had to make these trips in person. It wasn’t about money or not trusting your own men. And it sure as fuck wasn’t the jolly day trip you mentioned on the way here. It was all so you could meet those grey-suited buggers at the White Nights. I was naïve. I had you watched to see where you went when you left the hotel, but you didn’t need to leave the bleedin’ hotel did you? All your contacts, from government and industry, were already there.”
“Joe—for God’s sake. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Government officials? I can’t meet government officials. I can’t even meet your Supo man. The risk is too great. A KGB man caught in Finalnd, disguised as a German? They’d lock me up and throw away the key. If I could deal with the Finns why on earth would I be asking you to be the middle man in the vodka game?”
One more bullet.
Water began to lap around Kostya’s boots.
Wilderness took a speedloader from his pocket, flipped the chamber and slipped in another six bullets.
“You were sent here to set up a deal. You’re buying cobalt, because Russia is making a dirty bomb.”
Kostya looked incredulous.
“Joe—if we wanted Finnish cobalt why would we not just send a trade mission to Helsinki and buy it openly?”
“Because the Americans threatened to nuke Finland when you silly buggers sold it MiGs—openly. So it all goes covert. Instead of a trade mission, they send you. The undercover man. But then you realised I was here and you had to do something to throw me off the scent.”
“No, Joe. No.”
One bullet, the ice broke and began to
sink under Kostya’s weight, water rolling over his boots, up to his ankles.
“Why are you here?”
“Joe, I’m sinking.”
“Why are you here?”
“Joe, for pity’s sake.”
The ice tipped sideways. One leg vanished into the water.
“Why are you here?”
“Joe … Joe … Joe.”
“Why are you here?”
Wilderness took aim at Kostya’s head.
Kostya floundered, his gloved hands finding no grip on the ice.
He sucked in air, tried to shout and his voice all but failed him. Chilled to a croak.
“Because … because … Joe, I’m just a fucking Schieber!”
§78
Back at the White Nights, Wilderness found he’d missed another phone call.
You’re fired. Report back now! Burton.
Only then did he realise who’d sent him the first message.
§79
“I got the into-my-office-door-closed treatment. Charlie had cracked your code. That was a surprise. I had Charlie down for a complete prat. I stood there like a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl caught skiving off hockey. She didn’t ask me what I knew, she told me what I knew—the vodka, Kostya, the cobalt refinery … the lot … a catalogue of your sins—and mine. I was your collaborator … or was it conspirator? Either way I had betrayed her trust—not that she ever trusted me with a damn thing. I tried to warn you, but you never called.”
“A slight confusion over initials.”
“Oh fuck. Never thought of that. Anyway, she went ballistic. I don’t know where she is now. When you didn’t show up with your tail between your legs she just vanished. I’d guess she’s in London.”
“So would I.”
“Joe, am I in trouble?”
“I think we both might be in trouble.”
“Ah well, so much for my brilliant career.”
Now the shoes came off, kicked into the middle of the room, and her head went back and her hands locked into her hair in a silent scream.