The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  THIRTY

  Armstrong was digging another hole. He had filled in the first one and left Carey to replace the turf. Carey did his best but still the lawn in that place was bumpy and uneven and, in the circumstances, he did not feel like stamping it down too hard. He looked towards Armstrong who appeared to be systematically wrecking a flower bed. ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Armstrong pushed again with the spade, and then stooped quickly. ‘Wait! I think there’s some—’ before he finished the sentence Carey was by his side—‘thing here.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Carey put his hand down the hole and felt a flat surface. Flakes of something came away on his fingers and when he brought up his hand his fingerprints were brown. ‘Rust!’ he said. ‘This is it. Careful with that spade.’

  He looked back at the house and thought it was fortunate that Mrs K. had gone shopping and taken her son with her. A bit of good for a lot of bad. Earlier in the afternoon she had been out in the garden hanging out the weekly wash to dry, and then she had come over and chatted interminably about the iniquities of the planning authorities, the ridiculous prices in the shops and other matters dear to the housewifely heart. A lot of time had been wasted.

  He said, ‘If the trunk is corroded we might be able to rip open the top and take out the papers without making the hole any bigger.’

  ‘I forgot my tin opener,’ said Armstrong. ‘But this might do.’ He put his hand to the side of his leg and from the long pocket of the overalls designed to take a foot rule he extracted a sheathed knife. ‘Bought it in Helsinki; thought it might come in handy.’

  Carey grunted as he saw the design. He took the knife from the sheath and examined the broad blade and the simple wooden handle. ‘The Yanks think Jim Bowie invented these,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever try to tackle a Finn with one; they’re better at it than you. And probably the Russians, too, in these parts. It’ll do quite nicely.’

  He cleared earth from the top of the trunk until about a square foot of rusty metal was showing, then he stabbed at it with the sharp point of the knife. The metal was rotten and the knife punched through with ridiculous ease. He enlarged the hole and bent up the metal into a tongue which he could hold in his fingers. He gripped it and pulled and there was a tearing sound.

  Within five minutes he had made a hole in the trunk big enough to take his hand, and he groped inside and touched a hard square edge. His fingers curled around what felt like a book but when he tried to pull it out he found he was in the position of the monkey gripping the nut inside the bottle. The book was too big to come through the hole so he dropped it and concentrated on making the hole bigger.

  At last he was able to get the book out. It was a school exercise book with hard covers and, when he flicked the pages, he saw mathematical symbols and lengthy equations in profusion. ‘Jackpot!’ he said exultantly.

  The next thing out of the lucky dip was a roll of papers held by a rubber band. The rubber snapped at a touch but the papers, long rolled, held their curvature and he unrolled them with difficulty. The first pages were written in Finnish in a tight handwriting and the first mathematical equation came on the fourth page. From then on they were more frequent until the final pages were solid mathematics.

  ‘How do we know what we’re looking for?’ asked Armstrong.

  ‘We don’t—we take the lot.’ Carey dived into the hole again and groped about. Within ten minutes he had cleared the box which proved to be only half full but, even so, the books and papers made a big stack.

  Carey took some folded paper bags from his pocket. ‘Fill that hole; I’ll take care of the loot.’ He looked at his watch with worried eyes. ‘We haven’t much time.’

  He filled three stout kraft-paper bags with documents and sealed them with sticky tape. Armstrong said, ‘There’s not enough earth to go back. It’s filling the trunk.’

  ‘I’ll see to that,’ said Carey. ‘You nip along and fetch that wheelbarrow. You know where it’s planted.’

  ‘The empty house at the end of the street. I hope young Virtanen parked it in the right place.’

  ‘You’ll soon find out. Get going.’ Carey began to fill in the hole and, as Armstrong had said, there was not enough earth, so he took more from other parts of the flower bed and took care not to pack it too tightly. It took him quite a while but when he had finished Armstrong had not yet returned.

  He took the brown paper bags from where they had been lying among the long-stemmed flowers and hid them more securely in some shrubbery. His watch told him that time was running out; they had to get back to the paper mill and smuggle the papers aboard the bus. That had been arranged for but it would take time and there was little of that left.

  Impatiently he went to the front gate and was relieved to see Armstrong trudging back with the wheelbarrow. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘The damn fool hid it,’ said Armstrong savagely. ‘What did you tell him to do?’

  ‘To put it just inside the wall and out of sight.’

  ‘He put the bloody thing in the cellar,’ said Armstrong. ‘I had to search the house to find it.’

  ‘A misunderstanding—but we’ve got it. Come on.’

  They put the documents into the wheelbarrow and covered the bags with dirty sacking. Armstrong put the spade and the detector on top and picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow. He was about to push off when he stopped. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  Carey turned. A man was coming up the garden from the side of the house. His whole attitude was one of suspicion. ‘What are you doing in my garden?’

  Carey stepped forward. ‘Grazhdaninu Kunayev?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carey reeled out his story, then said, ‘Your wife knows about it, of course. We’ve made very little disturbance.’

  ‘You’ve been digging holes? Where?’

  Carey pointed. ‘There—on the lawn.’ He refrained from drawing attention to the flower bed.

  Kunayev walked over and prodded at the turf with his toe. ‘You’ve been neat, I will say that.’ He stamped hard with his foot, and Armstrong winced, thinking of the bomb below. ‘Does this mean you’ll be coming in earlier?’

  Carey frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘With the bulldozers.’

  ‘Not that I know of, comrade. That’s not my department. I’m concerned only with water pipes.’

  Kunayev looked at the house. ‘I’ve liked living here; it’s a good place. Now they want to pull it down and put up another damn factory. I ask you; is that right, comrade? Do you think it’s right?’

  Carey shrugged. ‘Progress sometimes means sacrifice.’

  ‘And I’m doing the sacrificing.’ Kunayev snorted. ‘I’m being transferred to the new housing development on the other side of town. A cheap, rotten, new house. Not like this house, comrade; those Finns knew how to build houses.’

  ‘Meaning that Soviet workers don’t?’ asked Carey suavely.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Kunayev. He walked towards the wheelbarrow and picked up the detector. ‘Is this your water diviner?’

  Carey tightened his lips. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like the mine detector I used during the war. I was at Stalingrad, comrade. Fourteen years old I was then.’ He strolled towards the fence separating his garden from the one next door, still holding the detector. ‘Boris Ivanevitch, are you there?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ whispered Armstrong. ‘What do we do now?’

  A woman called back. ‘He’s just going on duty,’

  ‘Good afternoon, Irina Alexandrovna; ask him to come round here. I have something to show him.’

  ‘Let’s just leave,’ urged Armstrong.

  ‘We can’t leave without that detector,’ said Carey through his teeth. ‘It would look too suspicious.’

  Kunayev came back from the fence. He had put on the earphones. ‘Seems to work just like a mine detector, too. Not as big and heavy, of course; but they’re clever with their electronics these days.’

 
‘It works on a different principle,’ said Carey. ‘But we’ve finished here, Grazhdaninu Kunayev; we must go about our work.’

  ‘No great hurry, comrade,’ said Kunayev carelessly. He walked over to the patch of relaid turf. ‘You say you found your water pipe here?’

  ‘A pipe junction,’ said Carey, gritting his teeth.

  Kunayev nicked a switch and walked back and forth several times. ‘It works,’ he said. ‘I could find that junction blind-fold—see if I can’t.’ He closed his eyes and walked back and forward again. ‘Am I there?’

  ‘Right on the spot,’ said Armstrong.

  Kunayev opened his eyes and looked past them. ‘Ah, Boris Ivanevitch,’ he said. ‘You’ll be interested in this.’

  Carey turned around and felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Boris Ivanevitch was a policeman.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘The chief study here at Sompio is the ecology of wetland,’ said Dr Matti Mannermaa. ‘In northern Finland we have many marshes caused by the slow drying out of the shallow lakes. Sompio was chosen as a nature preserve because it not only has such a marsh but also has high ground of an altitude of over five hundred metres and a small part of Lake Lokka. Thus we have a varied habitat for many creatures, especially birds.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ said McCready, hoping the interest showed in his face. He was bored to death.

  ‘I am an ornithologist, of course,’ said Dr Mannermaa. ‘My work here is similar to that done at your English research station at Slimbridge.’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ said Harding with enthusiasm.

  ‘So have I,’ said Dr Mannermaa. ‘I spent many months there investigating British methods. We have adopted the rocket-driven net for use here. We ring a lot of birds for the study of migratory patterns.’

  McCready indicated the rack of shotguns on the wall of Mannermaa’s office. ‘I see you shoot them, too.’

  ‘We must,’ said Mannermaa. ‘We have a continuing study in pesticide residues in body fat. We break a lot of eggs, too, Mr McCready—to study the thickness of the shells. Decreasing shell thickness is mainly a problem with the raptors, of course.’ He laughed. ‘I am not a sentimentalist about birds; I like roast duck just as much as anyone else.’

  ‘I’m a wildfowler,’ said Harding. ‘We get good shooting in Norfolk.’

  ‘I hope you don’t take a shotgun into Sompio,’ said Mannermaa. There was a twinkle in his eye which belied the gravity of his voice. ‘Well, now; let us look at the map and decide what is best for you to do.’

  He stood up and went to a wall map. For a few minutes they discussed routes and possibilities. ‘Here there is a hut,’ said Mannermaa. ‘On the edge of the marsh just below Nattaset—that’s the mountain here. It’s equipped with bunks and cooking facilities—rough living but better than tenting.’

  ‘Most kind of you,’ said McCready. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘A lot of our technical equipment is stored there. Please try not to disturb it.’

  ‘We won’t touch anything,’ promised McCready. ‘Thank you for everything, Dr Mannermaa.’

  As they shook hands Mannermaa said, ‘I hope your companions are successful in their shopping here. Vuotso is a small place and the range of choice may be restricted.’

  ‘All we need are basic rations.’

  ‘If you run out you’ll find some tinned food in the hut,’ said Mannermaa. ‘You can pay for it when you get back.’

  McCready and Harding left the office and emerged on to the main street of Vuotso. Harding said, ‘Co-operative chap, isn’t he? Those credentials Carey supplied must be really high-powered.’

  ‘But we mustn’t take a shotgun into Sompio,’ said McCready. ‘I wish we could take a machine-gun.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll be followed here?’

  ‘It’s a certainty—we left a trail like a bloody paper chase. Carey’s plan is working and that’s just fine for Carey, but I have a feeling that we’re left holding the sticky end.’ McCready sounded angry. ‘It’s all very well for him to set us up as targets but who likes being shot at? His plan that I should be an outside guard has already broken down. I have to sleep some time. It’s too big a job for one man.’

  ‘You’ll be with us this time, then?’

  McCready nodded. His brow was furrowed as he tried to cover all the angles. ‘Another thing—how will Denison hold out?’

  ‘He’s got remarkable resilience,’ said Harding. ‘That crack on the head stirred things up and a lot of the blocks on his memory have been shaken loose. He’s remembering more and more as time goes on, but he seems to have the ability to handle it.’

  ‘What happens when he gets it all back? Does he crack up and go back on the bottle?’ asked McCready sourly.

  ‘I don’t know. I tried him on whisky last night. He seems to have a positive aversion to it.’

  McCready grunted. ‘I hope he stays that way.’

  In fact, Denison felt remarkably well. As they went on foot into the Sompio nature preserve he tried to analyse the reasons for his feeling of well-being and came to the conclusion that it was because of the absence of panic when he probed into the past. And then, of course, there was the immediate environment. He stopped and took a deep breath of the cool clean air and looked about him.

  They were skirting the mountain called Nattaset and keeping to the high ground. Below there was a vista of the northern wilderness breathtaking in its beauty. Where there was firm ground the ever-present birches grew, but in between a multitude of islets there was a lacework intricacy of watercourses reflecting the blue of the sky, and in the distance an island-dotted lake shone like silver. Closer at hand white wreaths of last winter’s snow lay all about.

  Denison turned and saw McCready trailing about half a mile behind. He, too, appeared to have stopped and Denison thought he was doing a search with field glasses—and not just to look at the view. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder then, as far as McCready was concerned, this view would be bleak indeed. There were far too many places for a man—or even a regiment—to hide.

  Denison hitched his pack to a more comfortable position and set off again, keeping up a fast pace so as to catch up with the others. He drew abreast of Lyn, and said, ‘It’s lucky no one took a crack at us when we were leaving Kevo. I was so woozy I wouldn’t have been much help.’

  Lyn looked at him worriedly. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said lightly. ‘I feel a lot better now I can remember things. This morning I remembered the name of the man in the flat above mine; Paterson—a nice chap.’

  ‘And you remember being a film director?’

  ‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t run away with the idea that I was one of your big-time movie moguls—my stuff wasn’t shown in the West End. I make educational films mostly.’ He frowned. ‘Or, at least, I did. I was fired from my job.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Giles,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’m not worrying; I have more important things on my mind at the moment. All the same,’ he said, looking into his past. ‘I don’t seem to have been a nice character.’

  There was violence in her voice. ‘Forget it!’ she said crossly.

  He glanced at her face in profile. ‘You worry about me, don’t you?’ There was a tinge of wonder in his voice; it had been a long time since anyone had worried about what happened to him. All Fortescue had worried about was whether the job would get done—he hadn’t given a damn about Denison himself.

  ‘What do you expect me to do? Cheer when you get slugged on the head?’ She walked on a few more paces. ‘You should never have agreed to this mad scheme.’

  ‘Carey talked me into it—he’s a very persuasive man. But you talked yourself into it. Nobody asked you to come. Now why did you do that?’

  She offered him a wan smile. ‘You know, you’re rather like Hamlet; you let yourself be pushed around.’

  He grinned. ‘Ah, the fair Ophelia.’

  ‘Don’t cla
ss me with that damned ninny,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not going to go mad in white satin. But I still think that if Hamlet had had someone to give him advice, to put some backbone into him, things would have turned out differently. As it was, all he had was that wet, Horatio.’

  He felt suddenly depressed. ‘Are you offering to supply backbone?’

  ‘All I’m saying is that you mustn’t depend on this gang of Whitehall thugs. Don’t believe everything Carey tells you. He’s in business for himself, not you.’ She seemed angry.

  He was silent for a while. ‘You could be right,’ he said at last. ‘I have no illusions about this job. I know I was thrown into it involuntarily but I carried on of my own will and with my eyes open. I know I’m being used and I don’t particularly like it. At the time when Carey put the proposition I was mixed up, to say the least, and I dare say Carey took advantage. I don’t blame him for it—I was all he had.’

  ‘But you’re becoming better,’ said Lyn. ‘You’ll be getting ready to make your own decisions.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Denison thoughtfully. ‘We’ll see.’ He hitched the pack on his back. ‘When do we get to this hut?’

  They pressed on late that night because Diana wanted to reach the hut. ‘No point in staying in the open when we can have a roof over our heads,’ she said. Travelling late was no problem; the light never left the sky and they were able to move as fast at midnight as at midday and they saw the hut at two in the morning.

  It was built of birch logs and was bigger than they had expected. It was in the form of a letter ‘H’, wings having been added as was necessary. The living quarters were in the cross-bar of the ‘H’ and they were glad to divest themselves of the heavy packs. The two women began to prepare a meal and sent the men to get water.

  Harding and Denison took buckets and went outside, and Harding stopped just outside the hut and looked across the marsh which seemed to consist of reeds and water for as far as the eye could see. ‘Good wildfowling country,’ he said appreciatively.

  Denison slapped at his neck. ‘Good mosquito country,’ he grumbled.