by John Gardner
The smell of fir trees. The crunch of dead wood and pine cones under foot. Our own heavy breathing. Heaviness, legs aching and the sense of complete defeat. We pushed on.
Late in the afternoon, without any warning we broke from the trees.
‘Down,’ hissed Mostyn. I saw the helicopter as he spoke. It was flying diagonally to us at around four hundred feet. Russian, and moving in a zig-zag search pattern.
The ground ahead was made up of the high scrub we had encountered in the forest. Beyond it the area seemed to be flat and sloping.
We waited until the helicopter had moved out of sight before starting forward again through the scrub. Half-an-hour later we broke cover once more.
It was as though some machine had hacked its way through the forest and scrub making a great open ribbon around a mile or two wide, denuded of trees and foliage.
‘That’s it,’ breathed Mostyn. ‘The border’s in the middle of that lot. And over there — Finland.’
‘Hope someone’s home.’ Boysie, almost under his breath.
‘We’ve only got to get over there?’ I knew there was a catch somewhere.
‘We’ll see.’ I did not like the undertone in Mostyn’s voice. There was a reserve which did not bode well.
‘We’ll go forward,’ he said. ‘But for God’s sake keep a look out. Presumably they patrol with helicopters, but they’ve probably got foot patrols on the go as well. We can’t be more than two or three miles from the border post and they must all be as alert as snakes since yesterday’s trouble.’
We walked on, bunched together. I remembered all the instructors I had ever known, those years ago who had screamed that bunching means death. A group of men, huddled together for psychological safety make a smaller target and can be wiped out in a second by one burst of machine gun fire.
‘Shouldn’t we keep spaced out?’ I whispered to Mostyn. Lord knew why I was whispering.
Mostyn grunted something and made flapping motions with his hand which were supposed to indicate that we should spread out.
Fear dominated and we remained a tight knot of clowns. It felt lonely, like a single ant must feel advancing over an unlaid picnic cloth.
Ahead one could make out some definite and disturbing features. We were rapidly approaching a high wire fence, the wire stretched between rough poles set at fifteen yards intervals : the whole rising some twenty feet.
‘Difficult to get the complete setup without binoculars,’ Mostyn mumbled to himself.
The wire was barbed and stretched horizontally as well as vertically making a wall of close square windows.
‘What’s that?’ asked Hester, pointing.
It stood only a few feet away but none of us had noticed it: a board attached to the wire at eye level, oblong and white but for a large red painted hand. Like a policeman’s hand raised in the stop signal.
‘That,’ said Mostyn distastefully, ‘is the Russian equivalent for Achtung Minen.’
‘And it means,’ added Boysie, ‘that if you climb over the nasty barbed wire the odds are that you’ll get blasted into small pieces.’
‘A minefield?’
‘That’s what the gentlemen are saying.’ I did not like the tone of my own voice. Mines are not my favourite things and a minefield between us and Finland was the last complication we wanted.
Chapter Twelve — There Will Never Be Another You
‘We can’t fly over them, or go under them, or even round them.’ Mostyn ticked each of the possibilities off on his fingers.
We had found a clump of scrub for cover in order to hold yet another council of war.
‘As far as I can see,’ he continued, ‘there is only one alternative.’
I did not like to think about it. Mines are tricky enough objects when you’ve got a nice solid mine detector. To go through a field without specialized equipment was akin to being lunatic. Mostyn put it into words.
‘We will have to go through.’
‘Madness,’ I voiced.
‘You ever been through one?’
‘No, but I was taught how to, many years ago. It was highly dangerous then so I should imagine it’s even more so now.’
‘Well I’ve been through one.’ Mostyn was infuriatingly pompous. ‘So has Boysie. It used to be standard training with the old Special Security.’
‘Yes, we lost more recruits that way.’ Boysie did not seem to be jesting.
‘How though? How?’ Hester took no pains to cover her fear.
‘There’s always the possibility that it’s a dummy.’ Mostyn spoke quietly. ‘But, to be honest, I don’t think the Russians would play games like that on this particular border. I should imagine there’s at least a token sprinkling out there. But you have to treat it like any other minefield. You got your knife, Boysie?’
Boysie coyly lifted one leg of his baggy trousers to show the eight inch fighting knife, sheathed and strapped to his calf.
‘Good. We’ve got two knives. That’s one more than we need to get through.’
‘Markers?’ queried Boysie.
‘That’s a problem.’
I knew what they were talking about now. The technique obviously had not changed much over the years. It was still frightening. One guy gets down on his guts and prods the earth with a bayonet or knife, directly in front of him: moving in a wide semi-circle and pushing the knife in at an angle. If the ground is clear he moves up six inches and starts all over again. If the knife hits anything, he digs it out. The path, so cleared is marked by tape or rope.
‘How about pine cones? There are plenty of them around,’ suggested Boysie.
Mostyn nodded. ‘Good enough.’ He narrowed his eyes looking out beyond the barbed wire. ‘I should imagine the field probably stretches into the middle of no man’s land. There should be another fence somewhere out there. Then we just have to hope that the Finns haven’t mined their side.’
‘How do we get through the wire?’ I asked.
‘No problem there. I’ve been carrying an automatic, a knife, small tool kit and cutters since we left Moscow.’ Mostyn really was a shade too much of a good thing. ‘No,’ he added, ‘the real problem is time and light. We’ve got to do this one in daylight. It’s the only way we stand any chance. It’s going to be dodgy anyway, but by night we’d never get away with it.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Hard to say. If we three men take it in turns to do about fifty yards at a stretch, maybe three or four hours. If the daylight doesn’t hold then we’ll just have to stay out there in the dark. Using pine cones as markers we might just be able to carry enough to cover fifty yards.’
‘You mean that the last one through collects them up again?’
‘Quite.’
Mostyn went over the drill again and it was decided that Hester should collect the cones. She scrambled off in the direction of the trees while we decided who should be first man into the field. In the end, Mostyn took first place. He would be followed by Boysie and then I would have a go.
‘Only one thing,’ said Mostyn as we wormed our way down to the wire. ‘If you do have to dig one out for God’s sake be careful, they’re sometimes boobytrapped with trigger wires underneath.’
It was a comforting last piece of advice. Boysie and Mostyn busied themselves at the wire, Boysie’s big hands holding the strands on either side of the point at which Mostyn used his small shears, so that the wire would not snake back and tear across either of their faces.
I looked out over the brown grey landscape with some horror, knowing that one or all of us could be killed, or badly maimed, once we began to feel our way through. We were tired, hungry and edgy. You could not give us much of a prognosis. The odds were against all four of us getting to safety. Once more I wondered why the hell I was in this situation. Greed? My personal incompetence? Pride?
They had made a hole in the wire big enough for each of us to pass through. Mostyn stretched out and gently began to probe the earth. Boysie was on his knees
behind him, the big costume pockets full of pine cones that Hester had collected.
It racked the nerves to full stretch. I could feel the sweat sluicing from me. Even the most expensive deodorant would have been of little help.
Mostyn’s estimate had been reasonably accurate. It took him just over an hour to cover around fifty yards; slowly edging forward. At last, Boysie’s hand went up to signal they were out of pine cones. I squeezed Hester’s arm.
‘It’ll be all right.’
Stooping to pick up the cones as we went we moved hesitatingly towards the two figures who lay still and, maybe, inches from the flash and explosion: the small metalic violence which could end them.
Mostyn looked grey and exhausted and I noticed Boysie’s hands were trembling.
‘Hard to tell,’ said Mostyn. ‘Nothing so far. It could still be a dummy or we may just have stumbled on a direct path. But don’t let that fool you, Boysie. Treat it for real.’
‘What do you think I am?’
‘A neurotic who shouldn’t be let within a mile of a minefield.’
Boysie nodded sadly, stretched himself out and began to prod. He had not gone more than a few feet when he called back.
‘Keep your heads down, I’ve hit something.’
We waited, squashing against the earth as his hands and arms moved, painfully slow against our own jittering nerves. At last he let out a sigh followed by an oath.
‘Bloody rock.’
Boysie’s arm curved back and he flung the offending hunk of stone in a low trajectory in the direction of Finland.
I did not see it hit the ground, but we all felt the shock wave as the mine it detonated cracked out. A dark red flash, the patter of earth and a low cloud of smoke, drifting and clinging near to the ground.
‘Oh God,’ breathed Hester.
Mostyn swore and even at this distance I could hear Boysie retching.
‘Don’t move for five minutes,’ Mostyn called. ‘In case a patrol has heard. Just keep as near to the ground as you can.’
The minutes ticked by and our breathing became more regular. Mostyn signalled for Boysie to go on.
He moved a few more agonizing yards and stopped again. This time it was not a stone and we watched as he went through the process of digging around the mine, clearing it and then completing his semi-circle of probing. He then rolled to the side and probed a small area outside our path, clearing it so that it would be safe to place the mine there once he had lifted it.
‘You’d better get ahead and start laying the cones.’ Mostyn whispered to me. What a time, I thought. Go and join B. Oakes just as he’s lifting a mine. Great.
I marked the path and took up station behind the prone Oakes just as he removed the deadly seed. It looked harmless enough: dull metal, circular, about a foot in diameter and a couple of inches high. Boysie placed it in the area he had cleared to the right of the path and we moved on.
He lifted three more before we reached the end of his run.
‘Bloody place is infested with them.’ He raised his arm to bring up the other two. I took his place with Mostyn backing me up. The work was as heavy as smashing stones on the Moor. Total concentration. The knife blade feeling its way into the earth. One’s hand prepared to take the shock of it hitting against metal. The slow steady progress and the shivering ache which set up in the hands and wrists.
After an hour I was breathing as though from a long fast run. I did not come up against one mine.
The light was beginning to go, but we could now clearly see the actual border markation a good hundred yards ahead: a tall wire and posts fence like that on the Russian side.
‘A couple more stints should do it.’ Mostyn took over.
His progress, with Boysie as back up man, seemed to be slower than ever. He hit another mine about ten yards in. It took him over fifteen sweating minutes to lift.
‘It seems too near. You want to take the chance and rush it.’ Hester shivered.
‘You feel all right?’ I asked.
‘Cold and miserable. Quite honestly Rex I don’t really want to go on. I’ve had it.’
I put an arm round her. ‘Stick with me. It’ll work out. I promise. We’ve come a long way.’
The whole of the open space had now become shrunken to the few feet bordered by the pine cones and the land directly in front, leading to the fence.
At last, Mostyn’s arm went up. I once more trod carefully forward with Hester, picking up the cones as we went.
‘Think you can manage it, Boysie?’ Mostyn showed real concern.
‘We’ll get there.’ Boysie paused and grinned before adding — ‘One way or another.’
On his belly he began to probe the last fifty yards. At one point he put down the knife and laid his head on his arms to rest.
‘Would you go back to Mostyn and get his little snippers.’ He looked up and winked. ‘If anything happened to him on his way up to the wire I’d never forgive myself if I couldn’t get the rest of us through.’
I tiptoed back along the path and claimed the shears from Mostyn who only gave a sidelong glance and muttered. ‘Crafty bugger.’
Twenty feet from the fence Boysie hit three mines, one after the other. They were stuck hard in the ground and difficult to dislodge. In the end I had to lie next to him and help: easing my fingers under each in turn, feeling for any booby-trap wires and then pushing upwards.
We were both shaking and agitated when we reached the wire.
‘Don’t signal them yet.’ Boysie spoke fast, staccato. ‘Let’s get a hole cut in the wire so they can come straight through.’
It took us ten minutes to clip out a gap through which we could all climb.
Dusk had set in now and there could only be a matter of ten minutes at the most before visibility would be reduced to zero.
Boysie signalled and we watched as the two clowns, identically dressed, rose from the flat land and began their slow lope towards us.
‘Can’t tell which is which in this light,’ I said just as the first shot cracked overhead.
Automatically Boysie and I went prone, looking back to see what had happened.
Someone was shouting a long way off through a loud-hailer on the Russian side. It sounded like ‘Stop now and you will not be hurt.’
Mostyn and Hester had gone to ground. I could not even see them in the murk.
Then they started shooting in earnest. Machine-gun fire was ripping into the fence somewhere to our left.
‘Let’s get through,’ whispered Boysie. ‘Get on the Finnish side and we’ll be okay.’ Like people who say it’s all right to walk straight over zebra crossings: the cars are in the wrong if they hit you.
‘Hang on.’
Boysie squirmed through the gap. I followed. There were a couple of rifle shots, then silence.
We waited.
‘You think they’ve gone home to supper?’
‘Shhhh.’
Five minutes went by before Boysie called softly. ‘Mostyn? You okay?’
Quietly the voice came back. ‘Yes. We’re going to make a run for it.’
I had to rub my eyes, pricking and sore with concentration. The two clown figures rose from the ground about thirty feet away and began to run towards the gap. A quick burst of machine-gun fire and a couple of rifle shots.
The figure in the lead swerved as though unnerved by the shooting.
‘No,’ yelled Boysie. ‘Keep to the...’
The rest of his sentence was drowned by the crash of the mine. The clown’s figure seemed to hang, poised black against the horizon. Then the dark red flash leaped upwards. Something flew away to the right. The black shape became a thing, partly fragmented, rolling backwards with a shriek and leaving the other figure still padding towards us.
‘Christ,’ muttered Boysie. ‘They’ve got Mostyn. They’ve got my gaffer. Christ they don’t make them like him any more. There’ll never be another Mostyn. Christ.’
The firing had stopped. Smoke from the e
xplosion hung low and near the fence so that we could not make out even the shape of the figure we could hear coming towards us.
‘Here, Hester. We’re here,’ I called, shoving my arms through the gap to help her.
‘It’s not Hester, laddie. Sorry, but it’s not Hester.’ Mostyn struggled through the gap and lay panting and wheezing beside us.
From the Russian side all was silent. I found that my fingers were clutching tightly at the nefer the girl acrobat had given to me. ‘It will guard your tongue and your heart,’ she had said.
Chapter Thirteen — Where Or When
I do not suppose that I am any more sentimental than the next man. The shock of Hester’s death did the things it would do to anybody else. It left me numb and bitter; shaking and in a state of mind that made me want to lash out at the first thing that came my way.
‘What in hell were you doing?’ I shouted at Mostyn. ‘Couldn’t you stop her?’
I went on like that for about ten minutes, then, slowly, they pointed out that it could have happened to any of us. By that time I was too far gone to argue.
It was quite dark and Mostyn posed the big question. ‘Are we going to walk it over the Finnish side?’
‘You’re the expert. Back in the old days when we were real agents and not just bloody adventurers you used to know everything there was to know about borders.’
Mostyn sounded a trifle acid, ‘And paying guests as well I’ve no doubt.’
‘Ha-bloody-ha. Well what do you remember about this one?’
‘As far as I can recall,’ he might have been back at his office desk: the pomposity could almost be touched, ‘the Finns do not mine their side, but it’s always on the cards that our crimson comrades have planted a few here.’
‘I reckon it’s a chance we’ll have to take,’ said Boysie, getting up and beginning to slope off towards Finland. Mostyn gave me a nudge and we followed him.
The fence on the Finnish side was a less complicated affair: low stakes driven in waist high with three strands of barbed wire running between. You could almost step over it.