Snow Wolf

by Glenn Meade

  “Hold on tight!” Slanski gripped the steering wheel with one hand, rolled down the side window, and wrenched out his Tokarev. He eased on the brakes and slowed. Seconds later the helicopter came tearing over the trees and floated directly ahead of them, the machine swinging left and right as it tried to settle itself. Slanski suddenly saw the major’s face in the cockpit. He aimed, fired three quick shots, and saw holes blossom on the glass dome as the pistol cracked.

  The helicopter lurched but continued to hover, and then Slanski saw the major aim out through the side window. Puffs of white exploded in the snow to the left of the Emka. Seconds later Slanski saw the main road fifty yards in front. Off to the left, ahead of them, was a towering electric pylon, thick metal cables running high on either side. He yelled at Anna, “Keep your head down!” He gave a sudden burst of speed, and the Emka roared toward it.

  • • •

  The throaty clatter of the blades was deafening as the Mil tore through the air. There was an atmosphere of panic in the cockpit as the pilot fought to control the machine, turning in sharp banks, following the Emka as it snaked through the woods.

  Lukin’s eyes were on the car. He had the Tokarev stuck out through the side window, trying to get a clear shot at the driver, but it was almost impossible. Every time the Mil got ahead of the car it veered off onto another track, and the helicopter yawed violently to keep up.

  He roared at the pilot, “Try to keep this thing steady, can’t you?”

  “I’m doing my best!”

  The Emka suddenly slowed, and they overtook it again. As the Mil swung around and the pilot tried to settle the searchlight on the car, rapid gunfire sounded and three holes cracked in the glass above their heads. The MiL lifted as Lukin ducked his head instinctively, aimed through the window, and got off two quick shots, but both went wide.

  The Emka started to move again, turning right, then back onto the forest road that led down to the highway.

  “Keep after them! Don’t lose them!” They were fifty yards from the highway when Lukin suddenly felt a frightening shuddering.

  The pilot screamed.

  In horror Lukin saw the towering electricity pylon almost dead ahead. The pilot tried frantically to veer away at the last moment, but a second later the blades clipped the electric cables and there was a powerful blinding flash of blue corona, sparks bursting like fireworks in front of their faces.

  There was an almighty harsh metallic crash as the Mil slammed into the massive pylon, and then the noise of the blades died abruptly and the helicopter sank in a burst of flame.

  34

  * * *

  LENINGRAD

  FEBRUARY 27

  The tram halted on the Nevsky Prospect, and Anna and Slanski climbed down. It was early afternoon, and traffic clogged Leningrad’s broad main street. Slanski took Anna’s hand as they walked along the lengthy crowded avenue. It had started to snow, and the entire stretch was a chaos of noise and pedestrians.

  The Alexander Column in the Winter Palace and the magnificent dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral rose behind them in the distance. The lime-colored tsarist buildings lining the canals that ran either side of the Nevsky Prospect looked dazzling in the snow, easing the general impression of grayness. But on almost every side street there were still ruins standing from the war, blackened shells of buildings partly demolished or supported precariously with struts of heavy timber, testament to a siege that had lasted almost a year, destroyed entire districts in the city, and cost the lives of over half a million of its inhabitants.

  Strung across Nevsky Prospect was a giant banner of a beaming Joseph Stalin, smiling down at the traffic trundling past: trucks and cars, buses and trolley cars and trams; German BMWs and Volkswagens and Opels, surrendered or abandoned by a defeated Nazi enemy and gratefully confiscated by the city’s wrathful population.

  Slanski stared up at the banner of Stalin, then turned to Anna as they walked through the crowd. She was tired and pale, and there was a look of tension in her eyes. They had abandoned the Emka on a side street in the suburb of Udelnaya, six miles away, taken a bus to the edge of the city, and then one of the yellow city trams the rest of the way. Within half an hour they were in the center of Leningrad.

  When they reached the corner opposite the main railway station for Moscow, Slanski found a pay telephone and dialed the number.

  • • •

  The thin-faced man placed three tumblers of vodka on the shabby table. He drank one quickly and looked at the man and woman before wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve and smiling over. “Drink up. You’re going to need it.”

  The man was middle-aged, and his dark, lean face showed no sign of nervousness. He was a Ukrainian nationalist, and after the war he lived in Paris as a refugee, working as a photographer, until the Americans had helped send him into Russia with the identity of a Soviet prisoner of war caught up in the advancing Allied lines at Göttingen. Once he had been turned over with hundreds of other Russian soldiers, there had been weeks of brutal interrogation at the hands of the KGB, and even then he had to endure two years in the Gulag for his supposed mistake of being caught by the Germans.

  After that it was easy. He got a job in the photography studio near the Petrograd Embankment and took flattering photographs of senior officers from the Leningrad Naval Academy. They were so pleased they came back to him with their friends and families, and now and then he took shots of them and their comrades at naval functions.

  Every month he delivered copies and biographies of interest to an émigré agent in Leningrad, to be passed on down the line to the émigré office in Paris and eventually to the Americans. A dangerous job. But he was getting his own revenge on the Reds for what they had inflicted on his country.

  He had met the couple in the park near the Winter Palace an hour after the phone call to his studio. He took them on several roundabout tram rides back to his home, not resting until they sat in the filthy two-room tenement off an alleyway along the Moika Canal near Nevsky Prospect.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Slanski.

  “Everything you’ve told me suggests a problem. You’re both in deep trouble, or my name isn’t Vladimir Rykov.” He looked at Anna and shrugged as he blew out smoke and offered the pack to his guests. “There’s really no other way of putting it, I’m afraid, my dear.”

  As Slanski accepted a cigarette, suddenly across the landing a couple could be heard arguing at the tops of their voices, shouting at each other, doors banging. A scream curdled the air; there was the sound of someone being slapped and a voice boomed, “Get your hands off me, you filthy pig!”

  Vladimir raised his eyes toward the door and half smiled. “Love: where would we be without it? Russians like to argue and throw things. What they can’t do to authority they do to each other at home.” He nodded toward the door. “Don’t worry about those two, they’re at it night and day. Any moment you’ll hear the door banging, the husband will call his wife an old witch, and then he’ll be off to get drunk.”

  At that moment a door slammed, an angry voice shouted, “You old witch!” and footsteps clattered down the stairs.

  Vladimir laughed. “See? If only everything in life was as reliable as my neighbors.”

  Slanski said, “You were about to tell us why we’re in trouble.”

  The man looked back and sucked on his cigarette. “For two reasons. Number one, from what you told me the KGB and militia are doubtless looking for you. Number two, whatever route you take is going to be difficult.”

  “We could leave if you’re worried,” Slanski offered. “But we’ve nowhere else to go.”

  Vladimir shook his head resignedly. “Don’t worry about me. My worry went out the door with the war. I lost my wife and family. There’s only me left. What is there to worry about?” He stood and reached for the vodka. “Let the Reds shoot me if they want.”

  He refilled his glass as Slanski stood and crossed to the window and looked down. A small courtyard be
low led in from an archway on the street. At one end of the courtyard wall was a line of padlocked wooden doors belonging to what looked like outside storage rooms for the tiny flats. The yard was littered with refuse and patrolled by scraggly, scavenging cats.

  Slanski had explained about the incident with Lukin, the KGB major. Not because he wanted to but because whatever happened from now on would affect their journey and perhaps put Vladimir in danger. But he had been surprisingly unruffled by the information.

  Slanski looked back at him. “We have to get to Moscow somehow.”

  Vladimir stubbed out his cigarette, gulped some vodka, and wiped his mouth. “Easier said than done. By rail, there’s the Red Star express. It runs overnight between Leningrad and Moscow and takes twelve hours. But given what you’ve told me the railway station will be watched. Flying’s the quickest way. Aeroflot flies to Moscow every few hours. But tickets are hard to come by, and you’d probably have to wait a couple of days to get them, and that’s if you’re lucky. And no doubt the KGB and militia will be watching the airport, too, just like the railway stations. Of course, you could always steal a car and drive, but that takes well over a day allowing for rest stops, and you’d be only asking for trouble if you were stopped at a checkpoint in a stolen car.”

  “What about traveling by bus?”

  Vladimir shook his head. “There’s bus service, of course, but no direct one to Moscow. You’d have to change every so often, and the journey could take days. It’s very complicated if you don’t know your way.”

  Slanski looked over at Anna and sighed in exasperation. She stared back at him, then she said to Vladimir, “There must be some other way.”

  Vladimir grinned and spat a fleck of tobacco on the floor. “Maybe.” He thought a moment, then looked at them. “I’ve got an idea. It may work. Come, I’ll show you.”

  He headed toward the door, and Slanski and Anna followed.

  ESTONIA

  It was a nightmare. Lukin woke, shivering in freezing darkness. His limbs were painfully stiff, and he felt as if ice flowed through his veins. He was numb, soaked in sweat, feverish. Frost was on his clothes and face, and he felt as if someone had sealed him in a block of ice. Cold bit into his flesh and bones like fire. As he lay in the snow, half conscious, he became aware of a strong smell of kerosene fuel, mixed with an acrid, sugary stench.

  He remembered the stench. Anyone who had been near battle never forgot it. Like an animal carcass, but sweeter.

  Burning human flesh.

  He craned his neck to look around and felt a pain shoot down his left arm, which made him scream in agony. He closed his eyes slowly, then opened them again and looked down at his body, as much as he could in the poor light. He was lying in the snow, and the back of his head was touching something hard. From the way he lay he saw he was propped against a fallen tree trunk. There was a dull ache at the back of his skull, and he felt a throbbing pain flow through his body. His clothes had been shredded by the explosion, the material scorched, and he smelled of burned material and fuel.

  And something else. To his horror he saw his false hand had been sheared off, exposing his stump, and the end of the flesh had burned to black.

  Lukin stared at the wound in alarm. He tried to move his arm, but the stump refused to budge, his whole body frozen stiff, from cold or shock, he couldn’t tell which. Perhaps he was paralyzed, and the explosion had shattered his spine!

  He couldn’t recall, but he must have been doused in fuel when the helicopter’s tanks ignited. All he remembered with certainty was the awesome crash as the Mil hit the ground and an eruption of flames moments before. He vaguely recollected the passenger door bursting open from the force of the fall. He had been flung out, and his skull had hit something hard.

  After that was blank.

  Lukin had landed in the snow. It must have dampened the flames on his clothes and arm and prevented them from spreading. Still, the pain in his stump was excruciating. A thought occurred to him: If his back was broken, would he still feel pain in his limb?

  Somewhere near he could sense light and heat. He could see a tangle of hissing metal, steam rising from the wreckage of the Mil. The forest had not caught fire, but a small blaze burned in what remained of the cockpit, lying at the base of a huge electricity pylon. Severed metal cables swung in the wind, a shower of sparks erupting every time they brushed against the pylon.

  Flames licked in the center of a tangled heap of metal. He saw the body of the pilot lying in the shattered wreckage. His body had been half burned, the man’s left arm dangling over a chunk of jagged metal. The bone had cracked cleanly and was held on by only the exposed tendons.

  Lukin winced. The man was certainly dead, and it was his, Lukin’s, fault. He had been too intent on capturing Slanski and the woman. Too intent on stopping them from escaping. But they had escaped and he had lost them. So close . . .he had been so close.

  He was unaware of how much time had passed, but he guessed it hadn’t been long because the wreckage was still burning. Flakes of snow began to fall and hiss on the flames.

  Lukin was barely conscious, but he knew he couldn’t remain in this temperature for long. He tried to move, but still his body felt numb.

  Suddenly he was aware of a flash of light through the trees and heard the rumble of an engine. He remembered the highway. Perhaps someone had come to investigate the explosion or the damaged pylon. He cried, hoarsely, “Help!”

  It was a weak cry, a cry of desperation, and no one answered. Seconds later the noise and the light vanished beyond the trees. It was useless. Waves of pain rolled up from his scorched arm. His eyelids fluttered. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, forget about his suffering.

  Not sleep, he thought, I’m dying. For a moment, in his feverish mind, he saw Nadia’s face, smiling at him.

  LENINGRAD

  The storage room at the end of the courtyard was in pitch darkness when Vladimir unlocked the two heavy padlocks and flicked on the switch. The room flooded with light, and he beckoned them inside and closed the door. The large room had obviously once been one of several individual stables belonging to the house during the tsar’s time, entered through the courtyard. Vladimir’s storeroom was packed with ancient rotting furniture, and on a narrow workshop table were bits of engine parts. A dusty sheet lay in a corner, covered with paint stains.

  Vladimir pulled it off to reveal a German army BMW dispatch rider’s motorcycle with twin leather saddle pouches hanging at the back. The gray bike had been repainted dark green, and the tires were broad, deeply grooved thick rubber made for rough terrain.

  Vladimir smiled and ran a hand lovingly over the leather saddle. “I could say a lot against the Germans, but they still made the best motorcycles. There are lots of these models still around, and they’re much better than the Soviet variety. Even the army uses them. I took her for a spin last week. The engine still runs sweetly.” He wheeled the BMW out into the center of the room and said to Slanski, “You’ve ridden a motorcycle before?”

  “Never.”

  “Terrific! Now you really are done for, little brother.”

  “I could learn quickly.”

  “On Russian roads? You may as well put a gun to your head and squeeze the trigger. Here, you’d better start it and try it for size. Don’t worry about the neighbors, they’re used to me riding this thing.”

  Slanski took the handlebars and climbed onto the machine. It felt rugged and heavy.

  “Of course, it’ll be awfully cold riding it,” Vladimir remarked. “You have to be well wrapped up, or your butt will freeze hard as rocks.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  Vladimir smiled at Anna. “Sit on the back, dear. Get a feel for it.” Anna slid onto the machine behind Slanski and put her arms around his waist. Vladimir said, “Right, start her up. The kick-starter’s on your right. That’s the metal arm that swivels out.”

  Slanski found the kick-starter, flicked it out, gave it a blow with
his foot, and the machine started. A steady, reassuring throbbing filled the storeroom.

  Vladimir smiled. “See? She still starts first time. Well, what do you think?”

  “Considering we don’t have many options, it’s worth a try.”

  • • •

  Vladimir poured them each another vodka as they sat in the kitchen again and spread out the map. “Not bad for a first-timer. You did well.”

  Slanski had ridden around the yard for half an hour to get the feel of the machine. Difficult at first, but with Vladimir’s instructions he managed to keep the BMW reasonably well controlled, learning how to change gears, operate the various switches on the handlebars, and what to do if the engine flooded. A group of curious, scrawny children had come down from the tenement flats to beg Vladimir for a ride until he had shooed them away and wheeled the BMW back into the storeroom.

  Now Slanski looked at the man and said, “Tell us what you have in mind.”

  “The KGB and militia are probably going to be checking the railway and bus stations, the airport, and maybe even doing spot checks on the Metro.” He pointed to the map, a web of roads leading out of Leningrad to all points on the compass. “They may even set up roadblocks on all the main roads out of the city if they haven’t already found that car you abandoned. And when they do find it they’ll definitely get to work trying to find you. It’s well over four hundred miles to Moscow. Using the motorcycle you should be able to avoid the main roads out of Leningrad. But the one road they probably won’t be checking is the road back to Tallinn.”