Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  He’d done as much as he could. Cheryl was going to have to dream up some other way of finding out what JEG Chemicals was up to—if indeed the company was up to anything.

  He followed Dr. Hilti, erect and ramrod straight, back to the chemist’s office on the ground floor, and with Burt Merrik chattering in his ear nearly didn’t see the side corridor leading to a pair of steel doors with portholes in them and a sign above reading marine experimental chamber.

  Chase halted. Still talking, Merrik carried on a few paces. Chase started off down the corridor before Merrik realized what was happening.

  “Say, this looks interesting, Burt!” Chase exclaimed. “This would impress my people no end.”

  “Dr. Benson!” Dr. Hilti called out sharply.

  A smaller red-lettered sign said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Chase’s breath quickened a little. Was this it?

  “Not in there, I’m sorry,” said Dr. Hilti stiffly. “We’re conducting a series of tests.”

  Chase looked at Merrik rather impatiently, then shrugged with sad resignation. Merrik in turn scowled at Dr. Hilti. “You do realize how important this could be to us? It would be unfortunate if Dr. Benson felt unable to recommend us because he was denied the opportunity of seeing all our research facilities.”

  Chase smiled inwardly. Well, well. There was a streak of defiance lurking inside that mild exterior after all.

  Dr. Hilti thrust his hands into the pockets of his white coat. His bow tie jerked from the motion of his Adam’s apple and he said, “If it’s that important”—he laid emphasis on this, as if warning Merrik that it better had be or else—“I don’t suppose a few minutes will do any harm.”

  Chase grinned in a harmless sort of way and followed Burt Merrik through the steel doors, the tall gaunt-faced chemist following behind.

  It was like entering a shimmering green undersea cave.

  Enormous glass-sided tanks were ranged on either side of a central aisle. The only illumination, a gently shifting green light, came from the tanks themselves. A layman might have mistaken it for an aquarium. The bottoms of the tanks were faithful replicas of different seabeds, some with sand and silt, some with small rocks and pebbles, some with fantastic coral architecture, and everywhere a profusion of plant life, their fronds rippling rhythmically to an unseen current.

  Exactly like an aquarium, Chase thought. Except that there were no fish, no marine creatures of any description.

  Down at the far end of the chamber a circular metal staircase led up to a railed gantry. Chase thought he detected movement up there, but in the shifting green patterns it was hard to tell and he was probably mistaken. He concentrated on his other senses, primarily smell: Most herbicides had a distinctive odor that he would have known instantly. He inhaled deeply, trying not to sniff.

  “Water purification and treatment of effluents,” explained Dr. Hilti, close by his side as they moved along the aisle. “New methods of water pollution control.”

  If it was a lie it was smoothly and plausibly done. So far Chase had no cause to doubt he was telling the truth. Aside, that is, from the words Authorized Personnel Only. Because why forbid entry to these innocuous tanks containing seawater, sand, rocks, and plants? Maybe they were afraid of industrial espionage. It was a pretty large “maybe.”

  He couldn’t smell herbicides, but something stank.

  “I’m more than ever confident I can put in a strong recommendation to my head of department,” he said, nodding approvingly at Burt Merrik, who wore a happy green smile.

  “And who’s that?” Dr. Hilti inquired.

  “Dr. Detrick,” Chase said without thinking, and immediately cursed himself for being such a fool. Why couldn’t he have invented a name— any damn name?

  But Merrik was obviously overjoyed. “I sincerely hope we can help you with this project, Dr. Benson. We haven’t had dealings with Scripps before, and I’m being totally frank when I say we welcome this opportunity. We’re very grateful, believe me.”

  They came to the bottom of the metal staircase and turned back. As they did so somebody entered through the main door at the end of the aisle. Chase tried not to stare at the greenish light reflecting off the bald head and quickly looked away as if something in one of the tanks had caught his interest.

  That had torn the whole fucking thing to shreds. Banting—large as life and twice as ugly. He was bound to be recognized. It had been eight years since last they’d met, but of course Banting would know him in an instant.

  Chase stooped and bent close to the glass wall of the tank. He could hear Banting’s footsteps, muffled in the confined space between the tanks. He tensed, his neck muscles aching, as the footsteps came right up, and over his shoulder heard Dr. Hilti mutter, “Good morning, Professor.” Was he going to introduce Chase as a potential customer? By the way, Professor Banting, I’d like you to meet ...

  Chase held his breath. There was only the grunt of a monosyllabic reply, and the footsteps kept right on going, and a moment later he heard them on the metal treads, a hollow shuffling rattle.

  Breathing out, Chase straightened up and moved unhurriedly to the double doors. That could have been very nasty, he thought, following Merrik into the corridor. The air seemed cool, almost cold, against his face, which he hoped wasn’t perspiring too heavily.

  He shuddered inwardly and had to summon up his concentration as Merrik asked him something. Lunch? No, thanks all the same. He had to be getting back. Yes, pressure of work, and so on. But thanks, some other time.

  No lunch today, not here, with the chance that Ivor Banting might be at the next table. He wasn’t going to tempt fate twice. He thanked Burt Merrik and Dr. Hilti and went.

  Arms braced against the gantry rail, his hatchet face bathed in shimmering green light from the tanks below, Lloyd Madden said in a low dangerous voice:

  “Of course I’m sure. I met him at Hailey Bay. He was one of your marine biologists. The point, Ivor, is, What is he doing here and what does he want? Can you tell me? Can you answer that?”

  The train left Moscow at four o’clock on a rainy afternoon and arrived in Riga at eleven-fifteen the following morning, having been delayed at Ludza on the Latvian border for almost three hours. No one had bothered to explain why, and for Boris and Nina it was the one bad moment of the journey. Boris had carefully rehearsed the reason why they were traveling to the Baltic port and had made sure their papers were in order, though the explanation lacked plausibility even to his own ears. The Gulf of Riga was not noted as a vacation spot—certainly not a kurort, or health spa, so popular with Russian vacationers—and the capital itself was hardly a tourist attraction, with its shipping and textiles and telecommunications industries.

  Thankfully the stop at the border hadn’t been to check papers. At least they assumed so, because they hadn’t seen any police, and the guards on the train didn’t interrupt their naps, as if the delay were a routine occurrence.

  Boris sat gripping his wife’s hand and staring out at the ethereal dawn landscape, which consisted of trees in endlessly regimented rows marching down the hillside. In a way he was glad they hadn’t been able to get a sleeper (reserved for party officials and petty bureaucrats) because it meant they could stay close together instead of being in separate bunks. At long last the train moved on; they breathed easily again, and had a nip of brandy from Boris’s flask to celebrate and take the chill from their bones.

  In Riga they took a taxi to a small boardinghouse overlooking the river Dvina where a room had been booked for them by somebody in the underground organization; they were to remain here until contacted. Boris had no idea whether they would have to wait hours or days, no clue as to what was to happen next or where they would be sent. The extent of his knowledge was confined to this shabby cheerless house in a city he had never visited before and where he didn’t know a solitary soul.

  He had taken everything on trust, as he had to, praying that these people knew what they were doing and wouldn’t let them down. It
was only now he realized what a blind, foolhardy gamble it all was: entrusting their lives, his and Nina’s, to an organization he knew nothing about. Actually not even an organization but just one person—Andrei Dunayev, a student of his from the old university days who years ago had happened to mention that he knew of ways to get dissidents out of the country. Boris had lost touch with his ex-student and then quite by chance had run across him in, of all places, the furnishings department of GUM, Moscow’s mammoth department store. They had chatted for a while and Boris had learned that Dunayev was working as a cleaner on the railways.

  “What, with your qualifications?” Boris had said, amazed. Dunayev had been one of his best students and had graduated with honors.

  “I ran afoul of the nachalstvo,” the young man confessed, referring to the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats who wielded power in the state; displease them and you soon found yourself humping bricks on a building site or cleaning railway carriages, degree or no degree. “A few friends and myself printed and circulated a magazine and it didn’t go down too well. You know how it is.”

  Boris knew, though not from personal experience, how it was. He felt sorry for young Dunayev, thinking it a sad waste of a keen intelligence.

  After that they kept in touch, meeting occasionally for a drink in the evenings, and it struck Boris that for someone in a badly paid job Dunayev always seemed to have plenty of money to spend. The reason became clear when Boris once complained of not being able to buy a decent pair of shoes, and the next time they met Dunayev showed up with a pair of genuine English tan brogues, spanking new. He was na levo, he explained—literally “on the left”—which meant that he dealt unofficially in all kinds of goods and services, from prime cuts of meat to the best seats at the Bolshoi. The system had rejected him and therefore he was out to beat the system—on his terms.

  When Boris made the decision to defect, it was naturally to Andrei Dunayev that he turned for help. It had been very simple. A phone call, a meeting in the park, and everything, according to Dunayev, would be arranged. Boris and his wife were to get their hands on as much money as they could, in cash, pack two suitcases (as if they were indeed going on a short vacation), and be ready at twenty-four hours notice to leave.

  The word came. They were to take the overnight train to Riga where accommodations had been booked for them. They were to travel under their own name until out of the country. False papers would be supplied. Of course he trusted Dunayev, Boris kept telling himself, yet now that they were here, had taken that crucial and dangerous first step, he was beginning to have qualms.

  After a light lunch of chicken and salad he and Nina walked arm in arm along the embankment that bordered the river. The port itself was some three miles away. They could see the tangle of cranes and the funnels of ships to the west. Hereabouts the river traffic was mainly strings of coal barges, tugs, and other small craft. Boris didn’t want to be away too long in case someone tried to make contact, so after ten minutes they turned and strolled back. He couldn’t help glancing nervously at every car that passed, wondering if they were being followed, observed, reported. Even the landlady made him nervous. Her eyes had bored right through him as she took his papers, noted down the details, and handed them back with a hard gray stare.

  “Where will it be?” Nina asked, holding tightly on to his arm. “Sweden? Finland?”

  Towering beside her, hunched inside his overcoat, Boris shook his head morosely. “I wish I knew. Wherever they send us, it won’t be easy. We both know the risk.”

  She was silent for a while. “Are we doing the right thing, Boris? There’s still time to go back before we’re missed.”

  “We can’t go back. I must get to America.”

  “But why—why you?” she cried suddenly, clutching his arm, and Boris looked around fearfully. Nina bent her head and lowered her voice, even though there was no one else on the wide paved embankment. “There must be others who know what’s happening. Let them do something!”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps there are. But somebody has to take the responsibility. I know what’s happening and I feel responsible. How could I just sit back and do nothing?”

  “But what can the Americans do?”

  Boris stared sullenly across the river, sparkling in the weak afternoon sunshine. She had pierced to the heart of his dilemma. He recalled how Theo had been balked in his attempt to convince his own people that something had to be done before the environment took its revenge for the damage inflicted upon it by modern industrial man. Theo had been ignored, castigated, reviled—so what chance had he? All governments were tarred with the same brush. Capitalist or Communist, it didn’t make any difference. Don’t upset the equilibrium. At all costs maintain the status quo. Ignore unpalatable facts and they’ll go away.

  These facts wouldn’t go away, and still he couldn’t answer her. They waited the rest of the afternoon and that evening for contact to be made, staying in their poky room on the second floor, fearful that the landlady might suspect something—mightn’t she begin to wonder what on earth they were doing here, this elderly respectable couple who were clearly ill at ease in such impoverished surroundings?

  Nobody called to see them and the few times the phone rang in the dark brown-varnished hallway the calls weren’t for them.

  At breakfast the next morning, sitting around the large communal dining table with the other three guests—two merchant seamen and an engineer from Leningrad—Boris heard a car draw up outside and his heart was in his mouth when he saw that it was a dark green Zhiguli, the model used by low-ranking KGB officers. There was nothing they could do; useless to run (run where?) and nowhere to hide.

  Feigning indifference lest one of the people at the table was a police informer—there were stukachi, squealers, everywhere—Boris forced himself to swallow the last of the black bread and washed it down with hot strong tea.

  Nina was looking down at her plate (did she too know about the car?), and the sight of her neat gray head, the hair parted in the middle and held in place by two combs, filled him with an ache of tenderness and affection.

  It seemed his worst fears were coming true when the landlady entered and curtly informed him that there was someone to see him. Well, he thought, resigned, nothing else for it but to bluff his way through as best he could. Stick to the prearranged story that he and his wife had come to Riga (Riga, for God’s sake!) for a short break. But even as this was going through his mind Boris knew that it would never be believed. It never even occurred to him to wonder how the KGB had tracked them down: He just assumed, as he walked into the hallway, that they would know precisely where to find him, night or day. His fatalism was total.

  The man was wearing a brown belted trench coat, standing with his back to Boris, studying a faded sepia photograph of a family group. Through the frosted vestibule door Boris saw the blurred silhouette of a lurking figure; the man’s colleague, no doubt.

  The man in the trench coat turned casually to reveal a thin young face and pale deep-set eyes. He didn’t look at Boris, but beyond his right shoulder, and said, “Is this the one?”

  “That’s the one.” The landlady was standing in the doorway with her arms folded. She jerked her head at Boris. “He checked in with his wife yesterday about noon. I thought there was something a bit funny about them. Call themselves Stanovnik.” She used the name like an insult, smiling sardonically as if at some private joke.

  “What is this? What’s going on?” Boris asked, trying a show of bafflement shading into righteous indignation. “My name is Stanovnik. I work for the Hydro-Meteorological Service in Moscow.”

  The thin-faced young man gave a faint mocking smile. He was unshaven, Boris noticed, in fact rather unkempt generally. The KGB was becoming more and more slovenly in appearance these days.

  “We already know that, Professor.” He motioned to the woman to close the door to the dining room and went on in a softer tone, “We also know why you’re here. Did you really thi
nk it would be so easy?”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Are you the police? I have a right to know what you want with me.” His bones felt like water. Why in God’s name had he dragged Nina into this? Why?

  “It’s pointless, Professor, keeping up this pretense.” The young man shrugged very slightly. “Dunayev told us everything. You should choose your friends more carefully.”

  Boris stared at him for a full five seconds. His shoulders sagged. The strain was etched on his face. He swung around to confront the landlady but was unable to speak; his expression was eloquent enough.

  “His wife’s in there,” the landlady said with a backward nod. Boris’s hatred had left her quite indifferent.

  “You’ve done well,” the man in the trench coat said. “You will be rewarded.”

  “I seek no reward,” said the landlady snidely. “I only wish to serve the state as best I can.”

  “Damn you!” Boris ground out, his voice hoarse and shaking. “I hope you rot in hell”—raising his fist yet not knowing himself whether he really intended to stike her.

  The man stepped forward and grabbed his arm. “You’re in enough trouble as it is, Professor. Don’t make it any worse for you and your wife. Are your things packed?” Boris nodded his head at the worn carpet and the man said, “Go and fetch them. Now. Hurry.”

  When he returned with the two suitcases, breathing heavily, Nina was in the hallway. She didn’t utter a word as he helped her into her coat and then put his arms around her.

  “No time for that,” the man snapped, opening the vestibule door and beckoning his colleague. He tapped one of the suitcases with his shoe. “In the car.” He nodded brusquely to the landlady as they all went out, and she came to the front door and stood watching, her face hard, devoid of expression.