The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  The skull-faced man leaned back in his chair, and placed a couple of long, slender fingers to his lips. ‘I don’t understand.’

  I shrugged. ‘I would rather you did it than I do it myself. I don’t intend to take up anyone’s rations. It’s my fault all this has happened, so let’s get it over with quickly. A bullet to the back of the head, please.’

  He took this in, and then leaned over the desk again.

  ‘What madness is this?’ he whispered. ‘I have treated both of you remarkably well, Mister Dark. I arranged for your wounds to be fixed, and I even let you rest for a short time. I could have made life much worse for you, you know. You were caught crossing our border. And this is how you repay my kindness, by talking about rations like a crazy man? Yes, I will certainly have you shot if you don’t start explaining yourself.’

  I stared at him, and placed my hand against my cheek. There were stitches in it, brand new. I’d forgotten about cutting myself against the underside of the fence. There was something wrong with him. Not just with his words, but the whole manner in which he had said them: despite his demonic appearance, there was culture there, sophistication, altogether different from Sasha and the other thugs I’d encountered so far. His English was good, but his accent was peculiar.

  Yes. The realization hit me. He wasn’t a Russian at all, but a Finn. We’d reached Finland. We must have somehow made it across the line before the missiles had landed. That explained his comment about catching us crossing his border – in part, anyway. But what on earth did any of this matter now?

  ‘When was the first strike?’ I asked him. ‘And how secure is this bunker?’

  He pushed his chair back and stood, nostrils flared, and I wondered if he was about to hit me. And then something dawned on him, and he sat down again.

  ‘Why did you try to cross the border?’ he said.

  I stared at him blankly. ‘Do you really not know?’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s a man called Proshin of military intelligence in Moscow. I received a signal from him a few hours ago: he asked that we step up the vigilance on our side of the border in case two British agents matching your descriptions tried to make it across. This was a highly unusual request, but it was also from an unusually senior source, so I listened. Especially because Proshin claimed that it was vital to the security of both of our countries that you be stopped at once.

  ‘As a result, I immediately sent out your descriptions to my men and told them to keep watch for you. Shortly after doing so, you did try to cross our border, and we discovered you. Proshin has been informed of this, and I have granted permission for him and a small group of his men to cross our border to apprehend and interrogate you here, before they take you back to the Soviet Union. He asked me to keep you under armed guard until he arrives, which should be within the next’ – he looked at his wristwatch – ‘ten minutes or so. But I would like some answers from you before he gets here, because you have illegally crossed my border. So perhaps you can tell me why you did that, and indeed why you fled from Moscow in the first place?’

  I looked at him, trying to take in all the new information and weigh it against the possible. He must be bluffing. I had seen the cloud redden above me, expanding – or had I somehow imagined it? I looked over at Sarah, but she seemed as confused as I was.

  ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that there hasn’t been an attack yet?’ I said.

  He pressed his hands together, his forefingers sticking out like a gun and resting under his chin.

  ‘What sort of attack?’

  ‘Nuclear, of course!’

  He shook his head. ‘Are you trying to tell me that there has been one?’

  ‘Have you looked outside lately?’

  He clenched his jaw, and the hollows in his cheeks deepened further. ‘I’m losing patience rapidly, Mister Dark. Yes, I have looked outside lately. I arrived here only a few minutes ago. I would advise that you explain yourself to me, and that you do so quickly. As I say, Proshin and his men will be here very soon. But I’m perfectly willing to tell them that, unfortunately, you were foolish enough to try to escape from confinement, and that as a result I had no alternative but to shoot both of you.’

  ‘If there hasn’t been an attack, what the hell are we doing in a nuclear bunker?’

  ‘We’re not. This place wasn’t built to withstand a nuclear attack. We’re in Miehikkälä, and this bunker is part of the Salpa defence line, built during the last war to protect us from the Russians. I had you brought here because I was flying directly from Åbo and there is a small area nearby in which a helicopter can land, and because I felt confident you wouldn’t be likely to be able to escape from this place.’

  ‘But why were your men wearing gas masks?’ asked Sarah. ‘They had them on when they found me, and…’ She trailed off. ‘They had gas masks.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Some people farther down this coast have been affected by strange injuries in the last couple of days – we think some sort of hazardous chemical has drifted into the waters here, and a lot of fishermen and sailors have been badly afflicted, with their skin peeling away. Some of my patrols have been helping move people who have been affected, and are trying to investigate the source. All of them are wearing gas masks as a temporary precaution until we find out exactly what the cause of this is and how dangerous and contagious it is.’

  My stomach had tightened, and I realized he wasn’t bluffing. ‘It’s mustard gas,’ I said. ‘A particularly powerful form of it. It has leaked from a wrecked German U-boat on the seabed just off the coast of Söderviken. If there hasn’t been an attack, you have to call Washington at once, or London.’ I stopped. Neither would work. There was no reason why anyone would believe the head of the Finnish border guard, especially as we were the source of the information. We still had to get to the U-boat ourselves, find the canisters and show them to the Russians.

  I tried another tack. ‘You have to help get us there,’ I said in Swedish, and he raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You speak Swedish?’

  He had said Åbo, rather than Turku, which was the Finnish name for it. ‘My mother was from Åbo,’ I said. ‘Look, the Russians are convinced this chemical accident is part of a plot by the West to start a nuclear war. People at their bases in Paldiski and Hiiumaa have been showing injuries like the ones you mention. As you know that the symptoms are being experienced at several points along this coastline, and as it must be clear to you that until a few seconds ago both of us were utterly convinced that a nuclear attack had taken place, surely you can see I’m telling the truth about this. But the danger hasn’t passed – a real nuclear strike could be ordered at any moment. You have to help us get to Åland, as soon as possible, so we can reach the U-boat and prove to the Russians that there has not been a chemical attack.’

  He paused for a moment, then stood again, and walked briskly to the door.

  ‘Thank you for the explanation, Mister Dark,’ he said. I made to protest, but he hushed me. ‘Please let me speak. You escaped from confinement in Moscow, and I have no doubt you will also try to escape from here. You are both clearly extremely resourceful and dangerous operatives.’ He grabbed hold of the door handle. ‘And I think,’ he said, ‘that you will succeed in escaping from here.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘You mean—’

  He placed a finger to his lips. ‘I lost several members of my family in the wars with the Russians. There is no, as I think you say in English, love lost between me and them. I don’t believe someone could easily have invented the story you have just told me. I can, on the other hand, imagine that the Russians would react just as they have done if your story were true. So I will take a chance. Proshin and his colleagues will be furious with me, I’m sure, but they won’t be able to prove I have done anything. In any case this country is not, I repeat not, a part of the Soviet Union. I would rather take the risk you are lying to me than that you are not, considering what you have said. But you
have, if I understand you, very little time left. So let’s not talk any more. It makes me uncomfortable – I’ve said more in this conversation than I have to my wife all this year. There is a helicopter upstairs. Shall we go?’

  I looked at him, dumbfounded, and nodded. He smiled again, the most wonderful smile, and then opened the door.

  *

  Standing in the flattened grass outside the bunker was an Agusta Bell helicopter with orange and green livery. As we approached it, I turned to the Finn.

  ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  He pulled off his coat and handed it to one of the sentries.

  ‘General Jesper Raaitikainen.’ He shouted at the pilot to come down from the cockpit, and then started to climb up himself. I looked on with alarm.

  ‘What are you doing? We can fly this.’ I pointed at Sarah. ‘You have to stay here and meet Proshin, surely.’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. I’m not sticking around for that bastard. Captain!’ The pilot turned, and Raaitikainen spoke to him in rapid-fire Finnish. The pilot saluted smartly, then headed back to the entrance of the bunker. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Raaitikainen, smiling. ‘My men will tell Proshin you kidnapped me with a pistol, and there was nothing they could do about it.’

  ‘I would rather we went alone,’ I said.

  He ignored me, and clambered into the cockpit. ‘Mister Dark, you’re lucky you’re going anywhere at all. I might also point out that you have no idea where we are, or how to get to Söderviken. But I do.’ He looked down at us, and his face was again as stern as that underworld god I’d initially taken him for. ‘I advise you to climb in here with me now – unless you wish to wait here for Proshin after all?’

  Sarah looked at me, and I realized we had no choice. I helped her up, then climbed up myself, considering what his coming along might mean. He was right that we didn’t know how to get to Söderviken, but what would happen once we got there? We needed to find a way to convince the Russians that the leak was an accident rather than an attack: taking along a general from a Western ally wouldn’t help us do that, and they might believe it was another deception operation as a result. But it was better than no chance at all.

  As Raaitikainen was busy checking the controls, one of the sentries began running towards us and shouted something up to him in Finnish. He listened, then turned to me and Sarah.

  ‘The Russians have been sighted on the track leading here. Let’s go!’

  Raaitikainen shouted at his man on the ground, who saluted and stood back, and as he went through the checks and put the engine into warm-up we started to strap ourselves in.

  XV

  The world far below us was peaceful and still. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I dimly made out a landscape of ice and water, and at one point even thought I saw, clinging to the rocks of one of the small islands, a cluster of those curious miniature pines I’d seen in 1945. No doubt it was partly because I’d recently believed that nuclear Armageddon had already struck, but the serenity of it seemed almost unbearable.

  If Brezhnev launched a strike, the Americans would retaliate with their Polaris missiles. The British plan was to target forty-eight Soviet cities, and the Americans would no doubt do the same. Leningrad, Paldiski and others were on that list, and while the blast wouldn’t reach here, the fallout certainly would. I wondered if the B-52s were still in the air, circling as they waited for their instructions, and if so what the men in those cockpits were thinking as they looked down.

  ‘You don’t happen to have any diving equipment on board, do you?’ I shouted over the noise of the engines.

  ‘No!’ Raaitikainen replied. ‘But one of the coastguard stations in Åland will.’ He caught my look and clapped me on the back. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find a way through this. We’re nearly there now. Does it look like the world is about to end?’

  I shook my head and began to reply, when the engine gave a shrill whine and we began to tilt.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sarah called out.

  ‘An engine?’ I said, but realized almost at once that it wasn’t that, but a shot.

  I craned my neck, and saw the lights of a helicopter directly behind us. It looked like an Mi-8T, and it was firing its two PK machine guns directly at us.

  ‘Oh, God,’ moaned Sarah, rocking back into her seat. Raaitikainen was grappling with the stick, sweat pouring from his face, and I knew that we must have been hit somewhere. I unstrapped myself to help him take control, but we suddenly lurched again and I was thrown against the side of my seat, hitting my jaw and cutting open my cheek wound.

  Dazed by the pain and dizzy from the motion, I tried to bring myself to a standing position, but I could see it was a losing battle. Raaitikainen had also been thrown, and was no longer holding the stick, and Sarah was now slumped back, her mouth in a rictus – we were in freefall. I crawled along the floor of the cockpit towards Raaitikainen’s seat, but the sound of the engines suddenly rose in pitch and then there was an enormous crunching. I guessed that the rotors had hit something. I looked out of one of the perspex panels and saw a greyish-brown block of something, and then realized it was ice, and that we were underwater. I shouted across at Raaitikainen but he didn’t reply. When I looked up, I saw why: the upper part of his head was covered in blood, and his eyes had rolled upwards. I fought my way towards Sarah and unfastened her seat belt. We were kicking at the forward section doors when the water started coming in.

  *

  Panicking, I gave another kick to the door, and this time it was enough to get it open. Freezing water gushed through in a torrent, nearly drowning me and pushing me back, but I kicked my legs harder until I was through the gap and out into the water. I couldn’t see Sarah and tried to shout out to her, but it was useless.

  The gush of water in the helicopter had shocked me, but now it was chilling me through to my bones, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to last long in it. My heart was seizing, and my core temperature had plummeted within the last few seconds. As I tried to swim to the surface, my body was suddenly wracked with a tremor. I swam desperately towards the chunks of ice, found one and grabbed hold of it, but then more tremors broke through me, and I focused all my mental energy on trying to stop them. But they kept coming, sharper and sharper. Here came another one. Clench, tighten, stop it, shut it down. I was losing control. Soon they would take me over completely. The effort was getting to me, and I realized my cognitive faculties were being affected. If this continued, my body would shut down, and death would soon follow.

  This realization strengthened my mind and I kicked upwards with more force. Finally, I saw the surface of the water coming to meet me. I kicked and kicked again, until I reached the surface and was breathing, my teeth chattering as I caught my breath and took in great lungfuls of air.

  We had crashed on the coastline of one of the islands, with the cockpit submerged in the water and the rest of the helicopter jutting out of it. I looked around for Sarah and saw her a few feet away, her head out of the water but her arms flailing. I looked up and immediately spotted the Russians above us. They were quite a long way up but had already begun descending, and they had seen us, too: machine-gun fire immediately split the water, and men were starting to climb out of the cockpit and down ropes.

  With my arms still quaking, I grabbed hold of part of the skids and hoisted myself up onto the shoreline. Then I began making my way around the rocks to get closer to Sarah.

  ‘Grab hold of me!’ I shouted at her, stretching out my arm. I caught hold of her hand and pulled as hard as I could, hauling her onto the rocks.

  She gasped and then coughed up water. Her eyes started to close.

  ‘Don’t give up now,’ I whispered. ‘Please don’t give up now.’

  Perhaps she heard me, because she placed the palms of her hands against the rocks and lifted herself to her knees.

  I helped her to her feet and pointed to a line of woods behind us.

  ‘Can you run?’ I said.

&
nbsp; She nodded dully, and we started making our way towards the woods. There were patches of snow and black ice, but adrenalin and the survival instinct had kicked in and we somehow managed to make our way across them. We had to get to cover. I couldn’t have come this far to fail.

  We reached the top of a slope and I looked out at a large field, lit by the moon. There were trees all around the perimeter, but the field itself was completely barren – just grass, broken up with patches of snow and ice. No cover. Behind us, the sound of the rotors was almost deafening. I resisted the urge to look, but clearly we couldn’t go back down that way. Should we skirt the edge of the field and try to get around to the other side? That would be too obvious, and too time-consuming.

  We had to find people, and warmth. There was a barn with white window frames at the far end of the field and, closer, an utedass – an outhouse. I turned to point it out to Sarah, but she wasn’t there. I looked frantically back at where we had just come from, but she had disappeared. She must have fallen, and I couldn’t see her in the snow over a ridge. I began to run back towards the water when a burst of machine-gun fire broke through the trees, cracking in my ears and making me drop to the ground instinctively.

  Fuck.

  I started running towards the utedass.

  I had misjudged the situation horribly. Sarah was in worse shape than I had realized, and the Russians were much closer than I’d thought – gunfire clattered behind me before I was even halfway across the stretch, and the helicopter was now coming down to land in the field. I kept running, my arms starting to flail and my legs feeling like they might give way, heading for the door of the outhouse and praying it wouldn’t be the last thing I saw before the bullets hit me in the back. I reached the door and opened it, then slammed it behind me.

  It was pitch dark and, unsurprisingly, smelled foul. The gunfire had stopped for a moment, and I wondered if somehow I had fooled them and they’d lost sight of me. But then I heard a voice, and recognized it at once.