Special Dynamic

by Special Dynamic (retail) (epub)

  ‘Sophie. If they did come, we’d be stuck here, we’d fight it out. So if you see them coming — well, let us know, then take off. Don’t say goodbye, just go like the wind.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘I’d suggest Route 93 where it runs up from the frontier to Kauto. Shortest way would be roughly along the line of the frontier. Then stop a car or something, hitch a ride into town and start raising the alarm.’

  ‘That would be a very long trek. As much as — two days, good days?’

  ‘Better than trying a shorter trip and walking into their arms.’

  ‘All right.’ She nodded. ‘But it won’t happen.’

  ‘I know. Just so we know. In case.’

  What they were both saying, really, was, Please God may it not happen.

  ‘You said you would fight it out?’

  ‘We’re reasonably well armed now, after all. And once they were close, we obviously couldn’t move fast enough to make it worth running for it.’

  He heard Sutherland mutter, ‘Just because I’m fucked up, to say the rest of you have to stick around and get killed — Christ Almighty—’

  ‘Nobody said anything about getting killed, Carl… But look, we don’t want you getting frostbite either. Sit up, swing your arms, move as much as you can, move all your muscles — even if it makes the leg hurt — and rub it, it’s better than bloody well losing it—’

  ‘I don’t have to make it hurt, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sure… Look, take a couple more of Gus’s pills. But do what I said, please… Once we’re inside we’ll make you more comfortable, but—’

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Stripping off.’ He’d pulled a lightweight waterproof suit out of his bergen. ‘I’m going to work in this. You have one, Gus, don’t you? Digging’s hard work, so you sweat, your clothes’d soak through and if you can’t get ’em dry quickly they’d freeze. So it’s best to strip, dry yourself afterwards and dress again — clothes in the rucksack meanwhile…’

  *

  It was dark long before they finished, but it would have been dark inside anyway without candlelight. He and Gus manoeuvred Sutherland in, pulling him in through the tunnel in his sleeping-bag then getting him up on to one of the platforms, on a mat, and opening the bag so Ollie could splint the injured leg in a cage made of the brushwood from the stretcher, parcelling it with nylon rope. It was as close as you’d get to a plaster cast. Meanwhile Sophie had the meal heating up, a recipe devised by Sutherland — ‘Reindeer Chowder’ — consisting of sweetcorn with lumps of reindeer meat in it.

  Ollie explained some basic rules of snow-hole living. Keeping the vent open in the roof, and a candle burning, and not to have water simmering or boiling for longer than necessary — because of condensation making clothes damp. Drying all clothing and boots, mainly inside sleeping-bags from body-heat. Keeping the shovels where they could be got at quickly in case of a cave-in. A line running through the tunnel, and a marker outside in case when you’d gone out there at night you couldn’t find your way back.

  Ordinarily you’d have a candle watch inside and also a sentry outside, but he couldn’t imagine there was any prospect of enemies showing up during the dark hours. The danger period would start with daylight — tomorrow, the day after, day after that. They wouldn‘t give up, he thought, they’d surely be as desperate to stop the information getting out as he was to see it did get out.

  ‘About ready, this chowder.’ She looked round at Sutherland. ‘Shall I put it in mugs, d’you think, to eat with spoons?’

  ‘How else?’ The professor winced, shifting his position. ‘No connoisseur would dream of having it served any other way.’

  He was doing his best. But he was obviously in pain, despite the pills he’d taken. Ollie’s respect for him had grown since the accident. He hoped he’d done the right thing for that leg, strapping it up as he had… He put the submachine gun down on the snow-platform beside him; he’d dismantled and cleaned it and had now re-assembled it, having in the process re-familiarised himself with its rotary-bolt, gas-operated action. Stenberg asked him, ‘What’s that thing’s rate of fire?’

  ‘Around a thousand rounds a minute. But it’s adjustable.’

  ‘Did you ever handle one before?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  He waited, expecting to hear when, where and how, but soon realised there was no explanation coming. Sutherland broke the silence.

  ‘Will you leave the shotgun here, with us? So we’d have that as well as Gus’s pistol.

  Stenberg glanced at Ollie, frowning… ‘Leave?’

  Ollie nodded. ‘You’re not just a pretty face, Carl, are you?’

  ‘Well.’ Sutherland accepted his mug of chowder from Sophie. ‘Thanks.’ He looked at Gus. ‘What else can he do? Think about it, old buddy. Someone has to take the word out — right? Well, he could go himself, alone, but he’d be disinclined to leave Sophie here. Alternatively he could send her, but on her own she’d be — well, vulnerable, wouldn’t she? In spite of those secret weapons she carries. And think of this, now — if something went awry — I mean either of them alone, if they got stopped — well, back here we wouldn’t know about it, we’d imagine the message was getting through and it would not be. And those guys out there won’t be inactive meanwhile, we could finish up with all our chances shot… My logic about right, Ollie?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘So they push off.’ Stenberg folded his hands round the mug which Sophie had passed to him. He looked at Ollie. ‘You and Sophie, while we two hold the fort, as it were.’

  ‘While you sit tight, keep your heads down and wait for me to get back here. They’ll be out there hunting around for us, you can bet on it, you will have to lie very low indeed… OK, so there’s an alternative, if Sophie went solo and at the same time I took you two out. The trouble with that is it’d be slow going, with Carl lamed, and I think we’ll have a better chance of making it when the heat’s worn off a bit. And meanwhile the absolutely vital thing is to get the message out, and I think this is the best way to do it. But if anyone has any better ideas, let’s hear them.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Sutherland shook his head. ‘As I just said, there’s no other way to do it that’s as sure. You two good skiers in tandem, that’s the answer, has to be. And we’ll be snug enough here — plenty to eat, well hidden — long as we do keep out of sight… Will you leave us the stove?’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘Well, we’d manage, I guess—’

  ‘Of course we’ll leave it.’ He told Sophie, ‘We’ll travel as light as we possibly can. And I won’t go the full distance with you, only as far as Route 93, see you safe aboard some kind of transport, then straight back here to evacuate these two. You’ll have your tapes, the yoik and your own translations, and you can telephone your people and mine from Kautokeino.’

  ‘Notify our guys too, Sophie?’

  ‘Of course.’ She nodded, sitting down to start eating. ‘In any case my government would be very quick to tell all NATO countries.’

  ‘But your department wasn’t exactly on the ball, you said, when you called them from Karasjok.’

  She shook her head. ‘That is not whom I would call in this connection.’

  Stenberg cocked an eyebrow. ‘Defence Ministry?’

  She shrugged, looking as if she didn’t much like this line of interrogation. Ollie asked her, ‘Might one assume that your own department wasn’t primarily instrumental in giving us the pleasure of your company on this joy-ride?’

  Sutherland chuckled. Sophie said, rather primly, ‘If it was a Sami problem, it would concern those who are responsible for Sami affairs. Obviously. But since it is not — well, you must be familiar with the Biblical quotation “Render unto Caesar”?’

  Stenberg looked impressed. ‘How’s that for double talk?’

  ‘Your English, Sophie,’ Ollie told her, ‘has come on wonderfully in the last week.’

&nb
sp; Sutherland had been waiting with another question. ‘Sophie. You said your government would be very quick to tell their allies, then “whom I would call” — as if some doubt existed?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps my English is not so good, I should have said will.’ She shut her eyes: in what Ollie guessed might be a quick burst-transmission of a prayer. Then her eyes were open, wide, and on him… ‘We will make it — won’t we, Ollie?’

  ‘Yes.’ He assured her, ‘We will. We have to. Absolutely have to, we’ll make sure of it.’ He’d have liked to have taken her in his arms, hugged her, made her believe it. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘But if you’ve finished eating, if I were you I’d climb up on that nice bouncy bed we made for you.’

  ‘I never heard a block of snow called a bed before.’

  ‘You’ll find it’s slightly warmer up there. Because warmed air rises. Best of all, get up there and into your sleeping-bag.’

  ‘So why don’t you practise what you preach?’

  ‘Because as soon as I finish this repast I want to take a look outside.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have all the answers?’

  ‘Seems to, Sophie.’ Sutherland nodded. ‘And I can tell you one thing, I’m damn glad we had him along.’ He looked at Ollie. ‘But while you’re at it you might answer this. If it doesn’t embarrass anyone. How am I going to — hell, how shall I put it — how do I set about answering nature’s calls?’

  Stenberg rolled his eyes. ‘Diaper lessons now.’

  ‘Usual way, I’d imagine.’ Ollie suggested, ‘Crawl out — helped by this pal of yours — and dig a shovel into the snow to lean on. Or your ski-poles, but you’ll need to have a shovel with you anyway. Before you go outside, have Gus check it’s all clear out there. And don’t go farther than you have to, making tracks… On this subject, incidentally, it’s very important that neither of you should leave any — er — personal waste around, where it could be seen. Including teabags, anything at all. Dig a hole, Carl — deep. When you’ve filled it in, take a shovelful of snow and throw it so it falls — it looks natural then, but not when it’s raked over.’ He paused. ‘I want to tell you, for the record, I don’t like leaving you here. But you’re right, Carl, in the circumstances I’m sure it’s the best solution.’

  Stenberg asked him, ‘How long would you expect to be gone?’

  ‘Well, we’ll start early, when it’s still dark.’ He looked at Sophie. ‘I’d estimate the distance as about eighty k’s, if we can cover it more or less as the crow flies. Fifty k’s is about maximum as a day’s run for a good skier with a full pack — maybe a hundred pounds of gear, say. We’re both good enough, and we’ll travel light, as I said, so if we really push it I’d reckon to do it in about a day and a half. With a short night-stop in between, bivvied-up in some wood. But if we get away really early in the morning we’ll make the first day a long one, too. If that’s all right with you?’ She nodded, and he went on, ‘Second night I’ll be on my way back, so I’d be back here late on day three — with luck. But listen — (a) that‘ll be really pushing it, (b) the main reason for the two of us going together is we could run into trouble, they may have the whole border area staked out. If so, the plan will be for one of us to stay clear and sneak on through, and for my own preference that’d be Sophie. So then my return could be delayed somewhat.’

  Sutherland shook his head, muttered, ‘Jesus …’

  ‘I thought of one thing, Ollie.’ Sophie still hadn’t got up on her snow-bed. ‘We’ll be going along close to the frontier nearly all the way, won’t we. Well, I can show you where there is a tourist cabin like that one today. Statens fjellstue, in Norwegian, a State mountain hut. It’s near the border — more than half the distance, I suppose, but if we could get that far maybe we might make use of it?’

  He nodded. ‘Save bivvy-making, wouldn’t it… How about some chocolate now?‘

  Sutherland handed his mug to her. ‘That was great, Sophie.’ He lay back, put his hands behind his head. ‘Seems so damn strange, this. When you stop to think about it. I mean — sitting here feeding our faces, chewing the fat, when just hours ago we saw two guys killed? And more guys out there aiming to kill us now?’ He’d turned his head, staring at Ollie, finding it hard to express his feelings … ‘I have to convince myself this is me here, just sort of accepting all this stuff!’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Stenberg shrugged. ‘We mostly lead easy, comfortable lives, don’t we, we forget how tough life can be — I mean, until you get fire, flood, earthquake, air-crash, whatever. Then — well, it’s like if you throw a guy in the sea he starts swimming, right?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But—’ Sutherland stared around him. The snow-hole’s curved walls and ceiling were glazed now, condensation from the cooking had frozen into a glassy coating of ice which dazzlingly reflected the single candle’s light, a startlingly white brilliance from so small a source. Sutherland stared at Ollie again: ‘But you — well, Jesus…’ He wasn’t saying it — whatever it was that was baffling him, that he couldn’t grasp. The killing of the Russian, maybe… He muttered, looking away again, ‘You’ve been there before, I guess. Must have been…’ Then, after a few seconds’ silence, ‘Isak was a good-hearted little guy, you know?’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me.’

  ‘But he was, Gus. Didn’t I tell you how helpful he was to me, when I was here before? Really welcoming, nothing too much trouble — for a complete stranger, foreigner…’

  Sophie said, ‘That’s how they are, the Samis, ordinarily. Foreign visitors have said they can be more outgoing than the non-Sami Norwegians.’

  ‘Something surely changed that, with Isak.’

  ‘The business with his niece, Gus. They had him over a barrel, didn’t they.’

  ‘But he must have been involved a long time before that.’ Stenberg broke off some chocolate and handed the bar to Ollie. ‘He’d have made his blunder when he joined in this thing, long before we came on the scene. Then we show up and whoever’s calling the shots decides we have to be taken out, so they put the screws on him. That simple, isn’t it?’

  ‘On those lines, sure.’ Sutherland winced: both hands on his leg on the outside of the sleeping-bag, shifting it… ‘What beats me is why the Soviets should’ve brought him or other Samis into it at all. If he hadn’t been involved, pressured or not, we’d be as ignorant now as we were a week ago. Why wouldn’t they have played their own hand, with no such contacts and therefore none of the attendant risks?’

  ‘I think this is in the yoik.’ Sophie pushed back her short, dark hair. ‘The last line of the second verse — Bearing in blood-red talons freedom for Sameätnam. Sameätnam in Lappish means Samiland, Ollie, Lappland. So it’s to be made to look like a Sami “freedom” movement.’

  Sutherland nodded. ‘Makes sense. They’d have used Isak and others like him as their front men. With those books he wrote, he’d be a natural.’

  When Ollie took his look outside, he found to his satisfaction that it had begun to snow again. If it kept up for a few hours, all today’s tracks might be covered. Nothing better could have happened, and he went back in to give them the good news. But he’d had another thought too while he’d been outside.

  ‘Gus — a little more exercise now. It won’t take long, just a little job out there, but we’d better strip off again.’

  Stenberg said, ‘Face the wall please, Sophie.’

  ‘Dum… What’s this now, Ollie?’

  ‘I’m going to build a wall. We’ve a mass of excavated snow lying around, and if we make it into a wall screening the entrance Carl and Gus can go out when they need to and still be in cover.’

  There was another dimension to it as well, which he explained to Gus while they were shaping the wall, piling the snow and compressing it. In pitch darkness, with snow swirling down, weighting the trees’ branches. Goggles were useless, constantly snowing-up, he’d pushed them up on his forehead. Ice forming on the outside of the suit, sweat
inside that would have turned into a sheathing of ice if you’d stopped work for half a minute… He explained — the wall would serve not only as a visual screen, but if they were attacked here it would be a defence too. He had the figures in his memory: to stop a rifle bullet required four metres of fresh snow, but only two if it was packed tight, and there was plenty here to make a barrier two metres thick, one and a half high. He told Gus, ‘Ice is better than snow, of course, one metre’s enough to stop any small-arms fire. Better still is ice-crete — ice with gravel mixed in it. You’re safe behind twelve inches of ice-crete.’

  ‘Where d’you get the statistics?’

  People asked silly questions, sometimes. He gave him a silly answer as he swung up another load of snow. ‘Learnt them at my mother’s knee.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Pounding with his shovel… ‘She a commando too?’

  ‘Pianist. At least, she was… I want to put a curve in it, Gus, sort of curve it around the entrance hole, OK?’

  *

  During his first two-hour candle watch he sorted out rations for himself and Sophie to take with them. Only light stuff — biscuits, chocolate and raisins, and strips of the salted reindeer meat. Then he added two cans of baked beans: they could go in his own pack. Thermos flasks — to be filled with boiling-hot tea just before setting out — and teabags, sugar and milk powder. It might not be safe to make a fire, but if they made it to the tourist cabin there’d be a stove in it, she’d said.

  They’d be travelling about due west. Several hours’ trek to the border, then about forty kilometres through Norway before crossing back into Finland for another fifteen; back over the border again, and a few more hours’ yomp to the highway. It was the frontier’s zigzag course all along that stretch which made it necessary to pass to and fro across it while actually holding to a more or less straight line.

  As Sutherland had suggested, he was leaving the shotgun here. For their purposes it was really an ideal weapon. Ollie had told Carl, ‘All you need do is point it at the tunnel, and if anything except Gus shows in it, pull a trigger.’