Special Dynamic

by Special Dynamic (retail) (epub)

  He explained it to her briefly, and she laughed. He didn’t see anything funny. He asked her, ‘Five k’s to the fence, would you say?’

  ‘To the reingjerde?’ She was still panting. ‘I would guess three.’

  ‘Even better.’ There’d still be a lot of distance to cover, from there on. He looked around. Up here there wasn’t even a deer in sight now. ‘Let’s try to make up some time.‘

  *

  The fjellstue — mountain hut — was on the northeast shore of a lake, in a clearing with trees surrounding it, the trees being part of a big area of forest at that end of the lake. They stood blackly against a night-time whiteness of higher, snow-covered ground to the north and east, their branches shaken free of snow by a wind scouring down from that same direction. The light had gone. If Ollie hadn’t decided to take a short-cut through the bulge of Finland instead of following the fence and the border round — the way that other ski-track had gone — they wouldn’t have got here at all tonight. He’d made his decision at the deer-fence, where as it happened he’d also had to switch to a different map, a ground one instead of an air one, with more detail on it. The short-cut had about halved the distance.

  It was too dark to see whether smoke was coming out of the cabin’s chimney. But he couldn’t smell any, and it was too dark to check the snow for tracks.

  ‘Hang on here a minute. I’ll take a look.’

  ‘Don’t be long.’

  He squeezed her arm, and left her, ski’d out into the open. Wishing he had snowshoes here. The snow had a crust but a boot with a man’s weight in it would have gone right through, you’d have been wading. So you were confined to skis, which weren’t either very quiet or convenient at close quarters. He remembered a conclusion they’d reached, years ago, a result of some early tactical experiments during AWT exercises: skis for the approach, snowshoes for the assault.

  Not that he was about to assault anyone. He hoped. He was expecting to find the place empty.

  Close to the back wall of the fjellstue he listened, sniffing again for smoke or cooking smells, or others. Then he unclipped his skis and moved around to the lee side, close against the wall and under the projecting timber eave, where the snow was thin and hard as ice.

  Crunch …

  It was ice. He waited, listening for reaction. There wasn’t any. He was sure then — almost…

  No windows. She’d said the only opening would be the door. At the front corner he crouched again, running the palms of his mittens over the snow’s flat, unbroken crust, finding no holes or indentations. Moving cautiously and slowly to the door, then, feeling his way. A porch roof projected over front steps, supported on timber posts bolted to the sides of them. Three plank steps. Down low again, eyes inches from the timber, he could see in close-up unbroken coatings of snow curving upward at the back of each step, as wind had blown it. And no human foot had trodden here, not since the last snowfall. Not unless someone had been very clever.

  Like jumping all three steps. You couldn’t totally discount it.

  The door opened outward, and no lock, chain or bolt secured it from the outside, there was only a handle to be turned. With the gun ready, he reached from the side one-handed, turned it and pulled slowly, steadily…

  Then he was inside. Pulling the door shut so he could use his map-reading pencil torch.

  Empty — and no signs of any recent occupation. Otherwise, it was just as she’d described it. Wood-burning stove, wooden bunks, an axe and a saw for the use of visitors. He switched off the torch, opened the door and called softly, ‘It’s OK, Sophie, come on in!’

  She’d come by the same route he’d taken, in his tracks, leaving minimal evidence of this visit. He’d been thinking about it, didn’t intend either to use the stove or to stay longer than they needed. He waited near the door, heard her take off her skis where he‘d done it, then the scrape of her boots on ice as she came round the side. Wondering what humorous comment on this clandestine nightstop Gus might have made if he could have seen it happening — visualising the American’s sardonic, lopsided grin, and mercifully having no way of knowing that by this time any grin on Gus Stenberg’s face would be fixed, frozen, snow-encrusted, a grimace of death.

  *

  ‘Not even to heat a tin?’

  ‘No fire at all. We’ve got tea left. And staying alive, getting the word out—’

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Shaking her hair loose. One flickering candle stub burned on the stove’s cast-iron top. ‘But I had — you know, a dream — loving, all warm and—’

  Kissing. Her arms were round his neck and he was holding her, but he hadn’t started the kissing and she hadn’t either: kissing had commenced, self—initiated and now self-generating. Bulk of clothing, snow-cold in frozen candlelight, sweat drying cold inside. Knowing so well how it could and should have been, having had that same dream of — warmth. ‘Don’t imagine I haven’t thought about it too.’ About this cabin with the stove hot, warmth radiating, and Sophie… ‘On and off all day I’ve thought about us being here.’ Maybe even all the time, at back of the other minute-by-minute thinking. He heard her saying, words coming fast, muddled, as if from a swimmer, face momentarily out of water for a gulp of air, ‘But you do not know yet, nor do I know—’ He’d stopped her mouth again, guessing at what she’d been starting to say — that there might never be any realisation of that dream. He cut across it with, ‘We’ll have years and years to prove it, my darling.’ Cruel — confusing the issue deliberately, trusting to her not having the fluency to sort it out: because such thinking was destructive, got you nowhere. Then they were apart, temporarily, both aware that they were physically spent, having probably broken a number of ski-trek records. Not spent to that extent — you’d need to be dead, he thought, frozen through to the bones — but — he was saying — struggling into practicalities — ‘Cold food, then. Beans OK? Chew some meat with them?’ The beans had been insulated in his sleeping bag but the reindeer meat was like frozen boot-soles now, but it was still meat, hadn’t had a chance to go bad and there was nourishment to be had from it. ‘Second course — for a real change — well, what about biscuits and—’

  ‘Chocolate?’

  ‘Then sleeping-bags on those bunks.’

  ‘No. One bunk,’ she said.

  It would be a tight squeeze, with all the bulk of bags and gear. He was opening a tin. He told her, ‘In olden times in England they called it “bundling”. Pre-marriage custom, getting-to-know-you routine. Couple in bed all wrapped up separately, the girl actually sewn up and close supervision by Mama.’

  ‘I’d have a pair of scissors.’

  ‘Right.’ He passed her the topless tin, started opening the other. ‘But we‘re taking a risk, using this place. I don’t want to stay long, just long enough to rest up enough to face the next marathon. Tomorrow night you’ll have a hot meal and a soft bed in Kauto — think of that, to look forward to!’

  ‘I won‘t have you. I’ll wish I was back here, like now.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘And you will have that trek all over again.’

  ‘Knowing the route now, I’ve some ideas to make it easier.‘ He meant safer, more than easier, but it was too cold to correct it… ‘We did incredibly well today, you know.’

  ‘Don’t you know we always will?’

  ‘If you mean what I’m thinking you mean—’

  ‘That, of course, I know even better than you do.’

  ‘Expert, are you?’

  ‘Not yet, but I will be.’

  ‘Bloody soon.’

  ‘Now, if you like. This minute. My God, who wants to eat—‘

  ‘You do and I do.’ Holding her, hugging her… ‘You’re — a baked bean. Taste, smell… Sophie darling, we’d freeze. Anyway I want it perfect for you, like you never—’

  ‘I never had it on ice and in wet clothes.’

  ‘You won’t now either. I’m just about dying for you, I can tell you, but—’

  ‘Ta
lk of dying, what if — what if there is never any other—’

  ‘Don’t think like that, Sophie. Just don’t. I promise you—’

  ‘You can’t promise. You know, I know, there’s no promising. They can be out there now, coming this moment — or when we leave, maybe—’

  ‘Eat your beans.‘ He shook her, just gently. ‘Hear me? I do promise, I’ll make it come true, but right now just eat your fucking beans up, like a good girl.’

  ‘And my fucking biscuits.’ Small-voiced, shaky. ‘Chocolate. Fucking raisins.’

  ‘Voia voia, nana nana.’

  She laughed, half crying. ‘I love you, Ollie.’

  ‘Big and lovely, best girl in the country.’

  ‘I don’t like that big.’

  ‘I’ll make you bigger, one day.’

  ‘Heavens, that sounds like love!’ Hugging against him, her mouth near his ear, teeth chattering and through all the gear he could feel her shivers. ‘For a man to think of that, to want it—’

  ‘Can’t you believe things I tell you?’

  Food for fuel, for generating internal warmth. Then the ‘bundling’. Candle out, sleeping-bags crushed together on one timber shelf, heat building inside the bags de-freezing bodies and drying out damp clothes. He’d told her, ‘Bundlers were supposed to make conversation. For instance’ — he cleared his throat — ‘are both your parents alive and well, Miss Eriksen?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They have a farm near Kristiansund.’

  ‘Must be a lovely place to live.’ He thought, I’m stupid. She’s right, they could be outside there, this minute. Two covering the door, one to bust us out… Her murmur in his ear — relaxed, sleepy: ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘Once, years ago. Landed by helicopter, came in low over a lot of little islands, wooden houses on them. Summer, really beautiful.’

  ‘And your parents, are they in good health?’

  ‘We should have this conversation on tape, you know.’

  ‘Answer the question, please. Also, do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Two sisters, both married. And my mother’s alive. My father died a long time ago. He was an engineer, Merchant Navy, chief engineer actually. We’re Scots, did you realise this important fact?’

  ‘Does your mother live in Scotland?’

  ‘Dorset. Down south. Royal Marine country, too. Home was in Edinburgh but she has arthritis badly, needs the warmer climate. She was a fine pianist in her day. I saw my father cry, once, listening to her play — and he was a tough nut, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You’re a tough nut too. Do you cry, ever?’

  ‘I did when he died. I was twelve. That’s the last time I remember.’

  Not entirely true…

  Surfacing momentarily from sleep, reaching for that memory: of having to fight back tears — because it wouldn’t have done her any good to see them — watching his mother trying to play the way she’d used to, her arthritic fingers clumsy on the keys and obviously hurting like hell… Sophie was asleep, her body jammed against his on the hard, narrow bunk, bundled in insulation inches thick, but her soft breathing in that ear.

  *

  Sutherland’s voice croaked, Just because I’m fucked up, you don’t have to sit around and get killed!

  Loud — and as clear in his ears — or brain — in the cabin’s freezing dark as it had been when he’d uttered the same words yesterday.

  Yesterday?

  A struggle, then, to get time into perspective. Night before yesterday: when they’d been about to start excavating the snow-hole. So — dream, he thought, just a dream … But no dream now: he was wide awake, alert to his surroundings, muscles tensed. Having been woken by — what?’

  He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping. One hour, or six…

  Hum of wind in the forest. No other sound, yet. The middle step, he’d noticed earlier, creaked when weight was put on it. So you’d have warning, unless it was someone who’d been here before and knew it. But you wouldn’t expect to hear anything for a few minutes at least. If he’d been out there himself and put a foot wrong — as he had for instance on that ice — he’d have been as still as a rock now, allowing the inmates time either to react or to go back to sleep. Having found the tracks at the back there, knowing there were inmates.

  Still nothing. He unzipped the top of his sleeping-bag slowly, quietly, slid out of it and off the bunk, the submachine gun under his right hand as it touched the floor. Crack of light at the top of the door: moonlight. Clouds breaking up, then. So no snowing for a while, damn it. Boots: pulling them out of the sleeping-bag then out of the plastic and pushing his feet into them, the gun down on the planks beside them as he laced up their fronts. Ventile coat… He picked up the gun, selected automatic fire, then crouched at the side of the door, reached left-handed to turn the handle and push it open, hold it against the thrust of wind.

  Moonlight flooding in.

  ‘Ollie?’

  ‘It’s OK. Just taking a look outside.’

  Moonlight made it easy to see there was no one in the clearing, and to see from the snow’s unbroken surface that there hadn’t been anyone here either. Unless they’d come and gone — unlikely — on the same tracks, his and Sophie’s, which were very clearly visible, so visible that he decided — having refreshed his mental powers with sleep now — that he’d been a prize idiot to have come here at all.

  He knew why he had. Although for one reason and another it had obviously been out of the question once they got here, he’d brought her here with the same thought in his mind that she’d had in hers. Precisely what Gus Stenberg would have assumed, would have made his little snide comment about. He’d wanted a few hours alone with her — before they separated and maybe never saw each other again — a few hours with a door that shut and a stove providing warmth.

  He had a pee, and went back inside.

  ‘Sophie darling, we have to shove off now.’

  ‘Was there something out there?’

  ‘No. Nothing. But — look, please, get up, get ready. I shouldn’t have brought you here, it’s bloody dangerous.’

  ‘All right.’ Upheaval in the bag. ‘Although I do not see why—’

  ‘Because it’s where they’d expect us to come. Anyone like us, without the time to spare for making a bivvy, would use ready-made shelter — if he needed his head seeing to, like I reckon I do.’

  He heard her mutter something in Norwegian. She was out of her bag, rummaging in it for things that she’d been drying in there. ‘I’m thirsty. Couldn’t we make just a little fire?’ She added in a squawk: ‘My God, is it moonlight?’

  She must have had her eyes shut or her head in the sleeping-bag when he’d opened the door a few minutes ago. He told her yes, moonlight, bright as day. And yes to her plea for a drink, a fire. They’d finished their Thermos tea last night, and you had to have a source of heat before you could drink even water, unless you were happy to eat snow. That would have done for him, at a pinch, but there was a limit to the privations he felt he could reasonably inflict on her. So as you had to have a fire anyway, you might as well make tea, enough to refill the Thermos flasks as well.

  There were half-burnt sticks and bits of charcoal in the stove, and a small pile of cut wood in the corner. Plenty for immediate needs. But paper to get it started … He realised he’d have to sacrifice some of his small reserve of lavatory paper.

  ‘I’ll get snow in and make tea, you get dressed, Sophie. If you want to go outside, keep to the tracks we made last night.’

  *

  He led, navigating by his wrist compass, steering about due west but varying the course when necessary to make the best use of available cover. The moon was making it lighter than some days had been, combination of moonlight and snowscape producing a radiance of magnesium-type brightness. The clear sky was sending the temperature plummeting, too, it was very cold… This westward track was the shortest route they could have taken, to reach the highway that ran up out of Finland to
Kautokeino and thence north to Alta. South of the border it wasn’t called Route 93, the Finns had their own designation for it where it led on down to their major northwestern town of Enontekiö. There’d be some long-haul traffic on it at night, he guessed.

  They could alternatively have headed northwest to join what was marked on the ‘graphic’ as vinterveg, ‘winter road’, a cross-country track leading across frozen lakes and joining the highway about halfway up to Kautokeino. But there was at least one Lapp settlement right on it — at the northern end of the biggest of the lakes, a place marked as Suolujavrre. Sophie said she thought it would consist of maybe one farmhouse and a few gamme — turf huts — and it was just the sort of location Ollie guessed they’d have staked out. For one thing, it would have been a natural route to have taken from the point where yesterday he’d tried to confuse their ski—tracks by mixing them up with the Sami herdsmen’s. There were other, equally small settlements they could have gone for — for instance, a place called Kivijavrre where Route 93 crossed the border, where there’d be a Customs post. Or, halfway up to Kautokeino, a main-road halt marked Oksal. But there was no point in risking any of them when you could get to Kautokeino, the security of its police station and the certainty of good communications.

  ‘See — if we followed that line — where I tried to make it look as if we might be going? That’s how they’d have seen it, surely — and if I’d been in the other guy’s shoes that’s where I’d have sent a picket.’

  ‘It is the way I would have chosen.’ She nodded. ‘Easier travel, Ollie.’

  ‘But this way’s shorter. As well as safer. Joining the highway about here — however that’s pronounced … Aiddejavrre?’

  ‘There is a fjellstue there, like this one.‘