Out of perversity he travelled out of limits waiting for the roar of motor-cycles behind his green Lincoln. But, as far as he could see, he could have driven to Archangel without being stopped.
His presence was requested at the American Embassy where, in a small room with the radio playing “to drown the bugs”, he was warned by C.I.A. agent thinly disguised as a first secretary: “They’re setting you up for something.”
“Good on them,” Bridges said.
Flirting with communism, wasn’t it called? At night in his apartment, drinking Scotch at $1.50 a bottle, listening to jazz on his hi-fi imported from New York, Harry Bridges wondered about his motives. Sheer perversity seemed favourite. But, at the same time, he remembered his father who had died because of bigotry towards socialism and, in his mind, he linked it with a man called Ralston blowing his brains out on the terrace of a fine Spanish-style house.
Give it time, Bridges decided. Time to see both sides of the coin.
Then he gave himself extensions of time and was never quite sure at what stage he realised he was being trapped – if, that is, he wanted to escape.
He travelled extensively and saw all the “Heroic achievements”. He admired them and was angered by Western derision born of fear; equally he was angered by the plodding Soviet criticism of Western progress. In shadowy form, aided by a few slugs of Scotch, Bridges sometimes saw himself as an instrument for improving East-West communications; a sort of global P.R.O.
And all the time he kept his paper happy with a steady flow of exclusives. He liked seeing his by-line; he liked reigning over the other correspondents; he liked the hard winters and the soft life.
There was a lot he disliked in Moscow, in particular the company of the defectors, lonely fugitives living in limbo; they were his steadying influence, his warning light; although he persuaded himself that they had come over because of character flaws whereas he was merely staying to get the balanced view. Staying and staying.
He was, of course, depressed by the lack of freedom, the power of the secret police, the treatment of the Jews, the blind obedience of the people. “But,” he wrote to friends in the States, “you’ve got to equate all this against their achievements, their fundamental happiness, their indomitable spirit.” And he was fond of pointing out in his letters that you could still walk the streets of Moscow without fear of being mugged and that he had never come across a drug problem.
Back in America his friends asked: “What the hell’s with Harry Bridges? Has he gone over to the other side?”
Bridges wasn’t sure. Nor was he sure what sort of journalist he was any more. He decided to allow himself one more assignment before making his final decision. That assignment was Yermakov’s Trans-Siberian tour. He had seen both sides of the coin for long enough. Somewhere on the train journey he would have to toss the coin and see on which side it came down.
CHAPTER 5
They reached Novosibirsk, the Chicago of Siberia, at 10.31 on the morning of the third day. They were on the edge of winter and the first wisps of snow were falling hesitantly.
As always, the police alighted first followed by Yermakov, jovial and menacing in a bulky black overcoat, scarf and sealskin hat. His eyes were pouchy beneath the thick eyebrows and his skin looked tired. He shook hands with local Party officials and the stationmaster beaming nervously and accepted a bouquet of red orchids grown in the city’s greenhouses from a little girl. Then, with a military band playing, he inspected the jack-booted troops in their long coats drawn up outside the station.
It wasn’t until he had been driven away, waving to the crowds in a black Chaika, that the rest of the passengers were allowed to disembark. Among those staying overnight were the driver, Boris Demurin, who was taking the special coach all the way to Vladivostock; Harry Bridges and his fellow passengers; Viktor Pavlov and his fellow passengers.
All except Demurin and his crew went by cab to the Grand Hotel.
* * *
Pavlov stayed in his room for two hours. The room was functional with pink satin over the bed, pillows covered with towels, pink curtains and strips of white paper sealing the windows against the cold that was to come. He checked it methodically and, after fifty minutes, found a tiny black microphone concealed in the head of the brass bedstead. Not very original, he thought: the traditional hiding place for untaxed loot.
He didn’t think the bug had been installed for him; it was probably one of the rooms reserved for Western visitors. But you couldn’t take chances. He left the microphone intact and primed the tape-recorder which had been left for him at reception. Then he knocked on his own door, opened it and said: “Why, hallo Vladimir, come in. We’ve got a lot to talk about.” He closed the door, switched on the tape and listened for a few moments to himself talking to a man called Vladimir about computers. The machine had been adapted and the tape would play for two hours.
He glanced at his wrist-watch. It was 12.45. Between 12.45 and 12.50 the female watchdog installed on each floor to discourage hooliganism and fornication went downstairs to fetch her lunch of borsch, black bread, lemon tea and chocolate cake. The timing, like the meal, he had been advised, never changed. Gently, he opened the door and gazed down the corridor; it was empty. Instead of turning left towards the stairs which would take him down to the marble hall with its Corinthian columns he turned right towards a small service door. He opened it and ran down the stairs, through a yard cluttered with garbage cans into the street behind the hotel.
Harry Bridges who, throughout his career, had made a point of surveying the rear aspects of hotels, much favoured by publicity-shy celebrities and call-girls visiting politicians, saw him leave from the end of the street. Again every instinct bristled. Viktor Pavlov, mathematical genius and husband of a heroine, leaving as furtively as a jewel thief? Just as he had once followed fire engines and ambulances, Bridges followed Pavlov.
The snow was falling more thickly now, settling on the sidewalks, laying fingers on window-ledges. At the end of the street Pavlov struck out to the left. It was then that Bridges realised that there was someone else who knew about the rear aspects of hotels. From a doorway a figure detached itself and set out after Pavlov.
The snow blurred his outline but, if Bridges wasn’t mistaken, it was Gavralin, Pavlov’s healthy-looking companion on the train. He had been walking on the train with a limp: there was no limp now. He moved cautiously but confidently; a trained shadow, allowing Pavlov a good lead, using doorways and phone kiosks if he sensed that he was about to look round, accelerating whenever he turned a corner.
Bridges adopted the same tactics. He had an advantage: it was unlikely that Gavralin would suspect that he himself was being followed.
Pavlov turned into a main thoroughfare near the Institute of Applied Chemistry. Gavralin ran to the corner, waited a few moments before rounding it. Bridges did likewise. They proceeded along the main street, each separated by about 100 yards.
The snow fell steadily to the level of the big grey blocks of offices and apartments, then went mad in the wind tunnel created by the blocks. The snow muffled sound and the red tramcars were as bright as holly berries against the white. Pedestrians bowed their heads, lurching fatalistically into interminable winter, and only the little, long-haired horses trotting beside the trams looked unconcerned – Christmas pantomime ponies with the snow mantling their coats.
Pavlov now made pursuit more difficult by turning into the municipal park. There were few people here and the only cover was the trees. A few children played, rolling this first snow into dirty snowballs. One hit Pavlov; he turned and his shadow slid behind a wooden hut. Bridges, who hadn’t entered the park, waited beside a couple of vacuum snow-cleaners brought out from summer hibernation and an assembling army of old women with broad shovels.
Pavlov strode on, a tall, lonely figure in dark coat and fur hat. Gavralin let him get a couple of hundred yards along the path before following. Bridges entered the park, seeing only the man between him and P
avlov. There were only two sets of footprints on the snow; occasionally they crossed each other.
At the far side of the park Pavlov crossed the road, making for the wooden city. He dodged a boy on a sledge, its runners scraping on the sidewalk, and walked briskly down a narrow street of houses with carved eaves, their roofs already looking like white envelopes. He stopped at No. 43, a neat house with birch saplings in the garden and a row of dead, decapitated sunflowers. The wooden gate was carved in the shape of two huge rose blossoms.
Pavlov glanced around, went up the pathway and rang the bell. The door opened, Pavlov stamped, shook the snow off his coat and went inside. Gavralin took up a position behind a tree fifty yards away; Bridges waited fifty yards further down the street.
The snow fell thickly and the cold slipped inside Bridges’ overcoat.
* * *
Pavlov said: “The Peasant’s dead.”
The Prospector asked: “How?”
“Shot at Sverdlovsk.”
“Who by?”
“The Policeman,” Pavlov said. Before the Prospector could express shock Pavlov explained what he thought had happened. “They had got the Peasant. There was nothing else he could do. He saved us.” He shivered despite the warmth from the red-hot stove in the middle of the room. “Give me a brandy. The cold’s got inside me.”
“Cold? This isn’t cold. You should go to the Cold Pole at Indigirka. Minus 70 centigrade. It takes the skin off you like peeling an apple.”
The Prospector was a big shaggy man who had spent all his life prospecting in the northern wastes of Siberia. He wore a cap made of mink, boots of wolf-skin. He had found gas and petroleum for the Soviet Union; he had been marooned on an iceberg; he had existed for two months on wild mares’ milk; he had lived with Tungu tribesmen – once said to be the dirtiest people in the world. There wasn’t much that the Prospector hadn’t done and one day he had found gold. But, anticipating his reward, had taken a few large nuggets for himself. His final reward was four years in a strict regime camp with confiscation of property. The camp was close to the Siberian Railway – so that reinforcements could be mobilised in the event of a break – and he knew the stretch of railway east of Irkutsk where the kidnap was to take place well.
The Prospector was thirty-eight, a gentile. But four years’ imprisonment had affected him more savagely than it would most people: it had warped his adventurous soul. Now he wanted revenge. He didn’t care how he got it and, in 1970, he was recruited by the Zealots. They trusted him completely.
He had one disadvantage: he had a criminal record and therefore automatically attracted suspicion. The plan was that he should take the night train to Irkutsk and then a helicopter for the rest of the journey. Since his release from the camp he had joined the helicopter service hunting wolves and he was due to go on patrol.
He handed Pavlov a tumblerful of brandy and poured himself a large vodka from a bottle he kept in the garden so that, in deep winter, the colourless liquid was as thick as oil. In the kitchen the wolf he kept as a pet snuffled at the door.
“So what do we do now?” the Prospector asked.
“It hasn’t changed anything.”
“The Peasant knew where the guns were. He put them there.”
“The Priest knows where they are,” Pavlov said. “I thought of phoning him in Irkutsk. But all the clergy are under surveillance. It would be too dangerous.”
“So?”
“You’ll have to see him when you reach Irkutsk.”
The Prospector shook his shaggy head: he had let all his hair grow in the old days to keep out the cold and had kept the style; his beard was long and thick but the hair on his scalp had never grown properly after the attentions of the camp barber.
He said: “I won’t have time.”
“You’ll have to make time. The Priest won’t go where the action is. You can’t have priests running around in the middle of battlefields.”
“Battlefields?”
Pavlov gulped his brandy. “It could happen.”
“All right,” the Prospector said. “I’ll make time,” He lit a cardboard-tipped cigarette and poured himself more vodka. “To success.” He drained the vodka and smashed the glass against the incandescent stove.
* * *
Bridges, who looked and felt like a snowman, watched Gavralin flit across the road into a glass phone booth and, still watching the house, make a phone call. He guessed the purpose of the call. To police headquarters: “Give me the identity of the occupant of No. 43.”
Bridges watched Gavralin speaking, waiting, dusting the snow from his shapka, stamping his feet, then nodding vigorously. He hung up the receiver slowly, as if he had heard momentous news. Then he slid his hand inside his coat, took out a pistol, checked it, and slipped it back.
He came out of the booth and stood stamping his feet for a moment. He seemed to be making a decision. He reached it and headed for No. 43, keeping close to the wooden fences on the same side so that anyone looking out of a window wouldn’t see him unless they craned their necks.
Bridges thought: You are a stupid glory-seeker trying to go it alone.
As Gavralin climbed over the fence, approaching No. 43 along the line of dead sunflowers, Bridges heard barking. Gavralin drew his pistol and knocked on the front door.
From inside came a growling voice: “Who is it?”
“Police,” Gavralin shouted.
Bridges moved closer observing Gavralin move to one side to make sure no one left by the back door.
The front door opened and Gavralin went straight in, kicking the door aside, ramming the pistol in the ribs of the bearded man who answered it. The door shut. Bridges went to the window and peered in.
* * *
The Prospector said: “What the hell …”
“Where is he?” Gavralin snapped.
“Where’s who?”
“Viktor Pavlov.”
“I don’t know any Viktor Pavlov.”
Gavralin stood back, the pistol an extension of his arm. “You’ve already done four years. This could get you another twenty. Or,” he said, “you could be shot or sent down a cobalt mine where the death is slower. We usually give people the choice. Most of them prefer the cobalt mines. They wouldn’t if they saw the way men die.…” He jerked the pistol. “Where is he?”
The Prospector wavered. “In there,” he said, pointing at the kitchen.
“All right, you go first.”
The Prospector shrugged and turned, fumbling for a moment in the breast pocket of his faded blue blouse.
Gavralin thrust the pistol into his spine. “Open the door.”
“Just as you please.”
The Prospector opened the door, standing aside as the wolf went for Gavralin’s throat. The pistol fired once, the bullet punching a hole in the wall. Then the wolf had him down, white teeth deep in his throat. Gavralin struggled for a moment, making small bubbling cries.
The Prospector blew again on the soundless dog whistle he had taken from his breast pocket and the wolf stood back. Gavralin clawed feebly at the blood spurting from a savaged artery, then died.
Pavlov came down the stairs. “Is he dead?”
The Prospector nodded. “He” – pointing at the wolf – “doesn’t play games.”
“So I see.” Pavlov indicated the corpse. “We’ll have to get rid of that somehow.”
“How do you suggest?”
“You got your truck here?”
“It’s at the back.”
“Then you’ll have to take the body and dump it in the river.” Pavlov sat down near the stove. “Lock that thing up,” he said, pointing at the wolf. “I’ve got to think.”
The Prospector patted the wolf and led it into the kitchen.
Thinking aloud, Pavlov said: “You can never come back here now. Gavralin must have checked with the local police to see who lived here. Otherwise he wouldn’t have rushed you with a gun. The question is: Did he tell them I was here?” Pavlov poured himse
lf some brandy. “Another imponderable …”
“Imponderable? That’s a big word, my friend. What does it mean?” The Prospector stepped over the body and sat opposite Pavlov.
“If he did we’re finished. But I don’t think he did. If he had they’d have sent a whole posse of police here headed by Razin.”
“Then you’re safe?”
“Probably. But you’re not. Get the body into a sack. Dump it in the truck.” He stood up suddenly and adjusted the curtains. “Tell the neighbours that you’re going away on your usual patrol. Dump the body and get to Irkutsk as fast as you can.”
The Prospector stroked his beard. “What about the shot? Someone may have heard it. And another thing – they’ll be waiting for me at the helicopter.”
Pavlov said: “Forget about the helicopter. Go by road – no one suspects what you’re really up to.”
“And the shot?”
“You can’t take the wolf with you. Tell the neighbours you had to shoot it because it attacked you.”
The Prospector stared hard at Pavlov. “And what do you suggest I do with the dog?” He never called it a wolf.
“Cut its throat,” Pavlov said.
* * *
The Prospector wrapped the body in sacking and, in broad daylight, with the falling snow veiling him, dumped it in the back of his truck. Then he returned to the kitchen and talked to the wolf. “He wanted me to cut your throat.” He patted the wolf’s lean grey back. “I’d rather cut my own.” He snapped a lead on the animal’s collar and, as the wolf opened its jaws, said: “Just keep your mouth shut.”
He took the wolf with him, sitting him in the seat beside the wheel. Then he drove to the banks of the Ob and, as dusk thickened, dumped the body. But it hit a boulder, lodging on the brink of the dark water. The Prospector cursed. He was about to go after it when he heard the sound of a vehicle coming up behind him. He drove a hundred yards along the road and waited.
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