Shiller said: “Quite an opponent, that Razin. What are you going to do?”
“Do?” Pavlov turned away so that Shiller couldn’t see the expression on his face. “Do? We’re proceeding as planned, of course.”
“But your wife.…”
“One person,” Pavlov said. “Just one person.” Remembering that she was pregnant and it was two people.
After that the messages came at intervals as Razin applied everything he had learned about psychological torture: you don’t begin a course with a prolonged application of agony: you apply doses of increasing strength at regular intervals so that the pressure derives from anticipation.
The next message said: “Viktor Pavlov, your wife is bearing up well.”
From what? Pavlov poured himself a brandy and paced the corridor. There were fifteen minutes left before his ultimatum expired. Would they torture a pregnant woman? Anna, what have I done to you?
“Viktor Pavlov, your wife is not feeling well. She is asking for you.”
A miscarriage? Pavlov poured himself more brandy and Shiller said: “Don’t drink too much of that stuff – this is the one day in your life you’ve got to stay sober.”
“Are you trying to say I’m drunk most other days?”
“I’m just advising you not to drink too much today.” Shiller picked up the bottle and studied its level. “This threat to your wife. I know how you must feel.… Would you like me to take over?”
“No,” Pavlov said abruptly. Not after a lifetime of planning for this one day. He waited for the next message.
“Viktor Pavlov, the deadline for your ultimatim expires at 14.00 hours. Our deadline expires at 13.55. If you have not released your hostage by then.…” There was a pause. “… I can no longer guarantee the safe custody of your wife.”
“An odd way of putting it,” Shiller remarked.
“Because they daren’t kill her,” Pavlov said. Yes, that’s it, he told himself, they daren’t go through with it. He went to the sleeper. “Have you signed yet?”
“Not yet,” Yermakov told him. “Plenty of time yet.” He looked very composed, sitting at the table staring at the darkening sky. “Colonel Razin has put you on the spot, eh?”
“It will make no difference.”
“You’re a hard man.”
“I’m what Russia has made me.”
“And you’re proud of your hardness, Comrade Pavlov. But, believe me, no one will remember you as a hero. If you’re remembered at all it will be as the man who allowed his wife to die for an insane cause. Not much glory there, Comrade.”
“If you’ve made your decision why don’t you sign now?”
“I didn’t say I was going to sign. I said I had made my decision.”
They heard the click of the megaphone and then a woman’s voice: “Viktor, it’s me, Anna, your wife. Please, Viktor, for my sake, for the sake of Russia, give up this crazy scheme. You’re not well. Everyone here understands that. They’ve promised me that none of you will come to any harm if you abandon it. Please, Viktor, for us, for the baby.…” A sob reaching Pavlov across the snow. “They say you have only a few minutes to make up your mind. Then –” she didn’t finish the sentence – “Viktor, I love you.…”
Pavlov tried to light a cigarette but his hands were shaking too much. He went into the corridor as Razin’s voice replaced Anna’s.
“Viktor Pavlov if your hostage is not released now you will hear a single shot. I don’t have to tell you the target for the bullet.”
“Well?” Shiller asked.
“We proceed as planned,”
Shiller and the other Zealots watched Pavlov curiously. He went to the cell where Stanley Wagstaff had been locked up and closed the door behind him. He prayed as an atheist prays just before death. If I forget you, O Jerusalem.… He asked the God he had failed to worship to forgive him. He wept without tears.
A minute later there was a knock on the door. Shiller said: “The Englishman’s returned.”
“Send him in,” Pavlov said.
Stanley Wagstaff came in and Pavlov grabbed him by the lapels. “What’s happening? What are they doing to her?”
Stanley Wagstaff said: “We don’t know. They’ve taken her down to the pit-head.”
“Are they going to kill her?”
“I don’t know,” Stanley Wagstaff said. “We only know what you’ve heard.”
Pavlov pushed him away. “Wait outside,” he said.
At 13.55 hours they heard a single shot.
At 13.56 Yermakov signed the documents and Stanley Wagstaff took them back across the snow.
CHAPTER 6
Two men tried to reach the bridge during the next twenty-four hours of waiting while messages authorising immediate exit visas for the ten Jews were relayed to various cities in the Soviet Union.
The first was Boris Demurin. His motive was obscure. Unknown elements had conspired to wreck the triumphant climax to his career. He had been drinking vodka brought by the troops for most of the day. At six in the evening, with snow pouring steadily from the sky, obscuring the bridge, he decided to die heroically: it was the only thing left for him. Vaguely, without much hope, he thought he might kill the gangsters in the special coach; forty years ago, he remembered, a train driver had fought a gun-battle with four bandits, killing three before getting a bullet between the eyes. They had erected a monument to the driver. Why not a monument, here in the heart of Siberia, for Boris Demurin?
He stuffed the bottle of vodka inside his blouse and tied down the ear-flaps of his shapka. No one took much notice of him – an ancient, drunken train-driver. Why should they? The two soldiers standing guard outside the station asked him where he was going. “For a piss,” Demurin told them. “Watch you don’t trip over it,” one of them said. “You piss icicles out here.”
But Demurin didn’t feel cold. He wore his felt boots, worn fur gloves, thick blouse and trousers stuffed with paper. The cold was his friend, the breath of Siberia. There were scars on his face from frostbite which had nipped him many years ago; but now, if he felt the familiar numbness, he rubbed the skin with snow and the blood started to circulate again.
Almost immediately he was lost, lurching away from the track, the snow caking his face and covering his eyes. He pawed it away with gloved hands and took a long swig of vodka. He wasn’t scared; the pioneer railwayman had faced worse than this – building camps in blizzards, awoken at night by the crack of bolts on the track snapping in the cold. Boris Demurin, pioneer, marched groggily on hearing the wail and thunder of an old 0–6–6–0 Mallet, hearing the clank of convicts’ chains.
He stumbled, falling into a drift; got to his feet grinning. Taking another swig of vodka, he thought: The Trans-Siberian, the railway they said we couldn’t build. The British, the Americans, all sneering. Until it was done and suddenly Russia was a power, a menace, a threat to their trade linking east with west. How many derailments had there been? How many bridges had collapsed? How many deaths? How many sacrifices?
When Boris Demurin was in Moscow he often visited the Armory Museum inside the Kremlin, to see the collection of eggs created by Peter Carl Fabergé. One egg in particular – the Great Siberian Easter Egg made in 1900. It was fashioned from green, blue and yellow enamel with the route of the railway traced in silver. If you touched the Imperial eagle surmounting it the top came off to reveal a scale model of a train about one foot long, five cars and a gold and platinum engine with a ruby for a light; if you wound it with a gold key the engine pulled the coaches.
That’s the sort of monument I would like, Boris Demurin thought. Hero of the Soviet Union. Why not? He was in the pine wood now, all sound muffled by the snow. If I meet a bear he thought, I’ll dance with it. His face ached with the cold but he rejoiced with it.
Where the hell was the bridge?
He veered to the right before resting on a log. The snow wasn’t falling so thickly now, the foliage of the trees taking most of it. There was a burning pain in one of his legs a
nd, when he struck out from the pine wood into the thick snow, he limped. Eventually he came to the pit-head where they had taken Pavlov’s wife. Whatever had happened there, the snow had covered the evidence. He rested in the hut remembering that the track ran alongside it. He took another nip of vodka before setting out again, dragging his leg behind him. He stumbled against metal, cleared away the snow and saw the rusty line. Was the bridge ahead or behind him? He shook his head, it was as if his skull was full of snow. He touched his cheek with his gloved hand, but all sensation had gone from it. To hell with it, he thought: it took more than a touch of frost-bite to deter a pioneer.
Clutching the almost-empty bottle to his chest, he set off along the line. The snow was a white wall and thus he almost walked into the wrecked hulk looming in front of him. Boris Demurin stared at it in disbelief. He brushed some of the snow away. It was the E 723 2-8-0. The boiler had burst and the engine’s body was splayed into flaps and daggers of torn metal. Demurin had once driven one of these engines and it seemed to him as if it had been brought to him wounded.
The footplate was still intact and he climbed on to it, brushing the snow from the controls. He put the bottle to his lips but it was empty. Flinging the bottle away, he leaned out and gazed down the track, seeing it straight and gleaming new, seeing smoke-and cinders fly past; the track, he knew, led to the beginning and the end.
He took off his fur shapka and stayed like that, the snow settling on his hair. That was how they found him.
* * *
The second man to make for the bridge was Harry Bridges.
Before he went he told Libby what he was going to do. She told him he was crazy and he agreed with her.
They were huddled together in a corner of the station watched by one soldier sitting beside the incandescent stove with a sub-machine gun on his knees. They had tested him with English and decided he didn’t know any; just the same they talked in whispers. Stanley Wagstaff and Gopnik had been taken to a tent.
“I knew I’d have to make a decision on this journey,” Bridges told her. “I’ve just made it. Time I was a reporter again.”
She held his hand under the grey army blanket. “You’ll never make it. It’s pitch dark and snowing. You’ll get lost. If you don’t you’ll either get shot by the troops or Pavlov’s men.”
“Can you imagine it? An interview with Yermakov while he’s being held hostage?”
“Yes,” Libby Chandler said, “I can imagine it. But you’ll never live to write it.”
“You’re talking like I’ve been thinking.” He stroked her arm and her breasts beneath the blanket. “I thought you wanted someone to admire.”
“I want someone alive to admire.”
“I’ll survive,” Bridges said. “I always do.”
She held his hand to her breast. “Why do you have to do it, Harry?”
“Because everything you said about me was right. Now they’ve killed Pavlov’s wife … I have to go. I have to do something.”
“You don’t know that they killed her. We only heard the shot.”
“That’s something I could do. Find out if they did. Take the news to Pavlov. Here” – he felt in the pocket of his overcoat – “take this back. Just in case.…” He slipped her the micro-film under the blanket.
“Don’t go, Harry,” she said. “Please don’t go.”
“I’ll come back. It’s not as dangerous as you think. They aren’t geared to security. Only a madman would try to escape.”
“But what about the madmen on the bridge?”
“I figure Pavlov will want the news spread. Heroes don’t like to die unsung. Not his breed of hero.”
“If they realise who you are they might shoot you before you get there.”
“They can’t see too much in the snow,” Bridges assured her. “I’ll be able to see them but they won’t be able to see me.”
“What are you trying to prove, Harry? You told me you wouldn’t be able to get the story out.”
“There’s always a way,” he said. “I once knew a guy who filed a whole story in five-word takes. He was in a city where they were censoring all phone calls. His office got each of their bureaux all over the world to put calls into him. Each time they came on he got five words over before the operator cut him off. Each bureau then filed the five words back to the head office and there was a complete story.”
“It would be more difficult,” Libby Chandler remarked, “to get a story out of gaol.”
Bridges said: “Kiss me. If you kiss me just as I get up to go it will look as if I’m not returning.”
She kissed him, clinging to him.
He smiled at her. “Dinner in London? I’ll take you to some of the pubs in Fleet Street. Then maybe New York. I’ll take you out to Bear Mountain.…”
“I love you,” she said.
He left her and spoke to the guard who shrugged, pointing to the door. Bridges used the same pretext as Demurin; but this time one of the soldiers went with him behind the station. The soldier, not expecting anyone to try and escape in the middle of Siberia in the dark in a blizzard, selected his own tree and began to urinate. Bridges edged away in the darkness, then ran. He heard a shout but it was gagged by the snow. Then he was away. He made for the tent where Razin had set up his H.Q. It was heavily guarded but he thought he heard a woman’s voice. He skirted the camp ringed with Gruyanovs and Katyusha rocket launchers, heading in the direction of the pit-head, hoping then to cut sharp right to the bridge which was directly opposite the trees.
He pulled the fur flaps of his hat over his ears, tying the lace under his chin. He buttoned his coat up to his neck, stuck his gloved hands in his pocket, thanked God for the sealskin boots bought in Montreal. The snow poured steadily down; he thought the chances of reaching the bridge were remote.
By the time he reached the pine wood the cold had found its way inside his clothes. He stopped just inside the wood and rubbed snow into his face. After a few minutes his cheeks began to burn. You saved your face that time, he thought. His fingers ached and there were tears of ice at the corners of his eyes. Now all he had to do was turn right and he was bound to reach the track, provided he kept going in a straight line.
He set out again, head bowed into the snow, a blind man. After ten minutes he began to wonder if he had kept in a straight line. If he hadn’t then he could be walking into the barrels of the Red Army guns. He peered at his luminous watch; it was fifteen minutes since he left the wood. No track, no bridge. The cold was reaching his feet through the sealskin and the collar of his coat was iced up from his breath. His face was going numb again and he rubbed more snow into it; this time it took longer to thaw. He remembered a girl friend in Moscow whose legs still bore the purple scars of frost-bite.
He was whispering to himself, reassuring himself. He found he was scared of the black snow-flying night which could bury you. Here lies Harry Bridges, one-time journalist, part-time defector. He stumbled on until he noticed that the ground in front of him fell away. He took another step forward. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. He was staring into the ravine spanned by the bridge. He backed away, like a dog scared of a cat. To his right he saw a yellow glow. He moved towards it until the outline of the carriage on the bridge became clear.
He approached the carriage from the end that wasn’t protected by the Gruyanov. The lights stabbed the darkness until the snow cut them off. He slipped several times on the rails buried by the snow before he finally reached the carriage. He hauled himself up to the first door and banged on the window.
He saw a face peering through the window. Then the door opened and Bridges stared into the barrel of a pistol.
* * *
They gave him coffee and brandy and rubbed his face. “Like bringing back a man from the dead to hang him,” Shiller remarked.
Bridges sipped his coffee, choked over his brandy. “I once covered a story like that,” he said. “The former Turkish prime minister. Took an overdose of drugs. They got a stomach pump to him,
then executed him.”
“What do you want?” Pavlov asked. “Not another courier from Razin?”
Bridges shook his head. His cheeks were glowing again and his feet ached as the blood began to circulate. “No requests from Razin. I assigned myself this story.”
Pavlov said: “Anna. Is she alive?”
“I don’t know,” Bridges said. “She might be. I heard a woman’s voice in Razin’s tent.” He saw the hope on Pavlov’s face and was happy.
Shiller said contemptuously: “Assigned yourself a story? You wouldn’t report a traffic offence if you thought it would get you into trouble.”
“Times have changed,” Bridges said.
Shiller said: “It’s some kind of a trick.”
The Pederast said: “We should kill him.” He looked hopefully at Pavlov.
“Look at it this way,” Bridges said, reaching for the brandy bottle. “Would I have risked escaping and wandering through a blizzard by myself if I wasn’t after a story? What harm can I do? You’re all doomed and you know it. You might as well take me on trust. There’s just a chance that I can let the world know what you’ve done.”
They looked at him doubtfully until Pavlov said: “He’s right – he can’t do any harm.”
“And,” said Shiller softly, “he could make sure of your place in the history books.”
“The world should know what we’ve done,” Pavlov said. “The world should know what we’ve done for Israel.”
“What exactly have you done for Israel?” Bridges asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Pavlov told him, “when we get confirmation.”
Bridges peeled off his shapka and gloves, showering snow on to the floor. “I’d like to see your hostage.”
Pavlov shrugged. “Why not?”
They went to the sleeper where Yermakov was sitting at the table drinking Narzan water and writing letters on Kremlin notepaper. He didn’t look up.
Pavlov said: “A visitor for you.”
Yermakov finished a sentence before looking up. Bridges noted that his eyes were clearer, that he wore authority like a favourite suit. “Who are you?”
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