The Yermakov Transfer

by Derek Lambert

  The Prospector began to shout at him, profanely, obscenely. The Pederast looked at him with surprise, then shouted back, matching every obscenity, his voice rising to a shriek. The Prospector whistled softly and the wolf took the Pederast, knocking him aside from the machine-gun. His teeth were at the Pederast’s throat when the Prospector whistled again and the wolf stood back.

  “You see,” the Prospector said, “I was right to bring the wolf. I had to make him shout at me,” he explained, otherwise the dog wouldn’t have known who to go for. He might even have gone for you.…” he said to Pavlov.

  The Prospector pulled the Pederast to his feet. There were blue and red marks at this throat. “Come on,” the Prospector said. “It’s time to go.” He turned and saluted Pavlov. “You did it,” he said. “You were the one.”

  The three of them climbed down from the carriage making their way along the bridge leaving Pavlov and Yermakov alone together.

  * * *

  General Rudinko was an archetypal Soviet general: big and square, inclined to corpulence, a soldier’s soldier who styled himself on Rommel. He had been posted to Egypt to help the Arabs restore their fire-power wrecked by the Israelis during the Six Day War and had stayed there until Sadat ejected his Soviet advisers. He wasn’t sure where his personal affinities lay in the Middle East.

  He pointed towards the bridge and said to the major: “There they go.”

  The major nodded and gave an order to the Army photographer with a long lense like a bazooka. The photographer squeezed the pistol grip three times. “For Razin’s rogues’ gallery,” the major said. “Just in case we lose any of them.”

  “Is that likely, major?”

  “I don’t think so. They can’t get far.” He gestured towards six white-hooded scouts. “They’ll let them get as far as the pine trees and then take up the trail. There’s an old Jewish prayer house in the village. I’ve got men hidden all round it just in case any of them feel they should pray.”

  “I would,” the general said, “if I were them.” He consulted his watch. “We’ve got one hour and three quarters before Pavlov releases Yermakov.”

  “Perhaps Comrade Yermakov will make a break for it. There are only two of them now.”

  “Why should he? Pavlov’s got the weapons. Why risk being killed if you’re going to be released. After all,” General Rudinko said, “the man’s a politician” – as if that explained everything. “Is everything ready for the moment he reaches the station?”

  “It’s ready,” the major said. “But I don’t hold out much hope.”

  The general frowned: defeat only existed to be turned into victory. “We want Pavlov alive.”

  The major said: “We have a platoon deployed on the opposite bank of the ravine. Two of them have found cover behind some boulders on the brink. They’ve got a machine-gun with them. According to Gopnik, the detonator’s at the end of the coach near the Gruyanov. If they can get a quick burst in then they can destroy it before Pavlov has a chance to blow himself up. But in any case,” the major said brightly, “I should imagine he will shoot himself before we have a chance to take him.”

  The general remembered the shattered evidence of Israeli aggression in the Middle east. “He’s a brave man,” he murmured. “They all are. Worthy opponents, Major.”

  The major grinned. “Don’t let Razin hear you say that.”

  “To hell with Razin,” Rudinko observed. “Let’s go and have some coffee with our Western friends. A pretty girl that, eh, Major?”

  “With respect, sir,” the major said, “that’s one victory you’ll never win.”

  * * *

  They reached the pit-head, the three men and a wolf. Here they paused. “It’s useless,” the Pederast said, feeling his throat. “Why don’t we just give ourselves up? Shoot each other. Dive into the pit-shaft.”

  The Planter said: “They’ll put a helicopter up soon. Then we have no chance.”

  “We have a chance,” the Prospector said, eyes blue and alert in his shaggy face despite his fatigue. “There’s always a chance in Siberia. But you must make friends with it.”

  “Siberia isn’t my sort of friend,” the Pederast said. The teeth bruises on his throat were swollen with blood trapped below the skin.

  The Prospector ignored him. “Most people prepare themselves to die when they’re lost in the taiga. They’re beaten before they start. But you must use what Siberia has to offer. It has many weapons and you must accept them. Like falling snow,” he added, staring into the sky at the sparse Christmas flakes fluttering in the breeze. “If it falls harder it will soon cover our tracks.”

  “So what?” the Pederast asked.

  “We must go on because they’ll be watching us with field glasses. Then we’ll cut back into the pine wood and hide there till it’s dark.” He shielded his eyes and stared towards the station. “They’ve already sent some scouts after us. But they’re clumsy. I can lose them.”

  “And then what?” the Planter asked.

  “Then we come back here and pray that the snow covers our footprints.” He peered down the mine shaft. “You two wait here. There are some old steps down the side. I think they lead to a gallery.”

  The Pederast said: “You do what you like. I’m going it alone.” He grinned. “Have fun down your mineshaft.” Then he was gone, heading for the village.

  He passed the dilapidated shop where he had stayed with the others and walked on till he came to a small wooden building flanked with birch trees. Someone had brushed away the snow above the door and he could still read that it was a Jewish prayer house. He decided to pray for the first time for twenty years; the first time since his father, who had fought for the Red Army in the siege of Leningrad, had been taken away at I a.m. and thrown into a labour camp where he had died. He went through the broken doorway where he was immediately taken by two soldiers wearing snow combat uniforms before he had a chance to draw his pistol.

  The Planter waited for fifteen minutes until the Prospector reappeared fifty feet down the shaft and began to climb the steps. When he reached the top he told the Planter: “It’s all right. There is a gallery down there. Provided we don’t freeze to death we can hide there. The troops will be searching for us much farther on. Come on, my friend.”

  They made for the pine trees, plunging through the great pillars of the trees. “Now,” the Prospector said, “pray for snow.”

  “And what do we do when we get out of the shaft?”

  “We do exactly what the old pioneers used to do when they hadn’t any roubles to buy a train ticket. We become flyers. We jump on a train and steal a ride.”

  * * *

  Viktor Pavlov and Vasily Yermakov faced each other across the desk, a half-empty bottle of brandy between them. Pavlov offered his hostage a glass but Yermakov refused: he didn’t want to smell of alcohol when he faced the other members of the Presidium, particularly the young upstart. They would say he had to fortify himself with brandy; and, by the time they got back to Moscow, they would be whispering that he was drunk as Nikita Krushchev used to be. He fetched a bottle of Narzan water, filled a glass and sat down opposite Pavlov. He thought: I could take him now if I wanted to. His glance strayed to the automatic on the desk. But what was the point? A struggle, the gun going off as they wrestled on the floor.… No, I will walk out of this coach like a statesman, smiling as if I were greeting the American President at Sheremetyevo airport.

  “So,” Pavlov said, “in ten minutes you will be a free man. If,” he added, “anyone is free in the Soviet Union.”

  “If anyone is free anywhere in the world. Is a man free in the West when he has a family, a mortgage and he has to crawl to his employer for fear of losing his job – losing everything? Is the American free who is conscripted into an Army to fight a war he knows nothing about? Are the students of France free as they fall bleeding from the police clubs? Is the British Government free when it’s held to ransom by a handful of strike pickets? Are the Irish free as th
ey kill each other in Belfast?” Yermakov leaned across the desk, stabbing with his finger. “No, Comrade Razin, freedom is a luxury of the past. It is merely that the Russian people realised this first.”

  “In the West,” Pavlov said, “the people are free to leave.” His voice was husky, the pupils of his eyes unnaturally dilated. But, now it was all over, he had steadied himself, as Yermakov had done. What was done was done; no more doubts; victory was his – the means had justified the ends.

  Yermakov said: “I will tell you this. The difference between democracy and socialism is merely this: In a socialist state we hide our dirty washing: in a democracy they air it.”

  “And I’ll tell you this,” Pavlov said. “The difference between democracy and a socialist state is that in a democracy a man is allowed to keep his soul.…”

  Yermakov stood up. “Very shortly,” he said, “you will be in a position, according to your faith, to give the ultimate judgemeht on that.” He swallowed the rest of his mineral water. “And now I’ll get my coat. You are, I presume, allowing me to go?”

  “Of course.”

  Yermakov returned, buttoning his coat, adjusting his shapka. He glanced at his watch. 13.59. He stuck out his hand. “You are an outstanding man. I wish you had been on the right side.”

  Yermakov made his way along the bridge then turned right across the snow towards the railway station. As he drew near they began to clap and cheer. Yermakov adjusted the smile on his face as the dark-coated men from the Kremlin stepped forward to wring his hand and slap him on the back. As a survivor of long-standing, he had heard such applause before. It reminded him of distant gunfire – the prelude to a battle.

  From the coach Viktor Pavlov saw them bring Anna to the front of the crowd. But she didn’t wave. For a moment she was his life: the crusade behind him. His brain cleared and certain figures began to settle into an unarguable equation. Viktor Pavlov didn’t want to know the answer. He took a last long drink of brandy, fighting to keep it in his stomach. The Masada Complex. He walked to the end of the carriage and tossed the bottle out of the door, hearing it break against the side of the ravine. At that moment a machine gun opened up from behind a clump of boulders with a deep bark. The bullets slammed into the woodwork around him, shattering the windows. He grabbed the Gruyanov and fired back. He thought he saw a body fall. Another clutch of bullets whipped into the carriage and he thought: They’re trying to get the detonator. He let go of the machine gun. As he stood up, a bullet caught him in the chest throwing him against the wall. The blood pumped steadily from his chest. More bullets hit the carriage, grouping around the detonator. With his hand to his chest, Viktor Pavlov made his way through the streets of Beirut with an Uzi sub-machine gun under his arm.…

  * * *

  The explosion sent blast-waves loaded with snow over the crowd outside the railway station; they ducked their heads as the tortured air pushed at their faces. The explosion chased its way around the mountains before finding an exit and losing itself in Siberia. The bridge snapped in the middle, breaking the back of the coach. It seemed to fall in slow motion beneath a mushroom of smoke and snow veined with flame. Bridge and coach disappeared and for a long time there was silence.

  ARRIVAL

  The Trans-Siberian pulled out of Shilka at 21.19 on the twelfth day. Libby Chandler shared a compartment with a sailor bound for Vladivostock who snored, a New Zealander who talked enthusiastically of being bathed by a Geisha girl immediately on arrival in Japan and a Scottish schoolmistress with relatives in Hong Kong.

  When they arrived at Ksenievskaya at 04.32 on the thirteenth day two men, one with very shaggy features, the other with an inquisitive, bird-like face, were found half-frozen on the roof of the train. They were chased away by sleepy railway officials: such escapades were the stuff of Siberia and who were they to hand them over to the police?

  On the fourteenth day, after passing through the mock Jewish settlement of Birobidzan, the train finally pulled into Khabarovsk, the city named after Yerofei Khabarov who, in the seventeenth century, helped to tame the natives by pillage and torture.

  Today Khabarovsk is the biggest city on the Pacific side of Irkutsk, 8,531 kilometres by rail from Moscow. It throbs with industry and is the junction for foreign travellers going east on the Trans-Siberian. Here they board a train which has air-conditioning and better-looking girl attendants; it takes them 736 kilometres to the port of Nakhodka where they embark by boat for Japan.

  Travellers spend the night at the Khabarovsk Hotel and that’s where Libby found Colonel Yury Razin waiting for her in her room. He greeted her cordially and waved her to a chair as if it were his room.

  Libby said: “Get out.”

  Razin held up his hand. “Give me three minutes. All right?”

  Libby sat down abruptly, feeling sick. “What do you want? Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Quite enough,” Razin said, “But I admire you and I want to give you a few words of advice. Listen carefully. As you know, we are at great pains to stop our … our shared experience being recounted in the West. Now” – he studied her face – “I presume Bridges gave you some sort of story to send to his newspaper. Am I right?”

  She didn’t reply and he went on: “This is the position. We’re holding Mr. Wagstaff for a few months. When we finally release him the story will be so old that it will have lost its impact. And no one will take him seriously anyway. Bridges can’t leave without an exit visa and we shall ensure that he cannot make any contact with his office – or contact with anyone who might be able to get his report out of the country. That, Miss Chandler, leaves you.”

  Razin stood up and went to the door. “I want to tell you this. If you do as you’re told and don’t transmit Bridges’ story then perhaps one day you will be able to meet him again. If you do then Bridges is a dead man.” He closed the door gently behind him.

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Of the many books I have read during my research for this novel I should like, in particular, to acknowledge my debt to To the Great Ocean by Harmon Tupper, published by Secker and Warburg in Britain and Little, Brown and Co. in America; A History of Russian Railways by J. N. Westwood, published by George Allen and Unwin; Romantic Railways by Kenneth Westcott Jones, published by Arlington Books; The Jews in Soviet Russia Since 1917 edited by Lionel Kochan, published by the Oxford University Press; Between Hammer and Sickle published by Signet Books.