‘Vodka?’ Ben asked.
Akiko poured herself a glass and sipped it. ‘No, water.’
‘I didn’t think they did that stuff around here.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I was going to ask you the same.’ Ben examined her neck. If anything, the cuts and bruising seemed worse.
‘I’m a little sore,’ she said, moving her head from side to side, checking the level of discomfort. ‘The cuts were clean. No infection. And I think the cold helped.’ She drank some water. ‘You can see my wounds, but I can’t see yours.’
‘I . . .’ Ben choked. He was about to say that he was fine when the emotion suddenly welled up and overwhelmed him. The truth was that he’d been having problems. He kept seeing the frightened disbelief in the eyes of the man whose neck he’d broken, and hearing the sound the snowplow bucket made when he hit the other man—a dull, crunching, bone-breaking thud. Sleep provided the only relief. What scared him most was that those eyes would soon haunt him there as well.
He felt Akiko’s arms around him. They held each other in a motionless embrace for a full minute, an eternity, aware of each other’s heartbeat, their breathing.
Akiko released him.
‘Sorry . . .’ he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
‘What for?’
Ben shook his head.
‘You did what you had to do. Like your father would have done.’
Ben understood what she meant. There was a moment when he had felt an awful responsibility for Akiko, and he’d taken other lives to protect her. He hadn’t been given a choice, or rather, he had been given a stark choice: to do what he knew in a split second had to be done, or be responsible for letting her die. In that instant, Ben had been given a window into the reality of Curtis Foxx’s world, and his choices. Curtis had done what he’d had to do, which was to leave his wife and child. The alternative was to put them at terrible risk from potentially malevolent forces that wouldn’t have cared about collateral damage. Curtis had given his life for theirs, endured a slow and lonely death that crept up on him over the years, knowing that his son was growing daily and that he would never see him, have a relationship with him. And all the while the awful truth of KAL 007 burned into him while he honored the promise he’d made to his country—to keep its terrible secret. And suddenly Ben loved his father, a man he never knew on the one hand, but knew instinctively on the other, just as if he had grown up with him in his life.
He felt Akiko’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘We were never going to win. My mother probably died years ago. It was a foolish thing to come to Russia and expect to find her.’
Ben didn’t know what to say. Even if he was ready to call it quits, it wasn’t as if they could just leave, and they both knew it. There was the murder of Oleg back at Khabarovsk, and the two killers left in the snows of Ulan-Ude. With Luydmila’s help, Ben and Akiko had managed to get away, but sooner or later they would have to hand their passports to someone behind a hotel reception counter or at a passport control point and a red flag would be raised with the tourist police against their names.
Ben went over to the window. ‘The weather’s lifting.’ There was a patch of blue sky, people moving around, a few dogs and a . . . ‘Hey,’ he exclaimed, ‘what’s that doing here?’
A large green and white helicopter was perched on a plateau of raised ground at the highest point of the settlement, its main rotor blades drooping. A man in a red parka was on top of the machine checking the rotor heads and sweeping away the loose snow.
‘Can you read the writing on the side?’ he asked.
Akiko joined him at the window. ‘It says, “European Softwood and Lumber Company”.’
The village was too poor to have a helicopter at its disposal. There didn’t appear to be any hangar facilities up there, which explained why it was sitting out in the open during the storm.
‘Maybe it put down to get out of the weather,’ Ben suggested.
The door opened and Marat strode in.
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he said in Russian. ‘I’ve found someone for you to talk with.’
Akiko passed this on to Ben, who stuffed bread into his pockets and the cakes in his mouth and followed them out.
The wind had died completely, which made the bitter sub-zero temperature bearable. The sun burst through the patch of blue moving slowly across the sky, warmed their faces and caused them to squint. They shuffled down a narrow path behind Marat, through calf-deep snow between the black weather-beaten huts, and into a kind of general store containing a selection of goods from food items to basic hardware. The store was empty but for a man who was probably younger than he looked, because he looked about 100. His face was covered in liver spots and he was bent over double and leaned on a cane. He looked up at them sideways, his head turned at an odd angle.
‘These are the two I told you about,’ said Marat in Russian. ‘This is Akiko.’
‘Good morning,’ the old man said.
‘Good morning,’ Akiko replied.
‘You are looking for foreign national prisoners, I hear.’
‘Yes.’
‘I am one of those.’
‘You are from North Korea?’
‘Yes. I was brought here as a young man.’
‘I believe my mother was a prisoner in a camp, possibly in this area.’
‘Do you have any idea which camp? There were several around here. I spent most of my life in Labor Camp ZJa5756. It was nearby, over the hill behind the village, but they pulled it down and resettled us.’
‘No, no idea.’
‘What was her crime?’
‘No crime. She was a passenger on a plane that was shot down.’
‘A plane crash?’
‘Possibly.’
‘I knew a woman who was held at the camp. I heard that she had survived such an incident, though it might have been a train crash. Or a car crash. Sometimes my mind wanders and I find it hard to remember. Tell me, are you Korean?’
‘No, Japanese.’
‘Hmm . . . too bad. I seem to remember that this woman was Korean. It was such a long time ago. I have tried to forget, but it comes back, though often the memory changes, the details merge.’
Akiko nodded. Perhaps this was just an old man whose mind had gone.
‘Did you say that she was Japanese? Where are you from?’
‘Japan.’
‘It was a long time ago. I was driving a crane. I was drunk. I made a fatal mistake.’
Akiko felt the man’s eyes searching her face. He held up a bony finger and pointed at her, the tip trembling. It was as if he recalled her from somewhere, but then the certainty drifted away and his hand dropped back onto the handle of the cane.
‘What happened?’ Akiko pressed him.
‘I told you, I made a mistake. I had been drinking. Yes, I was drunk. The log dropped from the crane when I tried to place it on the stack. She was killed, you know, crushed. I killed her. She was Korean. No, she was a Mongol.’
‘What’s happening?’ asked Ben. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Akiko. ‘It is difficult. His memory wanders. He is too old.’
‘Or maybe he’s had a little too much of the local firewater,’ Ben suggested.
‘You remind me of her,’ the man said. ‘What’s your name? Hers was Nami.’
‘What?’ That name! Her mother’s. Hearing it jolted her. ‘What did you say?’
‘She was a Mongol. Yes, I’m sure of it—a foreign national. But I killed her.’
‘What was her name?’ asked Akiko, holding the man’s thin arms, her fingers squeezing his bones.
‘What’s going on?’ Ben asked.
Marat burst through the door. ‘Follow me. Now! The police—they have come to arrest you.’
Before Akiko or Ben could react, a large Mongol swinging a length of steel chain came through the back door. An instant later, a second man came
through the front door, wielding a lump of wood like a club, blocking any chance of escape.
The man with the chain shouted at Akiko and kept shouting. She put her hands above her head, as did Marat. Ben mimicked them. The old man cowered back against a row of farming tools and plumbing supplies. The two men approached Ben carefully, nervously, as if expecting some form of retaliation, the way people approach a wild and dangerous animal. They yelled at him and the one with the chain darted in and swung it across Ben’s stomach. He sank to the floor and yelled, ‘What do they want?’
‘Your hands, put them behind your back,’ Akiko said.
Ben did as he was told and felt duct tape being wound around his wrists. Akiko received the same treatment, as did Marat.
‘We are so sorry,’ Akiko told their guide.
Marat said something that earned him a sharp whack across the shoulders with the club.
‘They are not police,’ Akiko hurriedly told Ben as they were marched across the village. The two men herded them toward a small, two-story brick building that had seen better days, whole chunks of stucco dropping off here and there.
‘Then what are they?’ Ben asked. ‘Concerned citizens?’
‘Sons of ex-prisoners,’ she whispered. ‘It came over the radio—two westerners wanted by police for three murders. Marat heard them talking about this in the village. The police are arriving this afternoon to take us into custody.’
The man without the chain barked at her, warning her to keep her mouth shut.
Once inside the old building, they were led down a flight of stairs. The two men put Ben up against a wall and searched him, taking his passport, wallet, wristwatch, belt and shoes. They then pushed him into a small room sealed with a heavy rusting steel door and banged it shut. There were several such doors. Ben heard two more slamming, one each for Akiko and Marat. He examined his surroundings. The walls were brick and mortar, both crumbling in places with rising damp. They were probably once food or grain stores, he thought, rather than prison cells. There was nothing to sit on, shit in, or wash with. There were no windows. The air was heavy with a damp, musty smell and a black creeping mold occupied most of the walls and floor.
After ten minutes of silence, during which the only sound was his own breathing, he heard Akiko’s voice call his name, followed by the clang of the chain thrashing against her door and a man shouting at her. Ben sat on the floor and drew up his knees, but the floor was cold and within another twenty minutes he was pacing, just to keep warm. And then he saw the eyes. They were surprised eyes, the life slipping from them as the swinging length of steel reinforcing rod turned the man’s vertebrae and the spinal cord within to mush. The eyes lost focus, dulling, the head rolling to one side as the body simultaneously crumpled to the snow. There was also the man he had killed with the snowplow and the feeling of triumph that came with the moment, the exultation turning almost instantly into a ball of anguish and disgust that ate away at his insides. He had killed. Twice.
Ben heard Akiko’s voice again, muffled by the walls. She was talking to someone. Whatever happened, he had to get her out of Russia. She hadn’t killed anyone. She was the victim. His victim, just like the men he had killed.
A key suddenly rattled in the lock and the door flew open. It was Marat and his son, Anatoly. Akiko and the Korean man from the store hovered behind them. The Mongols who’d locked them up were nowhere to be seen.
‘Where are our jailers?’
‘Drunk,’ Akiko said, handing Ben his passport, shoes and other items. There was no money in his wallet. ‘They are congratulating themselves.’
‘So the old guy sprang us?’ Ben asked as he hurriedly dressed.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s going to get in trouble. Why’s he on our side?’
‘Because I remind him of Nami.’
‘What?!’
There was no time to talk about it. Marat whistled softly, urgently, and gestured at them to follow him and Anatoly up the stairs.
They regrouped in the shadow of the building’s brick columns and surveyed the open, snow-covered ground between them and the black huts clustered in random fashion more than fifty yards away. It was mid-afternoon. The sun had retreated, veiled behind a layer of light gray cloud that had lifted somewhat. They squinted into the glare. A few people dressed in black shuffled through the snow here and there, ignoring them.
Marat and Anatoly discussed the options with Akiko, who translated them for Ben.
‘The dogs and sleds are over there to the right, around the back of the hut on the edge of the square,’ she said, pointing it out. ‘The sleds are packed and ready to go. Marat and his son will go now and hitch the dogs. We will follow in two minutes.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Mongolia. Marat is going to get us across. He knows people.’
‘Okay,’ Ben acknowledged with a nod. Half a plan was better than none.
Marat and Anatoly were already on the move, sauntering across the square like they had all the time in the world.
Ben glanced back over his shoulder to make an observation about this to Akiko, but she was no longer behind him. She was saying goodbye to the old Korean who’d come to their aid. As he watched, she bowed and then kissed the man on the cheek. He pulled out a piece of cloth and wiped his eyes with it. Akiko wiped her eyes with the backs of her gloved hands. Ben wondered what he knew about Nami. The Korean turned and shuffled off without looking back, across the square in the opposite direction from Marat and Anatoly.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Akiko said, answering the look on Ben’s face when she rejoined him. ‘We need to go.’
Ben followed her into the glare, bursting with questions. They walked slowly, forcing themselves to appear casual, mimicking their guides’ example. They passed an old couple walking together, neither of whom looked up, choosing instead to watch their feet push through the snow.
The dogs were barking as they neared the black hut. Marat was talking to them in a hushed voice, trying to keep them calm. The animals yelped with excitement, keen to go. Akiko and Ben rounded the edge of the building and saw the sleds lined up. Marat was rubbing one dog’s head between its gray pointed ears, while Anatoly checked the harnesses. Neither Ben nor Akiko needed to be told what to do and assumed their positions on the sleds. Marat and his son jumped on behind them. The dogs took the strain at the sound of Marat’s voice. With the snap of the whip, they surged forward. The police from Ulan-Ude could arrive at any moment.
Marat turned the dogs toward the higher ground behind the settlement. The animals bounded in their harnesses, straining with the effort required to drag their loads up the hill. It was likely that the police would take the same trail Marat and Anatoly had used yesterday, which would bring them into the lower part of the settlement. The dogs kept close to the huts, avoiding the cleared ground between the buildings and the trees. After 100 meters or so, Marat guided the dogs across toward the cover of the trees. Spread out below were the black roofs of the settlement and something that caught Ben’s eye, the sun flashing off its polished green and white paint scheme. The helicopter. He could see the pilots in their seats, headsets on, running through checklists. He pushed himself up off the sled to get a better view, which caused a rail to dig into the snow as the sled turned and it toppled suddenly onto its side. Anatoly helped Ben haul himself out of the dry powder and then they both righted the sled. Ben grabbed his pack and found what he was looking for, a voice in his head telling him that this was the right thing to do. He lifted his legs high, awkwardly, trying to run to Akiko through snow that was thigh deep.
‘Get your things,’ he told her, breathing heavily with effort.
‘What?’
‘Get your backpack and let’s go. Thank Marat and Anatoly for us.’
‘What are you—’
‘Akiko. Do it now. We’re going to take that.’ He gestured down the hill at the helicopter.
Akiko explained the situation to Marat, who shook hi
s head dubiously.
Ben and Akiko were fugitives, so Ben was doing them a favor, but from the looks on their faces, he could see that the Mongols thought he was crazy. He shook both father’s and son’s hands and started galloping and stumbling down the hill, lifting his knees high out of the fine, dry snow. Akiko followed.
They approached the helicopter from behind.
‘Go knock on the door there,’ Ben said, indicating the right-hand front door. ‘Quickly.’
A whine suddenly electrified the air and a shadow passed slowly overhead as the helicopter’s main rotor began to turn.
‘What will I say?’
‘I don’t know. Ask them if they’ve seen Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. Whatever you say, give them a big smile. Don’t spook them. Go now.’
The tail rotor was spinning faster.
‘Hurry,’ he said.
Akiko walked forward, uncertain about what she was doing or why. She glanced back at Ben and saw him duck under the long tail boom and disappear from view. She walked to the door as instructed and knocked on the window. The pilot turned toward her and clearly got a fright, not expecting to see anyone standing there, his eyes momentarily wide. Akiko gave him a smile and a wave, which made him relax a little. The man reached overhead, flicked a switch or two, and then leaned forward, turned something on the front instrument panel and the motor died. The window slid down and he angrily told her in Russian to stand clear of the aircraft.
Ben appeared on the other side of the helicopter. He tapped the window beside the other pilot with something that startled Akiko. Both men turned toward the direction of the sound and instantly put their gloved hands above their heads as they saw the barrel of a silenced Makarov pointing at them.
‘Akiko!’ Ben called. ‘Come here!’
She ran around in front of the chopper’s stubby nose.
Ben again tapped the pilot’s window and gestured at him to lower it.
‘Tell them to undo their seat harnesses one-handed. Tell them to do it slowly,’ Ben told Akiko. ‘No sudden movements.’
The Zero Option Page 45