Five minutes later, their hoods up, the car locked, and each with a pair of binoculars hung round his neck, they set off down the track.
The settlement had been abandoned for at least a couple of years. The handful of wooden shacks had been ransacked. Rubbish poked through the snow – rusting sheets of corrugated tin roofing, shattered window frames, rotting planks, a torn fishing net, bottles, tin cans, a holed rowing boat, bits of machinery, ripped sacking and, bizarrely, a row of cinema seats. A timber-framed greenhouse fitted with polythene instead of glass had blown over on to its side.
Kelso ducked his head into one of the derelict buildings. It was roofless, freezing. It stank of animal excreta.
As he came out O’Brian caught his eye and shrugged.
Kelso stared towards the edge of the clearing. ‘What’s that over there?’
Both men raised their binoculars and trained them on what appeared to be a row of wooden crosses, half-hidden by the trees – Russian crosses, with three pairs of arms: short at the top, longer in the centre, and slanted downwards, left to right, at the bottom.
‘Oh, that’s marvellous,’ said Kelso, trying to laugh. ‘A cemetery. That’s bloody perfect.’
‘Let’s take a look,’ said O’Brian.
He set off eagerly with long, determined strides. Kelso, more reluctant, followed as best he could. Twenty years of cigarettes and Scotch seemed to have convened a protest meeting in his heart and lungs. He was sweating with the effort of moving through the snow. He had a pain in his side.
It was a cemetery right enough, sheltered by the trees, and as they came closer he could see six – or was it eight? – graves, arranged in twos, with a little wooden fence around each pair. The crosses were home-made but well done, with white enamel name-plates and small photographs covered in glass, in the traditional Russian manner. A. I. Sumbatov, read the first one, 22.1.20 – 9.8.81. The picture showed a man, in middle age, in uniform. Next to him was P. J. Sumbatova, 6.12.26 – 14.11.92. She, too, was in uniform: a heavy-faced woman with a severe central parting. Next to them were the Yezhovs. And next to the Yezhovs, the Golubs. They were married couples, all about the same age. They were all in uniform. T. Y. Golub had been the first to die, in 1961. It was impossible to see his face. It had been scratched out.
‘This must be the place,’ said O’Brian, quietly. ‘No question. This is it. Who are they all, Fluke? Army?’
‘No.’ Kelso shook his head slowly. ‘The uniform is NKVD, I think. And here, look. Look at this.’
It was the final pair of graves, the ones furthest from the clearing, set slightly apart from the others. They had been the last survivors. B. D. Chizhikov – a major, by the look of his insignia – 19.2.19 – 9.3.96. And next to him M. G. Chizhikova, 16.4.24 – 16.3.96. She had outlasted her husband by exactly one week. Her face was also obliterated.
They stood like mourners for a while: silent, their heads bowed.
‘And then there were none,’ murmured O’Brian.
‘Or one.’
‘I don’t think so. No way. This place has been empty quite a while. Shit,’ he said suddenly, and took a kick at the snow, ‘would you believe it, after all that? We missed him?’
The trees were thick here. It was impossible to see beyond a few dozen yards.
O’Brian said, ‘I’d better get a shot of this while it’s light. You wait here. I’ll go back to the car.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Kelso. ‘Thank you.’
‘Scared, Fluke?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Whoo,’ said O’Brian. He raised his arms and fluttered his fingers above his head.
‘If you try playing any jokes, O’Brian, I’m warning you, I’ll kill you.’
‘Ho ho ho,’ said O’Brian, moving away towards the track. ‘Ho ho ho.’ He disappeared beyond the trees. Kelso heard his stupid laugh for a few more seconds and then there was silence – just the rustle of the snow and the sound of his own breathing.
My God, what a set-up this was, just look at these dates: they were a story in themselves. He walked back to the first grave, pulled off his gloves, took out his notebook. Then he went down on one knee and began to copy the details from the crosses. An entire troop of bodyguards had been dispatched into the forest more than forty years earlier to protect one solitary baby boy, and all of them had stuck it out, had stayed at their posts, out of loyalty or habit or fear, until eventually they had dropped down dead, one after another. They were like those Japanese soldiers who stayed hidden in the jungle, unaware that the war was over.
He began to wonder how close Mikhail Safanov might have managed to get in the spring of 1953, and then he consciously abandoned this line of thought. It didn’t bear contemplating – not yet; not here.
It was hard to hold the pencil between his cold fingers, and difficult to write as the snowflakes settled across the page. Still, he worked his way along to the final crosses.
‘B. D. Chizhikov,’ he wrote. ‘Tough-looking, brutal face. Dark-skinned. A Georgian?? Died aged 77 …’
He wondered what Comrades Golub and Chizhikova might have looked like, and who had blacked out their faces, and why. There was something infinitely sinister about their featureless silhouettes. He found himself writing, ‘Could they have been purged?’
Oh, where the hell was O’Brian?
His back was aching. His knees were wet. He stood and another thought occurred to him. He brushed the page clear of snow again and licked the end of his pencil.
‘The graves are all well kept,’ he wrote, ‘plots appear to be weeded. If this place is abandoned, like the buildings, shouldn’t they have grown over?’
‘O’Brian?’ he called. ‘R. J.?’
The snow deadened his shout.
He put away the notebook and began walking quickly away from the cemetery, pulling on his gloves. The wind stirred in the abandoned buildings ahead of him, catching the snow and lifting it here and there like the corner of a curtain. He picked his way across the ground, following O’Brian’s large footprints until he came to the start of the track. The prints led off clearly in the direction of the Toyota. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and twisted the focus. The stricken car filled his vision, so still and distant it seemed unreal. There was no sign of anyone around it.
Odd.
He turned round very slowly, a complete 360 degrees, scanning through the binoculars. Forest. Tumbled walls and wreckage. Forest. Graves. Forest. Track. Toyota. Forest again.
He lowered the binoculars, frowning, then began walking towards the car, still following O’Brian’s trail. It took him a couple of minutes. Nobody else had been this way in the snow, that much was obvious: there were two pairs of tracks heading up to the clearing and one pair heading back. He approached the car and, by lengthening his stride and planting his feet in the prints of the bigger man, he was able to retrace O’Brian’s movements exactly: so and so … and … so …
Kelso stopped, arms outstretched, wobbling. The American had definitely come this way, round to the back of the Toyota, had taken out the metal camera case – it was missing, he could see – and then it looked as though something had distracted him, because instead of heading back up the track to the settlement his footprints turned sharply and led directly away from the vehicle, at a right angle, straight into the forest.
He called O’Brian’s name, softly. And then, in a spasm of panic, he cupped his hands and bellowed it as loud as he could.
Again, that same curious deadening effect, as if the trees were swallowing his words.
Cautiously, he stepped into the undergrowth.
Oh, but he had always hated forests, hadn’t he? Hated even the woodland around Oxford, with its poetic shafts of dusty bloody sunlight, and its mossy vegetation, and the way things suddenly flew up at you or rustled away! And branches slapping back into your face … Sorry, sorry … Oh yes, give him a wide open space any day. Give him a hill. Give him a cliff-top. Give him the sparkling sea!
&nbs
p; ‘R. J.?’ What a damned silly name to have to yell, but he yelled it louder anyway: ‘R. J.!’
There were no footprints visible here. The ground was rough. He could smell the decay of a swamp somewhere, as rank as dog’s breath, and it was dark, too. He would have to watch himself, he thought, keep his back firmly to the road, because if he went too far, he would lose his bearings, and maybe end up walking further and further away from the car, until there would be nothing left to do but lie down in the darkness and freeze.
There was a sudden heavy crash off to his left, and then a succession of smaller bursts, like echoes. It sounded at first like someone running but then he realised it was only snow dislodging from the tops of some branches and plunging to the earth.
He cupped his hands.
‘R. J …!’
And then he heard a human sound. A moan, was that it? A sob?
He tried to place where it was coming from. And then he heard it again. Nearer, and behind him now, it seemed to be. He pushed through a gap between a couple of close-growing trees into a tiny clearing, and there was O’Brian’s camera case lying open on the ground and there, beyond it, was O’Brian himself, upside down and swinging gently, his fingertips barely brushing the surface of the snow, suspended by his left leg from a length of oily rope.
Chapter Twenty-six
THE ROPE WAS attached to the top of a tall birch sapling, bent almost double by O’Brian’s weight. The reporter was groaning. He was barely conscious.
Kelso knelt by his head. At the sight of him, O’Brian began struggling feebly. He didn’t seem able to form a sentence.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kelso. He tried to sound calm. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get you down.’
Get him down. Kelso took off his gloves. Get him down. Right. Using what? He had a knife for sharpening pencils, but it was in the car. He patted his pockets and found his lighter. He flicked it on, showed the flame to O’Brian.
‘We’ll get you down. Look. You’ll be all right.’
He stood and reached up, grabbing O’Brian by his booted ankle. A noose of thin rope had dug deep into the leather. It took all Kelso’s weight to drag him down far enough for him to apply the flame to the taut rope just above his sole. O’Brian’s shoulders rested in the snow.
‘Asornim,’ he was saying. ‘Asornim.’
The rope was wet. It seemed to take an age for the lighter to have any effect. Kelso had to stop and shake it. The flame was beginning to turn blue and die before the first strands started to smoulder. But then under the strain they parted fast. The last of them snapped and the sapling whipped back and Kelso tried to support the legs with his free hand but he couldn’t manage it and O’Brian’s body crashed heavily into the snow.
The reporter struggled to sit up, managed to prop himself on his elbows, then slumped back again. He was still mumbling something. Kelso knelt beside him.
‘You’re okay. You’ll be fine. We’ll get you out of here.’
‘Asornim.’
I sore nim?
I saw him.
‘Saw who? Who did you see?’
‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck.’
‘Can you bend your leg? Is it broken?’ Kelso shuffled on his knees through the snow and began digging with his fingernails at the knot of the noose, embedded in the side of O’Brian’s boot.
‘Fluke –’ O’Brian held up his arm, desperately flexing his fingers. ‘Give me a lift here, will you?’
Kelso took his hand and pulled until O’Brian was sitting upright. Then he put his arm round the reporter’s broad chest and together they managed to get him up on to his feet. O’Brian stood, leaning heavily against Kelso, putting his weight on his right leg.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Not sure. Think so.’ He hobbled a few steps. ‘Just give me a minute.’
He stayed where he was, with his back to Kelso, staring into the trees. When he seemed to be breathing more normally, Kelso said, ‘Saw who?’
SAW him, said O’Brian, turning round. His eyes were wild and fearful now, searching the forest behind Kelso’s head. Saw the man. Saw him staring out of the fucking trees next to the car. Jesus. Just about jumped out of my fucking skin.
‘What do you mean? What man?’
Took one step towards him – hands up, let’s be friends, white-man-he-come-in-peace – and presto! he was gone. I mean, he vanished. Never saw him properly again after that. Heard him, though, and kind of glimpsed him once – moving fast through the forest up ahead, away to the right – sort of a sawn-off figure, like a quarterback, built low to the ground. And quick. So quick you wouldn’t believe it. Man, he seemed to move like an ape. Next thing I know, the world’s turned upside down.
‘He led me on, Fluke, you know that, don’t you? Led me right into his fucking trap. He’s probably out there now, watching us.’
He was getting his strength back, his recovery speeded by fear.
He hobbled a few steps. When he tried to put his left leg down properly he winced. But he could move it, that was something. It definitely wasn’t broken.
‘We gotta go. We gotta get out of here.’ He bent awkwardly and closed the catches on the camera case.
Kelso needed no persuading. But they would have to go carefully, he said. They had to think. They had blundered into two of his traps already – one on the track and one here – and who could guess how many more there might be. In this snow it was so damned hard to see.
‘Maybe,’ said Kelso, ‘if we try to follow my footprints –’
But his tracks were already beginning to be lost beneath the ceaseless soft downpour.
‘Who is he, Fluke?’ whispered O’Brian, as they went back into the trees. ‘I mean, what is he? What is he so goddamned scared of?’
He’s his father’s son, thought Kelso, that’s who he is. He’s a forty-five-year-old paranoid psychopath, if such a thing is possible.
‘Oh man,’ said O’Brian, ‘what was that?’
Kelso stopped.
It wasn’t another avalanche of snow from the treetops, that was for sure. It went on too long. A heavy, sustained rustling, somewhere in front of them.
‘It’s him,’ said O’Brian. ‘He’s moving again. He’s trying to head us off.’ The noise stopped abruptly and they stood, listening. ‘Now what’s he doing?’
‘Watching us, at a guess.’
Again, Kelso strained his eyes into the gloom, but it was hopeless. Dense undergrowth, great patches of shadow, occasionally broken by torrents of snow – he couldn’t get a fix on anything, it was so unlike any place he had ever seen. He was really sweating now, despite the cold. His skin was prickling.
That was when the howling started – a deafening, inhuman wail. It took Kelso a couple of seconds to realise it was the car alarm.
Then came two loud gunshots in rapid succession, a pause, and then a third.
Then silence.
AFTERWARDS, Kelso was never sure how long they stood there. He remembered only the immobilising sense of terror: the paralysis of thought and action that came from the realisation there was nothing they could do. He – whoever he was – knew where they were. He had shot up their car. He had booby-trapped the forest. He could come for them whenever he wanted. Or he could leave them where they were. There was no prospect of rescue from the outside world. He was their absolute master. Unseen. All-seeing. Omnipotent. Mad.
After a minute or two they risked a whispered conference. The telephone, said O’Brian, what if he had damaged the Inmarsat telephone? It was their only hope and it was in the back of the Toyota.
Maybe he wouldn’t know what a satellite telephone looked like, said Kelso. Maybe if they stayed where they were until dark and then went to retrieve it –
Suddenly O’Brian grabbed him hard by the elbow.
A face was looking at them through the trees.
Kelso didn’t see it at first, it was so perfectly still – so unnaturally, perfectly immobile, it took a moment for his mind to register it, to
separate the pieces from the shapes of the forest, to assemble them and declare the composite human:
Dark impassive eyes that didn’t blink. Black, arched brows. Coarse black hair hanging loose across a leathery forehead. A beard.
There was also a hood made of some kind of brown animal fur.
The apparition coughed. It grunted.
‘Com-rades,’ it said. The word was slurred, the voice harsh, like a tape being played at too slow a speed.
Kelso could feel the hair stirring on his scalp.
‘Aw, Jesus,’ said O’Brian, ‘Jesusjesusjesus –’
There was another cough and a great gathering of phlegm. A gobbet of yellow spit was ejected into the undergrowth. ‘Com-rades, I am a rude fell-ow. I cannot deny it. And I have been out of the way of hu-man com-pany. But there it is. Well then? D’yer want me to shoot yer? Yes?’
He stepped out in front of them – quickly, sharply: he barely disturbed a twig. He was wearing an old army greatcoat – patched, hacked off above the knees and belted with a length of rope – and cavalry boots into which his baggy trousers were stuffed. His hands were bare and huge. In one he carried an old rifle. In the other was the satchel with Anna Safanova’s notebook and the papers.
Kelso felt O’Brian’s grip tighten on his arm.
‘This is the book of which it is spok-en? Yes? And the papers prove it!’ The figure leaned towards them, rocking his head this way and that, studying them intently. ‘You are the ones, then? You are truly the ones?’
He came closer, peering at them with his dark eyes, and Kelso could smell the stench of his body, sour with stale sweat.
‘Or are you, perhaps, spiders?’
He took a pace back and swiftly raised the rifle, aiming it from his waist, his finger on the trigger.
‘We are the ones,’ said Kelso, quickly.
The man cocked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Imperialists?’
‘I am an English comrade. The comrade here is American.’
‘Well, well! England and America! And Engels was a Jew!’ He laughed, showing black teeth, then spat. ‘And yet you have not asked me for proof. Why so?’