Kolymsky Heights (27 page)

It happened just then that a specialist in optics, whose work I had been following, became unexpectedly available. I asked for him to be approached, he accepted, and joined us. This man was greatly surprised at our advanced work, and especially with the boosting techniques.

In the week of his arrival he asked for a private tête-à-tête and told me the following story.

Some time before, while touring facilities, his plane had been forced to land in a remote area where the only accommodation was a certain rocketry centre. He had stayed the night and one of the staff, hearing of his speciality, had asked his opinion on some recent work. This man was a designer of circuits and the question he was interested in concerned optical fibre.

In the designer’s laboratory miniature rockets were used for the testing of firing programmes – rather precise and exacting work. Missiles must constantly correct themselves in flight, and their terminal homing devices depend for accuracy on very brief rocket bursts. This requires exceedingly rapid start-up and shut-down procedures: the man’s particular field.

Some weeks before a party of officials had arrived with a new device for test. The device was an electronic circuit, boxed with two quartz pellets, apparently for frequency modulation. The device was placed in the laboratory, the man instructed to install a programme for one of the bench rockets; and they all retired to an adjacent observation room.

From here the rocket was activated – a normal ten-minute programme, allowing for many timed and recorded bursts – and after some minutes the electronic device was also remotely activated. The firing programme instantly changed. Firing did not stop. The device had been activated while it was actually going on, and it continued, not following its programme – a single prolonged burst until burn-out.

When it was safe to strip down the rocket, nothing was found wrong with it. The circuits were intact, contacts and breakers all as they should be, the heat-protected wiring (of optical fibre) perfectly cool. The designer was asked to pass a signal through the fibre. He could get no signal through it. In some way it had been rendered inactive. All the same he was asked to leave it in position for a certain number of days, and then repeat the programme. This he did. And everything worked; the optical fibre again quite operational.

He now asked, with much curiosity, what optical theory could explain such a thing …

This was the story the specialist told me, and he said that having now heard of the incident with Anton he wondered if there could be some connection.

I asked if he had told anyone else this story, and he said he had not. Optical fibre was not his field; he had almost at once forgotten it. His stay at the rocketry centre had been a mere overnight accident. A chance event.

I asked him to let me think over this event.

I thought it over, and I thought most soberly. Three years had now passed, with publication of our discovery no nearer. And far more, of course, since the work with the rogue harmonic – all that well behind us.

But not evidently finished with.

The quartz ‘pellets’, the remote boost, the ‘certain number of days’ of waiting … all this had surely to do with our rogue harmonic. The use of harmonics is not original. But
this
harmonic was original; it was not a thing come by accidentally. Somebody was using it.

I asked the specialist to remain silent a little longer and waited for my Directorate friend to visit.

When he did, I asked if work was going on with harmonics.

Yes it was going on, he said.

When was it intended to publish this work?

In time, Efraim, in time.

Had a use been found, perhaps, for the
rogue
harmonic?

He gazed at me. ‘Why do you ask?’

I told him why, and he sighed. ‘I am very sorry, Efraim. You should not have been embarrassed in this way.’

But he explained everything to me – and very frankly.

We had come on a principle of extraordinary military value. And to explain it he had first to outline the phenomenon of EMP – electro-magnetic pulse. This pulse, a side-effect of nuclear explosions, halts all electrical current in its vicinity – all current flowing
in wires
. Power stations stop, cars stop – and telephones, radios, lifts, lights; everything depending on electricity stops. Including, significantly, military command and control centres: no counter action could be ordered.

The answer to this paralysis was found in optical fibre; a material not susceptible to EMP but very efficient in conveying signals. Because missiles in flight could also be affected – the firing circuits and fuses immobilised by nuclear blasts in nearby orbit – they too had been re-equipped. Now every nuclear power was invulnerable to EMP.

To EMP but not – now – to everything. For our chance discovery had opened a new window of vulnerability.

At the simplest level it could physically blind ground forces – on foot, in tanks, or in bunkers; for the frequency penetrated all structures. With missiles, and nuclear activity generally, its potential was incalculably greater …

At present the tests were at laboratory level, but it was hoped to conduct them later on a missile in flight. Under current agreements the flight-testing of missiles had to be internationally supervised. Plainly,
this
test could not be supervised. But as it happened, China was not a party to these agreements, and a new guidance system was under development there. It would be flight-tested to their base at Lop Nor; indeed the commander there, a General Liu, had already been given advance instructions. Means were now being considered of
ourselves
supervising this test, by satellite …

And how, I asked him after a moment, would this affect our discoveries for sighting the blind.

‘Efraim,’ he said gently, ‘you
know
what is needed to sight the blind, and how that operation is completed. To produce a paper showing the harmonics would lead to an investigation of all that band of harmonics. And then?’

He went on much longer – in fact with good arguments.

(Ours was a
military
establishment. It had produced a military weapon. We knew other weapons developed here – disgusting ones. This one had all their potency but none of their vices. Our country was in a state of great instability, a beggared giant with nuclear rivals on all sides. The people might yet be exposed to horrors. The Directorate had a duty to protect the people. Sighting the blind was a magnificent thing. But for the moment
this
must have priority. People lived with blindness, but could they live after events that this was designed to prevent?)

‘Come – think it over! You’ll agree!’ he said.

I did agree – why not?

But all I thought was: they aren’t going to publish.

Not now, perhaps not ever. It was slowly sinking in.

‘Efraim,’ he urged me, on leaving next day, ‘forget this military application. Your achievement is very great and no resources will be spared for you to complete it – and the world one day to have it! Each one of us at the Directorate, I assure you, is absolutely aware of what you are doing. Press on with it!’

They were by no means aware of what I was doing. (For that same night I thought ‘To hell with them all!’ For everything they had an argument, and everything could be used for good or evil. Now the good must have a chance. It had come to me by chance. Now it would have another; and I embarked on the course that you know.) But we certainly pressed on!

Our lenses at the time were bulky, heavy, quite awkward in use. This our specialist soon changed, for he was already a
leader in the field of thin-film layers. And soon too we were engaged on improvements to the insertion procedures, trying them out on a batch basis (the operation is quite reversible); and were still doing it at the time of the explosion.

Of our military work here I will not speak, so I say nothing of the explosion; except that it was calamitous. We lost the genetics lab. We lost the apes’ quarters – also their adjoining sick bay. Several apes were in it then recovering from operation, their eyes bandaged, and those who survived the blast we got outside as soon as possible, for a rollcall – although they were very few in number.

The situation was now altogether desperate. Those apes still alive were badly contaminated. In a few weeks, only one of them was left – as it happened the least representative one; a testimony to my own hubris, and of a line that must not be crossed.

This creature I had made myself, in a Petri dish: a non-hardy female. By then we could identify early the non-hardy and should simply have washed her away. But I was then working with the foetus and investigating what else we could draw from it.

Since the contents of the dish (now fifteen years old, by name Ludmilla) would not be hardy, there would be ‘intelligence’. I decided to discover
how
intelligent this cell cluster could be made by copying cerebral material from Sibir’s foetus and trying to incorporate it. And this experiment was a great success – but a frivolous one, an unforgivable one, and one that must never be repeated! For Ludmilla is neither ape nor human. (In fact she is part Sibir, part Neanderthaloid, and part ape: an animal of a kind, but with a
mind
that I think is human.) The apes did not accept her and she lived apart, attached only to me. I gave her lessons which, alas, she found tiresome. On these occasions she had to sleep the night in a room kept for my Directorate friend; which room by association she also disliked!

This she was doing on the night of the explosion – in safety.
I rushed out myself, ordering her to stay in safety. And an ape would have done so, for they obey instructions. But she was concerned only for
my
safety and ran crying after me – into the secondary blast. This happened as I picked my way through the genetics lab. I had put on the mask and goggles we always wear in this lab, but the poor child was without them …

Well, but see how things turn out.

She was contaminated, of course, and also horribly blinded – her eyes requiring urgent removal for they were destroyed and infected – and thus became our first real patient. The others, remember, were
experiments
, still with their own eyes. Ludmilla had none; and so became the first true case of blindness in the world to be sighted by our operation.

Well, it’s quite standardised now, the operation – simple and brief. All the parts of it are here: the incisions, the junction, the graft, the fibre, the regulator chip, the lenses.
And
the boost – the good and the bad, you see. All here.

‘All here.’

Porter thought at first he was being offered a chocolate. The old man sat looking at it in his open palm: a gilt-wrapped dinner mint. Then he took another out of the drawer, silver-wrapped.

‘On disk. Four-centimetre disks. The silver one is by way of a history. A personal one, for you. The other has the technical information, a few hundred pages. It’s compressed – they’ll know what to do with it, the people you give it to.’

Porter looked at the fancy coins.

‘What do
I
do with it?’ he said.

Rogachev poked again in the drawer and withdrew two slim pouches, themselves not much wider than dinner mints.

‘They go in here. And the pouches in a belt.’ He found the belt, too, a canvas one. ‘And the belt next to your skin. The disks won’t deform or break. They’re encased, but don’t try to open the cases. It needs laboratory conditions to open them – below minus 240 Centigrade anyway, or they’ll be erased.
There’s a temperature lock. That’s the most important thing to remember. Now – it’s late. Do you want a last drink?’

It was indeed very late. It was almost three, and again they had talked the night away.

Porter went and got himself a drink, and when he came back found the old man sitting with his eyes closed, deathly tired. But the disks were in the pouches, and the pouches in the belt, and on the desk under his hand was an envelope.

‘Here’s the letter. You’ll need it to show the Evenks. It’s just blank paper – a few sheets.’

‘How about the ring – I tell them it couldn’t be found?’

‘No. It’s here.’ He opened his hand. ‘My wife’s, actually … There’s no one to send it to, and they’ll cremate me in a few weeks. You have it. You may find the inscription a little sentimental.’

He turned it over and over in his hand for a few moments, smiling rather crookedly, and offered it with a magnifying glass.

Through the glass Porter examined the gold band. The engraving was on the inside, its Russian words very worn:
As
our love the circle has no end
.

He read them silently.

‘Her death is why I’m here,’ Rogachev said simply. ‘This is how it happened. A funny circle, life, eh? Well, that’s the ring. And here’s the book. Put the belt on.’

Porter put it on, under his clothing.

‘You’ve remembered the temperature?’

‘240 degrees.’

‘
Minus
240. Even below that. Say liquid hydrogen, it’s easier. That’s to allow it to be opened. Once safely opened, no special conditions are needed. They’ll figure out how to read it. Remember, the
gold
one has the technical information. Now … Do I thank you again, or is it just goodbye?’

It was just goodbye, without words. And it was in the library; their four hands clasped for long seconds. Then the chair was whining out of the room, and Porter’s last view was of a single arm raised.
Vale!

In ten minutes, goodbye to Stepanka too, and hello to the washroom. And soon after, to his bunk.

All done now. Everything accomplished. Under the covers he felt the belt. Just a few hours to go. And in two or three days he’d be gone for good. He thought over the arrangements, but the day had been long. Up most of last night, little rest after it, and none at all since they’d been called in from the wind and the snow. He closed his eyes, drifting into darkness.

At the time that Kolya Khodyan and the Evenks had been summoned from the wind and the snow to learn that a name had been chosen for the baby, another man was learning some news, far away.

It was eight time zones away, and eight o’clock in the morning. And it was a very curious piece of news.

He knew he must have read it wrong.

He read it again. The print was so poor, it was hard to read anyway. His eyes were bad today. He looked up from the newspaper and blinked at the sea. It was at the other end of the short side street and he could see just a bit of it, beyond the promenade, the water a surly lead colour. A palm tree was lashing about there.

He had drunk a lot last night, for his cold. It hadn’t done anything for his cold but it had given him a bad head. God, how he hated the Black Sea!

Alexei ‘Alyosha’ Ponomarenko sat under the flapping awning outside the café and longed for the north. He’d never had a cold in the north. Wonderful Green Cape. Wonderful Kolymsky. Pure, pure snow; good comrades, plenty of money. New frost outside every morning. Good dry heat inside. Not
draughty, not damp. He longed for the princely apartment he had left behind in June. Here he lived like a pauper. Above this shitty café! Him! Even apart from the civil war now messily spluttering on here, his money was running out and he’d had to move from his decent place on the front to this back street.

He lit a cigarette but left it smouldering in the ashtray, and went in to get another cup of coffee. A kerosene stove was stinking away inside, which was why he was sitting outside. Nowhere in the place was there central heating.

‘Put a shot of brandy in it,’ he said.

‘Cash,’ the surly proprietor said.

Ponomarenko slammed the cash on the counter. The coffee he’d poured himself: it came with the breakfast.

‘And who gave you exclusive rights in the newspaper? Others are waiting for it.’

‘Buy another paper,’ Ponomarenko told him. He hung on to the paper.

‘There’s no hurry,’ one of the other guests said. A few disconsolate individuals were sitting about eating their lousy breakfasts; ghosts, wrecks, pensioners. ‘It’s all lies, anyway. They tell you what they want to tell you. Who’s winning today?’

‘Everybody’s winning,’ Ponomarenko said, and took the newspaper and his coffee out with him.

The paper was full of tanks going here, there. Sod the tanks. He swallowed the improved coffee and felt his eyes improve. He concentrated on what interested him. The two panels were side by side, one in Georgian, one Russian. He read the Russian one again.
Edict of the Government: Ministry of Justice
.

He read it twice more. Very tricky, the bastards here. Very. There was bound to be a catch in it somewhere.

He lit another cigarette and thoughtfully smoked it, blinking in the distance at the threshing palm tree. Then he folded over a few pages so they wouldn’t figure out what interested him and took the paper inside.

‘Tell me,’ he said to the fellow behind the counter, ‘is there a respectable lawyer anywhere in this town?’

The lawyer was a small man with a very large moustache, and he was an Armenian, which made Ponomarenko anxious; he had wanted a Georgian, one who knew all the shifts and changes of Georgian law anyway. He was also not impressed with the premises. To enter the lawyer’s office he had had to walk through a room with a dentist’s chair in it. The man reassured him on both points. He had practised for twenty years, he said, both in Batumi and Tbilisi; this was his week in Batumi. The dentist’s chair was his brother-in-law’s, who was this week in Tbilisi.

The lawyer first of all had a point of his own to make. He understood his visitor had come to consult him on behalf of a friend. Did the friend understand that such consultations were on a cash basis, and the cash was US dollars?

Ponomarenko put twenty down and when the man merely looked at it explained that his friend wanted only one simple question answered before deciding whether to go further. The lawyer remained looking at the money, but he nodded, and Ponomarenko told him the question.

There had been a government announcement in the paper that an amnesty was being offered to drug offenders who disclosed the source of their supply; what was the meaning of this announcement and what was the catch in it?

The lawyer nodded again.

The meaning of the announcement was that the government had recognised that an enemy of good government was organised crime. For the maintenance of law and order in the present turbulence it had identified it as a principal enemy. Organised crime was based in this region upon powerful drug rings. To isolate the rings it had been decided to pardon lesser offenders. That was the meaning of it. There was no catch.

Ponomarenko remained silent for some moments.

‘Your friend is known to the police?’ the lawyer quietly suggested.

‘No.’

‘Is being blackmailed, perhaps, forced to continue with … certain activities?’

‘Not exactly … ’

‘It’s a well-known squeeze. Speak freely.’

‘Well – what if certain things came to light – after he’d gone and said everything – things that aren’t really, sort of, to
do
with it?’

The lawyer looked at Ponomarenko and then he looked quite hard at the twenty dollars.

‘That’s not the same simple question,’ he said.

Ponomarenko put another twenty on the table.

‘If I understand you,’ the lawyer said, leaning back more comfortably, ‘your friend is worried that the police might start investigating other misdemeanours, once they’ve got him. Forget it. They’re interested in
drugs
. They want to eliminate the small offenders. A fault of the previous system was the harsh sentencing – capital punishment, life terms. They want to wipe the slate. Once the facts are given, that’s the end of it. Finish. Nothing on the record. Have no fear – for your friend. Unless it appears, when they look into it,’ he said jovially, ‘that he’s committed a couple of murders. Has he?’

‘Christ, no!’ Ponomarenko said indignantly. ‘Not that. But supposing, if they look into it, they find out he has a wife and – various things. That maybe he hasn’t kept up with, like payments. Things like that.’

The lawyer laughed heartily. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘they are interested in powerful forces challenging the
state
. Once your friend has reported the facts regarding
drugs
, he will be pardoned. It’s guaranteed. Take my word for it.’

‘Well,
I
would,’ Ponomarenko said. ‘But there’s my friend. How do I get him to believe this guarantee?’

The lawyer leaned back and hoisted a telephone directory from a shelf. He leafed through the pages. ‘You read Georgian?’

‘A bit.’

‘What does it say here?’

‘Ministry of Justice.’

‘Call them.’ The lawyer pushed the phone across. ‘Ask for the Chief Prosecutor’s office. When you’ve got somebody – I’ll talk.’

Ponomarenko dubiously dialled the number and followed instructions. He got the deputy prosecutor, and handed over the phone.

The lawyer identified himself and spoke affably to the deputy prosecutor. He said that on behalf of a client he would like today’s amnesty announcement for drug offenders explained in simple terms, and listened, nodding for a few minutes.

‘Quite so … Well, I have here, Deputy Prosecutor, a friend of the client. He would like it confirmed that no action whatever would be taken against his friend once the full facts have been given. And that a pardon would be automatic – nothing on the record, and no other areas investigated. Exactly. And the same with revenge evidence? … Oh, I expect the usual – photographs, tape-recordings. Yes. Yes. Destroyed and no copy taken – very good. Well then, Deputy Prosecutor, if you would not mind repeating that to my visitor I think I can deliver the first success in your campaign. Eh? Very good, ha-ha. Yes. Here he is.’

He handed the phone to Ponomarenko who asked a few husky questions, and listened intently.

‘Satisfied?’ asked the lawyer, when he had hung up,

Ponomarenko lit a cigarette. He was not so much satisfied as stunned with relief. The slimy little bastard blackmailing him had been met barely two weeks after his first joyous arrival in Batumi. Six nightmarish months ago – in June!

He let out a great lungful of smoke.

‘Actually,’ he said, slowly, ‘there isn’t any friend. It’s for me. I’m the client.’

‘No!’ the lawyer said, opening his eyes very wide. ‘You surprise me!’

But what Ponomarenko had to tell him soon surprised him much more.

The lunch hour was twelve to two in Batumi, but half a chicken each was sent up to the prosecutor’s office and they talked right through it. By then the discussion was exclusively on the agent who had trapped Ponomarenko, and on making arrangements to meet him again. In this matter, too, Ponomarenko had been given immunity, and was gladly cooperating.

His earlier statement – on handing over the keys to his apartment in Green Cape, on the detailed information he had given of conditions there, on the strange interest the man had shown in a chance Asiatic companion – had already gone off to Tbilisi.

With regard to the chance Asiatic, Ponomarenko could remember very little. He had met him in a bar. His name was Kolya, also a driver from the north. The agent had seen them drinking together; had been very interested; had wanted every detail about him. God knew why; Ponomarenko didn’t. But Kolya had been glad to talk about himself and he had let him talk and had later given the details.

Kolya what? Couldn’t remember. What details? Couldn’t remember those, either. Something about Chukotka and his background, he vaguely thought, and various places the guy had been. He was a native, a Chukchee. Only stayed a few days, anyway. Hadn’t seen him again.

But at two o’clock a fax arrived from Tbilisi that threw more light on this chance-met Chukchee. It also threw Ponomarenko into something like a stupor. The name of the Chukchee was Khodyan – Nikolai Dmitrievich Khodyan – and he was presently occupying Ponomarenko’s apartment in Green Cape.

The fax, transmitted via Yakutsk and Irkutsk, had originated in Tchersky.

Tchersky was in the same time zone as Tcherny Vodi.

There it was now 10 p.m., and Kolya Khodyan was just going through the wall.