Kolymsky Heights (39 page)

The car hadn’t stalled, was still slowly circling, in first gear. He stepped on the accelerator, shuffled his foot to change gear and straightened out. Two more jeeps had slammed into him
and his lights had been shot out. But there was light enough, he didn’t need lights; and in the frantic minutes had barely even noticed the collisions.

One wheel was dragging in the soft surface ice, and the steering was heavy. He had little speed and now was being banged again and again by the jeeps. In the brief interval when he’d appeared to stop, the RPG firing had ceased and the jeeps had closed in. But now, straightened out and on track again, he saw the grenades restarting, the jeeps again sheering away.

The moving half-tracks had come closer, their searchlights dazzling him. He saw the intention was to ram him, to catch him between two of them. He pressed the pedal to the floor, squeezed the last bit of speed and found, with the motion, the wheel dragging less, the steering coming lighter. He didn’t turn away, went directly at the converging lights, waited till he was almost at them, and spun the wheel. But now, hammer blows coming from his left eye, his distance was all out, and he was jolted out of his seat as he hit the rear end of one. He clutched on to the wheel as the car lurched left, right, skittering on the ice.

His foot had come off the pedal, and he found it again, hunching back in the seat. Firing had started behind him, a hail of it hitting the rear end, low down. And ahead now, perhaps no more than two hundred metres, the stationary half-tracks were puffing at him, the ice spuming up. But they were far apart, he saw, a gulf apart, and the line of torches in between was wavering. They could not fire
at
him, not in the car, could only try to stop the car.

He aimed at the gap between two half-tracks, saw the men on the ice there scattering, turning carefully to fire – and he was through. But Jesus, Jesus – caught once more! Now, at the last, another wheel. The car dragged, slithered. He was through the waiting line, but crippled, two tyres at least gone. And the half-track engines were now roaring into life behind him; an iron voice rasping over a bullhorn there.

‘Stop! Stop while you can! You’ll be blown off the ice!’

He kept going: swearing, coaxing, willing the thing to move. He was moving, moving, six or seven miles an hour maybe, the wheels churning, moving only when zigzagged. His eye, his knee were now alight with white fire – the ice also alight, lit up, spuming with small geysers popping in front of him.

Distantly now there were other lights, racing about. The American side, surely not far now. With nothing following him – and he was sure nothing was or it would easily have overtaken him – he thought he must now be over the international line.

[In fact he was not yet over it. The vehicles behind had been ordered to remain 250 metres from the line, and this they did; a fact confirmed by watching American helicopters. But they had also been ordered to continue firing up to it, and this too they did; the subject of later official complaint.]

For the men on the half-tracks the job was now very difficult. Even at one hundred metres RPGs could not hit a target with any great accuracy. And this target, a man in a vehicle, was
not
to be hit – at least not with a grenade – but only halted. The only way to halt him now was to hit his engine. If this could be achieved before he reached the line, men could go out on skis and get him. Probably at this time some small mortars were used.

The geysers that had been popping in front of the slowly zigzagging vehicle now came closer; and with his zigzag now established and predictable, they scored, and a cheer went up.

‘Hit! Stopped him! Okay, boys, go out there.’

The boys went out there, but to their consternation the target, though stopped, did not remain stopped.

The thing had landed with a whoosh, a metallic clang and a cascade of glass. The clang was the ripped-apart hood of the jeep, sections of which, and of the grenade, came through the shattered windshield and into Porter. The furnace in his head roared briefly and went out, leaving him in the dark. It had also bounced his foot off the pedal, stopping the car.

Still in the dark, he started the stalled engine again, twisting the wheel this way and that, and rocking the car in and out of reverse, which got it sluggishly crawling again.

The blast seemed to have stunned him completely. He couldn’t see anything. And the shock was making him pant. The glass had exploded in his face and must have cut his mouth. He tasted blood there. The panting he recognised after a minute to be not panting but something like choking. This nightmare – quite a familiar one – he had often had. Driving a car, choking, and unable to see where he was going. He knew he must be going right, that he hadn’t turned completely. When the car stuck and churned he wriggled the wheel and got it moving again, very slowly, a crippled insect, stumbling, stopping, wriggling on.

The US aircraft watching from above stated that it took him eight minutes and that he halted when he was told to.

A loudhailer told him to, in English, and presently some closer voices were bawling at him to open the door and step out with his arms raised. He opened the door but didn’t manage the arms or even the step, flopping out like a bundle on the ice. Many big amplified voices were sounding off all round him, and from the island itself, and among them he picked out, weirdly, the mellifluous one of Bing Crosby, hoping that his days would be merry and bright, and all his Christmases white.

The medical facilities on the island were found to be not adequate for Porter’s injuries and a helicopter was readied to take him 120 miles down the Alaskan coast to Nome. He was fully conscious and urgently demanding a tape recorder; which
the radio room made available to him, together with a throat microphone – this last a requirement of the military surgeon who didn’t want him shouting over the engine.

At Nome, the facilities were also found to be insufficient and he was jetted another 600 miles south to Anchorage. Here in the early afternoon of 25 December he was admitted to the Providence Hospital.

Because of the festivities only a skeleton staff was on duty at the hospital, but Nome had informed them of the case and specialists had already been contacted.

The specialists drove in, and they agreed that immediate surgery was needed. The patient was still conscious but now in great difficulties. Apart from possible neurological complications, the more obvious damage was very extensive. One eye was missing, he was blind in the other, had two shattered legs, and severe injuries to most of his upper body.

In stripping him for examination, the staff had found a body belt which he refused to give up. During the X-rays he insisted on holding it himself under a protective lead apron. The tape recorder had been taken from him (the tape, after being turned for him on the aircraft, had now run out), but he insisted that he had to give some immediate instructions about it to a man in Washington.

This man could not be reached, but at a redirected number somebody promised that he would call in as soon as possible. He had still not called in when Porter, now speechless and unmoving, had to be taken down to the operating theatre. By then, however, he had made his instructions understood: the belt and the tape were to be locked in the hospital’s safe, and if he was incapable of speech for any length of time after the operation the man from Washington had to hear the tape before touching the body belt.

These instructions were observed: the belt and the tape went into a safe and Porter himself to surgery.

The man in Washington was his CIA escort Walters, with
whom he had established, at the ‘camp’, a fair working relationship. Walters was not, at this time, in Washington but in Seattle, where he was spending Christmas with his in-laws. Seattle, though well north – the most northerly town of the United States proper – was still 1500 miles south of Anchorage.

Transport was made available, his journey notified, and he arrived at the Providence at nine o’clock. Porter was by then long out of the operating theatre, but not expected to live. His visitor identified himself, had his identification confirmed, and signed for the tape and the body belt. He had been keeping contact with Langley and was now instructed to go there at once. Langley was another 2500 miles. But by lunch time next day, which was Boxing Day, the material he brought with him had been duly processed. By then, however, the Providence’s morgue had received its expected corpse.

The voice on the tape was a husky whisper, not always understandable, but quite understandable about the body belt.

Inside the belt was a pouch, and in the pouch a foil-sealed case.

When manipulated in a vessel of liquid hydrogen the case sprang easily open and popped out its disk. The disk was four centimetres in diameter, and the material on it highly condensed. The technicians soon unravelled the protocol and transferred the contents to a screen.

The information on the disk was known to be addressed personally, but even so the directness of the opening caused surprise as the lines began streaking, one after the other, across the screen.

‘
How long, dear friend – how long? I await you with
eagerness … ’

The man who had been awaited with eagerness was given no name at the inquest held at Anchorage.

The medical witnesses said he had died of multiple injuries, and the military ones that he had sustained them in a vehicle that had halted, damaged, on the sea ice of north Alaska.

He had entered US territory from the Russian side of the border, perhaps having strayed there in fog. He had evidently been caught in crossfire during a military exercise – at present the subject of official complaint. For the exercise had taken place within 500 metres of the international line, and gunfire within 250 metres of it: a clear violation of treaties.

The man was non-caucasian. He had carried no identification and had given none. The coroner found he had been unlawfully killed, and ordered the body held until its identity was known and culpability for the death established.

The inquest was fully reported in the town’s two papers, the
Anchorage Times and the Daily News
.

In Irkutsk the general read these reports and added them to his own for a tribunal he would shortly be attending. The Americans, he had been informed, would be producing clear and certifiable photographs of the violation. A fig for the Americans! His only regret was that he was unable to produce their agent – a counter-violation. But the man had got away, if only to die. He read through the evidence of the civilian surgeons again, and decided there was no doubt about that. He was dead. And nothing had come of his mission.

The
fact
of the mission was very amply confirmed, however (evidence from Batumi, from Ponomarenko, from the many forged papers). And that nothing had come of it was equally
plain. Major Militsky, the guards, the Evenks – the testimony of all of them showed that. It was impossible for the man to have made contact with anybody on the mountain. And obviously he had never intended to. A reconnaissance only.

How he had arrived in the Kolymsky region was a problem, and how he had left it was another; as yet unresolved. But the action at the strait (bearing in mind the high security issue involved) was unquestionably justified. The object was to catch the man, discover who had sent him – and
how
. Unfortunately it had not been achieved. But the next best thing had. Meanwhile, inquiries were still continuing.

At Green Cape many inquiries were continuing.

Ponomarenko turned up and was soon appearing about town, with a variety of explanations. As was Lydia Yakovlevna, with a black eye.

At the Tchersky Transport Company the inquiry into missing parts continued for weeks, ending with a new set of rules for the disposal of dismantled vehicles. Too many of them had been found about the works, and the removal of parts without signed authority was now strictly forbidden.

In these weeks Vassili relaxed and his wife also relaxed, for she knew he was no longer worried. He whistled a bit, and winked, and she thought he was himself again. And this was true, for he was. Some small problems still lay ahead, relating to his deficit book, but these were familiar and unimportant ones, very minor. The one that had darkened him had gone. For though the Chukchee had used him, he had not let him down, and his faith in the man was restored.

At Murmansk there was the question of a missing seaman.

Two Norwegians, who had been in transit with him at the International Seamen’s Hostel, thought he had gone to the red light district. A trawl of the girls there turned up nothing; and the arrival of his ship, some days later, produced no other evidence.

The man had not
left
with the ship, and he couldn’t have left any other way, for his passport, his papers, his belongings, all
were still at the hostel. These the police retained for three months in case he turned up floating in a dock. But when he didn’t (and in the current crime wave there had been many permanent disappearances) marine agents were advised that his possessions could be sent, not at Murmansk’s expense, to the ship’s owners at Nagasaki.

At Nagasaki the
Suzaku Maru
, after circumnavigating the globe, was again in dock.

She had arrived, like her sister ship of the preceding year, on Christmas Day – at roughly the time that Porter had crossed the Bering Strait. At various points on his voyage home the captain had learned he would be facing a Board of Inquiry relating to some events at Otaru. These events he and the mate now had in good order, and the two officers appeared before the Board and explained them.

Seaman Ushiba’s illness had seemed just serious enough for an extra hand to be shipped in order to spare the patient deck duties. This the captain had set in hand, as Otaru radio station could confirm. At Otaru, Ushiba’s condition had necessitated sedation and prompt medical care, and he had ordered an ambulance. Adverse weather reports had also impelled him to seek an early departure, forgoing a lucrative cargo of tuna – a commercial loss but necessary for the good of the ship and the voyage.

When, in the Arctic, the new hand too had become ill, he had stopped off the mouth of the Kolyma for medical assistance. The man had been removed to hospital,
the ship allowed to
proceed
, and at Murmansk he had signed bills for the man’s expenses. This was all he knew. He had acted throughout with prudence and good sense. He hoped the Board would recognise it.

This the Board did, and another inquiry was completed.

With all his bills signed, the Korean seaman was of no further interest to Tchersky Health Authority. However, a note at last arrived from Murmansk acknowledging receipt of his
discharge from the Kolymsky region. It pointed out that since no application had yet been made for the man to board a ship, it was presumed other arrangements had been made and he had flown home. If this was the case Murmansk had no need to hold his papers and, unless specifically requested, would not do so.

At the medical centre this bureaucratic confusion caused no surprise. But since the man was unlikely to worry
them
again, it was decided his papers need not clutter up Tchersky’s either, and they were destroyed.

No record now remained in the Kolymsky region of a sullen Korean seaman, nor any connection, if there had ever been one, with a cheerful Chukchee who had driven to Tcherny Vodi.

At Tcherny Vodi the new year was sombre.

Before January was out a small coffin was taken for cremation (the last of the ape programme); and weeks later a larger one. The Administrator of the Buro was advised that the Director’s personal effects and his ashes need not be sent, for there was no one to send them to. Under a new Director the programme would resume, for Moscow still held all records.

In Oxford, Lazenby, without knowledge either of the Korean seaman or the Chukchee driver, was thinking of a third character.

His mind had been led in that direction by Miss Sonntag, whose farewell party he had just attended. Her departure had been planned for June (for she was now nearing sixty-five) and a successor already chosen. But her sister Sonya had fallen ill and needed attention, and now, after Easter, she would not be returning.

At the party they had reminisced a little and she had reminded him, slightly flushed over her second glass of sherry, of the day they had rummaged together through a bin and found only cigarette papers.

He thought of these papers on his solitary walk home and of what had come of them; and of an interrupted fishing trip on the Spey and what had come of
that
. A grotesque few days … and a grotesque individual met in the course of them. He remembered
very little of him. An austere staring face; a face on a totem pole. As at that village. The one with the odd name –
what
was it now … ?

Kispiox; Easter.

And for Jean-Baptiste Porteur, one further journey.

Anchorage had released the body two months before, with the coroner’s verdict amended from ‘unlawful killing’ to ‘death by misadventure’. For a misadventure it was. The deceased had strayed in fog, and in the same fog units involved in a military exercise had also strayed.

The Russians had made handsome apology, and offered handsome amends, with only a simple condition. No compensation could be paid, naturally, until the identity of the deceased had been discovered. But the identity of the deceased had not been discovered …

For the journey to Kispiox, Walters had been in attendance. He had flown with his burden to Hazelton, in the specially-adapted plane, and then had sat silently in the long, sombre vehicle on the slow drive to Kispiox. There he remained for some hours before returning to Langley, where he discussed the matter with the keeper of Lives.

‘Well,’ W. Murray Hendricks said, gazing down at the file before him, ‘it looks to me as if we got away with it.’

‘I’m sure we did,’ Walters said. ‘Nobody special was there, and nobody
has
been there. No visitors of any kind. They’re in the dark – totally.’

Two months before, at the funeral in Anchorage, special visitors had been present, visitors from the Russian consulate, to convey their government’s regret at the sad accident – and to examine the other mourners. But apart from the grave diggers and a Unitarian minister there had been no other mourners, only two reporters to record the burial of the unknown man; and Walters, watching from a window above the chapel.

‘How is he now?’ asked Hendricks.

‘Coming along. You can’t see a lot of change.’

‘He’s surely changed since you saw him at Anchorage!’

‘Oh, since Anchorage –’ When Walters had seen him at Anchorage – a glimpse only in the private intensive care room – Porter had been connected up to machines and swathed from head to foot in bandages. Walters had not, then, flown directly to Anchorage but to Elmendorf Air Force Base, a few miles away. The air base also had a hospital − without the full surgical facilities of the Providence but with some other facilities, less orthodox. A corpse had been flown in there, of another noncaucasian male, unknown, unclaimed, a road accident victim; a boon for Langley. For it had been decided that Porter’s body, dead or alive, should not remain in civilian jurisdiction, but be removed to a more secure kind. From Elmendorf medical personnel had visited to examine the patient, and the order of his wrappings.

The switch had been arranged that same night; during a fire alarm that had also been arranged. The new shift, of night staff and night physician, had not been surprised at the brain death shown on the monitors, and no autopsy had been required for the bandaged man – only his removal to the hospital’s morgue, where he remained for two months until the coroner’s final release. But the man in the morgue, so unceremoniously buried, was not Porter. Porter himself had been swiftly transported, doctors in attendance, to the air base, where he stayed on a life support machine until he could be flown farther south, to another military hospital, of Langley’s nomination.

‘Can he receive proper care up in that Indian village?’ Hendricks asked.

‘All he needs. There’s a health service in Kispiox, and district visitors. It’s what he wanted − he’s sick of hospitals. They’ve got some sight back in that right eye and it’s supposed to improve, though he’s got it covered now. His legs are wired up and there’s a lot of new parts in his body. He’ll be in that chair for some time. But he still has a lung – and a sense of humour. He calls himself bionic man.’

‘He’s talking now, is he?’

‘Not really – not yet. He can write a bit, but of course he can’t see and it’s just a scrawl. There was a big stack of
mail for him there. The postmaster will be answering for him – I told him what to write.’

The letters were from colleagues and students at McGill and Victoria. Both universities had been informed of the accident – of the nonstop truck that had hit him as he stepped out of Quebec woods. From both establishments he was now on sick leave.

‘Another thing,’ Walters said. ‘I saw his mother up there. A strange old woman – wailing. She said she’d warned him years ago against going to college – that though he’d bring light to the world, he’d the in the dark, and it would all end in tears.’

‘Well. He didn’t die,’ Hendricks said. ‘And as yet it hasn’t ended – in tears or otherwise.’

‘The
light
, though … A strange remark, wasn’t it?’

‘Sure. And about that she could be right.’

‘Was it any use, that disk of his?’

‘Apparently. Harmonics theory is brand new. And fibre optics is an advancing field. The Russians always led in those fields – very unconventional, their science. It’s possible to make a start, even with what he brought. A cure for blindness … We certainly never foresaw this. It wasn’t in vain, you know, his journey.’

‘Did anything new come up on the eyrie?’

‘It isn’t there.’

In the spring gales many of the eyries were no longer there on the east-facing cliff of Greater Diomede island. There had been landfalls, erosion, the usual seasonal changes on this heap of granite. But the position of Porter’s was well-marked: a clear fix had been taken of its location. Whether the eyrie remained or not, the data disk would remain, deep in the cliffs back wall, secure in its crevice; perfectly recoverable when time and chance offered. On the tape, Porter had been quite clear on that.

It was not the only thing he had been clear on. He had been concerned about an addition he wanted made to a forthcoming book. It had been edited for him by a young woman in Prince George. He had spelt out the addition and Walters had passed it on. This he mentioned now.

‘That other young woman, eh?’ Hendricks smiled. ‘Well, he had no shortage of them. He was very attractive to women. He was married to an Indian girl once, you know – she was blind.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Walters said, staring. ‘I didn’t know that at all. We were together for weeks in camp, and talked a lot. I never understood that.’

‘No. Well. There’s a lot not understood about him. I doubt if anybody understood him,’ Hendricks said, and closed the file. ‘He had no real attachments, you know,’