Kolymsky Heights (4 page)

By September, the inquiry had ground down at Langley. It didn’t stop but it settled where it had started: the biographical department.

In charge of it was a man called W. Murray Hendricks. He was an elderly lawyer who had been with the department since the mid-1960s when a series of chaotic upsets to do with faulty cross-referencing (which had cost the country some billions in an unnecessary arms race) had brought about his rapid transfer from the Library of Congress. There he had been in charge of Copyrights. Here he was in charge of Lives. He was an orderly man with a mild manner.

W. Murray Hendricks, now able to examine all the papers calmly and without pressure, had come to three conclusions.

The first was that the relationship between the unknown correspondent and Lazenby was likely to have been social rather than professional. His assessment of Lazenby was that he was a remote sort of fish: professional matters he might remember, social ones not. This one he didn’t remember. It was probably social.

To be social with Lazenby called for qualities of warmth and gregariousness in the other party. Hendricks looked through the candidates on the list and found three warm and gregarious ones. Two of them, he saw, had sent Lazenby condolence notes on his wife’s death – they had appeared in the twenty-four letters sent from London – but one of them had not. He looked this one up.

It was a Professor Rogachev – Professor Efraim Moisevich Rogachev – and the department held a useful file on him. It stopped abruptly. In examining where it stopped he saw why no condolences had been received; why there were, in fact, no letters at all from him. Lazenby’s archive covered a period of sixteen years. This man had gone missing seventeen years ago. He had had a motoring accident at Pitsunda on the Black Sea. His wife had been killed and he himself injured. He had returned to work briefly but had then had something resembling a nervous breakdown, after which – nothing.

Hendricks looked up the man’s activities before the accident. He found that the week before he had been at a conference in England, at Oxford. The department kept records of conferences, and Hendricks sent for this one. It contained a full delegate list and also reports on the conference activities. Leafing through, he saw that Lazenby and Rogachev had met there on at least three occasions: at a welcoming reception for the delegates; as fellow panellists on a seminar; and as members of a sub-committee.

Before this they hadn’t met for three years – far too long ago to be relevant now; which brought him to a second conclusion.

Efraim Moisevich Rogachev was the likeliest man to have sent the message to Lazenby, and he had done so as a result of the meeting at Oxford.

The relevant meeting was probably the social one, the reception. Something had happened at it. Whatever it was, another person had also been involved. The message asked for another person. The person might merely have been mentioned, but it was more likely that he was there. He would be a Russian-speaker; and most probably a Russian. He was being asked to go to Russia. Without a fair knowledge of the place he wouldn’t get far in it.

But if he was being asked to go there, he was evidently not there now.

Hendricks had a closer look at the Russian delegation. It was a strong one; twelve members. Three of them, he saw, had defected not so many years afterwards.

Third conclusion. The man required had been present at the Oxford conference and was likely to be a Russian not now in Russia.

Hendricks had copies made of the photographs of the Russian delegates, together with brief biographical details. But before despatching them to London he had second thoughts.

The mission that was being suggested was a hazardous one and needed a young man – at least not an old one. All the Russian delegates
were
now old. It couldn’t be any of them. Just possibly it might be some other Slav who was present, a Pole or a Czech, Russian-speaking. But further reflection showed this to be unlikely too.

Getting someone into Russia on clandestine business wasn’t a difficult matter, but this was not a matter of simply sending someone to Russia, but to Siberia. And not simply Siberia but a sealed area of Siberia. Quite a different proposition.

On the face of it, an impossible proposition.

Yet Rogachev thought it could be done. He thought he knew the person who could do it.

Several interdepartmental discussions produced a fourth and final conclusion.

A person who might get into a security area of Siberia was a Siberian person. More specifically a Siberian
native
person: non-caucasian, mongoloid, Asiatic.

There was nobody like that on any of the Slav delegations, or on the Russian either. It left open some other kinds of delegation; but there was no certainty that this man was a delegate at all.

Hendricks decided on a wider sweep.

He ordered a check on
every
academic who had been in Oxford at the time of the conference.

This assignment, a large one, was methodically broken down. The period in question had been a Long Vacation, which let out the students and their normal mentors. The academic had to be of a certain age and type. His age, not more than the twenties at the time, suggested a well-qualified graduate or a research fellow. His type, Asiatic, suggested certain characteristics, perhaps even a name, that ought to stand out in some way.

The inquiry was thoroughly handled, as thoroughly as all the others had been, and produced results that looked just as barren. Some colleges had records of guest scholars of seventeen years before, but most did not. Halls of residence and bursars’ accounts helped fill up gaps; but even when the name came up it attracted no attention and merely joined the others on the list that went to Hendricks.

From Hendricks it attracted immediate attention, and a series of howling and uncharacteristic curses.

He already had a stout file on this man.

He knew he should have thought of him long before; and he also knew that not much would be forthcoming from him.

He was brooding on the matter when Lazenby’s statement turned up, and he nodded wearily over it. It was a jumbled recollection of a jaunt Lazenby had shared, time and location unknown, with Rogachev and a young Russian of Asiatic appearance who spoke a transatlantic kind of English.

Hendricks was now in a position to supply both time and location, as well as the name of the young man, and a pretty ample biography into the bargain. But still he hesitated.

He could trace the wild young man himself. This would take time. But time was not something he was short of. Ships were now off the Siberian run and would not be back again before next June. Until then no message could come from Rogachev anyway.

He came to his decision, and on the following day set the new search in motion.

That was on 30 September, and two days later, on 2 October, another message arrived from Rogachev.

Miss Sonntag, at work with her paper knife, looked at the envelope, and her mouth fell open. Then she ran in to Lazenby.

He had a look at it, and at Miss Sonntag, and at the envelope again.

After this they looked at each other.

The new message was more robust in tone.

‘This one
does
ring a bell, Prof?’

‘Yes. Yes, it does,’ Lazenby said.

‘We thought that. But there are some points here of even more interest than the message.’

These points were the postmark and the address. The postmark had been stamped at Ijmuiden, Nederland, and the address had been written with a Japanese ballpoint – its ink Japanese; of a formulation used only in Japan; for Japanese script; not exported. The analysis had been made after discovery that the only ship in from the Arctic at Ijmuiden had been Japanese. In Gothenburg, at the time of the earlier message, there had also been a Japanese ship. On both messages the fingerprints were the same, and in both cases the ship was the same.

This ship had not been to Dudinka; or to Igarka; or Noviy Port, or Salekhard. It had sailed the Arctic from one end to the other, but it had not stopped at any of those places.

Wherever it had stopped, the ship was now moving again. It was steaming down the coast of Portugal and going home; where it would arrive in two months if unlucky, or nearer three if not. This was because it was tramping, and would put in wherever cargo offered – in general to ports not served by regular lines.

This was what it had done in the Arctic also. But between the Arctic and its present route there was a difference. Wherever it put in now a Lloyd’s agent was likely to report the fact. No Lloyd’s agents had reported facts in the Russian Arctic. There its only listed port had been Murmansk; which had been its listed port in June too. But it must also have called at some port other than Murmansk, for the secret establishment could not be anywhere near there. Murmansk was the base for the Russian Northern Fleet, with extensive yards and service facilities. No biological plant would be sited in that vicinity; which in any case was under constant surveillance, all its objectives known, in no way a waste howling wilderness.

This opened up the rest of the Arctic for consideration,
several thousands of miles of it; and it also opened up the inquiries in Japan.

From Japan the answers were good and informative.

The ship was one of a line of six tramps, and the Arctic run was a summer perk of the masters’. Only one of them had been taking it on for the past couple of years. The only regular business on the route was with Murmansk, and any other picked up along the way was the perk: it could be accepted or not at the captain’s discretion. If he reported it, the owners took a share; if not, the crew did. The only sure information was the crew’s, and they were not likely to give it.

But the ship was being watched, and inquiries would continue.

Wonderful, said Hendricks, and got on with his own. These were not going so well either.

By Christmas –
at
Christmas – the next news arrived. The Japanese ship had crept back into Nagasaki unnoticed. All the crew had crept off it, and away on leave. When they came back they were being dispersed and the ship broken up. For its engines were clapped out and its equipment was clapped out, and the ship was finished.

Hendricks passed a hand over his face. He felt like that ship.

He had at last received a reply from the wild young man. His own previous letter, one of a series, had been dignified and discreet. He had had it mailed in an area where the young man was thought to be at present. It was on plain paper and gave a local postbox number for reply. It said that the old friend mentioned earlier, from Oxford, England, was making a last attempt to reach him. The matter was urgent and personal, and a kind acknowledgment was requested by return for the present letter.

The kind acknowledgment came back on the letter itself. It was in red felt-tip and said fuck off spook.

Hendricks thought he could give up then. Nothing more
would come, he was certain. The crew of a Japanese tramp would show no zeal to help a friendly intelligence agency. The young man was not friendly to any intelligence agency, and had not been fooled by this one.

But still he postponed the decision. Not much money was being spent, and he decided to consider the matter again in April, when the new budgetary year came round.

April came round, and he considered it again. In particular he considered Rogachev.

Not a bad record, but not outstanding; nothing at all out of the ordinary. He had done time in a labour camp in the fifties, but so had many other Russian scientists – it was a respectable thing to have done. Respectable, in fact, was the description for him, and biology his field – a teamwork field. If anything remarkable was going on in it some whiff would surely have come from other teams by now. No other whiffs had come. Was it likely that an old man of eighty-one had come up with something on his own? It was not likely. Far more likely, the years of isolation had brought on childish delusions. There was something childishly gleeful in the tone of the messages.

Hendricks hesitated only briefly, then he closed the inquiry down: papers to be kept current for six months in case by chance something new did come up, although he didn’t expect anything to come up.

But something did then come up. By chance something quite new came up.

The satellite came up, over the Indian Ocean. And twenty minutes later it was over Siberia.

The satellite was one of a group of three delivered to the US
military by Boeing, a development of the company’s Big Bird series. Each of the three had a telemetry package that allowed instantaneous relay, and each was in a slightly different orbit.

This one was in a polar orbit. Travelling north-south, it made a complete circuit of the earth once every ninety-four minutes. Its intelligence-gathering equipment was turned on only over the territory of the old Soviet Union, however. There it had to monitor upwards of 500 land objectives.

An hour before another satellite had overflown the site, and there had been no recordable activity. But when this one came round, 300 miles to the west of it, the fires were already burning.

At first the fact went unnoticed for the satellite’s current objective was a missile base. Of this it had to take four still photographs and ten seconds of video. All the stills were good, despite freckling along the right-hand edges, but the results showed no change and were merely saved for reference.

The video was different. Something was spotted moving in it. A loaded flat-bed truck was moving. This was unusual at three o’clock in the morning, and attention was diverted to it to find out what it might be carrying through deep snow at that hour. For this reason some time passed before it was noticed that the right-hand edge of the video was also freckled.

Optical enhancement brought up the freckles as flames and interest rapidly switched to the new development.

The location of the distant fire was soon established, as was its probable origin in an explosion: the flames were still shooting one hundred feet high. This was surprising, for the low-rated objective had not been known to house explosives. In earlier listings it had been marked as a weather station. Later analysis had shown the ground to be covered over a wide area with ventilators, indicating that work went on below ground, and too extensively for simple meteorology. The radio traffic and transport pattern showed no military significance, however, so the low rating was retained, but all
visible structures were marked and thereafter updated. They consisted of a few concrete buildings, telegraph poles, generator housings, power pylons, and a fenced area of sheds, evidently used for storage, just off the landing strip.

The enhanced freckles were compared with earlier photographs, and some differences emerged. The largest concrete structure, apparently the dome of something below, had vanished, and so had the generator housings. Pylons and poles had been toppled, sheds blown down, and burning debris scattered over a wide area.

More optical work brought other images into definition. A thin thread-like line of beads, at first glance glowing debris, was detached from its background of flame and translated into a formation of men. They were standing in line, each with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front. They were bandaged about the eyes, and dressed only in underpants – their clothing evidently abandoned in flight from the burning buildings.

Slightly apart from this line was another man, also in underpants, but with no discernible bandage. This individual had something in his hands. It was not possible to see what it was, but a study of the video showed his head going up and down while those of the men in line turned towards him and away.

An anthropometrist was called in.

This expert’s field was body movement and measurement and he concluded that what was in the man’s hand was a list, and that a rollcall was going on; and from the ten seconds of action that it was a rapid one, not surprising for almost naked men in fifty degrees of frost. But some aspects of it puzzled him, and he asked for further imaging work to clarify the effects of flame and heat distortion. The imaging work was done but it did not solve the problem. He ran a few tests to prove that what he was beginning to suspect could not be true. But it seemed that it was true.

the men who stood in their underpants in the Siberian ice
had arms that were too long. There was something not right about their femurs, too, and the whole shape of their legs. The man reading the list and calling out the names was built the same way. And however the anthropometrist juggled the results, the way did not turn out to be human.

April was the month of this observation.