Russian Roulette (5 page)

Hundreds of meters of the water pipe had already been laid. The opening was in front of us: a perfect black circle like the entrance to some futuristic cave. It was small. If I hadn’t been so thin and if Leo hadn’t been so slight, neither of us would have fit into it, and it was unlikely that many of the soldiers would be able to follow, certainly not in their gas masks and protective gear. They would have been mad to try. Would they really be prepared to bury themselves alive, plunging into utter darkness with tons of damp earth above their heads?

That was what we did. On our hands and knees, we threw ourselves forward, our shoulders scraping against the curve of the pipe. At least it was dry inside the tunnel. But it was also pitch-black. When I looked back to see if Leo was behind me, I caught a glimmer of soft light a few meters behind me. But when I looked ahead . . . there was nothing! I brought my hand up and touched my nose, but I couldn’t see my fingers. For a moment, I found it difficult to breathe. I had to fight off the claustrophobia, the sense of being suffocated, of being squeezed to death. I wondered if it would be a good idea to go any farther. We could have stayed where we were and used the tunnel as a hiding place until everyone had gone—but that wasn’t good enough for me. I could imagine a burst of machine gun fire killing me or, worse still, paralyzing me and leaving me to die slowly in the darkness. I could feel the Alsatians, sent after us, snapping and snarling their way down the tunnel and then tearing ferociously at our legs and thighs. I had to let the tunnel carry me away and it didn’t matter where it took me. So I kept going with Leo behind me, the two of us burrowing ever farther beneath the wood.

To the soldiers it must have seemed as if we had disappeared by magic. They would have passed the ditch, but it’s quite likely that they didn’t see the pipeline—or, if they did, refused to believe that we had been foolhardy enough to enter it. Once again, the rain covered our tracks. The dogs failed to pick up our scent. Any footprints were washed away. And the soldiers were completely unaware that, as they moved forward, we were right underneath them, crawling like insects through the mud. When I looked back again, the entrance was no longer there. It was as if a shutter had come down, sealing us in. I could hear Leo very close to me, his breath sobbing. But any sound in the tunnel was strange and muted. I could feel the weight above me, pressing down.

We had swapped one hell for another.

We could only go forward. There wasn’t enough room to turn around. I suppose we could have shuffled backward until we reached the tunnel entrance, but what would be the point of that? The soldiers would be looking for us, and once we emerged, the dogs would be onto us instantly. On the other hand, the farther we went forward, the worse our situation became. Suppose the tunnel simply ended? Suppose we ran out of air? Every centimeter that we continued was another centimeter into the grave and it took all my willpower to force myself on. I think Leo only followed because he didn’t want to be left on his own. I was getting warmer. Once again I was sweating inside my clothes. I could feel the sweat mixed with rainwater in my armpits and under the palms of my hands. My knees were already hurting. Occasionally, I passed rivets where one section of the pipe had had been fastened into the next and I felt them tugging at my anorak, scratching across my back. And I was blind. It really was as if someone had switched off my eyes. The blackness was very physical. It was like a surgical operation.

“Yasha?” Leo’s whispered voice came out of nowhere.

“It’s all right, Leo,” I said. My own voice didn’t sound like me at all. “Not much farther.”

But we continued for at least twenty minutes more. We were moving like robots with no sense of direction, no choice of where to go. We were simply functioning—one hand forward, then the next, knees following behind, blind and deaf. There was nothing to hear apart from ourselves. Suppose the tunnel went all the way to Kirsk? Would we have the strength to travel as much as thirty kilometers underground? Of course not. Between us, we had half a liter of water. We hadn’t eaten for hours. I had to stop myself from imagining what might happen. If I wasn’t careful, I would scare myself to death.

Hand and knee, hand and knee. Every part of me was hurting. I wanted to stand up and the fact that I couldn’t almost made me cry out with frustration. My shoulders hit the curve of the ceiling again and again. My eyes were closed. What was the point of using them when I couldn’t see? And then, quite suddenly, I was outside. I felt the breeze brush over my shoulders and the rain, lighter now, patter onto my head and the back of my neck. I opened my eyes. The workmen had constructed some sort of inspection hatch, and they had left this part of the pipe open. I was crouching in a V-shaped ditch with pieces of wire and rusting metal bolts all around. I pulled back my sleeve and looked at my watch. Amazingly, it was five o’clock. I thought only an hour had passed, but the whole day had gone.

Leo clambered out into the half-light and sat there, blinking. For a moment neither of us dared speak, but there were no sounds around us and it seemed fairly certain we were on our own.

“We’re okay,” I said. “We went under them. They don’t know we’re here.”

“What next?” Leo asked.

“We can keep going . . . follow the road to Kirsk.”

“They’ll be looking for us there.”

“I know. We can worry about that when we get there.”

And just for one moment, I thought we were going to make it. We had escaped from the helicopters. We had outwitted the soldiers. I had a hundred rubles in my pocket. I would get us to Moscow and we would tell the whole world what had happened and we would be heroes. Right then, I really did think that despite what we had been through and all that we had lost, we might actually be all right.

But then Leo spoke.

“Yasha,” he said, “I don’t feel well.”

W
E COULDN’T STAY WHERE
we were. I was afraid that the soldiers would find the entrance to the pipeline and realize how we had managed to slip past them—in which case they would double back and find us. We had to put more distance between us while we still had the strength. But at the same time I saw that Leo couldn’t go much farther. He had a headache and he was finding it difficult to breathe. Was it too much to hope that he had simply caught a cold, that he was in shock? He didn’t have to be contaminated by the chemicals from the factory. I tried to convince myself that, like me, he was exhausted and if he could just get a night’s rest he would be all right again.

Even so, I knew I had to find him somewhere warm to shelter. He needed food. Somehow I had to dry his clothes. As I looked around me at the spindly trees that rose up into an ever-darkening sky, I felt a sense of complete helplessness. How could I possibly manage on my own? I wanted my parents and I had to remind myself that they weren’t going to come, that I was never going to see them again. I was sick with grief—but something inside me told me that I couldn’t give in. Leo and I hadn’t escaped from Estrov simply to die out here, a few kilometers away, in the middle of a forest.

We walked together for another hour, still following the road. They’d been able to afford asphalt for this section, which at least made it easier to find our way in the dark. I knew it was dangerous, that we had more chance of being spotted, but I didn’t dare lose myself among the trees.

And in the end it was the right decision. We stumbled upon it quite by chance, a wooden hut that must have been built for the construction team and abandoned only recently. The door was padlocked, but I managed to kick it in, and once we were inside I was surprised to find two bunks, a table, cupboards, and even an iron stove. I checked the cupboards. There was no food or medicine, but the almost empty shelves did offer me a few rewards. Using my flashlight, I found some old newspapers, saucepans, tin mugs, and a fork. How glad I was now that I had thought to take a box of matches from my parents’ kitchen and that my waterproof clothes had managed to keep them dry. There was no coal or firewood, so I tore off some of the cupboard doors and smashed them up with my foot, and ten minutes later I had a good fire blazing. I wasn’t worried about the smoke being seen. It was too dark and I kept the door and the shutters closed to stop the light from escaping.

I helped Leo out of his wet clothes and hung them to dry. He stretched himself out on the nearest bunk and I covered him with newspaper and a rug from the floor. It might not be too clean, but at least it would help to keep him warm. I had the food that I had brought from my home and I took it out. Leo and I had drunk all our water, but that wasn’t a problem. I carried a saucepan outside and filled it from the gutter that ran around the side of the building. After all the rain, it was full to overflowing and boiling it in the flames would get rid of any germs. I added the tea and the sugar and balanced the whole thing on the stove. I broke the chocolate bars into pieces and examined the cans. There were three of them and they all contained herring, but fool that I was, I had forgotten to bring a can opener.

While Leo drifted in and out of sleep, I spent the next half hour desperately trying to open the cans. In a way, it did me good to have to focus on a problem that was so small and so stupid. Forget the fact that you are alone, in hiding, that there are soldiers who want to kill you, that your best friend is ill, that everything has been taken from you. Open the can! In the end, I managed it with the fork that I had found, hammering at it with a heavy stone and piercing the lid so many times that eventually I was able to peel it away. The herring was gray and oily. I’m not sure that anyone eats it anymore, but it had always been a special treat when I was growing up. My mother would serve it with slabs of black, dry bread or sometimes potatoes. When I smelled the fish, I thought of her and I felt all the pain welling up once more, even though I was doing everything I could to block out what had happened.

I tried to feed some to Leo, but after all my effort, he was too tired to eat and it was the best I could manage to force him to sip some tea. I was suddenly very hungry myself and gobbled down one of the cans, leaving the other two for him. I was still hopeful that he would be feeling better in the morning. It seemed to me that now that he was resting, he was breathing a little easier. Maybe all the rain would have washed away the anthrax spores. His clothes were still drying in front of the fire. Sitting there, watching his chest rise and fall below the covers, I tried to convince myself that everything would be all right.

It was the beginning of the longest night of my life. I took off my outer clothes and lay down on the second bunk, but I couldn’t sleep. I was frightened that the fire would go out. I was frightened that the soldiers would find the hut and burst in. Actually, I was so filled with fears of one sort or another that I didn’t need to define them. For hours I listened to the crackle of the flames and the rattle of Leo’s breath in his throat. From time to time I drifted into a state where I was floating although still fully conscious. Half a dozen times, I got up and fed more of the furniture into the stove, doing my best to break the wood without making too much noise. Once, I went outside to urinate. It was no longer raining but a few drops of water were still falling from the trees. I could hear them but I couldn’t see them. The sky was totally black. As I stood there, I heard the howl of a wolf. I had been holding the flashlight, but at that moment I almost dropped it into the undergrowth. So the wolves weren’t just a bit of village gossip! This one could have been far away, but at the same time it could have been right next to me, the sound starting impossibly low then rising higher and higher as if the creature had somehow flown into the air. I buttoned myself up and ran back inside, determined that nothing would get me out again until it was light.

My own clothes were still damp. I took them off and knelt in front of the fire. If anything got me through that night, it was that stove. It kept me warm, and without its glow I wouldn’t have been able to see, which would have made all my imaginings even worse. I had taken out the roll of ten-ruble notes that had been in the tin and at the same time I found the little black bag my mother had given me. I opened it. Inside, there was a pair of earrings, a necklace, and a ring. I had never seen them before and I wondered where she had gotten them from. Were they valuable? I made an oath to myself that whatever happened, I would never sell them. They were the only remains of my past life. They were all I had left. I wrapped them up again and climbed onto the other bunk. Almost naked and lying uncomfortably on the hard mattress, I dozed off again. When I next opened my eyes, the fire was nearly out, and when I pulled back the shutters, the very first streaks of pink were visible outside.

The sun seemed to take forever to rise. They call them the small hours, that time from four o’clock onward, and I know from experience that they are always the most miserable of the day. That is when you feel most vulnerable and alone. Leo was sound asleep. The hut was even more desolate than before—I had fed almost anything that was made of wood into the fire. The world outside was wet, cold, and threatening. As I got dressed again, I remembered that in a few hours I should have been going to school.

“Wake up, Yasha. Come on! Get your things together . . .”

I had to force my mother’s voice out of my head. She wasn’t there for me anymore. Nobody was. From now on, if I was to survive, I had to look after myself.

The two remaining cans of fish were still waiting, uneaten, on a shelf beside the fire. I was tempted to wolf them down myself, as I was really hungry, but I was still keeping them for Leo. I made some more tea and ate a little chocolate, then I went back outside. The sky was now a dirty off-white. The trees were more skeletal than ever. But at least there was nobody around. The soldiers hadn’t come back. Walking around, I came across a shrub of bright red lingonberries. They were past their best but I knew they would be edible. We used to make them into a dish called
kissel,
a sort of jelly, and I stuffed some of them into my mouth. They were slightly sour, but I thought they would keep me going and I placed several more in my pockets.

“Yasha?”

As I returned to the hut, I heard Leo call my name. He had woken up. I was delighted to hear his voice and hurried over to him. “How are you feeling, Leo?” I asked.

“Where are we?”

“We found a shed. After the tunnel. Don’t you remember?”

“I’m very cold, Yasha.”

He looked terrible. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend otherwise. There was no color at all in his face and his eyes were burning, out of focus. I didn’t know why he was cold. The one thing I had managed to do was to keep the hut reasonably warm and he was still tucked underneath the makeshift covers that I had put on the bed.

“Maybe you should eat something,” I said.

I brought the open can of herring over, but he recoiled at the smell. “I don’t want it,” he said. His voice rattled in his chest. He sounded like an old man.

“All right. But you must have some tea.”

I took the mug over and forced him to sip from it. As he strained his neck toward me, I noticed a red mark under his chin. Very slowly, trying not to let him know what I was doing, I folded back the covers to see what was going on. I was shocked by what I saw. The whole of Leo’s neck and chest was covered by dreadful diamond-shaped sores. His skin looked as if it had been burned in a fire. I could easily imagine that his whole body was like this, and I didn’t want to see any more. His face was the only part of him that had been spared. Underneath the covers he was a rotting corpse.

And at the same time, I knew that if it hadn’t been for my parents, I would be exactly the same as him. They had injected me with something that protected me from the biochemical weapon that they had helped to build. They had said it acted quickly and here was the living—or perhaps the dying—proof. No wonder the authorities had been so quick to quarantine the area. If the anthrax or whatever it was had managed to do this to Leo in just a few hours, imagine what it would do to the rest of Russia as it spread.

“I’m sorry, Yasha,” Leo whispered.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said. I was casting about, trying to find something to do. The fire, untended, had almost gone out. But there was no more wood to put in it anyway.

“I can’t come with you,” Leo said.

“Yes, you can. We’re just going to have to wait. That’s all. You’ll feel better when the sun comes up.”

He shook his head. He knew I was lying for his sake. “I don’t mind. I’m glad you looked after me. I always liked being with you, Yasha.”

He rested his head back. Despite the marks on his body, he didn’t seem to be in pain. I sat beside him and after about ten minutes he began to mutter something. I leaned closer. He wasn’t saying anything. He was singing. I recognized the words. “Close the door after me . . . I’m going.” Everyone at school would have known the song. It was by a rock singer named Victor Tsoi and it had been the rage throughout the summer.

Perhaps Leo didn’t even want to live—not without his family, not without the village. He got to the end of the line and he died. And the truth is that, apart from the silence, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between Leo alive and Leo dead. He simply stopped. I closed his eyes. I drew the covers over his face. And then I began to cry. Is it shocking that I felt Leo’s death even more than that of my own parents? Maybe it was because they had been snatched from me so suddenly. I hadn’t even been given a chance to react. But it had taken Leo the whole of that long night to die and I was sitting with him even now, remembering everything he had been to me. I had been close to my parents but much closer to Leo. And he was so young . . . the same age as me.

In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo. I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. After all, being unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I am. After all, living as a boy of fourteen in a Russian village, it had never been my intention to become a contract killer.

His death may have been one step on my journey. But—believe me—it was not a major step. It did not change me in any meaningful way. That happened much later.

I set fire to the hut with Leo still inside it. I remembered the helicopters and knew that the flames might attract their attention, but it was the only way I could think of to prevent the disease from spreading. And if the soldiers were drawn here, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. They had their gas masks and protective suits. They would know how to decontaminate the area.

But that didn’t mean I was going to hang around waiting for them to come. With the smoke billowing behind me, carrying Leo out of this world, I hurried away, along the road to Kirsk.