Siberius (15 page)

             
Nick considered the pistol in his pocket and thought about a trade. Talia had admonished him against it, but he didn’t care. The gun had a full clip, but that was it. The extra clips had been left in his haversack back at the Yenisey installation. And it was clear just by looking at their village that the Chukchi had no way of getting any more.
They’ll use it to hunt
, Nick thought.
Yeah, I’ll be doing them a favor. Helping them out.
Regardless of the pistol’s impact, it would be a temporary one.

             
“Are you coming?” said Talia.

             
“Keep your shirt on, lady,” he said, then yawned and joined her.

             
The village was small, with 10 pyramid-like yurts forming a circle around what looked like a sort of public square. In the center was a huge fire pit lined with cobbles from the lake. Outside the northern edge of the yurt circle, a roughly hewn fence formed what Nick assumed to be a corral, although it was empty of any livestock at the moment. Parked at a makeshift gate were six sleds of various sizes.

             
At the edge of the village, Talia stopped.

             
Nick passed her by, then he too stopped and turned toward her. “Thought you were in a hurry?” he said before he registered the look on her face. He turned back toward the yurts before noticing that something wasn’t quite right.

The village was quiet.

“Come on out, choo-choos,” Nick whispered in a wry way.

“
Chukchi.” Talia looked irritated. “Show some respect.”

Nick felt foolish. He was only trying to be funny. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“So you do have some humility, huh?”

“
Buckets of it. What if they suddenly show up dressed in Soviet uniforms?”

“
They can’t be bought, Mr. Somerset. Besides, they make there own clothes from animal hides. They’re very traditional.”

“
Like eskimos, then?”

“
The preferred nomanclature is Innuit. ‘Eskimo’ is the name given to some Arctic peoples by their enemies. They’re not fond of it.”

“
Do you ever stop teaching people stuff?”

“
Only those who don’t need enlightening.”

“
So enlighten me on where your Chukchi friends are.”

Uneasily, she said, “Let’s find out.”

They entered the village. The first yurt
they came to was deserted, the flaps unsecured, the sole occupant a snowdrift trailing into the darkness. Talia went inside, looked around, but found nothing. No sign of life, no trace of a struggle.

“
Hey, lady,” Nick said from somewhere outside. She left and found him staring and pointing toward the corral. “Is it always open?”

Talia could see even from this distance that a small section of the fence was down. Perhaps, she thought, the reindeer had escaped and the village was now tracking them. But she remembered the number of children from her last visit and knew that the Chukchi would never endanger their youngest in such a hunt. She also remembered two pregnancies. Pregnant women don’t chase reindeer. The thought of the Red Army pilfering the village and taking the people into custody didn’t feel right either. Russians and the Chukchi lived an harmonious existence together for the most part and had even been trading partners.

They continued down the tent row, and Nick studied the smooth covering of snow blanketing the square. “No footprints,” he said. Talia was busy looking inside another deserted tent. “Anyone home?” Nick hollered out. Talia met his gaze with a horrified expression.

“
For God’s sake,” she said. “Don’t do that.”

“
There’s no one home.”

“
I don’t care,” she said. “From now on,
always
keep your voice down.” Nick saw she was trembling.

“
Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say.” He would have been angry had he not seen how upset she was. He watched as she made her way over to the collapsed yurt
,
and followed.

The tent was open to the elements and boot-deep in snow. Talia studied the structure, finding two of the four main posts broken in half. Below the break on one of the posts were familiar gouges.

Ragged number 11s.

Nick entered and a wave of stench hit him, forcing him to cover his mouth and nose. The smell was identical to the odor at the cabin. Treading into the shadows, Nick found the source of the stench in a darkened corner: a yellow puddle, frozen in the snow. He tapped the ice with his finger.

“Same as the cabin,” he said without breathing. Talia nodded, then went outside. Nick ran past her, then inhaled. “That’s some damn powerful piss.”

Talia went to the next yurt, then the next. They were all deserted. Nick joined her, but didn’t go inside; he studied the terrain surrounding the village instead. They were in an open space miles in diameter. There was no way he couldn’t see anyone- or anything- approach the village. It gave him little comfort. Even in this alien land, everything was somehow off kilter and Nick struggled with it. He sensed that Talia knew a lot more than she was letting on. He could see in her face that something was very wrong.

“Maybe they’re visiting friends,” he said. Talia went to the fire pit and placed her hand over it. There was no heat. “Or maybe they-”

“
They what, Mr. Somerset?” she said in a fierce, startling tone. “Are you going to offer a ridiculous theory? Because I’m not interested.”

“
Wait a minute,” he said, stepping back. “I’m just trying to help. They are your friends. Why don’t
you
tell me where they are?” Instead of saying anything, she retreated back to the lakeshore and sat on a boulder.

Frustrated, Nick threw up his arms and headed in the opposite direction. He had had it with this crazy woman and her secrets.

Talia looked out over the frozen lake. She hadn’t told the Chukchi about her studies, not truthfully. As far as they were concerned, she was observing birds in her tree hides. But now they were missing, driven from their village or worse, and guilt was starting to gnaw at her.

She rubbed her arms to warm them, then stared down at the snow. A few yards off shore, the stump of a branch jutted from the ice. Talia looked at it a while, and like a drifting cloud, the stump began to take on familiar dimensions. She stood up and inched her way across the ice toward the branch.

Within a few feet, she realized that it wasn’t a branch at all.

Nick searched for food in one of the standing yurts. “Crazy broad,” he said. “Keep your damn secrets then. Lot of good it’s doing.”

And then he heard the scream. It was short, more of a yelp, and it cut out abruptly. He ran from the tent, bounded across the village, then stopped at the sight of Talia at the edge of the frozen lake.

Never, ever raise you voice,
he thought.
What a load of garbage.
Nick walked down to the lakeshore, but stopped when he saw Talia’s frightened face.

“
What?” he asked. He had been saying that a lot lately.

“
The lake,” she said, pointing.

Nick shielded his eyes and saw the jutting branch. “So?” he said, but Talia remained in a state. Mindful of its thickness, he moved across the ice, testing it with each step. He wondered how cold the water was below his boots. And how deep.

Approaching the branch, he knelt down and realized why Talia had screamed. “Jesus,” he said under his breath, then thought
I’d have screamed, too
.

Sticking up out of the ice, the arm was broken and bent at odd angles. A coat sleeve dangled in frozen shreds and the hand was missing all the fingers below the first knuckles. Though it succumbed to the lake just above the elbow, it was so broken up it was hard to tell where the real joints were. Nick reached out and touched it. It was as solid as the ice he stood on. He brushed away the snow, uncovering the lake ice to see who the arm was attached to.

What lay below, he wasn’t prepared to see.

Nick jumped to his feet and backed off. Glancing over at Talia, he opened his mouth to say something, but words didn’t come out. Instead, he kicked away more snow from the lake surface, exposing a wide circle of clear ice.

“C’mon over here, lady,” he said. “I think you should see this.”

Talia baby-stepped her way to Nick, afraid of what she already knew was there.

She was wrong.

Encased inside the lake ice and frozen in a permanent scream was the face of a Chukchi woman. It was what Talia had expected to see. What she hadn’t expected to see were the others. Crowding all around the woman were the terrified faces of more villagers. Talia covered her mouth when she recognized the faces of the children. Nausea crept up on her and she held her breath. A slippery, salty taste flooded her mouth, but she maintained control.

“How many people were in that village?” Nick asked.

Talia pointed down and said, “That many.”

Nick helped with her backpack, lifting it off of her shoulders and setting it on the snow. He pulled out a canteen and handed it to her. She sat on a rock and sipped.

“We could use something hot to drink,” he said as he sat down next to her. Talia stared off in the distance and handed him the canteen. He took a swig, then said “Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.” He was trying to comfort her, but doing a poor job of it. When she looked at him, he was surprised to see a tear and a vulnerable face. Nick found himself drawn to her.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Nick pressed a shoulder against hers. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “They were your friends. How else are you going to react?”

“
You’re
not upset, though,” she said between sniffles.

“
Sorry. Guess I’ve seen a lot worse. You missed a hell of a war.”

She nodded, grateful that he was there with her. The thought of being alone now terrified her.

“No one wants to see friends come to harm,” Nick continued.

Talia looked back at the lake. Now a nondescript mound of snow covered the protruding arm. It made it all the more horrific.

“How long do you think they’ve been in there?” said Nick.

“
I don’t know,” Talia said. “A week. Maybe more.”

“
Red Army had nothing to do with this, did they?” he said.

Hesitating, she shook her head.

“Thought so.” He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Talia looked at him again with tortured eyes. “I can’t,” she said in an uncharacteristicly timid voice. “I made a promise.”

“A promise? To who?” Nick said in disbelief. “About what?”

“
Mr. Somerset, I’m sure you can understand the value of a secret.”

Nick stood up. “We’re in a deserted tent city in the middle of Siberia, lady, with 20 dead Eskimos under a frozen lake. What’s more important than that?”

She looked up at him with grieving eyes. “Mr. Somerset, my name is not ‘lady.’”

Nick’s anger melted away. In an instant, Talia became a human being. At the same time, Nick became the world’s biggest heel. He sat back down, but couldn’t say anything. He rolled up a snowball and threw it.

“I’m sorry, Talia,” he said. Her eyebrows arched at the sound of her name.

“
They were the only family I had left.”

He nodded. “But why the lake?”

She considered his question a moment, but the answer was clear. They were in the middle of a plain, too far away from the safety and height of the trees. The lake was a desperate attempt to hide, a tragic mistake that drowned or froze them to death outright.

For Talia, however, there was a more profound question. The Chukchi had lived in this region for over a thousand years without incident. Now it was evident that something had changed the natural dynamic. What it was, she hadn’t a clue, but it brought about the end of an entire village. The one bright spot, if one could be found, was that they drowned. It could have been worse. Horribly worse.

They sat in front of a fire and tended a pot filled with melting snow. Normally, they would have chipped a hole in the lake ice to fill their canteens, but with the bodies of the villagers submerged in it, they decided not to risk drinking what could be bacteria-contaminated water. Eating the snow itself was not the preferred way to rehydrate, either, and liquifying it into drinkable water was the safest option. Besides, Nick wanted something hot to drink, even if it was simply water.

Placing his hands in his pockets, Nick’s fingers touched the camera. He thought about his mission, about what a joke the whole thing now seemed to be. It was likely that the pictures he took would be too dark, yet there was always a chance that someone in the OSS would find something useful within the images. He hadn’t wanted to abandon all hope of getting them to Otto Pulskovar’s farm in Bratsk. At least, he reasoned, getting the film to the right people gave him a goal. Nick was after all a patriot who fought for his country and wanted to make a difference in the new secret battle for intelligence between the west and the Soviet Union. Despite his desire to retire from government work, he didn’t want to leave with his mission a failure. He had his pride.