A freshly fallen tree lay across the road, its top buried in the bank cast up by the snow ploughs. Orlov nudged the truck against it, got out of the cab and inspected it. The raccoon dog leapt off Kirov’s lap and followed its master.
‘We can’t go on and we can’t go round it,’ Orlov said equably.
‘What do we do?’
‘Wait. There are tracks on the other side of the tree. Someone has been here already. My guess is they’ve gone for chains. Give it an hour and they’ll be back to shift it. Stretch your legs.’
Kirov stepped out into the snow. He scanned the empty road in both directions and looked up for the position of the low sun. From the trees there was silence. The snow lay in still waves on the lake.
‘Smoke? Drink?’ Orlov was already getting them. In the open he seemed to grow to fill out his clothes. He was no longer sparse and scrawny.
‘Andropov…’ Kirov began.
‘I don’t want to talk about Andropov,’ said Orlov evenly. He laughed and shook his head. ‘Bugger Andropov — bugger all of them. Once I used to care. Now I don’t. They’re not important. They don’t affect any of this.’ He swung out an arm to take in the earth and the sky. He spoke with a dignity that made Kirov want to laugh with a deep and bitter laughter: the other man was too simple to be alive. Orlov said, ‘Who cares if they kill each other?’
I care, Kirov told himself. If not about them, then about something else: about the truth, with all its elusiveness.
Orlov started chatting about other things: the animals, the trees, the Reserve and its conservation programme. ‘I didn’t give a damn about it until I came here — but now…’ He was full of homespun philosophy about nature, as trite and tedious as you could get, and Kirov still liked him for it. They continued like this for a quarter of an hour while the cold day dozed and the treetops nodded and the raccoon dog pursued its interests skipping about in the snow before settling in the driver’s seat of the truck. At the end of that time a second vehicle appeared a way off on the road behind them. ‘Company!’ said Orlov, who was pleased.
They waited. The other truck struggled on the road, approaching slowly, visible across a spur of the lake. They could hear the thrum of its engine, taut and brutal in the still air. A kilometre away the newcomers stopped. A man dismounted from the cab and stood, peering in their direction. He got back into the vehicle and it came on again, slow and labouring. In the trees the tonk-tonk of a capercaillie rose and fell.
‘What are they up to?’ Orlov asked. The dog smelled nervousness and jumped down from the cab. The strangers had halted again, three hundred metres away. Their truck stood dark and compact between white snow banks. Orlov shot a glance in Kirov’s direction. It spoke innocence and betrayal. The strangers leapt out of their truck and began firing.
They had automatic weapons. That first burst took the raccoon dog and flung it up in the air. The same volley hit Orlov in the arm, spun him round and left him alive and in shock to collapse against the truck. Kirov flung himself onto the bank to the thud-thud of bullets burying into the snow. He scrabbled over the frozen crest and tumbled into the shadows of the trees.
He heard them — four voices, tense but relaxed, like hunters on a spree. And Heltai with his high clear voice giving orders which he called suggestions — ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to fan out to look for him?’ and a single shot, which put an end to Orlov.
Kirov crouched in the cover of some spruce saplings. Behind him the trees went on for ever into darkness. Ahead the sun lay low over the lake and cast long bars of light through the margin of the forest and the snow bank glittered. Heltai was calling indulgently as if to a naughty child.
‘Pyotr Andreevitch! Petya! I know you can hear me. Let’s not be silly now. Come on out and we’ll talk things over.’
Figures were climbing over the snow bank. Kirov retreated, covering his tracks by moving over the sheltered spots where the snow was thin and his prints were lost in the leaf litter. Heltai continued to give casual instructions to his team then resumed: ‘Petya, what we have here is a misunderstanding. I’m sure that we can re-establish co-operation if only we talk things over. Otherwise there’s likely to be — an unfortunate accident.’
The accident he had in mind came as a burst of gunshots. Their direction was random. They were trying to draw his fire. Heltai wasn’t to know that Kirov didn’t carry a gun.
He retreated further. The sun disappeared and the road was now hidden. He heard footfalls off to his left and hunched in the cover of the trees. Heltai was still calling. Now more faintly. ‘Petya! Petya!’ His mother calling. Uncle Kolya calling. ‘Petya!’ The cold biting into him as long as he was motionless. More shots, sticks breaking, the sound of Heltai’s men, driving him back to avoid encirclement. As long as Heltai controlled the road he was trapped. The trees would envelop him for ever. If he lost the road he was a dead man. ‘Petya!’
Tree by tree he fell back until the cover ran out. Behind him a gully cut through the forest. The slope fell away sharply in rocks and a few stunted bushes to a frozen stream, and on the further side a dark wall of trees. To his left the shape of a man broke from this side of the gully and the figure scouted the slopes. If Kirov tried to cross to the other side he would come under the hunter’s field of fire. Back along his trail the noise of the others grew closer. He hugged the cover. Closer, closer. A man emerging suddenly not two metres away from him — looking away from him — looking ahead — looking at him — now!
Kirov dived for the other man’s legs. The man buckled at the knees, his gun went off and he was flying backwards. Kirov leapt onto him, his hands grappling for the other’s throat. Wrists around his own. A strong man, holding him off by strength, mouth open and yelling murder and other people hearing and running but Kirov didn’t dare to look: will his strength never run out? Butt him! The man stares back, wide-eyed, bloody-nosed and determined — you bastard! — butt him again, and again until he goes slack and his gun can be grabbed and smashed onto his head. And he lies back. Behind the anger and the blood he now looks pitiful.
Kirov gripped the gun and dropped over the edge of the gully, slithering on his side down the slope through the rocks and scrub. Bullets pinged off the rocks. Further up, from the crest of the gully, one of the hunters was firing. Kirov skidded into the shelter of a boulder, rolled over and loosed half a clip at his pursuer. He sprang to his feet again and ran flat- and slither-footed across the bed of the stream across the shivering crackling ice. More shots and the thwack of bullets into the scrub on the far side. He turned and emptied the magazine into the figure behind him, ditched the gun and threw his body onto the far slope, scratching and clambering through the stone debris and the dried berry bushes. No shots. He felt like a spider on a wall. No shots — and the tension of their absence was almost as killing as the bullets. His hand yanked at a root and dragged him upwards so that he reached the top of the gully. He pulled himself to his feet and his limbs ached and were torn with the effort. Slowly — but whether it was slowly he couldn’t tell since time was meaningless. And stretch, crucified against the trees.
He didn’t hear the shot. He was flung bodily into the trunk of a tree. His left arm was limp. His body was bruised to depths that didn’t exist. He was on his back, lying face up to see the sky through the treetops. Frozen in shock. Motionless and cold.
I’m dying, he thought. And it felt peaceful.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They found him sitting with his back to a tree. He felt their warm breath on his face as they stooped to examine him and heard their impossibly distant voices. They carried him, head and foot, his face looking upwards at the sky breaking through the pine tops, and laid him on the snow while they opened their vehicle. They placed him inside and covered him with a blanket, but even so he was cold and it didn’t hurt; no pain, just a frozen peacefulness.