‘I might pick up some useful intelligence.’
He knew I was vainly striving to find additional justification.
‘I have to find out what’s going on. I hate feeling useless, being on the sidelines.’
‘Want me to come with you?’
The offer surprised me. I was quite touched.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but no. I need to go alone.’
‘Don’t forget who the enemy is, will you?’
Chicomeztli came to my suite early the following morning.
‘There is a troop carrier leaving Harwich at noon,’ he informed me. ‘That is all we can manage. Otherwise, there will be nothing for several days.’
I think he believed I would refuse. It would be a rush to make the flight, but I had already packed a bag.
‘That will be fine,’ I said.
‘There will not be time to make special arrangements for you. They will just be informed you are joining them.’
‘Fine,’ I said again.
‘We can fly you there by jetcopter. The commander is called Huemac. You will need to report to him.’
‘I can be ready to leave in half an hour.’
‘Pick warm clothing,’ he said.
‘I’ve already done so.’
Unexpectedly, he reached up and hugged me.
‘Please look after yourself,’ he said.
Five
The carrier hold was brightly lit and packed with warm human bodies, but I stared out of the window at a bleak world of white and grey. The swirling snow melted as it hit the glass, turning into a clear slime which gathered at the base of the window. Far below, I could see a frosted surface – a frozen sea.
I turned and said in Nahuatl to Huemac: ‘Is that the Baltic?’
All around me the troopers had removed their snowsuits, but they looked cold, huddled into their padded uniforms. Huemac was adjusting the straps on his boots.
‘I asked you a question,’ I said.
‘Pardon me?’ he replied in English.
‘I said, is that the Baltic?’
He did not get up. ‘If there’s a sea below, then that’s what it is.’
Soon afterwards I saw the coast. The snow had thinned so that it was possible to make out dark clusters of trees among the white fields. Small villages dotted the landscape, ribbons of roads, isolated farm buildings; but we did not pass over any large settlements. The sky remained clear apart from the snow – no escorts, no sign of any enemy craft. We were probably crossing one of the Baltic provinces.
Crew-women in drab green coveralls doled out mugs of steaming chocolatl and rolled tlaxcalli filled with mince and tomatoes. The troopers warmed their hands on the mugs and savoured the rolls like men under siege.
‘Do you find it cold in here?’ I asked Huemac. He looked perfectly at ease himself, and was drinking mineral water rather than chocolatl.
‘They were transferred from Cyrenaica,’ he said, telling me what I wanted to know.
Obviously this was an indication of the seriousness of the situation. To thrust troops from the heat of North Africa into the depths of a Russian winter had to be a measure of desperation, or at least great urgency. Why had there been no word of Extepan or Maxixca for almost a month? I was impatient to find out.
I had no appetite and left my rations uneaten. Darkness began to gather outside the window, and matt-black flaps slid out to cover the wings, blotting out any traces of light. There was no change in the pitch of the engines: they whined on and on, carrying us deeper into the heartland of Mother Russia.
The troopers, true to their Aztec characters, were mostly silent. They played cards or dice, dozed or fingered crucifixes; some puffed on slender clay tubes packed with aromatic tobacco. When they talked, it was quietly, and I could make out none of the words. I sensed Huemac watching me discreetly. I was sure he resented my presence on the flight.
Some time later I was woken from a doze by a change in the sound of the engines. The craft began to tilt and bank.
‘Strap yourself in,’ Huemac said.
‘Are we landing?’
‘Soon.’
He was taller than most Aztecs, with rugged features. His hair was still soot-black, but his face was lined. He was forty, forty-five, an experienced commander.
‘Where are we landing?’ I asked.
‘Velikiye-Luki.’
I had never heard of it.
‘It’s on the road to Moscow,’ he told me.
Ten minutes later the carrier touched down at a military landing strip with a soft bump and a wheeze. The flaps were drawn back, and the dimming golden wings were shrouded with steam. Snow had stopped falling some time before, but it lay heavy on the ground and had been piled high on both sides of the runway. Of Velikiye-Luki – a small city, according to Huemac – I could see nothing except for the prefabricated buildings of the landing strip, black under a clear night sky.
‘Wait here,’ Huemac said. ‘I won’t be long.’
The troopers were struggling into their camouflaged snowsuits, pulling up hoods, tugging on fat mittens and padded overboots: they resembled morose and grubby polar bears. Soon they began disembarking, slinging their heavy packs over their shoulders and carrying their Xiuhmitl automatics in their hands as they went down the central corridor to the hatch at the rear. Freezing air wafted into the hold, and ice crystallized on the outside of my window.
I quickly donned my own protective clothing. A big cater-pillared troop-carrier rolled up, and the soldiers began climbing into its humped back. They were orderly, disciplined, unhurried.
Huemac returned, his suit zipped up and his hood drawn tight over his head. A younger Aztec officer accompanied him, an automatic tucked under his arm.
‘Are you ready?’ Huemac asked.
I nodded, tugging on my mittens.
Huemac led me towards the hatch at the front of the craft. Even before we stepped outside, the cold air assailed us like something palpable. There was a brisk wind, and the stars shone diamond-bright between tattered ribbons of moonlit cloud.
My feet crunched on a layer of brittle snow. The smell of smoke was in the air, and reddish glows lit the horizon. A sleek black glidecar was waiting nearby, its engine thrumming. The driver sat rigid, head swathed in a peaked cap with the ear-flaps buttoned down.
I followed the young Aztec officer into the back of the vehicle, steadying myself as it rocked on its air cushion. Huemac pulled the door shut behind him, and the car promptly sped off across the runway, throwing up plumes of snow from its flanks.
We passed through a checkpoint without delay, the guards waving us on as if eager to get back to the shelter of their sentry cabins. And who could blame them on such a bitter night?
The glidecar thrummed onwards, soon entering a ruined landscape which was lunar-like in the darkness. Snow-covered rubble lined both sides of the road, electric cables dangled from broken posts, and a wrecked Russian missile launcher was lodged in a wide storefront window like a huge beast being swallowed by an enormous black mouth. I could see the imperial eagle on its flank, blistered and charred. Now tall buildings with orderly ranks of windows began to rise around us, many gutted or in ruins. Their concrete façades were decorated with wheatsheafs and electricity pylons in the monumental imperial collectivist style.
Huemac and the young Aztec began a quiet conversation across me. They each spoke Nahuatl with very different accents. We turned into a broad avenue. Foot patrols passed by, the troopers crouched against the wind. Fires flickered and smoked behind skeletal walls, and a burst water-main spread rippled waves of ice across the road. Here and there emergency arc-lights had been mounted on solar platforms, their magnesium glare revealing Aztec soldiers burning wood fires under the engines of captured diesel trucks. A dog sniffed at a snow-covered mound which I was sure comprised frozen corpses. Scouters floated by overhead – artificial moons in purposeful orbit above the shattered city.