He said it like it was a commitment that needed reinforcing. “I promise… what is possible… a degree of harsh justice. It is owed to you.”
And his voice was drowned by the thrash of the rotors.
Timofey said, “It was good to have known him.”
Natacha said, “Was the best time of my life, most fun and most excitement.”
“I don’t have hope for him.”
“He will be alone and frightened.”
Jasha said, “His trade would mark him as a solitary man. Not a frightened man. If he is not overboard he will sleep; if he sleeps he will not wake… Good to know you.”
They hugged awkwardly. In truth, something of them unsettled Jasha. He thought they possessed a freedom that he did not have. Were as liberated as Zhukov, and would have hung around him while there was a value in his friendship, then would have drifted away, returned to a world from which he was excluded. It was a long time since Jasha had held another man in his arms, many years, and even longer since he had clung to a young woman and felt her dampened contours, bumps and angles against him. He had guided them back, first, to where his vehicle was parked up, well out of sight of his cabin, then had driven them to the point where the little Fiat had been left. They said they would go back to the apartment where his father was. Would be cautious, careful, suspicious, would spend time watching the entrance and looking for cars that mounted surveillance. Would be wary of any indication that an FSB investigation searchlight was beamed on them. Would spend most of the day loitering and watching. If it were clear, then they would be inside, check on his father, might feed him, then would draw down stocks for sale from the cache behind the wardrobe, and would be off to the railway station in time to meet the slow train up from the capital. Would they ever be used again as ‘assets’? Jasha doubted it. He had done his farewells with the boy first, then the girl. She kissed him, wet lips, and shivering, and then they were into the little car, and they bumped away and swung on to the slip-road to the highway for the run down to the coast and the bridge over the inlet, and then to Murmansk. He thought it unlikely they would talk of him after they had gone two kilometres, and that he would soon be forgotten, an unpredicted interlude.
A last wave from her, then the bend in the track.
Jasha could have taken them to his cabin. Had not. Might have fed them and lit a fire, and given her a blanket to drape over herself while her clothing dried on a bar in front of the flames. But they had no place in his space, and the only common factor was the stranger inserted briefly into their lives. He would have enjoyed more time with the agent, learning something of where he had been and his philosophy and where he stored the anger that was common to those of the lone wolf breed. Could have spent two days, or three, but then each would have exhausted the other… Jasha imagined that the man was long dead and would now be swirling among the mixed currents of the Barents. Might float for a bit after being toppled from the craft, then would sink. Might snag on deep rocks, or be dropped in weed beds, or be beached on isolated rocks and become food for the gulls. Had not told the kids.
He reached his cabin. He looked around when he was out of the pick-up. Stood still and listened to the sounds of his dog scraping the inside of the door, but listened also for Zhukov. Heard only the dog and the wind in the trees. He did not expect that he would see the bear again… unless the idiot creature suffered more injury, required help. If it stayed fit then their companionship was unnecessary. He would miss it, missed any friend who moved on. He fed his dog, lit the fire, then stripped out of his wet clothing.
But he was troubled. Remembered how long he had watched the dinghy as it spun and twisted, rose and fell, and seen it into the rain mist of the inlet, and looked long and hard for it after it had disappeared. He supposed he was touched by the man… which was weakness for Jasha. But they were all flawed men and made friendships only from necessity, and ditched them when they could, which was their pedigree – missed a friend, regretted the passing, and moved on.
He was in and out of sleep.
Gaz did not know, nor care, how long he had been in the dinghy. Time no longer had meaning. What had changed were weather conditions and with them the sea’s motion.
The cloud blanket was gone and through his near closed eyes he watched as the sun teetered on the edge of the horizon, did not dip further in this Arctic Circle summer, but would hover and then rise for the start of a fresh day. The wind had dropped and the wave movements were now gentle, soothing, and he lay in the dinghy with the water heavy around his body and rolling.
He had tried to fight sleep. Reckoned he had made a good fist of it for as long as his strength held out, but that had slipped. When he finally slept he would not wake again. Regrets? He would have said, had his thoughts been cogent, that he was a small man in a big system, a tiny cog in a large motor, that he had performed a use and delivered as comprehensively as he had found possible. Could not have demanded more… No more pain in his upper body and it might have been the cold water in the bottom of the dinghy that lapped against him that had achieved the numbness. It would be good to sleep.
Gulls were with him.
Not the seal. Doubted now whether he had actually had a seal riding escort, and was now near certain that he had not actually seen a full-grown brown bear on the rocks as he had moved towards the northern mouth of the inlet before drifting into the Barents Sea. The gulls shrieked and screamed over him, might have suggested that he hurried up with the business of getting himself asleep so that they could begin the feast. One, the boldest but not the biggest, had landed on the side of the dingy, had pirouetted there and perched more comfortably, and Gaz had managed to tilt his head sharply and it had realised that he still lived and that patience was demanded. It would go first for his eyes, then the slack skin of his cheeks, then try to burrow its beak inside his mouth having prised open his jaw. He would have liked to have the seal alongside, if there had actually been one. It could have ridden shotgun. Always on the wagons that the regiment boys drove were some who were never behind the wheel but were crouched over the barrel, and its sights, of the big machine-gun, fifty calibre. They were capable of keeping bad things back, and the seal would have been the nearest thing to match them.
No seal and no bear, and the gulls biding their time and circling him. Only the one face to hold on to. He had seen men die, eking out the last moments of breath and heartbeat, and some held crucifixes and some gripped worry beads and some shouted prayers. He only had the face… but the shape of it, lips and nose and the dance of the eyes and the hair that the wind carried over it was fading in his mind.
No ships to look for and only the ripple of water and the gulls’ cries. And ever more difficult to keep his eyes open.
It was an ability much prized. Both Mikki and Boris had the skill. Each cupped a lit cigarette in the palm of their left hand.
The funeral service would be a brief affair, but both would have time to smoke a filter tip during the priest’s prayers and there would be a short address from the brigadier on the loss of his son, tragically taken.
They stood behind the principal mourners. Other than the family there was a decent attendance of older cronies, men from the former KGB days, and their wives, many of whom showed off loud jewellery. Not anything that either man would have commented on to Lavrenti’s mother and father, but it was striking that very few colleagues from Lubyanka had chosen to come to this cool, shaded, flyblown place of ostentatious headstones. The burial was in the Kuntsevo cemetery, out at the end of Kutuvovsky Prospekt, and both had arrived early. There was good history in the ground there and they looked for the ‘famous’ graves of Kim Philby, a hero and a defector to the Russian cause and a Briton with an Order of the Red Banner, and those of the Krogers, husband and wife, both quality agents, and there were those of Russian military men who had given their lives for the Communist state. The brigadier would have had to pull strings, use influence, to lay his hands on a precious plot here.