The early sunlight fell on horizons of gradually rising hills, no tower blocks, no pylon lines, no industrial chimneys, only the expanse of tundra. He remembered how it had been when he had crossed a part of it on foot, running with the kids, and more of it when they had circled the roadblock and reached the car. Behind him, the old man gave the officer more water, whining, with a drunk’s slur, his apologies. It was the only way that Gaz thought worth considering… and how to get a prisoner, young and fit, desperate and trussed, on to that landscape. He scratched in his brain for detail. It was a bleak view confronting him, and with no charity: there had been no charity in any of the theatres he’d worked.
He owed it, and the debt had a millstone’s weight. He turned away from his view of the wilderness.
The bear, Zhukov, had come forward and now had its weight on its buttocks and lower back and half of its stomach fur was exposed and one of its front legs was raised above its throat.
Jasha had seen it emerging from its cover. He had not taken the rifle from the wall but knew how long he would need to reach it, and how long it would take to arm it, and his dog lay supine on its sacking bed and growled quietly. Jasha had lived for long enough in the cabin – with no company but that of a dog – to know all the sounds made by animals, large and small, shy and bold. He knew those indicating anger and those that meant an animal was challenged and he should back off, and those when a creature crossed boundaries and regarded him as a companion. He recognised that Zhukov made the same sound, with a chilling and dangerous intensity, as when he had had the wire around its foot and his flesh had been growing over the barbs.
Using his binoculars, the hunter located the source of the bears pain. One leg was a full fifteen centimetres shorter than the one with the long yellow claws and with the roughened dark pads that made the identifying footprint. He studied the stump and his eyes roamed slowly over the skin that had weathered and strengthened. When Zhukov moved, he employed a rolling gait, like that of a bow-legged peasant. There was little grace but his speed was undiminished. In the last days the creature had kept back from him, had stayed hidden, but had tracked him. Jasha had only seen this behaviour once before. When Zhukov had been in intense pain from the wire he had followed and stayed hidden, but had kept company with the hunter. What the binoculars found, Jasha reckoned, was a fencer’s staple. He estimated it to be some five centimetres from point to arch, and almost entirely lodged in the stump. It surprised him that the bear could not put the stump in its mouth and use its teeth to extract it. The bear, Zhukov, did not know how to be free of it… He had come to Jasha for help.
He thought the bear weighed perhaps 350 kilos. On its hind legs it would have stood at more than two metres. With either front leg it could break Jasha’s neck with a casual blow. With one slash of the claws it could disembowel him. With its teeth, old and as darkened as those of a habitual nicotine smoker, it could bite off his head. It was a wild creature; stories of bonding and friendship were few and far, mostly lies or delusions. His aid was required. He removed his binoculars, and pondered. The dog had not moved, not even a flick of the tail.
Every few minutes, the bear uttered the short and soft cry, pathetically quiet for a creature of that size. Jasha’s loneliness, self-appointed, in the wilderness was interrupted by the beast that came to him and trailed him, made demands of him. Two options faced Jasha. Living in the wilderness there were rarely opportunities to fudge an issue of importance. The same as when he had served in the treacherous beauty of Afghanistan. He either killed the enemy or he slipped away unobserved and accepted failure. Both the options were stark. He could go to the far wall of the cabin, could reach up above his dog and could lift down the old Dragunov sniper’s rifle. A single cartridge, 7.62x54R, fired at point-blank range – the same bullet could kill at 800 metres – would end the life of the bear, would close a chapter of suffering. He could then go outside, and use his hunter’s knife carefully to remove the bear’s pelt and hang it out to dry and be cleansed while he dragged away the carcase and dismembered it for easier consumption by the foxes or even have the attention of a pair of lynx. Could sell the skin via his agent in Murmansk, and get a fair price even though a front pad was missing, and be freed of the burden of having the troubled creature tracking him, entering his home and leaving his dog traumatised… The second option was both terrifying to Jasha and compelling.
For an hour or more, he would busy himself inside the cabin. The dog would be fed. He would place the tin with his worldly wealth on the table beside his military identity card. He remembered the two kids running in their ridiculous clothes across the rock and bog of the tundra, and remembered the man with them who struggled to keep pace who was military from his bearing, and they came from the frontier and the barricaded border. The memory was a distraction. He would drink tea first, and dry his eyes, and the dog would have to take its chance.
He supposed it to be a matter of trust, and a time when trust and love merged. He eyed his overflowing toolbox, and put his kettle on the ring.
From a high point, Knacker surveyed a vista.
He and the Norwegian, their vehicle left at the bottom of the slope, had trudged up a rough path and the mud from earlier rain clung to his shoes, buffed that morning by Alice.
A familiar moment for Knacker. A chance to look across what seemed an endless expanse of uniformly dull ground, a scrap of the hinterland of the Russian Federation. Never tired of it. Could have learned more by taking out a subscription to a postcard company, but it still thrilled him to have that chance to gaze towards a long horizon. There was little to learn except that the terrain seemed to be difficult and slow-going: on the side of any fugitive would be the lack of roads and trails and the clumps of granite rock and the stunted forests of dwarf birch. There was one blip on the desolation in front of him… a cluster of high-rise blocks and three industrial chimneys, grey from the smoke they poured out. The place was called Nikel. The reason for the place was the nickel-smelting ovens: seven decades before, it had been a site of ferocious combat as the advancing Germans had fought their way into the complex. Old equipment was still used. The Norwegian said the levels of pollution from sulphur dioxide were way above even Russian standards of safety. The light wind floated the smoke emissions to the south as they had for many years and there the ground had no trace of green.
Knacker said, “You are one of the cleanest and least contaminated countries in Europe and you have to exist alongside this foul mess?”
The Norwegian shrugged. “What else is possible?”
“It is immaterial to them that they poison the air, the ground, the water courses?”
“They require nickel for their armaments programmes and so they must have it, but will not pay the price of modern equipment. They do not care.”
“Do they listen to you?”
“We complain, but we are ignored. And they deny… We believe that town is inside one of the top five most poisoned locations in their country, but they say our data is ‘contrived’. They will not admit to a fault, are scared to take blame. You cannot confront them with logic and argument, but you know that.”
“That analysis, I do not disagree.”
“You have a man there? One man?”
If Fee had been with him, or Alice, they would have expected a slight smile to break on his face, and a little shrug, and a gesture that indicated a conversation straying into such confidences was unwelcome. No smile, no shrug, no gesture. He liked his companion, believed his honesty. “That’s about it.”