Still in the dark, he started the stalled engine again, twisting the wheel this way and that, and rocking the car in and out of reverse, which got it sluggishly crawling again.
The blast seemed to have stunned him completely. He couldn’t see anything. And the shock was making him pant. The glass had exploded in his face and must have cut his mouth. He tasted blood there. The panting he recognised after a minute to be not panting but something like choking. This nightmare — quite a familiar one — he had often had. Driving a car, choking, and unable to see where he was going. He knew he must be going right, that he hadn’t turned completely. When the car stuck and churned he wriggled the wheel and got it moving again, very slowly, a crippled insect, stumbling, stopping, wriggling on.
The US aircraft watching from above stated that it took him eight minutes and that he halted when he was told to.
A loudhailer told him to, in English, and presently some closer voices were bawling at him to open the door and step out with his arms raised. He opened the door but didn’t manage the arms or even the step, flopping out like a bundle on the ice. Many big amplified voices were sounding off all round him, and from the island itself, and among them he picked out, weirdly, the mellifluous one of Bing Crosby, hoping that his days would be merry and bright, and all his Christmases white.
62
The medical facilities on the island were found to be not adequate for Porter’s injuries and a helicopter was readied to take him 120 miles down the Alaskan coast to Nome. He was fully conscious and urgently demanding a tape recorder; which the radio room made available to him, together with a throat microphone — this last a requirement of the military surgeon who didn’t want him shouting over the engine.
At Nome, the facilities were also found to be insufficient and he was jetted another 600 miles south to Anchorage. Here in the early afternoon of 25 December he was admitted to the Providence Hospital.
Because of the festivities only a skeleton staff was on duty at the hospital, but Nome had informed them of the case and specialists had already been contacted.
The specialists drove in, and they agreed that immediate surgery was needed. The patient was still conscious but now in great difficulties. Apart from possible neurological complications, the more obvious damage was very extensive. One eye was missing, he was blind in the other, had two shattered legs, and severe injuries to most of his upper body.
In stripping him for examination, the staff had found a body belt which he refused to give up. During the X-rays he insisted on holding it himself under a protective lead apron. The tape recorder had been taken from him (the tape, after being turned for him on the aircraft, had now run out), but he insisted that he had to give some immediate instructions about it to a man in Washington.
This man could not be reached, but at a redirected number somebody promised that he would call in as soon as possible. He had still not called in when Porter, now speechless and unmoving, had to be taken down to the operating theatre. By then, however, he had made his instructions understood: the belt and the tape were to be locked in the hospital’s safe, and if he was incapable of speech for any length of time after the operation the man from Washington had to hear the tape before touching the body belt.
These instructions were observed: the belt and the tape went into a safe and Porter himself to surgery.
The man in Washington was his CIA escort Walters, with whom he had established, at the ‘camp’, a fair working relationship. Walters was not, at this time, in Washington but in Seattle, where he was spending Christmas with his in-laws. Seattle, though well north — the most northerly town of the United States proper — was still 1500 miles south of Anchorage.
Transport was made available, his journey notified, and he arrived at the Providence at nine o’clock. Porter was by then long out of the operating theatre, but not expected to live. His visitor identified himself, had his identification confirmed, and signed for the tape and the body belt. He had been keeping contact with Langley and was now instructed to go there at once. Langley was another 2500 miles. But by lunch time next day, which was Boxing Day, the material he brought with him had been duly processed. By then, however, the Providence’s morgue had received its expected corpse.
The voice on the tape was a husky whisper, not always understandable, but quite understandable about the body belt.
Inside the belt was a pouch, and in the pouch a foil-sealed case.
When manipulated in a vessel of liquid hydrogen the case sprang easily open and popped out its disk. The disk was four centimetres in diameter, and the material on it highly condensed. The technicians soon unravelled the protocol and transferred the contents to a screen.
The information on the disk was known to be addressed personally, but even so the directness of the opening caused surprise as the lines began streaking, one after the other, across the screen.
‘ How long, dear friend — how long? I await you with eagerness … ’
EPILOGUE
The man who had been awaited with eagerness was given no name at the inquest held at Anchorage.
The medical witnesses said he had died of multiple injuries, and the military ones that he had sustained them in a vehicle that had halted, damaged, on the sea ice of north Alaska.
He had entered US territory from the Russian side of the border, perhaps having strayed there in fog. He had evidently been caught in crossfire during a military exercise — at present the subject of official complaint. For the exercise had taken place within 500 metres of the international line, and gunfire within 250 metres of it: a clear violation of treaties.
The man was non-caucasian. He had carried no identification and had given none. The coroner found he had been unlawfully killed, and ordered the body held until its identity was known and culpability for the death established.
The inquest was fully reported in the town’s two papers, the Anchorage Times and the Daily News.
In Irkutsk the general read these reports and added them to his own for a tribunal he would shortly be attending. The Americans, he had been informed, would be producing clear and certifiable photographs of the violation. A fig for the Americans! His only regret was that he was unable to produce their agent — a counter-violation. But the man had got away, if only to die. He read through the evidence of the civilian surgeons again, and decided there was no doubt about that. He was dead. And nothing had come of his mission.
The fact of the mission was very amply confirmed, however (evidence from Batumi, from Ponomarenko, from the many forged papers). And that nothing had come of it was equally plain. Major Militsky, the guards, the Evenks — the testimony of all of them showed that. It was impossible for the man to have made contact with anybody on the mountain. And obviously he had never intended to. A reconnaissance only.
How he had arrived in the Kolymsky region was a problem, and how he had left it was another; as yet unresolved. But the action at the strait (bearing in mind the high security issue involved) was unquestionably justified. The object was to catch the man, discover who had sent him — and how. Unfortunately it had not been achieved. But the next best thing had. Meanwhile, inquiries were still continuing.