‘Was that Uri Sergeivich?’ the girl asked, her eyes brightened still more at being named a lovely lady.
‘Yura, yes.’ He hadn’t heard Yura’s patronymic.
‘Oh God, he’s important! He’s really important — an old comrade of Pavel Grigorovich! We must be at a good table. You don’t think we can be at Pavel Grigorovich’s table?’
‘I don’t know.’
They were not at Bukarovsky’s table, but at one close by. Liova, the Light Vehicles head, was also at this table and some other departmental chiefs and their ladies. And a great hubbub rose from all the tables as the guests settled and saw what was before them, and what was still to come. Before each one of them was a bottle of champagne and of red wine, and for each couple a bottle of vodka and of cognac. And what was to come — on the elaborate commemorative menus — was the most extravagant meal Porter had ever seen. It was served on the trot by a small army of waitresses, Russian and Yakut, course after course of it.
Three kinds of soup and sour cream; caviar, smoked salmon, Kamchatka crab; roast chicken and beef with venison and tongue; salamis, sausages, stuffed piroshkes; salads, vegetables, pickled everything in profusion; with sugared cranberries and macaroons and icecream. And a box of chocolates with the coffee for every lady.
Bukarovsky, his haggard face relaxed and grinning, had. appointed himself master of ceremonies and gave the first toast. And the toasts went on throughout the meaclass="underline" toasts to the guests, and the ladies, to Shevelyev and the company he had founded, to comrades now absent with the boats and those left always absent in the camps, to Tchersky and Green Cape, to the Kolymsky region and Yakutia, to peace and prosperity.
They had grown somewhat slurred before a crash of cymbals announced a surprise event — a huge cake wheeled in as a present from Tchersky. The cake, iced to represent the original log premises of the Tchersky Transport Company, was set all around with models of the company’s first primitive trucks.
Bukarovsky, highly emotional, had to reply to this, and he said that proud as he was of the company’s development it could never have happened without the willing help of the Tchersky municipality; which suggested further toasts from those who had not yet given any.
Liova was on his feet, to give the Tchersky Road Services committee and its ambulance section whose vehicles he had the honour to service. Then Yura was on his, to say not only the ambulance section but all the health services, and in particular Tchersky’s magnificent hospital! And gazing round to where all the grinning faces had turned, Porter saw Medical Officer Komarova staring at him.
His heart gave a single great thump.
She was at a table beyond Bukarovsky’s, and now, through the cigarette smoke, he saw all the senior staff of the hospital. The director of the hospital was there, and Dr Gavrilov, and the isolation wing sister he had abused so loudly in Korean and Japanese. They were all looking and smiling quite amiably. But Medical Officer Komarova was not smiling. She was simply staring.
But was she staring at him? Perhaps she was staring at Yura. He looked quickly away, and was grateful that Yura then sat down and the impatient band struck up and people began taking the floor. Lydia Yakovlevna wanted to take the floor. The girl was now quite drunk and nibbling his ear.
‘I want to dance. I want to make love. First I want to dance,’ she said.
‘Yes, we’ll dance.’
‘Lovely lady, why hurry from me?’ Yura was now quite drunk himself and dribbling at her.
‘Oh, Uri Sergeivich, I don’t hurry from you −’
‘Ah, you know my name!’
‘Uri Sergeivich! Who doesn’t know your name?’
‘Uri Sergeivich,’ said a voice from the rear, ‘I would like, on behalf of the Medical Services committee, to thank you for your kind words.’ Komarova was in the rear. She was bending over to shake hands. She was bending over Porter to do so.
He dropped his napkin at once and got his head under the table to pick it up.
‘My privilege and my honour,’ Yura told her, drunkenly kissing the hand he was shaking. ‘But what’s this — not in your dancing clothes, not dancing with us tonight?’
‘Tonight it’s not possible. I am on call. But I felt I had to —’
Porter ducked out, dragged by Lydia Yakovlevna, and glimpsed the arm of a severely tailored suit before he was on the floor and lurching with the mob.
‘Oh God! Oh, pussy cat! Isn’t it wonderful? I feel wonderful,’ Lydia Yakovlevna said. She was nibbling his ear again. ‘I love you. I want to do things. We’ll do things, won’t we?’
‘Yes, we’ll do things,’ Porter said.
Komarova had certainly seen him. She had come over to see him better. Why else would she have come over to give thanks for kind words? The hospital director could have come and given them. But the hospital director didn’t seem to have recognised him, and nor had any of the others. All of them had examined him in the hospital; conscious and unconscious, clothed and naked: a sullen Korean seaman, bruised, with a pigtail and a moustache. Now he was a smiling Chukchee with a shaven head and a smooth face, a guest of Pavel Grigorovich’s. What connection could there be between the chance foreign seaman and this driver from Green Cape? But she had seen a connection.
Or had she?
He went frantically over every encounter he had had with her. She had seen him on the ship. She had brought him to the hospital. She had examined him every day. The others had examined him more — this was true — yet he was her patient, and her responsibility. She had had to make the arrangements to get him to Murmansk. Perhaps she had now heard from Murmansk …
Or there could be another reason entirely.
She was the district medical officer; perhaps in her district she had not before seen any Chukchees. He hadn’t seen any himself. He had certainly been a novelty to Yura, to liova, even to the old Yakut Vassili. Bukarovsky had been puzzled as to what he was doing here from Chukotka. She could be asking just such questions about him now.
Yes, it was that. It had to be that.
‘Pussy cat, one more dance and then let’s go,’ Lydia Yakovlevna said. She was rubbing herself against him. ‘Oh God, I want to do things. I want to do everything. We’ll do everything, won’t we?’
‘Yes, we’ll do everything,’ Porter said.
He had signed for a bobik to get down to Tchersky, and now they went back to Green Cape in it, and up to the second floor and did everything. But his mind was not on his partner, now strenuously enjoying herself in the Finnish bed, but on the stern figure in the tailored suit.
This was at the end of October.
27
At the end of October, General Liu Shih-Yu, commander of the military region of Sinkiang in west China, flew from his headquarters at Urumchi to the desert station of Lop Nor.
At Urumchi, a town of half a million people, he maintained an infantry division. At Lop Nor, with almost no people, he had two armoured divisions.
Lop Nor was a nuclear test base: his country’s oldest.
General Liu was not today on nuclear business, however. He was here to observe the impacting of a test missile. It was coming from Manchuria in east China and it would cross the intervening 3200 kilometres in nine minutes. A new guidance system had been designed to land it within a target area (CEP — circular error probable) of 250 metres.
At Lop Nor he inspected the target area. Instruments had been set to record the impact from the air, from the ground, and from below the ground. Then he went to his observation bunker. Here contact was already established with Manchuria, and he greeted his opposite number, the commander of the Shenyang military region.