She wasn’t coming.
He went back to the cave.
He didn’t know what to do. A quarter to three in the morning. Even if she came now, it would be six before she got back.
She wouldn’t be coming.
The stove needed replenishing, and the generator. He attended to these things, brooding over the situation.
If she couldn’t come now she would come tomorrow. She wouldn’t leave him like this. He had nothing to eat or drink. He was trapped here, stuck, couldn’t leave the place. Had there been an accident? She couldn’t have got lost. Not for this amount of time. Something had held her up. It would be another whole day and night.
There was no point in doing anything now — all the bodywork to come down first. The truck would be back from Provodnoye at eleven — eight hours to go. He had better sleep a while, and start again.
He laid the sleeping-bag back in the bobik, switched the generator off, and got into the little van. The loose structure swayed and creaked with his weight, and he had barely settled himself when he heard the sound of a motor. He lay for a moment listening, and raised himself, and grasped a heavy wrench and got slowly out.
A bobik engine. And from the direction of Green Cape. He went to the entrance, raised the layers of curtain and peered through the branches. He saw the flicker in the sky and suddenly the headlights, swinging blindingly round the bend The car came on, very slowly. He couldn’t see who was in it how many were in it. Then it slowed further, and he saw the shape of her head, peering, and he switched the torch on.
‘God!’ She got out and hugged and kissed him. ‘I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, my darling! I couldn’t leave before. They were searching.’
He took her inside, and got the lights working, and unloaded what she had brought and right away took a long pull at the vodka while listening to her hurried story.
The militia had started in the afternoon. She thought they were now at Green Cape, searching the Transport Company. Her own house had been the last in Tchersky and they had not started till 10.30. They thought he had broken in somewhere and was lying low. They had gone through every nook and cranny — the shed, the cellar. It was midnight before they’d left and they were still poking about the area so that it was another half hour before she had dared take the bobik out.
She had got everything: full jerricans from the pump at the ambulance depot. Sausage, cheese, blackbread, two bottles of vodka, more coffee. From the little general counter at the post office, torch batteries and a child’s compass, it was all they had; from the same place a school atlas of Siberia — there was no public map of this reserved area. If he could delay a little she might lay hands on one in the ambulance section or her own administrative office: it had been locked when she had realised the lack. And a blanket.
‘But you’ve finished it!’ She was tired and dazed from the journey, and had only now noted the transformation in the bobik.
‘No. I haven’t.’
He explained about the bobik. Also the battery.
She stared at him. ‘Oh, God! I didn’t even know it was there. I didn’t see it … They didn’t, either … Maybe people keep spare batteries … Well — I’ll bring it, then.’
He saw she was swaying, deathly pale, and he held her. He opened the rear of the bobik and sat her there, and poured a little vodka into the vacuum flask cap. But she took only a sip.
‘I’ve still got to get back … Well, maybe I’ll be able to get you a proper map now … But no, I can’t — how?’ She shook her head, still dazed. ‘The office won’t be open today.’
‘What day is it?’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘Sunday?’ He had lost a day somehow; both of them dazed. ‘Okay, you’d better go. You’ll make it before anything’s moving in Tchersky. But take it easy. You’re very tired.’
‘Yes. I’ll come earlier tomorrow — that is, tonight.’ She dragged herself up. ‘I’ll try to get here by midnight. And I’ll find out what I can.’
He turned the bobik for her on the river and saw her into it, and she smiled wanly as he kissed her. ‘With all these mechanical activities — the disks are safe?
‘Yes. They’re safe,’ he said.
She stroked has face and he kissed her again.
‘Go safely, Tanya-Panya.’
‘Yes.’
He watched the lights recede and went back in the cave; on his own again.
He ate a little and took another swig of vodka and turned the generator off and got back in the bag. As he dozed off to sleep he felt the body belt. Through all the activities, safe.
49
By noon on Sunday an embarrassing situation had arisen in Tchersky. The native driver posing as Khodyan had driven into town at 4 p.m. on Friday, had helped to unload a van in the yard of a building next to the militia headquarters and had men vanished into thin air.
Almost forty-eight hours ago.
There was nowhere that he could have gone. The militia had searched every building where he could have gone; they had even searched buildings where he couldn’t have gone. They had searched the jail, the schools, the old women’s baths, the militia chiefs own home, apart from all other private dwellings.
He wasn’t in Tchersky.
But if he wasn’t in Tchersky, how had he got out of it? He hadn’t taken his own vehicle, and he hadn’t taken anybody else’s. No vehicles were missing. Apart from Green Cape, four kilometres away, there was nowhere else to go.
He could have walked to Green Cape, or taken a lift. Nobody had knowingly given him a lift, although he could have grabbed one; hidden in the back of something. But once arrived there, then what? He wasn’t in any private dwelling, or in the basements or boiler rooms of any apartment blocks. He wasn’t in the supermarket or its warehouse; or in any of the premises of the port authority.
That left the sprawling sheds and stores of the Transport Company above; and the militia chief thought this was the most likely. By some means or other he had got himself there. Plenty of booze crated in the place, and food. He was familiar with it and he was resting up there, deciding what to do. He couldn’t escape, and there was nowhere to go if he did. But you could look a long time before finding him there; and this was a problem for the chief who did not have a long time. He was being driven mad by urgent calls and faxes from Irkutsk.
Irkutsk was 3400 kilometres away and it was a big town; they didn’t understand there how it was possible to lose someone in a little settlement of 10,000 people stuck out in the taiga. In particular, they didn’t understand the nature of the people here. Oddballs, many of them, running away from something; but not bad. There was no crime here, no theft or fraud. Everybody knew each other. The jail was for drunks, fighting mad at night but best of friends in the morning.
This particular individual had been the best of friends with everybody. No one had a bad word to say of him; only that he could be touchy, if picked on as a Chukchee. Well, here he’d been picked on, for having funny papers. Knew someone had told on him. Plenty of people here had funny papers; the militia chief knew that. But this one had gone broody. A broody native hid himself. With a bottle. Obvious. He was holed up, would come out when it suited him. Explain that to Irkutsk!