It was moving fast, not a truck; headlights coming rapidly up and down the switchback. As it neared he saw it was a bobik, and that it was slowing and stopping. They’d both dipped their lights, and now he briefly flicked his and kept going, and in the rear-view mirror saw the other car had started again. They’d raised a hand to each other in passing. All okay. The other bobik didn’t belong to Tchersky; some other kind of plates on it.
He suddenly realised he didn’t have any plates.
He couldn’t run into Bilibino without plates.
He worked this out, and had found a solution before he saw the lights of the next station, in a hollow of the switchback far ahead, Road Station No. 3.
He stopped on the hill above it, doused his lights, and took what he needed out of the back. Then he coasted down and went in, in the dark.
Fuel first, and he took it from a bobik. The car was backed in tight to a snowbank. Too tight for the next task. He had decided he needed only one plate — and a rear one was the least likely to be missed.
He found his target, and got to work. Fixings iced solid, and he didn’t bother with them. He muffled the chisel with a rag and thumped it with the wrench. In a few minutes he had prised the plate off, and had it with him in his own bobik.
Road Station No. 3; goodbye. 5 p.m.
He was making fast time; but also tiring fast. Eleven hours of driving since he’d left the cave. And the mountains would be coming up. He had to find a place soon.
He drove slowly, looking for it. If he’d left it too late, he could turn and go back to one he had already spotted. But this he didn’t have to do. In starlight, from a hilltop, he saw it: at the foot of the slope, a dark hollow in the expanse of white. He drove down, and took a look at it.
Barely noticeable when travelling; a little culvert with a bridge over it, one of many. In the darkness underneath was a frozen stream, a couple of metres below the road, the same kind he’d driven out of hours before. The bridge was the width of the road. The bobik would tuck easily under it.
The bank sloped gently, and he drove down, on to the stream and under the bridge.
He slept two hours there, with the heater off to save fuel. The bobik was a deep freeze when he came out of the bag, and he started the engine and the heater. Eight o’clock.
He unwrapped the bread and sausage. The hard salamis had been separately wrapped when she’d brought them. Now they were in one coarse sheet of paper. He ate, and drank some coffee from the flask; and in torchlight took a look at the number plate.
One bolt was still bent in it. He had spare bolts in the tool kit. The whole ingenious vehicle was put together with only a few types of bolt. He sawed this one off presently, and got out and fixed the plate on the front. Then he filled up the tank, and attended to a few needs of nature.
He hadn’t washed much since leaving the house on Friday, and it was now Monday night. He chipped a bit of ice and did the best he could with his hands and face, and then his teeth. Then he climbed up and had a look at the road. All clear.
By ten, despite the constant zigzagging in the mountains, he had made Road Station No. 4.
He had decided to take four jerricans here. That should see him to Bilibino, with some extra in case of a detour. He hadn’t seen the airport there. In the mountainous area it could be way out.
He drove in without lights, and got out with the first pair of jerricans. He filled them rapidly, and returned with the second. Only one other bobik was in the car park — too near the hut, but shielded by a truck. He siphoned a can out of it and started the next, and stopped abruptly. The hut door had opened.
Two men, roaring with laughter, were coming out. And coming to the bobik. He had no time to get the cap back on. He hid behind the truck and heard them exchange cheerful obscenities with others still at the hut door. Then the men got in the bobik and he watched it go, across a huddle of trucks. Light from the hut door gleamed off the truck hoods, and then the door closed and he stood for some moments, quite still.
He first secured the jerricans in the car and then went back and looked at the trucks. In the dark their hoods no longer gleamed, but he went round them one after the other, and there was no doubt of it. A thick coat of ice was on the hoods. The engines hadn’t been used for hours — probably not all day.
He had seen no trucks on the road all day.
He got back in the bobik and took off fast.
He had to get out of the mountains. There was nowhere to squirrel himself away here. He thought the next station was still in this labyrinth. That would be Road Station No. 5. Only one more after that to Bilibino. He had gone almost two thirds of the way to Bilibino. And obviously all convoys to Bilibino had been halted.
He was stunned by the revelation.
Tchersky’s militia couldn’t have done this — not so far out of their region, not on their own authority. Only a supra-regional authority could have done it. Irkutsk had done it. Their investigators were already in Tchersky then.
And they had figured he was going to Bilibino. What other reason could there be for halting all the traffic to and from it? From it, presumably, in case he’d already dropped off, and they wanted information. But the only reason for Bilibino could be the airport. So they’d figured that too.
He couldn’t go to Bilibino airport.
For the first time since arriving here — for the first time since leaving Japan — he was truly at a loss.
He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t just stop. But there was no point in going on.
Road Station No. 5 came up, still in the labyrinth, and he passed it with his lights off, not knowing what else to do.
As he switched on again, hanging in tight to a bend, a thought of a kind came to him. They could figure this and they could figure that. But there was one thing they couldn’t figure.
How could they figure the bobik? It didn’t exist. He’d conjured it out of parts that didn’t exist, a phantom. And the little bastard was going better than ever, thriving on all difficulties. Since he didn’t know what else to do, he let it.
52
By early afternoon the general had gone far to shaking up the midwinter lethargy of Tchersky. He was a burly, vigorous man, and he detested lethargy. To a certain extent he could understand it here. Where he had come from, it grew light at eight and dark at four. Here it was dark all day. Such street lights as there were were on all day. The people crept about like dormice. Everything they did had to be rechecked. Everything the militia did had to be rechecked.
The first assignments he had delegated briskly, taking over the militia chiefs desk for the purpose. Helicopters had gone off, driving crews were being interviewed, scores of phone calls made. Now, with the transport question in hand, he could concentrate on other matters.
Principal among them was what the fellow had been doing here, and where he had been doing it. Early on he had discovered that he had not been where he said he had been. His neighbour, his girlfriend, his workmates, all said he had spent much of his time at a nearby collective. At this collective they’d never heard of him. He had not been there. But he had been somewhere.
A place had been arranged for him here: it was likely that cover had also been arranged. Or he had arranged it for himself. He had certainly in a short time made many contacts. In any case, somebody was covering for him now. That much was obvious.