Two o’clock, and he put the light out.
And almost at once was woken up. He stared at his watch: 6 a.m. A moment ago it had been only two. But they were quite right to wake him. Something very interesting had turned up.
53
At two in the morning Porter passed Road Station No. 6, and ahead now there was only Bilibino.
An idea had come to him of what could be managed if only he could get through it. But it was now six hours since he had wakened under the bridge, and the mountain bends and anxiety had totally exhausted him again.
He drove slowly, his eyes sore, looking for somewhere to shelter. On the final stretch to Bilibino there would be buildings and mine workings — he remembered them. The convoy of a few weeks ago had kept parallel for some kilometres with a stream. The gold beds ran often near streams and across country. But that had been close to town, too near in. He needed something earlier, and soon.
He passed presently under big overhead cables and saw a pylon: the power line from Bilibino. It served the goldfields and some surrounding installations. He was already too near.
Fifty or sixty kilometres back the road had crossed a stream, and he wondered if he should turn and go back to it. It would eat up a lot of gas. He didn’t know what was for the best and meanwhile let the bobik chug on, too tired to think.
He saw a glow coming up in the sky on his left. The first of the outlying goldfields? If the goldfield was near a stream, and the stream led to — where did the streams lead to here? He was now far from the Kolyma. Some other river. A river south of him. Which meant to his right. If there was a river to his right and streams ran down from the left …
He drove on, watching the glow come nearer, until it was no longer a glow but lights, floodlights, just a kilometre or two ahead and to his left, and he knew now he had better go back. And then he knew he had just crossed a bridge.
He had crossed it and was at the other side.
Jesus Christ! He was too tired to turn. He reversed.
He reversed over the bridge and looked down at a lovely, wonderful, frozen stream, and drove down to it, and got under the bridge, and switched everything off, the lights, the engine, himself; and just sat there in the dark for a minute.
Then he got out and climbed the bank and had a look.
Yes, the first of the goldfields, not a kilometre away; the din of its machinery carrying in the air. He could even see, silhouetted against the lights, the skeletal housings of the mine lifts. As he looked two trucks lurched out on to the road a few hundred metres ahead and turned towards Bilibino.
Too much activity, and too near. But he couldn’t be seen and he also by now couldn’t care. He simply had to rest.
He went down and gave himself a huge vodka, and drank it with his eyes shut. He tore off a chunk of black bread and ate it, and in his sleeping-bag he ate more.
He slept an hour and woke still tired. But there was no time to linger. It was getting on for 4 a.m. The best time to be in town was between five and six, the dead point of any road security, but with the place just stirring into activity. He recollected almost nothing of it except that during work hours it had been a mess; slow-moving traffic, the local drivers leaning out and chatting across to each other. He wanted a clear run through, with no curious eyes looking him over.
He drank some coffee and looked at the school atlas in torchlight. He was already off one page and on to the next.
Pevek showed up next, another familiar destination for Tchersky drivers. Still a colossal distance away; double the distance he had already travelled. He wasn’t going there. Big security installations at Pevek, and big security to go with them. Yura had promised it to him, he remembered: ‘You’ll go to Bilibino, Baranikha, Pevek, everywhere!’
Pevek was the end of the route. But where the hell was Baranikha?
He searched for and found Baranikha, three or four hundred kilometres away: in the tiniest type, a dot. But the atlas was a school one, in use for many years. From what he had seen in the Despatch Depot, big loads were going to Baranikha, heavy construction in progress there. So much construction needed engineers, architects, workers; who all needed flying in. There would be an airport of some kind at Baranikha, at least a strip.
The idea had come to him while negotiating the mountain bends. If major airports were out of bounds, he could try little cross-country ones. Cross-country hopping, from one to another, could take him a long way — and he knew now he had to go a long way. And not at all the way that had been planned for him. No Yakutsk, no Black Sea, no Turkey. He had to take a route that nobody expected. And there were still some options …
They didn’t know how he had come in. They couldn’t know how he would go out. Light years ago he remembered the CIA man telling him he couldn’t go out the way he had come in. But why could he not? He had come in from Japan. Why not go back that way? From Nakhodka, far down on the Pacific seaboard, ships ran regularly to Japan. One way or another he could try to get himself on one. For months now he had lived on his wits. Were they going to desert him at the last?
He looked up Nakhodka in the atlas; and his heart sank. Farther even than he thought — an incredible distance, 4000 kilometres at least. Well … From Tchersky, even if anyone remotely thought of the idea, it would seem impossible for him to get there. By land it probably was impossible, range upon range of mountains in between. But hopping it, a bit at a time? Would security be so tight at little out-of-the-way strips? If he could only get beyond Bilibino …
He went up on the road for another look.
Still bitterly cold, but with some change evident in the air; a sharp thin snow was falling, hazing the goldfields lights and muffling the continuous clanging. As he watched, a truck lumbered out, and shortly after it another one, heading for Bilibino. Local field trucks. Nothing else on the road — all long distance traffic still halted. He went down and started the bobik and got back on the highway.
He picked up the trucks after a kilometre, and stayed well behind, running only on sidelights, wipers going. Now he could see the frozen stream on his right, running beside the road as he remembered. It had come down from high ground and taken a sharp turn on meeting some rock barrier. All of the ground here was high; rich gold-bearing land.
Presently the trucks began slowing, and he watched their rear lights turning in at the opposite side of the road. He cut his own lights, and slowed to a crawl. A big compound, evidently a processing plant, with a huge conical tip and a line of sheds, all well floodlit. He crawled nearer, and stopped, out of range of the lights.
Noisy activity was going on in the compound. A trolley train was moving around and trucks were manoeuvring. He couldn’t see what had happened to the two he had followed but others were slewed round and facing him, their drivers out and chatting. He had seen no trucks going the other way. They evidently didn’t go back that way. They must return some other way.
When he had driven this section weeks before, Vanya snoring beside him, he had noticed little of the route, too busy keeping station in the convoy. But over dinner the drivers had told him a loop road ran through the goldfields; that if you were driving beyond Bilibino, you had to take care to avoid that road or you could get hopelessly entangled. Maybe these trucks took the loop road, at the other side of town, to return through the strung-out goldfields. He watched and waited, and presently one of them moved; and a few moments afterwards, another.