He started up and followed, keeping well behind, again using only sidelights. The trucks ahead were empty and now going at a brisker pace. In barely twenty minutes he saw another glow appearing ahead, which soon became town lights.
Bilibino.
Time to move. He switched to headlights, overtook the first truck and cut in between the two. And not a moment too soon. Almost immediately the road curved, and ahead he saw a barrier strung with amber lights, and the truck in front slowing.
The barrier was down but, as they appeared round the bend, it was already being raised. The man in front had opened his window and stuck a raised thumb out as he went slowly through, and Porter did the same. He saw uniforms — militia uniforms and others he didn’t recognise — and looks of mild curiosity turned on him in the light hail of snow. But peering in his rear-view mirror he saw that already they had turned to the next truck, and he was in. In and sailing into Bilibino.
He remembered it only vaguely. An administrative building like Tchersky’s, a cinema like Tchersky’s; all the buildings — post office, supermarket, apartment blocks — built to the same design in this north land. He saw the hostel he had slept in; the goods centre, the car park. Big trucks were lined up in the car park, Tchersky trucks. All still halted, no activity there. Just a little activity elsewhere: a few light trucks and bobiks trundling about town, postal vans, food vans; the odd militia car parked, cigarettes glowing inside.
He drove with his window a little open and could hear the drone of aircraft above, and saw one coming in to land, well ahead and to the right. Stay away from that area. He continued following the truck that had led him in, dazzled by the glare of the one behind. Ahead, the truck suddenly pulled in and stopped; at a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall, an all-night bar or café. He passed it and pulled up himself, and in his mirror saw the other truck stop and both drivers get out and go into the place.
Shit! He had planned to follow until they turned off. If the Tchersky drivers had warned you had to take care to avoid the loop road, it evidently wasn’t signposted. Nothing was signposted in Green Cape or Tchersky, either. You had to know.
He switched his lights off, kept the wipers going, and lit a cigarette. He needed a vodka himself but decided to wait until he needed it more. Five-thirty. The time was right; the town just sluggishly stirring into life, the police sitting out the last half of their shift. He’d been lucky — with the two trucks, the barrier. Would he be as lucky on the way out?
A militia car cruised slowly past and he saw, through the drizzle of snow, faces turned towards him. The wipers. He should have turned the wipers off. The car went on, but they had noted him. He couldn’t stay here; they’d be round again. He waited till they were well away, switched on, and took off. He kept on the way he’d been going.
The town square passed behind him. He couldn’t tell if he was on the main road; other roads had run off the square. This one had a few large buildings, apartment blocks, depot-type stores; but thinning now, dwindling. Definitely going out of town. Headlights came suddenly towards him round a bend, and dipped in acknowledgment, and he dipped his own. A bus.
POLAR AVIATION, he saw, as it passed.
Christ! He was going to the airport, after all. The road went to the airport. There would be checks before the airport.
Which now, rounding the bend, he could clearly see. It was on a large flat plate of land, slightly below, ringed with orange sodium lamps. Through the snow drizzle he could even make out a lit-up runway.
More to the point, and worse, dead ahead and downhill he could also see a barrier, and men in dayglo stripes and a waving torch. There was no way of stopping or turning off or going back. He’d been seen. And the barrier was firmly down. He drew slowly up to it, and opened his window.
‘Where to — airport?’ A militia man; there were two of them, also another, in the unfamiliar uniform; all bundled up, scowling in the snow. They had come out of a hut, he saw.
‘No. Loop road.’ He hoped to God this was the way to it.
The torchlight examined him.
‘Where’s your field badge, then?’
‘Fuck the field badge! It’s not even my job,’ he said, scowling. ‘I’m off in a couple of hours, and I win this. All through the fucking fields — for a breakdown! What’s up here, no one can fix a machine themselves?’
‘Where you from, old-timer?’
His number plate was being inspected, he saw.
‘Road stations, way back. I’m on equipment. Not my job, this! Got sent up here a couple of weeks, and now every shitty number comes up I get it. Go on, send me back! The bastards know I’m off in a couple of hours. Do me a favour!’
As his scowl increased he saw that those outside were mellowing into smiles.
‘Okay, big mouth. You know you lost a rear plate? Replace it as soon as possible. What you got in the back there?’
‘Fucking tools! What you think I got? A cabaret?’
‘Go on — move.’ The barrier had been raised and one of the men was waving an illuminated baton. A few hundred metres ahead he saw there was another barrier. He slammed into gear, swearing hard at the now-merry faces as he passed.
Through.
He tooled slowly downhill.
The wide opening to the airport passed with its exit and entrance signs. the only signs he had seen so far on the road. Just inside, he saw, there were more guard posts, and he sailed past and on to the next barrier; now also miraculously raised.
Then he was on his own, and the street lights ran out, and he drove on in the dark.
The road curved sharply again and forked, and he took the main branch and curved round with it; and then slowed and stopped. Was this where you got tangled up?
He reversed to the fork and took a look at it again.
There was no doubt he’d taken the major road. But was it the right one? No sign of any kind, no warning of the fork even.
A large mound of grit was dumped at the roadside before the fork, with a deep ditch behind it; evidently a runoff for the spring thaw. He left the engine running and scrambled down to the ditch. Wide enough, and no rocks in it.
He drove the bobik down, sheltered behind the pile of grit, and switched everything off. The sounds of the airport were still near: helicopters chattering, a jet warming up. They flew the bullion out, he’d heard, in ingots.
He waited twenty minutes before the two trucks came round. They passed and he watched their lights; saw them keep steadily to the broad main track. Exactly. It was the one he’d taken himself: the loop road into the goldfields. Where he would have lost himself. The through route was the narrower one.
He started up and pulled out of the ditch.
Okay. Baranikha. Three or four hundred kilometres. Six o’clock, he saw.
54
By six fifteen the general was stepping into his car. They’d asked if the transport company’s vehicles could now be allowed to move. The route to Bilibino and beyond was still paralysed. Yes, he said, on consideration. He had totally forgotten it.
They had also asked if he wanted the people ahead warned that he was coming. In no way! Catch them unprepared. The night’s work had already warned them enough. Give them time and they’d soon dream up a story to account for the discrepancy.
A highly interesting vehicle had emerged — or rather not emerged — at the collective. The native collective, Novokolymsk. Where they’d claimed never to have heard of the fellow. As the garbage workers had also claimed … Well, he’d been had, and he saw it now. Natives stuck together.