He was very nervous, and he asked nervous questions. Could anybody follow them? How far were they going?
Fifty kilometres, they said, amused; and nobody could follow. You needed a signal. The authorities fitted it in your vehicle, a tracked vehicle. The signal told them on the island who was coming — there was an island out there. And it also guided you to your station. There was a beacon at. the fishing station, also fitted by the authorities. You’d never find it otherwise. Nobody could follow — no need to be nervous!
This calmed him completely, and as they briskly set off after taking only steaming tea he showed a lively interest in the fishing. The best grounds, they told him, lay where the seabed shoaled near the islands. There were two islands there, but you couldn’t go to the second, it was American. The first you could go to only in summer. The military let you camp in the small rock bays then — that’s where the seals came up, on slabs.
So what kind of fishing did they do now?
Ice fishing, through holes, two metres square. You had to know where to cut. Mainly the ice was two metres thick out there but in some places it ran to twenty. You cut it in layers with an electric saw, off the car’s battery. The authorities came and checked your holes from time to time, and they had to be near your beacon. The signal directed you there — see it?
The signal was an amber light on the dash which pulsed at wider intervals if they veered off course. They veered a bit to show him how it worked, and laughed at his astonishment.
It was crowded in the vehicle; eight men in it, all loudly instructing the interested Evenk. Another vehicle had set off a few minutes before them to set up camp, and a third was keeping company close beside, its headlights dimly visible in the fog.
Did people come out from the island to check the holes? he asked.
Sure. They checked your beacon too, and usually you gave them a bit of fish; they always needed fresh stuff there.
They drove over in cars, did they?
Sometimes — if recruits were being trained. They trained the soldiers in ice manoeuvres. Native guys, some of them — they used them as trackers. But mainly it was in a helicopter.
They kept a helicopter on the island?
A helicopter? An army of them. See, the place was just a big hump of rock, about a kilometre long, and they’ d taken the top off and made a whole landing ground up there. If they all took off at once you couldn’t hear yourself speak.
Was it that near?
Ten kilometres from the fishing station. In summer, in the boat, you could see it from right here — not far to go now.
It wasn’t far to go. And then they were there: the fishing station.
Lanterns burned at the fishing station — seal oil lamps, on stakes, in a large square. Much activity was going on in the square. In the dense fog spectral shapes from the advance party were rigging a tent; others going round refilling the lanterns. All of them were on short skis, and now he put his own on. The backpack he had left in the village, and all he had taken from it was the torch, now rammed inside his anorak.
Various bits of gear came out of the vehicles; a winch, fishing lines, ropes, fish boxes. The men bustled at the work, and he followed a party of them to the first hole. Lamps burned here too and from all four sides tethered ropes slanted into the hole. The men tugged the ropes, assessing the weight in the basket traps suspended there, and each hole was visited in turn. Once the traps were hauled in they could do line work for bigger fish, they said. You dangled hook baits down through the holes; all this after breakfast.
They went to breakfast in the tent, and as they ate he asked how long the fog would last.
It depended. Snow was rare at this season, but when it snowed you got a fog. It hadn’t snowed long so the fog wouldn’t last long. Maybe only a few hours. You waited for the wind.
Did it affect their work?
No. Out there it affected them, the island. They didn’t like fog. Just in darkness, they could see — they had special glasses. But in fog they saw nothing.
What was it they wanted to see?
The Americans — just four kilometres the other side of the island. They watched each other. That’s what they did, while the rest of us did the work.
The men were cheerful at breakfast and cheerful as they went to work, and the headman jovially told him he could stay and help wash the dishes to pay for his keep. He shovelled snow in a bucket and put it on the stove and observed the day’s chef cocking an ear.
‘That’s funny — there’s one up there,’ the man said.
‘A helicopter?’ Faintly now he could hear it himself.
‘Yes. Not one of the island’s, though.’
‘You can tell the difference?’
‘It’s from the mainland. A big one, going there and back, can’t you hear? No business being up in the fog.’
Porter moodily cleared the tin plates and scraped leavings from the pot.
‘Fat and rinds go in the basket. It’s bait,’ the chef told him. ‘Hello — they’ve started up now!’
A harsher clatter was suddenly rending the air.
‘The island?’
‘That’s them. Going up in the fog!’
‘Where is it, the island?’
‘Out there … What are you doing with your skis?’
He was strapping them on. They had all removed their skis as they’d sat round the trestle for breakfast.
‘I’ll just go out and take a look,’ he said.
‘You’ll see nothing in this … The island’s over there, past our first hole, a straight line. Jesus — more going up! Hey, stay inside the lights! It’s easy to get lost. Don’t go more than a hundred paces!’
‘Okay.’
For the first fifty paces he couldn’t see the dimly lit hole, and then he saw it. At the hole the men were busy hauling in and didn’t notice him. Looking back he could just make out the dim haze of the camp. He started counting again. He counted fifty, and sixty, and seventy; and looking back now could see neither the hole nor the camp. He had not moved his skis as he turned, and when he started again he kept on in the same straight line, and he also kept on counting. His paces on the skis were just about a metre, so after a thousand he had done a kilometre; the air black; the blackness now all roaring.
59
By 4 a.m. the airbase reported that the man was not in the mine, not on the site, that no vehicle had been removed from the site, and that there was no sign whatever that he had ever arrived.
The flight controller went further. He had been growing steadily more sceptical all night, and he now said that they had wasted enough time and he wished to withdraw his men.
The general considered this. Unable to talk to the godforsaken camp himself, his communications had been entirely with this little air force shit; who was becoming a peremptory shit, and an increasingly insolent one.
‘How many men have you got there?’ he said.
‘Twenty-four. In three helicopters. Eight-man squads.’
‘Isn’t there one among them who can mend a telephone?’
‘There’s a signals staff, yes. But they’re in a blizzard there. The line could be down anywhere.’
‘Have they tested the one in the building?’
‘I’ll ask them. But this is your last request, General. I will give it one hour.’
‘Request? What request? It’s an order! You will report to me in one hour,’ and he had slammed the phone down.
But the man was right, he knew. Four hours of air force time wasted … And the bastard had slipped away again, it was certain; could by now be halfway to Magadan.