We’re rumbling along the airfield now. I feel the wheels juddering on cracks in the dry clay surface, the pull of air on the wings. Another bullet rips through the wings: I can see the reddened sky above the oilfields through the wide tear. Then another hits the glass windscreen of the cockpit: glass flies everywhere. We bounce along the runway, gathering speed.
A hand grabs my shoulder. It’s Yuri; with a single movement he pulls himself up into the seat behind me, next to the professor. More bullets are flying past us, but we’re moving fast now, towards a wall of smoke that billows from a blazing oil derrick. The clatter of the engines is matched by the savage juddering of the plane on the cracked runway. The jolts come faster and faster, like hammer blows. Every part of the airplane is rattling: I feel it’s going to shake into a thousand pieces.
The smoke from the derrick envelops us like a black blanket. I choke with soot: I can’t breathe. I close my eyes, but I’m too late: soot covers my eyeballs. A stinging, fiery blackness fills my vision. I feel like the inside of my head is burning.
Something makes me blink. And, like a miracle, I can see clearly. The smoke blows away harmlessly, and my lungs fill with fresh, clear air. I feel the wind in my hair and on my face, like a cooling balm, washing away the blackness of the oilfields.
I can see again. Looking down from the airplane, one hundred, two hundred feet below us, I see a gloomy expanse, lit here and there by the flaming derricks. As we climb higher, they look like a hundred red candles burning on a dark table. Beyond the darkness of the oilfields is a wide sweeping expanse, gray in the night: the shores of the Caspian Sea. Above us, I see a skyful of stars. We’re leaving Baku. For the last few hours, I’ve focused every second on survival. Now, relief floods through every nerve in my body. But, like the soot that I still feel in my nostrils, I’m not free of what I saw in this place. I’ll never be free of it.
Rufus is shouting. “South-east, to Iran? A couple of hours, and we’ll be there.”
I can’t speak. But I hear Yuri and the professor like a chorus, loud and clear. “No. South-west. Aim for Mount Ararat.”
32
East of Ararat
We’re deep into the night. Far below our aircraft, I see a shadowed plain. Rufus points downwards “Look – there’s dim lights down there in the valley. That must be Yeravan. Capital of the new, free Republic of Armenia.”
But none of us look. Our eyes are drawn, as if by magnetism, straight in front of us. The dawning sun must be coming up behind the aircraft: crimson rays slice past us, and far ahead, they strike the biggest thing any of us have ever seen.
The mountain appears not part of this earth. It looms in the western sky, a detached, perfect pyramid of fuchsia-pink snow. It looks as if the light of daybreak has conjured it down from Heaven. Beyond it are serried banks of grey-blue clouds, like waves. The mountain’s shadow in the sunrise stretches out away from us, across the clouds: a tapering, purple finger pointing away from the peak, far into the distant West.
Almost comically, a second, smaller cone stands by the mountain’s side, aping its bigger neighbour. Rufus turns to us. “That small one is on my map too, it’s called Little Ararat. Prof, you were right, you know – both peaks are extinct volcanoes. And down there – that tall tower directly below us is marked as an ancient Christian monastery, Khor Virap.”
We’re flying above a river; a glittering ribbon of gold in the growing daylight. Axelson shouts.
“That’s the Aras River below; it’s the border of the Republic of Armenia. Now we are crossing into the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Beyond the river, the land rises straight up towards Ararat.”
The mountain is looming closer, looking bigger every moment. Rufus jokes. “We must all keep a sharp look-out now. Watch out for a boat.”
“For what?” The professor doesn’t quite understand Rufus’s remark.
“Noah’s Ark, of course! It must still be up there somewhere… oh God.”
He’s staring, and pointing to our right. His voice has an odd, dead sound.
“Engine on fire.”
We all look. But there’s nothing dramatic to see. Between the ventilation grills of the right-hand engine casing, there are a few fluttering sparks. A fine thread of black smoke trails behind in the air.
Yuri shouts out. “Was it hit by the shots at Baku?”
“Probably not, Sirko. More likely is that sitting for two months on a runway next to a load of oil rigs has choked the engine with soot. I think it’s that soot that we can see, burning in there, rather than the engine itself. I’ve got my fingers crossed that the fire will burn itself out without damaging the engine.”
Rufus is aiming left of the mountain, between Ararat and its little brother. The mountain’s colossal sides, plastered with snow, slope dizzyingly downwards. Peering straight down, I see the lowest point of the saddle between the two peaks. I also see, ahead and far below, the shadow of our airplane.
There’s a spluttering sound from the right engine… a strange, feathery whirring. Rufus turns his head and stares at the engine. The propeller slows, flapping to a standstill.
He grins grimly. “Not to worry. We can still make a safe landing – I hope. But the air’s thin up here: it gives less lift. And this side wind doesn’t help.”
We seem to be drifting to the right, getting closer to the slopes of the bigger Ararat peak. Its snowy flanks look close now: they are horribly steep, plunging thousands of feet down to the icy snouts of glaciers. Below the glaciers, I see naked rocky walls, ribs and ridges, sliced by scores of deep-cut gullies.
“All of you! I’m looking for a landing place. Can any of you see anywhere suitable?”
I look, but all I can see is the steep chaos of ice and rock. Time is oddly suspended; I have a sense of the tiny speck of our airplane in the vastness of the air and the mountain. I feel we’re gliding, not flying; like a feather in the breeze. No-one says anything: our lives are in Rufus’ hands. He shouts again.
“It’s hardly good, but the best place is over there. Lava flow: it looks quite flat.” He points to a blackened patch, like spilt dried ink, far below the snow line. It looks an awful long way to it. Rufus adds “We might not get there, of course. Brace yourselves: we may be doing some tobogganing.”
The snowfields are now whizzing past us, close alongside and below us. Gusts of wind, whirling around the mountain, buffet the plane like a boxer’s punches; we start to bounce and sway in the tumbling air. A swirl of rising snow, caught in the wind, blows into our faces and we’re blind. Everything is a world of solid white. Then just as quickly, I see again.
A bone-white glacier is just below us, cracked and fractured by crevasses. Ahead and far below us, the smooth black lava flow looks no nearer than it did before.
Another jolt from the wind; the airplane feels like it’s bouncing over invisible rocks. My jaws bang together; then, there’s a bigger blow.
“We hit some snow. Bloody wheels have come off! Hold tight, it might get a bit bumpy.”
We’re skimming the surface now; the snow is all peaks and troughs, like a whipped meringue; we’re bobbing over the lumps. A white spike the size of a house catches one wing and spins us round like a gramophone record; my heart’s in my mouth, my head bangs the side of the fuselage, everything turns over and over. We’re tumbling down the slope; hopelessly out of control.
There’s a crushing impact: a heart-stopping stillness.