During the short afternoon, as they wound slowly, methodically along tracks and lanes, often screened by trees or high hedges and walls, always heading generally eastwards, the sky darkened swiftly and heavy cloud pressed down on them. A wind, too, sprang up; the weather had been deceptive in the morning. When it began to snow, large flakes driven into their faces, pattering against the sides of the APC, he knew he had been given the kind of luck he needed. The weather closed in on them. He worked from the map and the compass as the scenery was blotted out by curtains of rushing snow.
No air traffic.
Eventually, he abandoned the soldiers. They feared him, momentarily, but hatred was already beginning to make them calculate recklessly. They were beginning to be dangerous to him. They climbed out of the APC reluctantly, hauled out the wounded man without tenderness, and stood beneath the trees, sheltered from, the worst of the weather, looking up at him in a murderous little knot effaces. He almost abandoned his plan to take the uniform of the man nearest him in build — but he knew he had to disguise himself if he was to drive the APC the rest of the way.
The man did, shivering with rage and cold as he stripped to his underwear, then donned Vorontsyev's sweaters and anorak and slacks. He seemed to hate the still-warm clothes, but he was forced by the temperature to put them on quickly. Vorontsyev bundled the uniform into the cab, jumped in shaking with cold, and drove off. He drove until the wind and temperature made it difficult to hold the wheel or use the gears — then he stopped, dressed in the chilly uniform, and swigged from the vodka in the first-aid kit.
Gradually, warmth returned. He had abandoned the men at least three miles from the nearest dwelling. They wouldn't die, but it would be a long time before they could describe what had happened.
He drove on, ten miles still from Khabarovsk, having covered nearly eighteen miles of country tracks and lanes. It was already beginning to grow dark with evening rather than storm.
He picked up the first of the roadblocks in the gleam of the headlights, only yards ahead of him. He had skirted Khabarovsk as best he could, keeping to the east of the town, but eventually, after three hours, he had had to join one of the main roads, which would take him through the outer suburbs to cross the river. He wanted to be south-east of Khabarovsk, and time was running out.
The roadblock was thrown across the approach to the bridge, a red-and-white pole, bollards to close the traffic flow down to a single lane, armed soldiers. He slowed behind the cars ahead of him as the brake lights went on, glaring in the falling sleet. He put out the cigarette, adjusted his uniform to some impression of tidiness, and waited to creep forward, or for them to come to him. He tried to shake off the narcosis of the journey. He had thought about nothing, made no plans beyond getting to the destination he had decided upon — even when he began running it had been there, a means of escape more like a child's dream than a plan. But, it had settled itself, apparently, and he had made no conscious effort to rid himself of it.
As the soldier marched down the little rank of waiting cars, he realised the mistake he had made. The sleet shifted aside for a moment, and he could see an army truck up ahead, in another lane. He had ignored the sign he had passed a hundred yards back redirecting priority traffic — which meant any army vehicle. Quickly, he wound down the window.
The cold flowed in, sleet peppered his face. The soldier looked up at him. He believed, in that moment, that they knew who he was — even though the chances of the soldiers he had abandoned getting to a telephone had been almost zero. They might, might just have to run into another army unit 'What the hell's the matter with you?' the guard asked, his face old and flat under the helmet. 'Can't any of you buggers read?'
'Sorry—' Vorontsyev murmured, thickening his Muscovite accent, not able to trust himself to assume another way of speaking; he made himself more stupid, uneducated. 'Nearly asleep — been driving this bloody thing for hours.'
'Papers?' The guard held up his hand lazily. He didn't want to listen to anyone else, had his own grouses about being on duty so long his feet had gone numb and his back ached.
Vorontsyev handed over the papers as nonchalantly as he could; sensing a situation developing even as the heavy mittened hand took them, flicked a torch on them. Perhaps it was the click of the officer's boots coming down the line, or the fact that the car ahead of him pulled away, its boot having been slammed down after a perfunctory search.
'Where's the bloody picture, then?' The guard held out the ID papers. 'And your movement orders — in the cab?'
'Picture fell out,' Vorontsyev mumbled, looking sheepish. 'Sent it to some tart, I expect.'
Nothing, nothing yet. 'What's going on here, Boris?' the officer said, and Vorontsyev saw the soldier wince at the use of his first name by the younger officer.
'Nothing much, sir. Silly bugger — sorry, sir — this man pulled up in the civilian queue — and he's lost the picture in his ID card.'
'Has he? You, where's your picture? Have you reported this to your officer?'
'Sir — he said he had more important things to worry about.'
'Mm. From Moscow, are you?'
'Sir.'
'All as thick as cowpats, they are, sir,' Boris offered, obscurely in league with Vorontsyev now that the officer was present.
'It says here you're from Tallinn.'
'Lived in Moscow for years, sir. Mother's from Tallinn—'
'Bloody conscripts for you,' Boris murmured helpfully.
'Why are you driving around on your own. Where's your officer, the rest of the platoon?' the officer snapped, then strolled to the back of the APC. As Vorontsyev leaned out of the cab to answer, Boris winked up at him. The officer glanced into the back of the vehicle.
The blood — there had to be blood. A car horn hooted at the delay caused by the APC. Vorontsyev saw the young officer's back straighten, his attention fixed on the offending driver.
'You watch this,' Boris muttered, grinning and showing bad, stained teeth. Vorontsyev could smell the tobacco on his breath. 'All bullshit, he is. Don't worry, mate — he won't keep you long now.'
The driver of the car behind had wound down his window. The officer was half-swallowed by the interior of the car, his words muffled as he remonstrated with the driver, his tone evident. Then he re-emerged from the car, and it pulled meekly over to the side of the road. The officer strode back towards the APC's cab, Vorontsyev's papers in his hand.
'You — why are you alone?' he snapped, his face red with outrage and cold.
'Sir? This is going to the depot for repairs — new gearbox needed, seems like. I was detailed to take it.'
'Then you're not—?' The officer was confused.
'Not what, sir?'
'Never mind. Oh, get on with it — get moving. Boris, come with me!'
As Vorontsyev would up the window again, Boris winked again, then swaggered off briskly behind the officer, towards the hapless driver who had expressed his impatience.
Vorontsyev felt weak, and grateful that he had been able to sit through the last few minutes. It was an effort to depress the dutch, get the APC into gear, pull forward to the pole. It went up, out of his view, and he was through and on to the bridge across the Amur. He dared not look in the rear-view mirror, nor the side-mirror. He sat as if there was nothing behind, only the rutted slush on the bridge. As he pulled off the other side of the span, he slumped more in his seat, tried to relax, to pretend that his weakness, his quivering arms and legs, was due to tiredness and not fear.
The track lay below him, gleaming icily in the moonlight, the white, snowbound fields spreading away below the steep, in-dined embankment the tracks followed. It was ten o'clock. The storm had lasted until only an hour earlier, and then had been brushed aside by the mounting wind which now swept the last rags of high cloud across the night and howled across the expanse of lower land between the eastern hills and Khabarovsk.