‘I’m going below,’ Borodin said to the political officer. ‘I want to check through the orders and the manifest again. Then I’m going to inspect the cargo before the weather deteriorates any further. Do you want to come?’
‘Of course. It is my duty.’
‘Good. Comrade First Officer Bulgakov, you are on watch and in charge. We will head due north until I personally order a change of course. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Captain.’ Tatiana Bulgakov was a modern woman; no ‘Comrade Captain’ for her. Modern and massively competent. She would be a captain herself within five years — as long as the current surge towards modernism continued to flow through the Soviet Union. If not, she would marry some fortunate mariner and make as impressive a mother and matriarch as she would have made a master and commander.
Borodin put the lieutenant out of his mind and crossed to the starboard bridge-wing door. If there was going to be a storm, he might as well get a breath of fresh air now, he thought, and stepped out into the bitter cold. He paused on the bridge wing for an instant, his eyes slitted against the wind as he watched the outrunners of the current rain squall which had swallowed Novgorod on her way east and south towards Archangel. He waited until he felt the first icy drops shatter against his face, then he crossed to the forward rail and looked down at the weather deck again. Leonid Brezhnev was 20,000 tons of Gdansk manufacture. She was old and battered but sturdy. He had a grudging affection for her and it was good to be back aboard after a winter in Murmansk. He still enjoyed looking at her for the simple pleasure of doing so, like a lover out with his girl for the first time in a while. The battering wind arrived, gusting strongly from the north-east, after its sister the rain. In the chill which suddenly descended then, Borodin noticed a strange thing: part of the wet metal deck seemed to be steaming. It was probably some kind of illusion. Or maybe it was a freak of the conditions. But, right far forward, just this side of the steps up to the forepeak, near the hatch into the Number One hold, the decking seemed to give off a wisp or two of steam.
Then the wind whipped it away, and in any case the captain’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the political officer who did not share his love for open air and Arctic rain squalls. Borodin turned away and thought no more about it. He had more important considerations.
Like his orders. And the manifest of his cargo.
Neither of which he liked.
Borodin’s cabin was only marginally warmer than the bridge wing so it was a blessing that the samovar he insisted should always be there was bubbling merrily and was able to supply two glasses of thick, dark, scalding tea. They cradled the heavy green vessels in their cupped hands, letting welcome warmth seep into their thick, calloused fingers, then sipped the first serving down before climbing out of their clumsy wet-weather gear. Sholokov hung the streaming black rubberised jackets as neatly as possible on the back of the captain’s door as Borodin beat his arms across his chest and puffed with the cold. ‘Another glass, please,’ he ordered, then crossed to his desk and pulled out the ship’s papers. Orders and manifest were on top of the pile, ready to be consulted first. By the time Sholokov turned from the samovar with the two little glasses looking faintly ridiculous in his great bear-like hands, Borodin had spread the documents on his desk top.
‘I hate being first out,’ confided the captain. ‘You always get the worst of it.’
‘Somebody has to do it,’ sympathised the political officer, his voice guarded and a little distant. ‘And orders are orders.’
Borodin glanced up. Perhaps he had gone too far; Sholokov and he had made two voyages together and he thought he knew the man well enough to risk expressing a little disquiet. Maybe not. It was difficult to tell with political officers. Everyone else aboard owed their first allegiance to the ship. Sholokov’s first allegiance was to Dzerzhinsky Street, via the Port Authority political section perhaps, but there was no question about it. He worked for the KGB, not the merchant marine.
‘I’m not questioning the orders, Fydor, I’m simply expressing a lack of satisfaction with our luck.’
‘Luck does not enter into it, Comrade Captain. We serve as we are required to serve and are fortunate to be able to do so.’
A Party slogan for every situation; that’s how you get to be a political officer, mused Borodin wryly. Sholokov registered the quizzical look in the captain’s clouded blue eyes and had the grace to look just a little sheepish as he wiped drops of condensation from the ends of his walrus moustache.
‘Well, in that case, our luck is almost overpowering on this occasion, Comrade Political Officer. We are being required to serve almost beyond the call of duty — could we ever admit such a degenerate idea. You have studied the manifest?’
‘In the Port Authority office, before loading began.’
That gave Borodin pause. Most political officers would have quietly arranged another posting faced with that knowledge.
But Sholokov was still speaking. ‘And, like yourself, I oversaw some of the loading.’ He took a deep breath and leaned forward, his big hands spread on the desk. ‘It is the most dangerous cargo I have ever come across but, quite frankly, Alexeii, you were the best man in Murmansk to deal with it. I would not have allowed it on any other vessel. I would not have accompanied it aboard any other vessel.’
Borodin looked down at the broad peasant hands spread across his manifests. He saw the thick yellow nails and the thick black hair across their backs. He noticed the stark contrast the dark curls made with the white paper and, indeed, with the dead white skin, but he did so almost unconsciously. Between the powerful, stubby fingers, like stray curls from the hairy backs, the black ink of the manifest showed the figure 50.
That was the dynamite, Borodin knew. Fifty tons of dynamite, much of it beginning to sweat clear drops of deadly nitroglycerine, none of it safe enough for use any more, all of it destined for the disposal sites off the remote islands of Novaya Zemlya more than a thousand kilometres north-east of their current position. A thousand kilometres across the black waters of the storm-lashed, icebound Barents Sea.
All sorts of rubbish, from ancient ammunition to the nuclear reactors of decommissioned submarines, tended to find its way to the seaports along the north coast of the continent. In the summer they were sent north for disposal in small, relatively safe loads. But the movement of the dangerous rubbish did not cease during the winter although its shipment did. Along the great rail networks all through the dark months came rivers of waste from all over the Soviet Union. Rivers flowing northwards, dammed at their outlet by the shore ice along the southern edges of the six seas lying between the continent and the Arctic Ocean. There was no knowing what might pile up in the dockside warehouses of Leningrad, Archangel and Murmansk during the long black winters, and the first ship out in the spring often got the worst of it to take up and dump off the barren coasts of Novaya Zemlya.
Leonid Brezhnev’s cargo was almost entirely composed of such waste. In cases, crates, containers of all sorts, she was carrying a range of ammunition designed for use in everything from Kalashnikov rifles to MiG fighters, shells from tanks and Koni class frigates. Not just shells from the Konis, either; decommissioned warheads from their SA-N-4 missiles. There were dozens of torpedo warheads and two decommissioned propulsion units from Victor class submarines. And there was the dynamite — commercial explosive. Nobody at Murmansk seemed to know how old it was or where it had come from. There was general agreement, however, that it was in a highly dangerous state and needed to be moved carefully and immediately.