Shaw shook his head in bewilderment, pulled himself up to a crouching position. There had to be some logical answer here, but he couldn’t see it yet. He went on staring down the shaft and at first he didn’t notice that the fan had stopped and the central rod was turning, turning very slowly… it was only when he felt the gentle but irresistible pressure of the huge concrete block on his shoulders that he realized, with a thrill of utter horror, that the lid was coming down between its greased stanchions, that he was about to be wound into the two layers like grain on a millstone, squeezed flat, his body pulped and then wrung dry between the two massive concrete sections.
Thirteen
As the gap began to close, as the slabs came slowly together, Shaw felt blind horror. The mushroom-top was pressing him down now, irresistibly, uncheckable and monstrous, an awful force which he could not fight. There was no time for him to scramble clear now, to reach the edge and drop down. Long before he could squeeze and wriggle through that narrowing gap the two halves would have come flat together.
There was only one thing to do.
Dragging his body forward, scraping along the rough concrete, he got his hands firmly on the central rod as it turned and he plunged down into the darkness of the shaft itself, head first, turning on the rod. He slid down quickly, felt his feet clear the concrete, got a grip with them on the rod. Just as he did so the rod stopped turning, the mushroom-top hit the lower section of the pill-box with a dull boom, a thud which echoed eerily down the shaft. In pitch darkness and stifling heat, Shaw hung upside down, the blood pounding and swelling in his head until he felt that it must burst. Hanging on to the rod with a grip as tight as death itself, he let his feet come clear, taking all his weight on his hands. Groping around with his feet, he felt for the sides of the shaft, found them, braced his legs out sideways, and shifted the grip of his hands. Then he swung his legs downward, came head up, and gripped with his knees tightly on the rod, hanging like a monkey on a stick but, at least, the right way up now. Thankfully, he felt the blood leave his head. He felt a good deal safer now, but it was only a comparative safety. He knew that he was caught, caught like a rat in a trap and with just about as much hope of getting out — until someone far below opened up that mushroom-top again.
Meanwhile, he was in danger of suffocating.
There was no movement of air now, except for the naturally-rising exhalations, the used, filthy air from below, air which brought to his nostrils the stink of damp and mustiness, of decayed animal bodies, of sweat and all other known human smells, an overpowering aroma like rotted death. He was now in what could be his tomb, a sealed and lead-lined concrete tomb.
He felt faint and dizzy, his legs and arms aching from the strain of holding on. Soon he must slip, slide down into the unknown darkness. His thoughts grew fantastic, dreamlike; the darkness began to people itself with strange shapes and faces, the blood pounded again in his ears, in his head, as he tried to suck in what air there was. His lungs felt congested, useless as they heaved away in great dragging sighs.
He was on the point of slipping down the rod when he felt the movement, the turning movement which told him they were opening up again, and then a moment later he felt the first draught of air sweeping up, sweeping over his body and drying out the sweat which drenched him. He hung where he was until the rod stopped its turning and the top was fully open; and then, using his last reserves of strength, he hauled himself upward, hand over hand, until he was able to reach out and drag the top half of his body limply over the edge of the shaft onto the concrete. For a few moments he stayed there, taking in gulps of fresh air, feeling life come back. Then he heaved himself right out of the shaft, crawled across the top of the pill-box and dropped thankfully to the earth.
He slid down by the side of the wall, feeling the shake in his limbs as the nightmare, claustrophobic experience drained out of him. Then, when he was rested, he walked back to the road, found the bicycle, mounted it, and pedalled away as fast as he could for Moltsk.
Back in the port Shaw left the bicycle on the outskirts and caught a late bus to the Nikolai Hotel, feeling an overwhelming gladness at being once again in the world of light and human sounds. When he reached the hotel he went straight up to his bedroom. He took off his jacket, nicked out a thread in one of the seams with his fingernail, and pulled. The seam ripped a little way and he got his fingers in and brought out some sheets of very fine crackle-proof tissue covered with a mass of tiny figures and letters. He was busy for twenty minutes, covering a sheet of paper with pencilled words and numbers, and then he re-stowed his code-book, brought out his battery shaver, and slid the back open. From inside he lifted a tiny morse key, set it up for transmission, and hitched the end of a flex to a wall where it held fast on a rubber sucker-cap. Then, reading off the three-figure groups from his pencilled jottings, he tapped out his message to the British Embassy in Moscow for immediate retransmission to Whitehall. He repeated it through once more and when it was passed he dismantled the transceiver and slid the back of the shaver shut. Then he burned his notes in the flame of his lighter and went to bed.
Next day he kept on the move around the town, eyes and ears on the alert, unobtrusively watching down by the dockyard and out by the northern road. There was a considerable movement of troops, and indeed the town seemed to be filling up with them now as more and more drafts came in by train and went in trucks to barracks on the northern outskirts. There were other vehicles on the move as well, heavy lorries like those of the night before, streaming out towards the military area with their cargoes of packing-cases guarded by armed men of the Red Army.
That evening, after an infuriating day of getting precisely nowhere, Shaw waited inconspicuously near the medical research centre and waylaid Triska Somalin as she ran down the steps and towards a small red car parked near the building. She looked extremely attractive, he thought, neatly and tastefully dressed with a small fur cap set rather cheekily on her thick black hair.
Smiling he said, “Good evening, Dr Somalin. Going anywhere special?”
She seemed nervous, but pleased to see him. She said, “Oh, no. Just home.”
“Change your mind, then?”
“No—”
“It’s a woman’s privilege, at least in England it is. Isn't there somewhere we can eat, and have a drink?” He lowered his voice. “I want to talk to you.”
She met his eye and said, “All right. But why not the flat?” She smiled, a little shyly he thought. “I am a good cook, Mr Alison.”
“I don’t doubt that, but have a change away from it. Save the washing-up and try someone else’s cooking.” He added, “It wouldn’t be risky for you, would it — to be seen with an Englishman, I mean?”
She shook her head. “Oh no, not now.” She was looking pleased, he could see; lights danced in her eyes, as though no one had asked her out for months. She said, “Thank you so much, I shall be delighted.”
“Well, that’s fine. Come along then, let’s go right away.”
“It’s early to eat yet…”
“Well, then, we needn’t hurry en route.”
They got into the car at once and she drove off. There was a nice little place, she told him, where they could get a good meal and where it was quiet, and they would be able to talk, a little way out of Moltsk to the south, in a small fishing-village. She said it was simple and down-to-earth but she would prefer that to the glitter of the more sophisticated places where the officers and important civilians ate so noisily and so drunkenly. Shaw agreed. As she drove, they talked; and Shaw told her about the pill-box and about his own experience in the shaft. She had not, she said, heard anything from Igor Bronsky about a tunnel.