‘Who has, sir?’
‘All of them, the bastards.’
‘Has Mr Goldmann gone, sir?’
‘All of them. I went to where he was, and where Mikhail was. They were gone.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I am betrayed, Johnny, as my grandmother was. It is a place of betrayal.’
‘Why would they do that, sir?’
‘It is a place for traitors, Johnny.’
And the light flashed.
Carrick started up. His feet slipped on the mud’s sheen. He found his balance. He stood.
It was downstream of them. Perhaps two hundred metres along the far bank from the point opposite. Four short flashes, then killed.
‘Do you have the torch, sir, or did they?’
‘Goldmann had the torch. The pig. He goes in concrete. First I strangle him, then the concrete. I—’
‘You have a lighter, sir.’
‘You think well, Johnny. Good.’
He felt the movements beside him, then heard the click. The lighter flame was shielded in Reuven Weissberg’s hands, and Carrick helped him protect it.
The darkness came again. It was behind them and in front of them, but the moonlight on the water was splitting the darkness. Carrick went back and scrambled up the bank to where the boat was. He threw the coil of rope into it. At the end of the rope was the device — he was proud of it — that he had fashioned in the last hour. It was a broken-off branch, two inches thick, and protruding from it was a slighter branch, which he had snapped six inches from the main stem. Inverted, the branch was lashed with string to the rope. He had made a hook. He saw the light again. It had moved so slowly, but had come along the far bank and upstream, had halved the distance to the point across the water from them. Reuven Weissberg had to protect the lighter flame, and the wind off the river guttered it.
Carrick took hold of the front of the boat. He heaved it free from where it had settled against birch trunks. He levered the boat down the steep bank, and lost control of it. It cannoned into his shins, and the pain ran rich. He arrested its slithering fall. He worked it down, short pace by short pace, towards the waterline. Took an age. In his ears was the rumble of the river, and its roar seemed louder to him now, keener. He brought the boat to the edge.
The back end had gone into the water. He held it there — had he not, it would have slid down and been taken.
‘You are with me, Johnny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Will not betray me? Are not them? Traitors all.’ The words came with spittle on the breath.
‘Will not, sir.’
He saw the light again, four flashes. It was across the river from them. Now Reuven Weissberg called, but Carrick didn’t understand. Over the water’s roar, at this narrow point, came a croaked, feeble response, then a hacked cough, but from near enough for Carrick to hear it clearly. A second shout from Reuven Weissberg, an instruction. Carrick took the rope with the improvised hook he had made, gave it. Didn’t know whether the rope could be thrown far enough. He had the boat further into the water, clung to it, and saw Reuven Weissberg pirouette as he hurled the rope across the water towards the far trees and saw it snake out. Willed it … Another shout from the far bank, and the rope went taut. He tested it, and Reuven Weissberg did.
A moment. Reuven Weissberg reached out, snatched at Carrick’s neck, held it and kissed him. They were in the boat. Then they were launched.
Chapter 20
Carrick clung to the rope, arms high above his head, hands clenched on it. Had his grip failed when they had pushed off, or when they were at the mid-point of the river, or at the moment when the boat’s front end hit the far bank, they would have been lost. He had taken the weight of the boat. In front of him, Reuven Weissberg was too short-built to use both hands on the rope and have his feet wedged against the sides. He had used the rope as kids did in an adventure playground, hand over hand and swinging, desperate to keep his feet in the boat and to guide it. The worst had been when a tree trunk — might have been thirty feet long — had hit the back end when they were beyond mid-stream but where the current had a fiercer thrust. The boat had rocked with the impact but stayed up.
They had scraped against sunken branches, had had to heave on the rope to get through them, and had reached the bank.
Weissberg skipped off. Carrick groped, found a tree root and heaved at it to test its strength, then used the cord hooked to the boat to moor — did that one-handed, then let the rope go free and swing up.
He heard, ‘Stay close to me, Johnny.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have your weapon?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Be careful of them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Dangerous and desperate, these people, and thieves.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They went up the bank, Reuven Weissberg first, then Carrick. He was on his hands and knees, grappling with mud, when he came to the top. Branches slashed at his face. He crawled forward, then the foot ahead of him, unseen in the black darkness below a mat of branches and tall weeds, kicked against his chin. He did not call out.
He cleared the rim of the bank, and the torch came on.
Carrick blinked. For a moment he was blinded. He thought it was held less than fifteen feet ahead of him. He screwed his eyes shut to lose the brightness. The beam shook, as if the hand holding it could not keep steady. There was a bad cough from behind the torch, which made the beam shake worse. He heard a question called, and Reuven Weissberg answered it. The beam was lowered.
Where was he? Where he had not been before. Why was he there? He had no idea. Who was he? He didn’t know.
He saw them. Each had a hand on a young tree and used it as a support. The torchbeam flared out and showed enough of them. Two old men. Two old men with stubble and filth on their faces. Two old men with mud-smeared, torn clothes. Two old men, and one gasped for breath while the other was bent half double with coughing. He saw that one, the shorter, had lost a shoe. His sock was sodden and ripped, and blood seeped into the mud round it; it was the other who coughed and couldn’t spit out what was lodged in his lungs. He had thought they would be young, aggressive and athletic, the same as Viktor and Mikhail, would have the same flat, thin fair hair and smooth skins and … Between them was the canister.
He realized then that two old men had dragged it across country to meet the rendezvous. Carrick thought it would have been the same on that side of the river as what they had trekked through, coming past the Sobibor camp, to reach the Bug. Already the canister was settled in the mud and had the weight to make a puddle round its base. The torchbeam shook because the hand of the taller man trembled. They were both, Carrick reckoned, on the point of collapse.
It was like a dance, but the artists were exhausted and clumsy.
Reuven Weissberg advanced on the canister and reached for one of its side straps.
The taller one, holding the torch, used his second hand to pull the thing back.
The shorter one inserted himself between Reuven Weissberg and the canister.
Argument broke out. Reuven Weissberg told Carrick, low voice, that they wanted money. Where was it? Carrick was told there was no money until the content was verified. Had they not known there would be no money paid to them for delivery? He was told it didn’t matter what they had believed: they would get money on verification. They were two old men, not mafiya. They couldn’t have fought with Reuven Weissberg, and Carrick saw no weapons. He could tell from their faces that they had come expecting to be paid. He could see fragments of writing stencilled, black on olive green, on the canister’s canvas cover. The voices were raised but Carrick turned away.