Kolymsky Heights (38 page)

At first the sheer numbers had stunned him. Helicopter after helicopter, a great stream of jeeps, then the half-tracks, all thundering away out into the strait. Sent to chase after him, to pick him up before he could reach the line.

But soon he knew it couldn’t be so. They’d gone too fast − just racing to block the line before he could cross. Once the men had disembarked and the little island was sealed, vehicles would be spared to hunt him – jeeps probably, zigzagging fast on the ice between the islands. He had to get off the ice.

This side of the island was deeply fretted, eroded by tides in the narrow channel. The Eskimos had said that in summer they camped in rocky bays, that seals came up on slabs then. Perhaps
there was a place to hide there. He made fast work up the coast, and came on slabs, a great line of them.

They began in a heap at one side of a small inlet, and extended out like a breakwater, huge rocks, mainly flat, all iced. He skied along the line, peering for a cavity. He could see there must be gaps between the rocks, but snow had iced up a continuous wall. There was no way into the wall, and he couldn’t climb it with his skis. He also couldn’t tell how much farther out it went. They could be at the end hunting him at any time.

He skied rapidly back to inspect the inlet, and saw the Eskimos had used it; the beach sloped sharply upwards and bits of their gear still littered the slope. A windlass for hauling boats, its tarpaulin blown open; a few nondescript humps now iced over; an abandoned lantern, hanging in an opening of the cliff face. He went in the opening, found a sizeable cave, and looked swiftly round it with his torch.

There was a fireplace; heavy seal hooks in the roof; a rock bench for handling the carcases. He’d seen this before in the north. Nowhere to hide here. He turned and went out fast, almost at once taking a tumble on the slope as he hit a couple of the humps. He picked himself up, looking at the humps.

Seabirds, frozen. There were four of them, caught by winter. And after the Eskimos had gone. The Eskimos would have taken them for bait. They’d fallen. He looked up the rock face. There would be an eyrie up there. In the torch beam a hollow showed in the pitted face, ten, twelve metres up.

No way up there, with the cave opening in between.

He shone the torch either side of the hollow, and saw there had been a rock fall to the right; a jagged ledge was exposed in the cliff face there. The ledge ran above the first tumbled slabs. From the slabs it looked possible to get to the ledge; and from the ledge, the eyrie.

He went to the slabs, knowing it was a crazy risk to take. But the breakwater effectively stopped him from skiing farther anyway. He rapidly got out of the skis, holstered them on his back, and tackled the slabs.

Icy smooth, no footholds. He reached behind him for the coiled rope in the tunic belt. The plaited nylon was hooked to its little ice pick. He slung the pick, managed at the fourth try and hauled himself up the slab.

High; three metres. From the top he could see the outline of the eyrie. Still seven or eight metres above, and to his left. Hazy in the torch beam but with a long shadow inside.

He looked up at the ledge, and flung the pick – flung it repeatedly until it caught. He tugged hard on it with his full weight: a long, long drop this time. Then he twisted the gun on its strap round to his back, and started up.

The battered rock had footholds, slippery, unreliable, but giving purchase. He walked up the cliff face, hand over hand on the rope, and when his head came level with the ledge felt carefully with his feet for a hold and swung himself up.

He knelt there a moment, released the pick, gathered the rope in his hand and slowly raised himself.

The ledge was glassy with ice, very narrow; no room to turn. He faced into the cliff, and edged sideways along it, watching his feet.

He couldn’t see the eyrie until he was at it. The cliff bulged out slightly and suddenly there was no more ledge.

He stood quite still, his arms on the cliff, and looked sideways at the eyrie. An irregular hole, very jagged; a metre wide, about the same high. It had its own small ledge, slightly below, evidently the perch from which the birds had fallen, and above it another, like an overhanging brow.

He kept his arms on the cliff, extended a foot sideways and lowered it to the perch. The brow above was so slight there was almost nothing to hold on to. He got a gloved hand on the icy rim, steadied himself, got the other foot quickly on the perch and threw himself in. The skis snagged behind him in the opening and he was held for a moment before he wriggled them, and himself, inside and found he was on his knees on a floor.

He stayed there panting for a while. Then he took the gun and
the skis off his back, helped himself to one of the Yakut’s cigarettes, and sat and smoked it with his eyes closed.

This was a few minutes after eight in the morning, and he had some thinking to do.

The Greater Diomede island, on its east-facing cliff, is dotted with bird eyries and Porter was in three of them while the fog lasted. The first, above the so-called Seal Causeway, he decided was too obvious a place to hide in, and he didn’t stay long. The second was where he hid what was in the body belt. (A half of it, for one disk was still on him when he was cornered.) The third was where he was brought down.

His account of what happened here is not totally coherent. But he knew that, although he couldn’t see it, a tape recorder was running at the time and that his words, necessarily distorted, would all the same be subjected to careful analysis.

He was in this last place some time after half past nine. (The gilt-wrapped disk, containing the data, he had just hidden. He had got away from it fast; but now he was wondering whether he should bury the silver one too.) The helicopters were then still grounded but he could hear their rotors slowly turning; also the sound of vehicles, less muffled by fog now and evidently patrolling to north and south of the opposite island. From this he knew that the strait was covered for miles and that he had no chance of skiing across.

He also knew that survival on the icy cliff was impossible; that he would be trapped on it when the fog lifted, and that his options were either to give himself up or to be caught.

A jeep had turned up below at this time and he heard the crew get out and search a cave. The man in charge had shouted:

‘Remember, lads, he’s to be taken alive. But put a few in his legs – he’s a wriggly bastard, can still make it, give him half a chance.’

This had given him pause. He was to be taken alive. And he was a wriggly bastard who could still make it.

He wondered.

He had his pick and line. He had his skis, his gun.

A few minutes later he also had a fantastic view.

The breeze, already snatching at the fog, turned suddenly into a blasting wind that blew it away entirely. In minutes the air was crystal clear, and the other island stood immediately before him. It looked no distance at all – a huge skyscraper of rock, laced with lights.

Helicopters were going up and down on it, taking a look at the disturbance before them.

Before them was the disturbance facing him.

He counted sixteen half-tracks; the flickering torches of some scores of men; many jeeps skimming on the ice; and helicopters fluttering, a long line of them, now too beginning to lift off.

He saw three long-bodied ones thundering away, evidently back to the mainland. The smaller ones went blinking up into the sky, to land somewhere above him. The half-tracks and the flickering torches remained.

The place he was in had a low roof and the floor was covered with debris. This slit in the rock – for this was all it was – was four or five metres deep, and wider inside than out, the walls at either side of the opening hollowed in.

From the opening he observed something new happening.

A helicopter had evidently lifted off above, and presently he saw it flittering like a daddy-longlegs along the coast, its searchlight examining the cliff face. As it drew closer he hid himself in the hollow by the opening and stayed there as the eyrie lit up. The searchlight looked in for half a minute, and moved on.

A little later, he saw that two vehicles were following the helicopter on the ice. Some banging had been going on, but it took him time to figure out what it was. One of the cars was a jeep. The other seemed to be a fire-fighting vehicle. It had an articulated ladder, and at each cave where the helicopter had lingered the ladder was raised.

Porter watched as, in the beam of a searchlight, a man went up the ladder, in a gas mask. At the top he flung in what seemed to be a stun-grenade, producing the bang, and shortly afterwards a canister of tear gas – smoke streamed out, anyway. Then the man paused, head well down, before suddenly rushing the place; with a sharp rat-tat, and another pause, before he reappeared and came down the ladder.

Porter positioned himself in his own eyrie to be nearer fresh air, prepared to take a deep breath and hold it. He knew he could hold it for two minutes. The man hadn’t taken as long as two minutes.

He was waiting there when it happened. He saw the walls turning milky white, heard the scrape of the ladder and the man coming up. He gave it ten seconds, filled his lungs, and actually saw the stun-grenade come arcing in. It struck the low roof, bounced sharply on to his chest and exploded in his face.

For some moments, the flash was the last thing he saw. It blinded, deafened, almost paralysed him.

He still hung on to his breath.

The second canister he didn’t see or hear. He knew it was there by the stinging of his lips and a prickling round the eyes. He was aware, through the smoke, of a bulky presence at the opening, a pig’s snout emerging there. He smashed the man’s head with his gun and yanked him swiftly in; remembering to rap off a quick burst at the roof. He had the gas mask off in seconds and put it on himself, exhaling and inhaling. He still could hear nothing at all. He waited some moments more, breathing quickly in the gas mask, and went out backwards.

It was the trousers (this he did not learn) that gave him away. He didn’t hear the order to face around, didn’t even hear the warning burst chattering round his head; was aware only of the solid jolt in his right leg, that he no longer had the use of the leg and was tumbling off the ladder.

By this time he had less than two metres to fall and he landed in a heap, but with the gun in his hands. He got off a short burst with it, and saw the men standing there take cover.

In the brilliant beam he had almost a flashlight picture: of the fire vehicle’s driver staring out of the window; of the man at the ladder mechanism gaping at him; of the jeep, its offside doors standing open.

Two armed men had been positioned by the jeep, both now down on the ice and peering at him from underneath the car. One was yelling at him, he could see the mouth going but couldn’t hear what it said. The man had his gun levelled, so Porter shot him and saw the man punched back flat on the ice; and in another soundless moment saw the other man wriggling his gun out from underneath, and he put a burst into him too.

The driver of the jeep was still in it; he now saw his legs emerging. He put two single shots near them, tore the gas mask off and yelled, ‘Stay where you are! Get back in!’ He could just, now, above the ringing in his ears, hear his own voice, and he saw the legs go back in.

He crawled to the offside door, poked the gun in, and kept it on the man while he pulled himself in.

‘Don’t shoot me,’ the man said.

He was very frightened.

‘Just drive.’ He had the gun at the man’s chin.

‘Drive where?’

‘To the line – get going!’

‘We can’t make it. They’ll blow us to pieces!’

‘I’ll
blow you to fucking pieces!’

He fired under the man’s chin, shattering the window.

The man was trembling very badly, but he put the car in gear, and moved, bumping over something.

He said shakily, ‘Give yourself up – they won’t kill you. There’s orders not to kill you. We can never make this.’

This seemed very likely. From nowhere jeeps had come spinning – from the left, from the right.

‘Go faster!’

‘We’re going as fast as we can.’

Maybe they were. He wasn’t seeing too well. When he
looked ahead his left eye couldn’t see the man beside him. (This was because his left eye was in the eyrie, blown out by the stun-grenade.) The other jeeps were not going any faster: they had come out fast, trying to cut them off, but seemed now only able to keep pace and automatic fire was coming from them. He understood they were not trying to hit him but to immobilise the car. The firing was at the engine, at the wheels.

And some of the half-tracks ahead, he saw, were moving. Their headlights were on and their searchlights now came blindingly on. The ones that weren’t moving had also begun firing; puffs of smoke came from them, and a few metres ahead the ice began to erupt: small grenades, propelled grenades – again intended evidently just to stop the car.

The effect of the grenades was to detach the jeeps closest to him, which turned rapidly aside – giving them, so it seemed, a final lucky burst, for the car jerked suddenly and slewed, the driver wrestling with the wheel as they tilted and slithered round in a complete half-circle.

‘We’re hit, they’ve got us – give it up now!’

‘Keep going!’ His balance, his spatial sense had gone; couldn’t tell which side was down. ‘Where are we hit?’

‘Your side – we’re all down there. See it!’

He took a look, and saw they were down. ‘Give it left wheel,’ he said, and turned back and saw the man was no longer at the wheel. He was no longer in the car. His door was open and he had flung himself out.

‘Jesus Christ!’ The back doors too were open, and now banging to and fro as a jeep struck them. He got his gun up and put a burst in the jeep’s windshield. The magazine ran out with this short burst and he levered himself, in great pain, behind the wheel. His right knee was now in torment, no movement in the leg. He carried the leg over the seat and got his other foot down.