Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) (42 page)

Evgeny Zhikarev was waiting inside. He reached both his hands for hers, drawing her quickly inside, and then closed the door.

“Ah! You do not know how frightened I have been! I have imagined all sorts of things! Please, are you all right?”

“I am all right, but he did not come. Your literary lieutenant did not come. I sat and waited. I drank my tea slowly, but he did not come.”

She took off her coat and hat, fluffing her hair a little after the hat’s confining. “There was a car, a Volga with two people in it. The woman looked straight at me. For a minute I thought—”

“Two people? What was she like, this woman?”

“Dark hair, very striking. A handsome woman, she had manners like an official. She looked right at me.”

Zhikarev could feel his heart beating, and there was a sick feeling in his stomach. “And the man? A tall, soldierly man? Very strong?”

“That’s the one. Do you know them?”

“I know them.” Evgeny Zhikarev sat down suddenly. “She is Comrade Kyra Lebedev. She works with Colonel Zamatev, and the man was Stegman.” He gestured to his crippled feet. “He did this to me.”

He limped across to the fire and added coal from the bucket. He straightened up. “We have no time, then. Why else would they be here but for us?”

“She knows you by sight?”

“Of course. She has been to my shop. We spoke of furs together. She would recognize me at once.”

For a long time they were silent, each thinking, frightened, understanding what impended. “We have no choice,” she admitted. “I must return to the tearoom. I must meet Potanin.”

He shook his head. “I do not like it. If she looked at you, by now she knows who you must be. She saw you, and she is a very astute young woman. I have heard it said that she is Zamatev’s strong right arm. His future depends on capturing that American, and if they believe you knew him they will try to discover what you know, or they will hold you to bring him in.”

“How would he know?”

“They would find a way; believe me, they would.” Zhikarev looked at her. “Would he come back for you? Give himself up for you?”

She shook her head. “I do not know. I hope not. They lie; they will promise and then do as they wish. I cannot let that happen. If they catch me I will kill myself.”

He shrugged. “It is not easy to do. They will leave you nothing. Being captured by them is not good. Particularly for a woman.

“No,” he said. “We must escape. We must escape now.”

“I will try once more to see Potanin. This afternoon—”

“And I shall be ready to move. It must be today or tonight, no later. No matter what he says, insist.”

When Kyra Lebedev realized who she was, would the search begin at once? Or would they try to locate her by other means? Or simply alert their people to watch for her to see with whom she was associated and where she was in hiding?

It was late afternoon before she took to the street again. “If I do not appear by shortly after dark you had best forget about me,” she advised. “I will do what I can, but they might arrest me, so I’d be unable to return.”

He went to the door with her. “See yonder?” he said. “That grove of birches by the river? If I must leave here, I will go there and wait for you until midnight. We should not try to cross by daylight, anyway.”

“What of the Chinese? Will they let us enter?”

He shrugged. “It is a chance we must take. I have the name of a Chinese who might help. One never knows.”

The small street was empty. She walked swiftly to the corner, then crossed and went into the street of the cafe, if such it could be called, avoiding the more busy street where she had seen Kyra Lebedev.

Only four tables were occupied when she entered the cafe, and she saw Lieutenant Potanin at once. He was seated near the door, and he was reading while sipping his tea. He looked up as she entered, and she crossed the room to his table. Surprised, he stood up.

She said, “Do you remember Ivan Karamazov, who wanted not millions, but an answer to his questions?”

He smiled. “I have read Dostoevsky,” he said, “but do you have questions, too?”

“Several.” She seated herself. “But very little time. I bring you greetings from a friend who deals in furs. He does not walk well.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Will you have some tea?”

“I also bring you”—she took the book from under her arm—“Balzac’s
Le Père Goriot
. It was a book of my father’s.”

“A gift?” His eyes searched hers. “What is it you wish?”

“My friend has furs awaiting, as usual. We would like to pick them up tonight.”

“ ‘We?’ Does it need more than one?”

“It does.” She smiled at him. “I do not like being abrupt, and I know this is not the way such things are done, but I have no choice.”

His eyes searched hers, and the smile disappeared. “I see.” He took up the book she had placed on the table. “Fortunately, I read French.” He spoke very softly then, keeping his eyes on hers and his face slightly averted from the room, although nobody seemed to be paying attention. “At fifteen minutes to midnight, then? No earlier, no later.”

“Thank you.” She arose. “Until then,” she said, and turned to the door.

The street was dark but for the light from the cafe windows. Quickly, she crossed the street and stepped into the shadows of a doorway.

The street was empty, and snow was falling softly. Hesitating a moment, she stepped out into the snow. And then she heard the car.

It was coming up the street, the headlights pointing a lighted finger before them. With a step she was back in the doorway again and out of sight.

The Volga drew up at the cafe. A door opened and a woman got out. On the other side of the car the driver stepped out. He was a big, broad-shouldered man. The woman turned toward him, her face momentarily in the light.

It was Kyra Lebedev.

Chapter 42

J
OE MACK KNEW how to wait while the dawn washed color from the sky. He knew how to wait while watching beyond the agonized arms of gnarled trees stretched against the morning. He had killed the moose and skinned it out, eating meat and saving meat against the long days to come.

He knew how to wait and watch for movement. The forest was sparse now, except for occasional tight groves of Mongolian poplar, willow along the streams, and scattered larch. He had found a shadow that suited him, and he waited in the shadow to see what moved in the distance.

Over there, a blue shadow against a paler sky, was another range, and he needed to study it in sunlight and in shadow to learn where the passes might be and where the canyons were.

He had come far, but had far yet to go, and now the land was narrow and the chase would tighten and close in. Alekhin would know that he would avoid the open tundra for its lack of cover and would keep to the mountains along the sea.

Alekhin had been hanging back, listening to what was said, studying his trail, planning for his own move. Joe Mack knew that as well as if Alekhin had told him. Alekhin would be impatient with the blundering efforts made thus far. He would know what to do when his time came, and his time was now.

There had been much blundering. First, Zamatev had not wanted to advertise that a prisoner had escaped him or that he even had prisoners. He had held back, expecting a quick capture.

Bringing soldiers into the field had been a mistake, also. If they had had to bring soldiers, they should have been a detachment of Siberians, not men from the Ukraine. Good men, no doubt, but flatlanders, unaccustomed to Arctic mountains.

The trappers had been a wise move on the face of things, but as Alekhin would know, the trappers were half in sympathy with the American. Not that they were in any sense disloyal, simply that he was one of them, a hunter and a trapper who handled himself as such, and they took pleasure in seeing him outwit the city men who organized the pursuit. The American had used their country as they might have used it, and so when they went into the field they did not look too hard.

Joe Mack studied the distance with care, his eyes sweeping the country bit by bit, missing nothing, remembering everything. He could read terrain as a scholar reads a rare manuscript or a jewelsmith studies a diamond for the cutting. Much of his life had been spent in wild country, and for nearly a year now he had lived in the taiga, learning its moods and its whims. Long ago he had learned that one could not make war against the wilderness. One had to live with it, not against it.

Somewhere out there, before or behind him, was Alekhin, closing in, making ready for the capture or kill. And Alekhin had had time to study him, while he knew little of the Yakut. Now he must learn or die.

Joe Mack knew that every move he made must be calculated, yet he must never establish a pattern of behavior. He must not allow Alekhin to guess where he might be at any given time. He must vary his campsites, be careful of his kills, change direction often.

Above all, he must be prepared for a fight to the death. Alekhin would understand nothing less.

Carefully, from his shadow atop the low ridge, he studied the terrain and plotted his route. There was easy cover ahead and to his right, so he must avoid it. That would be the best way, the likely way, so he must choose another. Yet even that procedure must not become a pattern.

Criminals were almost invariably stupid in this respect. If they escaped from the law, they returned to familiar surroundings to be close to those they knew, people who could help them and conceal them, people with whom they were comfortable. Of course, the law knew this and knew where to look for them and whom to question, and there was always somebody who would talk or who would drink too much and say too much.

Willie Sutton, that skillful escape artist, had rarely made that mistake. He would lose himself in a totally unexpected environment where nobody knew him and nobody would look for him.

So far he had kept to the highlands. Now, for a little while at least, he would take to the low country. Consequently, he must avoid being seen from above.

Seated in his shadow he worked on the moosehide, scraping fragments of flesh from it, allowing the warm sun to reach it. The hide would make excellent moccasins, and he would be needing them.

Nothing moved in the terrain before him. Working on the hide, he took time to watch, ready to catch the slightest movement. He saw nothing but a bird now and again, and just before the sun disappeared he saw three moose come from the willows and amble slowly across the terrain. He stopped his work to watch, for if they were frightened while en route it would reveal a presence there. They walked across the area and disappeared into the trees. Rolling up his moosehide, he added it to his pack, and shouldering it, he left the trees and went down a dry watercourse toward the river.

That night he found an overhang by the river where the rocks had been somewhat warmed by the brief sun. There he bedded down and slept. Before dawn he was moving again.

A narrow stream flowed north through the tundra. There was a film of ice along its banks, no more. Here and there was a patch of thin snow. There were willows in plenty and occasional poplar or larch. He wandered on, pausing at intervals to listen and to watch the flight of birds or the movements of animals. He found no tracks of men, only animals.

It was very still, not a breath of air stirring. He walked through the day and into the early evening. At night he found a place on a south-facing slope under some larch. There had been a blowdown there some years before and many of the trees stretched out above the bank of a watercourse, forming a roof. Beneath them he found a place for his camp.

C
OLONEL ARKADY ZAMATEV landed in Chersky. Lieutenant Suvarov awaited him as the plane landed. He led the way to a Volga parked near the airfield.

“No question about it, Colonel Zamatev. He has been seen in the forest. He was spotted by a high-flying plane, crossing a clearing.”

“You reported this to Alekhin?”

Suvarov’s lips tightened. “Comrade Alekhin says it was not him, but who else could it be?”

“Why does he not think it was the American?”

Suvarov shrugged. “He says the American would not cross a clearing at this time. He would go around it. That’s absurd! Why go the long way around when he is obviously in a hurry?”

Zamatev said nothing. The Volga was taking them down a bumpy, icy street. Big concrete buildings, most of them five stories high, loomed about him. He looked at them, hating their bleak ugliness. Of course, in such a place as this, what could one expect? It was amazing they had built anything at all in this godforsaken country.

On the desk in the office prepared for him lay a series of reports. He scanned them rapidly. One and all they were, no matter how carefully worded, reports of failure. Not only failure to recapture the American, but losses of men and equipment.

“Any word from Comrade Lebedev?”

“Yes, sir. She is in Iman. The woman Baronas is there also. No sign of her father.”

“She has arrested the woman?”

“Not yet, but she is sure she is there, possibly with some intention of crossing into China. She should have her by nightfall.”

Zamatev sat down abruptly. He was exasperated. The Baronas woman was not that important. Why was Kyra wasting her time? She should be here, coordinating things, which she could do so very much better than this Suvarov. A nice young man, but no imagination, too ready to accept the easy way.

His hurried flight to Moscow had been on orders. He had been called on the carpet, and his friend on the Politburo had set it forth in plain, unvarnished terms: get the American at once or he would be removed from his command.

“You have been a fool, Arkady,” his friend had said. “You began well, and you should have continued with a series of small fry. Instead you became too ambitious. Taking this American was a frightful risk. Admitting for the moment that you carried it off well, you were still taking a chance of international repercussions. Then you allowed him to escape.”

“Nobody could have dreamed a man would attempt such a thing—”