Wilderness left Persereiikkä with a Russian-made map of Lapland in his hand, a creek just north of Nellim ringed in blue biro, and a dozen questions in his head. Some of them he’d put to Eddie as soon as he could.
Chaplin looked at the encrypted message.
“Another wedding? So soon?”
“No. A funeral. My great-grandmother died. One hundred and fifteen.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yes. Isn’t it?”
“I’ll have to tell Mrs. Burton.”
“Has she told you not to send?”
“Not yet, but she will.”
Wilderness to Eddie:
—What do the Watchers say Mother is short of? And don’t give me a lecture just a list.
—Such as?
—No prompts just tell me what they think.
—Zinc’s OK. Copper’s down. Nickel’s all but wiped out. Steel’s booming.
Second biggest uranium reserves on Earth. Mountains of coal. Petrol pouring in from Roumania. Will that do?
—Crops?
Two lousy harvests in a row, but you could have found that out from the Daily Express. Is this leading anywhere? I’ve got work to do y’know.
—What have you heard about a crackdown on illegal stills?
—Oh, they’ve been moaning about that for a while. It takes a bushel of grain to make a gallon of vodka.
—What the fuck is a bushel?
—About 60 lbs. It takes 10-12 pounds of grain to make a bottle of vodka. Mother can’t spare the grain. Been importing grain for years. One bottle of vodka gets one bastard drunk for a day.
12 lbs of grain makes enough bread to last a family for a week. Simple maths really.
—So they really are short of vodka?
—And spuds.
—And paper?
—That too. There’s a story going round the office that the poor buggers stationed in East Germany are so short of bog roll they’re wiping their backsides on classified documents.
—You have to wonder, don’t you? Who makes these things up?