He knocked on the door – panting, having jogged all the way back from the river – and his double rap was answered immediately with a whisper of ‘Who’s there?’
‘Bob.’
‘Glory to God…’ Nadia’s hissed murmur, as the door creaked open; then he was inside and she was pushing it shut and fastening it behind him. Bob taking in the lamplit scene: Don Juan standing between the telega’s shafts, that wreck of a boat on top of it, Nick and Krebst looking up from securing the tarpaulin over it with rotten-looking twine. He checked the time – on Nadia’s little watch: ten forty-two… Maroussia beaming at him, her old fingers working at the donkey’s cheek-strap, Irina coming from the kitchen with a bundle wrapped in cloth – food, no doubt. Both the girls were wearing trousers and wool jackets. Nadia whispered, brushing at herself where he’d touched her when getting at her watch, ‘You’re filthy!’
‘No time to wash, either.’ Smiling as he turned to her. ‘Sorry. Later, I’ll—’
‘You’re also brilliant. Truly.’ Irina pushed in between them, similarly welcoming, and Bob smiled at her: ‘Irina. Sorry we gave you an anxious time.’ Nadia continuing, across this, ‘Nick’s told us all about it, Bob. We owe you – everything…’
‘Owe Maroussia, not me.’ But he wasn’t thinking much about who owed what to whom: for the moment there wasn’t time to think about anything except the essentials of this evacuation. Although as it were in the same short breath he was conscious of a surge of – well, elation – astonishment in it too – at what he’d read – was still reading – in her face.
Lovely face. Having then to wrench his eyes off it, and using Maroussia as an excuse – although he meant this anyway – ‘Maroussia, how can I thank you? There aren’t words…’
‘Who wants words?’
‘But I think you’ll have to come with us now. They’re sure to guess – in time.’
‘In time, I’ll be dead. What did you do with the key?’
‘Here.’
‘Would you get rid of it? A long way off?’
‘Right.’ Glancing round. ‘You ready, Nick?’
The Count nodded. He’d washed most of the coal-dust off; his head and beard were dripping wet still. ‘Did you fix the steamboat?’
‘It’s on its way down-river.’
‘No trouble?’
He shrugged. ‘Not much.’ Asking Krebst, ‘All set, Sergeant?’
‘Very good – thank you!’ Krebst laughed. He was the sort of man who laughs easily. Nadia murmured, ‘The other one talks French, Bob.’ Nodding towards Majerle, the orang-utan, as he came out of the kitchen shaking water off himself. Nadia added, ‘Good French.’ Bob’s eyes held hers again – for about two seconds that might have been two minutes… Then: ‘That’s worth knowing. Not that mine’s up to much.’ He tried some of it, all the same, on the orang-utan: ‘Très bon! On peut causer en Francais, uh?’
‘Mais oui! Et je veux vous remercier, Monsieur…’
‘Robat. Je m’appelle Robat. Mais – pas necéssaire – du tout.’
Krebst didn’t talk French, Nick told him – drawing him aside, wanting a private word. But the rest of them did, of course… ‘Bob – we do have to take the Czechs along with us, I suppose?’
‘Unless they choose to go off on their own. That would be fine. But we need to get ’em well away from here first, don’t you agree?’
‘You mean in case they were recaptured, and—’
‘Exactly. And for the same reason let’s stick to Anton Vetrov and Robat, and not a word about princesses.’
Not that one had positive reason to distrust them. But when time and circumstances allowed, one might enquire into their background, probe a little: it seemed strange that Khitrov didn’t seem to have done them any harm. ‘Nick – on the same subject – I acquired another pistol down there. I want mine, by the way – wherever Nadia or Maroussia put it… But we have four between us now – what d’you think about arming the Czechs?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Let’s not, then. What about the tunnel under the wall?’
‘Nobody’s sure. But we have a rope, we could get over it, if—’
‘Right. Make sure you bring it. And it’s up to you to take us to the right spot. Next question is where should Maroussia pick us up? Cutting the corner, if we get to the road a hundred metres north of the gate, as you said – how far from there, with cover we can wait in?’
‘Four, five hundred metres, from where we rejoin the road. There’s a bend before that, and we could wait down on the river side of the levee.’
‘Fine. And Maroussia – when you get to us, don’t stop. If you did they might hear it from the gate. Keep Don Juan down to a walk, we’ll pile in one at a time while you’re on the move, then you can give him his head. All right?’
She’d nodded. Don Juan moving his ears about as if to hear better. Bob said, ‘Then the big decision – how far north can you take us?’
‘Not to Fedorovka?’
Fedorovka, of the blood-red sunset, had been the place in his mind when he’d briefed Nick an hour earlier. Knowing that she and the donkey had been that far, to collect Nick’s mother and the two girls, that it was a distance they could manage. But he’d been having second thoughts: had been reminded, when he’d cast the steamboat adrift, of this river’s strength.
‘Fedorovka would do, Maroussia. A long way for you and this fellow anyway. But – look…’ He sketched it with a forefinger on the donkey’s grey hide. ‘Here’s the river. Here on the other bank, Sasykolsk. We need to fetch up somewhere near there – actually just above—’
‘Where you met Leonid Mesyats.’
‘Exactly! But you see – six of us in a boat, with one man rowing…’
‘Kopanovka would be the best place. You’d have a channel right across, and all downstream.’ Glancing at the Count. ‘For me, ten or twelve versts farther, that’s all.’
‘Could you really make that distance?’
‘He could.’ She ruffled Don Juan’s ears. ‘Take a bit longer, that’s all.’
The Count led, with Nadia next behind him, then Majerle, Krebst, Irina, and Bob bringing up the rear. Single file and about six paces apart, slipping out of the door and turning right along the front of the stable-block and around its end, then northward towards the road. The moon was down, but the night was windless now and every sound the others made ahead of him seemed dangerously loud.
The vital thing was to be gone before a relief guard found the cellar door bolted, got no response from inside and started yelling. But not just for them to be gone – Maroussia too. These few minutes now would be the worst time of all for the alarms to sound. The plan was that she’d give them time to get clear before she started out, so when she was stopped at the gate she’d have nothing on board except the remains of the old dinghy, and they’d be waiting for her to pick them up just down the road: they’d have got out either through the old bolthole which Leonid Mesyats’ grandson was thought to have made use of a few days ago, or if Nick couldn’t find it, over the wall.
These were beeches. Fine old trees, their great canopies shutting out the sky. Sounds as of a small army blundering through the night ahead of him.
Irina, suddenly close…
‘All right?’
Her pale face as she turned… ‘Having trouble finding it, I expect.’
‘Might as well close up. You might help him.’
‘Yes…’
Bunching up. Krebst – Majerle, then… ‘Nadia?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’ Her whisper. ‘But – just a minute…’
‘This way.’ Nick’s voice, from the right. ‘I’ve found it. Nadia?’
‘Coming.’ From behind them, the direction of the house, an owl hooted. Possibly the owl… They were advancing in a group now, a few paces behind Nadia. Then the wall loomed black, with the trees’ great branches overhanging it. Nadia had stopped. ‘Nikki?’
‘I don’t think it’s any use.’ His voice came from ground-level. ‘Too narrow. All right for a child, perhaps, but—’
‘Didn’t Boris use it?’
‘We don’t know for sure. Might have partly filled in since then, anyway. Bob?’
‘Over the top.’ He came up beside Nadia. ‘Where’s the rope?’
He took the coil from Nick: it felt like rotten rope… Get over without it, maybe. Up one of these trees, out along a branch to the wall, haul the girls up… Looking up at the branches, he decided to try the rope anyway: not that this would be a good time for breaking legs.
‘Give me some room. I’ll chuck it over that one.’
The third throw made it. He reached up for the dangling end, hauled it down so that the rope was doubled over the branch, close enough to the wall.
‘I’ll go up first – if this doesn’t break – then haul the girls up. Then you, Nick, and you go over the other side and I’ll lower them down to you. I’ll get the Czechs up after you three are over. All right?’
Nadia muttered, ‘Will it take your weight?’
‘Soon find out…’
Luckily, it did. Which meant it would take the others’ weight too. It didn’t have to take the whole weight anyway, except at some brief moments, a lot of it was on the wall through one’s feet as one scrambled up: but if it had broken he’d have come down on his back. He made it, though, digging the toes of his boots into crevices between the bricks, then transferring – not easy – from the branch to the top of the wall…
‘All right. Girls now…’
Nadia, then Irina. Then the Count, then the orang-utan and Krebst. He pulled the ends of the rope up, threw them down on the other side. ‘Down you go, Nick.’ The Count slid down into the darkness on that side, and when he whispered up that he was ready Bob lowered Irina into his arms. Then Nadia. The Czechs went over, using the rope, and he followed.
Landing in long grass and bushes: he hauled the rope down by jerking it around the branch. Maroussia might need it, but in any case the last thing one wanted was to leave a marker here. Coiling it between hand and elbow as he ran, following the others across the road – which curved concavely at this point, following the edge of the high ground which had justified Stukalin or his predecessors building a house here. The curve’s concavity was eastward: and the intention now was to cut across that area of low ground – bog, presumably – and rejoin the road well above the north gate, out of which Maroussia and Don Juan would be clattering in about ten minutes’ time. Where you rejoined the road you’d be climbing up on to the levee, artificial banking that carried the road above the level of spring floods.
Nick led again – over the road and down a steep, uneven slope. Even in mid-summer the dead-flat ground was soft underfoot. The long grass would keep it so, Bob supposed. Soft, but firm enough to walk on. Getting an idea from it, an alternative approach to the river crossing. Wishing he had Leonid Mesyats here to consult… Up ahead, Nick had Irina with him, and the Czechs were close behind them; looking round for Nadia, Bob found her close on his left.
Putting out a hand: ‘All right?’
‘Need to hurry, don’t we?’
‘Yes…’
Otherwise Maroussia might be driving out on to the road ahead of them, and have to stop, not knowing where they’d got to. Then the man or men on the north gate would hear her stop: and later, when all hell broke loose, might remember…
What might happen to Maroussia was a major worry. The other big one was what to do when – assuming the right word was when, not if – what to do when one got down to the delta, with only one small boat at one’s disposal and six grown people to be transported in it. Even in a flat calm – and as the days passed the odds against getting many more flat calms on the Caspian were lengthening.
Nadia panted, ‘Ought to just make it…’
Nick whispered back to them, ‘I can make out the levee now. Not far to go.’
They all heard it then: the cart’s iron-rimmed wheels on cobbles. On a still night like this you’d just about hear it in Enotayevsk… It had stopped now. Nadia had begun, ‘Oh Lord, that’s—’ and then checked, in the silence. Bob imagining the cart stopped, Don Juan flexing his ears while Maroussia went to shut the coachhouse door. She’d be climbing back up now, flipping the reins…
At exactly that moment the wheels began to grind again. He called, ‘Nick – better run?’
Maroussia said crossly, ‘Told you, didn’t I? It’s a boat. My late husband, God bless him, used to catch fish from it. None of your business, anyway.’
‘You wouldn’t catch many fish from it now, babushka, I’ll tell you that for nothing!’
‘It can be mended. Look, cover that end up, put it back as it was before!’
‘I’d sell it under the cover, if I were you. Best chance you’d have. What d’you reckon you’ll get for it?’
She sniffed. ‘Sack of turnips, maybe.’
‘You and your turnips.’ The soldier laughed. ‘On you go, then, babushka. Let me know how you get on, eh?’ She flipped the reins. ‘Po-idyom…’
Plodding out through the gateway and turning right, northward. Iron wheel-rims clattering on the ridged surface. After about a hundred yards, just around the bend, she saw a figure on the road ahead: with four or five hundred metres still to cover before she’d been supposed to see anyone…
‘Maroussia.’ Low-voiced, but audible enough – the Count. Other figures appearing behind him now, seeming to rise out of the ground like apparitions… She clicked her tongue at Don Juan, to keep him going, guessing he’d take this meeting as a good excuse to stop if he was given half a chance… ‘Thought you’d be farther on than this.’
‘Only just made it.’ Panting. ‘Had to run…’
‘Put my darlings in first, eh?’
‘Of course.’ The Count was loosening the twine and pulling back the leading edge of the tarpaulin. The cart having an escort of pedestrians now – stumbling along beside it, puffing and blowing… He had the front uncovered, room for anyone to get in on either side of the boat’s bow and then duck under and sit down. There’d be plenty of headroom, anyway… ‘Nadia – here, I’ll give you a leg up…’
Trundling northwards. Don Juan was doing well, having maintained a reasonably fast trot for – well, more than an hour now, probably – Maroussia keeping him up to scratch with an occasional crack across the rump – using the loose end of the reins, leaning forward from her perch to reach him with it – while the telega banged and clattered over ruts and potholes, swayed around the bends.
Under the boat’s stern were the two girls and the Count – they’d been the first to board – while the Czechs and Bob were in the front, the thwart across the midships section of the boat dividing the head-space into these two halves. The tendency was to sit with the feet drawn in, hugging one’s knees. Noise and vibration kept verbal exchanges to a minimum; although Bob was using his advantageous position in the bow to spend periods on his feet, leaning beside Maroussia for sporadic conversation.
Some of this was useful. For instance she was sure about there being a transverse deepwater channel that would take them across from Kopanovka to the fishing-station a few miles downstream. It linked the two main, roughly parallel channels, ran – he gathered, putting his own interpretation on to her sketchy description of it – from north-west to south-east, starting about two miles below Kopanovka where you’d take a left fork into it. When she’d last been on the river up there – with her husband, years ago – there used always to be a small island high and dry in about the middle of it, and after the island a branch southward which was not a main channel but into which the current was always very strong. So you’d hug the left bank, keep to it, and finally emerge into the main channel only about a mile above the fishing-station. Which, she warned him, would be deserted now, Leonid Mesyats and his like having all dispersed to their own villages. Her Ivan had been a keen fisherman in his day, and in her own younger days she’d spent a lot of time on the river with him. All their friends had been fishing people; from childhood onwards the river had been initially their livelihood, later their recreation and still an appreciable source of food.
‘So when the Solovyev family weren’t here…’
‘Spring and autumn – yes.’
Then later he’d broached another subject… ‘Maroussia. This very long trip you’re making for us. You aren’t likely to be back at the Dacha much before sunrise, are you?’
‘About then.’ She cackled. ‘In time for work.’ A flip of the reins… ‘All right for this old devil, he can sleep all day. Sleep and eat, is all he does!’
‘Will you take the boat back with you?’
‘Suppose so. I’ll say they wouldn’t buy it. Mean pigs…’
‘Then you’ll find Nadia missing, and you’ll want to know what they’ve done with her.’
‘I’ll say she went out with me to find Don Juan, and the night was beautiful so she decided to stay out for a little while. That was the last I saw her. They might believe the prisoners caught her and took her with them.’ A shrug of the bent, shawled figure… ‘Give them something to believe. But I’ll say their filthy soldiers must have – taken her, or—’
‘You’d be desperate, wouldn’t you – mad with worry.’
‘I’ll be mad, all right!’
‘But as regards this boat – couldn’t you stop in Enotayevsk, at the Shvedski traktir, persuade the Swede to give you some turnips for it? Half a sack, say?’
‘Maybe. Wake him up. Tell him I was there earlier looking for him. And I’ve been out all night looking for a buyer. Went to Fedorovka, maybe…’
‘That’s good. You’d have at least some support for your story, then. If you needed any. And if anyone had seen you passing through Enotayevsk earlier – seen or heard you…’
‘Yes. Yes…’
They’d been coming up to Fedorovka. He’d got back inside, feeling a bit better about the old girl, that she might get away with it. Being allegedly crazy, she’d be hard to trap. Only if there was physical evidence – coal-dust for instance. Even in this cart: and notably from himself, the only one of them who hadn’t cleaned himself up. He made a mental note to tell her this: so she’d throw a bucket or two of water over it. But the mess in her kitchen, too, around the tap where the others had rinsed themselves. And she ought to check the Hole very carefully for any evidence of its having been made use of; then shift all that hay back over the trapdoor.
The orang-utan asked him in French, ‘Are we doing all right?’
‘Doing fine.’ Over the internal noise, you had to yell. ‘But we’re about to go through a village. So – need to stay quiet.’ He leant back to warn the others: ‘Fedorovka coming up.’
‘Maroussia and Don Juan all right?’
‘Both doing well.’
‘But—’ Nick, leaning forward past Irina – ‘Are we – up to schedule?’
‘God knows.’ There wasn’t any schedule. The hope, as he saw their present situation, was simply to get to the other side of the river, to that transport, before daylight. At least before daylight… ‘Nadia, can you see the time by your watch?’
‘No, but it must be – twelve-thirty?’
He grunted, sitting back. Noise and motion changing as the condition of the road surface changed, in the approach to the village. Clock-watching wouldn’t help anyway, he thought, all you could do was push on as fast as possible; you couldn’t estimate how long any particular stage of the journey might take. How long to get to Kopanovka, then to find and take a boat; then the crossing, landing, doing something or other about the boat – covering of tracks being vitally important…
More distantly – but getting less so as time passed – the real spectre was the looming problem of one small skiff, six people, and the Caspian, which could be as treacherous as any other sea.
The three women were in tears when the time came to say goodbye, on the levee road a few hundred yards short of Kopanovka. Even the Count’s voice had sounded a bit strangled. Bob meanwhile resisting the urge to hug the old woman, for fear of impregnating her clothes with coal-dust. Frightening thought, that just a few grammes of coal-dust might put her into Khitrov’s hands… She’d been turning the cart, Nick leading the donkey round; Bob had told her, ‘We all owe you our lives. I’m sure none of us will ever forget you.’ Nadia sobbed, ‘We’ll be praying for you, Maroussia darling.’
‘More sense to pray for yourselves. Nobody’s going to do an old crow like me any harm. Go with God, may He protect you and bless you with happy lives, my children.’ She’d whacked Don Juan into a trot, mercifully cutting the bad moment short, and they’d scrambled down the side of the levee, so as to approach the village along the river and as invisibly as possible.
Irina whispered, ‘It’s dreadful, to think we’ll never see her again!’
‘I know.’ Nadia was still snuffling too. ‘It’s wrong. If only we could have persuaded her to come with us…’
Then there’d have been seven in the skiff, Bob thought. Although he had tried to persuade her, and was far from happy at the thought of her going back to Krasnaya Dacha… He was leading the party now, feeling his way carefully over uneven ground, hearing the girls’ whispers behind him and an occasional exchange of mutters from the Czechs, and with the village in sight ahead, roofs and chimneys clear-cut against the stars. Destination the waterfront, village quay – and either one boat or two.
The disadvantage of using two would be the risk of the boats getting separated and losing each other. Imagining the Czechs on their own in one boat being swept into the downstream channel that Maroussia had mentioned: he personally wouldn’t have been exactly distraught at losing them now, but an extension of the scenario was to see them stranded somewhere, arrested, and talking to save their own skins. Even if the rest of them had got clear by then, Maroussia would be – to put it mildly, vulnerable…
The village was very close now. Very small, too: a hamlet more than a village. Waiting for the others to catch up, he was looking down at the river, at its swift bubbling flow a few yards out from the bank. Closer in, the bank hid it. But a path led down: fishermen’s access, he guessed, perhaps the village boys. String and bent pins… An idea forming: why not make use of that current, let it work for us?
Once he had a boat he’d every intention of doing exactly that. But now – the business of getting a boat…
Brand new idea hatching. Hell of a lot better than one he’d toyed with earlier. That one had been to avoid any upstream work with a heavily-loaded boat by rowing straight across and landing on the central island or islands, the dried-out land in the middle of the river, hauling the boat across and relaunching it. Not impossible, with four men to do the portage. But the going might have been too difficult – swampy areas, for instance.
‘Hang on a minute, Nick?’
He wanted to check on how accessible or otherwise the river might be, down there where the path led. It might lead right down to the water, or the bank lower down might be sheer and so high above the present water-level that you’d need a ladder.
It was steep, anyway. He sat, went down feet first, using his heels and his bottom, hands flat on the dew-damp, slippery ground.
The path did take one right down to the water. Although – well, fishermen might use it, but not as much as cattle did. Cattle used it a lot.
And this was viable. A lot better than six people trooping into a tiny, dead-quiet village and probably waking them all up.
On the point of returning to the others he paused, groped in his pocket for Maroussia’s key and lobbed it into the darkness above the river. Hearing no splash, over the river’s continuous murmur. She’d told him, in the telega, that the key had been her husband’s, the Bolsheviks had never changed those locks when they’d converted storerooms into cells; she’d hung on to it, just in case a day might come when she’d have need of it.
As indeed it had. And again, thank God for her.
He climbed on up. His thought until this moment having been to go on his own into the village, get hold of a boat and bring it, embark them down there where the cattle drank. But – rethinking it now – swimming to the boats’ moorings would be far better. Or wading, or crawling along in the shallows – depending on how one found it. That short distance, even against a current of two or as much as four knots, would present no problems. And however small this place was there’d surely be boats – or at least a boat – at the quay.
Landing-stage below the quay, probably. As at Enotayevsk. The system would be universal, meeting the needs of fisherman and other river users.
‘Nick – no need to go into the village. The river’s accessible, at the bottom of this path. I’m going to swim from there, bring a boat back.’ He pointed downstream. ‘Going that way – don’t even have to pass the village.’
‘Brilliant… But I’ll go with you.’
‘Much better if you stayed with the girls. Suppose I got into trouble?’
‘Well…’
‘I go with you?’
Krebst…
‘Can you swim well?’
A nod… ‘Swim good. Row boat good, too.’
‘All right… Irina, is that a white shirt you’re wearing, under your coat?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘When you’re waiting down there, take your coat off? The white’ll show up, give me a mark… Nick, the path’s steep, and slippery, best go down on your bums. And watch out for bloody cowpats, I put my hand in one… Oh, look, if you wouldn’t mind – hang on to this lot for me?’
One jacket, assorted weaponry, boots…
Nadia was whispering in French to the other Czech, explaining what was happening. Bob led the sergeant down, and explained to him before they went into the river that he’d take one boat if it was big enough to hold them all, or two if they were all the smaller type of dinghy. Also, to save time and noise and be less visible, instead of getting into the boat or boats they’d stay in the water, swim with them.
‘Let’s go, then.’
Slithering in: the river’s flow immediately very noticeable. As well as cleansing: recalling Nadia’s critical remark… Soft mud bottom: easier to swim than wade. He looked back, waiting to be sure that Krebst could cope all right: and he could, was doing so, using a powerful breaststroke that was ideal for the purpose – producing no splash, only a little bow-wave as he forged into the current, face low in the water. Riverbank on the left darkly visible… Bob used breaststroke too, swimming a few yards ahead of him.
He could see the quay, its vertical stone-faced wall replacing the curve of riverbank and bushes. Houses’ roofs behind it. The post of a derrick, gibbet-like against the sky. River steamers would load farm produce here, he guessed.
Boats – Mesyats-type boats – ahead and to his left, more or less end-on, noticeable in the first place through movement – the flow of the current past them, the surface breaking where it lapped noisily around their timbers – and the boats jostling each other as they moved to it. Three – four… And that was a timber landing-stage. He glanced back, saw Krebst close to him, turned and swam to this near-end of the stage, almost under the first boat’s stern.
Irina whispered, crouching on the bank between Nadia and the Count, ‘Be awful if our food got wet. When they come with the boat, Nikki…’
‘I’ll take it from you and pass it over when you’re in. Don’t worry.’
Nadia said, after a pause, ‘Isn’t Bob absolutely splendid?’
‘He’s a good fellow.’ The Count added, ‘But of course this stuff—’ pointing at the water – ‘is his natural element. And boats and so forth, it’s his trade, that’s why he’s here. So – what’s the saying, if you keep a dog why do your own barking?’
From the direction of the village, a dog began to bark.
‘Speak of the devil…’
Majerle, the orang-utan, muttered in French, ‘They’ve woken them up.’
A man’s voice – shouting. Words indistinguishable, but in a tone of alarm. More than one dog was barking now: it sounded very close. Irina hugged her brother’s arm: ‘Oh, God…’
‘Steady on…’
The barking was all one dog’s again, and even that one’s frenzy seemed to have passed its peak. Then, over the river’s thrum, what might have been a door slamming – or, in retrospect now, a shot. The orang-utan growled, ‘They’ve run into trouble, that’s for sure.’
He was a fool, Nadia thought. As well as highly unprepossessing. She muttered in French, ‘I see no reason to believe so. Just because some dogs start barking.’
‘You’re right, Nadia.’ The Count – clutching at the straw. ‘Absolutely right.’ He had his arm round Irina, who was whispering ‘Come on, come on…’
The boat virtually sprang at them out of the dark at that moment. Swerving sharply into the bank out of empty blackness and the river’s passing flood, a large figure materializing out of the shallows at its bow end and then another near the stern. Bob called quietly, ‘Nick – take this line?’
He did the rowing himself until he’d got them into the channel that branched off eastward. Then Krebst took over, with Bob navigating, making sure he stayed close to the left-hand bank, circling even farther northward when about an hour later the channel divided around the central island. The island in fact was barely visible – wouldn’t have been identifiable as such if one hadn’t known of it and been looking for it. The southward drag of current was very strong at that stage, and for about half an hour it was necessary to aim off by as much as twenty or thirty degrees – aiming the boat at the bank in order to crab along parallel to it. Things got easier after they’d passed the island; Nick took a spell at the oars, and Bob relieved him after another half-hour, by which time they’d been entering the main channel.
Two hours, roughly, since departure from Kopanovka.
He was the only one of them who hadn’t slept. He’d forced himself to stay awake – several times catching himself on the point of nodding off – because he’d realized that it was all being left to him now, Nick Solovyev having apparently – effectively – become a passenger.
As if he’d expended all his energies. Or had the stuffing knocked out of him, during those minutes facing Lesechko in his own ancestral home.
But maybe he was just exhausted. Bob himself didn’t remember ever feeling quite this tired. Not even in his year and a half in the Dover Patrol – in an ancient destroyer, wild days and nights often in force 8 gales playing hide-and-seek with German destroyers in and around the minefields, with hardly any rest even in harbour – repairing, refuelling, ammunitioning, maybe a few hours at anchor in the destroyer lines where it was about as rough as it was outside the breakwaters… Chaotic memories returning now because this state of exhaustion was comparable: and in present circumstances alarming, raising doubts as to whether one could trust one’s own judgement, or reactions in any new emergency.
He’d thought an emergency had been developing at Kopanovka, when the dog had started giving tongue. He’d been on the landing-stage, casting off the boat’s painter from an iron ring, and the ring had toppled, clanged against the iron plate securing it to the timber. That was all it had taken to rouse the dog – one clink… It had started barking, then a window had scraped up in one of the cottages and an old man had shouted angrily at it. Quavery old voice… Another dog had joined in for a while: Bob had thought the whole village would have been roused, that maybe he and Krebst were going to have to run – or rather swim – for it… Frightening prospect: without a boat they’d have been done for. Working fast, getting the stern line off – not all that simple in the dark, one had first to trace that line from the boat to another ring with other boats’ lines on it as well. Then – enormous relief – back in the water, towing the boat out from the stage: barks diminishing, the dog getting no support for its efforts and giving up, and finally the old man had slammed his window shut.
‘Bob – isn’t that the processing shed?’
Nick – in the stern with the girls, all three of them had been slumbering – was leaning forward, pointing. Bob rested on his oars, and looked round. Knowing they would come to that iron-roofed shed first…
That was it, all right. The shed’s long iron roof was a low slab of blackness against lighter sky.
Definitely lighter sky. He hadn’t realized it until this moment: but the stars were fading, in that eastern sector.
So in an hour, hour and a half at most, you’d have something like daylight here. And the emergency, therefore, was now. Having anticipated getting down into the delta by sunrise: now having it thrust into one’s sluggish mind that no such thing was possible. Roughly a hundred miles to go: having first to (a) get ashore (b) hide the boat somehow (c) get to the barn – hoping to God the truck would be there – unguarded, and with petrol in its tank…
And then – if all that worked out – you’d be making the journey south in daylight. In order to end up on that marsh with your small skiff and six people to take out to sea in it.
Bloody nightmare. And a head that felt as if it might have been full of lead… He told himself, Don’t try to think. Just get on with it.
Rowing, anyway… And asking Nick, ‘Tell me when you see the landing-stage. About a hundred yards beyond the shed, wasn’t it?’ He adjusted his course, edging the boat round to close in nearer the bank. At the same time, visualizing the landing place and the slope beyond it where he’d watched fishermen hauling their boats up, he realized that the obvious thing to do with this boat was exactly that, the same as they’d done with theirs. There’d be no counting of boats, it might lie there for months – at least for the few days they needed now with no one on their trail.
‘Nick, listen. We’ll land the girls at the stage. Then the four of us can pull this boat up and park it with the others. The girls can keep lookout while we’re doing it. And – listen…’
The brain did still work, after a fashion and at about half speed. Remembering now that those fishermen had wooden rollers on which they’d hauled their boats up, and guessing that the rollers would be up at the top of the slope, left there when the last boat had been taken up. So Nick could go up there, take a precautionary look around, leave the girls there and bring the rollers down. While the Czechs also disembarked here at the tilted landing-stage, to meet him when he brought the boat to the bottom of the slip.
Nick commented, about ten minutes later when they’d done it. ‘That was good thinking, Bob.’
He looked at him through the darkness. Finding himself short of words as well as sleep. He managed, ‘Let’s see if the truck’s there now.’ A hand on Nadia’s arm: ‘This way.’
Until they got up there, their only cover was the darkness. No trees, bushes, anything. Leading them uphill, with Nadia beside him and the Count somewhere on his left with Irina, the Czechs following, he forced himself to the effort of putting the immediate problems into words: less for anyone’s information than in the hope that someone – meaning Nick, primarily – might come up with answers, or comments that might lead to answers. The main points being that it would be light in about an hour, that if they set off in the truck now most of the journey would be made in daylight, and it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the Cheka might have put out a general alert – anti-Bolshevik prisoners on the run. They’d use the telephones at railway stations, probably. Another point was that in daylight the truck – or lorry – might be recognized. And – finally – they’d arrive on the marsh in daylight, and for obvious reasons they’d want to put some distance between themselves and wherever they dumped the truck: so you’d have six people on the move, on foot, in daylight – possibly with an alert out for them.
His voice tailed off. It had been a major effort, trying to put it into words.
He could see the barn now. And then the huts too: it was spotting the barn that had led his eye to them. But in any case it was, clearly, getting lighter.
‘Any ideas, Nick?’
‘Only – I suppose – push on…’
‘Not lie up here until it’s dark again, then push on?’
‘Oh, God – another day…’
Irina said, ‘I think Nikki’s right. Another day for them to send out descriptions, and have everyone looking for us.’
‘Well.’ Bob yawned. ‘You have a point. But I think the false trail I laid should hold them for a day or two. Before they start looking on this side, I mean.’
Nadia asked quietly. ‘You’d wait for tonight, Bob, would you?’
‘I – suppose…’
Looking at her dark profile, close to him. Thinking this had to be the right decision – if only because it would be dangerous to press on without getting some sleep first. But also, suppressing an inclination to put his arm round that tall, lithe figure: or better still – thinking about it now – to stop and use both arms, crush her body against his… Astonishing. Dead on one’s feet, a brain that felt like river-mud, and still… He thought, Survival of the species… Telling the others over his shoulder, ‘Let’s see if the truck’s here, anyway.’