I was being hunted by a pack of wolves through a ravaged countryside, but there was something wrong with my face. It was slowly peeling away. Somewhere behind me, Colin Templeton shouted orders at men wielding spears, laughing as they chased me. Anna was there, too, caring for the dead on the battlefield, men without eyes. I watched as she leaned down to kiss one on the mouth…
I woke, sweating, and when I tried to move realized instantly that my hands and feet were manacled. It was dark, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and work out what was directly in front of them: the ceiling, made out of concrete, just a couple of inches away, and an exposed wire jutting out of it. With my nightmares still fresh in my head and no idea where I was, I cried out in terror. I stopped immediately, because the proximity of the ceiling meant that the sound bounced back, nearly deafening me. And I was aware that there was someone in the room with me.
‘Sarah?’
There was no reply for a few moments. Then: ‘Yes.’
She was in the bunk beneath me.
‘Are you all right?’
Silence.
‘It’s happened, hasn’t it?’
She started sobbing and I looked up in despair, feeling as if I might cry too, but finding I was unable to.
*
We lay there in the darkness for a time, trying not to think of what the future might hold, balanced between a nightmare and reality. Then, as if by magic, light crept into the room – someone had entered. A hand reached over and loosened the manacles on my ankles, and then released Sarah. After being pulled down a small stepladder, I found myself standing next to Sarah on a cement floor, facing two stocky men armed with machine-pistols.
They prodded us out of the room and along a narrow corridor, past rough concrete walls. One of them opened a thick steel door and we were pushed into a tiny room that contained nothing but a small wooden desk, a couple of plastic chairs and a naked bulb. I was pressed down into one of the chairs and Sarah into the other, and then the men took up position by the door, their hands on their weapons, their eyes expressionless. They hadn’t said a word to either of us.
I stared at both of them with amazement. The country above us had just been destroyed, yet they were still gamely following orders as though nothing had happened. I hadn’t thought the discipline went that deep, even here. Perhaps it was something to do with the training – or the bunker we were in. While the British ones had reserved space for cabinet ministers, royalty and civil servants, this one seemed to have been designed for the military, and infantry at that. Pack them in like sardines in a tin, with an inch’s breathing space – I couldn’t understand the logic of it. Perhaps they were intending to wait until the fallout had dissipated and then emerge and strike back, swelling over the border in their tanks and street-sweepers. Well, it wouldn’t surprise me. All the British contingency plans had been riddled with holes, because nobody had had the balls to point out the truth: there was no possible way to survive a nuclear attack.
Not in the long term, anyway. Civil servants had wasted years writing documents and setting aside budgets for depots that would contain tons of flour, yeast and even sugary biscuits. But the brutal reality was that much of the world had been destroyed, and nobody was going to live long enough to rebuild it.
Most people would have been killed instantly in the first strikes. But the minority who had survived, like me and Sarah and whoever else was in this bunker, would suffer a much worse fate. We would struggle on for a couple of months down here and in other places like it, fighting among ourselves over the rapidly dwindling water and food supplies. At some point, someone would insist that the only option left was to go outside again and see if more water could be found, or search for those holes in the ground with the sacks of flour in them. A few souls would venture out, only to die slowly of radiation poisoning. The rest of us would sit down here waiting for them to return, gradually going mad. People would soon start to kill each other, and then themselves. But there would be little or no life on the surface for hundreds and hundreds of miles – and that meant that there was no way to survive in the long term. It didn’t matter how many bunk beds you had.
The door opened and a man marched into the room. He was wearing a leather coat over his uniform so I couldn’t make out his rank, but the sentries saluted him so he was obviously the bigwig. He was a tall man, completely bald, and with cheekbones so pronounced that his head resembled a skull. He somehow seemed precisely the sort of figure to meet in this situation: a god of the underworld. He pulled out a chair on the other side of the table, seated himself in it and leaned across the desk, staring at the two of us with bright blue eyes.
‘We have little time,’ he said, ‘so I will dispense with the preliminaries.’ He spoke in heavily accented English, which took me by surprise. ‘I have the following information about you, which I wish you to confirm. You are British spies by the name of Paul Dark and Sarah Severn, and you have escaped from imprisonment in Moscow. My understanding is that you escaped from a moving car while being transported to the Lubyanka.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We are. I couldn’t give a damn any more. In fact, I want to die, and the sooner the better.’
Sarah turned to me, her eyes dulled with fear. I had brought her too far. Osborne had been right: all the women I ever cared about died – Mother, Anna, Vanessa. Now Sarah would die, too. I hadn’t been able to save her, or anyone else. Better I go too, and fast.
The skull-faced man leaned back in his chair, and placed a couple of long, slender fingers to his lips. ‘I don’t understand.’
I shrugged. ‘I would rather you did it than I do it myself. I don’t intend to take up anyone’s rations. It’s my fault all this has happened, so let’s get it over with quickly. A bullet to the back of the head, please.’
He took this in, and then leaned over the desk again.
‘What madness is this?’ he whispered. ‘I have treated both of you remarkably well, Mister Dark. I arranged for your wounds to be fixed, and I even let you rest for a short time. I could have made life much worse for you, you know. You were caught crossing our border. And this is how you repay my kindness, by talking about rations like a crazy man? Yes, I will certainly have you shot if you don’t start explaining yourself.’
I stared at him, and placed my hand against my cheek. There were stitches in it, brand new. I’d forgotten about cutting myself against the underside of the fence. There was something wrong with him. Not just with his words, but the whole manner in which he had said them: despite his demonic appearance, there was culture there, sophistication, altogether different from Sasha and the other thugs I’d encountered so far. His English was good, but his accent was peculiar.
Yes. The realization hit me. He wasn’t a Russian at all, but a Finn. We’d reached Finland. We must have somehow made it across the line before the missiles had landed. That explained his comment about catching us crossing his border – in part, anyway. But what on earth did any of this matter now?
‘When was the first strike?’ I asked him. ‘And how secure is this bunker?’
He pushed his chair back and stood, nostrils flared, and I wondered if he was about to hit me. And then something dawned on him, and he sat down again.
‘Why did you try to cross the border?’ he said.
I stared at him blankly. ‘Do you really not know?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s a man called Proshin of military intelligence in Moscow. I received a signal from him a few hours ago: he asked that we step up the vigilance on our side of the border in case two British agents matching your descriptions tried to make it across. This was a highly unusual request, but it was also from an unusually senior source, so I listened. Especially because Proshin claimed that it was vital to the security of both of our countries that you be stopped at once.
‘As a result, I immediately sent out your descriptions to my men and told them to keep watch for you. Shortly after doing so, you did try to cross our border, and we discovered you. Proshin has been informed of this, and I have granted permission for him and a small group of his men to cross our border to apprehend and interrogate you here, before they take you back to the Soviet Union. He asked me to keep you under armed guard until he arrives, which should be within the next’ – he looked at his wristwatch – ‘ten minutes or so. But I would like some answers from you before he gets here, because you have illegally crossed my border. So perhaps you can tell me why you did that, and indeed why you fled from Moscow in the first place?’
I looked at him, trying to take in all the new information and weigh it against the possible. He must be bluffing. I had seen the cloud redden above me, expanding – or had I somehow imagined it? I looked over at Sarah, but she seemed as confused as I was.
‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that there hasn’t been an attack yet?’ I said.
He pressed his hands together, his forefingers sticking out like a gun and resting under his chin.
‘What sort of attack?’
‘Nuclear, of course!’
He shook his head. ‘Are you trying to tell me that there has been one?’
‘Have you looked outside lately?’
He clenched his jaw, and the hollows in his cheeks deepened further. ‘I’m losing patience rapidly, Mister Dark. Yes, I have looked outside lately. I arrived here only a few minutes ago. I would advise that you explain yourself to me, and that you do so quickly. As I say, Proshin and his men will be here very soon. But I’m perfectly willing to tell them that, unfortunately, you were foolish enough to try to escape from confinement, and that as a result I had no alternative but to shoot both of you.’
‘If there hasn’t been an attack, what the hell are we doing in a nuclear bunker?’
‘We’re not. This place wasn’t built to withstand a nuclear attack. We’re in Miehikkälä, and this bunker is part of the Salpa defence line, built during the last war to protect us from the Russians. I had you brought here because I was flying directly from Åbo and there is a small area nearby in which a helicopter can land, and because I felt confident you wouldn’t be likely to be able to escape from this place.’
‘But why were your men wearing gas masks?’ asked Sarah. ‘They had them on when they found me, and…’ She trailed off. ‘They had gas masks.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Some people farther down this coast have been affected by strange injuries in the last couple of days – we think some sort of hazardous chemical has drifted into the waters here, and a lot of fishermen and sailors have been badly afflicted, with their skin peeling away. Some of my patrols have been helping move people who have been affected, and are trying to investigate the source. All of them are wearing gas masks as a temporary precaution until we find out exactly what the cause of this is and how dangerous and contagious it is.’
My stomach had tightened, and I realized he wasn’t bluffing. ‘It’s mustard gas,’ I said. ‘A particularly powerful form of it. It has leaked from a wrecked German U-boat on the seabed just off the coast of Söderviken. If there hasn’t been an attack, you have to call Washington at once, or London.’ I stopped. Neither would work. There was no reason why anyone would believe the head of the Finnish border guard, especially as we were the source of the information. We still had to get to the U-boat ourselves, find the canisters and show them to the Russians.
I tried another tack. ‘You have to help get us there,’ I said in Swedish, and he raised an eyebrow.
‘You speak Swedish?’
He had said Åbo, rather than Turku, which was the Finnish name for it. ‘My mother was from Åbo,’ I said. ‘Look, the Russians are convinced this chemical accident is part of a plot by the West to start a nuclear war. People at their bases in Paldiski and Hiiumaa have been showing injuries like the ones you mention. As you know that the symptoms are being experienced at several points along this coastline, and as it must be clear to you that until a few seconds ago both of us were utterly convinced that a nuclear attack had taken place, surely you can see I’m telling the truth about this. But the danger hasn’t passed – a real nuclear strike could be ordered at any moment. You have to help us get to Åland, as soon as possible, so we can reach the U-boat and prove to the Russians that there has not been a chemical attack.’
He paused for a moment, then stood again, and walked briskly to the door.
‘Thank you for the explanation, Mister Dark,’ he said. I made to protest, but he hushed me. ‘Please let me speak. You escaped from confinement in Moscow, and I have no doubt you will also try to escape from here. You are both clearly extremely resourceful and dangerous operatives.’ He grabbed hold of the door handle. ‘And I think,’ he said, ‘that you will succeed in escaping from here.’
I stared at him.
‘You mean—’
He placed a finger to his lips. ‘I lost several members of my family in the wars with the Russians. There is no, as I think you say in English, love lost between me and them. I don’t believe someone could easily have invented the story you have just told me. I can, on the other hand, imagine that the Russians would react just as they have done if your story were true. So I will take a chance. Proshin and his colleagues will be furious with me, I’m sure, but they won’t be able to prove I have done anything. In any case this country is not, I repeat not, a part of the Soviet Union. I would rather take the risk you are lying to me than that you are not, considering what you have said. But you have, if I understand you, very little time left. So let’s not talk any more. It makes me uncomfortable – I’ve said more in this conversation than I have to my wife all this year. There is a helicopter upstairs. Shall we go?’
I looked at him, dumbfounded, and nodded. He smiled again, the most wonderful smile, and then opened the door.
*
Standing in the flattened grass outside the bunker was an Agusta Bell helicopter with orange and green livery. As we approached it, I turned to the Finn.
‘I don’t even know your name.’
He pulled off his coat and handed it to one of the sentries.
‘General Jesper Raaitikainen.’ He shouted at the pilot to come down from the cockpit, and then started to climb up himself. I looked on with alarm.
‘What are you doing? We can fly this.’ I pointed at Sarah. ‘You have to stay here and meet Proshin, surely.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. I’m not sticking around for that bastard. Captain!’ The pilot turned, and Raaitikainen spoke to him in rapid-fire Finnish. The pilot saluted smartly, then headed back to the entrance of the bunker. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Raaitikainen, smiling. ‘My men will tell Proshin you kidnapped me with a pistol, and there was nothing they could do about it.’
‘I would rather we went alone,’ I said.
He ignored me, and clambered into the cockpit. ‘Mister Dark, you’re lucky you’re going anywhere at all. I might also point out that you have no idea where we are, or how to get to Söderviken. But I do.’ He looked down at us, and his face was again as stern as that underworld god I’d initially taken him for. ‘I advise you to climb in here with me now – unless you wish to wait here for Proshin after all?’
Sarah looked at me, and I realized we had no choice. I helped her up, then climbed up myself, considering what his coming along might mean. He was right that we didn’t know how to get to Söderviken, but what would happen once we got there? We needed to find a way to convince the Russians that the leak was an accident rather than an attack: taking along a general from a Western ally wouldn’t help us do that, and they might believe it was another deception operation as a result. But it was better than no chance at all.
As Raaitikainen was busy checking the controls, one of the sentries began running towards us and shouted something up to him in Finnish. He listened, then turned to me and Sarah.
‘The Russians have been sighted on the track leading here. Let’s go!’
Raaitikainen shouted at his man on the ground, who saluted and stood back, and as he went through the checks and put the engine into warm-up we started to strap ourselves in.