She laughed, but without humor. “It is a problem here, too. We hear of efforts to convince people to drink less, but so far they have not succeeded.”
“I know very little of Russia.”
“My father says it has not changed. Russia now is the same as under the Tsars. As a nation, Russians have always been suspicious of outsiders. They have always lived outside the community of nations. What is happening now in Afghanistan began long ago. Read Kipling’s Kim again and especially some of his short stories. Nor have they ever permitted free travel in their country or allowed their people to travel freely outside of Russia. Balzac had to meet his Polish mistress in Switzerland, as travel to France was not permitted for long periods.”
“It is a pity. I have seen much beauty here, and I have seen little.”
“The Kamchatka Peninsula is magnificent. There are volcanoes, snow-covered peaks, waterfalls, and splendid forests. If it was possible, I think your people would come to see it. You are great travelers, I know.”
She shivered. “It grows colder. We shall have a bad winter, I believe.”
“They have not bothered you here?”
She shrugged. “We are far out of the way, and we do nothing to attract attention to ourselves. Wulff knows we exist, but our furs enrich him. Nevertheless, if we caused trouble he would have us all in prison or shot” She paused. “I think he only knows we exist, but does not know where and does not wish to know. Nor does he know who is here or how many.”
“You see,” she looked up at him again, “we are far from anywhere. No one travels this way. Someday — ”
They walked on. “Is it true that everybody in America has an automobile?”
“Some families have two or three. A car is not considered a luxury, but a necessity. Many people drive many miles to work, and someone who does not drive a car or own one is a curiosity.”
“And you?”
“I could fly a plane before I drove a car, and I would still rather fly. In the mountains where I grew up, there were no roads. Not close by, at least. My grandfather and my father did not want them, nor did they want visitors. When I left the mountains to go to school I lived with some Scottish relatives and rode in a car for the first time.”
“Do Indians have cars?”
He chuckled. “The pickup has replaced the pony. I think every Indian has one, or if he does not own a pickup he soon will.”
They paused again. “The way of life changes very rapidly in America. When cars became available, Americans began to travel even more, and at first there were tourist parks where they could stop at night and camp. Usually there was one building where there were showers and a place to cook. Then there were tourist courts where you could rent a room with a carport attached. That gave way to the motel, and now the motels are passing. Too many Americans are flying now, rather than driving. It used to be that there were filling stations on every corner and almost as many motels. Each year now there are fewer. I believe that soon there will be vast stretches in America where nobody travels but local people. It is faster to go by air.”
“But you have railroads!”
“Of course, and for something less than one hundred years they were very important. They grow less so year by year. ”
Joe Mack did not go further. There was a restlessness in him that he felt was a warning. They parted there at the edge of the cluster of shelters, and she walked away without looking back. For a long moment he stood looking after her.
It was a grim life that faced her, a truly beautiful young woman condemned to live her life out in a forest, making do in a crude shelter, always in fear of discovery and what might follow. He had never been given to parties or even the essential affairs an officer was called upon to attend. He had gone, and he had known the effect he created, but he was happiest when far out in the woods or when flying alone and high in the sky. Yet thinking of Natalya he could see her in an evening gown at some of the balls or dinners he had attended. She was made for that world, not this.
He paused again when well back into the birch forest and looked carefully around. He must not be followed. And he must prepare, now, for an escape. Above all he must not settle down to a day-by-day existence here. True, this was the best sort of place he could find to ride out the winter, but he must be prepared to move, and quickly, at any time.
The search was on, and it would be a relentless search, Remembering Alekhin, he knew the man would be ruthless as well as persevering. And somewhere down the chain of days they would meet. Somewhere, somehow, he knew it would happen.
Man to man, face to face, and death for one or both.
Remembering Alekhin’s cold, heavy-lidded eyes, he felt a chill.
Seventeen
Colonel Arkady Zamatev was coldly furious. He was also frightened.
He had spent the evening at a gathering in the apartments of Comrade Shepilov, where he had been almost immediately surrounded by questioners wanting to know about the American who had escaped.
Who was he? What exactly had happened? Where was he now? There were people present who were important. Trust Shepilov to be sure of that. There were also people who would go away wondering and asking questions of each other. The hitherto solid tower he had built was showing signs of wear and tear.
There was but one answer. He must recapture the American without delay. But had he not been trying to do just that? Had he not alerted everyone? Had he not tried everything he could think of? And not a single lead.
Well, not many. There was, of course, Alekhin’s feeling and the indications he, Alekhin, believed in.
Zamatev sat down behind his desk and page by page went over the reports he had received from the field.
Negative.
The man had vanished like a ghost. In a vast, only partly explored land, without weapons, without food, without proper clothing, he had disappeared. The man could not speak Russian. He could not possibly know the country well enough to exist. Aside from the one insubstantial story Alekhin had, there were no reports of thefts; yet somehow if alive, the man had to be eating.
Pennington had been brought back and grilled. He had been treated roughly, yet he obviously knew nothing. It was apparent that Pennington was telling the truth. After all, they had had no time together, and their conversation, carefully overheard, had been an exchange of the most obvious kind. As Pennington said, the man would not and could not trust him. Their informant in the prison knew nothing, either.
Zamatev made tea. He liked it strong, and on this night he needed it.
Once more he got out the map and studied it. First, the large map of the Trans-Baikal and the lands to the east. That portion of Siberia east of Lake Baikal, lying between the Amur River border with China and the Arctic Ocean, was a huge piece of territory. He merely glanced at the thick finger of land pointing eastward toward the Bering Strait and Alaska. That was impossible, absolutely impossible. Mountains, rivers, and tundra. Few villages, few people, many small mountain ranges, swamps, and bitter cold.
South toward the Amur; that has to be it. Perhaps eastward, south of Magadan?
He was studying the map when he heard the tap on the door. For a moment he sat starkly still.
The KGB? They usually came in the night. But he, Zamatev, was the KGB, or at least he was the GRU, which was almost the same thing.
The knock came again. Too light for that. He walked to the door. “Who is there?” he demanded.
“Kyra.”
He opened the door. “Come in! Come in! How are you?” His kiss was brief. Her lips were cold from the night air.
There was no nonsense about her. She walked right to his desk. She placed a typewritten report on the map, “It is there, what I have learned, but let me tell you. I think I have a lead.”
He sat down and leaned back in the chair. “Tell me.”
“We covered a lot of area and we found nothing, nothing at all. We asked questions, we looked at reports. Nothing.”
“In Aldan, however, there is a dealer in furs. A man named Evgeny Zhikarev.”
“I know the name.”
“Exactly. Stegman had questioned him once.”
“What about him?”
“A dealer in furs, as I said, and a small bale of furs had just been received. Obviously he was nervous, and it had something to do with the furs. I went through them, and I know something of pelts. Some of them were very fine skins, and the best of them were treated in a different way from the bulk. Most of the furs were crudely handled, but a number of them showed the skilled hand of a man who both knew about furs and cared about them.