Several of the settlers were of Romanian stock with strong family ties in the Old Country. Their political views were not in accord with Mother Russia’s. Nor would they ever be – not until all oppression was removed and people could work and worship in their own way, and restrictions lifted so that they might emigrate at will. They were Jews and they were Ukrainians who thought of themselves as Romanians, and given freedom of choice they might also have been Russians. But mainly they were people of the world and belonged to no one but themselves. Their children were brought up with the same beliefs and aspirations.
In short, while many of the resettled families were simple peasants of no distinct political persuasion, there were a good many in the new villages and camps who were anti-Communist and budding, even active fifth-columnists. They clung to their Romanian links and contacts, and similar groups in Romania had well-established links with the West.
Mikhail Simonov – fully documented as a city-bred hothead and troublemaker, who’d been given the choice of becoming a pioneering Komsomol, or else – had gone to just such a family, the Kirescus of Yelizinka village, for employment as a lumberjack. Only old man Kazimir Kirescu himself, and his oldest son, Yuri, knew Jazz’s real purpose there at the foot of the Urals, and they covered for him to give him as much free time as possible. He was ‘prospecting’ or ‘hunting’ or ‘fishing’ – but Kazimir and Yuri had known that in actual fact he was spying. And they’d also known what he was after, his mission: to discover the secret of the experimental military base down in the heart of the Perchorsk ravine.
‘You’re not only risking your neck, you’re wasting your time,’ the old man had told Jazz gruffly one night shortly after he took up lodgings with the Kirescus. Jazz remembered that night well; Anna Kirescu and her daughter Tassi had gone off to a women’s meeting in the village, and Yuri’s younger brother Kaspar was in bed asleep. It had been a good time for their first important talk.
‘You don’t have to go there to know what’s going on in that place,’ Kazimir had continued. ‘Yuri and I can tell you that, all right, as could most of the people in these parts if they’d a mind to.’
‘A weapon!’ his great, lumbering, giant-hearted son, Yuri, had put in, winking and nodding his massive shaggy head. ‘A weapon like no one ever saw before, or ever could imagine, to make the Soviets strong over all other people. They built it down there in the ravine, and they tested it – and it went wrong!’
Old Kazimir had grunted his agreement, spitting in the fire for good measure and for emphasis. ‘Just a little over two years ago – ‘ he said, gazing into the heart of the flames where they roared up the sprawling cabin’s stone chimney, ‘ – but we’d known something was in the offing for weeks before that. We’d heard the machinery running, do you see? The big engines that power the thing.’
‘That’s right,’ Yuri had taken up the story again. ‘The big turbines under the dam. I remember them being installed more than four years ago, before they put that lead roof on the thing. Even then they’d restricted all hunting and fishing in the area of the old pass, but I used to go there anyway. When they built that dam – why, the fish swarmed in that artificial lake! It was worth a clout and a telling-off if you got caught there. But about the turbines: hah! I was stupid enough then to think maybe they were going to give us the electricity. We still don’t have it … but what did they need all that power for, eh?’ And he’d tapped the side of his nose.
‘Anyway,’ his father continued, ‘it’s so still on certain nights in these parts that a shout or the bark of a dog will carry for miles. So did the sound of those turbines when they first started to use them. Despite the fact that they were down in the ravine, you could hear their whining and droning right here in the village. As for the power they produced, that’s easy: they used it for all of their mining and tunnelling, for their electric drills and rock-cutting tools, their lights and their blasting devices. Oh, and for their heating and their comfort, too, no doubt, while here in Yelizinka we burned logs. But they must have taken thousands of tons of rock out of that ravine, so that God only knows – you’ll forgive me – what sort of warrens they’ve burrowed under the mountain!’