Making Enemies (18 page)

It was late afternoon. The snow had stopped some hours before but dark clouds hung low over us. Before long it would start to snow again. Mika and I were outside splitting logs by the light of a kerosene lamp.

‘How do you find him?’ Mika asked, resting his axe for a moment.

‘Krasov? Frightened.’

‘He has reason to be.’

He picked up the axe again and struck at the wood, splitting it neatly in two. I admired his skill. His pile of logs was much larger than mine.

‘You must get him out as soon as you can. He’ll crack up if he stays here much longer,’ I said.

‘Our people have seen Russian patrols in the woods. We cannot move him at present. It is too dangerous.’

‘One day more?’

‘Maybe two. Who knows?’

‘It’s too long.’

‘Glenn is unhappy but he accepts the situation.’

‘I’m not worried about Glenn.’

‘There is more at stake than the sanity of one man,’ Mika said.

I saw then, in the detachment of Mika’s verdict, the roots of Krasov’s despair. Only Hammerson and I valued him. For Mika and the others with him, Krasov was a parcel, and not a parcel they would ever have chosen to deliver. But Krasov was something they owed Hammerson, and that was why they turned on him the anger they felt at themselves for owing anyone anything, and then for having the debt called in.

I saw too that nothing I said carried any weight. I was powerless – another parcel, like Krasov, though of less value. We continued
cutting logs in silence, the sound of our axes striking the wood echoing dully against the snow-laden trees that surrounded us.

‘Were you a soldier?’ Mika asked suddenly. ‘Did you fight in the war?’

‘Yes.’ I hoped the shortness of my reply would put him off any more questions. It didn’t.

‘Where did you fight?’

‘In the desert. Sicily. Normandy.’

‘I cannot imagine dying on a beach.’

‘It’s no different from dying anywhere else. If you’re lucky, it’s quick; if you’re not, it isn’t.’

‘I saw men die too,’ he said.

I looked at him. Perhaps I had mistaken his deliberate way of speaking, his lack of familiarity with English, for coldness. But his questions revealed his search for common ground. Now we had found it. We had both fought, and we had both survived. The survivor always has a tale to tell.

‘We called it the Winter War. We went into Karelia and forced the Russians out. Then they forced us back. We lost our land: There were many dead.’

‘Is that why you hate the Russians?’

‘It is one of the many reasons,’ he said. ‘To us, they are always the enemy. I cannot imagine a day when they will not be. That is the price for living too close to someone more powerful than yourself.’

He stopped talking and concentrated his energies on splitting logs. Then he said:

‘Are you still in uniform?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, we are brother soldiers.’ He smiled at me.

*

A small wooden building stood at one end of the house, a pile of logs to one side of the door. This, Mika explained, was the sauna.

We went into the room and undressed. There were towels piled high on a shelf. Mika, now naked, pointed to the door.

‘First we wash ourselves and then we go into the steam room. After the steam, the snow. Come.’

We washed and then Mika handed me a towel. ‘Spread this on the bench and sit on it. It is to prevent burns. In there is the steam.’
He pointed at the door. ‘At first it is better to lie on the lower benches. It is cooler. As you get used to the heat you move higher. Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

He opened the door to the sauna and went in. I followed him and walked into a wall of heat. My eyes closed at once with the sheer intensity of it. Sweat broke from my body and I fought for breath, choking as the air was drawn out of me as I sought, mouth open, chest heaving, to breathe again. I put out my arms to keep my balance, searching like a blind man for something to hold on to.

The moment passed. My body adjusted and I breathed once more. I opened my eyes. In a corner, I could make out the scalding stones over which water had been poured. Steam continued to rise, but my discomfort was limited now. I stumbled towards a bench and threw myself down on its wet wooden surface.

Slowly the perspective of the room came into focus. There was wood everywhere, the light scrubbed spruce I had seen in the house. I could see Mika lying full length on the bench, his hands over his eyes, breathing deeply and slowly.

It was only then that I realized there was someone else in the sauna with us. Sitting opposite me was a young woman. She too was naked. Her body shone wetly in the dim light. She brushed her fair hair back from her face with her fingers and smiled at me. Then, with a scream, she opened the door and plunged out into the snow. I watched her go in disbelief.

She rolled in the snow, then she turned her back and gathered handfuls of snow and rubbed it over her body. It was an extraordinary performance, without guile or intent, wholly private and wondrous to observe.

She saw me watching her and laughed again, throwing snow up in the air so that it fell all over her. Then she ran back into the sauna and closed the door. She leaned towards me.

‘My name is Tanya Alenius,’ she said, and offered me her hand.

I was looking into the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen.

Scrawled in red ink across the top of the letter were the words
R.C., Do you know about this
?
W.G.
The unwritten coda to Willy Glover’s question was ominously clear: if not, why not?

The typewritten letter now being passed round the table was addressed to a Dr Christopher Hall of the Engineering Department, Birmingham University, dated 26 February 1947 and signed by Geoffrey Stevens.

‘Do we know if Stevens spoke to Hall last week?’ Gardner asked.

‘They were seen leaving Smith Street together after the meeting,’ Maitland said. ‘So we must assume he did.’

‘Did anything come of it?’

‘We’ve no evidence so far, but that may not mean much,’ said the ever-cautious Colin. ‘The truth is, we don’t know what happened.’

‘Has Stevens sent any other letters like this?’ Boys-Allen asked. ‘How wide is he casting his net?’

‘No others have come to hand.’ Colin Maitland said. ‘But that’s not to say he hasn’t written to his contacts.’

‘He’s bound to have written other letters,’ Gardner said. ‘My guess is there could be twenty more like this in circulation, possibly forty. Some of them will have gone to America. Stevens is a powerful figure in the scientific community here and on the other side of the Atlantic. He’s one of the Government’s main advisers on nuclear issues, knows all the leading players, particularly the Americans. They respect him for the work he did before the war.’

‘He mentions forming some kind of association,’ Maitland said. ‘There could already be a groundswell of hostile opinion among our own scientific community which we haven’t yet noticed, and this proposal could fly within days. There would be serious repercussions,’ he warned, ‘if this country’s senior nuclear scientists created an effective lobby in defiance of government policy.’

‘He’ll need more than the voices of a few scientists to pose any threat to policy,’ Guy Benton said. ‘This kind of opposition is usually very amateur, all emotion and no sense.’

If Benton’s rejection of the amateur was intended to reassure us, it didn’t. Stevens was a man of standing whose opinions held considerable weight. Whatever he said would get listened to.

‘I accept he’s not in the Nils Bohr league,’ Colin Maitland said. ‘But he’s not far behind. He’ll be listened to.’

‘What do we know about Hall?’ Arthur Gurney asked. ‘He’s a new one on me.’

‘Explosives expert.’ Maitland consulted his notes. ‘Very highly thought of Did a lot of experimental work during the war. Worked with Barnes Wallis for a time. He’s one of the men Willy Glover’s trying to lure on to his nuclear programme. I am told that without Hall, making the bomb’s going to be a damn sight more difficult.’

‘Is he likely to be convinced by Stevens’s argument?’

‘I don’t know enough about him to answer that,’ Maitland said, sounding less than sure.

‘Has Hall ever expressed any views similar to Stevens?’

‘Not that we know of,’ Colin said. ‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t, it means we don’t know if he has.’

‘So it’s possible?’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘There’s a lot of moral uncertainty within the scientific community at present,’ Arthur Gurney said. ‘We’ve picked that up from a number of sources. They’ve seen the photographs and the films of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it’s scared them half to death. Those images of molten corpses are very powerful, certainly enough to make any reasonable person think twice about taking part in a project to build a weapon of such indiscriminate destruction. There are real grounds for thinking that Stevens’s appeal may succeed. He could be pushing on doors that are already open to him.’

‘What if a significant group of scientists were to agree with Stevens?’ Guy Benton asked. ‘What would happen then?’

‘No scientists, no bomb,’ Colin Maitland said bluntly.

‘And if we have no bomb?’

‘How can we play in the big boys’ playground if we don’t have the toys they have?’

There was silence while we contemplated life on the margins of international politics. It didn’t appeal. I sensed a brief but unspoken yearning for the simple choices of past glories. How much simpler our lives had been when we had an empire: we knew our place in the world, and no one had exploded a nuclear device. Stevens’s
letter seemed to illustrate all the complications and dangers of the difficult, new post-war world.

*

A week later a newspaper article appeared in the press in Stevens’s regular column. It was clear he was unable to keep his secret to himself – or that he had been instructed not to do so.

Later that same day the cutting appeared on Rupert’s desk. There was the familiar red scrawl. Even upside down the instructions were clear.

Rupert, this must stop. Do something. W.G.

The battle lines were being drawn.

We left on the second night.

One of the Finns who had accompanied us from Helsinki reported that a Russian patrol had been seen a few miles away, heading in our direction. Mika said it was no longer safe for us to stay and Hammerson agreed. It meant a change of plan about where Krasov was to be picked up but the contingency was in place.

‘It ought to work,’ Hammerson said to me. ‘But you never know, do you?’ It was the first time he’d shown less than full confidence in the enterprise.

There were six of us in the party: Krasov, Hammerson, myself, Mika and his two minders. Over our clothes we wore white suits, like those used by soldiers in the Winter War. Mika issued us with guns. Hammerson saw my surprise and said: ‘Better safe than sorry. But I don’t expect to use it.’

He was holding a German Luger admiringly. Mika gave him ammunition.

We piled into the lorry and drove back across the causeway and then on through the thickly wooded countryside. It was snowing again heavily now, and our progress was painfully slow. We passed no one, saw nothing. The land was deserted, empty except for an occasional animal, momentarily trapped in the glare of our headlights, eyes flashing like stars and then vanishing as it raced away into the night.

After two hours we stopped. There was a muttered conference in Finnish.

‘This is as far as he can take us,’ Mika told us. ‘The road has become too dangerous.’

‘We can’t stop here,’ Krasov said frantically.

‘Now we go on foot.’ Mika’s expression wasn’t encouraging. I
imagined he was worried about whether or not the diminutive Russian would last the journey. Krasov looked at him as if he were mad.

‘Road is too dangerous, snow is up to our waist, and he tells us walk.’ He leaned against the side of the lorry and groaned in misery. ‘Here I am staying. I will not move. Here I will die.’

Mika unloaded skis from the lorry and handed them round. Hammerson took a pair for Krasov and fitted them on, whispering encouragement to him as he did so. There was something almost tender in the way Hammerson treated him. He was doing it out of affection and respect for the man, and Krasov appeared to respond.

‘Keep together but not too close,’ Mika instructed. He and the others had carbines slung over their backs.

We set off down a gentle incline, pushing our way through the winter skeletons of birch trees. I tried to imagine what it would be like in summer, islands of silver birch floating in green meadows on the side of a long rolling hill, under a wide blue sky with the soft grey water of the inland lakes stretching into the distance. But the thought did nothing to keep out the cold.

‘We rest here,’ Mika said some time later. We had reached a summer house deep in the woods. ‘Then we begin the last leg of our journey.’

One of the minders started a fire while Mika gave us brandy from a flask. Slowly, our frozen bones came back to life. Krasov was exhausted, too tired even to complain. Hammerson looked after him like a child, finding him a corner where he could rest, wrapping him in a rug to keep warm, bringing him food.

I had lost track of time. I hardly knew whether it was day or night. The daylight was over so quickly it hardly seemed to matter. By now the wooden house was warm. I settled in a chair and slept intermittently. Krasov snored in his corner.

‘He did well,’ Hammerson said, indicating Krasov. ‘You have to give the little guy his due. He’s tougher than he looks. There’s some strength in that body, despite its size.’

‘Have you done this journey before?’ I asked Hammerson. If this was to be our last night together, I was determined to find out as much as I could.

‘Once. Some time ago now.’ He seemed reluctant to say more. ‘Krasov isn’t their usual cargo. That’s been the trouble all along. Their heart’s not in this.’

‘What is their usual cargo?’

‘Balts.’ He said. ‘Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians; not your genuine asshole Red like Krasov. Reds by coercion, the guys who can’t swallow the ideology though it’s all they’re given to live on. The good guys. The opposition.’

‘There isn’t an opposition in a one-party state,’ I said, rather too smartly.

‘There is – it’s underground,’ Hammerson said. ‘We call this the lifeline, the escape route for Balt nationalists. We bring them out when things get too hot. There are a number of these networks operating across the Baltic states, left over from the war. I guess, for the Balts, the war never ended.’ He pointed at the sleeping forms of the three Finns. ‘That’s why they’re edgy. Russia is the enemy and Krasov is Russian. This cargo smells.’

The cargo in question stirred and murmured something in Russian but did not wake up.

‘Why did they agree to take him then?’

Hammerson smiled. ‘I called in my marker.’ It was all he would say.

I tried to question him about his involvement with these Baltic peoples. How did it start? When? Hammerson smiled through his evasion.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘There’s plenty of time.’

‘I have a simple view of the world. You have to stand up for your beliefs. These people are oppressed by a system they didn’t choose. They can’t be what they want to be, what they have a right to be. In my book that’s bad. I’m on the side of freedom. The guy who’s taking it away from them is my enemy.’

‘Isn’t there more to it than that?’

‘You tell me then.’

There was an edge to his voice which warned me off. For some reason I didn’t understand, he wasn’t going to tell me anything more. I changed the subject.

‘What brings Mika into this?’

‘The Finns had a hard time in the war. Mika lost a father and a brother. He can’t forgive the Russians easily.’

‘And Tanya?’

Hammerson laughed. ‘You’ve met Tanya, have you? She’s his sister.’

‘What’s she to do with all this?’

‘Not much. Mika doesn’t involve her unless he has to. She’s a doctor. We needed a doctor to get Krasov across the border.’

‘Where’s she gone now?’

‘Back to Helsinki, I guess. That’s where she lives.’

I must have slept after that because the next thing I remember is Hammerson shaking me and saying: ‘We’re moving out, Danny. We’re on our way.’ He turned to Krasov. ‘Last leg, my friend. Not far now. Imagine you are walking to America.’

I looked out of the window. It was very dark and the wind was blowing the snow into drifts. It was going to be a cold and difficult journey.

We set out in single file once more, crossing fields and forests. The sky had cleared and the moon was up, draining the landscape of colour but etching every outline black against the snow and making our shadows look like pools of darkness sliding silently across the ground.

We were following the edge of a forest, moving along the top of a sweeping hillside, keeping always within sight of the line of the trees so that, at the first sign of danger, we could slip back into the shadows.

I was the first to see the other skiers. They were below us, just above the base of the valley on the opposite side. There were four of them, visible only briefly as they too kept close to the line of the trees. But occasionally one, then another, would break out into the open, only to disappear again. At first I thought they were hunters looking for game. I could see the guns on their backs. Then I knew they were shadowing us, that we must be in their sights. They were still hunters but now we were the quarry. I called to Mika and pointed down the hill. He waved us back out of sight into the trees. He had taken his carbine off his shoulder.

‘What’s happening?’ Krasov’s anxieties returned.

‘There are people down there,’ I said, pointing. ‘I don’t know who they are.’

‘Russians,’ Mika said, scanning the valley through binoculars. ‘Looking for us.’

‘If we go back into the woods,’ Hammerson said, ‘we should lose them.’

‘Too slow,’ Mika said. ‘We have a deadline for the rendezvous and it is only safe for our friends to wait a short time. We must
keep going, only faster. There is only one way now and that is forward.’

We started again, a greater urgency in all our actions. The slope of the hillside was in our favour and our speed improved. From time to time I looked down and though there were moments when I thought we had outrun our pursuers, always a figure reappeared, only to vanish again. They had found us and were not going to let us go.

‘We won’t make it at this rate,’ I heard Hammerson say.

‘We have to make it.’ Mika was grim-faced.

But the decision was not to be ours to take. A branch above me shook with a sudden vibration and snow fell on to to the ground. I looked down the valley and saw a narrow arc of white light streaming silently towards us. I watched it snake up the hill, marvelling at the swift beauty of the line, before the muffled crackle of explosions reached us, like distant fireworks. Then the single line became a chorus as others joined it, lines of light that lived and died in seconds. It was an uncanny, almost surreal experience, the uneven patterns of the tracer bullets bursting out against the dark sky and then dying away, followed by the delayed sound of muffled crackles from deep in the valley. The trees around us echoed as bullets buried themselves in wood or whined uselessly away into the darkness beyond and shook with the explosions. Snow fell from the swaying branches above us.

‘Looks like World War Three’s begun,’ Hammerson said. ‘Just what we didn’t want.’

The pattern of our response was professional. Hammerson and Mika were responsible for Krasov and they pulled him along as fast as he could go. The two minders, their carbines at the ready, were already crashing down into the valley, concealed in dead ground. They were to divert our attackers while we were to be given the chance to escape, even at the cost of their lives.

It was then a question of move and countermove, a deadly ballet of diversionary fire from the Finns while we pressed forward; the answering counter-attack from our pursuers. Then more fire from us down the hillside, while the two Finns changed their position, followed by another burst from them drawing answering fire from the Russians while we moved forward as fast as we could.

Our pursuers were not getting any closer, but nor were we escaping. It was as if we were inextricably joined to each other, Siamese twins each bent on driving the life out of the other.

There was a sudden cry from behind us. I turned to see Krasov
fall forwards, sliding away from us over the rim of the ridge, his arms grabbing helplessly at the snow as he slithered backwards down into the hollow of dead ground below us. I thought he must have been shot. But as soon as he came to a halt he shouted for us again and we knew he was all right. Hammerson was already going after him, plunging through the snow, and when he reached Krasov he grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him to his feet. Krasov appeared shaken but unhurt.

‘Come on,’ I heard Hammerson say. ‘Climb. Climb.’

Mika had taken up a position behind a tree and was giving covering fire to Krasov and Hammerson. I watched them clamber up together, Hammerson encouraging Krasov forward as fast as he was able. For a moment the firing stopped and there was an eerie silence broken only by gasps for breath from Krasov.

‘Help him,’ Hammerson called to me. ‘Give him a hand.’

The last few yards were up a steep snowbound slope to the ridge on which we stood. This part of their ascent was fully exposed to the view of our pursuers below. I secured my foothold and leaned over the edge, reaching down as far as I could. Krasov’s progress was painstakingly slow and he was still too far away for me to get hold of him. He was finding it a very difficult climb and he kept losing his grip and sliding backwards into Hammerson’s arms.

‘OK, we’ll try another way,’ I heard Hammerson say.

He started climbing himself, diagonally this time, leaving Krasov where he was. He dug out footholds in the snow and made a platform for himself. Then he reached backwards, took Krasov’s hand and pulled him up. Slowly, they came towards us, Hammerson leading the way, digging out the snow in a ragged staircase for the little Russian.

As they came fully into view, the moonlight making their dark outline easily visible against the snow, the arcs of light from down in the valley burst out again, chasing them as they zigzagged up the last yards of the slope. I was lying full length on the snow now, both arms reaching for Krasov. He was a few feet from me, struggling against the steep slope to find the grip that would drag him over the edge to safety. The marksmen below were finding their range and bullets started to crack all around us.

Then the streams of light found their quarry and converged on Hammerson, and with a cry he fell forward in the snow. With agonizing slowness he began to slide head first down the hillside. Krasov looked round and shouted for him. I grabbed his arm and pulled him to
safety. Behind him, as the hillside gave way steeply, I saw Hammerson plunging downwards faster and faster, out of sight and out of range. I saw the Russians clambering towards his still form.

Krasov moaned in despair. I wanted to fire at the ant-like figures swarming up the hillside.

‘No.’ Mika grabbed my arm. ‘No time for that. We have to go on.’

‘We can’t leave him there.’

‘He’s dead or dying. We can do nothing for him now.’

He pulled me after him, and then Krasov. With almost superhuman strength he dragged us through the woods and down to the road. There, waiting for us, its engine turning over, a plume of exhaust visible in the night air, was a lorry. Two figures emerged and ran towards us. They spoke in Finnish to Mika who pointed at Krasov. They took him by the arms and bundled him into the lorry and drove off. It was all over in less than a minute. No time even for goodbye.

‘Now we find Hammerson,’ Mika said.

It took us more than an hour to climb back up the hill. The night was still clear but I could see no sign of our attackers. After a time we picked up one minder, then the other, both unharmed. From the expressions on their faces, they had enjoyed themselves. I wanted to know how they had got on but I was too breathless to ask Mika to translate for me. He seemed in no mood to talk.