There was also a hood made of some kind of brown animal fur.
The apparition coughed. It grunted.
'Com-rades,' it said. The word was slurred, the voice harsh, like a tape being played at too slow a speed.
Kelso could feel the hair stirring on his scalp. 'Aw, Jesus,' said O'Brian, 'Jesusiesusiesus -'
There was another cough and a great gathering of phlegm. A gobbet of yellow spit was ejected into the undergrowth.
'Com-rades, I am a rude fell-ow. I cannot deny it. And I have been out of the way of hu-man com-pany. But there it is. Well then? D'yer want me to shoot yer? Yes?'
He stepped out in front of them - quickly, sharply: he barely disturbed a twig. He was wearing an old army greatcoat - patched, hacked off above the knees and belted with a length of rope - and cavalry boots into which his baggy trousers were stuffed. His hands were bare and huge. In one he carried an old rifle. In the other was the satchel with Anna Safanova's notebook and the papers.
Kelso felt O'Brian's grip tighten on his arm.
'This is the book of which it is spok-en? Yes? And the papers prove i!' The figure leaned towards them, rocking his head this way and that, studying them intently. 'You are the ones, then? You are truly the ones?'
He came closer, peering at them with his dark eyes, and Kelso could smell the stench of his body, sour with stale sweat.
'Or are you, perhaps, spiders?'
He took a pace back and swiftly raised the rifle, aiming it from his waist, his finger on the trigger.
'We are the ones,' said Kelso, quickly.
The man cocked an eyebrow in surprise. 'Imperialists?'
'I am an English comrade. The comrade here is American.'
'Well, well! England and America! And Engels was a Jew!' He laughed, showing black teeth, then spat. 'And yet you have not asked me for proof Why so?'
'We trust you.
"'We trust you."' He laughed again. 'Imperialists! Always sweet words. Sweet words and then they kill you for a kopek. For a kopek! If you were the ones, you would demand proof.'
'We demand proof.'
'I have proof' he said defiantly. He glanced from one man to the other, then lowered the rifle, turned and began moving quickly back towards the trees.
'Now what?' whispered O'Brian.
'God knows.'
'Can we get that rifle off him? Two of us, one of him?'
Kelso stared at him in astonishment. 'Don't even think it.
'Boy, but he's quick, though, isn't he? And completely flicking crazy.' O'Brian gave a nervous giggle. 'Look at him. Now what's he doing?'
But he was doing nothing, merely standing impassively at the edge of the trees, waiting.
THERE didn't seem to be much else for them to do except follow him, which wasn't easy, given his speed across the grounds the roughness of the forest floor, the handicap of O'Brian's injured leg. Kelso carried the camera case. Once or twice they seemed to lose him, but never for long. He must have kept stopping to let them catch up.
After a few minutes they came back out on to the track, but further up, roughly midway between the abandoned Toyota and the empty settlement.
He didn't pause. He led them straight across the snowy track and into the trees on the other side.
This was not good, thought Kelso, as they passed out of the grey light and back into the shadows. Surreptitiously, without slackening pace, he put his hand into his pocket and tore a page out of his yellow notebook, screwed it into a ball and dropped it behind him. He did this every fifty yards or so - hare and hounds: an old school game - only now he was hare and hound.
O'Brian, panting at his back, whispered, 'Nice work.'
They emerged into a small clearing, with a wooden cabin in the centre. He had built this well - and recently, by the look of it - cannibalising the old encampment for his materials. Why he had done this, Kelso never discovered. Perhaps the other place was too full of ghosts. Or, maybe he wanted a spot even more secluded, and more easily defensible. In the silence, Kelso thought he could hear running water and he guessed they must be near the river.
The cabin was made of the familiar grey timber, with one small window and a door to suit his height, set a yard above the ground and approached by four wooden steps. At the base of these he picked up a branch and prodded deep into the snow There was a spurt of white powder as something jumped and snapped. He withdrew the branch. Clamped around the end was a large animal trap, the rusty metal teeth stuck deep into the wood.
He laid this carefully to one side, climbed the steps to his door, unfastened the padlock and went inside. After a brief exchange of looks with O'Brian, Kelso followed, ducking his head to pass through the low entrance, emerging into the one small room. It was dark and cold and he could smell the insanity - he inhaled the lonely madness, as sharp and sour as the lingering stink of unwashed flesh. He put his hand to his mouth. Behind him he heard O'Brian suck in his breath.
Their host had lit a kerosene lamp. The whitened skulls of a bear and a wolf shone from the shadows. He put the notebook on the table, next to a half-eaten plate of some dark and bony fish, put a pot of water on the hob and bent to rekindle the old iron stove, keeping his rifle close to hand.
Kelso could imagine him an hour ago: hearing the distant sound of their car on the track, abandoning his meal, grabbing his gun and heading for the forest, his fire doused, his trap set -There wasn't a bed, merely a thin mattress, leaking stuffing, rolled and tied with string. Beside it was an ancient Soviet-made transistor radio, the size of a packing case, and next to that a wind-up gramophone with a tarnished brass horn.
The Russian unfastened the satchel and took out the notebook. He opened it at the picture of the girl gymnasts in Red Square and held it up for them: there, you see? They nodded. He set it down on the table. Then he pulled on a length of greasy leather hanging round his neck and kept on pulling until he hauled from somewhere deep in the fetid fluids of his clothes a small piece of clear plastic. He offered it to Kelso. It was warm from the heat of his body: the same picrure~ but folded very small, so that only Anna Safanova's face was visible.
'You are the ones,' he said. 'I am the one you seek. And now: the proof.'
He kissed the home-made locket and lowered it back into his clothes. Then, from the belt of his greatcoat, he drew out a short, wide-bladed knife with a leather hilt. He turned it, showing them the sharpness of the edge. He grinned at them. He kicked back the bit of carpet at his feet, dropped to his knees and prised up a crude trapdoor.
He reached down and pulled out a large and shabby suitcase.
HE unpacked his reliquary like a priest, reverently placing each object on the crude wooden table as if it were an altar.
The holy texts came out first: the thirteen volumes of Stalin’s collected works and thoughts, the Sochineniya, published in Moscow after the war. He showed the title page of each book to Kelso and then to O'Brian. All of them were signed in the same way - 'To the future, J. V. Stalin' - and all, clearly, had been read and re-read endlessly. On some of the volumes, the spines were badly cracked or hanging off. The pages were swollen by markers and bent corners.
Then came the uniform, each part carefully wrapped in yellowing tissue paper. A pressed grey tunic with red epaulets. A pair of black trousers, also pressed. A greatcoat. A pair of black leather boots, gleaming like polished anthracite. A marshal's cap. A gold star in a crimson leather case embossed with the hammer and sickle, which Kelso recognised as the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union.
And then came the mementoes. A photograph (in a wooden frame, glazed) of Stalin standing behind a desk:
signed, like the books, 'To the future, J. V. Stalin'. A Dunhill pipe. An envelope containing a lock of coarse grey hair. And finally a stack of gramophone records, old 78s, as thick as dinner plates, each still in its original paper sleeve: 'Mother, the Fields are Dusty', 'I'm Waiting For You', 'Nightingale ~f the Taiga,' 'J. V. Stalin: Speech to the First All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers, February 19 1933', 'J. V. Stalin: Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, March 10 1939'...