It was a quarter to eight.
He moved back to the stern and managed to shout, 'Comrade!' He made a chopping motion with his hand to starboard. The Russian gave no sign of having understood but a minute later, as the dark mass of the island emerged out of the snow, he steered to the north of it and soon afterwards Kelso made out a rusty buoy and beyond that a line of lights in the sky He cupped his hand to O'Brian's ear. 'The bridge,' he said. O'Brian pulled down his hood and squinted at him. 'The bridge,' repeated Kelso. 'The one we came over this morning.'
He pointed and very quickly they were passing beneath it - a double-bridge, half-rail, half-road: heavy ironwork dangling stalactites of ice, a strong smell of sewage and chemicals, the drumming of vehicles overhead - and when he looked back he could see the headlights of traffic moving slowly through the snow.
The familiar shape of the Harbour Master's building appeared ahead of them on the starboard side, with a jetty stretching out and boats moored to it. They hit an invisible sheet of thick ice and Kelso and O'Brian were bounced forwards. The engine cut out. The Russian restarted it and reversed, then found a channel which must have been cut by a bigger boat earlier in the evening. There was still ice but it was thinner and it splintered as their prow sliced into it. Kelso looked back at the Russian. He was standing now, peering intently at the dark corridor, his hand on the tiller, taking them in. They came alongside the jetty and he put the outboard into reverse again, slowing them, stopping. He cut the motor and leapt nimbly on to the wooden planking, holding a length of rope.
O'BRIAN was out of the boat first, with Kelso after him. They stamped and brushed the snow off themselves and tried to stretch some life back into their frozen limbs. O'Brian started to say something about finding a hotel, maybe, calling the office, but Kelso cut him off.
'No hotel. Are you listening to me? No office. And no bloody story. We're getting out of here.'
They had thirteen minutes to catch the train.
'And him?'
O'Brian nodded to the Russian who was standing quietly, holding his suitcase, watching them. He looked oddly forlorn - vulnerable, even, now that he was out of his home territory. He was obviously expecting to come with them.
'Christ almighty,' muttered Kelso. He had the map open. He didn’t know what to do. 'Let's just go.' He set off along the jetty towards the shore. O'Brian hurried after him.
'You still got the notebook?'
Kelso patted the front of his jacket.
'D'you think he's got a gun?' said O'Brian. He glanced back. 'Shit. He's following us.'
The Russian was trotting about a dozen paces behind them, wary and fearful, like a stray dog. It looked as though he had left his rifle behind in the boat. So what would he be armed with, wondered Kelso? His knife? He pushed his stiff legs forwards as hard as he could.
'But we can't just leave him -'
'Oh yes we bloody can,' said Kelso. He realised O'Brian didn't know about the Norwegian couple, or any of the others. 'I'll explain later. Just believe me - we don't want him anywhere near us.
They almost ran off the jetty and came into the big bus park in front of the Harbour Master's building - a bleak expanse of snow, a few sorrowful orange sodium lights catching the whirling flakes, nobody else about. Kelso struck north, slithering on the ice, holding on to the map. The station was at least a mile away and they were never going to make it in time, not on foot. He looked around. A ubiquitous, boxy, sand-coloured Lada, spattered with mud and grit, was emerging slowly from the street to their right, and Kelso ran towards it, flapping his arms.
In the Russian provinces, every car is a potential taxi, most drivers willing to hire themselves out on the spur of the moment, and this one was no exception. He swerved towards them, throwing up a fountain of dirty snow, and even as he pulled up he was winding down his window. He looked respectable enough, muffled against the cold - a schoolteacher, maybe, a clerk. Weak eyes blinked at them through thick-framed spectacles. 'Going to the concert hall?'
'Do us a favour, citizen, and take us to the railway station,' said Kelso. 'Ten dollars US if we catch the Moscow train.' He opened the passenger door without waiting for an answer and tipped forward the seat, shoving O'Brian into the back, and suddenly he saw that this was their chance, because the Russian, caught by surprise, had fallen behind slightly, and was making heavy progress through the snow with his case.
'Comrade!' he shouted.
Kelso didn't hesitate. He rammed back the seat and got in, slamming the door.
'Don't you want -' began the driver, looking in his mirror.
'No,' said Kelso. 'Go.'
The Lada skidded away and he turned to look back. The Russian had set down his case and was staring after them, seemingly bewildered, a lost figure in the widening vista of the alien city. He dwindled and disappeared into the night and snow.
'Can't help but feel sorry for the poor bastard,' said O'Brian, but Kelso's only emotion was relief.
"'Gratitude,"' he said, quoting Stalin, "'is a dog's disease."'
THE Archangel railway station was at the northern edge of a big square, directly opposite a huddle of apartment blocks and wind-blasted birch trees. O'Brian threw a $10 bill in the direction of the driver and they sprinted into the gloomy terminal. Seven wood-fronted ticket kiosks with net curtains, five of them closed, a long queue outside the two that were open, a baby crying. Students, backpackers, soldiers, people of all ages and races, families with their homemade luggage - huge cardboard boxes trussed with string - children running everywhere, sliding on the dirty, melted snow.
O'Brian pushed his way to the front of the nearest line, spraying dollars, playing the westerner: 'Sorry, lady. Excuse me. There you go. Sorry. Gotta catch this train -'
Kelso had an impression of a fortune changing hands -three hundred, four hundred dollars, murmurs from the people standing round - and then, a minute later, O'Brian was striding back through the crowd, waving a pair of tickets, and they ran up the stairs to the platform.
If they were going to be stopped then this would be the place. At least a dozen militia men were standing around, all of them young, all with their caps pushed back like Imperial Army privates off to war in 1914. They stared at Kelso and O'Brian as they hurried through the terminal, but it was no more than the frank stare that all foreigners received up here. They made no move to detain them.
No alert had been issued. Whoever is running this show, thought Kelso, as they came back out into the open air, must be convinced we're already dead -Doors were being closed all the way along the great train; it must have been a quarter of a mile long. Low yellow lighting, snow falling, lovers embracing, army officers hurrying up and down with their cheap briefcases - he felt they had stepped back seventy years into some revolutionary tableau. Even the giant locomotive still had the hammer and sickle welded to its side. They found their carriage, three cars back from the engine, and Kelso held the door open while O'Brian darted across the platform to one of the babushkas selling food for the journey. She had a wart on her cheek the size of a walnut. He was still stuffing his pockets as the whistle blew.
The train pulled away so slowly it was hard at first to tell it was moving. People walked alongside it down the platform, heads bent into the snow, waving handkerchiefs. Others were holding hands through the open windows. Kelso had a sudden image of Anna Safanova here, almost fifty years ago - 'I kiss mamas dear cheeks, farewell to her, farewell to childhood'- and the full sadness and the pity of it came home to him for the first time. The people ambling along the platform began to jog and then to run. He stretched out his hand and pulled O'Brian aboard. The train lurched forwards. The station disappeared.
THEY SWAYED ALONG the narrow, blue-carpeted corridor until they found their compartment - one of eight, about halfway down the carriage. O'Brian pulled back the sliding wooden door and they lurched inside.