Immediately after takeoff the passenger directly in front abruptly and without warning fully reclined his seat, the back of which stopped just inches from Charlie’s face, even though he threw himself backward. The frame of the inset meal table jammed tightly just below Charlie’s knees, threatening the blood supply. The man ignored Charlie’s shoulder tap and whispered plea to ease forward and told him to fuck off when he tapped harder. The Yakut obligingly made room for Charlie’s legs.
Despite his advanced tooth decay Charlie’s companion chewed contentedly upon an appropriately turd-shaped black and sinewy piece of pemmican he took, unwrapped, from inside an enveloping jacket. Aware of Charlie’s interest, the man smiled again and generously offered Charlie a bite, wet end first. When the tepid mystery described as lunch was put before him, Charlie wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision refusing the chance of even previously chewed dried meat. He offered the tray, minus the vodka and wine, to the Yakut, who eagerly accepted. The manly stewardess was just as eager to serve him more vodka when she realized he’d pay in dollars.
The visa kiosk at Yakutsk airport was shuttered. Charlie stood back to let other passengers hammer and protest against the metal grill and Miriam stayed with him. So did the three Russians, and Charlie frowned at the prospect of being the group tour guide. It was only two in the afternoon, but already it seemed to be darkening from twilight into night.
It took them more than an hour to progress into the customs hall. Their luggage was already waiting. The pathologist and forensic scientists had tried to anticipate the equipment they might need, with no way of knowing what would be locally available. Olga said at once, “I’m missing a case. Some saws, spare scalpel blades.”
“You’d better report-” started Miriam, before stopping abruptly, embarrassed.
“We are the police,” Charlie reminded, grinning at her. There was no air-conditioning within the terminal building and Charlie felt his clothes melting around him in the humidity. Already there were a lot of flies and insects.
Resigned, Olga said, “There’ll be no point, will there?”
“None,” said Lestov, positively. “Can you manage without?”
“I’m going to have to, aren’t I?”
Yuri Ryabov, Aleksandr Kurshin and Vitali Novikov were waiting on the outside concourse. The silver-haired, urbanely mannered militia chief, who’d put on his neatly pressed and newest uniform for the occasion, looked curiously at the disheveled although obviously Western-dressed Charlie-particularly at the snowshoes-spread Hush Puppies-and said in Russians, “Who’s that?”
Charlie said, “I’m the British investigator. Everyone able to speak Russian will make it easier to work together.” Charlie wasn’t offended-he never was when somebody underestimated him-but he was surprised at the stupidity. He was sure he’d caught the slight smirk of satisfaction from Kurshin. Charlie was conscious of the intense examination from the third man in the group.
Also in Russian, Miriam said, “And I’m American. Hello.”
Ryabov looked more confused than embarrassed. Gesturing toward three waiting, undesignated cars, the local militia chief said, “You’ll want to settle in, after such a long flight. We’ve booked you into the Ontario.”
First stupid, now clever, thought Charlie, who’d spent the intervening days since first being alerted to the murders preparing himself far more thoroughly than by simply buying a beekeeper’s hat that would be necessary in the summerlike temperatures. In the short time outside the airport terminal he’d already noted the preeminence of horse-drawn transport in his search for nonexistent taxis. And knew the Ontario Hotel, a Canadian joint venture, was a thirty-minute car ride from the Yakutsk town center: effectively they would be as imprisoned as the original Russian exiles.
It was the thin, intense man who at once introduced himself and maintained the aircraft division, hurrying forward to usher Charlie into his car, which Charlie allowed unprotesting but curious, wonderingif Novikov was intended to be his personal jailer. Ryabov shepherded Miriam and Lestov into his vehicle, leaving the remaining Russians to go with the local homicide investigator. Always ready to kiss as well as look a gift horse in the mouth, Charlie said, “Is it always as dark at this?”
“In the proper summer it’s lighter. Maybe for two months of the year.”
The car’s body shell was a Lada but the inside was cannibalized from other vehicles. It smelled of longtime dampness. Charlie said, “You lived here all your life?”
There was a quick look across the car. “Regrettably I was born here.”
Charlie awarded himself ten out of ten again. Sometimes the gods, whoever and from wherever they were, truly smiled. He said, “Until a few days ago I’d never heard of Yakutsk. Or the region.”
“Few people ever have. Or want to.”
Charlie saw the pathologist was white-knuckled from the tightness with which he was holding the wheel. Why, wondered Charlie, had the arrival examination been so equally intense? The man was blinking rapidly and perspiration was bubbled on his upper lip. Charlie moved to speak, but before he could Novikov said, “You have come especially from London?”
The temptation to rush-to try at once to use the advantage of being alone, how he always preferred to be-was enormous, but Charlie held back. “I am permanently based in Moscow.” I hope, he added mentally.
“Officially?” queried the man. Then, just as quickly, he nervously answered his own question. “Yes, of course you must be. The end of the old system, I suppose?”
“It’s a very new arrangement,” agreed Charlie. There were times to push against the tide and times to go with the flow.
“You are the first, under that arrangement?”
“Yes.”
“You must have been special chosen? Have influence maybe?”
The man wanted him to be special. Why? “There were reasons,” he said, seeking another guiding question to fill the emptiness of his reply.
“Are you attached to the British embassy in Moscow?”
“Yes.” Where the hell was this going?
“You must know important people?”
Charlie exaggerated the shrug of apparent modesty, seeing the crack of light in the literal darkness. “I suppose I do. Things are very different in Moscow now: different in Russia.” He gestured to the two cars in front. “Once our being here like this would have been unimaginable.” As it was unimaginable that a British officer was here more than fifty years ago, he thought.
Novikov said, “Very little changes here. Never for the better.”
It was difficult to conceive that what little Charlie could see outside the car could have been worse. The countryside was unlike anything he had seen or experienced before, ever imagined. The stretched-to-the near-horizon twilight was only broken by the stick-drawn blackness of skeletal, leaf-naked trees, a child’s pencil drawing abruptly denied by the suddenly vivid, paint-box colors of rarely seen plants brought to life by the strange thaw. Most difficult of all was to believe that beneath such a barren, infertile moonscape, larger than the entire Indian subcontinent, lay the majority of the world’s reserves of oil, gas, coal, gold and diamonds. Or that for so many Stalin years-and after-men, women and child slaves had little more than their bare hands, and those stick-thin tree branches for pit props, to mine it.
Charlie, with difficulty, remained silent, his foot-throbbing instinct telling him the other man had more to say. But abruptly Novikov had fallen silent, although his hands were still white-knuckled at the wheel and the perspiration still flecked his upper lip.