Not easier than Bryansk. The same: surrounded by a hostile enemy, guns that weren’t fakes. As the thought came Yuri believed he heard shouts from the road below and a dog, perhaps several dogs, barking. The helicopter’s lights still darted and searched above him, once so close in front that he had to stop against a tree, to prevent stumbling into it. Definitely voices. And dogs. The dog sounds were closer: he guessed the animals had been let loose, to hunt him down. He’d forgotten a knife: anything at all that might have served as a weapon. He needed a stream, any wetness, to blur the scent. Wouldn’t be tracking him by scent, he realized, starting forward again. All they’d need would be his noise. The barking was definitely closer: he thought he could hear their crashing through the undergrowth.
Yuri was fleeing with both hands outstretched, to detect the trees, but only his right hand struck the obstruction and it wasn’t wood and he stopped, frightened by the unknown, feeling out and touching the coldness with both hands. It was, absurdly, the seeking helicopter light which briefly illuminated it and even showed him the commencement of the culvert, where it opened to the stream. He groped along its length, in the darkness again, to its beginning and felt around it, trying to assess the size. Big, he determined: huge, in fact. He’d have to bend but it would be possible to walk in. Maybe even run. No, couldn’t run. There was the stream. Water. What he needed to defeat the animals whose yapping and barking was very close now. The water’s flowing would actually disguise any sound.
The helicopter returned, again briefly illuminating. The stream emerged from somewhere above, about a foot across, but a much wider path and a concrete receiving sluice had been built at the entrance to the pipe which ran in the open for about fifty yards. And then disappeared into the hillside. The wideness of the stream had given Yuri the clue: it was a drainage pipe to carry off the melted winter snows (‘there are lodges and good skiing all around’) from a river that had been eroding the hillside through which it passed. How far was it buried, before re-emerging? Yuri definitely heard a man’s voice this time; an irrelevant question, then.
He slipped out of the rucksack and, thrusting it before him like a shield, entered the total darkness of the pipe. The water came up above his ankles, soaking very quickly through his boots and numbing his feet. He scuffed along, bent double, feeling the slime underfoot. It was greasy to his touch when he reached sideways for support to the wall of the drain and he pulled his hand quickly back again, offended. He was aware of a sound above the hiss of the water, a squeaking, and recoiled when something brushed against his leg, above the waterline. The smell – wet decay and decomposing rot – was so repugnant Yuri gagged, choking back vomit. After several hundred yards he turned but was unable to see the slightly lighter circle marking the entrance so he decided at last to risk the torch.
Dozens of reflective spots of light came back at him. Eyes. He’d expected rats but not so many. They swarmed either side, unafraid, but were avoiding the water. Just rats? He couldn’t see anything else. Surely the water would have prevented it being habitable to snakes! The slime virtually encircled the pipe, showing the volume of water at the height of the snow thaw. How did the rats survive then? Yuri put the rucksack back on, to free his hands, and waded on, directing the torchlight straight ahead, desperately anxious for some sign of the tunnel’s end. Total blackness stretched ahead of him. A rat squeaked and made as if to jump at him and Yuri whimpered away, shuddering. And not just with revulsion. The coldness was moving up from his feet, actually making it difficult for him to walk properly and he clamped his mouth closed against the distraction of his teeth chattering. He moved the torch up again, away from his immediate path. Still total blackness but at least there were fewer rats: far fewer. He supposed it was obvious they would congregate around the beginning of the tunnel because of the need to forage outside for food.
Attuned as he was to sound after the forest manhunt it was the change in the rush of water which registered first, louder and faster, and expectantly he pointed the torch again, looking for the outlet to the river into which the stream fed, but couldn’t see it. He drove himself forward, wanting to get out of the foul place, and had there been more feeling in his feet and legs he might have detected the change underfoot, because it was not abrupt but graded. It was not until he began to slip on the slime that he became aware that the pipe was curving increasingly downwards. And realized the sound wasn’t a river but the fall of water and that was why there were no longer any rats. By then it was too late. Yuri clutched out but there was no purchase in the slippery walls and then he fell, awkwardly, losing the torch. The rucksack became a float beneath him and the rush of water hurried him down the now virtually perpendicular pipe. Everything was black. He was engulfed in rushing, choking water but he fought against choking because he could not breathe, either. Yuri was not conscious of hurtling out of the pipemouth. The indication was a lessening of the water’s push, where it spread into a man-created waterfall and of falling differently and helplessly through space, without the hardness of the concrete tube around him. He tried to correct himself, to get as near as he could into the parachute landing position he had been taught, but the rucksack unbalanced him and he cartwheeled, out of control. It was only later, in daylight and from the bank to which he hauled himself, that Yuri realized how close – hardly more than a foot – he had come to being thrown against the sharp-ridged granite cliff face that would almost certainly have killed him. Instead, propelled from it by the thrust of the water, he landed actually in the river, but from the height from which he fell it was practically the same as striking solid ground. His left wrist twisted under him and he felt a sear of agony and what little breath he still held was knocked out of him.
It was the rucksack, still acting like a float, which prevented his drowning in those first few minutes. He groaned breath back into his body and, unable to use his left arm, paddled instead with his right, combining the rucksack’s support and the river’s current to get himself to the pebbled bank.
Yuri lay for a long time unmoving, recovering, at last with his right hand groping along his left arm, trying to assess the damage. The wrist was already swelling but he could just move his fingers: sprained, not broken, he decided. He tore the sleeve of the shirt away at the shoulder, soaked it further in the water, and then bound it as a cold compress around the wrist with his good hand and his teeth before pulling himself further away from the river to drier ground.
Not like Bryansk at all, he thought. Worse. But there was a comparison. For the Bryansk exercise the spetsnaz had been alerted to what he was attempting. Just as the helicopters and the armed men and dogs – unimaginable protection but for one obvious reason – had been forewarned, back there.
He knew, at last, what Kazin intended by the instruction to locate the defector. I think I could kill someone who tried to kill me, he thought. So it hadn’t ended with the death of his father: destroy or be destroyed, he accepted.
‘What was it?’ demanded Levin. They were in the main room of the house, Galina nervously close by his side, Petr by the window watching the car lights of the returning searchers.
‘False alarm,’ assured Proctor. ‘The observer in the helicopter thought he saw someone but it couldn’t have been. We’ve covered every inch.’
‘What then?’ asked Galina, unconvinced.
‘An animal,’ insisted the FBI man. ‘We’ve had them trigger the sensors before. The observer is a new guy: too jumpy.’
‘You can’t be sure,’ argued the woman.
‘Isn’t there something more important to think about?’ reminded Proctor, who had brought Yuri’s false message. ‘Moscow are actually thinking of letting Natalia out!’