‘What happens in Warsaw?’ Petrie asked.
‘You do have the disk here? It sure complicates life if it’s in Bratislava or someplace.’
‘Tell me what happens in Warsaw.’
‘Don’t fence with me, friend. We’re here to help. In Warsaw I have contacts. You’ll stay snug and cosy in a flat in the Old Quarter for a couple of weeks while we fix up documentation. After that it’s a one-way ticket to New York.’
It was all reassuringly plausible.
‘Okay, the disk is here. I’ll get it.’
There was a tap on the door. A tall man in his mid-thirties was waving a silver disk. ‘Is this it?’
Amos said, ‘There’s no time to waste. Contrary to anything Callaghan may have told you, this is not, repeat not, a safe house. People will be checking up on him and this is an obvious place to check out. Bad people could arrive here at any moment.’
‘Maybe they already have, Amos.’
Amos gave Petrie a thoughtful look. ‘Well, I guess you’ll just have to trust us on that.’
‘What about Callaghan and Alice?’
‘They’ve been taken care of.’
Petrie slid into the passenger seat. The van smelled of stale cigarettes and the floor was covered with sweet papers. Amos took the wheel with a grunt, wiping a clear patch on the windscreen with his hand. Obadiah sat in the back, and slammed the door shut. He was clutching a black canvas bag. Petrie tried not to think about what it might hold.
The road levelled and joined another narrow one taking them north. The churning black cloud on the horizon had now reached the zenith and looked remarkably like a Plinian explosion from some volcano. Amos put his foot down and Petrie fantasised that they were fleeing from a pyroclastic flow. He’d have preferred that.
The High Tatras, Petrie was learning, consisted of forested tracks, chairlifts and ski slopes. Many of the side roads were closed. There was a trickle of cars and the occasional bus. From time to time Obadiah, his finger on a map, would issue some terse instruction. Apart from that he was effectively mute. Maybe, Petrie thought, Obadiah saw himself in the traditional mould of the Western hero; others gabbled, he rode god-like and aloof like Gary Cooper.
Following a one-word instruction from Obadiah, Amos turned left and was confronted by a track with a chain across it. Obadiah said, ‘Road’s closed.’
Amos gave Petrie a look. Petrie jumped out and unhooked the chain. He thought that a closed track through a dense forest was the perfect place for murder. He wondered how long it would be before his body was discovered, whether it would be identified. He wondered what Priscilla and Kavanagh and his parents would think as his absence stretched from days to weeks and then to months. The snow was about three inches deep and light flurries were coming down.
The road was steep and the van slithered its way up through the forest track. More than once it threatened to leave the path. The pyroclastic flow had finally caught up with them and the falling snow thickened as they ascended. Amos was gripping the steering wheel and pushing his face up against the arc of visibility created by the wipers. Petrie looked into the forest but saw only darkness. He could easily have jumped out and run.
After about twenty minutes of climbing, a beep came from inside Obadiah’s black bag. ‘Message.’
Petrie had forgotten all about Vashislav’s phone. Obadiah seemed to think the message was public property. He read it aloud:
‘Dearest Tom,
Still in Albena. Quiet in winter, but have found a man with a boat. Am just about to sail for Odessa. If I can get to Norway I have lots of friends. Will try for Svalbard. Know the people at the Eiscat radar and will get them to fire a message back at the signallers.
Are you alive? Please reply via Unur.
Freya.’
‘You’re just good friends?’ Obadiah asked. Petrie ignored him.
‘Who’s this Unur?’ Amos wanted to know.
‘Forget it,’ Petrie snapped. ‘How can the stupid woman be broadcasting like this? I warned her.’
‘Your friend won’t last,’ said Amos. ‘Not more’n a day or two.’
And how long have I got? Petrie kept the thought to himself. They drove under a pair of thick metal cables. The trees were thinning and then the van was suddenly above the treeline, and the road was levelling out. There was a building with narrow slotted windows and a tall control mast studded with little antennae. The snow around it was pristine and there were no cars.
Amos said, ‘This is it.’
Icy air blew around the van as he slid open the door. Petrie stepped out. His heart was thudding in his chest. They were on a plateau. Conifers fell steeply away on all sides. A single-file track led down through the trees, pointing to the north — he thought it was the north. On the horizon, beyond the track, he could make out a line of peaks, glimpsed through the snow flurries.
Amos caught Petrie’s look. He said, ‘Poland.’
The van door slammed shut. Obadiah, with his black canvas bag.
Petrie said, ‘It’s cold.’
‘After you,’ said Amos, pointing to the track.
There was nothing else to be done. Petrie headed down, snow getting into his shoes and wetting his feet. He heard the men at his back, their breathing heavy with exertion. He wondered when it would come, what it would be like.
Petrie wondered, and he thought, and he hoped.
He wondered about the signallers. Were they living creatures, human-like? Were they thinking machines, having supplanted organic life millions of years ago? Was he right about the probe in the Oort cloud and was the probe in it just an insensate robot, some super-powerful computer? Or by some trick of time beyond imagination, did the signal really come from the Whirlpool galaxy, sent to us before we existed?
He thought, what a way to end! To have been offered the interstellar hand, to have almost touched it, and yet to have sunk back into the slime.
And he hoped that, when they got to Freya, she wouldn’t suffer.
The corpse was sprawled stomach-down on a flat, icy boulder, as if it had been kneeling before execution. It wore a black hooded fleece, heavy gloves, thickly padded trousers and furry, knee-length boots. Its face was expressionless. Its lips were thin and cruel, and its small black eyes stared unblinkingly ahead as if fixed on the Hardangerfjord far below.
The waters of this fiord were black and heavy, and speckled with little ice floes. Across the water, mountains glowed white under a sky dotted with stars and auroral curtains, dancing and shimmering, silent and awesome. Up here, on the roof of the world, Thor and Odin were a tangible presence.
In the Arctic cold, any corpse more than a few hours old would have solidified. Cracks would have split its internal organs and its cell walls would have burst, as the water they held expanded and turned to ice. But then, in the near-dark, something moved. It was a slow, careful, barely discernible movement, but it was there: a finger and thumb were adjusting a black, knurled knob. The corpse was alive after all.
The man standing next to the prone body was identically dressed, except that a scarf covered his mouth and nose. He was shivering violently and flapping his arms. The scarf muffled his voice, but failed to conceal its tension. ‘Range?’
The corpse pressed a button and frosty breath drifted through the line of a red laser beam. ‘Two kilometres. Just under.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Cold air’s denser. Bullets have a different trajectory.’