“So why bring a revolver?”
“Because,” he coughed up some blood and spat it out into the darkness, “I am afraid.”
“Who are you afraid of?”
“Of them.” He paused. “Of you.”
The man’s accent was Muscovite, not Ukrainian, refined, not thuggish.
“How long have we got?”
“They’ll come for you in the morning. At first light.”
“How do you know?”
The man braced himself. “Because I’ll be the one guiding them through the tunnels. I know them better than any man alive. With my workmates I dug most of them myself. I told the Cheka it was too dangerous to search the tunnels at night and, like fools, they believed me.”
“So you are an informer,” said Jones. “Only, you’re informing on the Cheka.”
“Yes, you could put it like that,” said the man with an air of bemusement. “We are all informers now.”
The man smiled a little, and put his hand to the gash on his temple. It was sticky with blood where the rock had hit him. Evgenia found a handkerchief and dabbed the wound, tutting at it and pulling a face at Jones.
“I’ve brought you some food.”
Squatting down, he removed a knapsack from his back and opened it. Then he lay out a white cloth and laid upon it some cheese, two onions, two lengths of sausage and half a loaf of black bread.
“Where did you get this?” asked Jones, hotly. He’d found the revolver and it rested in his hands, its muzzle pointing at the man.
“You still think I work for the Cheka, don’t you?”
“Where did you get this food?”
“My name is Ilya. I am the manager of the All Soviet Marble Works. The marble from my tunnels is shipped all around the world, especially to Germany and Italy. The fascists love marble more than gold, and our collective brings in millions of roubles every year. For the moment, that means the Cheka leaves me and my workers alone, more or less. It means that we get more money than most and so we eat. But I am all too well aware,” his voice dropped an octave, “that others are starving and that it is vital that the world knows what is happening here. Everyone around here heard them machine-gunning the orphanage. Everyone around here loved the priest. So I’m risking my life and that of my family and my friends to help you. You already hit me over the head with a rock, then strangled me – and now, when I offer you my family’s food, you suspect me.”
“He is a fool,” said Evgenia flatly.
“I am a fool,” echoed Jones. “The paranoia, you end up losing your wits. I am most terribly sorry, Ilya. My name is Gareth Jones of the Western Mail and this is Evgenia Davidovich Miranova.”
Ilya smiled to himself once more. “Delighted to meet you both. Mr Jones, you are, I think, a good fool. Otherwise you would not be here. Now, eat, because we don’t have much time. Oh, I forgot.” He produced a small bottle of clear liquid from his knapsack. “A little vodka?”
“Now you’re talking,” said Jones.
“Eat. Drink.”
As they followed his commands to the letter, Ilya told them about the Cheka’s net for them: house-to-house searches of all properties, farms and outhouses in the surrounding villages for the last two days, checks at every railway station for one hundred miles around, checks at every road bridge, hundreds of troops combing the fields and forests for miles around.
“So we have no hope,” said Jones, his mouth half-full of bread and sausage.
“Not quite,” said Ilya.
“How do we get out?”
He looked them up and down. “You will leave inside the marble.”
“We would die.”
“If you stay here, you will die.”
“But we would surely suffocate.”
“I would not be suggesting this route if it were untried. It isn’t. It’s worked before.”
“How?”
“For that, you’ve got to trust me. It won’t be comfortable. In fact it will be extremely uncomfortable. But you will have someone with you the whole way, by road and river and sea, someone who will look after you as best he can.”
“The whole way where?”
“To Odessa.”
“And then?”
“Mr Jones, I can smuggle you and Miss Miranova out of this Cheka-infested hole underneath ten tons of marble. But I am not a magician. When you are in Odessa, you must find a foreign ship all by yourself.”
“Why can’t you come with us?”
“The Cheka watch me the whole time. I am the guardian of the marble goose that lays golden eggs. I cannot move from here.”
“So who’s going to look after us on the journey?”
Ilya whistled, softly, and once again they heard footsteps over the sound of the wind in the tunnel. The boy who appeared was big-boned, sure of himself, unafraid – but only fifteen years old, if that.
“Ond dim ond plentyn ydyw,” Jones said to Evgenia. He’s just a child.
“Is there a problem?” asked Ilya.
“He’s very young.”
“Yuri is someone I trust absolutely.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because, Mr Jones, he’s the son of the murdered priest. He’s also my grandson.”
“The priest was your son?”
“Yes.”
“Do the Cheka know that?”
“Not yet. He changed the name on his identity card to protect us.”
Evgenia looked away.
“But the boy is very young,” said Jones.
“You’re going to have trust him.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, Mr Jones, you have no choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ilya led the way into the labyrinth of tunnels, stopping every now and then in silence to listen. Nothing, only the wind’s murmur. Soon, a tunnel took them downhill for a time, and then the darkness grew less thick. Twenty yards ahead, Jones sensed the tunnel opening out into the lesser darkness of the night. He took a step forward and, beneath the arc of the rock, he saw the heavens, the stars glittering all the more brightly in the frozen air. Banished from seeing the sky for four nights, he moved forward again until Ilya, roughly, dragged him back.
“Stay deep inside the cave, idiot. Someone could be watching.”
Yuri disappeared into the night.
“What’s the plan?”
“The truck will come here, where no-one can see us. You will lie down between two long slabs of marble. We’ll put wooden planks and straw on top of you, then drive off to the factory where we’ll use the crane to lift more marble slabs, crossways, on top of you. You will be quite safe. The bad news is that the truck will be so heavily laden it goes pretty slowly. So the journey to the river will take the whole day. Once there, Yuri will find the right moment for you to get out of the truck and into the barge. That’s the hardest part – but he’s good at staging a distraction so no-one tricky spots you.”
“What about the dogs?”
“This is one of ten trucks. We bait the others with dead mice and rats. The dogs will be too busy to care about you two.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. We bait the dog handlers, too, if needs be. Under Communism, foreign currency can buy pretty much anything.”
“Even the Cheka?”
“Especially the Cheka. Unless Moscow is involved. Then it gets more difficult.”
Jones hesitated, then asked Evgenia to translate the phrase, “Sometimes I get claustrophobia.”
Ilya looked puzzled. “Claustro-what?”
“Fear of being confined in a small space,” explained Jones.
“Tough,” said Ilya.
Some time later, they heard the sound of a truck engine being started up, the dynamo whining, the exhaust clearing its throat, gears grating as the truck moved slowly, ponderously towards them, showing no lights. The way Yuri backed the truck deep into the cave, fifty feet from the entrance, it was clear that this wasn’t the first time this operation had been carried out.