Evgenia squeezed out first. After she was through, Jones passed her the tin case and, taking one last breath, edged out from underneath the marble. As he stood up, coughing and spluttering, his lungs were heaving.
Soaked with the evil, oily water, Evgenia and Jones clambered up the ladder to see a cold and dismal sun sinking towards the horizon. What had happened to them was beyond words and they had none.
“I could kill Pyotr,” Jones said at length.
Stripping down, they washed off the foul water as best they could, then changed into new clothes Yuri had found for them while he tried to dry their boots on a radiator. At least the tin case had kept its seal intact.
Yuri disappeared, only to come back shortly. “Granma wants to see you in her cabin,” he said.
The tabby on Granma’s lap stopped purring the moment they entered. Her cabin was tiny: a cot where they both sat, a chair for her, and a chart of the river on a small wooden table, with photographs of Lenin and Stalin plastered across the bulkhead. The still occupied the rest of the space.
Nodding to Lenin and Stalin, she pressed her thumbs against the outer edges of the wooden panel where the two portraits hung. The two Bolsheviks swung back to reveal an icon of the Madonna and child. Kissing the icon, she muttered a prayer and crossed herself in the way of the Old Believers.
Then, leaning across to the still, she opened a tap and filled a jug with clear liquid, found three glasses and filled them each to the brim. They drank them all down in one. She poured three more shots.
“How long to Odessa?” asked Jones.
“In two days the sea. From there we hug the coast. Odessa, a week, maybe more, maybe less.”
“To Odessa then.” Jones made to down his glass but Granma’s tone stayed his hand.
“Never had dogs before.”
“Granma, you know we almost drowned back there. Drowned because Pyotr didn’t bother to fix the bilge pump. He could have killed us.”
Her blue eyes had a film of water over them, the mask of her face beginning to crack.
“What is it, Granma?” asked Evgenia.
“Your precious film. Tell me, what’s in it?”
“A dead man and a dead horse. A dead village. Orphans, dying, their tummies distended, like balloons.”
“Will it make any difference?”
“Yes, Granma, all the difference in the world. No-one outside the Soviet Union believes this famine is happening. This film will prove that our government is lying.”
“The Cheka?”
Up above, where Arkady was at the wheel, the barge horn blasted. Granma stood up, surveyed the empty river, gave the boy a lick with the rough edge of her tongue and returned to her cabin, returning to her silent self-absorption.
“You were saying,” prompted Evgenia, “the Cheka.”
Granma’s words came in a rush, tumbling out one after another. “At the very last moment, the Cheka ordered Pyotr to come with them. At that last dock. Son of a bitch, he drinks too much. He’ll talk, tell them everything, not just you but the others too. He’s my… my…”
Her shoulders heaved. Tears started to run down her cheeks. “He’s my only child. He’s a fool and a drunk but he’s all I have.”
Evgenia comforted her, stroking the old lady’s hair, whispering into her ear.
At length, Granma continued, “Pyotr is stubborn, like his father before him. He won’t crack under the knout. But if they give him a bottle, if they talk to him like they’re all pals, then in his cups he’ll tell them everything. So you should leave. You should get off the barge before he cracks.”
“When?” asked Jones.
“At nightfall. In an hour, maybe less.”
“Will he crack?” asked Evgenia. “Are you certain?”
“No. But the risk…”
They left her, the cat once again purring in her lap.
For a moment, the two of them stood on the steps of the cargo hold, looking out upon the world beyond the riverbanks, the sky to the east turning pink. Their quandary was impossible.
Perhaps Yagoda’s letter was still their best way out of trouble. Perhaps it could be used to create a story of a secret mission for the head of the GPU. But, for that to work, they would have to be who their other documents said they were: a professional translator and a foreign journalist. Dressed up like barge workers, in stinking working men’s clothes, her hair cut short, the magic letter would not be believed.
But Pyotr could deliver them up at any moment. All the GPU had to do was telegram the local militia to hold the barge at the next lock on the Dnieper and they were done for.
“The Cheka,” Evgenia said at length, “they grind you down. You have courage, you have determination, you have something precious the world must see. But, in the end, they break you. If we leave this barge, they will sniff us out. If we stay on the barge, they will have us. But for these poor people who have risked their lives to help us, we are nothing but a curse. The same with the Wobblies. It would have been better if we had not even tried.”
Overhead, a solitary crow beat its wings against the darkening sky.
“Let’s go before we lose the light,” said Jones, his hand touching the bag holding the Kinamo and the reel of film.
They told Yuri of their decision who relayed it to Granma. As the barge rumbled to a stop, they shook hands with Yuri and waved farewell to Arkady, who grinned hugely at them, oblivious. Of Granma, there was no sign.
The barge bumped against the ice. Here, the Dnieper had widened, the western bank a dark strip, two miles off. Ice floes close to the hull creaked and see-sawed, settling into a broken crazy-paving as the wash from the engine died down. Jones picked a solid rectangle twenty yards long towards the stern and, when he lowered himself onto it, it barely tilted with his weight. Evgenia passed him their bag and she too jumped down.
Soon, two black dots were making their way across the vast icefield towards the dying sun.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sky turned blood red, then scarlet. By the time they made the riverbank, it was an inky blue. By the light of the stars, they found a rough track running parallel to the river – but it was potholed and full of sumps of snow and ice which they sank into, sometimes beyond their knees. It was madness to try and go further in the dark. Madness, too, to stay out here on the edge of the steppe with nothing to protect them from the wind from the east, growing stronger with every minute.
After some time, stumbling, exhausted, they came across a black shape looming out of the dark. Crowley’s lighter did its job, illuminating a building of the simplest possible design: wooden slats laid diagonally, their ends embedded into a bank of earth, the floor frozen mud, on top of which a filthy sheepskin lay.
“All my darkness sums it up,” said Jones. “Do you think that Duranty would ever end up in a fisherman’s hut like this?”
Evgenia shuddered. “Never.”
“Yes, not his thing. Poor chap, he needs to widen his horizons.” Jones was oddly happy. Better the hut than the hole underneath the marble. They scouted around for some firewood but their hoard was pretty pitiful, only a snow-sodden log and a dead bush that burned fiercely for ten minutes before it was done. When the log took hold, its smoke filled the hut, sour and acrid in their throats. It was a mercy when the fire died out. They lay down together, shivering in the iron cold, and waited for dawn listening to the howl of the wind.
“The film reel, Mr Jones? The film reel?” Lyushkov’s soft rumble was calm, gentle, almost girlish. For the life of him, Jones couldn’t remember where he’d left it. He was always losing things: his hat, his marbles, the film reel. “I am most terribly sorry, Mr Jones,” said Lyushkov, “but you give me no choice.” They crushed all the bones of his left hand first, then all the bones of his right – and he sat in front of his typewriter in a wet slimy darkness, while Cardiff demanded copy, and he couldn’t write a word because he had flippers instead of hands.