Ice Trilogy (91 page)

A vague
noise woke Olga up early: people were making a racket, but she really didn’t want to get out of bed. She opened her eyes with difficulty. In the Ham everyone was bustling about, jumping out of bed, running into the hallway. Way down the hall, a dull shot rang out, then another. Then — a shout was abruptly cut off. In underpants and T-shirt, Olga jumped out of bed, glancing at the clock: 4:16. She opened her fist: the key! The key wasn’t there. Then she remembered: over dinner she’d given it to the Russians, told them everything, hoping that they’d help with the escape. She’d trusted those hotheaded Russian guy
s...

“What happened?” Meryl asked, hanging over the top bunk.

“They offed someone!” Sally shouted, hurrying into the hall half naked.

“They tricked me! They left without me!” Olga realized. Furious, she punched the bed.

She ran out into the hall with other women: almost the entire population of the bunker was crowded around the open door of the storage room. Everyone was pushing and shoving and swearing. The men were armed with whatever they could find — unscrewed chair legs, pieces of drawers and shelves. Clearly the Russians had spread word of the escape, and the Garage was ready. The Ham wasn’t far behind. Women shouted as they tried to jam their way through the door; Olga noticed that some of them were carrying manicure scissors.

“It’s like shouting ‘fire’ in a theater,” she thought.

There were young people and middle-aged people in the crowd, and even an old Ukrainian woman with unbrushed hair elbowing furiously as she clutched a twisted wet towel and shouted, “Outta my way, pushers and shovers!”

Olga rushed forward in confusion, worming her way through the crowd. She pushed into the dimly lit storeroom, filled with other Friends of Dead Bitches. Hurrying forward, she glimpsed a door into the well-lit guard room on the left. Two uniformed Chinese guards lay on the floor, their heads bashed in. Nearby, the bare legs of one of the Russians could also be seen, apparently the fat guy Lyosha; one smooth, hairless leg in a white unwashed sock jerked convulsively. The smell of blood cut through the smell of people just roused from sleep.

“It’s begun!” Olga thought, both excited and afraid.

The storeroom was a meat grinder: people wailed, others swore, others pressed with all their might against the pale blue walls; someone’s nightclothes split and tore, brooms cracked underfoot, a harrowing cry came from a woman who had fallen on the floor.

“Oh my Go
d..
.” a male voice sobbed desperately; Olga realized that she would soon be crushed. Close by she could hear curses and prayers in different languages.

“Oh Mama,” Olga implored, her face pushed against the sweaty nape of a cheery, freckled Swede.

The Swede’s head shook with strain; something in his body cracked and he farted; behind, people shouted and pushed and shoved. Olga found herself hurled abruptly into a wide corridor, where she landed on the floor with the Swede, a beaky French woman, and a long-haired German. A young man fell on top of her, yelped, and tried to scramble over her like a tree trunk. Shrieking and scratching, Olga clambered across the muscular Swede.

The French woman was half crushed. She swore, “
Oh
...
salauds
,
putain!
”

“A-a-a-a No! NO!!!!” someone squealed.

Beneath Olga, the Swede was groaning, and the young man on her back began to yowl. She braced her legs, bellowed, and with all her might pushed up and freed herself from the jumble of bodies. Stumbling, she ran down the corridor with the crowd. The hall was long, well lit, and fairly wide, wider than the one in the bunker. Here and there were doors: on one, a red cross, on another, a picture of a dog’s head, on a third, the number 7.

Down the hallway Olga ran, her bare feet slapping against the warm linoleum. Others ran alongside, bumping each other and cursing. Just ahead the hall forked: people huddled in confusion, feverishly trying to make up their minds which way to go. Someone muttered “Elevator” and waved to the right; a group ran off in that direction. Suddenly Olga noticed drops of blood on the floor. They led to the left.

“The Russians!” she thought. “The wounded one! The guards shot hi
m..
.”

For some reason she felt sure that the Russians knew the way out, and she rushed to the left. This hall was just like the last, but without doors, and it stretched on before forking again. There was someone running behind Olga and someone just ahead. Again, the red drops led left. Olga followed them and ran smack into a group of escapees who were beating two Chinese women in white coats. The women didn’t even try to resist. Nearby, on the floor, lay an overturned cart with cups, thermoses, and plastic jars.

“Here are the elevators!” Sergei’s shout sounded ahead. “This way!”

Through a muddle of backs, hands, and faces, Olga saw the three stainless steel elevator doors, each decorated with an image of a red heart flanked by two Ice hammers. Abandoning the lifeless Chinese women, everyone ran to the elevators. Sergei, limping and holding a captured gun, was one of the first. Olga rushed toward him. Suddenly the doors opened, revealing two rows of guards with automatics, one standing, one kneeling. There was a shout in Chinese, and the guns roared into action. Olga froze in her tracks as the bullets literally cut the people ahead of her into pieces. Light-haired, blue-eyed people, riddled with bullets, fell to the floor. Bullets whizzed everywhere, ricocheting off the walls, scattering blood and shredded flesh. Still, Olga hadn’t been hit.

“That’s i
t..
.” she thought. “Now it’s my turn.”

Cold with fear, Olga turned wildly to the right, her whole body braced in expectation of being shot. She saw the open door from which the two unlucky Chinese women had probably emerged with their cart. Exhausted, stumbling, falling, certain that she wouldn’t make it — the air was so thick with bullets — Olga grabbed the doorjamb with one hand while her feet struggled for traction on the floor. Then someone kneed her in the back, hurtling her through the door, before slamming into her and knocking her flat.

Olga rolled across the smooth floor.

The door slammed shut. The room was almost quiet. The only thing to be heard was black-haired, brown-eyed people killing blue-eyed, light-haired ones. Olga rose onto her hands and knees and looked around. By the door, in all his heroic height, stood Bjorn. Pale, his mouth hanging open with terror, he leaned back against the door.

“Lyktstolpen!” Olga laughed hysterically, jumping up. “Mamochka, oh my Go
d..
.”

Bjorn looked all around:

“An elevator! Another elevator!”

Olga turned. As far as she could tell they were in a large room adjacent to the workshop where they’d cut the strips of dog hide: long metal tables, low metal cabinets, a large glass cabinet, and on top of it a plastic dog head, a full meter high, the dog’s crimson tongue hanging out happily. There were stickers on the cabinet beneath that featured red-and-gold Chinese characters followed by exclamation marks. The square door of a large freight elevator was inset in the wall.

“That way!” Olga shouted, rushing toward the lift.

As if on automatic pilot, Bjorn pushed himself away from the door and ran behind Olga, overtaking her in two leaps. His huge palms, spattered with blood, slammed against the elevator’s black call button. The thick doors opened immediately, as if awaiting his touch. The inside of the elevator was spacious.

“Amazing!” Olga gasped, jumping in front of Bjorn.

Muttering in Swedish, he followed. On the left was a panel with a red button on top and a black one below. On the right, covering the entire wall, was a poster displaying the same happy dog with lolling tongue. Next to the dog were the same exclamatory Chinese characters they’d just seen, as well as a small picture of a very happy Chinese family whose smiling pater familias held out a flask.

Olga pressed the red button.

The elevator moved smoothly upward.

Bjorn’s and Olga’s eyes met.

“Lyktstolpe
n..
.” Olga said again, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand and shaking her head with abandon.

Tears shone in her eyes.

Bjorn held her awkwardly by the shoulders.

“You knew?” she asked.

“Not exactl
y..
.” he mumbled. “The Russians only told the Americans and the Germans.”

“Those pigs!” sobbed Olga. “I was the one who gave them the key. And they didn’t even tell m
e..
.”

“Russian anarchis
m...
The Brother
s
...
what is i
t...
Karmanazov
, right?” Bjorn tried to joke.

“Karamazov, Lyktstolpe
n..
.” Olga muttered, looking around the elevator.

The lift soon stopped. The doors opened. Before Bjorn and Olga spread a dimly lit space reminiscent of the laboratory of a pharmaceutical factory. There were rows of tables and chairs, shelves and metallic cabinets along the walls, a huge portrait of the same dog, now accompanied by two excited families with flasks, an
d...
Olga saw a window with a pre-dawn sky and a pale full moon. The sky was real, the moon behind was too. Tears welled up in Olga’s eyes again.

“Bjorn! We’re above ground.”

Bjorn paid no attention to her, but entered the workshop. It was empty. He approached a large steel case with wide doors and opened it: it was a refrigerator stuffed with dog legs, all of them skinned. Olga hurried over. They stared silently at the piles of dog legs. It must be here in this workshop that they manufactured the product that made all those Chinese families so happy.

“Bitch’s paw.” Olga suddenly remembered a forgotten Russian curse.

Bjorn slammed the refrigerator shut. Olga rushed to the door of the workshop and tried the handle: locked. She ran to the window again: the third floor. Not so high, but the glass was too thick to break.

“How do we get out of here?” she said, thumping the glass. The moon was melting, giving way to the sun.

Bjorn slid open the door of a tall cabinet. Inside were stacks of cardboard boxes bearing the image of the dog. One box wasn’t sealed. It contained the familiar flasks.

“The elevator only goes down. But where’s the toilet?” Bjorn looked around.

“You need to go?” Olga grinned nervously.

Bjorn saw four narrow doors in the corner. He opened them and peeked inside. Behind two of the doors were toilets. The third was a small cabinet stuffed with packs of labels for the flasks. The fourth contained mops, a stepladder, and plastic buckets.

“Nothing!” Bjorn slammed the door angrily. Then he looked up, and suddenly stopped. There was a large air duct on the ceiling above the door. The wide silver-gray pipe branched in the middle, ending in two intake vents.

“Wait a secon
d..
.” Bjorn grabbed the stepladder. He opened it, climbed up, and hit the pipe hard with his massive fist.

The silvery metal bent under the impact.

“Wow!” said Olga. “I get it! I see!”

She grabbed one of the mops, unscrewed the handle, and tossed it to Bjorn.

“Here!”

Bjorn pounded on the pipe and brought it down to his level; then he worked the long mop handle into the gap between the sections and yanked as hard as he could. The pipe sections came apart easily. Metal crashed down.

“You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?” Bjorn asked, jumping off the stepladder.

“I don’t kno
w...
I used to be afraid of height
s..
.”

“Thi
s...
isn’t very high.”

He picked Olga up, lifted her like a feather onto the ladder, gave her a push — and she crawled into the duct.

“How is it in there?” he asked, glancing at the window.

“Dark,” Olga replied from the duct. “Come on up!”

She crawled ahead cautiously.

Bjorn climbed the ladder and slid into the duct after Olga. The support bracket holding the duct shook under their weight but held fast. Olga crawled ahead. The vent was wide and warm. There was no air moving in it — most likely it was used only during work hours to ventilate the workshop. It was stuffy. So far, there was only darkness ahead. Olga crawled carefully forward. Bjorn crawled after her.

“Darknes
s...
but we should, shoul
d...
” Olga muttered in fright, trying to calm herself. “Lyktstolpe
n...
you should have gone in firs
t...
I mean, you’re Lyktstolpen, s
o...
you’v
e...
you’v
e...
got a light bulb in your hea
d..
.”

“What?” Bjorn asked in a loud whisper.

“Nothing — so far!” she replied.

He squeezed her ankle encouragingly.

Olga had crawled about fifteen meters when the duct veered left and came to a small grate though which a dim light entered. She cautiously brought her face closer to the grate. She could see a large room, crammed with tall wooden crates prepared for shipping. All of them were stamped with the dog’s head logo. In the middle of the room were two forklifts.

“Crates, and inside — boxes, and in them — little bottle
s...
” Olga thought automatically, looking around the room, “and in the bottles — juic
e...
juice from bitches’ paw
s...
how wonderfu
l..
.”

Bjorn crawled up from behind, his hand touching Olga’s legs.

“What’s there?” he whispered.

“A warehouse of some kind.”

“Any people?”

“No. We’ve got to break the grate.”

“Then we’ll have to switch places,” he said, beginning to turn around.

Olga wiggled backward. Bjorn tried to crawl over her. They were squeezed tight, surrounded by warm metal. Bjorn’s massive chin poked Olga’s chest. He tried to wriggle his large body free.

“We’re getting stuck!” Olga panicked and squirmed against Bjorn. “Come on, Lyktstolpe
n...
come on!”