Kolchak's Gold (42 page)

On the stretches between resort towns we tried to get down onto the main roads because they were plowed clear; along here we removed the chains and Pudovkin drove too fast for the roads, the tires leaving black smears on the oil-smudged curves, the beetle running along with a complaining rubbery whine.

On the northern approaches to Tuapse we stopped at a government pump to fill the tank and put oil in the crankcase and Pudovkin asked the attendant about the weather to the south. There had been less snow down there, the man said; he heard Sochi was completely snow-free.

We had come only a bit better than a hundred miles since dawn and it was already late afternoon. We'd last eaten at midnight—food we'd carried ashore from the boat—and we were famished; we bought bread and tinned herring and beer and I purchased a cheap composition suitcase because my paper-wrapped bundle had been ruined by last night's weather. When we returned to the car Pudovkin said, “If we run straight through we'll reach the border by tomorrow night. What do you say?”

“I'll take another turn at the wheel, then.”

He'd been reluctant to let me drive before; he was still reluctant—he loved to drive, particularly on bad roads. “I should have been a taxi driver or a racer,” he said. “Isn't it childish?”

We ate on the move and then he spread the map across his knees and directed me to the left up a steep pitted asphalt street; we had to get around Tuapse because at this time of year the police would notice any strange car in the deserted streets.

The detour took us well back into the hills before we could turn south again and the snow was deep along the shoulders; we had to put the chains on again.

Darkness fell and there was no moon—the clouds were still with us. We crawled because it was hard to see: the line of definition was poor between what was road and what was not road. The country there is jagged and humpy and the hills are studded with low scattered trees. Down below along the coast it is semitropical with palmlike vegetation and white-roofed seaside houses but these hills, footing against the mysterious Caucasian Mountains, are as primitive as something in Nepal. It is twenty miles between habitations and there are no towns; the roads at best are farm-truck tracks and our game antique beetle had as much trouble as it could handle.

Go a little higher in the mountains to the left and you would find yourself in valleys inhabited by tribes of prehistoric persuasion among whom the people grow to fantastic ages and technology is unknown. The hold of Soviet civilization is precarious on these fringes and nonexistent in the interior: like the role of colonial forts on an African frontier in the eighteen fifties. Bukov had elected this route for that very reason but it didn't make the journey any less alarming: only the fragile heartbeat of our antique Volkswagen kept us alive. Chilled beyond the poor heater's capacity we labored through the hills and I think privately both of us prayed, each in his own way, although I doubt Pudovkin was any more religious than I.

In predawn murk we reached a signpost and found we were several miles southeast of where we thought we were. We had to backtrack to an intersection and turn west toward the coast to avoid being forced up into impassable mountains.

We were beyond Sochi now, somewhere above Sukhumi, and there was no alternative but to drop straight along to the main coast highway and follow it south.

“There is a checkpoint below Sukhumi. Too many arms smugglers trying to sell in Turkey. They have deliberately made this bottleneck—everyone who goes south must go through there. The alternate back roads have been closed off by explosives.”

“Then we'll just have to find out if our papers are good enough.”

“I'm not concerned about the papers. But we've left possible leaks behind. Leonid, the one the police arrested. The man who has boats—the one Boris doesn't trust. Or that one who took us across the straits. The checkpoint may have been warned.”

“Why don't you turn back, then. I'll go on through alone. If they take me at least you'll have time to get out of the country yourself.”

He said, “I don't wish to leave. It's my home.”

Ten minutes later he broke the silence again. “I had better tell you the plan in any case. You will have to do the last of it yourself since I am not going to cross the border with you.”

“I thought I was just going to walk across through the fence.”

“That used to be possible. But on account of the arms smuggling they have mined the border.”

I took my eyes off the road to glance at him. Bukov hadn't said anything about mines. I suppose he'd seen no point in alarming me more.

“Batumi is the Soviet border city. A village, really. Just before you reach it there is a fork, and we will take the Armenian route to the left, toward Leninakan. At one point about five kilometers south of Batumi the road skirts very close to the fence. There are guard towers—machine guns and searchlights. About one kilometer past that point, I will let you out of the car and you will be on your own. You will be about five hundred meters from the fence. There are a good many trees but not close together enough to be a forest. There is a metal culvert in the road which marks our spot. If you walk toward the fence from that culvert you will find a narrow foot track marked by four trees which grow along an exactly straight line. You have to be looking at them from the culvert to see the line because from any other angle they are just four trees among many. If you walk that straight line, keeping just to the left of the trees—within arm's length—you will not step on a mine. It is a route we have used several times. We had to dig up two mines and de-activate them, and replace them.

“Now the time to cross is at dusk, because the searchlights are least effective and daylight is poor. If you move slowly and watch the lights you'll get through. The nearest searchlight tower is about two hundred meters from the point where you will cross. The fence itself is nothing, a few strands of barbed wire like a cattle fence, but the top strand is electrified with a very high charge. You must go through between the bottom strand and the middle one. Then you are in Turk territory but you must cross about twenty meters of open ground into the trees beyond. You are safe once inside those trees. You understand all this? I'll give it to you again before we get there, but I want you to be making yourself ready in your mind. The trick of survival is to move slowly. Slowly. Every muscle screams to run but you must remember to be slow. All right?”

“Yes. I'll remember.” My pulse thudded just thinking about it.

“There is a goat track up the river valley on the Turk side. Follow that path to the left about three kilometers and you will come to a road. A dirt road, but it has a fair amount of traffic from the coast. From there you should be able to get a lift into the town of Trabzon, only be sure it is not a Turk army vehicle you try to flag down. You have the Turkish visa among your new papers?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should have no trouble, but avoid the army while you are close to the border. Sometimes they tend to throw refugees back across to ingratiate themselves with the Soviets.”

“I understand.”

“In Trabzon there is a
taverna
run by a man called Pinar. Remember the name.”

“Pinar,” I said, and repeated it.

“He has worked with us for many years. He will see to your needs and provide transport for you at least as far as Ankara or Istanbul. After that you must make your own decisions.”

At half-past ten that morning, freshly shaved, we approached the checkpoint and were halted in the stalled queue of traffic awaiting clearance. There were half a dozen lorries and two or three cars ahead of us.

Pudovkin was rehearsing what he would say. He wasn't speaking aloud but I could hear the tongue drumming against his palate.

He had the wheel now; he thought it would look better. He had an Intourist identification card and was going to try to pass as my guide and overseer.

It was raining now, the downpour slanting into the glossy pavement and melting what snow was left; the Soviet guards stood at the zebra-checked crossbar steaming in their heavy wool uniforms. I was rigid with fear: what if they didn't like the look of the contents of my suitcase? The water-soaked note cards, the admixture of Russian and English script.…

We had scraped off our stubble in melted snow with hand soap for lather and my cheeks stung with shaving rash; my feet were frozen even though I had dried them repeatedly; we had eaten the last of the bread and herring and my stomach growled incessantly; I knew they would take one look at the pair of us and yank us out of the car.…

From the side of his mouth Pudovkin said, “Mainly they will look for weapons. The south of Russia has many arms factories—as you are supposed to know, Monsieur Lapautre—and this means that guns are easier to obtain here than in any other part of the Soviet Union. Workers try to sell them on the black market in Turkey.”

“What about that pistol of yours?”

“I left it where we shaved,” he said.

It only chilled me more: now we were weaponless. Then I realized how foolish the thought was. There were six guards at the checkpoint and each was armed with an automatic rifle slung across his back. One light pistol wouldn't have made a tinker's difference if it had come to shooting.

Then it was our turn. In their grey uniforms buttoned to the choke collars they leaned down at either door and asked us to step out of the car. The guard on my side was young, red-faced; I noticed the frayed cuffs of his uniform.

“Bumagi,”
he said—papers.

Several of them were glancing at us. I tried to keep my hand steady when I reached for my—Lapautre's—passport and documents. I heard Pudovkin saying we had nothing to declare, we were on our way to the small-arms assembly plant at Tblisi. I tried to find belief or disbelief in the soldiers' faces but they only looked professionally stern. Beside me a lorry driver was offering one sentry a Russian cigarette while another sentry climbed into the back of the truck; evidently the driver was a frequent passerby and the sentry nodded and smiled in response to something he said, but then that sentry's eyes came around toward me and his face turned cold. I endeavored to look impatiently bored with the bureaucratic idiocy of it but I was convinced the contrivance was transparent.…

The youth didn't give the passport back to me. He held it in his hand and walked around to the front of the Volkswagen. I thought he was staring suspiciously at the front number plate and my throat turned hollow but then his partner reached in past Pudovkin to pull the release and the youth opened the trunk.

He removed my suitcase and set it down on the wet pavement, and pried up corners of the trunk lining. He took out the spare tire and shook it, weighed it in his hands and put it back. Then he opened my suitcase. I tried not to stare. He pawed through the single shirt and pair of wet socks I had replaced last night; he riffled two stacks of notes and then put one finger on the floor of the suitcase while he reached around under it with his other palm—testing the thickness for a false bottom. Finally he closed the suitcase and politely laid it back in the trunk. I breathed.

His partner was down on one knee on the far side of the car looking at the understructure, his rump showing past the front-sloping fender.

Pudovkin, yawning, patted his lips and turned to glance at the clock mounted on the side of the checkpoint shack. The truck beside me growled through, the gate came down again and another truck pulled in.

They gave us back our papers. Pudovkin had to sign something and then we got back in the car and drove through the raised gate. Sixty yards beyond it was a café-bar and Pudovkin pulled in there. “Hungry?”

“My God, I never want to go through that again.”

He grinned at me. “You get used to it.”

“I'd rather not have to.”

The place was obviously a popular pit-stop for those who had had to wait on the queue at the checkpoint; we had to wait again but finally we bought wine and cheese and bread and went outside to get in the car.

A sentry at the checkpoint shack was talking into a telephone, looking up and down the road. I began to freeze up. Pudovkin went around the front of the car to the driver's door. I saw the sentry's arm come up, pointing our way; he took the phone away from his ear and shouted something.

Pudovkin said under his breath, “You didn't hear him. Get in—quickly.”

I jackknifed into the car and Pudovkin had it rolling before I had the door shut. We swung out into the road and his foot was on the floor. We were nearly through the bend before the first bullet starred the glass of the rear window.

We had a jump on them because they had to get to a car to chase us but the road ahead ran right into the town of Poti; they would telephone ahead to put us in a vise. We had to get off the coast highway and I unfolded the map with badly shaking fingers while Pudovkin wheeled recklessly past slow lorries on blind bends.

“Not the first left,” I said. “It loops back. Take the second turning.”

He pulled out to overtake a bus and there was a van coming toward us but Pudovkin kept the throttle down and the van nosed down under pressure of panic brakes; we squeezed through ahead of the bus and when I threw a wide-eyed glance at him Pudovkin's lips were peeled back in a fierce glowing rictus. I clung to the strap with one hand and tried to keep the map in focus with the other. “It ought to be soon.”

The old car had a top of not more than a hundred kph—about sixty miles per hour—and Pudovkin was getting every ounce of that out of it. Once we hit the hills we wouldn't be able to make even that much speed.

I kept glancing to the rear but the starred window made it hard to see. Pudovkin had an outside mirror on the door and he was using that. He said, “No sign yet. Those trucks are holding them on the bends back there.”