The Dark Chronicles (92 page)

‘The Russians. Have you seen any?’

She shook her head, and I realized she was frightened. I had a gun on my hip.

‘I don’t mean you any harm,’ I said, and very slowly removed the pistol and placed it on a sideboard covered in lace, next to an antique clock. Her shoulders relaxed a little.

‘Did you call Lundström in Degerby?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘He said he would come at once – but Degerby is quite far away. I think you should clean up and get out of those clothes. I have some for you if you would like them.’

She led me to a small but spotless bathroom, where she had laid out a shirt, a pair of narrow twill trousers and calf-high boots. There was also a basin, which she had filled with water, and beside it a towel. I thanked her, and she bowed her head and closed the door.

I removed my shirt and dipped my head in the basin, rubbing off all the shit – no wonder she had looked frightened of me. There was a glass by the tap, and I poured water into it and gulped it down, then poured some more and gulped that too.

Sarah had been captured.

I removed the rest of my clothes and climbed into the ones the old woman had left for me. They were a reasonable fit, and they were dry. I would have liked to have washed properly and treated some of my aches and pains, but there was no time for that.

Sasha and his men would now be searching every inch of this area for me, and could get here before Lundström. As if to emphasize this point, there was a burst of noise from the pile of clothes on the floor, and I reached into the trouser pocket and took out the radio receiver.

‘Medov to Rook. Current location Map C, J11. Boathouse empty.’

‘Rook to Medov. Any sign of disturbance?’

‘None, Rook. There are several cottages along this section – I will move on to them now.’

‘Understood. Report back in ten minutes. We have three hours to find him.’

The device went silent.

Three hours to find me.

I had imagined I’d seen a nuclear attack when I’d been captured at the border, but part of me had refused to believe it was possible, despite hearing Brezhnev order the missiles primed myself. Sasha’s presence here in Finland confirmed that the Russians wanted to stop me from warning anyone they were about to attack, but even that hadn’t quite convinced me. The message on the receiver had. There was only one reason I could think of for them needing to finding me within the next three hours: it must be the deadline they had been given by Moscow. If they hadn’t stopped me by then, Brezhnev was going to go ahead and launch a strike anyway. After that, it wouldn’t be long before R-hour.

I poured some more water and sipped at it, but I’d lost my thirst. I stared at the glass in my hand, at the meniscus of the water curving
up to meet the sides of it. From this angle the surface was like a silvery-grey ridge, and gave the illusion of being a separate object from the water. I replaced the glass on the basin, suddenly transfixed by the surface of the water. In my mind’s eye, it was as though the water was the world, and the air above it what would happen to it after a nuclear attack. Those two separate realities were only held apart by that thin silvery line between them: me.

Focus, Paul.

I picked up the transmitter and returned to the living room, where the woman was placing logs on the fire.

‘Thank you for the clothes,’ I said. ‘They’re a good fit.’

She turned to look at me.

‘They belonged to my husband,’ she said, her eyes cavernous. ‘He died last spring.’

Jesus. What had I walked into here?

There was a banging noise. The door. We both froze. I reached for the Makarov on the sideboard, and she shuffled to the door and unlocked it. A man in a police uniform, clutching a Lahti pistol, stepped into the room, his face weather-beaten and shaven, but nevertheless familiar.

‘Kjell Lundström?’ I said.

He lowered the pistol and furrowed his brow.

‘No, I’m his son, Jan.’

He was slimmer than his father, but otherwise had come to resemble him in the intervening years.

‘Thank God!’ I said. ‘I need to find a diving suit at once. Can you help?’

He stared at me for a few moments and then a look of recognition crossed his face.

‘You are the British lieutenant-colonel who came here in 1945.’

‘Yes!’ I said, surprised that he’d even remembered my rank. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no time for catching up. I desperately need to find a diving suit – there’s a German U-boat on the seabed a few miles south of Söderviken, and I need to get to it – fast.’

I led him into the hallway and quickly told him the story. His eyes widened, but he nodded his head rapidly. ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘I know where the coastguards keep all their equipment, and I believe they have a few diving suits there.’

‘Great. How do we get there?’

He stretched out a hand, and gave a slightly crooked smile.

‘Come with me.’

*

We bid goodbye to the woman, and left her in her cottage in the woods, perhaps wondering if the world was about to end. I brought along the Makarov and the radio receiver. Lundström had a small speedboat tied up by the jetty, and as we walked down to it I asked him how his father was doing. His mouth tightened fractionally, and he told me he had died some years previously.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know him, but he seemed like a good man.’

Lundström nodded, his eyes focused straight ahead. ‘He was,’ he said quietly.

We climbed aboard. He took the wheel and I seated myself on a low bench, taking in the smells of diesel and grease. The water was wreathed in a low mist, the surface stippled with flecks of moonlight. The helicopter had crashed in a cluster of islands called Kumlinge, and now we were heading for an island called Storklubb, or Klobbo in local dialect. Lundström handed me a torch and I shone it ahead of us to light the way. As we left the bay through bobbing buoys, small islets started to hove into view, but Lundström didn’t slow for them and we passed through smoothly. I noticed a small pile of greyish-white stones had been arranged on the tip of one of the islets, contrasting against the pink granite beneath, and guessed he was also using them to navigate.

He had explained that the coastguards had several stations on the island, but that this one had diving equipment stored in a cabin away from the barracks building, and that he was confident we
could creep in. He knew where they kept the key. ‘There are few secrets in this place,’ he said. ‘Especially if you’re in law enforcement.’

We were going at about fifteen knots, I thought, and every few seconds we crested a wave and cold spray hit my face and froze my jaw.

‘There should be some clothes under there,’ he shouted over the noise of the motor, pointing to a line of low cupboards under the seating. ‘I’d advise you to put on some more layers, because it will be even colder when we get out there.’

I bent down and slid one of the cupboards open and found an old rollneck sweater, which I pulled over my head, and a pair of canvas trousers, which I placed over the dead husband’s. Lundström looked like a gun dog focused on a bird: with this man’s help, I might be able to make it. I just had to hope that Sarah was still in one piece. I tried to focus on the task ahead. Once I got hold of the diving suit, I would have to try to locate the U-boat and dive for the canisters. But then I would have to get them out of the water, and find Sasha again…

I let my thoughts spin away as the smell of pines and seaweed carried on the air. We crested a large wave and spray covered the windscreen, obscuring the view for a second. Lundström had gone quiet, his face set. He took a large map from the dashboard and consulted it. Then he cut the motor.

‘We’ll be coming in soon,’ he said.

He steered with a more intense concentration until, about five minutes later, we came to a pass between two small islands. Lundström slowed the boat and headed towards the one on the left. He climbed out and swiftly jumped onto the shore, tying the ropes to a metal ring attached to the remains of a small wooden quay, one half of which had fallen apart.

‘Ryssbryggan,’ he said, as I joined him on shore and tied the other rope. ‘We used to be part of the Russian Empire, you know. They built this back in the First World War.’ He finished tying up
and looked across at me. ‘I hate the fucking Russians,’ he added. His jaw clenched for a moment, and then slackened again.

The jetty led onto a narrow dirt track through dense bushes and foliage, and we swiftly made our way along it, taking care to keep our heads down. ‘That’s their barracks,’ Lundström whispered after a couple of minutes, pointing to a greyish-white building in a clearing ahead. ‘But they keep the diving equipment in there.’ He pointed to a tiny cabin with white window frames positioned a few dozen feet away from the main building, right on the water.

We ducked down and started crawling through a brush of long grass. Now I saw that there was a jetty here as well, but that it was occupied by several patrol boats – Sea-Hounds or something similar – which was presumably why we’d come via the broken quay instead.

Crack.

I sat, frozen still in the grass. It was just some twigs breaking under my feet, but had anyone inside the barracks heard the noise? The outline of Lundström’s head was just visible against the deep blue of the sky a few feet ahead of me, and he was utterly still. The wind rustled near us, the water lapped softly against the side of the jetty, but there were no other sounds. Finally, Lundström ducked his head; he raised the palm of his hand and gestured for me to come forward.

Less than twenty seconds later we were at the edge of the cabin. Lundström crawled onto a small step leading to the door and I saw him feeling around with his hands until he lifted a key from a ledge beneath the step. Then he pawed his way up until he was in the doorway and stood. He beckoned me to join him again and I did. He looked at me for a moment, then inserted the key. He turned it. The click sounded terribly loud in the silence, and we waited to see if anything responded. When nothing did, he slowly eased the door open, and we stepped inside.

It was even darker than it had been outside, but after a few seconds my eyes began to adjust. We were in a small hallway with two
wooden doors, similar to the one we had just come through. Lundström reached for the handle of the door to the right, then leaned his shoulder into it and opened it. I followed him into a room that felt a little larger than the hallway, but which was yet darker.

‘In here,’ Lundström whispered from the far corner, and I walked towards the sound of his voice. I heard him unhook a latch and he told me to go in ahead of him, which I did, but at the last moment something registered – heat – and I tried to pull back, but it was too late because I felt a rough shove at the base of my neck and I stumbled and fell to the floor. I heard the door slam shut and the latch hooking into place. It was lighter here, but incredibly hot, and I looked around the room with growing fear.

This wasn’t a storage room for diving equipment. It was a sauna.

*

‘Jan!’ I shouted out, but there was no response. Understanding swept over me. Lundström had lured me here so he could lock me in. And he had left me here to burn to death.

The heat was unbelievably intense, and my clothes were already soaked in sweat. I tore at them frantically, struggling with the boots and then kicking them off. I grabbed the gun from my pocket, but realized at once that it was too light: he’d emptied it – presumably when I’d been putting on more clothes at his suggestion.

I looked around again and began to make out a few more items in the room. There was a rectangular window low in the wall on the right and through it I glimpsed reeds and rushes and a stretch of water. Most of the room was taken up with two benches in the shape of steps to sit on, and below them was a basket filled with small wooden logs, presumably firewood for the stove. Some metal crowbars rested against the wall – perhaps to open the window? I reached for them, but they burned my hands, so I went for the wood instead. Slightly cooler. I threw one of the logs at the window, but it just bounced back at me comically. I could hardly see straight
now, because sweat was pouring into my eyes, making them sting. I wanted to wipe them but my hands were also soaked and I thought I’d probably just make them worse.

As I was trying to think what to do next, a loud hissing sound made me jump. After a couple of seconds I realized what it was, as my chest started to burn up as though someone had lit a blowtorch inside me. Lundström hadn’t left; he had just poured water on the stove. Somewhere behind the pain I registered that this offered me some kind of leverage, but I struggled to grip the thought for long enough to follow it through, because the pain was so searing. I wanted to scream in agony, but if I did that I might bring the coastguards running, and with them ruin any chances I might have of stopping Brezhnev from going ahead with his strike. I grunted and groaned instead, biting my upper lip and tasting the hot sweat pouring off me. I crouched as close to the ground as I could but resisted the urge to lie down because I wasn’t sure if I did that I’d have the strength to get back up.

And then the hissing came again. The thought came into my mind that I was experiencing pure fear. In London during the war, the V2s had panicked everyone because the sound of their falling had been heard only after they had done their damage. But this was how terror really worked: the sound came first, then a delay, and finally the inevitable. And here it came: the heat rising again, so fast I felt my skin was going to burn off and my internal organs catch fire.

I wanted to detach my mind so I wasn’t as aware of the pain, but I knew it was crucial to hold on to my thoughts if I wanted to survive. A lucid thought broke in now: he must be opening the door to add water, and judging by the speed with which he was doing it the stove was probably very near the door. If I could muster the strength to reach it, perhaps I could get out, or at least stop him from pouring on any more water. I crawled in the direction of the heat, but it was agonizing and my skin started to sting as though it were about to bleed or peel off, and I recoiled instinctively. I had to fight my instincts, but it was getting harder to think straight.