Stephen Burke: The Reluctant Contact

Moonlight bounced off the fresh pristine snow, so he did not need a flashlight to find his destination. When he reached the correct section of the walkway he stopped and stood still for a good two minutes, waiting and listening for any followers. Satisfied, he jumped down to the frozen ground and crawled under the walkway, out of sight. He turned on his flashlight and pulled out a wrench from inside his coat. Working quickly, he began to remove the section of pipe he had sabotaged the night before his departure for his brother’s funeral. A bit of insurance, to remind them how indispensable he was. Once he had dismantled the pipe, he removed the faulty valve he had added to the system and replaced it with a new one. Then he reconnected the lot and immediately heard the hot water flowing freely once more.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said, looking in the direction of the executive building. ‘Don’t mention it.’

He turned off his flashlight, climbed back up onto the walkway and went back the way he’d come.

There was a light on in a second-floor apartment in Paris as he passed. He wondered whose it was, and what she was doing awake at this hour. A figure appeared at the window and he stopped. He remained motionless and watched out of curiosity, as well as not wishing to be seen out and about at this hour.

The person in the window reached out to draw the curtains. It was a man. Timur. He looked up and down the street, in the same way that Yuri had scanned his surroundings moments earlier before jumping off the walkway. Yuri stopped exhaling in case his condensing breath might betray his position. He saw Timur look away and pull the curtains shut.

What poor woman is he visiting, and at three in the morning? Yuri wondered.

He watched for a moment longer. The light remained on, but he saw no further movement.

THE NEXT MORNING, Yuri got out of bed, picked up a dry towel and wiped off the dripping condensation covering his window. Outside, the volume of ice in the fjord had visibly increased overnight, almost enough for a brave soul to try to skip across to the other side. Two more weeks and you would be able to walk straight over there and touch the glacier. He showered in piping hot water, making sure not to get his hair wet. Walking around outside with a damp head was a guaranteed ticket to a fortnight’s stay in Pyramiden’s hospital. It was possible to avoid getting ill here by constantly wrapping up for the outside, and then pulling off layers as soon as you got inside again.

As he dressed, he turned on his radio, a Yugoslav military receiver he had traded in return for adding an extra radiator to a family apartment. Yuri had arrived with few possessions but his technical abilities came in useful for bartering. While the radio was one of the best models in town, he still had to work hard to obtain an acceptable signal. He achieved this by connecting a length of copper wire to the aerial and wrapping the other end around his room’s iron plumbing pipes. The clearest signal was a Norwegian station, with presenters who spoke Norwegian, which he didn’t understand. And they played far too much Abba for his liking.

Legally, he should not be listening to western stations at all. Back home, the police checked roofs to see who had their antennas bent towards the capitalist half of the world. Up here, there was more freedom as long as you didn’t flaunt it. As a rule, Yuri only listened to western stations. If he couldn’t find one, he preferred silence rather than listen to the official voices from home. Not understanding what foreign presenters were saying added a sense of mystery. Though he guessed that their monologues were probably as banal as those on Soviet radio.

The Norwegian signal was lost momentarily and Yuri adjusted the tuning dial. He found himself on a different station, which was faint and unstable, but they were playing Bowie. Yuri mimed along, not knowing what most of the lyrics meant. He could tell that the man had attitude and that’s what he liked about him. If Soviet censorship was actually working, he should not have known who David Bowie was. But everyone did. As with many western stars, his records were banned for being ideologically harmful compositions. You could get them of course, in Moscow, if you had money or something to trade. You could get anything you wanted in Moscow. It was just a matter of knowing the right person to ask.

Bowie was also famous in the Soviet Union because he was one of the few western musicians who had actually visited it. On the way home from Japan, he had travelled by train from Moscow to Warsaw because he had a fear of flying. He did not play any concerts but the trip had generated a song, ‘Warszawa’. The Soviet Union had its own rock stars, such as the Singing Guitars, aka the Russian Beatles. But Bowie was special.

Even in the big cities, an original vinyl was a rarity. When Yuri was younger, western music was bootlegged on to old X-rays. Bone records, they were called. But since cassette tapes had become available, it was easier to get the music you liked. Except in Pyramiden. This was another of the sacrifices one had to make on Svalbard. You had to survive with what you found around you. People here had little, and what little they had, they shared. This was the Arctic way of life.

When the Bowie song was over, a Russian voice said, ‘Until next time. This was Seva… Seva Novgorodsev. The City of London. BBC.’ Yuri turned and stared at the radio. A Russian on the BBC. And then the man was gone as quickly as he had found him. A new programme began. Who the hell was he? Yuri switched off the radio but decided to leave the dial untouched. This man needed further investigation. He left his wet towel on the radiator to dry. Then he prepared himself to face the elements.

He grabbed his cigarettes and matches from the table and left the room. Smoking was something he only did outside. It was too cold to open his apartment windows to air the place out. He had recently switched to Bulgarian light cigarettes, which the advertising said were better for you. Inhaling them gave him a false sense of heat, as though his lungs were a stove.

Leaving his apartment block, Yuri lit his first of the day and turned in the direction of the waterfront. Then he began the five-minute trek to the power station, which was located beside the coal deposit and the harbour. Pyramiden’s miners worked almost every day of the year to fill the coal deposit in preparation for the next ship home. No Christmas break for the Christians nor Hanukkah for the Jews, except on their own time, and in private. Once the ship had docked in the harbour, a crane levered the black rock into the hold. And as soon as it had sailed away, sitting deeper in the water, the whole process started anew. Their outpost was kept going solely for this purpose. If the coal ever ran out, the town would die.

Long before he reached the power station, he smelled the smoke from the burning coal, rising out of the tall twin chimney stacks. The plumes of smoke were an ugly sight against the still Arctic landscape, but needs must. His arrival this morning was earlier than usual, but he was annoyed to find Semyon already settled inside the control room with his arms folded.

‘Morning,’ said Yuri, turning his back to take off his coat.

Five seconds inside the room and he had already started to sweat. The power station was the warmest place in town.

‘So, any bright ideas?’ asked Semyon, before Yuri even had the chance to hang his coat up.

‘For what?’ he replied, stamping the last of the snow off his boots on to the doormat.

‘The exec problem,’ said Semyon. ‘We’ll have to fix it today, or they’ll put us both out of our jobs.’

‘Oh,’ he replied. He tapped the glass on a pressure dial on one of the floor-to-ceiling control units, as if he were concerned about the reading. ‘I had a brainwave last night actually. Couldn’t sleep. One of the junction valves. That was it. All sorted now.’