Robert Harris - Archangel

R. J. O'BRIEN stood on the street corner at the end of the alleyway leading to Vavara Safanova's yard, his metal case on the ground between his legs, his head bent over the map.

'How long d'you figure it'll take us to get there? A couple of hours?'

Kelso looked back at the tiny wooden house. The old woman was still standing at her open door, leaning on her stick, watching them. He raised his hand to wave goodbye and the door slowly closed.

'Get where?'

'The Chizhikov place,' said O'Brian. 'How long d'you figure?'

'In this?' Kelso raised his eyes to the heavy sky. 'You want to try to find it now?'

'There's only one road. See for yourself. She said it was a village, right? If it's a village, it'll be on the road.' He brushed a dusting of snowflakes off the map and gave it to Kelso. 'I'd say two hours.'

'That's not a road,' said Kelso. 'That's a dotted line. That's a track.' It wandered eastwards through the forest, parallel with the Dvina for perhaps fifty miles, then struck north and ended nowhere - just stopped in the middle of the taiga after about two hundred miles. 'Take a look around you, man. They haven't even made most of the roads in the city. What d'you think they'll be like out there?'

He thrust the map back at O'Brian and began walking in the direction of the Toyota. O'Brian came after him. 'We got four-wheel drive, Fluke. We got snow chains.'

'And what if we break down?'

'We got food. We got fuel for a fire and a whole damn forest to burn. We can always drink the snow. We've got the satellite phone.' He clapped Kelso on the shoulder. 'Tell you what, how about this: you get scared, you can call your mommy. How's that?'

'My mommy's dead.'

'Zinaida then. You can call Zinaida.'

'Tell me, did you screw her, O'Brian? As a matter of interest?'

'What's that got to do with anything?'

'I just want to know why she doesn't trust you. Whether she's right. Is it sex or is it something personal?'

'Oh-ho. Is that what all this is about?' O'Brian smirked. 'Come on, Fluke. You know the rules. A gentleman never talks.'

Kelso huddled further into his jacket and increased his pace.

'It's not a question of being scared.'

'Oh really?'

They were within sight of the car now. Kelso stopped and turned to face him. 'All right, I admit it. I am scared. And you know what scares me most? The fact you're not scared. That rea//y scares me.

'Bullshit. A bit of snow -'

'Forget the snow. I'm not bothered about the snow.' Kelso glanced around at the tumbling houses. The scene was entirely brown and white and grey. And silent, like an old movie. 'You just don't get it, do you?' he said. 'You don't understand. You've no history, that's your problem. It's like this name "Chizhikov". What's that to you?'

'Nothing. It's just a name.

'But it's not, you see. "Chizhikov" was one of Stalin's aliases before the Revolution. Stalin was issued with a passport in the name of P. A. Chizhikov in 1911 .'

(Are you excited, Dr Kelso? Do you feel the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave?'And he did. He did feel it. He felt as if a hand had reached out from the snow and touched his shoulder.) O'Brian was quiet for a few seconds, but then he gave a dismissive sweep of his metal case. 'Well, you can stand here and commune with history if you want. I'm going to go and find it.' He set off across the street, turning as he walked. 'You coming or not? The train to Moscow leaves at ten past eight tonight. Or you can come with me. Make your choice'

Kelso hesitated. He looked up again at the tumbling sky. It wasn't like any snowfall he had ever known in England or the States. It was as if something was disintegrating up there

- flaking to pieces and crashing around them.

Choice? he thought. For a man with no visa and no money, no job, no book? For a man who had come this far? And what choice would that be, exactly?

Slowly, reluctantly, he began to walk towards the car.

THEY headed back out of the city, along a minor road, and northwards, so at least there was no GAl checkpoint to negotiate.

By now it must have been about one o'clock.

The road ran alongside an overgrown railroad track lined with ancient freight cars, and to start with it wasn't too bad. It could almost have been romantic, in the right company.

They overtook a gaily painted cart being pulled by a pony, its head down into the wind, and soon there were more wooden houses, also bright with paint - blue, green, red leaning in a picturesque way out in the marshland at the end of wooden jettys. In the snow it wasn't possible to tell where the solid ground ended and water began. Boats, cars, sheds, chicken coops and tethered goats were jumbled together. Even the big wood pulp mill across the wide Dvina, on the southern headland, had a kind of epic beauty, its cranes and smoking chimneys silhouetted against the concrete sky.

But then, abruptly, the houses disappeared and so did their view of the river. At the same time the hard surface gave way beneath their wheels and they began jolting along a rutted track. Birch and pine trees closed around them. In less than fifteen minutes they might have been a thousand miles from Archangel rather than a mere ten. The road wound on through the muffled forest. Sometimes the trees grew high and fine. But occasionally the woodland would thin and they would find themselves in a wilderness of blackened, blighted stumps, like a battlefield after heavy shelling. Or - and this was oddly more disconcerting - they would suddenly come across a small plantation of tall radio antennae.

Listening posts, O'Brian said, eavesdropping on Northern NATO.

He started to sing. Walking in a Winter Wonderland Kelso stood it for a couple of verses. 'Do you have to?' O'Brian stopped.

'Gloomy sonofabitch,' he muttered under his breath.

The snow was still falling steadily. Occasional gunshots cracked and echoed in the distance - hunters in the woods -sending panicky birds flapping and crying across the track.

They went through several small villages, each smaller and more dilapidated than the last - a barracks in one with graffiti on its walls, and a satellite dish: a little chunk of Archangel dropped in the middle of nowhere. There was no one to be seen except a couple of gawping children and an old woman dressed entirely in black who (stood at the roadside and tried to wave them down. When O'Brian didn't slow she shook her fist and cursed them.

'Hag.' O'Brian looked back at her in the mirror. 'What's eating her? Where are all the men, anyway? Drunk?' He meant it as a joke.

'Probably.'

'No? What? All of them?'

'Most of them, I should think. Home-made vodka. What else is there to do?'

'Jesus, what a country.

After a while O'Brian began to sing again, but un4er his breath now and less confidently than before.

'We're walking in a winter wonderland...'

ONE hour passed, then another.

A couple of times the river came back briefly into view, and that, as O'Brian said, was a sight and a half- the swampy land, the wide and sluggish mass of water and, far beyond it, the flat, dark mass of trees picking up again, only to dissolve into the waves of snow. It was a primordial landscape. Kelso could imagine a dinosaur moving slowly across it.

From the map it was hard to tell exactly where they were. No habitations were recorded, no landmarks. He suggested they stop at the next village and try to regain their bearings.

'Whatever you want.

But the next village was a long time coming, it never came, and Kelso noticed that the snow on the track was virgin: there hadn't been any traffic this far out for hours. They hit a drift for the first time - a pothole disguised by snow - and the Toyota slewed, its rear tyres flailing, until they bit on something solid. The car lurched. O'Brian spun the wheel and brought them back on course. He laughed - 'Whoa, that was fun!' - but Kelso could tell that even he was starting to feel unsettled now. The reporter slowed the engine, switched on the headlights and shifted forwards in his seat, peering into the swirling flakes.