Robert Harris - Archangel

It was hard to hold the pencil between his cold fingers, and difficult to write as the snowflakes settled across the page. Still, he worked his way along to the final crosses.

'B. D. Chizhikov,' he wrote. 'Tough-looking, brutal/ace. Dark-skinned A Georgian?? Died aged 77...'

He wondered what Comrades Golub and Chizhikova might have looked like, and who had blacked out their faces, and why. There was something infinitely sinister about their featureless silhouettes. He found himself writing, 'Could they have been purged?'

Oh, where the hell was O'Brian?

His back was aching. His knees were wet. He stood an4 another thought occurred to him. He brushed the page clear of snow again and licked the end of his pencil.

'The graves are all well kept,' he wrote, 'plots appear to be weeded. If this p/ace is abandoned, like the buildings, shouldn't they have grown over?'

'O'Brian?' he called. 'R. J.?'

The snow deadened his shout.

He put away the notebook and began walking quickly away from the cemetery, pulling on his gloves. The wind stirred in the abandoned buildings ahead of him, catching the snow and lifting it here and there like the corner of a curtain. He picked his way across the ground, following O'Brian's large footprints until he came to the start of the track. The prints led off clearly in the direction of the Toyota. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and twisted the focus. The stricken car filled his vision, so still and distant it seemed unreal. There was no sign of anyone around it.

Odd.

He turned round very slowly, a complete 360 degrees, scanning through the binoculars. Forest. Tumbled walls and wreckage. Forest. Graves. Forest. Track. Toyota. Forest again.

He lowered the binoculars, frowning, then began walking towards the car, still following O'Brian's trail. It took him a couple of minutes. Nobody else had been this way in the snow, that much was obvious: there were two pairs of tracks heading up to the clearing and one pair heading back. He approached the car and, by lengthening his stride and planting his feet in the prints of the bigger man, he was able to retrace O'Brian's movements exactly: so and so.. . and... so...

Kelso stopped, arms outstretched, wobbling. The American had definitely come this way, round to the back of the Toyota, had taken out the metal camera case - it was missing, he could see - and then it looked as though something had distracted him, because instead of heading back up the track to the settlement his footprints turned sharply and led directly away from the vehicle, at a right angle, straight into the forest.

He called O'Brian's name, softly. And then, in a spasm of panic, he cupped his hands and bellowed it as loud as he could.

Again, that same curious deadening effect, as if the trees were swallowing his words.

Cautiously, he stepped into the undergrowth.

Oh, but he had always hated forests, hadn't he? Hated even the woodland around Oxford, with its poetic shafts of dusty bloody sunlight, and its mossy vegetation, and the way things suddenly flew up at you or rustled away! And branches slapping back into your face.. . Sorry, so~... Oh yes, give him a wide open space any day. Give him a hill. Give him a cliff-top. Give him the sparkling sea!

'R. J.?' What a damned silly name to have to yell, but he yelled it louder anyway: 'R. J.!'

There were no footprints visible here. The ground was rough. He could smell the decay of a swamp somewhere, as rank as dog's breath, and it was dark, too. He would have to watch himself, he thought, keep his back firmly to the road, because if he went too far, he would lose his bearings, and maybe end up walking further and further away from the car, until there would be nothing left to do but lie down in the darkness and freeze.

There was a sudden heavy crash off to his left, and then a succession of smaller bursts, like echoes. It sounded at first like someone running but then he realised it was only snow-dislodging from the tops of some branches and plunging to the earth.

He cupped his hands.

And then he heard a human sound. A moan, was that it? A sob?

He tried to place where it was coming from. And then he heard it again. Nearer, and behind him now, it seemed to be. He pushed through a gap between a couple of close-growing trees into a tiny clearing, and there was O'Brian's camera case lying open on the ground and there, beyond it, was O'Brian himself, upside down and swinging gently, his fingertips barely brushing the surface of the snow, suspended by his left leg from a length of oily rope.

THE ROPE WAS attached to the top of a tall birch sapling, bent almost double by O'Brian's weight. The reporter was groaning. He was barely conscious.

Kelso knelt by his head. At the sight of him, O'Brian began struggling feebly. He didn't seem able to form a sentence.

'It's all right,' said Kelso. He tried to sound calm. 'Don't worry. I'll get you down.'

Get him down. Kelso took off his gloves. Get him down. Right. Using what? He had a knife for sharpening pencils, but it was in the car. He patted his pockets and found his lighter. He flicked it on, showed the flame to O'Brian.

'We'll get you down. Look. You'll be all right.'

He stood and reached up, grabbing O'Brian by his booted ankle. A noose of thin rope had dug deep into the leather. It took all Kelso's weight to drag him down far enough for him to apply the flame to the taut rope just above his sole. O'Brian's shoulders rested in the snow.

'Asornim,' he was saying. 'Asornim.'

The rope was wet. It seemed to take an age for the lighter to have any effect. Kelso had to stop and shake it. The flame was beginning to turn blue and die before the first strands started to smoulder. But then under the strain they parted fast. The last of them snapped and the sapling whipped back and Kelso tried to support the legs with his free hand but he couldn't manage it and O'Brian's body crashed heavily into the snow.

The reporter struggled to sit up, managed to prop himself on his elbows, then slumped back again. He was still mumbling something. Kelso knelt beside him.

'You're okay. You'll be fine. We'll get you out of here.'

'Asornim.'

I saw him? I saw him.

'Saw who? Who did you see?'

'Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck.'

'Can you bend your leg? Is it broken?' Kelso shuffled on his knees through the snow and began digging with his fingernails at the knot of the noose, embedded in the side of O'Brian's boot.

'Fluke -' O'Brian held up his arm, desperately flexing his fingers. 'Give me a lift here, will you?'

Kelso took his hand and pulled until O'Brian was sitting upright. Then he put his arm round the reporter's broad chest and together they managed to get him up on to his feet. O'Brian stood, leaning heavily against Kelso, putting his weight on his right leg.

'Can you walk?'

'Not sure. Think so.' He hobbled a few steps. 'Just give me a minute.'

He stayed where he was, with his back to Kelso, staring into the trees. When he seemed to be breathing more normally, Kelso said, 'Saw who?'

SAW him, said O'Brian, turning round. His eyes were wild and fearful now, searching the forest behind Kelso's head. Saw the man. Saw him staring out of the fucking trees next to the car. Jesus. Just about jumped out of my fucking skin.

'What do you mean? What man?'

Took one step towards him - hands up, let's be friends, white man he come in peace - and presto! he was gone. I mean, he vanished Never saw him properly again after that.

Heard him, though, and kind of glimpsed him once -moving fast through the forest up ahead, away to the right -sort of a sawn-off figure, like a quarterback, built low to the ground. And quick. So quick you wouldn't believe it. Man, he seemed to move like an ape. Next thing I know, the world's turned upside down.