Robert Harris - Archangel

'He led me on, Fluke, you know that, don't you? Led me right into his fucking trap. He's probably out there now, watching us.'

He was getting his strength back, his recovery speeded by fear.

He hobbled a few steps. When he tried to put his left leg down properly he winced. But he could move it, that was something. It definitely wasn't broken.

'We gotta go. We gotta get out of here.' He bent awkwardly and closed the catches on the camera case.

Kelso needed no persuading. But they would have to go carefully, he said. They had to think. They had blundered into two of his traps already - one on the track and one here - and who could guess how many more there might be. In this snow it was so damned hard to see.

'Maybe,' said Kelso, 'if we try to follow my footprints -'But his tracks were already beginning to be lost beneath the ceaseless soft downpour.

'Who is he, Fluke?' whispered O'Brian, as they went back into the trees. 'I mean, what is he? What is he so goddamned scared of?'

He's his father's son, thought Kelso, that's who he is. He's a forty~fiveyearold paranoid psychopath, if such a thing is possible.

'Oh man,' said O'Brian, 'what was that?'

Kelso stopped.

It wasn't another avalanche of snow from the treetops, that was for sure. It went on too long. A heavy, sustained rustling, somewhere in front of them.

'It's him,' said O'Brian. 'He's moving again. He's trying to head us off.' The noise stopped abruptly and they stood, listening. 'Now what's he doing?'

'Watching us, at a guess.

Again, Kelso strained his eyes into the gloom, but it was hopeless. Dense undergrowth, great patches of shadow, occasionally broken by torrents of snow - he couldn't get a fix on anything, it was so unlike any place he had ever seen. He was really sweating now, despite the cold. His skin was prickling.

That was when the howling started - a deafening, inhuman wail. It took Kelso a couple of seconds to realise it was the car alarm.

Then came two loud gunshots in rapid succession, a pause, and then a third.

Then silence.

AFTERWARDS, Kelso was never sure how long they stood there. He remembered only the immobilising sense of terror:

the paralysis of thought and action that came from the realisation there was nothing they could do. He - whoever he was - knew where they were. He had shot up their car. He had booby-trapped the forest. He could come for them whenever he wanted. Or he could leave them where they were. There was no prospect of rescue from the outside world. He was their absolute master. Unseen. All-seeing. Omnipotent. Mad After a minute or two they risked a whispered conference. The telephone~ said O'Brian, what if he had damaged the Inmarsat telephone? It was their only hope and it was in the back of the Toyota.

Maybe he wouldn't know what a satellite telephone looked like, said Kelso. Maybe if they stayed where they were until dark and then went to retrieve it -Suddenly O'Brian grabbed him hard by the elbow.

A face was looking at them through the trees. Kelso didn't see it at first, it was so perfectly still – so unnaturally, perfectly immobile, it took a moment for his mind to register it, to separate the pieces from the shapes of the forest, to assemble them and declare the composite human: Dark impassive eyes that didn't blink. Black, arched brows. Coarse black hair hanging loose across a leathery forehead. A beard.

There was also a hood made of some kind of brown animal fur.

The apparition coughed. It grunted.

'Com-rades,' it said. The word was slurred, the voice harsh, like a tape being played at too slow a speed.

Kelso could feel the hair stirring on his scalp. 'Aw, Jesus,' said O'Brian, 'Jesusiesusiesus -'

There was another cough and a great gathering of phlegm. A gobbet of yellow spit was ejected into the undergrowth.

'Com-rades, I am a rude fell-ow. I cannot deny it. And I have been out of the way of hu-man com-pany. But there it is. Well then? D'yer want me to shoot yer? Yes?'

He stepped out in front of them - quickly, sharply: he barely disturbed a twig. He was wearing an old army greatcoat - patched, hacked off above the knees and belted with a length of rope - and cavalry boots into which his baggy trousers were stuffed. His hands were bare and huge. In one he carried an old rifle. In the other was the satchel with Anna Safanova's notebook and the papers.

Kelso felt O'Brian's grip tighten on his arm.

'This is the book of which it is spok-en? Yes? And the papers prove i!' The figure leaned towards them, rocking his head this way and that, studying them intently. 'You are the ones, then? You are truly the ones?'

He came closer, peering at them with his dark eyes, and Kelso could smell the stench of his body, sour with stale sweat.

'Or are you, perhaps, spiders?'

He took a pace back and swiftly raised the rifle, aiming it from his waist, his finger on the trigger.

'We are the ones,' said Kelso, quickly.

The man cocked an eyebrow in surprise. 'Imperialists?'

'I am an English comrade. The comrade here is American.'

'Well, well! England and America! And Engels was a Jew!' He laughed, showing black teeth, then spat. 'And yet you have not asked me for proof Why so?'

'We trust you.

"'We trust you."' He laughed again. 'Imperialists! Always sweet words. Sweet words and then they kill you for a kopek. For a kopek! If you were the ones, you would demand proof.'

'We demand proof.'

'I have proof' he said defiantly. He glanced from one man to the other, then lowered the rifle, turned and began moving quickly back towards the trees.

'Now what?' whispered O'Brian.

'God knows.'

'Can we get that rifle off him? Two of us, one of him?'

Kelso stared at him in astonishment. 'Don't even think it.

'Boy, but he's quick, though, isn't he? And completely flicking crazy.' O'Brian gave a nervous giggle. 'Look at him. Now what's he doing?'

But he was doing nothing, merely standing impassively at the edge of the trees, waiting.

THERE didn't seem to be much else for them to do except follow him, which wasn't easy, given his speed across the grounds the roughness of the forest floor, the handicap of O'Brian's injured leg. Kelso carried the camera case. Once or twice they seemed to lose him, but never for long. He must have kept stopping to let them catch up.

After a few minutes they came back out on to the track, but further up, roughly midway between the abandoned Toyota and the empty settlement.

He didn't pause. He led them straight across the snowy track and into the trees on the other side.

This was not good, thought Kelso, as they passed out of the grey light and back into the shadows. Surreptitiously, without slackening pace, he put his hand into his pocket and tore a page out of his yellow notebook, screwed it into a ball and dropped it behind him. He did this every fifty yards or so - hare and hounds: an old school game - only now he was hare and hound.

O'Brian, panting at his back, whispered, 'Nice work.'

They emerged into a small clearing, with a wooden cabin in the centre. He had built this well - and recently, by the look of it - cannibalising the old encampment for his materials. Why he had done this, Kelso never discovered. Perhaps the other place was too full of ghosts. Or, maybe he wanted a spot even more secluded, and more easily defensible. In the silence, Kelso thought he could hear running water and he guessed they must be near the river.

The cabin was made of the familiar grey timber, with one small window and a door to suit his height, set a yard above the ground and approached by four wooden steps. At the base of these he picked up a branch and prodded deep into the snow There was a spurt of white powder as something jumped and snapped. He withdrew the branch. Clamped around the end was a large animal trap, the rusty metal teeth stuck deep into the wood.