Robert Harris - Archangel

There was no food or water in the boat, just a couple of oars, a boathook, the Russian's suitcase, his rifle, and a small tank that smelled as though it was leaking cheap fuel. In the darkness he had to hold his watch up very close to his eyes. It was just after half-past six. He leaned over and said to O'Brian, 'What time did you say the Moscow train left Archangel?'

O'Brian lifted his head long enough from his despair to mutter, 'Ten past eight.'

Kelso twisted round and shouted above the engine and the wind, 'Comrade, could we get to Archangel?' There was no reply. He tapped his watch. 'Could we get to the centre of Archangel in an hour?'

The Russian didn't seem to have heard. His hand was on the tiller and he was staring straight ahead. With his collar turned up and his cap pulled down, it was impossible to make out his expression. Kelso tried shouting again and then gave up. It was a new kind of horror, he thought, to realise that they probably owed their lives to him - that he was now their ally - and that their futures were at the mercy of his unfathomable mind.

THEY were heading roughly north-west and the cold was being hammered into them from all sides - a Siberian wind at their backs, the freezing water beneath their feet, the rushing air on their faces. O'Brian remained monosyllabic, inconsolable. There was a light in the prow, and Kelso found himself concentrating on that - on the shifting yellow path and the roiling water, black and viscous as it began to solidify.

After half an hour the snow resumed, the flakes huge and luminous in the dark, like falling ash. Occasionally something knocked against the hull and Kelso spotted lumps of ice drifting in the current. It was as if winter was clutching at them, determined not to let them go, and Kelso wondered if fear was the reason for the Russian's silence. Killers could be frightened, like anyone else, perhaps more than anyone else. Stalin lived half his life in a state of terror - scared of aeroplanes, scared of visiting the front, never eating food unless it had been tasted for poison, changing his guards, his routes, his beds - when you had murdered so many, you knew how easily death could come. And it could come for them here very easily, he thought. They would run into an ice barrier, the water would freeze behind them, they would be trapped; the ice-crust would be too thin to risk crawling across, and here they would die, covered for decency under a shroud of snow.

He wondered what people would make of it. Margaret -what would she say when she learned her ex-husband's body had been found in a forest nearly a thousand miles from Moscow. And his boys? He cared what they would think: he wouldn't miss much, but he would miss his sons. Perhaps he should try to scrawl them a heroic final note, like Captain Scott in Antarctica: 'These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale -'

He thought that perhaps he didn't fear dying as much as he had expected he would, which surprised him as he had little physical courage and no religious faith. But a man would have to be a rare fool - wouldn't he? - to spend a lifetime studying history without acquiring at least some sense of perspective on his own mortality. Perhaps that was why he'd done it - devoted so many years to writing about the dead. He'd never thought of it that way.

He tried to imagine his obituaries: 'never quite fulfilled his early promise... never published the major work of scholarship of which he was once judged capable ... the bizarre circumstances of his premature death may never be fully explained 'The memorialising articles would all be the same and he would know every one of their grudging, timeserving authors. The Russian opened the throttle wider and Kelso could hear him, muttering to himself.

OTHER half hour passed.

Kelso had his eyes closed and it was O'Brian who saw the lights first. He nudged Kelso and pointed, and after a second or two, Kelso saw them as well - high gantry lights on the chimneys and cranes of the big wood pulp factory on the headland outside the city. Presently more lights began to appear in the darkness on either bank and the night sky ahead became fractionally paler. Perhaps they would make it after all?

His face was frozen. It was hard to speak. He said, 'Got the Archangel map?'

O'Brian turned stiffly. He looked like a white marble statue coming to life and as he moved small slabs of frozen snow cracked and slid off his jacket into the bottom of the boat. He dragged the city plan out of his inside pocket and Kelso shifted forwards off the thin plank that served as a seat, fell on to his hands and knees, and crawled awkwardly to the prow. He held the map to the light. The Dvina bulged as it came into the city, and a pair of islands split it into three channels. They needed to keep to the northern one.

It was a quarter to eight.

He moved back to the stern and managed to shout, 'Comrade!' He made a chopping motion with his hand to starboard. The Russian gave no sign of having understood but a minute later, as the dark mass of the island emerged out of the snow, he steered to the north of it and soon afterwards Kelso made out a rusty buoy and beyond that a line of lights in the sky He cupped his hand to O'Brian's ear. 'The bridge,' he said. O'Brian pulled down his hood and squinted at him. 'The bridge,' repeated Kelso. 'The one we came over this morning.'

He pointed and very quickly they were passing beneath it - a double-bridge, half-rail, half-road: heavy ironwork dangling stalactites of ice, a strong smell of sewage and chemicals, the drumming of vehicles overhead - and when he looked back he could see the headlights of traffic moving slowly through the snow.

The familiar shape of the Harbour Master's building appeared ahead of them on the starboard side, with a jetty stretching out and boats moored to it. They hit an invisible sheet of thick ice and Kelso and O'Brian were bounced forwards. The engine cut out. The Russian restarted it and reversed, then found a channel which must have been cut by a bigger boat earlier in the evening. There was still ice but it was thinner and it splintered as their prow sliced into it. Kelso looked back at the Russian. He was standing now, peering intently at the dark corridor, his hand on the tiller, taking them in. They came alongside the jetty and he put the outboard into reverse again, slowing them, stopping. He cut the motor and leapt nimbly on to the wooden planking, holding a length of rope.

O'BRIAN was out of the boat first, with Kelso after him. They stamped and brushed the snow off themselves and tried to stretch some life back into their frozen limbs. O'Brian started to say something about finding a hotel, maybe, calling the office, but Kelso cut him off.

'No hotel. Are you listening to me? No office. And no bloody story. We're getting out of here.'

They had thirteen minutes to catch the train.

'And him?'

O'Brian nodded to the Russian who was standing quietly, holding his suitcase, watching them. He looked oddly forlorn - vulnerable, even, now that he was out of his home territory. He was obviously expecting to come with them.

'Christ almighty,' muttered Kelso. He had the map open. He didn’t know what to do. 'Let's just go.' He set off along the jetty towards the shore. O'Brian hurried after him.

'You still got the notebook?'

Kelso patted the front of his jacket.

'D'you think he's got a gun?' said O'Brian. He glanced back. 'Shit. He's following us.'

The Russian was trotting about a dozen paces behind them, wary and fearful, like a stray dog. It looked as though he had left his rifle behind in the boat. So what would he be armed with, wondered Kelso? His knife? He pushed his stiff legs forwards as hard as he could.

'But we can't just leave him -'

'Oh yes we bloody can,' said Kelso. He realised O'Brian didn't know about the Norwegian couple, or any of the others. 'I'll explain later. Just believe me - we don't want him anywhere near us.