Robert Harris - Archangel

They almost ran off the jetty and came into the big bus park in front of the Harbour Master's building - a bleak expanse of snow, a few sorrowful orange sodium lights catching the whirling flakes, nobody else about. Kelso struck north, slithering on the ice, holding on to the map. The station was at least a mile away and they were never going to make it in time, not on foot. He looked around. A ubiquitous, boxy, sand-coloured Lada, spattered with mud and grit, was emerging slowly from the street to their right, and Kelso ran towards it, flapping his arms.

In the Russian provinces, every car is a potential taxi, most drivers willing to hire themselves out on the spur of the moment, and this one was no exception. He swerved towards them, throwing up a fountain of dirty snow, and even as he pulled up he was winding down his window. He looked respectable enough, muffled against the cold - a schoolteacher, maybe, a clerk. Weak eyes blinked at them through thick-framed spectacles. 'Going to the concert hall?'

'Do us a favour, citizen, and take us to the railway station,' said Kelso. 'Ten dollars US if we catch the Moscow train.' He opened the passenger door without waiting for an answer and tipped forward the seat, shoving O'Brian into the back, and suddenly he saw that this was their chance, because the Russian, caught by surprise, had fallen behind slightly, and was making heavy progress through the snow with his case.

'Comrade!' he shouted.

Kelso didn't hesitate. He rammed back the seat and got in, slamming the door.

'Don't you want -' began the driver, looking in his mirror.

'No,' said Kelso. 'Go.'

The Lada skidded away and he turned to look back. The Russian had set down his case and was staring after them, seemingly bewildered, a lost figure in the widening vista of the alien city. He dwindled and disappeared into the night and snow.

'Can't help but feel sorry for the poor bastard,' said O'Brian, but Kelso's only emotion was relief.

"'Gratitude,"' he said, quoting Stalin, "'is a dog's disease."'

THE Archangel railway station was at the northern edge of a big square, directly opposite a huddle of apartment blocks and wind-blasted birch trees. O'Brian threw a $10 bill in the direction of the driver and they sprinted into the gloomy terminal. Seven wood-fronted ticket kiosks with net curtains, five of them closed, a long queue outside the two that were open, a baby crying. Students, backpackers, soldiers, people of all ages and races, families with their homemade luggage - huge cardboard boxes trussed with string - children running everywhere, sliding on the dirty, melted snow.

O'Brian pushed his way to the front of the nearest line, spraying dollars, playing the westerner: 'Sorry, lady. Excuse me. There you go. Sorry. Gotta catch this train -'

Kelso had an impression of a fortune changing hands -three hundred, four hundred dollars, murmurs from the people standing round - and then, a minute later, O'Brian was striding back through the crowd, waving a pair of tickets, and they ran up the stairs to the platform.

If they were going to be stopped then this would be the place. At least a dozen militia men were standing around, all of them young, all with their caps pushed back like Imperial Army privates off to war in 1914. They stared at Kelso and O'Brian as they hurried through the terminal, but it was no more than the frank stare that all foreigners received up here. They made no move to detain them.

No alert had been issued. Whoever is running this show, thought Kelso, as they came back out into the open air, must be convinced we're already dead -Doors were being closed all the way along the great train; it must have been a quarter of a mile long. Low yellow lighting, snow falling, lovers embracing, army officers hurrying up and down with their cheap briefcases - he felt they had stepped back seventy years into some revolutionary tableau. Even the giant locomotive still had the hammer and sickle welded to its side. They found their carriage, three cars back from the engine, and Kelso held the door open while O'Brian darted across the platform to one of the babushkas selling food for the journey. She had a wart on her cheek the size of a walnut. He was still stuffing his pockets as the whistle blew.

The train pulled away so slowly it was hard at first to tell it was moving. People walked alongside it down the platform, heads bent into the snow, waving handkerchiefs. Others were holding hands through the open windows. Kelso had a sudden image of Anna Safanova here, almost fifty years ago - 'I kiss mamas dear cheeks, farewell to her, farewell to childhood'- and the full sadness and the pity of it came home to him for the first time. The people ambling along the platform began to jog and then to run. He stretched out his hand and pulled O'Brian aboard. The train lurched forwards. The station disappeared.

THEY SWAYED ALONG the narrow, blue-carpeted corridor until they found their compartment - one of eight, about halfway down the carriage. O'Brian pulled back the sliding wooden door and they lurched inside.

It was not too bad. A thousand roubles per head in 'soft' class bought two dusty, crimson banquettes facing one another, a white nylon sheet, a rolled mattress and a pillow neatly folded on each; a lot of laminated, imitation-wood panelling; green-shaded reading lamps; a little fold-up table; privacy.

Through the window they could see the spars of the iron bridge clicking past but once they were across the river there was nothing visible in the snowstorm except their own reflections staring back at them - haggard, soaking, unshaven. O'Brian drew the yellow curtains, unfastened the table and laid out their food - a grubby loaf, some kind of dried fish, a sausage, tea-bags - while Kelso went in search of hot water.

A blackened samovar stood at the far end of the corridor, opposite the cubicle of the carriage's female attendant, their provodnik~ a hefty, unsmiling woman, like a camp guard in her grey-blue uniform. She had rigged up a little mirror so she could keep an eye on everyone without stirring from her stool. He could see her watching him as he stopped to study the timetable that was fixed to the wall. They had a journey of more than twenty hours ahead of them, and thirteen stops, not counting Moscow, which they would reach just after four in the afternoon.

Twenty hours.

What were their chances of lasting that long? He tried to calculate. By mid-morning at the latest, Moscow would' know that the operation in the forest had been bungled. Then they would be bound to stop the only train out of Archangel and search it. Perhaps he and O'Brian would be wiser to get off at one of these earlier stops - Sokol, maybe, which they would reach at 7 a.m., or, better still, Vologda (Vologda was a big town) - get off the train at Vologda, get to a hotel, call the American Embassy -He heard a sliding door open behind him and a businessman in a smartly cut blue suit came out of his compartment and went in to the lavatory. His neatness made Kelso aware of his own bizarre appearance - heavy waterproof jacket, rubber boots - and he hurried on down the corridor. It would be best to stay out of sight as much as possible. He begged a couple of plastic cups off the grim-faced guard, filled them with scalding water, and made his way unsteadily back to their sleeping-berth.

THEY sat opposite one another, chewing steadily on the dry, stale food.

Kelso said he thought they should get off the train early.

'Why?'

'Because I don't think we should risk being picked up. Not before people know where we are.

O'Brian bit off a piece of bread and considered this.

'So you really think - back there in the forest - they'd've shot us?'

'Yes I do.'

O'Brian had apparently forgotten his earlier panic. He began to argue but Kelso cut him off impatiently. 'Think about it for a minute. Think how easy it could have been. All the Russians would have had to say is that some maniac took us hostage in the woods and they sent in the special forces to rescue us. They could have made it look as though he'd murdered us.