He wrapped the razor and my notes in brown paper and tied it with string. “You’ll have to leave the briefcase. Do you have everything?”
I had transferred things out of my old pockets. I said, “Everything I need, yes.”
“We might have made it a suitcase but a man with a package draws less attention.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“Let’s hope we have.”
Pudovkin wore black stovepipe boots up to his knees. Cord trousers and a heavy short coat and a soft motoring cap. He looked like a truck driver; he was supposed to. “Let’s go down,” he said, and we left the chamber. I found I was moving with a prowler’s predatory silence, my heart pounding, watching the deaf informer’s door; we slipped past it and went down the stairs into Bukov’s flat.
The lights were out and it was dim, the windows defined by dreary winter twilight. Pudovkin shut the door and produced an automatic pistol-one of those flat dull nine-millimeter guns stamped out in a Czech works. He popped the clip into his hand and worked the action with the air of a man who knew his weapons. When he put it away again I saw that he carried it in his belt, without a holster. That was according to the rules: it’s not impossible to ditch a gun but you can’t hide a holster when it’s attached to your belt.
Bukov was an amorphous shape in the poor light. “It’s time.”
I said, “I don’t know how to-”
“Never mind that. You’d better come over here.”
He led us to the front window and pointed across the way. I had not been out of the cell in three full days and the heavy lie of snow on the square took me by surprise. It was not snowing at the moment. The shadow was where he had to be, on the right-hand side of the square just inside the window of a cafe, at a table near the door with money by his wine so he could leave instantly without arousing the waiter’s ire.
Bukov said, “He wouldn’t recognize you as you are now, but he knows everyone who’s entered this building. He didn’t see you enter it. He can’t see you leave it.”
“Is there a back door?”
“No. There are windows.”
“All right,” I said.
“Pudovkin will have to leave alone by the front door-the man saw him come in. You understand?”
I turned to Pudovkin. “Where do I meet you then?”
“Remember where you parked Timoshenko’s car?”
“Of course.”
“That street. Fifty meters farther along it. You’ll find an old grey lorry standing there. Get in behind the wheel and wait for me.”
Bukov said, “If you’re challenged you’re just waiting to pick up a friend. The cargo is wool coats, the destination is Kerch. If anyone wants to see the shipping documents they’re in the glove box with the keys to the truck.”
“That gun you offered me when I first came. Maybe I’ll take it now.”
“No,” Bukov said. “We can’t have shooting here.”
The three of us went down to the ground floor. I shifted my grip on the paper-wrapped parcel; my palms were slick. Pudovkin stopped at the foot of the stairs and watched Bukov guide me to the rear of the corridor; the sill was low but the building was constructed on a slope so that it was a good ten-foot drop to the bank of snow beneath.
Bukov frowned. “Wait here a moment.” Then he left me; I saw him circle past Pudovkin and then his heavy shoes thudded the stairs going up. I bit my lip; what if someone should enter just now, or pop out of a doorway along the hall?
Bukov came trotting down with a high pair of rubber overshoes. “You don’t want to ruin your shoes, do you.”
“Are these your own?”
“I’ll get another pair. Put them on.”
“Thank you.”
I balanced myself against the window jamb and tugged them on over my shoes. Bukov slid the window open. “All right?”
“I’ve been privileged to know you,” I told him. “Isn’t there anything I can-”
“Just don’t lead them back to me if you can help it. They know what I am but they think if they leave me free to operate I’ll lead them to others. I won’t, but they don’t know that.”
“They won’t leave you alone forever.”
“I know that. But in the meantime we’re getting a great many people out. I’ll have no regrets when they come-I just don’t want to hurry them.”
“I understand.”
I thought he smiled; in the dimness it was hard to be sure. He offered his hand. His grip was firm and quick. “Give Nikki my love.”
“I-”
But he urged me out the window. I hung by my fingers and let myself drop. The snow cushioned the fall but I lost my balance nonetheless and had to brush myself off; when I looked up the window was sliding shut.
The truck swayed when Pudovkin put his weight on the running board and swung himself into the cab. The door chunked shut and he reached across my knee into the glove box for the keys. “I’m sorry it took so long. I had to throw him off the scent, that fellow in the cafe.”
“Did he try to follow you?”
“No, but he knows who I am. I couldn’t let him see me come this way. I had to come the long way round.”
The dusk had turned to night. He ground the starter and the engine caught; I heard the ratchet of the handbrake.
The truck had been driven to pieces. We rattled around the village and went bucking and pitching down the country lanes, snarling through the gears. He said, “We’re a little heavy. It really is a cargo of coats. I’m afraid it won’t be a fast journey-we’ll be lucky to make the coast by dawn. I’ve got to stay on the back roads.”
“Then we’ll be crossing the straits by daylight.”
“No, it’s better to lay over and cross by night. There’s a house we’ll use.”
It began to snow again. Through the batting windshield wipers I saw the forests slide past. We snored and growled up the low hills, the truck shuddering with the strain. There are thick woods inland on the peninsula; at the crests the wind has made the trees hunchbacked. The wind of our approach stirred the trees and pillows of snow fell with plopping crunches, now and then on our hood; several times we had to stop and get out to clean it off. Pudovkin said, “I have tire chains but I hope we won’t need them.” His voice was thin against the racket.
There was nothing for me to do. He had to concentrate on his driving; the roads were narrow and steeply treacherous. I tried to doze. Into my inert grey weariness fell the occasional pebble of apprehension and retrospection: I was a fool, there was no way out of this, I’d been unforgivably callous in involving Bukov and his people in this because it meant I was no longer risking merely my own life but theirs as well.
We ran on into the snowy night along the narrow hill tracks. We crossed above a lake, faintly shining in the night-the ice on it gleamed where the wind had cleared the snow from it. The truck was not insulated and had a poor heater and its window seals were all gone; the wind bit my ears.
During the past three and a half days I had numbed myself with introspective rationalizing and fantasizing. At times I’d had to fight an overwhelming yearning for Nikki, whom I had tried to put out of my thoughts until then; I could see her clearly, her movements and poses and faces-I remembered the way her hair had looked against the pillow; I could hear the cadences of her voice. She was personal and specific in my vision. The nerve ends of my hands and lips remembered with exquisite agony the sweet warm textures of her body. Now Bukov’s parting comment brought it all back again and I drowsed fitfully in the lurching truck with Nikki on my mind, wanting her and blaming her, loving and hating, and now wondering: would I seek her out, once I was out of the Soviets’ reach? Would we meet-and how would it go? Did I have anything to say to her beyond accusations?
My anguish was the torture of questions without answers. The faces moved across the screen of my eyelids: MacIver. Haim Tippelskirch. Zandor. Timoshenko. Karl Ritter. Vassily Bukov. And Nikki. The faces I had never
