Chapter 4 Reunion

The next day, Lee's sixth day on Russian soil, his contact Ivan spent waiting around whatever halls of justice the Soviets had in Archangel. He returned at suppertime.

"I have some bad news, Lee," he said, finally calling Lee by his first name.

Lee half-arose off the sofa where he had been catnapping. Sitting up, he asked, "What have you heard? The admiral—?"

"There's been a plane crash. So the authorities here believe. Somewhere in the forests a couple of dozen miles on the other side of the White Sea. On the Kola Peninsula. No one knows yet if there are survivors, or where the wreckage is. A search crew left this morning."

"How do they know for sure the plane crashed?"

"The pilot babbled something over the radio about it. There was another voice, and some scuffling. A few more words about landing the plane in the trees, and then the radio died out. Presumably, the plane crashed."

Lee turned his head away, dealing with this privately. He couldn't believe the admiral was gone, or even could have been gone. Many a time before, Admiral Nelson, a little short of miraculously, had pulled out of some difficulty that could have taken his life, or worse. He had even saved Lee a time or two. Had saved Seaview and her men. Had prevented some world-shattering event. Had stopped war. When Lee turned back, his voice was very low. It almost snagged in his throat. His eyes were dark and steady.

"We're going to the Kola Peninsula, if that's where the admiral was going."

"I hear there were four KGB men with him, besides the pilot and co-pilot of the plane." Ivan didn't miss much. "That's all I know, though, for right now."

Lee slept fitfully that night, wondering about Ivan's ferreting skills. Only by boat—one Ivan would have to scrounge up in some way—could they cross the intervening sea in the time they needed to.

Escape

Yuri and Oleg were taking it easy now that help was on the way, so Nelson took a stroll. They knew he couldn't get far, not in the forest. Still aching from the crash yesterday, he first visited Stepan, who was lying comfortably in a nearby hut. Stepan grasped his hand and with eyes brimming, said, "No one can thank you more than Stepan Drovik."

The admiral had a misty eye, too. Once outside again, he turned up his collar as a freshet of rain fell. Wandering about, he talked with the children, laughing over their dogs and goats. He stopped to watch the making of lye soap, and the quarreling over who would stir with the big ladle. Walking down to a fitful stream near the village, he stood on a large rock and tossed in a stone.

Gazing downstream at the deep-set trees, he knew that without a plane, or a boat, he would not be returning to Archangel, not with the White Sea in between here and there. He'd have to rely on the rescue party Yuri and Oleg radioed for. But if he did, he would still be a prisoner.

Shaking his head at his prospects, he tossed another stone into the water. Turning about, he saw a young girl about fifty yards away in the stream. He watched, fascinated, as she darted from rock to rock, lifting up her pants legs and sometimes splashing in the shallows. Eddies were strong. He was about to turn when he noticed a strange thing. She had clambered back on a rock to jump in again, but this time she slipped. She began to struggle in the water.

Nelson was already running to her. He jumped from rock to rock, leaping into the water when the rocks were farther than a stride apart. He caught up with her just as she was going down a third time, reaching under her arms and lifting her onto one of the larger rocks. She sat, with his help, gasping and soaked in her woolen outfit. Pushing her up on the rock so she could get a firmer grip, he sat down beside her, winded. He brushed her hair back and spoke to her.

"There, now. It's all over. Just a little wet, you see?"

Wiping water out of his eyes, he looked back at the camp, and then at the girl again. She was already on her feet and turning to leave. He stood and helped her to the bank, steadying her for a moment as she prepared to step up on the black earth. She was laughing and crying at the same time.

As she ran back to the huts, he decided what he had to do then. In no time, the girl would bring her folks to the spot where she had been playing. He decided then and there to escape, crossing the stream first. For this, he had to swim. The current was quick, but it was the only way.

He plunged in, the water not as cold as it would be in two months, when the short fall had ended. A medaled swimmer, he crossed the stream ably enough, climbing out into the realm of dark trees. Swiftly he ran out of sight of the village. The dripping trees enveloped him, drawing him towards their midnight-colored center.

In the village, two things happened in short order. First, the girl told her story. Then the villagers, along with Yuri and Oleg, saw that the American had escaped. Tali, the headman, ordered his men to round up food and fire-making tools. Each of the twelve men, in addition to the KGB agents, had his own bag of food, flint and steel and a woolen tarp in case the 'posse' had to stay overnight in the woods.

Dark Woods

The first night he took no rest.

Struggling through the brush, his sweater and shirt snagging and ripping, he thought of Robert Frost's poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Frost had never penned truer words than when he wrote, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep."

In the deep twilight of late summer, the forest, crushing out the light, was as gloomy as the nave of a North Yorkshire cathedral, and he had a long, lonely trek ahead of him, his wounded arm and a slightly twisted spine from the crash his only companions. Besides the rain. A sprinkling or two was falling even then. No one had spoken to the clouds to tell them not to rain so much, he thought jokingly. Time, too, for the nights to begin turning chilly.

Luckily, though once he got a good soaking once when he slipped on the mossy bank of a stream, he didn't twist an ankle or his escape would have been of short duration. One thing he was sure of. He might miss the village, the children, dogs and bleating goats, but he knew he didn't want to be there when the 'rescue' party from Archangel showed up. But now that he was 'free,' what chance did he have? It was maybe twenty miles to the Sea, and then he'd need a boat to cross it.

He had plenty of water with the streams so full, but rocks, brush and trees made sticking to them hard. For food he could only scrounge up a handful of blue-black bilberries. As exhaustion set into his legs, he relied on the cloudy moon for guidance. He kept it over his right shoulder, hoping by so doing he was going south.

But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep. Just like the poet, Nelson knew he had miles to go, but in his case, it wasn't the eternal sleep of death he was speaking of, but finding his way to safety.

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Ivan spent the morning, the seventh day on Russian soil for both the admiral and Lee, asking questions. He returned for lunch and to inform Lee that the plane's wreckage was just beyond the White Sea on the Kola Peninsula. A radio message had come from a village located there. Ivan didn't know its full contents, but he did know it involved Admiral Nelson.

Lee felt some relief in the message, though he didn't know if it had come from the men with the admiral or not. The finding of the wreck dismayed him though, along with his concern about the admiral's safety in Soviet hands. He said as much to Ivan, expressing his gratitude for Ivan's information.

"Do you think he's in the village where the radio is?"

"It's possible." Ivan toyed with his coffee mug and took another bite of sandwich. Both men sat in Lee's hotel room, a room of great dimensions and decorated with faded Old Russian dignity. Lee sat forward to hear every word, abandoning his food on a low table before him. "The Soviets," said Ivan, matter of factly, "are at least headed that way right now. A rescue, if one can call it that, should be soon."

"What's our plan?"

"I didn't know we had one."

"We have to have one!" exclaimed Lee, impatient with the lax interest Ivan showed. "We have to get to the admiral first. Do you know where this village is?"

"What do you propose, Captain? March into the woods and demand the admiral, say we'll deliver him to Moscow or something?"

"That might work. You speak Russian so well and your cover—"

"—is not to be tampered with," Ivan finished for him. "What good would it be, if I lost it?"

"What good is your cover now, if it can't help the admiral?"

"Sometimes, Captain, in a war—and this is war we are fighting with the Soviets—some sacrifices have to be made. It's a kind of 'martial' law."

"Jokes at a time like this," Lee said bitterly. "Well, what do we do?"

"We'll head for the village where the message came from. I think I know it. I also know a boat owner who can get us across the Sea."

"Sea?"

"Remember your map, Captain. The White Sea lies between us and the Kola Peninsula."

"Then when we're there, we hire a car? A truck?"

"The latter. Something sturdy. This is going to be one hell of a trip. I only hope my kidneys are up to it, and yours, too, Lee."

"That bad, eh?"

"There are roads that time forgot. That's bad enough. But one main road leads to a dirt track. The track leads to the village, so I've been able to discover. I had a small map plotted out for me by a man who runs a bar near here. He doesn't suspect anything."

Lee, in spite of himself, in spite of all his nervous fears for the admiral, had to laugh. "I'm an old hand at rough travel, Ivan," he said, taking a sip of coffee again. "Something's always hitting the Seaview."

"We'll have to leave now, Lee, to catch the boat."

Lee downed the rest of his coffee and quickly got his warm knit cap and a jacket. Their long and difficult sea crossing was to begin in less than an hour. It was just before noon when the left Archangel.

An Unexpected Friend

Nelson took a breather as soon as he heard the first birds—dawn. Perched on a rock in the woods, he looked back the way he had come. Rubbing his hand on his torn trousers, he thought about last night's noises. Stealth noises. Sounds of pursuit. Crashing, as if someone was following him, but not quite catching him. A deep voice suddenly resonated out of the woods. Nelson turned sharply at the sound.

Appearing before him, taking slow steps, was Tali, the headman of the village where he had saved the girl. He was one of the largest men Nelson, who was not a tall man, had ever seen. Bigger than Yuri and Oleg put together. Tali came forward, his hands low. He carried no weapon. He didn't have to. Nelson wiped an uneasy hand across his upper lip and stood up. He stepped back a bit. After that, he stood his ground.

"You saved my cousin," said the headman, in a monotone, as if speaking didn't come naturally to this man of the deep woods. The quiet of hundreds of thousands of fir and pine trees and his reindeer pastures better suited him.

The admiral nodded. "She was not able to get out by herself."

"Who are you?"

The woods waited for an answer. The birds had flown, and an uncertain drizzle fell through the trees. A stream gushed by, hitting the rocks like a hammer on so many anvils. The admiral turned that way, the way he would like to have gone. He decided a truthful answer was best.

"I'm an American. I came to Russia to help a friend. Something went wrong, and now I am where I am."

"Who did you come to Russia to help?"

"Vasily Tereschenko. You don't know him."

"I've met him. He's wise," said Tali. "He works for the trees and I hear for the sea as well."

The admiral looked at Tali and began to hope. Was there a chance Tali might help him? In the tired mood of his mind, he had almost decided to play on Tali's feelings when the headman spoke up again, greatly relieving Nelson's mind.

"Where are you going? Archangel? Is that where you can get help?"

Nelson, flustered beyond words, nodded. Suddenly, he felt a sinking in his legs. They could not hold him up any longer. Too tired. Slipping down beside the rock, he leaned on his injured arm and just looked at Tali. He knew that, alone, he could go no farther. Tali would have to help him.

"I need help. I need—" He wiped his brow and felt at a loss for words, as if fatigue had driven them all away. There was no need to speak, he thought. Tali knew everything.

Rushing forward, Tali caught him as he was pitching forward. He held him up while deciding what to do. Lifting him to his feet, Tali walked with him towards a place of refuge he knew, a cabin in the woods. It was well away from the village and the knots of searchers looking for the prisoner.

"Положись на меня. Depend on me." Tali's own words.

Tali and the admiral talked along the way, especially about Vasily Tereschenko. Nelson was now walking on his own. He'd found an extra reserve of strength somewhere. Tali's people, the Nenet, were independent, woods-bred, not of the city, but they understood Vasily's conservation efforts made on behalf of the land and the sea. Near Tali's village, logging companies indiscriminately pulled out trees, leaving whole watersheds bare, a cause of flooding in spring melts.

Standing on a hill, Tali pointed out destroyed acres. Nelson noted how impassioned he became when he described the flooding of the 'lower' villages as he called them. Into one of these, that first afternoon, Tali made his way, intent on getting food for the American. Tali didn't take the admiral with him. Nelson stayed at Tali's small hunting cabin by the stream they were following.

The Village

After a fairly gloomy sea crossing, landing at Ruch'i on the Kola Peninsula, Ivan pulled some more strings and a truck appeared out of nowhere. A kidney-busting drive through boreal hell made Lee thank all of those whales and bombs that had ever rocked the Seaview, all of those undersea monsters that had ever toyed with it, shaking it about. Through the immense woods of the Murmansk Oblast, or region, this road was indeed a hole-infested perdition. Twice, he brought up a question about the front axle. Both times, Ivan grinned over at him and otherwise ignored him.

Ivan knew where he was going. His speed over the summer melted roads proved it. If only for the admiral's sake, Lee didn't wish for him to slow down, but he hoped they'd arrive in one piece to rescue him! Refueling cans in the truck assured the travelers of not having to stop to fill up the tank—and where could they stop? Here was the land of the brown bear and salmon. Not filling stations with snappy attendants in white caps.

Search planes and a single helicopter flew overhead. A jeep or two passed them on the way. Finally, a jeep driver going the opposite way hand-signaled them to stop.

Ivan flashed his identification. Suddenly, there was attention to spare in the jeep. Lee became tangled up listening to a short talk, in Russian, then the jeep drove on. Ivan smirked beside him in the truck and put it in gear again.

"Why did they just go on like that?" Lee was speaking of the jeep.

"I showed them who I was."

"Who are you? I mean, to the Russians, Ivan?"

"A KGB lieutenant."

Lee was dumb with horror. The man he had trusted to rescue the admiral, supposedly an American spy working in the Soviet Union, had of all things a KGB affiliation!

"Are you still one of us?" Lee asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer. "Who are you with?"

"I'm with you. And the U.S. This is my cover and you can see why I don't want it blown. I don't want to be caught as a spy. I've infiltrated some of the highest KGB circles in the Soviet Union. I know things only a few others know."

Lee whistled. "Man, your life insurance must be high!"

"It is. But I don't pay it. The taxpayer does, recall?"

Lee smiled again. He couldn't fathom this man. Here he was, driving a comparatively insignificant truck into miles of trees, trees being scoured by the secret police and the army, and he was cool.

Then it struck Lee. If the jeeps are here, and the planes, was the admiral in the vicinity?

"Do you think the admiral's close by?" he asked.

For once, the unflappable Ivan sobered up. "He might be. But if the planes and jeeps are out, he might have escaped. Out there somewhere—and he's running."

Lee sobered, too, thinking about it. "Do you think he's found some help?"

"He might be getting help from someone, someone who knows the woods and where to hide him."

After another couple of hours on the road, with rain slanting down, Lee and the mysterious Ivan got on a muddy track leading to a small village—not the one from which the radio message had been sent, though. That was still further north. Ivan had some more prowling around—and talking—to do.

A part of Lee wanted the admiral to be at the village they were coming to, even if the KGB men were there. It was bad enough he had been captured, but it was worse having him hunted down in these woods. Lee somehow trusted that Ivan, with his skills and his way with Russian, could whisk the admiral clean away from his captors. It was a feeling he had, that Ivan could do whatever he set his mind to do.

Facts and data meant nothing to Ivan. Lee's traveling companion could lie his way out of a paper bag! What else was the man capable of? He stole a glance once or twice when he could, prizing his eyes off the road. Ivan, who Lee feared more than even the KGB, was too sure of himself, a dark-featured man with a smile curling his lips. It never went away. It was always there. A smile of determination. He knew what he was going to do, even if Lee was unsure about it.

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At the 'lower' village, Tali shared a smoke and some drink with old friends, gazing up when two men, driving up in a truck, came into the hut, startling everyone. One was a dark-haired younger man, and the other, a slightly balding, older man. The dark man's eyes roamed about. He didn't speak much except in whispers, mostly deferring to his companion, but when Tali left the hut, he followed him. Tali was about to leave the village with a bag of food and drink.

"Why do you follow me?" asked the Nenet, wondering if he had a shadow.

Lee Crane fumbled for words. Actually, he didn't know any that he could use. He had barely understood the question. Thankfully, Ivan stepped out of the hut and addressed Tali.

"We'd like you to help us, Tali." Ivan spoke in Russian. Even he could not use the Nenet dialect. "You're so wise to the woods, that we know you can help us."

Tali himself fumbled for an answer. He couldn't take these men to the admiral. He couldn't abandon Nelson to his fate with these outsiders, perhaps even KGB men.

"I don't think so," he said firmly. "I travel alone. If that American is in these woods, I'll find him and return him to you." Saying this, he lied.

"But we'd like to go along. You know the places to look, Tali."

"I'm going now. Good luck in your search."

"Tali, I'm afraid I have to insist," Ivan said, putting out a hand to stop the retreating Russian. "You've seen him, haven't you?" Tali hung his head. "Where is he?"

"Why do you think I know?"

"You carry food and drink out of the village—you make me suspect you. Both of us," said Ivan, indicating Lee by his side.

Tali looked at the younger man again and saw the eagerness in his eye.

"I don't know where he is. If I did, I wouldn't take you to him."

"Why?"

"This one looks like he could be mean. He has fire in his eyes."

"Tali, these men are friends," said Ivan, laughing, hands on hips.

"Who? He and the—the other?"

Ivan nodded, knowing he was taking a risk with his own cover, if Tali chose to go to the 'real' KGB with his information.

"Then he is an American, too."

"I am an American," said Lee, catching on at last. He said, in English, "I know the admiral. Admiral Nelson. He is a friend of mine. Приятель." Friend. One of the few words in Russian Lee was sure of. Ivan translated the rest of Lee's words.

Tali, short for Talinov, Tali's family name, scanned Lee's face to see if he was telling the truth. He lit on an idea to help prove if Lee was indeed the admiral's friend.

"Nelson has an old, healed scar on his right calf. Was it from a bullet or a knife?"

Ivan again translated. Lee thought back. Many adventures had led the two men, apart or together, into dangerous waters that had nothing to do with the sea. The admiral had wounds, garnered through his military years and even now in Seaview's time, but what was the scar on his right calf? Then Lee smiled. He turned to Ivan to translate.

"Tell him, the admiral doesn't have a scar on his right calf. There isn't one on his left, either." He swung on Tali, still talking in English. "You were making that up."

Ivan translated and then laughed at the two men. "Can we go now?" he asked, speaking in Russian, but indicating the woods for Lee's benefit. "We need to find the admiral before the rest of the searchers do. Then I shall try to find Vasily Tereschenko! I'll be lucky if the Soviets haven't moved him to Siberia."

Tali hedged a while longer and then caved in. "I'll take you to him. I only hope you're not lying," he said, fingering a hunting dagger at his waist.

Lee looked obliquely at it and then back up into Tali's face. It was a true face, but one signifying the man, a big man, a very big man, would brook no imposition.

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He waited for Tali to return with food. The cabin—a miniature dacha—was a well-built place, though leaves had blown in through a broken window pane. One chair, a bed, a few empty shelves over a pot-belly stove were the only other things in the cabin besides dead mice. Twilight made the room gloomier. It was rainy and getting colder out. Nelson welcomed the fire Tali had lit for him. The man had a magical way with wood. He could bend it, shape it, light it, and probably even eat it, if necessity made him.

Quietly nodding off, he was awakened by voices in the woods. Gulag entered his mind, the prisons the Soviets ran in Siberia. Gulag. Gulag. The word floated on a red hammer and sickle banner across his inner 'eye.' He leapt off the wooden bed and ran towards a rear window. Gulag. Gulag. Endless work, torture, beet soup, freezing weather. Years and years. Oblivion. Dying by degrees, slow or fast, depending on his luck. Gulag. Gulag.

He raised the sash and opened the shutters. Just slipping through the window, he turned and saw an unfamiliar face. Behind Tali, the new man acted with a certain pride of place, definitely KGB. Such assurity could only mean the stranger was an agent.

"Stop, Nelson!" he cried, in English. That was to be expected. These KGB men could speak better English than many of the actors on the British stage.

Tali, big and silent, stood off to one side in the cabin. Nelson turned to Tali, stepping back from the window.

"So it comes to this," he said, harshly. He felt great anger. It was the second betrayal he had suffered at Russian hands in less than two weeks. "You brought the police."

Lee had just stepped through the door behind Ivan. Separating himself from the glib spy, both of them smiling, he said, "I guess I don't look like the police, do I, Admiral?"

The reunion was brief, but explosive.

Now, with Ivan's help, they had to find a way off this rock and back to Archangel, back to a beach where Lee had stashed a radio to call for pickup. Then, get aboard FS1, piloted by Sharkey. After that, the reunion aboard Seaview. And after that, with Ivan's, or Gerrymander's, help, they had to find Vasily Tereschenko, somehow liberate him, and reunite him with his family. In dealing with Soviet Russia, Ivan had no need to tell them, they were truly dealing with a sleeping bear.

The End?