The Benefactor Index: Chapter Nine - The enemy of the good
Throughout November, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month, where the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
As I am treating this as a writing exercise, anything that I produce will be posted on this blog, one chapter a time. The text will have been edited for spelling and coherence but is otherwise a rough first draft, written at speed. There will be no second draft.
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The Benefactor Index
By Sam Redlark
Prologue - A Sin of Gold
Chapter One - Pochka
Chapter Two - An arrow made of eagle feathers
Chapter Three - The milking of chickens
Chapter Four - Street without drums
Chapter Five - Swans to the snow
Chapter Six - Further from the eye
Chapter Seven - The nephew of vodka
Chapter Eight - The mayor of sidings
Chapter Nine - The enemy of the good
Chapter Ten - If even just one is absent
Chapter Eleven - The friend of an unlucky man
Chapter Twelve - The riches that are in the heart
Chapter Thirteen - What fell off the cart
Epilogue - New-forgotten old
~
Chapter Nine - The enemy of the good
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| image generated by Craiyon |
“It must be freezing,” murmured Orlov as he inched the van forward.
“You are crazy,” said Pestov, who was sitting alongside him. “You will not make it. We will end up just like the bus.”
“See the water only makes it to just above the man's knees,” said Orlov, pointing. “Our engine is much higher than that. It will not be a concern if we go slowly. Trust me, I have done similar in tanks.”
“A police van is not an all-terrain vehicle.”
“I do not understand why it has not frozen,” said Yury, who was seated on the opposite side of the grill. He nervously eyed the floor as if he expected to see water seeping in through the gaps.
“It is contaminated water from the bread factory we passed,” said Orlov. “It must have rushed out in a hurry before the winter could touch it.”
In the back of the van, Garin and Katin were engaged in earnest conversation. Garin's torch was resting on the corner of the list which was unfolded on his lap.
“I know Volkov,” said Katin. “He will tear down your remit, but in the end he will see the utility. It will help if he sees that I am there with you.”
“The others?” said Garin. “Konev is here. I am here, You are here.”
Katin allowed his gaze to journey deeper into the van towards Ibragimov and Yury.
“I know some of the names,” he said. “Leoniv; I don't know him. Muratov, I used to run with him when we were younger...”
“Earlier, you claimed you did not know him,” said Garin.
“I meant that I have not seen him recently. There is no relationship.
“Nazarov – the composer – I know. He is a very difficult man but I can talk to him.
“Zhurov – I am surprised to see his name here. We communicate often but he seldom comes to Moscow. He goes where the heavy machinery is. This address you have for him; it is the ministry building. He does not even keep an office there. But Volkov and Nazarov definitely. They will both be at their work. They never leave.”
Ibragimov leaned forward. He dipped two of his fingers into a small puddle that was creeping in through the bodywork at the rear of the van. He raised his hand to his lips and dabbed the fingers with his tongue.
“It is yeast water from the factory,” he said.
“We are almost clear of it,” reported Orlov. “A few more feet.”
A pair of men, who were smoking on a low wall, watched with interest as the vehicle crept out of the water. As soon as it was clear, the man on the right, grabbed a small stack of rouble notes that were resting under a stone between the two. He stuffed them into black sports holdall next to him. The other man blew out a disconsolate puff of smoke that clung to the frozen air like an old grey rag.
Ahead, the road broadened into a sprawling junction.
“It will be more direct to take the road along the Lantsov Canal,” said Katin.
“Orlov, go along Lantsov,” called Garin.
“Where are we heading?” asked the driver.
“The decommissioned tower at Yozhikov Airport.”
Orlov scanned the way ahead until he had located the landmark. It rose high above the Moscow skyline on a concrete stem. At the top, a partly-lit stack of circular tiers were balanced precariously like a crippled spacecraft.
“The Kapitsa is in port,” he said “We can all work on our tans.”
On his left an attractive blonde woman, wearing a long brown coat, was waiting next to a white car. He slowed down to look at her.
At the Lantsov exit, a woman and a young girl were standing in front of a painted canvas screen that depicted penguins on an ice floe. Writing along the top advertised Arctic cruises and sunbathing opportunities. A number of taxidermied penguins were arranged around the couple.
“There are no penguins in the Arctic,” said Pestov, as they passed alongside. “This creates unrealistic expectations.”
“I have heard they bring some with them on The Kapitsa, and put them out on the ice for the passengers to spot,” said Orlov.
“They would not last more than a few minutes,” said Pestov. “The bears and the seals would pick them off.”
A man wearing a blue anorak looked on as they cruised through a red light.
The Lantsov Canal had been constructed to allow large ships passage between the heart of Russia and the Barents Sea. The enormous white hull of The Kapitsa was tied up at the quayside. The sunlamps on the exterior of cruise ship flared like stars caught in the tiers of the decking. As the van drew closer, night turned to day. On the embankment, across the road from the canal, men and women wearing swimming costumes and dark glasses were reclined on sets of skis that had been planted in the snow at acute angles.
“It is warm” said Orlov.
He raised one hand off the wheel and attempted to open the neck of his coat.
Passengers were disembarking from the liner and crossing the road in search of taxis.
Pestov wound down the window.
“...took two days off our course to make illegal exchange with merchants in the middle of the sea,” complained a man in a fur hat.
Behind him a middle aged couple were struggling under the spread weight of various hi-fi system components.
Loud classical music began to emanate from the liner. Several bright lights suddenly converged on one of the lifeboats that were dangling from the side. Inside the boat, a woman dressed in white stepped into view. She raised the folded pleats of her dress on either side, in a half curtsy, to reveal the pale silhouette of a pant-suit underneath. The music carried on for a few more bars, then she began to sing. The words of the Russian Arctic Anthem peeled away from the white flanks of the cruise ship and were carried through the night-time streets of Moscow on the rich, dark current of her voice.
“That is Vesna Parshin,” said Orlov.
He slowed the van.
“My mother loves her music. She claims a connection with her mother.”
“Volkov is our primary concern,” said Garin, from the back of the van. “If we come through this, I will pull some strings and arrange a private performance for your mother.”
~
They approached Yozhikov from the north entrance. Over the previous two decades, the footprint of the airport had elongated towards the south-west as it modernised, leaving, at the opposite end, a trail of derelict buildings and fractured runways. The dilapidated relic of the old control tower was perched atop a rounded column of smooth concrete several hundred feet high. The bottommost tier was shaped like a flying saucer with a curving base and windows that encircled the space just below the overhang of the roof. Above it there were four taller cylindrical storeys that grew progressively narrower. Various radio masts and dishes bristled and bloomed from different parts of the structure. The exterior walls had originally been painted a shade pale green while the roofs had once been a bold shade of red. Over the years the paint had begun to peel off in enormous flakes, adding to the dishevelled appearance of the building.
Garin had seen a report predicting the causalities and damage to infrastructure that would result if the tower were to topple over. A sealed addendum, labelled Top Secret, had revealed the preferred direction that the building would be encouraged to fall towards, if a collapse was felt to be imminent. At a meeting he attended, an engineer had assured them that, while non-essential parts did commonly fall off the structure, its core integrity remained intact.
“The Chief of the Design Bureau of Standardisation makes his home there,” the man had said, as if this alone was proof was of the building's safety.
“Volkov!” another man had muttered. “He believes he can dictate terms to the law of gravity.”
~
They parked far away from the looming nighttime shadow of the tower. Lights blazed in one of the upper storeys. Their own shadows stretched across the piebald snow as they made their way towards it. In the base they found the seemingly fossilised remains of baggage carousel, its overlapping rubber panels caked in grey dust. A piece of the concrete ceiling had fallen in, creating a monotone mosaic of itself on the barren floor.
In an adjacent lobby, a cylindrical boiler, made from grey metal, lay on its side wedged between a short pair of dormant escalators. Orlov stood on tiptoes and attempted to place his hand on top of it, but he could not quite reach. His fingers brushed the white salt stains that grazed the unpolished surface.
Soon after they located the crooked grey stairwell that ascended the core of the stem, to the tower hundreds of feet above their heads.
“Pavel, If you expect me to live long enough to harvest one of my kidneys, then I implore you, do not make me climb those stairs,” pleaded Konev
“My knees may also not be the equal of the climb,” said Yury, dourly.
“There is an elevator,” said Katin, He depressed a button opening the metal doors, then peered inside. “It would appear to be in working order.”
Garin glanced in the direction of Orlov and Pestov.
“It will not be the stupidest thing we have done tonight,” said Orlov.
~
The silver doors to the elevator juddered open. The saucer section of the tower had been completely gutted. Even the flooring had been stripped out, leaving bare concrete, strewn with small fragments of the crumbling ceiling. A lone pigeon flapped between the stone rafters.
“If it will not come down, do not try to shoot it,” said Garin to Orlov.
The climbed a narrow concrete staircase to the floor above – a round, open plan workshop. Banks of strip lighting illuminated the room. A space that been cleared in the middle of the floor, in-between the untidy desks, was occupied by eight drawing boards mounted on easels, arranged in two rows of four. The paper on each of the boards was covered with jottings and improvised diagrams. Already several sheets had been pulled back to allow space for new ideas.
At the side of the room farthest from the staircase, a dark-haired, middle-aged man, smartly dressed in a black suit and tie was seated behind an enormous desk that seemed to have been cobbled together from other pieces of wooden furniture. The surface was strewn with piles of tools, jars filled with pens and pencils, dismembered electrical equipment, tubes and aerosols of glues, lubricants and paints, rubber bands and other clutter, that taken together formed a collage of an overly-active mind.
The man was already rising to his feet as Orlov and Pestov entered the room with their guns drawn. A solitary medal, pinned to his chest, above his heart, winked under the lights.
He regarded the armed interlopers with disinterest. Turning his attention towards Ibragimov, he remarked: “I had long thought that you were dead.”
“You know this man?” enquired Garin.
“He is more than a father to me,” said Volkov.
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| image generated by Craiyon |
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