his lips to advise the use of a safety line when the lieutenant stopped the young soldier, handing him a lifeline himself. Grudgingly, the young man took the line and cinched it to the thick webbing of his gun belt before snapping the carabineer at the far end of it to the hand rail that ran up the fat curve beside the iron rungs. Then he was off. Pausing only to un-cinch the clip once or twice where the hand rail was secured to the whaleback by uprights like banisters, he raced up at incredible speed. âTake your time, Boris! This isnât a race!â warned Aleks.
âDonât worry, Lieutenant, Iâll be up there before you can spit and swear,â called Boris by way of answer. And his boast seemed well-based, for he was swarming over the outer curve in record time, outlined against the hard blue sky like a mountaineer on an ice-cliff.
âTake care!â called Aleks as his soldier disappeared at last.
â
To fear death is never to be properly alive!
â called Borisâs voice, beginning to sound breathless at last.
As epitaphs went, it was a fitting one â particularly for a soldier. For it seemed that no sooner had he called the mocking words than Boris was tumbling back down the side of the whaleback, face up to the hard blue heaven, etched against it in a capital X shape, arms and legs waving wildly as he fell. The safety line snaked out beside him, a solid, serpentine S against the sky. Becoming a bar-straight stripe against the white curve with terrifying speed as he reached its lower end and the carabiner clip at its upper end caught against the topmost upright of the hand rail.
Boris was still spread-eagled, facing upwards, when the line snapped taut. He had cinched it to his belt buckle. And his unbreakable webbing belt was tight across the small of his back, just above his hips, as though protecting his kidneys.
Because he fell absolutely silently, the rush of his motion and the twang of the tautening line were clearly audible to the stunned men in the pulpit beneath him. As was the
crack!
his spine made as it snapped, broken by the belt as efficiently as a neck being severed by a headsmanâs axe, just at the moment he came level with them all.
Borisâs broken body bounced back up as his headset and goggles came tumbling down. The black line scribbled across the white metal above him, then began to straighten once again as the body fell once more â this time with sufficient force to twist the carabineer open. The line sprang clear of the handrail. Trailing the useless rope like a disconsolate tail, the broken corpse tumbled down on to the outer rail of the pulpit. The outer edge caught it across the chest. Its arms and head flung wildly inboard, as though trying to grab safe hold or call for help. But that was an illusion. Even before anyone could move, let alone try to catch the limp and broken limbs, it slammed back and outwards from the rail, throwing up its hands in surrender, and giving everybody one last glimpse of Borisâs white, stricken face. And the black mark in the middle of his forehead, immediately above the bridge of his nose. Then he was gone.
Aleks and Richard led the rush to the rail and craned to see over the side in a last faint hope that he had somehow survived after all, but there was nothing to see but the eternal royal blue of the deep water stretching like an ocean of ink back towards Rat Island Pass and forward towards Japan.
It is 10 a.m. Moscow time as Ivan Yagula runs out of the Lubyanka exit of the Moscow metro and begins to stride across the square where the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky used to stand, towards the building which housed the grandson of the secret service he had fathered. The square is bustling. Tourists wander all agog, surrounded by the jewels of Russian history.
Militsia
in police uniform and the much maligned GIA traffic cops patrol. The old KGB headquarters building towers dead ahead, but Ivan tends to the
âDonât worry, Lieutenant, Iâll be up there before you can spit and swear,â called Boris by way of answer. And his boast seemed well-based, for he was swarming over the outer curve in record time, outlined against the hard blue sky like a mountaineer on an ice-cliff.
âTake care!â called Aleks as his soldier disappeared at last.
â
To fear death is never to be properly alive!
â called Borisâs voice, beginning to sound breathless at last.
As epitaphs went, it was a fitting one â particularly for a soldier. For it seemed that no sooner had he called the mocking words than Boris was tumbling back down the side of the whaleback, face up to the hard blue heaven, etched against it in a capital X shape, arms and legs waving wildly as he fell. The safety line snaked out beside him, a solid, serpentine S against the sky. Becoming a bar-straight stripe against the white curve with terrifying speed as he reached its lower end and the carabiner clip at its upper end caught against the topmost upright of the hand rail.
Boris was still spread-eagled, facing upwards, when the line snapped taut. He had cinched it to his belt buckle. And his unbreakable webbing belt was tight across the small of his back, just above his hips, as though protecting his kidneys.
Because he fell absolutely silently, the rush of his motion and the twang of the tautening line were clearly audible to the stunned men in the pulpit beneath him. As was the
crack!
his spine made as it snapped, broken by the belt as efficiently as a neck being severed by a headsmanâs axe, just at the moment he came level with them all.
Borisâs broken body bounced back up as his headset and goggles came tumbling down. The black line scribbled across the white metal above him, then began to straighten once again as the body fell once more â this time with sufficient force to twist the carabineer open. The line sprang clear of the handrail. Trailing the useless rope like a disconsolate tail, the broken corpse tumbled down on to the outer rail of the pulpit. The outer edge caught it across the chest. Its arms and head flung wildly inboard, as though trying to grab safe hold or call for help. But that was an illusion. Even before anyone could move, let alone try to catch the limp and broken limbs, it slammed back and outwards from the rail, throwing up its hands in surrender, and giving everybody one last glimpse of Borisâs white, stricken face. And the black mark in the middle of his forehead, immediately above the bridge of his nose. Then he was gone.
Aleks and Richard led the rush to the rail and craned to see over the side in a last faint hope that he had somehow survived after all, but there was nothing to see but the eternal royal blue of the deep water stretching like an ocean of ink back towards Rat Island Pass and forward towards Japan.
It is 10 a.m. Moscow time as Ivan Yagula runs out of the Lubyanka exit of the Moscow metro and begins to stride across the square where the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky used to stand, towards the building which housed the grandson of the secret service he had fathered. The square is bustling. Tourists wander all agog, surrounded by the jewels of Russian history.
Militsia
in police uniform and the much maligned GIA traffic cops patrol. The old KGB headquarters building towers dead ahead, but Ivan tends to the
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