Kolchak's Gold

“The wind will do it for us.”

We jingled slowly south and in a little while daylight began to flood across the ridges, scattering the shadows.

I tried to navigate but the map of Georgia and the Caucasus was not of the finest scale and did not show all the back roads; often we reached intersections not indicated by the map and had to guess. We were trying to avoid the seaside resorts but at the same time we could not afford to take the main inland routes because they were summer roads high up in the Caucasus and if you got stuck in snowdrifts up there they would be carrying your body out in the spring. The late snowfall had been a bad break all around; it restricted our choices of routes, it slowed our travel and it left tracks.

On the stretches between resort towns we tried to get down onto the main roads because they were plowed clear; along here we removed the chains and Pudovkin drove too fast for the roads, the tires leaving black smears on the oil-smudged curves, the beetle ru

On the northern approaches to Tuapse we stopped at a government pump to fill the tank and put oil in the crankcase and Pudovkin asked the attendant about the weather to the south. There had been less snow down there, the man said; he heard Sochi was completely snow-free.

We had come only a bit better than a hundred miles since dawn and it was already late afternoon. We’d last eaten at midnight—food we’d carried ashore from the boat—and we were famished; we bought bread and ti

“I’ll take another turn at the wheel, then.”

He’d been reluctant to let me drive before; he was still reluctant—he loved to drive, particularly on bad roads. “I should have been a taxi driver or a racer,” he said. “Isn’t it childish?”

We ate on the move and then he spread the map across his knees and directed me to the left up a steep pitted asphalt street; we had to get around Tuapse because at this time of year the police would notice any strange car in the deserted streets.

The detour took us well back into the hills before we could turn south again and the snow was deep along the shoulders; we had to put the chains on again.

Darkness fell and there was no moon—the clouds were still with us. We crawled because it was hard to see: the line of definition was poor between what was road and what was not road. The country there is jagged and humpy and the hills are studded with low scattered trees. Down below along the coast it is semitropical with palmlike vegetation and white-roofed seaside houses but these hills, footing against the mysterious Caucasian Mountains, are as primitive as something in Nepal. It is twenty miles between habitations and there are no towns; the roads at best are farm-truck tracks and our game antique beetle had as much trouble as it could handle.

Go a little higher in the mountains to the left and you would find yourself in valleys inhabited by tribes of prehistoric persuasion among whom the people grow to fantastic ages and technology is unknown. The hold of Soviet civilization is precarious on these fringes and nonexistent in the interior: like the role of colonial forts on an African frontier in the eighteen fifties. Bukov had elected this route for that very reason but it didn’t make the journey any less alarming: only the fragile heartbeat of our antique Volkswagen kept us alive. Chilled beyond the poor heater’s capacity we labored through the hills and I think privately both of us prayed, each in his own way, although I doubt Pudovkin was any more religious than I.

In predawn murk we reached a signpost and found we were several miles southeast of where we thought we were. We had to backtrack to an intersection and turn west toward the coast to avoid being forced up into impassable mountains.

We were beyond Sochi now, somewhere above Sukhumi, and there was no alternative but to drop straight along to the main coast highway and follow it south.

“There is a checkpoint below Sukhumi. Too many arms smugglers trying to sell in Turkey. They have deliberately made this bottleneck—everyone who goes south must go through there. The alternate back roads have been closed off by explosives.”

“Then we’ll just have to find out if our papers are good enough.”

“I’m not concerned about the papers. But we’ve left possible leaks behind. Leonid, the one the police arrested. The man who has boats—the one Boris doesn’t trust. Or that one who took us across the straits. The checkpoint may have been warned.”

“Why don’t you turn back, then. I’ll go on through alone. If they take me at least you’ll have time to get out of the country yourself.”

He said, “I don’t wish to leave. It’s my home.”

Ten minutes later he broke the silence again. “I had better tell you the plan in any case. You will have to do the last of it yourself since I am not going to cross the border with you.”

“I thought I was just going to walk across through the fence.”

“That used to be possible. But on account of the arms smuggling they have mined the border.”

I took my eyes off the road to glance at him. Bukov hadn’t said anything about mines. I suppose he’d seen no point in alarming me more.

“Batumi is the Soviet border city. A village, really. Just before you reach it there is a fork, and we will take the Armenian route to the left, toward Leninakan. At one point about five kilometers south of Batumi the road skirts very close to the fence. There are guard towers—machine guns and searchlights. About one kilometer past that point, I will let you out of the car and you will be on your own. You will be about five hundred meters from the fence. There are a good many trees but not close together enough to be a forest. There is a metal culvert in the road which marks our spot. If you walk toward the fence from that culvert you will find a narrow foot track marked by four trees which grow along an exactly straight line. You have to be looking at them from the culvert to see the line because from any other angle they are just four trees among many. If you walk that straight line, keeping just to the left of the trees—within arm’s length—you will not step on a mine. It is a route we have used several times. We had to dig up two mines and de-activate them, and replace them.

“Now the time to cross is at dusk, because the searchlights are least effective and daylight is poor. If you move slowly and watch the lights you’ll get through. The nearest searchlight tower is about two hundred meters from the point where you will cross. The fence itself is nothing, a few strands of barbed wire like a cattle fence, but the top strand is electrified with a very high charge. You must go through between the bottom strand and the middle one. Then you are in Turk territory but you must cross about twenty meters of open ground into the trees beyond. You are safe once inside those trees. You understand all this? I’ll give it to you again before we get there, but I want you to be making yourself ready in your mind. The trick of survival is to move slowly. Slowly. Every muscle screams to run but you must remember to be slow. All right?”

“Yes. I’ll remember.” My pulse thudded just thinking about it.

“There is a goat track up the river valley on the Turk side. Follow that path to the left about three kilometers and you will come to a road. A dirt road, but it has a fair amount of traffic from the coast. From there you should be able to get a lift into the town of Trabzon, only be sure it is not a Turk army vehicle you try to flag down. You have the Turkish visa among your new papers?”

“Yes.”