Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson Read Free Book Online

the person who could do it.
    Several interdepartmental discussions produced a fourth and final conclusion.
    A person who might get into a security area of Siberia was a Siberian person. More specifically a Siberian native person: non-caucasian, mongoloid, Asiatic.
    There was nobody like that on any of the Slav delegations, or on the Russian either. It left open some other kinds of delegation; but there was no certainty that this man was a delegate at all.
    Hendricks decided on a wider sweep.
    He ordered a check on every academic who had been in Oxford at the time of the conference.
    This assignment, a large one, was methodically broken down. The period in question had been a Long Vacation, which let out the students and their normal mentors. The academic had to be of a certain age and type. His age, not more than the twenties at the time, suggested a well-qualified graduate or a research fellow. His type, Asiatic, suggested certain characteristics, perhaps even a name, that ought to stand out in some way.
    The inquiry was thoroughly handled, as thoroughly as all the others had been, and produced results that looked just as barren. Some colleges had records of guest scholars of seventeen years before, but most did not. Halls of residence and bursars’ accounts helped fill up gaps; but even when the name came up it attracted no attention and merely joined the others on the list that went to Hendricks.
    From Hendricks it attracted immediate attention, and a series of howling and uncharacteristic curses.
    He already had a stout file on this man.
    He knew he should have thought of him long before; and he also knew that not much would be forthcoming from him.
    He was brooding on the matter when Lazenby’s statement turned up, and he nodded wearily over it. It was a jumbled recollection of a jaunt Lazenby had shared, time and location unknown, with Rogachev and a young Russian of Asiatic appearance who spoke a transatlantic kind of English.
    Hendricks was now in a position to supply both time and location, as well as the name of the young man, and a pretty ample biography into the bargain. But still he hesitated.
    He could trace the wild young man himself. This would take time. But time was not something he was short of. Ships were now off the Siberian run and would not be back again before next June. Until then no message could come from Rogachev anyway.
    He came to his decision, and on the following day set the new search in motion.
    That was on 30 September, and two days later, on 2 October, another message arrived from Rogachev.

6
    Miss Sonntag, at work with her paper knife, looked at the envelope, and her mouth fell open. Then she ran in to Lazenby.
    He had a look at it, and at Miss Sonntag, and at the envelope again.
    PROF G F LAZENBY
    OXFORD
    ENGLAND
    After this they looked at each other.
       
    The new message was more robust in tone.
    Go up, thou baldhead/ How is it that
    ye do not understand?/ I want that man/
    that speaketh the tongues of the
    families of the north/ him that pisseth
    against the wall/ As to my abode/ it
    was written plainly in the beginning/
    I dwell in/ dark waters/ Shew him all my
    words/ that the people shall no more/ sit
    in darkness/ nor like the blind/ stumble
    at noonday/ Make speed/ Baldhead. 
    ‘This one does ring a bell, Prof?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, it does,’ Lazenby said.
    ‘We thought that. But there are some points here of even more interest than the message.’
    These points were the postmark and the address. The postmark had been stamped at Ijmuiden, Nederland, and the address had been written with a Japanese ballpoint – its ink Japanese; of a formulation used only in Japan; for Japanese script; not exported. The analysis had been made after discovery that the only ship in from the Arctic at Ijmuiden had been Japanese. In Gothenburg, at the time of the earlier message, there had also been a Japanese ship. On both messages the fingerprints were the same, and in both cases the ship was