Mountain of the Dead Page 12

  Beard shot to his feet. Zolotaryov leapt to his equally quickly. Then everyone was standing and talking at once

  “Sasha,” Igor said harshly. “Enough. These are our hosts.”

  Ignoring him, Zolotaryov lifted his jacket and removed his hunting knife from the scabbard he always wore around his waist.

  Lyuda gasped. The woodcutters closest to him backed away.

  With a quick, neat flip, Zolotaryov caught the knife by the blade and held the handle toward Beard. “This is a very good knife,” he said. “I believe it would be useful to a man such as yourself.”

  Beard stepped forward and claimed the knife. He seemed to appreciate its weight and balance. “You are giving this to me?” he asked, an eyebrow cocked suspiciously.

  “Only if you deserve it,” Zolotaryov said. He retrieved a red candle from a table and went to the nearest wall. He splashed wax onto a pine log. “You and I, one throw each. If you come closer to the mark, then you can keep the knife. Surely you will have little trouble besting a simple tourist?”

  Beard broke into a genuine smile. “And if you come closer to the mark? What of mine do you want?”

  “An apology to my friend, Igor. For the way you spoke to him.”

  “That’s not necessary—” Igor began.

  “Done!” Beard said. “Who throws first?”

  “You can have that honor.”

  Excited murmurs rippled through the onlookers as Beard and Zolotaryov took their places behind an imaginary line. With little fanfare, Beard launched the knife. It happened so fast one moment he gripped the blade in his hand, the next it protruded from the wall a mere two inches from the splatter of wax. The woodcutters broke out in raucous cheers.

  Beard beamed with pride. “Good luck, tourist.”

  Kolya retrieved the knife and handed it to Zolotaryov. Everyone fell silent once again.

  Zolotaryov extended his arm, cocked his elbow, took aim, and threw the blade.

  It struck the wall with a thud.

  After a pregnant pause, a woodcutter who’d hurried over to compare the results cried, “Beard wins!”

  ⁂

  To celebrate his victory, Beard rounded up several bottles of moonshine, filled mugs for everyone, and toasted to sportsmanship while apologizing to Igor for his “ungentlemanly conduct” and “condescending remarks.” The hikers made an exception to their pact to abstain from alcohol, and they all imbibed freely. Georgy played his mandolin while a woodcutter joined him with a guitar, and soon the night resounded with gaiety and laughter and dancing.

  Some hours later, while Lyuda and Zolotaryov, the last two hikers on their feet, staggered through the snow to their respective cabins, Lyuda told Zolotaryov that he had saved the night, though she felt bad he had lost his knife.

  “Sometimes to win you have to first lose,” he replied, dropping her a knowing wink, and it was only a few minutes later while she lay in bed, about to fall into a drunken sleep, that she realized what that cryptic statement and wink meant.

  The sly wolf had lost the knife-toss on purpose!

  The Dyatlov group leaving Vizhay for Sector 41

  Yevgeny “Beard” Venediktov (left) with fellow woodcutters

  CHAPTER 13

  We spent the next half hour setting up camp on the riverbank some fifty miles shy of the Mountain of the Dead. I’d half expected mountain man Fyodor to construct an igloo to sleep in, but he had a normal tent like the rest of us, which he erected in record time. I was not so competent. It was a bitch to get the twiggy metal pegs into the permafrost. I bent half of them out of shape while hammering the tops with a rock, and once I got enough into the frozen dirt to hold the ground sheet in place, I couldn’t figure out which way the fiberglass support poles needed to go.

  When I finally got the tent upright, I joined everyone around the fire. Disco had collected several stacks of firewood and fed enough to the fire to get it roaring several feet high. I thought this excessive for our needs, but the forest wasn’t in danger of burning down in the middle of winter.

  Fyodor, I realized, had vanished. I didn’t know where he’d wandered off to, and I didn’t care.

  I sorted through the tins of food I’d brought, lining them up in the snow. I said to Disco, “Since you almost died today, I guess you can choose what’s on the menu.”

  “I’m guessing we don’t got no gumbo with turtle eggs?” he said.

  Olivia smiled in that coquettish way she had.

  “What?” Disco said.

  “Wit turtle ag,” she said.

  “Don’t got none of them,” I said, doing my own impersonation of his accent. “De alma-dillions, dey dug dem all up.”

  Olivia said, “That was pretty good.”

  Disco said, “Didn’t sound nothing like me.”

  “So what’s your accent?” she asked him. “French?”

  “Cajun,” he replied.

  “Sounds French to me.”

  “Sounds Cajun to me.”

  “What’s the deal with them? Are they descendants of Arcadia?”

  “When the British took over the area,” I said, rummaging through my rucksack for a can opener, “they kicked the French out of their homes. There’s a word for it.”

  “Le Grand Dérangement,” Vasily said. He was sitting next to me, the fat Dyatlov criminal case file resting on his lap.

  “The Great Displacement,” Disco agreed. “They went south, settling in Louisiana.”

  “So Cajuns are Acadians?” she said.

  “All Cajuns are Acadians, sha. But not all Acadians are Cajuns. You get me?”

  “Are you some kind of writer too?”

  “I’m in the film industry, me.”

  I chuffed. “Film industry?”

  “What’s up, neg?”

  “Modesty doesn’t suit you. Just tell her.”

  “Tell her what?”

  “You’re a movie star. You love that word more than anybody.”

  “It’s two words,” Olivia said.

  “Don’t mind him, sha. Whitey, he’s just jealous I sell more movie tickets than he does books.”

  “So you really are a movie star?”

  “One of the biggest.”

  I chuffed again, this time because of his lack of modesty.

  “Can I have an autograph?”

  Disco flashed a crowing grin. “Sure, Olive. Whitey, you got a pen?”

  I retrieved one from my rucksack and tossed it to him. To Olivia I said, “You know how stupid it is asking someone for an autograph when you don’t know anything about them?”

  Ignoring me, she said, “I don’t have anything to write on. Oh, wait.” She withdrew a paperback book from her bag and handed it to Disco. “Just inside the cover would be great.”

  “Are you serious?” I said, recognizing the book instantly. I’d written it.

  “I don’t have anything else.”

  “You want Disco to autograph my book?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Why do you even have one of my books?”

  “Vasily lent it to me to read.”

  Vasily glanced up from the case file. He’d been studying a geological survey map detailed with annotations, contours, elevations, and other markings. I had the same map on my computer, only on Vasily’s someone, presumably Vasily himself, had scribbled in red on this one where the Dyatlov tent had been located on Kholat Syakhl, as well as nine X’s in the swathe of forest to the south—the location where the hikers’ bodies had been discovered. “I have read all six of your books, Mr. Smith,” he said. “They were engaging and well researched—and the reason I agreed to see you.”

  Disco opened the paperback—the third one I’d written, which was about an infamous serial killer who’d never been caught—and attempted to scribe a note. He frowned, tapped the pen, and tried again. “Ink’s frozen.”

  “Poetic justice,” I said, turning my attention to preparing dinner. I built tomato and cheese sandwiches for each of us, setting th
em on a rock at the edge of the fire to toast. They didn’t take long, and I distributed them while Olivia refilled our mugs with hot water. After we ate and cleaned up, we huddled around the fire in contented silence.

  It was nearly five p.m. The sun had already westered as the earth made its inevitable tilt toward night. The pearlescent sky bled with streaks of pink and peach, backlighting the streaking clouds, delineating their contours, bloating them with splashes of violet and vermillion.

  Just as I was contemplating mentioning the tranquil sight, the sharp, toneless report of a gunshot shattered my peace of mind.

  “Ah,” Vasily said, smiling. “Perhaps we will have some real food now.”

  ⁂

  Fyodor emerged from the forest to the east, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a white jackrabbit dangling by its ears from his hand. He stopped near his dogs, which were barking over each other to win his attention, their tongues lolling, their tails wagging. He skinned the animal with a paring knife, then removed the front legs and offal, tossing them to the canines.

  “Poor bunny,” Olivia said.

  “He’s Bear Grilles,” Disco said, impressed.

  Joining us, Fyodor cut away the silverskin and sinew from the carcass, butchered it further, and burned the head and intestines in the fire. He speared what remained with a stick and held it over the guttering flames, as if roasting marshmallows.

  “You catch everything you eat?” I asked him.

  “Da,” he grunted, not looking at me.

  When the rabbit had turned crispy black in places, Fyodor removed it from the fire and jabbed the end of the stick he was holding into the snow, so it stood like a pole. He produced the little knife and sliced a chunk of meat from the saddle, eating it straight off the blade. He chewed quickly and swallowed hard, grease dripping into his beard. Then he sliced off more chunks of meat and offered them to the rest of us.

  “No thank you,” Olivia said. “We just ate.”

  Disco and Vasily, however, accepted.

  “Try.” Fyodor thrust the knife toward me. “It will make you strong.”

  Ignoring the sarcasm, I plucked some meat from his blade. The flavor and texture was similar to chicken, but at the same time had its own taste, succulent yet gamey.

  “Good?” Fyodor said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “So do you like living way out here, Fyodor?” Olivia asked him. “I mean, it’s pretty isolated.”

  He tore into a hind leg and smacked his lips loudly. “I like,” he said.

  “You don’t get lonely?”

  “Nyet, not lonely.”

  “But don’t you miss having people around?”

  “I have wife,” he said.

  “Oh. I didn’t know—I never saw her at the cabin.”

  “She has family in Ivdel,” Vasily answered. “She likes staying with them.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” I remarked.

  Fyodor looked at me, hard. “I am happy. She is happy. No trouble.”

  “What does she do?” I asked.

  “She is hunter, like me.”

  “You should have invited her on this trip.”

  Fyodor glanced at Vasily, a faint smile on his lips as something subtle passed between them, though I couldn’t say what.

  Olivia picked up on this too and said, “Is she okay, your wife?”

  “Da, she is okay,” Fyodor said.

  “She’s not sick?”

  “Nyet, not sick.”

  “You’re not keeping her captive in a basement somewhere?” I said.

  Fyodor barked a laugh, which loosened some phlegm in his throat. He horked into the snow.

  “Is this a game of twenty questions?” Vasily asked.

  “Is there something you’re not telling us?” I asked.

  “What on earth would we not be telling you, Mr. Smith?”

  I had absolutely no idea. Olivia didn’t seem to either, and we left the discussion at that.

  ⁂

  As the sun dipped farther on the horizon, the sky darkened to bruised reds and virulent purples. The forest’s shadows thickened and propagated, while the furnace-orange fire asserted more prominence, a beacon in the gathering night.

  Fyodor retired to bed first, followed shortly by Disco. I lit up a cigarette and said to Vasily, “You mentioned to me you knew Igor Dyatlov. Did you know Yuri Yudin as well?”

  He nodded. “As well as anyone could know him. He became a recluse after he graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute. But he knew of my work. He visited me at the foundation a few times over the years.”

  “Did he talk about Igor and the others?”

  “Occasionally. Their deaths were very difficult for him. Imagine being the only survivor of such a tragedy, of having to identify your friends’ personal belongings, what belonged to whom, or traveling in the same helicopter transporting their organs, which he did. He had survivor’s guilt.”

  “He must have had a theory as to what happened to them?”

  “Certainly. He was convinced the Soviet government was responsible.”

  I frowned. “But he must have known the lights in the sky were R-7 rockets.”

  “He didn’t think rockets had anything to do with their deaths. He thought the hikers were silenced because they had seen something they were not supposed to have seen.”

  This was a new theory to me. “Such as?”

  Vasily shrugged. “Something obviously important enough for the military to murder nine of its citizens over.”

  I considered this. “Did the Soviet military have any bases in the Northern Urals?”

  “The bulk of their ground forces were stationed well to the west of the Urals, facing the North Atlantic Alliance, but yes, they had sizeable concentrations of troops spread around the rest of the USSR, including the Ural Military District.”

  “But Igor officially obtained a permit to follow the route he took from the Sverdlovsk Tourist Club. Not to mention the area was also regularly used by the Mansi for hunting and herding reindeer. It seems an odd location to conduct secret experiments or whatever. Wouldn’t they choose a properly controlled spot, something like their version of Area 51?”

  “The Northern Urals are remote, and if the hikers got lost and strayed far from their approved course…”

  “They were experienced hikers.”

  “No one in the group had attempted a Category III hike before. Everyone is capable of making mistakes. Then again, maybe they saw something unusual in the distance and went to investigate.”

  “But their bodies were found on Kholat Syakhl.”

  “The NKVD could have moved them there to avoid the disclosure of whatever they were hiding.”

  “And staged their deaths?”

  “The bodies of Rustem and Igor had been turned over after death—this could also mean moved and put down in the wrong position.”

  “What about the entries in the hikers’ diaries? They’d described the route they took themselves.”

  “Faked, doctored. Hence the unreleased second criminal case file. And remember, nobody’s ever determined why Igor decided to set up camp on the exposed slope of a mountain in a blizzard when trees, and the protection they offered, were so close. Not to mention the tent wasn’t even set up correctly. The entrance faced south, into the wind, which would have permitted a draft and made for a very cold night. Same oddity with the labaz. It was constructed in haste, in a snow pit, rather than in a tree beyond the reach of animals, as was standard practice.”

  “And Yuri Yudin really believed all this?”

  “He was convinced of it. He pointed to other inconsistencies as well. Searchers discovered a flask of alcohol inside the tent, but he was adamant to his death they did not take any alcohol with them on the expedition, nor did they obtain any en route. He and Zina, as the acting medics, had complained numerous times about not having any alcohol to use for sterilizing. And all their chocolate was missing.”

  “Their chocolate?” Olivia sai
d. She’d been listening quietly to us but with rapt attention.

  “Skiing is energy intensive, Miss Joosten. Chocolate has more than double the caloric density of carbohydrates or protein. The group had brought a large amount with them, which was rationed to last them until they returned to Vizhay. But none was found in either the tent or the labaz. It had been taken and presumably consumed.”

  I said, “So Yudin believed the Soviets ate the chocolate and forgot some alcohol?”

  “And a puttee, which was found outside the tent.”

  “A puttee?” Olivia said.

  “Part of a military uniform,” Vasily replied. “It’s a long narrow piece of cloth soldiers wound up from their ankle to knee for protection and support. But what particularly convinced Yuri Yudin of military involvement was Lyuda’s missing tongue. He didn’t believe an animal took it because—”

  “It was removed while she was alive.”

  Vasily nodded. “Precisely. On the other hand, Lyuda was the most forthright of the group, outspoken…and her missing tongue could have been the cost of that forthrightness.”

  “What do you think?” I said. “Do you agree with Yudin’s theory?”

  “Oh, we debated back and forth. But, no, I never believed it. For starters, the soldiers didn’t leave any footprints behind. Yuri Yudin insisted they would have erased them, but to accomplish everything they did—construct the ersatz labaz, pitch the tent—there would have been many tracks. To erase them all would be quite difficult. And then there is one indisputable fact: under Rustem Slobodin’s corpse was a death bed. In other words, when Rustem fell and didn’t get up again, the heat from his body melted the snow beneath him. After he died, it froze, creating a kind of bed. This would not be present had he been murdered somewhere else and his body moved to where it was found.”

  I said, “But how could Yuri Yudin believe this theory knowing about this death bed?”

  “He didn’t give in easily, Mr. Smith. He was a stubborn mule of a man who went by his gut, and this was what it told him. He called me a few weeks after we had the debate about the death bed and suggested the Soviets didn’t kill the hikers at the secret site. They brought them to the mountain alive. After they faked the tent and the labaz, they made the hikers undress and sent them into the snow. The first five died from hypothermia. But the others survived in the ravine, so soldiers went in to finish them off.”