Skeleton Key

had rained recently. The asphalt was wet and greasy, with pools of dirty water all around. There were no other planes in sight. In fact, the airport didn‟t seem to be in use at all. A few lights burned, dull yellow, behind the glass. But there were no people. The single arrivals door was locked and chained as if the airport had given up all hope of anyone ever actually coming there.
    They were expected. Three army trucks and a mud-streaked saloon car were waiting. A row of men stood to attention, dressed in khaki uniforms with black belts and boots almost like Wellingtons rising to their calves. Each one of them carried a machine-gun on a strap across his chest. Their commander, wearing the same uniform as Sarov, stepped forward and saluted. He and Sarov shook hands, then embraced. They spoke for a few minutes. Then the commander snapped an order. Two of his men ran to the plane and began to unload the silver chest that was Sarov‟s nuclear bomb. Alex watched as it was taken out of the back and loaded into one of the trucks. The soldiers were well disciplined. Here was enough power to destroy a continent, but not one head turned as it was carried past.
    With the bomb in place, the soldiers swivelled round and, marching in time, approached the two remaining trucks and climbed in. His hands cuffed together now, Alex was bundled into the front seat of one, next to the driver. Nobody looked at him. Nobody seemed too curious about who he was. Sarov must have radioed ahead and warned them that he would be there. He examined the man driving the truck. He was tough and clean-shaven with clear blue eyes. There was no expression on his face. A professional soldier. Alex turned and looked out of the window in time to see Sarov and Conrad getting into the car.
    They set off. There really was nothing outside the airport, just a flat, empty landscape where even the trees managed to be stunted and dull. Alex shivered and tried to cross his hands to rub warmth into his shoulders. There was a clink from the handcuffs and the driver glanced at him angrily.
    They drove for about forty minutes down a road pitted with holes. A few buildings, modern and characterless, crept up on them and suddenly they were in Murmansk itself. Was it night or day?
    The sky was still light but the streetlamps were on. There were people on the pavements but they didn‟t seem to be going anywhere, just drifting along like sleepwalkers. Nobody looked at them as they followed a single road, four lanes wide. This was a boulevard in the centre of the city.
    It was absolutely straight and seemed to go nowhere, with blank, uninteresting buildings on either side. Murmansk was made up of row after row of almost identical apartment blocks like so many match boxes. There didn‟t seem to be any cinemas, restaurants, shops—anything that would make life worth living.
    There were no suburbs. The city just stopped and suddenly they were driving through empty tundra, heading for a horizon that had nothing at all to offer. They were fourteen hundred kilometres from the North Pole and there was nothing here. People with no life and a sun without a shred of warmth. Alex thought of the journey he had made. From Wimbledon to Cornwall.
    Then London, Miami and Skeleton Key. And finally here. Was it to be finally? What a horrible place to finish his life. He really had come to the end of the world.
    There were no other cars on the road and no street signs. Alex stopped even trying to see where they were going. After another thirty minutes they began to slow down, then turned off. There was a crunching sound under the wheels as they left the asphalt surface and continued along gravel. Was this where the Russians kept their submarines? He could only see a chicken wire fence and a dilapidated wooden kiosk trying to pass as a sentry box.
    They stopped in front of a red and white barrier. A man appeared, dressed in dark blue with a loose, flapping overcoat and, showing underneath it, a tunic and a striped T-shirt. He was a Russian sailor. He couldn‟t have been more than twenty years old and he looked confused. He ran over to the car and said something in Russian.
    Conrad shot him. Alex saw the hand come out of the window and the flash of the gun, but it all happened so quickly that he could hardly believe it had happened at all. The young Russian was thrown backwards. Conrad fired a second time. There was another sailor in the sentry box—Alex hadn‟t even noticed him—and