Kolymsky Heights Read Online Free PDF

The Siberian inland waterway system was very extensive. Two rivers in the north-west alone, the Ob and the Yenisei, had some dozens of ports with several others under construction. The reason for this was the extension of the huge natural gas deposit, the biggest in the world, which lay between the two rivers. As Russian oil production declined, the gas was due to replace it, both for internal energy and for external trade. For both purposes the product was urgently needed; and as satellite observation showed work was going on round the clock to get it.
    To finance the project (which included a tunnel to west Europe 3000 miles long), massive foreign loans had been negotiated. The loans would be repaid in gas and were being supplied in the form of equipment. The amount of equipment was staggering. Apart from the rigs and drilling gear, there was all the piping to go inside the tunnel. There were giant compressors and pumping stations at intervals along it. There were thousands of earth-moving machines, tens of thousands of tractors.

    In the lively scramble for orders, western shipping companies had not been backward. The equipment for the original field had been carried largely by ships of the old Soviet Union, but for the new deal the managing consortium had specified that new equipment, wherever possible, should be transported in vessels of the countries supplying it.
    The countries supplying the new equipment were Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Holland. Ships from all of them were now ferrying loads along the Arctic sea route. Russian icebreakers were guaranteeing the route from early June to early October, the latter date varying with the ice pack: a fact that led the experts to a prediction.
    It was now the first week of July, and the ice was building early. The prediction was that nothing could be expected from the unknown correspondent after the end of August. Western shippers, reluctant to hazard their vessels even in a ‘guaranteed’ September, were handing this slice of business to Russia’s own merchant fleet. It was not thought that a member of this fleet had posted the message. A foreign seaman, more familiar with foreign ports, and with greater privacy to fiddle with ambiguous cigarettes, had done it. He would not therefore be doing it after August.
    But this raised other questions.
    The ports opened to the foreign vessels were Dudinka and Igarka on the Yenisei, and Noviy Port and Salekhard on the Ob. Because they were guaranteeing a quick turnaround at these ports, the Russian authorities had provided no shore facilities for foreign crewmen. None of them was allowed ashore anyway.
    If sailors were not allowed ashore, how had one of them got the message?
    Tentative answers were provided for this, too. An intermediary had given the sailor the message. The intermediarymust have had time to establish a relationship with the sailor. The sailor had to be a regular on the route. However regular he was, the only local citizens he could meet were those allowed on his ship – in the normal way port officials or dock workers. But the area was a security area, which neither port officials nor dock workers were free to move in and out of at will. The intermediary had to come from outside. He had to have access to the ship – and also to the research station. What kind of intermediary could this be?
    The experts proposed a transport worker. The foreign ships were not leaving Russian ports unladen. Some carried specialist return cargoes, of a kind which might afford access to the ship of a specialist worker. A closer examination of the ports concerned showed Dudinka, on the Yenisei, as the likeliest to have specialist return cargoes. Dudinka was the port for Norilsk, a large mining and industrial centre, and its main business was nickel and precision nickel-alloy parts.
    A report was called for on the handling of nickel-alloy parts, and meanwhile three working propositions were set out:
The message had been posted by