‘Good luck!’ Artyom extended his hand to the lookout. Anton silently nodded, putting his rucksack onto his back. His eyes were totally empty.

‘Well, that’s all! We won’t say goodbye. Note the time!’ Melnik said. He turned and, without saying another word, was off.

CHAPTER 19. The Final Battle

Having moved the heavy cast-iron lid of the closed manhole aside, they began their descent. The narrow, vertical shaft was composed of concrete rings, from each of which jutted a metal bracket. As soon as they were left alone, Ulman changed. He spoke to Artyom in short, monosyllabic phrases, mainly giving orders or admonishing him. As soon as the lid of the hatch had been removed, he ordered Artyom to put out the flashlight and, putting on the night vision instrument, dived inside first. Artyom had to crawl down, holding on to the brackets. He didn’t really understand what all these precautions were for, as, after the Kremlin, they hadn’t encountered any danger along their way. Finally, Artyom decided that the stalker had given Ulman special instructions and, having been left without a commander, he was enthusiastically filling the role himself. Ulman smacked Artyom on the foot, giving the sign to stop. Artyom obediently froze, waiting until the other man explained to him what was happening. But, instead of explanations, a soft thump was heard from below. It was Ulman jumping to the floor. A few seconds later, Artyom heard muffled gunshots.

‘You can come down,’ his partner said to Artyom in a loud whisper, and a light came on.

When the brackets ended, he released his hands, and dropped about two metres, landing on a cement floor. Lifting himself up, he dusted off his hands and looked around. They were in a short corridor, about fifteen paces long. The opening of the manhole yawned above them in the ceiling. There was another hatch just like it in the floor, with the very same cast-iron grooved cover. Beside it, in a pool of blood, lay a dead savage face downwards, squeezing his blow pipe tight in his hand even after death.

‘He was guarding the passage,’ Ulman replied quietly at Artyom’s questioning glance, ‘but he had fallen asleep. Most likely he didn’t expect anyone to crawl in from this side. He had put his ear to the hatch and dropped off.’

‘You killed him… what, while he was sleeping?’ Artyom asked.

‘So what? It wasn’t a fair fight.’ Ulman sniffed. ‘If nothing else, now he’ll know not to sleep on duty. Anyway, he was a bad person: he wasn’t observing their holy day. He was told not to go into the tunnels.’

Dragging the body to the side, Ulman opened the hatch and again put out his flashlight. This time the shaft was extremely short and led to an office filled with trash. A mountain of metal plates, gears, springs and nickel-plated handrails, enough parts for a whole coach, completely hid the manhole from prying eyes. They were heaped on top of each other in disarray right up to the ceiling and stayed there only by some kind of miracle. There was a narrow passage between this pile and the wall, but getting through it without touching and bringing a whole mountain of metal down was almost impossible.

A door buried in dirt up to its middle led from the office to an unusual square tunnel. A line from the left there: either there was an obstruction or they had stopped laying the track for some reason. To the right there was a standard tunnel, round and wide. It seemed as if there was a border between two intertwined subterranean worlds here. Even breathing was different: the air was damp but not so ghastly and stagnant as in the secret D-6 passages. They weren’t sure where to go. They decided not to move out at random, as there was a frontier post of the Fourth Reich located on this line. Judging by the map, it was only about twenty minutes from Mayakovskaya to Chekhovskaya. Digging into the bag with his things, Artyom found the bloodied map he had got from Daniel, and worked out the true direction from it. Less than five minutes later they reached Mayakovskaya.

Sitting down on a bench, Ulman took the heavy helmet off his head with a sigh of relief, wiped his red, damp face with a sleeve and ran his fingers through his dark-blond crew cut. Despite his powerful frame and having the habits of an old tunnel wolf, Ulman, it seemed, was only slightly older than Artyom.

While they were looking for somewhere to buy food, Artyom was able to inspect the station. He no longer knew how much time had passed since his last meal, but his aching stomach was no laughing matter. Ulman had no supplies on him: they had left in a hurry and brought only what was necessary.

Mayakovskaya resembled Kievskaya. It was just a shadow of the once elegant and airy station. In this half of the ruined station people huddled in ragged tents or out on the platform. The walls and ceiling were covered with damp patches and trickling water. There was one small campfire for the whole station but no fuel.

The inhabitants talked among themselves quietly, as if at the bedside of a dying man. However, there was a shop even here: a patched up three-man tent with a folding table displayed at the entrance. The selection was modest: skinned rat carcasses, dried up and shrunken mushrooms, procured here God knows when, and even uncut squares of moss. A price tag lay proudly next to each item – a piece of news print with carefully handwritten numbers. There were almost no shoppers except them, only an undernourished stooped woman holding a small boy by the hand. The child was pulling towards a rat lying on the counter, but his mother admonished him:

‘Don’t touch! We’ve already eaten meat this week!’ The boy obeyed, but he didn’t forget about the carcass for long. As soon as the mother turned away, he once more tried to reach for the dead animal.

‘Kolka! What did I tell you? If you are bad, the demons will come out of the tunnels to get you! Sashka didn’t obey his mommy and they took him!’ the woman scolded him, succeeding at the last moment to pull him away from the counter.

Artyom and Ulman couldn’t make up their minds. Artyom began to think that he could survive until they got to Prospect Mir where the mushrooms would at least be fresher.

‘Some rat, perhaps? We fry them in front of the customer,’ the shop’s bald owner said with some dignity. ‘Certificate of quality!’ he added enigmatically.

‘Thanks, I’ve already eaten,’ Ulman hastened to turn him down. ‘Artyom, what do you want? I wouldn’t take the moss. World War Four will start in your gut from it.’

The woman looked at him with disapproval. In her hand were only two cartridges which, judging by the prices, was just enough for the moss. Noting that Artyom was looking at her modest capital, the woman hid her fist behind her back.

‘Nothing here,’ she snarled spitefully.

‘If you don’t intend to buy anything, get lost!’

‘We’re not all millionaires! What are you staring at?’

Artyom wanted to answer, but he was carried away by the sight of her son. The boy was very similar to Oleg. He had the same colourless, fragile hair, reddish eyes and turned-up nose. The boy put his thumb in his mouth and smiled shyly at Artyom, looking at him a bit sullenly. Artyom felt as if his lips were spreading into a smile in spite of himself, and his eyes were swelling with tears. The woman intercepted his glance and flew into a rage.

‘Damned perverts!’ she screeched, her eyes glaring. ‘Let’s go home, Kolienka!’ She pulled the boy by the hand.

‘Wait! Stop for a minute!’ Artyom pressed several shells out of the reserve clip of his machine gun and, catching up to the woman, gave them to her. ‘Here… These are for you. For your Kolia.’

She looked at him with distrust, then her mouth twisted scornfully.

‘Just what do you think you can get for five cartridges? That he’ll be your child?’