Metro 2034

CHAPTER 17 Who’s Speaking?

Artyom lowered his sizzling-hot gun-barrel and tried to wipe away the sweat and tears with the back of his hand, but the hand couldn’t reach his face: the gas mask got in the way. Maybe he should just take the damn thing off? What difference did it really make, anyway?

The sick people must be roaring loud enough to drown out the bursts of sub-machine-gun fire. Otherwise, why would more and more of them keep pouring out of the carriage to face the hail of lead? Couldn’t they hear the thunderous rumbling, didn’t they understand they were being shot at pointblank range? What were they hoping for? Or maybe they couldn’t give a damn any more either?

The platform was piled high with swollen bodies for several metres around the exit that had been broken open. Some of the bodies were still twitching, and a groan came from somewhere under the burial mound. The purulent flow from the open abscess of the doorway finally stopped: the people left in the carriage huddled up tightly together in terror, hiding from the bullets.

Artyom glanced round at the other gunners. Was he the only one with shaking hands and trembling knees? None of them said a word. At first even the commander was silent. The only sounds were the wheezing of the overcrowded train trying to suppress a bloody cough and the curse spat out by the last man still dying under the heap of dead.

‘Monsters… Bastards… I’m still alive… It’s so heavy…’

The commander finally spotted the man, squatted down beside him and emptied the remains of his cartridge clip into the poor wretch, squeezing the trigger until his empty gun started clicking. He got up, looked at his pistol and for some reason wiped it on his trousers.

‘Keep calm!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Any further attempts to leave the infirmary without permission will be punished in the same way.’

‘What shall we do with the bodies?’ the men asked him.

‘Put them back in the train. Ivanenko, Aksyonov, see to it!’

Order had been restored. Artyom could go back to his post and try to get some sleep. There were still a couple of hours left until reveille: if he could just get at least an hour of shuteye, so that he wouldn’t collapse on duty tomorrow.

It didn’t work out like that.

Ivanenko stepped back and started shaking his head, refusing to take hold of the putrescent, disintegrating bodies. Forgetting that he had no cartridges left, the commander hissed in fury and held out the hand with the pistol towards him. The firing pin clattered uselessly. Ivanenko squealed and ran for it.

And then one of the soldiers who was coughing flung up his automatic and stabbed the commander in the back with a crooked, awkward thrust of his bayonet. But the commander didn’t fall, he stayed on his feet and slowly looked round over his shoulder at the man who had struck him.

‘What are you doing, you bastard?’ he asked in quiet amazement.

‘You’ll do for all of us the same way soon… There’s not a healthy man left in the whole station. We shoot them today, and tomorrow you’ll drive the rest of us into these carriages,’ the man yelled at the commander, trying to tug his bayonet out of him, but not firing for some reason.

No one interfered. Not even Artyom, who took a step towards the two of them, but then froze, waiting. At last the bayonet came out. The commander reached for his wound, as if he was trying to scratch himself, then went down on his knees, braced his hands against the slippery floor and started shaking his head about. Was he trying to come to his senses? Or did he want to fall asleep?

No one could bring himself to finish the commander off. Even the mutineer who had stabbed him with the bayonet recoiled in fright, then tore off his gas mask and shouted loud enough for the whole station to hear.

‘Brothers! No more torturing them! Let them out! They’re going to die anyway! And so are we! Are we human beings or not?’

‘Don’t you dare,’ the commander wheezed inaudibly, still on his knees.

The gunners started murmuring, conferring with each other. The bars were torn off carriage doors, first in one place and then in another. Then someone shot the instigator in the face and he tumbled over backwards to join the other dead. But it was already too late: with a triumphant roar the crowd of infected people gushed out of the train into the hall, running clumsily on their thick legs. They tore the automatics out of the daunted sentries’ hands and wandered off in various directions. The guards faltered too; some were still firing at the sick people, but others mingled with them and wandered out of the station into all the tunnels: some went north, towards Serpukhov and others went south, towards Nagatino.

Artyom stood there, gazing stupidly at the commander, who refused to die. First he crept forward on all fours, then he stood up, slipping repeatedly, and set off to go somewhere.

‘And now for your surprise… You didn’t think I’d be prepared for this,’ he muttered.

The commander’s wandering gaze settled on Artyom. He froze for a moment and suddenly spoke in his ordinary voice that brooked no insubordination.

‘Popov! Take me to the radio room! I have to order the northern guard post to close the door…’

Artyom lent the commander his shoulder, and they wandered slowly past the empty train, past the fighting men, past the jumbled heaps of lumber, to the radio room, where the phone was. The commander’s wound was apparently not fatal, but he had lost a lot of blood and his strength deserted him before they got there: he went limp and slumped into oblivion.

Artyom shoved the desk against the door, grabbed the microphone of the internal switchboard and called the northern guard post. The phone clicked a few times and wheezed as if it was breathing laboriously and then it was silent, with a terrible silence.

If it was too late to close off that direction, Artyom had to warn Dobrynin at least. He dashed over to the phone, pressed one of the two buttons on the panel and waited a few seconds… The phone was still working. At first the only sound in the receiver was a whispered echo, then he heard a rapid clicking, and finally the ringing tone.

One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six…

Oh God, let them answer. If they’re all still alive, if they haven’t been infected yet, let them answer, let them give him a chance. Let them answer before the sick people can reach the borders of the station… Artyom would have pawned his very soul now, just for someone to answer at the other end of the line!

And then the impossible happened. The sound broke off midway through the seventh beep, he heard grunting and squabbling in the distance and a cracked, agitated voice gasped through the rustling.

‘Dobrynin Station here!’

The cage was shrouded in gloom. But even in that meagre light Homer could see that the prisoner’s silhouette was too puny and too lifeless to belong to the brigadier. As if it was a stuffed dummy sitting behind the bars – limp and drooping. It looked like the guard… Dead. But where was Hunter?

‘Thanks, I didn’t think you’d reach me in time,’ said a dull, hollow voice. ‘I felt… cramped in there.’

Miller spun his chair faster than Homer could look round. The brigadier was standing in the passage, blocking their way out to the station. His hands were firmly clenched together, as if one didn’t trust the other and was afraid to let go of it. He turned his mutilated side towards them.

‘Is that you?’ asked Miller, and his cheek twitched.

‘Yes, for now,’ said Hunter, giving a strange little cough. If Homer hadn’t known him, he might even have taken the sound for a laugh.

‘What’s wrong with you? What happened to your face?’

Miller clearly wanted to ask Hunter about something completely different: he gestured with his hand, ordering the guards to go out. They left Homer there.

‘You’re not exactly in the best shape either.’ The brigadier gave that cough again.

‘A mere trifle,’ said Miller, screwing up his face. ‘It’s just a shame that I can’t give you a hug. Damn you! Where have you…? We searched for you for so long!’

‘I know. I needed… to be alone,’ Hunter said jerkily. ‘I didn’t want to come back to people. I wanted to go away forever. But I got scared…’

‘But what happened with the Black Ones? Did they do that to you?’ asked Miller, nodding at the purple weals.

‘Nothing. I wasn’t able to destroy them.’ The brigadier touched his scar. ‘I couldn’t do it. They… broke me.’

‘You were right,’ Miller said with sudden passion. ‘Forgive me for taking no notice at first, for not believing. At that time we… Well, you remember… But we found them, we burned out the whole place. We thought you were already dead. That they’d… I wiped them out for you… For you. To the very last one!’

‘I know,’ Hunter said in a hoarse, distraught voice. ‘And they knew that would happen – because of me. They knew everything. They could really see people, and every person’s destiny. You have no idea who we dared to raise our hand against… He smiled at us for one last time… He sent them… Gave us one more chance. And we… I condemned them, and you carried out the sentence. Because that’s what we’re like. Because we’re monsters…’

‘What…’

‘When I came to them… they showed me myself. It was as if I looked at myself in a mirror and saw everything the way it really is. I understood everything about myself. I understood about people. Why it all happened to us…’

‘What do you mean?’ Miller stared at his comrade anxiously and cast a quick glance at the door – perhaps he regretted having sent the guards away?

‘I told you. I saw myself through their eyes, in a mirror. Not the outside, but the inside… behind the screen… They lured me out in front of the mirror in order to show me. A cannibal. A monster. But I didn’t see a man. I was terrified at the sight of myself. Something woke up. I’d been lying to myself before. Telling myself I was protecting people, saving… It was lies. I was just a bloody, ravenous beast who tore out throats. Worse than a beast. The mirror disappeared, but it… this thing… stayed. It woke up and refused to sleep anymore. They thought I would kill myself after that. What did I have to live for? But I didn’t. I had to fight. At first on my own… So that no one could see. As far away from people as possible. I thought I could punish myself, so that they wouldn’t punish me. I thought I could drive it out with pain…’ He touched his scars. ‘Then I realised that without people it would defeat me. I was forgetting myself. So I came back.’

‘They brainwashed you!’ Miller exclaimed in an agonised voice.

‘Never mind. It’s over and done with now,’ said the brigadier. He took his hand away from the weals on his face and his voice became dead and empty again. ‘Almost all. That story was finished long ago and what’s done is done. We’re alone here now. We have to pull through on our own. That’s not what I came about. There’s an epidemic at Tula. It could break out to Sebastopol and into the Circle. Airborne fever. The same old deadly plague.’

‘It hasn’t been reported to me,’ said Miller, eyeing him suspiciously.

‘They haven’t reported it to anyone. They’re being cowardly. Lying. They don’t know what to do.’

‘What do you want from me?’ asked Miller, sitting up higher in his wheelchair.

‘You know that. The danger has to be eliminated. Give me a token. Give me men. Flamethrowers. We have to shut down Tula and purge it. Serpukhov and Sebastopol too, if necessary. I hope it hasn’t got any further.’

‘Wipe out three stations just in case?’ Miller asked.

‘To save the rest of them.’

‘After a bloodbath like that everyone will hate the Order…’

‘No one will find out. We won’t leave anyone who could have been infected… or could have seen anything.’

‘It’s a huge price to pay!’

‘Don’t you understand? If we delay just a little bit longer, there’ll be no one left to save. We found out about the epidemic too late. There won’t be another chance to stop it. In two weeks the entire Metro will be a plague barracks, in a month it will be a graveyard.’

‘I have to make sure for myself…’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’ve gone crazy? You didn’t believe me then and you still doubt me now. Screw it. I’ll go on my own. As usual. At least I’ll keep my own conscience clear.’

He swung round, pushing aside Homer, who was absolutely stunned, and headed for the exit. But those final words he flung out had sunk deep into Miller’s chest, like a harpoon, and they dragged him after the brigadier.

‘Wait! Take a token!’ He fumbled hastily under his tunic and held out a perfectly ordinary looking flat metal badge to Hunter, who had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘I authorise you…’ The brigadier raked the token out of the bony fingers, stuck it in his pocket and nodded without speaking, aiming a long, unblinking stare at Miller.

‘Come back,’ said Miller. ‘I’m tired.’

‘But I’m just raring to go,’ Hunter said, and coughed again.

Then he disappeared.

Sasha didn’t dare to ring again for a long time: there was no point in annoying the guards of the Emerald City. They must have heard her, and perhaps they had already taken a good look at her. And if at this stage they still hadn’t opened the door that had grown into the ground, it was only because they were consulting, uncertain if they should admit a stranger who had guessed the signal.

What would she say to them when the door finally opened?

Should she tell them about the epidemic raging at Tula? Would they want to intervene? Would they risk it? And what if they could all see straight through people, like Leonid? Perhaps she should tell them straight away about her own, different kind of fever? Confess to someone else what she still hadn’t admitted to herself…

And would Sasha even be able to move their hearts? If they had defeated the terrible sickness long ago, why didn’t they intervene, why didn’t they send a messenger to Tula with the cure? Simply because they were afraid of ordinary people? Or because they hoped the plague would wipe them out? Perhaps it was them who had sent the disease into the Greater Metro?

No! How could she think that? Leonid had said the inhabitants of the Emerald City were just and humane. That they didn’t execute anyone or even imprison them. And that no one even dared to think of committing a crime in the midst of the boundless beauty that they had surrounded themselves with. Then why wouldn’t they save people who were doomed to die? Why wouldn’t they open the door?

Sasha rang again. And again.

The silence behind the steel wall was as impassive as if it were just a fake, concealing nothing but thousands of tons of stony earth.

‘They won’t open up for you.’

Sasha swung round abruptly. The musician was standing about ten steps away from her, in an awkwardly twisted pose, dishevelled and sad.

‘Then you try! Maybe they’ve forgiven you?’ said Sasha, giving him a puzzled glance. ‘What have you come here for?’

‘There isn’t anyone to forgive me. It’s empty.’

‘But you said…’

‘I lied. This isn’t the entrance to the Emerald City.’

‘Then where is it?’

‘I don’t know. No one knows.’ He shrugged.

‘But why did they let you through everywhere? You’re an observer, aren’t you? You… On the Circle, and with the Reds… You’re trying to fool me now, right? You blurted out the truth about the City and now you regret it!’ She tried to look into his eyes, searching pathetically for confirmation of her own assumptions.

‘I used to dream of getting into the City,’ said Leonid, gazing stubbornly at the ground. ‘I searched for it for years and years. I collected rumours and read old books. I must have come to this spot a hundred times, probably. I found this bell. And I rang it for days on end. But all for nothing.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’ she asked, walking straight towards him. Her right hand assumed a life of its own and slid towards her knife. ‘What did I do to you? Why did you do this?’

‘I wanted to steal you from them,’ said the musician. Spotting the weapon, he seemed bewildered and instead of running, sat down on the rails. ‘I thought that if I was left alone with you…’

‘But why did you come back?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ he said, looking up at her submissively. ‘I suppose I realised I’d crossed some kind of line. After I sent you here… After I was left on my own, I started thinking… No one’s born with a black soul. At first it’s transparent, and it darkens gradually, spot by spot, every time you forgive yourself for something wrong and find a justification for it, every time you tell yourself it’s only a game. But then the moment comes when there’s more black than white. Not many can sense that moment, it’s not obvious from the inside. But I suddenly realised that I was crossing that boundary, right here and now, and afterwards I would be different. Forever. And I came to confess. Because you don’t deserve this.’

‘But why is everyone so afraid of you? Why are they all so spineless with you?’

‘It’s not me,’ Leonid sighed. ‘It’s my dad.’

‘What?’

‘Does the name Moskvin mean anything to you?’

‘No,’ said Sasha, shaking her head.

‘Then you’re probably the only person in the Metro who doesn’t know it,’ the musician said with a mirthless chuckle. ‘Anyway, my dad’s a big boss. The boss of the entire Red Line. He fixed me up with a diplomatic passport. So they let me through. It’s an uncommon name, no one takes any risks. Unless they simply don’t know.’

‘Then what do you…?’ Sasha backed away, gazing at him suspiciously. ‘Observe? Is that what you were sent out for?’

‘They just got rid of me. My dad realised he could never make a man of me, and he gave it up as a bad job. So I just disgrace his name on the quiet,’ said Leonid, pulling a wry face.

‘Did you have a quarrel with him?’ asked the girl, screwing up her eyes.

‘How could anyone quarrel with Comrade Moskvin? He’s a living monument! I was excommunicated and cursed. You see, even as a kid I was a holy fool. I was always attracted to beautiful pictures, and the piano, and books. My mother spoiled me, she wanted a little girl. When my father realised what was going on, he tried to cultivate a love of firearms and Party intrigues in me. But it was too late. My mother got me addicted to playing the flute, my father tried to break me of the habit with the strap. He banished the professor who was teaching me and replaced him with a political commissar. But it was all a waste of time. I was already rotten. I didn’t like the Red Line. I thought it was too grey. I wanted a bright life. I wanted to study music and paint pictures. Dear Papa once sent me to chip off a mosaic, so I would realise that beauty is perishable. And I chipped it off, so that I wouldn’t be beaten. But while I was smashing it, I memorised every last detail, and now I could make one exactly like it myself. And ever since then I’ve hated my father.’

‘You mustn’t talk about him like that!’ Sasha exclaimed indignantly.

‘I can,’ the musician said with a smile. ‘Other people get shot for doing it. And as for the Emerald City… My professor told me about it, in a whisper, when I was little. And I decided that when I grew up I was definitely going to find the way in. That there must be a place in the world where what I lived for had some meaning. Where everyone lived for it. Where I wouldn’t be a petty little pervert, or a parasitical prince, or a hereditary Dracula, but an equal among equals.’

‘And you didn’t find it,’ said Sasha, putting her knife away. Sifting through the unfamiliar words, she had understood the most important thing. ‘Because it doesn’t exist.’

Leonid shrugged. He got up, walked over to the button and pressed it.

‘It probably doesn’t matter if anyone there really can hear me or not. It probably doesn’t matter if there really is any such place in the world. What matters is that I think there’s a place like that somewhere. And that someone hears me. Only I just don’t deserve to have the door opened for me yet.’

‘And is that really enough for you?’ asked Sasha.

‘It’s always been enough for the whole human race, it will do for me too,’ the musician said with a shrug.

The old man ran out onto the platform after the brigadier and gazed around in confusion: Hunter was nowhere to be seen. Miller trundled out of the cell block, as ashen-faced and desolate as if he had given his soul to the brigadier along with the mysterious token.

Why had Hunter fled and where to? Why had he abandoned Homer? It would be better not to ask Miller: Homer ought to get as far away from that man as possible, before he remembered that the old man even existed. Homer walked away unhurriedly, pretending that he was trying to catch up with the brigadier and expecting to be called from behind at any moment. But Miller didn’t seem interested in him any longer.

Hunter had told the old man that he needed him in order not to forget his former self… Was he lying? Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to lose control, go berserk here in Polis and get into a fight that he might lose and so never get to Tula? His instincts and his killing skills were superhuman, but even he wouldn’t try to storm an entire station all on his own. If that was it, then the old man had played his role by accompanying him to Polis, and now he had been kicked off the stage.

After all, the final outcome of the whole story depended on him too. And he had done his best to bring about the precise denouement planned by the brigadier – or whoever it was that spoke for him. What was this token? A pass? A badge of authority? A black spot? An advance indulgence for all the sins that Hunter was so eager to take on his soul? Whatever it was, by extorting the token from Miller, together with his consent, the brigadier had finally given himself a free hand. He wasn’t planning to make his confession to anyone. Make his confession! Why, the thing that had taken control inside him, the terrible thing that occasionally came out to look in the mirror, couldn’t even talk properly.

What would happen at Tula when Hunter stormed it? Would drowning an entire station – or two or three stations – in blood be enough to quench his thirst? Or would the thing he was carrying inside him simply run riot after sacrifices like that?

Which of the two had asked Homer to follow him? The one who devoured people, or the one who fought with monsters? Which of them had fallen in the phantom battle at Polyanka? And who had spoken to the old man afterwards, asking for help?

And what if… What if Homer was supposed to kill him, what if that was his true mission? What if the final vestiges of the former brigadier, almost completely crushed and suffocated, had dragged the old man into this expedition so that he could see everything for himself, so that he would kill Hunter out of horror or mercy with a treacherous bullet to the back of the head in some dark tunnel somewhere? The brigadier couldn’t take his own life, so he was looking for an executioner. An executioner who wouldn’t need to be asked, who had to be discerning enough to do everything himself, and deceive that other presence inside Hunter, the one who was swelling, growing stronger by the hour and didn’t want to die.

But even if Homer could muster the courage, even if he could seize the right moment and take Hunter by surprise, what good would it do? He couldn’t halt the plague all on his own. So was there nothing left for the old man to do in this double-bind but observe and record? Homer could guess where the brigadier was headed. According to rumour, the semi-mythical Order, to which Miller and Hunter apparently both belonged, had established its base at Smolensk Station, in the underbelly of Polis. Its legionaries were called upon to defend the Metro and its inhabitants against dangers that the armies of ordinary stations couldn’t cope with. That was all that the Order allowed to be known about itself.

It was absurd for the old man even to think of getting into Smolensk, which was as impregnable as Alamut Castle. And there was no point in any case: in order to meet the brigadier again, all he had to do was go back to Dobrynin… And wait until the groove that Hunter was travelling along inevitably led the brigadier there too, to the scene of his future crime and the final station in this strange story. Should Homer let him deal with the plague-carriers, disinfect Tula and then… Carry out his unspoken will? The old man had thought his role was different: to write, not to shoot, to bestow immortality, not take life. Not to judge or interfere, but to allow the book’s heroes to act for themselves. But when the blood is knee-deep all around, it’s hard not to get smeared with it. Thank God he had let the girl go with that trickster. At least he had spared Sasha the sight of the appalling bloodbath that she wouldn’t have been able to prevent anyway.

He checked the station clock: if the brigadier was on schedule, then Homer still had a little time in hand. A couple of hours to be himself. To invite Polis to one last tango.

‘And how were you planning to earn the right to get in?’ Sasha asked.

‘Well… It’s stupid, of course… With my flute. I thought it could put something right. You know, music is the most fleeting and ephemeral of the arts. It exists for exactly as long as the instrument is playing, and then disappears without trace in an instant. But nothing infects people as quickly as music. Nothing else gives them such deep wounds that heal so slowly. Once a melody has moved you, it stays with you forever. It’s the distilled essence of beauty. I thought I could heal the soul’s deformity with it.’

‘You’re strange,’ she said.

‘But now I’ve realised that a leper can’t heal other lepers. That if I don’t confess everything to you, the door will never be opened for me.’

‘Did you think I’d forgive you? For your lies and your cruelty?’ asked Sasha, glancing at him sharply.

‘Will you give me one more chance?’ Leonid asked and suddenly smiled at her. ‘After all, you say we all have the right to that.’

The girl didn’t answer, wary of being drawn into his strange games again. A moment ago she had almost believed in the musician’s repentance, but now was he starting again?

‘In everything I told you, one thing was true,’ he said. ‘There is a cure for the sickness.’

‘A medicine?’ Sasha asked with a shiver, willing to be deceived again.

‘It’s not a medicine. Not tablets and not a serum. A few years ago we had an outbreak of the disease at Preobrazhenskaya Station.’

‘But why doesn’t even Hunter know about it?’

‘There wasn’t an epidemic. It fizzled out on its own. These bacteria are very sensitive to radiation. Something happens to them when they’re irradiated… I think they stop dividing. And that stops the disease. It was discovered by chance. The answer lies on the surface, so to speak.’

‘Honestly?’ She took hold of his hand in her excitement.

‘Honestly.’ He put his other hand over hers. ‘You just need to contact them and explain…’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? It’s so simple. All those people who have died in the meantime…’ She freed her hand and her eyes glittered.

‘In one day? Hardly… I didn’t want you to stay with that butcher,’ he muttered. ‘And I was planning to tell you everything right from the start. Only I wanted to swap the secret for you.’

‘And swap me for other people’s lives!’ Sasha said angrily. ‘That’s not worth a single life!’

‘I’d swap mine for it,’ said the musician, jiggling his eyebrow.

‘It’s not for you to decide! Get up! We’ve got to run back… Before he reaches Tula.’ She jabbed one finger at the watch, whispered as she worked out the time and gasped. ‘There’s only three hours left!’

‘What for? I can use the communications here. They’ll call Hansa and explain everything. We don’t need to run anywhere. Especially since we might not be in time.’

‘No!’ said Sasha, shaking her head vehemently. ‘No! he won’t believe it. He won’t want to believe it. I have to tell him myself. Explain to him…’

‘And then what will happen? Are you going to give yourself to him in your joy?’

‘What business is that of yours?’ she snapped, but then, instinctively sensing the right way to handle a man in love, she added in a gentler voice. ‘I don’t want anything from him. And now I can’t manage without you.’

‘You’re learning from me how to lie,’ the musician said with a sour smile. ‘All right,’ he sighed helplessly. ‘Let’s go.’

It took them half an hour to reach Sport Station: the sentries had changed, and Leonid had to drum into their heads all over again how a girl with no passport could cross the borders of the Red Line. Sasha watched the time tensely and the musician watched her – it was very obvious that he was hesitating, struggling with himself.

On the platform, scrawny new conscripts were piling up bales of goods on a stinking old trolley, tipsy workmen were doggedly pretending to caulk the broken veins of pipes and little kids in uniform were learning off a serious adult song. In the space of five minutes two attempts were made to check their documents, and the next check – when they were almost in the tunnel leading to Frunze already – dragged out beyond all endurance.

Time was flying past. And the girl wasn’t even sure she still had those pitiful two and a half hours – no one could stop Hunter. The young soldiers had already finished loading the trolley and it was moving towards them, panting as it picked up speed. And Leonid made up his mind.

‘I don’t want to let you go,’ he said. ‘But I can’t hold you back. I was thinking of making us arrive late, so there’d be nothing left for you to search for. But I realise that still won’t make you mine anyway. Being honest is the worst way of all to seduce a girl, but I’m tired of lying. When I’m with you I feel ashamed of myself all the time. Choose for yourself who you want to be with.’

The musician grabbed his miraculous passport out of the dawdling sentry’s hands and punched him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. Then he grabbed Sasha’s hand tight and they stepped onto the trolley, which had just drawn level with them. The dumbfounded driver looked round and found himself staring into the barrel of a revolver.

‘My father would be proud of me right now!’ Leonid laughed. ‘The number of times I’ve heard him say I’m wasting my time on nonsense, that I’ll never amount to anything with that blasted whistle of mine! And now at last, here I am behaving like a real man, and he’s not here. Jump!’ he ordered the driver, who was holding his hands up high.

Although they were travelling at speed, the man obediently stepped off onto the rails, howled as he went tumbling over and over, then fell silent and disappeared into the blackness that was chasing hard after them. Leonid started throwing off the load, and the motor snorted more briskly with every bundle that fell onto the rails. The lethargic headlamp on the bow of the trolley blinked weakly as it peered forward, lighting up only the next few metres. A brood of rats darted out from under the wheels and their squealing was like someone scratching on glass, a startled line walker sprang aside and somewhere far behind them an alarm siren started wailing hysterically. The ribs of the tunnel flickered past faster and faster. The musician was squeezing out every ounce of speed the trolley was capable of.

They flew through Frunze Station: taken by surprise, the sentries scattered like the rats, and the trolley was already hundreds of metres away from Frunze before it started howling furiously in unison with Sport Station.

‘Now things will get hot!’ Leonid shouted. ‘The important thing is to slip past the crossover line to the Circle! There’s a large frontier post there… They’ll try to intercept us! We’ll go straight along the branch line to the centre!’

He knew what to worry about: from out of the side branch that had taken them onto the Red Line a powerful searchlight lashed into their eyes as a heavy freight trolley came rushing towards them. Their tracks would converge in a few dozen metres, it was too late to stop. The musician pressed the worn, shiny pedal to the floor and Sasha squeezed her eyes shut. They could only hope the points were set in the right direction and wouldn’t direct them into a head-on collision.

A machine-gun rumbled and bullets whizzed by just centimetres from their ears. There was an acrid smell of burning and heated air, the roar of another motor flared up and faded away, and the trolleys missed each other by a miracle – the battle trolley flew out onto their track only a moment after Sasha’s trolley passed the fork before sweeping on, shuddering, towards Culture Park. The battle trolley had been flung in the opposite direction.

Now they had a short lead that would last them until the next station, but what then? The trolley slowed down – the tunnel had started sloping upwards.

‘Park’s almost at surface level,’ the musician explained to her, looking back. ‘But Frunze is fifty metres down. We just have to get past the rise, after that we’ll pick up speed!’

They even managed to pick up some speed before reaching Culture Park. A proud old station with tall vaults, half-dead and dimly lit, it turned out to be almost uninhabited. A siren started rasping, clearing its rusty throat. Heads appeared above the brick fortifications. Sub-machine-guns started barking after them too late, in helpless fury.

‘We might even stay alive!’ laughed the musician.‘Just a bit more good luck, and…’

And at that moment a small spark glinted in the darkness astern of them, then blazed up more brightly, becoming blinding as it overhauled them… The battle trolley’s searchlight! Thrusting the fierce beam out ahead of it like a lance on which it was straining to impale their ramshackle little vehicle, the battle trolley ate up the distance between them, cutting it back minute by minute. The machine-gun started yammering again and bullets whined through the air.

‘Just a bit further! This is Kropotkin already!’

Kropotkin… Ruled off into squares with identical tents set out in them, neglected and unkempt. Someone’s rough portraits on the walls, painted a long time ago and already blurred and runny. Flags and more flags, so many that they merged into a single ribbon of crimson, a frozen jet spurting out of a fossilised vein.

Just then an under-barrel grenade launcher barked and fragments of marble showered down onto the trolley: one of them slit Sasha’s leg open, but the wound wasn’t deep. Ahead of them small young soldiers started lowering a boom, but the trolley had picked up more speed and smashed it aside, almost flying off the rails itself.

The battle trolley was gaining on them implacably: its motor was many times more powerful and easily pushed the steel-clad behemoth along. Sasha and the musician had to lie down and shelter behind the metal frame of their trolley.

But in just a few moments the sides of the two trolleys would touch, and they would be boarded. Leonid suddenly started taking off his clothes, as if he had lost his senses. A frontier post appeared ahead: a parapet built of sandbags, steel tank traps – the end of the journey. Now they’d be jammed between two machine-guns, between the hammer and the anvil.

In a minute it would all be over.