Moskva

31 Ural 650

The bike grinding its way up the darkened track was a 1970s Ural 650, with its famously awful K301 carburettor swapped out and the original 6-volt dynamo replaced by a 12-volt model. Other than that, the machine was original. A bit rusted in places, particularly on the chrome. The black plastic band sealing the seam around the two-part petrol tank had rotted but it didn’t leak, at least not enough to be dangerous. The gearbox leaked though. There hadn’t been a Ural built where the gearbox didn’t leak, and that included the model built by workers wearing white gloves and delivered to Stalin.

The man riding the bike regretted not buying the sidecar model.

It would have given him better balance. On the other hand, what with only 40 horsepower to the flat-twin, the sidecar’s weight would have made the track in front of him impassable. It wasn’t the ice that made the going hard, it was the frayed edges to the road and the sharpness of the bends that had the engine thumping and forced him to change down and down again.

Between a drop in revs and the unhealthy thud of gears meshing, he heard a shot from the woods and flinched, bringing his motorbike to a slithering halt, even as he wondered if he should have accelerated for all he was worth, which obviously enough wasn’t much. At best, he’d give the shooter a slowly moving target.

The woman who stepped from between trees trained her rifle on him almost casually as she crossed the track, twisting slightly to keep it sighted while she lifted a snow rabbit from the ditch where it had tumbled. It kicked twice and then she had it by its back legs, and swung it so the back of its skull caught the edge of her raised heel. She glanced down to check it was properly dead and then she shifted her attention to the Ural, jerking her rifle to indicate that the rider should climb off.

He shook his head.

Working the bolt, she slotted another round into the rabbit rifle, raising its muzzle enough to aim at his knee, which still hugged the petrol tank. The leg out of sight kept the motorbike balanced on the slippery ground.

‘Get off,’ she ordered.

He looked at her and they both knew he’d refuse.

But then the early sun came up from behind the trees and brightness filled a patch of forest that had been dark and Dennisov looked at the young woman holding the rifle and felt his heart lurch as she stared back at him.

She had a serious face.

A face that belonged, it seemed to him, to someone who’d never stopped to wonder if she was plain or attractive, and was all the more attractive for that. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been shot before. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been days he’d have happily shot himself. It was simply that it would be a pity to be shot, even only in the leg, by the girl from his childhood poster, because that was obviously who she was.

So he shrugged to show that sunlight on her braids had changed his mind, considered which leg to swing over the tank, what he should do with the bike afterwards and whether the track was too slippery to let him pull the bike on to its centre stand.

The answer to the last was probably.

As to which leg, he should probably use the one that worked. So, twisting, more clumsily than he would have liked, he stepped back from the bike, decided he definitely wouldn’t manage to get it on to its centre stand, and lowered it as far as he could, before letting it drop.

Stepping away, he watched her eyes widen and saw not only the moment she noticed his metal leg but also the moment she jacked the unspent round into her hand without even noticing. Pushing up his goggles, he said, ‘Dennisov, captain, retired.’

‘Major Milova.’

The man sketched an unorthodox salute. ‘You’re going to have to help me right the bike, I’m afraid.’

They looked at the Ural together. The machine was heavy and hot enough to melt snow on the track beneath. ‘Did you have it adapted?’

Dennisov shook his head.

‘Then isn’t it hard to ride?’

He grinned. ‘Damn near impossible.’

Coming closer, she wrinkled her nose. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘For me, this is sober.’ He was shivering with cold as he took his hip flask from inside his flying jacket and watched her realize he was wearing only a stained singlet beneath. It made him wish he’d found a clean one.

‘Army issue?’ she asked.

‘How did you guess?’

It wasn’t a serious question, although the question her eyes asked when she glanced down at his leg was serious enough.

‘We crashed,’ he said.

‘I know.’

He looked at her slightly oddly, as if wondering how she knew, and she stared back, perhaps balancing what she’d read in the files with the cripple in front of her. If she’d read the files, then he knew what she’d be thinking: he was less handsome than his official photograph. He hoped she’d think him more real. She could probably see him killing his own CO for incompetence. Regretting it afterwards maybe. Suffering sleepless nights.

But she could see him do it. That was fine. He had.

He could see her not minding that much. That was fine too.

‘Crash?’ she asked, nodding at a scar beneath his stubble.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘This one too?’ She touched a star-shaped pucker at the edge of his eye.

‘Shrapnel,’ he told her.

‘You could have been blinded.’

He shrugged, and smiled as her mouth twisted. He wondered what else was in his file. Whatever it was, he’d found the right place. Looking at Marshal Milov’s granddaughter, Dennisov decided that simply seeing her walk out of the trees into sunlight had been worth the ride.

‘You’ve been shot?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, yes. And crashed, obviously.’

‘Heavy calibre?’

‘Of course.’

‘How many times?’

‘A real man never tells.’

He liked her laughter. He liked the way she walked round to the other side of his Ural without being asked and gripped her end of the handlebars, bending at the knees to lift the machine properly.

They came up the track towards the dacha together, with Dennisov’s bike between them, Sveta with her rifle now slung across her back, and Dennisov limping on the side with his prosthetic leg. He wore leather jeans, cut off on that side at the knee and bound with twine to make them windproof. In the dawn light, they looked as if they’d wandered in from another era.

‘Thought you couldn’t ride that thing any more?’

Dennisov looked at Tom and grinned, his smile wide and his eyes crinkling at the edges. There was a sense of achievement, of pride in the way he patted the tank as if the Ural was alive. He glanced sideways at Sveta before he answered.

‘Wasn’t sure I could.’

His eyes flicked beyond Tom and he straightened up, coming almost to attention before Tom even had time to turn. Tom knew who was there. The commissar stood in his doorway, wrapped in a patched dressing gown, white hair almost to his shoulders, and the gap between door and frame narrow as possible to keep in the warmth.

‘From Moscow?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘For me, for her, for him?’ He glanced between them and waited for Dennisov’s answer.

‘You, sir.’

‘Any idea why they didn’t telephone?’

‘I believe it’s off the hook, sir.’

The commissar smiled. ‘Any trouble getting through?’

‘The guards at the bottom stopped me. My papers convinced them. Comrade Vedenin’s signature probably helped.’

‘Vedenin? Nothing good then. In you come.’ Looking at Tom, he said. ‘If you could put that thing round the back…’

By the time Tom returned, the others were gone. The churned-up snow in front of the dacha was silent and deserted. Two rabbits hung on a hook by the door. A second later, a shot from the woods told him where Sveta was.

He imagined Dennisov was inside the house.

Not wanting to disturb the commissar or interrupt Sveta’s hunting, Tom stayed where he was, settling himself on the front steps and digging in his pocket for a papirosa. He had three cardboard filters at his feet and a fourth about to go that way when he heard the front door open.

‘The old man wants you.’

‘You okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do I ask why you’re here?’

‘He’ll tell you.’ Dennisov clapped him on the arm as he edged past, made unsteady by the ice below the steps rather than alcohol. In the forest beyond, wood pigeons rose from frosty trees at the sound of a shot and one fell fluttering.

‘That is his granddaughter, right?’

‘It is.’

‘Guess I’d better fetch her back.’

The old man’s desk looked like an old man’s desk: a letter opener in the shape of a sabre, an enamel mug with pens in it. A telephone, with the receiver now back on its cradle. Untidy piles of memos probably forgotten even by those who had written them. A fountain pen left open and dried.

Tom doubted that even the commissar knew what half the papers were.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Or perhaps hydroelectric dams went unbuilt, regiments undispatched and prisoners unreleased, unquestioned or unexecuted, awaiting his approval. The commissar was examining what looked like a shopping list, occasionally crossing an ingredient out, when Tom came in.

Leaning closer, Tom saw names.

Under the list, flapping loose, a second sheet, filled with so many overlapping circles it looked like a travesty of the Olympic logo. The commissioner sighed. ‘I miss the days when we fought enemies we could see.’

He nodded towards a photograph of a girl holding a rifle.

She was blonde, with a country girl’s shoulders. She looked so like Sveta that for a moment Tom thought it was her. Only the girl’s uniform was older, her sniper rifle had a fat scope and looked far heavier.

‘Seventeen,’ the commissar said. ‘Seven kills. Hadn’t even kissed a boy, never mind anything else.’ He smiled fondly. ‘So fierce. So determined.’

‘Sveta’s grandmother?’

‘Yes. She was young. Too young, really. Although not as young as her daughter, poor child. They were bad times. In a way I’m glad she’s not alive to see what we’ve become.’

He answered the question without Tom asking it. ‘Weak, corrupt, soft…’

‘That was taken at Stalingrad?’

‘We fought because we believed. We really believed. And because we were outnumbered and because we’d be shot if we didn’t. But we believed.’ He turned one piece of paper over on top of the other, hiding both.

‘Stalingrad or Berlin. Blood and iron. The Motherland destroying their Fatherland. Everything comes back to that. For better or worse, that clash was where this world was made. We became monsters. Our only defence is that they were worse. Now they’re gone and we remain and you’re ashamed to admit we were allies. Without us, you’d be speaking German. Without us, you’d have a swastika on your flag. Do you doubt that?’

‘I’m a soldier,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve had men die. I looked at your casualty rates. I’ve no idea how a country could take that level of damage and survive.’

‘Ask your friend Dennisov.’

‘He says you’re a bunch of alcoholics.’

‘He’s right. But there are worse things to be. Hypocrites, for a start. We fought. We died. What did Erekle Gabashville tell you about us?’

‘Nothing,’ Tom said.

The old man’s gaze was hard, as if trying to find the lie inside that word. He glanced beyond Tom to the window and Tom turned to watch his friend and Sveta walking from the trees. Another rabbit hung from Sveta’s hand and Dennisov was carrying her hunting rifle. The old man sucked his teeth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. They’ve found Alex’s body. Your friend brought the message.’

‘Found her where?’ Tom managed finally.

‘Opposite my apartment. At Patriarch’s Ponds.’