The Concubine's Secret

49

‘Relax, Lydia, enjoy the ride.’ He gripped the steering wheel as it almost jolted out of his hands and the truck bounced its way across a narrow ditch, making Igor grunt.

‘Don’t they have guards on patrol?’ Lydia demanded. ‘Snipers in the trees?’

‘Of course. That’s why we’re in an army truck. No one will take any notice of it.’

‘And what happens when we get there?’

‘We’re not driving up to the front door and knocking on it politely, if that’s what you mean. Don’t worry.’

‘I am worried.’

Alexei glanced at his sister’s face. This wasn’t the Lydia he’d travelled halfway across Russia with. That Lydia would have been brimming with excitement.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked quietly.

‘Chyort! What do you think is the matter with me?’ She blinked hard and stared ahead through the windscreen. ‘It’s this insane driving.’

‘You said you wanted to see the layout of where Jens Friis is working?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then hold on tight.’

At that moment he swung the heavy wheel, both arms working hard, and abandoned the gravelled track.

‘This way,’ Igor indicated off to the right.

The side window was caught by a low branch and Lydia flinched at the crack it made. She was jumpy as hell. For half a mile Alexei concentrated on nothing but wrestling the damn truck through the trees, avoiding gulleys and mounds of packed snow that formed traps which wouldn’t melt till spring.

‘What’s the matter, Lydia?’ he asked again when he struck a stretch where the terrain grew smoother.

Her hands were huddled like little corpses in her lap, unmoving and stiff. ‘Let’s focus on our father,’ she murmured in a low voice. ‘And this crazy ride.’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is.’

‘Are you all right? Has something happened?’

‘I’m fine.’

One of her gloved hands crept off her lap and settled in the valley between his thigh and hers. It curled up there as if needing warmth. He stamped on the brake pedal to avoid a jagged stump and jinked the truck so its wheels slid into a sideways skid. One wing brushed along the length of a bough that was draped in icicles and gave off a noise like the rattle of buckshot.

‘Alexei, do you have any idea where the hell we’re going?’

For a split second their eyes met and he knew she wasn’t talking about the forest.

‘How about to the top of the tree?’

She smiled.

He looked away quickly and just missed crunching into a blackened pine trunk.

‘Is this it?’

‘Yes. This is as far as we go, the rest is on foot.’ Alexei was pushing to move on fast.

They clambered out of the truck, the air bone-white with a mist that twisted in and out of the trees like beckoning fingers. Igor threw a canvas pack on his back.

‘It’s just up ahead,’ he said.

They moved off in single file, keeping close to the dark trunks. In this mist it would be easy to lose touch. The remnants of the snow were heaped into hunched shapes by the wind, and underfoot the cracking of brittle pine needles betrayed their movements. Alexei slipped the gun out of his pocket.

‘Sentries?’ Lydia whispered.

He nodded. ‘They patrol the forest in pairs. But the guards are cold and bored and after months of tedium they expect to find nothing, so they pay scant attention to what is in the forest. They spend more time patrolling the complex itself.’

‘Alexei, why did Maksim come? It’s a bitterly cold day and he looks ill. Even back there in the car it could be dangerous for him if he’s found and questioned. It wasn’t necessary.’

‘Yes, it was. To remind his vory who is their pakhan.’

‘To remind the thieves? Or to remind you?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes.’

It wasn’t a question he chose to answer. Instead he silenced her by placing a finger to his lips, so that they crept forward more cautiously, Lydia right on his heel. Igor watched the rear. The forest ended abruptly, switching within the space of ten paces from its own private twilight to an open expanse of slippery white sky. An area the size of a village had been flattened within the heart of the forest; an efficient clearing of timber had carved out a rectangle which was hidden from view by a brick wall erected around its perimeter. Ten metres high and topped with razor wire, while around its base more strands coiled like a sleeping, spiny serpent.

‘Not very welcoming,’ Lydia whispered in Alexei’s ear.

He grimaced. ‘It’s not meant to be.’

‘So how do we get in?’

‘We don’t.’

‘I thought we were here to observe the complex they’ve built. That’s what you said.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But the wall hides it all from view. I can’t see anything.’

He leaned back against one of the pine trunks, merging his silhouette with its rough bark. ‘You will,’ he promised.

‘Time to go, Lydia.’

Alexei looked up. His sister was still peering intently through Zeiss binoculars high up in one of the pine trees, a good fifteen metres off the ground. She looked small up there in the shadows of the canopy, and he could tell by the concentration on her face how much she wanted to stay.

‘ Lydia,’ he said quietly, aware of how sound carried in the heavy damp air.

She removed the binoculars with reluctance. ‘Bring me down.’

Igor played out the rope and dropped her down from her perch so fast that Alexei was surprised her legs didn’t break as she hit the ground. She handed the binoculars back to Igor.

‘Spasibo,’ was all she said.

She’d been surprised by Igor. By the way he’d looped a strap of leather between his ankles and around one of the narrow trees that was set back from the forest’s edge. Using the foot strap and another one between his wrists, he shinned up the trunk as fast as a polecat, his plump stocky legs pumping away with unexpected strength. Lydia had watched, mouth open, astonished. Alexei had smiled. He’d seen it before in the streets of Moscow at night. That’s how Igor scaled the drainpipes of apartment houses. Once up in the canopy he’d hooked a rope from his backpack over a branch and rigged up a sling on a simple pulley. So now Lydia had seen over the wall, exactly as Alexei had promised.

‘It’s a hangar,’ she said, keeping her voice low.

‘A massive one.’

‘What’s in it?’ Her eyes were huge, shining with the excitement he’d expected to find earlier. This was more like Lydia. ‘And what do you think all the sheds are for?’

‘The sheds are for storage of equipment. We’ve watched them haul machinery on trolleys over to the hangar.’

‘There are some big containers outside it. What are they?’

‘They look like petrol tanks to me. And the brick shed over to the right is the guard house.’

She nodded, her hat tumbling off. She jammed it back on. ‘I spotted that, the soldiers coming and going in and out of it. Dogs as well.’

‘It’s an interesting complex they’ve constructed here. A vast expanse of open space sliced out of a forest and walled in for secrecy. What the hell are they up to in there?’

‘A new kind of aeroplane?’

‘Maybe. But Jens is not-’

Her fingers gripped his wrist so hard they seemed to drill into the nerves, but he barely noticed. Her face was as white as the mist that draped itself over her shoulders.

‘I saw him,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘I saw Papa.’

‘No, Lydia, Jens would be inside working. They wouldn’t be allowed to wander around at will. And anyway,’ he gave a small snort of impatience, ‘you’d be unlikely to recognise him after all these years.’

‘I tell you I saw him.’

‘Where?’

‘Through the binoculars. He was sitting on a bench beside the big hangar.’

‘You’re imagining things.’

‘It was him. I know it was.’

Alexei left it there. Why argue the point? If she wanted so badly to believe she’d seen her father, then let her believe it.

‘Come on,’ he said in a brisk voice and removed his wrist from her grasp, ‘let’s get moving. Igor has finished packing away the rope.’

The wind was picking up, snatching at the branches, stealing through the mist. As they set off in single file once more, keeping close, Lydia cast one last glance back at the perimeter wall and whispered, ‘He had a woman sitting next to him, Alexei. Her hand was in his.’

They almost stumbled over the bodies.

‘Alexei!’

Lydia had seized the back of his coat with a force that almost choked him. As he swung round he was astonished to see a knife in her hand. Where the hell had that come from?

She’d stepped on an arm.

‘Down!’ he breathed.

He yanked her into a crouch at the base of a tree. Igor had flattened to the ground. The lack of undergrowth in the pine forest made movement easier but was no damn use when you needed cover. He held her down and under his palm on her back he could feel her heart racing. He waited ten minutes, gun in hand. Then another ten. No sign of any movement, no flicker of branches or flutter of birds. No sound, just a raw silence. They didn’t speak, not even a whisper, but Alexei made hand signals to Igor, then crawled away on his belly and elbows.

He found tracks, a number of them. And he found bodies, four, all in Red Army uniforms. Covered in blood. As though someone had hurled wet paint at them. He scoured the area, weaving between trunks, studying the high branches, but could spot no one. No one alive, that was; no one whose breath shuddered white trails into the mist. When he returned to Lydia she hadn’t moved a muscle, as if the icy air had frozen and trapped her there. But as soon as he nodded, she sprang to her feet in a low crouch.

‘Look,’ she whispered.

Her gaze was fixed on one of the dead soldiers. He was young and slumped in a sitting position against a pine, legs stiff in front of him, his eyes wide open and staring directly at her. Glassy, useless, sky-blue eyes. His throat had been cut from ear to ear like an extra-wide smile under his chin, and his life had spilled out over his army greatcoat by mistake – except this had been no mistake.

‘There are others,’ Alexei murmured and held up four fingers.

She slid a hand across the white skin of her own throat and raised an eyebrow. He nodded. All with smiles under their chins. He saw her flinch and feared she would freeze, her body go rigid. He’d seen it happen. Shock did strange things to a person. He was prepared to throw her over his shoulder if necessary, but when he started to move off she tucked in behind him like a shadow. Once again Igor brought up the rear, small eyes darting from tree to tree.

It was only when they reached the army truck that Lydia asked quietly, ‘Who did it? Who killed them?’

Alexei was certain he knew but something in him was reluctant to tell his sister.

‘Alexei,’ she insisted.

‘It’ll be Maksim. Watching our backs. That’s what a good pakhan does for his men.’

‘But you said the army patrols worked in pairs. And that they weren’t thorough in checking the forest. So why were there four soldiers?’

Alexei stamped the snow off his boots and swung up into the truck. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he scowled.

‘Not to me.’

‘We were betrayed.’

‘Betrayed? But who knew we were coming here today?’

‘Only us.’

The old black bone-shaker was still there on the track. Relief hit Alexei like a slap in the face and until then he hadn’t realised that a part of him had been doubting Maksim Voshchinsky. Fearing that he’d gone. But why would he do that when he’d just proved himself ruthless and thorough in protecting their backs? Alexei and Lydia resumed their earlier positions on the back seat and Alexei greeted Maksim with a grateful bear hug. The older man smelled of brandy but his skin felt brittle and cold, as though he’d been out in the wind.

‘Good to see you safe, my son,’ Maksim smiled.

‘Thank you, father.’

Lydia reached across Alexei and picked up one of Maksim’s hands. She removed the glove and lifted it to her lips, pressing a kiss on its veined flesh.

‘Spasibo, pakhan,’ she murmured.

The leader of the vory v zakone withdrew his hand with a chilly smile that went nowhere near his eyes.

‘Alexei,’ he said, ‘control your sister.’

The room smelled of blood. Metallic and salty and sticky as tar in the nostrils. Alexei stood just inside the door, heart pumping, seeking the source of the smell. He had accompanied Lydia into her house and up the narrow stairs. Something was wrong and he was determined to find out what. But on the top landing waited a thin man with suspicious eyes and a receding hairline, wearing a red armband that declared him to be the head of the Housing Committee. He blocked their path.

The man puffed out his weedy chest. ‘Comrade, there’s a stain on the floor outside your room. Please clean it up.’

Lydia blinked as though she hadn’t heard properly, then let out a gasp and pushed past, rushing to her door.

The man bit his lip, annoyed. ‘It looks like blood,’ he shouted after her.

Alexei followed. It was blood. And in the room there was more. The big woman, Elena, was standing by the bed. She lifted her head to see who had burst in without knocking, her pale eyes hard and angry. Beside him Lydia was quivering like a small animal, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

‘Liev,’ she whispered. ‘Liev.’

On the bed sprawled the big man. His barrel chest was naked and exposed, except for a bandage which looked as though a large crimson dinner plate had been placed on top of it. A vivid strident red. Every inch of his skin was covered in blood, sweat or bruises, while his one black eye had sunk into an equally blackened socket. But his mouth, though split and scabbed, was twisted into a lopsided attempt at a grin.

‘ Lydia,’ he bellowed.

She flew across the room. Smears of blood rubbed off on her as she leaned over and kissed his hairy cheek, wrapping her arms around his bull neck.

‘You’re not dead,’ she said. It was an accusation.

‘Nyet. I thought about it. But changed my mind.’

‘I’m glad.’ She was beaming at him, her hands gripping chunks of his beard. ‘I thought you were dead, you big idiot.’

Alexei wondered if she’d act with quite that desperate energy if he came back from the dead one day. He doubted it.

‘They threw you out, did they?’ she laughed. ‘Didn’t want your smelly carcass in their prison?’

The Cossack grunted.

She patted the bandage on his granite chest. ‘Making a bit of a fuss over nothing as usual, aren’t you?’

He grunted again and from somewhere under the bandage rose a bubbling sound. It might have been a laugh.

‘Shut up,’ Elena snapped. ‘Don’t talk, Popkov.’

She was standing in the same spot, staring at Lydia with barely controlled anger. In one hand she held a white enamel basin piled high with scarlet swabs of cotton and stained bandages. In the other, which was turned palm up, lay a blood-streaked rifle bullet.

‘Did you take it out of him?’ Alexei asked.

‘Someone had to.’

‘Anaesthetic?’

She glanced at the empty vodka bottle on the floor and gave it a kick that sent it spinning under the bed.

‘Elena,’ Lydia said, her voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t do it for you, girl.’

‘I know.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be back here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because without the Cossack, there is nothing here for you to come back for.’

‘There’s you. And Edik with his dog.’ Her tone was bemused.

‘Like I said. Nothing for you to come back for.’

‘Elena,’ Lydia said solemnly, ‘I thought you and I were friends.’

‘Then you thought wrong.’

The woman dumped the bullet on Liev’s chest where it sat like a miniature gravestone on top of the bandage. A heavy stillness settled in the metallic-tasting air.

‘ Lydia,’ Alexei said quickly, ‘come with me. We’ll buy medicines for him.’ He wanted her out of this room.

She didn’t move. Her huge eyes were lost in shadows but her gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the Russian woman.

‘Why did I think wrong, Elena?’

The woman’s expression softened. But that made it worse, as if she saw no hope for the young girl in front of her.

‘Because,’ Elena said, ‘you damage everything you touch.’