The Concubine's Secret (32 page)

‘It’s fascinating to see the construction of it.’

‘I agree,’ Jens Friis responded to Olga, who was standing at his side. They were both gazing upward. ‘Every time I see it, it takes my breath away.’

‘It’s like a huge pregnant whale floating up there.’

Jens laughed, his breath a shimmer of white in the early morning air. ‘Ah, Olga, you don’t do it justice. It’s an airship. Look at it. Sleek and elegant. A gigantic silver bullet waiting for someone to pull the trigger.’

He was proud of the design. However much he hated it, he was proud of it. Like a child who goes bad, it’s hard to stop loving it. Airships had a far greater range than aeroplanes and this one, with two biplanes attached to it, would provide a weapon that could terrorise whole cities and battlegrounds.

With a shiver Olga looked away from the creation looming above their heads. Instead she stared at young Fillyp struggling with the ropes, at the cement floor meticulously clean, at her own hands, a skilled chemist’s hands.

‘Olga,’ Jens said gently, and for a brief second while everyone’s attention was elsewhere he touched her shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault. You have no choice. None of us have.’

She turned her bleak blue eyes on him. ‘Is that true, Jens? Is that really true?’

The airship’s hangar was as high and as intricately ribbed as the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. It towered above them like a new kind of sky, but no sun ever shone inside this world. It dwarfed the band of engineers and scientists who set about their work with well-schooled efficiency, reduced to the significance of worker ants by the vast structure.

Today it was Jens’ task to reconstruct the release triggers on the gas containers, adjusting his new design for one of the holding brackets on the underside of the biplanes in the adjoining hangar. The weight of each biplane was crucial to the airship’s balance, so he had to calibrate his measurements with minute precision. He was watched carefully. Not only by the guards who shuffled up and down, rifles slung over their shoulders, beating their arms across their chests to keep warm, but by the others. He never knew who they were or what they did. Lean-faced, grey-haired observers, two of them, always dressed in black suits. He called them the Black Widows because they crawled all over the place, poisonous as spiders.

They both wore spectacles and one was constantly unwinding the wire frames from his ears and polishing the glass with his pristine white handkerchief, which seemed to be reserved for that one specific task. They rarely spoke. Just watched everything he did. Sometimes when he glanced over his shoulder, one of the overhead lamps would be reflected in their lenses and it looked to Jens as if hell fire itself was trapped in their eyes.

Outside in the mist Elkin was lolling on a bench at the side of the hangar, smoking a cigarette and picking at a burn on the back of his hand. Smoking of any kind was strictly forbidden inside the hangars, or even anywhere near them for that matter, but once out here in the surrounding compound no one bothered much and the massive buildings provided good protection from the biting wind.

Jens lit his own cigarette – one of the bonuses of being part of this unit was free smokes – and took a place next to his colleague on the bench, folding his long legs under the seat.

‘Elkin,’ he said, ‘you and I have got to have a serious talk about timing. You told Colonel Tursenov that we’ll have it fixed in two weeks.’

‘It’s true, we can.’

‘I think that’s very doubtful. We’ll have to run a sequence of tests first.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Friis, don’t treat me like one of those dimwits over there.’ He gestured with the tip of his cigarette towards a guard sitting on the top step of a stone store hut over by the compound’s brick wall. Near enough to keep an eye on them but too far for words to carry.

‘Elkin, just think about what we’re doing here,’ Jens murmured. ‘Think about the monster we’re creating.’

‘All I’m thinking about is my release at the end of it. That’s what they promised us. Our freedom.’

‘You’re a fool, Elkin.’

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

‘Use that big brain of yours. What we’re involved in here is top secret. Do you honestly believe that when we’ve completed our work, they’ll just open the doors and let us walk out?’

‘Yes!’

‘Like I said, you’re a fool.’

Elkin jumped to his feet and glared down at Jens, who remained seated, unwilling to attract the guard’s attention.

‘Friis, I did nine years in the camps in Siberia, including three in the Kolyma gold mine. I’m bloody lucky to be still alive at all. I’m not going to risk this one chance of becoming a free citizen, of returning to my family, just because you have some stupid misplaced notion of noble behaviour to protect others.’

‘We are all lucky to be alive. And every one of us wants our freedom.’

Elkin leaned over so that his scarred face was only inches from Jens and whispered fiercely, ‘Then don’t fucking ruin it for the rest of us by causing any more delays.’ He turned on his heel and strode through the damp air back towards the hangar, his figure dissolving in the mist.

Jens didn’t move. He let his unfinished cigarette fall to the wet grass and inhaled deeply while he fought off a black wave of sorrow. He was used to depression. It always came and sat at his heels like a faithful dog until he was as accustomed to its rank and fetid breath as he was to his own. But now he had a weapon against it, a bright light he could switch on at will, shine in its dull lifeless eyes and drive it back into the darkness from which it came: the knowledge that his daughter was alive.

He closed his eyes and conjured her up. An elfin dancing creature. He tried to imagine her as she would be now, a young girl of seventeen with hair the colour of flames and clear amber eyes that looked at you straight. A face that kept private thoughts hidden behind a slow, curious smile. But he couldn’t do it. That seventeen-year-old kept sliding away into the mist like Elkin, and in her place skipped a laughing child, one who tossed her head when she ran into a room or creased her smooth forehead into a frown of concentration when helping her father bang a nail into a length of wood, or draw a perfect angle of ninety degrees. A heart-shaped face that would tilt up at him, eyes bright, and break into a wide grin when he tapped her little chin and said, ‘Well done,
malishka.’

‘I’m glad you’ve found something to look happy about.’

Jens opened his eyes to find Olga standing in front of him. He liked that shy uncertain way she had about her, and had an overwhelming urge to take her hand firmly in his and walk away to freedom. Except that the field and the hangars were surrounded by a ten-metre-high wall topped with coils of vicious wire, and guards patrolled its perimeter day and night.

So instead he said, for her ears only, ‘Someone is looking for me.’

‘Who?’

‘My daughter.’

Olga’s eyes widened, soft blue eyes that were good at spotting his moods. ‘I didn’t know you even had a daughter.’

There was something in her voice, something regretful just under the surface, but he was too engrossed by the images in his head to notice it.

‘I thought she was dead,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

His ears heard the crack of a gunshot and he looked around quickly before he realised it was in his mind. ‘We were on a train.’ He recalled the temperature in the cattle wagons. So cold it transformed the blood in his veins to agonising ice and he’d watched the lips of his wife and daughter turn blue, their skin whiter than the snow outside in the wastelands of Siberia.

‘The Bolsheviks were everywhere,’ he said, ‘stopping all White Russians escaping. They hauled all the men off the train and…’ He grimaced and lit himself another cigarette to rid his mouth of the taste of death.

‘Shot them?’ Olga asked.

He nodded. ‘I was one of the lucky ones. Because I’m Danish, they threw me in a labour camp instead.’ He drew hard on his cigarette. ‘Lucky,’ he repeated bitterly. ‘It depends what you mean by that word, doesn’t it?’

‘What about your wife and daughter? What happened to them?’

‘I thought they would have been killed as well.’

‘But now you’ve heard your daughter is alive?’

‘Yes.’ His broad smile came as a surprise to both of them. ‘Her name is Lydia.’

Alexei slept late. His legs ached, his skin itched. A woman with sores on her face and a broom in her hand prodded him with the bristles.

‘Up!
Kozel!
Out now.’

Alexei rolled out of bed fully clothed, aware of his own stink, and saw that the dormitory had already emptied of last night’s occupants. The rule was that no one was permitted indoors in daylight hours. These were mercifully short in winter. He was heading down to the single bathroom on the ground floor when a rush of cold air signalled the main door had swung open and a voice behind him drew his attention.

‘
Tovarishch!’

He turned. Three men in long coats with fur shapkas jammed on their heads were standing just inside, staring at him. The lethargic concierge behind the reception desk eyed them with dislike but made no comment, and Alexei experienced a flicker of alarm. He folded his arms across his chest as though bored by the interruption and remained where he was, his mouth pulled into a tight line.

‘
Da?’ he responded.

‘We want you to come with us.’

Alexei’s mind raced. OGPU operatives. They had to be. That’s all he could think. The secret police. They come for you when you least expect it, especially when there are few people around to witness it. Somehow they’d traced him. Now the bastards had come to arrest him. Because of his social origins? Just because he was from an aristocratic family? Or was there something else? Immediately his thoughts went to Antonina. Had she betrayed him? A bitter taste stung the back of his tongue because he’d believed he could trust her. How the hell could he help his father when he couldn’t even help himself? He forced his shoulders to relax and stuck a smile of sorts on his face.

‘Well,
tovarishchi
, why on earth would I want to go with you?’ he asked easily. ‘I’m busy now. Another time maybe.’

He took a stride away down the corridor but didn’t turn his back on them. To his surprise, instead of snapping at his heels like a pack of wolves eager for the taste of flesh, they just stood there by the main door looking perplexed. Four more steps along the tiles and he pushed open the bathroom door.

‘Of course, comrade,’ a tall coat at the front of the threesome said politely. ‘When would be convenient?’

Alexei stalled, hand still on the door. Convenient? Since when did OGPU do anything at your convenience? He released the door, moved back along the corridor and studied the intruders more closely. They were no older than himself, around mid-twenties; one short and plump, the others taller and leaner with identical moustaches. All had eyes that made him nervy.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘We met last night.’ It was one of the tall figures who spoke.

‘Last night?’

‘
Da.
Don’t you remember me?’

Then it came to him and he cursed his starved brain for its sluggishness. The moustaches. Of course, just like the man they called
pakhan
, with the droop around each side of the mouth.

‘Of course I do. Tell me, how is he today?’

‘Better.’

‘I’m glad. Send him my good wishes for his recovery.’

‘He wants to see you.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’ The man paused and added reluctantly, ‘If it is convenient. He asks whether you would come to eat bread with him.’

Alexei laughed with relief, a good strong belly laugh that made the threesome shuffle uneasily.

‘
Da
,’ he said. ‘Tell him yes.’

Bread and salt.

Alexei accepted the piece of black bread on the tray that greeted him as he walked into the apartment, and dipped it in the bowl of salt. In Russia bread and salt represented much more: they meant hospitality. They meant welcome. On bread and salt you could live. Beside them on the tray stood a shot glass filled to the brim with vodka. He picked it up, knocked it back in one and felt it burn the cobwebs from his stomach.

His mind kicked into gear and he looked around with interest. The apartment was an odd mixture of old and new. On the walls hung hefty oil paintings in elaborate frames, all portraits of different men. Sharp observant eyes gazed out at him from each one. Family portraits? Could be. For a moment Alexei recalled the severe paintings of his own ancestors that used to line the grand staircase in their St Petersburg villa and frighten him as a child. At least some of these looked as if they knew how to smile. The furniture, in contrast, was new and utilitarian, a plain bleached pine that looked at odds with the paintings, but everything was clean and there was no curtain dividing the large living room into separate quarters.

‘This way,
pozhalusta.’

Alexei followed the plump one of the trio into a corridor and to a heavy door, with an ancient brass handle that looked as though it might have come from somewhere else. Somewhere like a church. The soft-looking knuckles knocked.

‘
Da?’

‘
Pakhan
, I have the comrade from last night.’

‘Come in, damn you.’

They entered a room that belonged to a man with a passion. Though the curtains were half closed, a strip of sunlight lay dim and dusty in the air, exposing the contents of the room. Wings seemed to flutter, feathers flashed scarlet, eyes gleamed corn yellow. The place was full of birds. Alexei blinked but the birds didn’t move. They were all stuffed. Exquisite masters of the air trapped under glass domes and doomed to pose on mossy branches until their feathers blackened and turned to dust. With a jolt Alexei pictured his own father, Jens Friis, trapped, penned, ensnared for so many years, unable to fly.