The Concubine's Secret (50 page)

‘You will tell him?’ Lydia prompted.

‘
Da.’

‘Thank you.’

They stood there in the twilight, their shadows merging on the scrubby grass until Lydia moved to separate them. The naked silhouettes of the trees jabbed fingers at them in the wind.

‘Kuan, why did you betray Chang to the Soviet police? You told them about the room in Raikov Ulitsa, didn’t you?’

The black eyes revealed nothing. ‘I do not know the meaning of the word
betray.’

‘It’s what you do to your enemies. Not to your friends.’

‘Comrade Chang is my friend.’

‘Then treat him like one.’

The blank eyes suddenly came alive, the stolid body unexpectedly fluid and mobile as it swung to face Lydia. ‘Leave him in peace,
fanqui.’

Lydia knew the word, she’d heard it a thousand times in Junchow.
Fanqui.
It meant foreign devil.

But Kuan hadn’t finished. ‘You have no need of him,’ she said. ‘There are many Russian men you can take instead. Choose your Soviet officer, the one with the fox-colour hair. One of your own. But leave Chang An Lo alone.’ She was close enough for Lydia to see the faint tremble in the corner of her eyelid. ‘Give him back to China,’ Kuan hissed.

Jens woke with a sense of sharp hunger. Not in his stomach. It was centred somewhere in his brain, gnawing its way along the coils, devouring parts of him. He tried desperately to recall what he’d been dreaming about but it had drifted out of reach already, leaving him with just the hunger and a waft of perfume more real in his nostrils than the dank odour of the basement cell.

Today would bring another letter.

Jens rolled on to his front to avoid the constant light of the dim overhead bulb and buried his face in the grubby pillow, so thin he could feel the bed slats through it. Today another letter. From his daughter.

That one word – daughter.
Dochka
. It altered him. Changed his perception and made a different person of him. It made it harder to bear what he had done and what he was still doing on the project. He groaned into the pillow. He wanted to sit Lydia down in front of him and explain. Don’t judge harshly,
malishka
. A man on his own with no one and nothing in an inhuman wasteland is one thing. He hardens like the shell of a walnut and over time the soft kernel inside slowly shrivels and dies. But a man with a daughter is quite another.

A man with a daughter has a hold on the future.

‘Prisoner Friis, do you agree with Prisoner Elkin? That everything is ready?’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

‘You surprise me.’

‘We have worked hard, Comrade Colonel.’

They were in Colonel Tursenov’s office, strung out in a nervous line. The chief scientists and engineers on the project stood uneasily in front of his leather-topped desk, eyes fixed on the faded Turkish carpet under their feet. When spoken to directly their gaze crept up to Tursenov’s collar with its red flashes. No higher.

‘I expect to be impressed,’ the Colonel said. ‘There will be guests, high level military observers. So no mistakes. You understand me?’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

Tursenov strutted along the line, his spectacles glinting with satisfaction. ‘I have selected the location for a full test.’

‘A full test?’ Elkin exclaimed. ‘I thought…’ He looked suddenly pale.

‘What you thought, prisoner, is irrelevant.’ Tursenov turned his head and scrutinised Jens. ‘A full test,’ he snapped. ‘No mistake of any kind.’

Jens stared straight at him, right to the back of the hard grey eyes, and what he saw there wasn’t satisfaction. It was fear. Failure was not an option for a man like Tursenov because failure would mean a sentence of twenty years in a prison labour camp, and long before the first year was up he’d be torn limb from limb when the guards’ backs were turned. Jens had seen it happen. Had heard the screams.

‘No mistakes,’ Jens assured him.

‘Good.’

‘May I ask the location of the test?’

‘This will amuse you, prisoner Friis. It is to be in Surkov camp.’

‘But Colonel, there are hundreds of prisoners there.’

‘So?’

‘You can’t kill all-’

‘It’s not me doing the killing, prisoner Friis. It’s you.’

‘But there’s no need to.’

‘Of course there is, prisoner Friis. We need to ascertain how low the planes must fly and the exact concentration of the gas. The test will be conducted at Surkov camp. The decision is made.’

Surkov camp. A flash of memories arced through Jens’ head, jolting it on his shoulders. Barbed wire tied round his wrists, beatings with an iron pipe till it buckled, solitary confinement in a cell smaller than a coffin, a robin fluttering bright as a ruby on his finger until a guard broke both the bird and his finger with his rifle butt.

‘It’s the place where you started your life as a prisoner, I believe.’

‘Started my death as a prisoner,’ Jens corrected.

Tursenov laughed. ‘That’s good. I like that.’ The laughter trickled away as he studied Jens’ face. ‘Well now, it looks like you’ll be starting the death of other prisoners too. But I wouldn’t let that worry you. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’ve survived.’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel. I have survived.’

The light in the courtyard was yellow. It slid through the darkness and spilled like oil on to the figures hunched in the cold morning air. Today it seemed to Jens that it made everyone look ill, but maybe that was because they all felt sick after yesterday’s meeting with Tursenov.

A full test. At Surkov camp. Dear God, he hadn’t expected that. There were people he knew there, men he’d eaten with, worked with, prisoners who had cared for him when he’d been injured.

He walked, limbs stiff and heavy, around the circle behind the compound’s metal fence, pleased not to talk, not to think. His gaze was fixed on the massive iron gate, his ears tuned for the screech of its hinges, and he didn’t even notice that Olga was limping. He didn’t see her distress because he was too blinded by his own.

‘Get out here, you big oaf!’

The baker was throwing open the back of the cart but the horse was jittery, tossing its head from side to side, picking up each feathery foot in turn, and all the time Jens watched out of the corner of his eye for the boy. Why wasn’t the thin figure there? He should be grabbing the reins.

‘Keep moving,’ a guard yelled.

It was Babitsky, his temper fraying at the edges this morning because he had woken with a thumping cold and the last thing he wanted was to be stuck on exercise duty. Jens moved his feet. He hadn’t even realised they’d stopped. Other prisoners muttered impatiently, their combined breath a white fog in the compound, so it took a moment before he could glance again at the cart, a quick glimpse over his shoulder as he followed the trail of footprints that stirred up the ice underfoot.

What he saw slammed into his mind. Either his eyes or his brain surely had got it wrong. It had to be a mistake. He looked away, concentrating on keeping his limbs functioning, and three seconds later when he again turned his head he was convinced the scene would be rearranged.

It wasn’t.

He had to clamp his teeth viciously on his tongue to stop himself shouting out. His mind froze. He rounded the bottom of the exercise circle, unaware that he had speeded up until he crashed into the man in front.

‘Watch yourself,’ the man snapped.

Jens didn’t even hear. He was staring at the bread cart. At the horse. At the big man who had come from the far side and was now facing in Jens’ direction, holding the reins and running a massive hand down the animal’s sweating neck. Jens recognised him at once even after all these years. It was Popkov, Liev Popkov. Older and dirtier, but Jens would know that damn Cossack anywhere. The black eyepatch, the sabre scar across the forehead that Jens remembered being inflicted as if it were yesterday.

‘What’s up with you?’ The man behind jabbed him.

‘Silence!’ Babitsky yelled.

Jens noticed Olga watching him but her face was a blur. He kept walking. How long had he been out here in the yellow-stained darkness? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Twenty-five? He might have only a few minutes left. He drew a deep breath, the air scouring his lungs, but it calmed him. His mind started to tick.

Hadn’t Lydia mentioned in her note that the Cossack was with her here in Moscow? Popkov and Alexei, she’d said. Without seeming to rush, he glanced again through the wire fence and across the thirty or so metres that separated him from the baker’s cart.

An involuntary flicker and his eyes skipped over to the stone seat against the wall. Jens had made another small flat folder of metal, so that the boy could pick up the new one at the same time that he returned with a note from Lydia. But the boy wasn’t here. Popkov was. The big man was carrying a tray of
pelmeni
that wafted a mouth-watering meaty smell over to the prisoners and Jens saw him glance casually at the seat, at the cobbles under it, as he lumbered past into the building. All smooth so far.

It was as Popkov emerged that everything went wrong. As if by accident their eyes met and the Cossack gave what could have been a nod or could have been just a nervous twitch of his thick neck. Jens lifted a hand and adjusted his hat. A wave of sorts. The baker was in a hurry. To Jens’ watchful eyes he seemed even more nervous today, tetchier, his feet scampering over the cobbles as though walking on coals.

‘You!’ The roar came from Babitsky. ‘I know you, you fucking bastard.’

Everyone turned and stared at the hefty guard. Babitsky’s rifle was aimed straight at Popkov’s chest.

‘Grab that big bastard,’ Babitsky shouted. Even in the pre-dawn cold, his face had turned vermilion. He was pounding across the courtyard, his rifle stuck out in front of him. ‘You,’ he bellowed, ‘I’m going to kill you.’

Jens hurled himself at the fence. ‘Run!’ he screamed.

But there was nowhere to run and the Cossack knew it. The gate was barred, the courtyard ringed with uniforms edging closer, rifle muzzles tracking every move he made. He gave Jens a flash of teeth in the black beard, flexed his massive shoulders and prepared to fight with bare hands.

‘
Nyet!
’ Jens shouted. ‘Don’t-’

Babitsky exploded on to Popkov, rifle thrust hard at his stomach. The guard was big but Popkov was bigger and faster. He stepped neatly to one side, pivoted on his heel and snapped the edge of one hand across Babitsky’s throat so that his knees buckled like bent straws. He clawed for air as he crashed to the ground. The other guards moved forward warily, surrounding the Cossack, who had snatched Babitsky’s rifle from the ground and was starting to swing it round the circle like a club, cracking elbows and smacking jaws.

Jens clutched the wire. Everyone knew what was coming.

A shot rang out. The sound of it was deafening in the enclosed yard as it ricocheted off the walls. The prisoners groaned in unison, all pressing their faces against the fence, the exercise circle forgotten. Popkov fell, his hand groping under the stone seat. Blood flowed on to the cobbles.

Lydia pounded her fist on the door till it shook on its hinges and rattled in its frame. Still it didn’t open. She thumped it harder, again and again, until the skin on her knuckles split. At long last there was the turning of a lock and the door jerked open.

‘What the bloody hell…?’ A pause. ‘Well now, if it isn’t little Lydia. What on earth are you doing here making such a row at this unseemly hour of the morning?’

‘I need your help, Dmitri.’

The Soviet officer smiled, a quiet steady smile that seemed to bob to the surface from somewhere deep down, as if he’d been expecting this moment, just not certain where among all the other moments it was hiding. He stepped back into the hallway, pulling the door wide open for her, and waved her inside.

‘What was wrong with the doorbell?’ he asked mildly.

‘It was too… easy.’

‘Too easy? What crazy place does that idea come from?’

‘I needed to hit something.’

They sat in the dining room facing each other across the middle of a long oak table. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, but with heavily carved feet so ornate that it jarred with the modernism of its owner. It occurred to Lydia that, like Antonina’s bracelet, it might have been acquired from someone needing help. Someone like herself.

‘So,’ he said with an easy smile, ‘what has got young Lydia so worked up this morning?’

‘I’m not worked up.’ She lifted her coffee and sipped it with a show of calm, but she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t shift the pulse of pain.

His grey eyes creased with amusement and she realised she wasn’t fooling him. He had sat her down, insisting that she join him for breakfast, poured her coffee and offered warm croissants from a French bakery, bottled peaches and wafer thin slices of smoked pork. She stuck to just the coffee. She would choke if she tried to eat. He was wearing embroidered slippers and a Japanese silk robe with a white linen napkin tucked into its front. With surgical precision he was slicing one of the peaches.

Lydia took a deep breath and let out the words she’d come to say. ‘Dmitri, today a friend of mine was shot.’

He raised one eyebrow. ‘The Chinese?’

‘No.’ The word jumped out of her mouth. ‘No, it was a Cossack friend of mine called Liev Popkov.’

‘A Cossack? He probably deserved to be shot then.’

In a low voice she said, ‘Dmitri, I will stick this knife in your throat if you say that about Liev Popkov.’

He placed a sliver of fruit in his mouth, dabbed the napkin to his lips and sat back with a serious expression. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t there.’

I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there. Chyort! I wasn’t there to help him when he needed me. Guilt jammed in her throat like a pebble from the Moskva River.