Gradually, the noise was replaced by the sound of the wind.
And Lock heard, with a rage that was like fierce excitement:
‘You stupid bastard!’
‘Sure. I counted six separate locations — what about you?’
‘Five.’
‘It’s six … and maybe the same out back. At least as many strung out around the house. That’s a dozen and more. This guy Bakunin — he doesn’t take prisoners, right?’ Dmitri shook his head. ‘Then they’ll be changing positions now, having given themselves away — take someone out, if you can. From the other window ‘
Lock raised his head beside the window. A flicker of fire and the impact of a bullet against the far wall, the sound of a ricochet.
He fired at the spot where the muzzle flash had originated but the two bullets disappeared silently into the snow. Ducked back as more gun flashes leapt out. The bullets hummed like insects in the room. Dmitri fired once and cursed a miss. Their reply was fourfold and the big man crouched beneath the window like some catatonic mental patient.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes — you?’
‘OK.’ Two lost animals calling to one another. ‘You think they’ll close in?’
“I don’t know!’
‘How do we get out?’
‘God knows.’
Lock, lying on his stomach, could smell old polish on the floor, old cooking in the furniture, mustiness.
‘I should watch the back of the house,’ Dmitri offered reluctantly.
‘Sure.
Do that.’
‘I can’t call anyone … It’d be risking their lives, too.’
‘Sure. Watch the back’
Something, entering through the shattered window, burst near the fireplace. The room exploded in a blinding, white phosphorus light. Lock slapped at shards of flame on his clothes. The skin on his hands burned. Dmitri was exposed as by a flashbulb.
The explosion filled Lock’s eyesight, making him unable to see the fire it had started.
‘Incendiary grenade-!’ he heard Dmitri shout. Goludin’s clothes were smouldering, so was the rug, Lock realised as his eyesight returned. There were other fires, dotted over the room, flaring up quickly. The curtains near him were ablaze.
‘No choice!’ he shouted. ‘Back door!’ Then: ‘What’s out back?’
‘Garden — a shed, vegetable plot — ‘ He sounded like someone from a realtor’s office. ‘Fence, low enough to climb over — OK?’
‘It’s all there is — get going!’
The room was being greedily consumed by the fire. Two shots, as if poked in their direction to stir them into movement. They’d be waiting out there ‘I’ll go through the door, you try a window.’ Lock swallowed saliva, and at once his mouth was dust-dry. They crawled side by side to the kitchen door, Lock following Dmitri through it.
‘You’ll see the shed, off to your right.’
‘OK. Watch yourself’
The fire crackled behind them, stirred to a rage by the wind.
‘Christ, the bloody rabbit!’ Dmitri cried. Lock was stunned — the girl’s, he realised. The four-legged icon wrapped in fur, every feeding-time a devotion for the lost daughter. He couldn’t say damn the rabbit… Dmitri awkwardly pulled on the overcoat he had dragged from the table. Lock felt his own thrown against him and he struggled into it. Then Dmitri lifted the rabbit’s cage down from a work surface and cradled it to his chest.
The fire was garishly orange, blocking the open door to the living room. Smoke roiled and billowed, making Lock choke.
He stared at the kitchen door. ‘The church in the old town, can you find it?’
‘Yes’
‘Rendezvous there if we lose contact — OK? Alexei will make for it, too!’ The rabbit’s eyes were preternaturally large, hypnotised in terror by the light of the fire as it crouched in its cage.
He hesitated only for a moment, then slipped to the door and reached up to silently unlock it. Gripped the handle, then flung it wide, his whole body protesting at the imminence of pain. He flung himself to the right side of the door, rolling along the narrow, snow-covered verandah, bullets slapping into the wooden wait just above him, throwing up puffs of snow near his face. A bloody rabbit, was all he could cogently think, a bloody rabbit, for Christ’s sake!
Rolled off the verandah into deep snow which masked him, whitening his overcoat into camouflage. He swallowed icy snow and looked up, attempting to locate the shed. Flame burst through the roof of the wooden dacha and from the windows at the rear of the house, outlining him. He climbed to his feet and ran in a crouch, stumbling through the snow as through deep, tidal water. Shots. Felt nothing. Numb with cold and shock, he wouldn’t even sense the bullet that crippled or killed him —
— breath bullied from his body by collision with the wall of the shed. Snow fell from the roof, covering his head and shoulders.
Impact like that of a bullet, halting him. His cheek against the rough wood. Still alive, unhurt. Just winded.
Firing, away on the other side of the house. Dmitri and his daughter’s bloody rabbit — pointless. Pointless without the rabbit?
He dragged air into reluctant lungs. Ice in his throat, his cheeks numb as the blizzard dried the melted snow on his face, caked it with more snow. Two shots impacted into the opposite wall of the shed, smashed glass. He saw a child’s swing skeletal against the pale sheen of the snow, oranged by the fire. The whole of the dacha was now ablaze.
The church in the old town. He remembered it from his previous visit — a lifetime ago. Onion-domed, neglected, black with grime. Shots again from the far side of the garden, perhaps pistol shots, perhaps Dmitri…
He knelt in the snow, recollecting the surroundings of the dacha, aware of his shadow thrown by flames on the wall of the shed. The haze of the town’s lights was dim, almost invisible. That way-?
That way. He crawled into a bush which shed its weight of snow on him. Crawled into and through its snagging, scratching thorns and found the fence. Rickety, low, decayed — turned at the noise and fired, giving away his position, killing the greatcoated man who was blundering at him, rifle aimed.
The soldier seemed to dive over him, still attacking as he died. then the body was still in the deep snow, arms splayed as if he had drowned and the body was floating.
Lock flung himself against the fence and it gave outwards, then collapsed. He fell sideways and ludicrously into a snowdrift, hearing a voice cry out:
‘Over here! Across the lane — in the trees, here!’ He did not even pause to consider some kind of trap, it had to be Dmitri calling to him. He blundered through the snow, which suddenly dipped and spilt him into what must be the lane. He struggled free of the drift and climbed the bank of the buried lane. A few lumbering steps more and the depth of snow diminished, surrendering to the dark barrier of the firs.
He could see nothing.
‘Dmitri?’ he called.
‘Over here!’ It was him.
He gripped the man’s sleeve as he might have done a lifebelt, breathing stertorously, hearing the gasps of Dmitri’s exhausted breaths. Head hanging, he found himself staring into the wide, black, terrified eyes of the rabbit, its cage half-filled with snow.
The eyes reflected two tiny, burning dachas.
There was silence inside the trees, hardly any wind, little blown snow.
‘How did you — ?’ he began.
‘It’s my place. They don’t know it, didn’t know the lane was there, probably — no time now. Come on, this way. Quickly!’