Pinocharsky came towards them, arms open in a mime of embrace. He was wreathed in smiles but looked harassed, his wiry red hair wisping.
‘Well then!’ he said. ‘Here you are; you have come at last! But you’re late. I was expecting you two hours ago. You have to hurry. Your train is waiting on the next platform.’ He gestured for porters. ‘What a lot of luggage you have. But no matter, there’s no doubt plenty of room.’
The members of the League were looking at one another in dismay. Forshin took Pinocharsky by the arm.
‘Train?’ he said. ‘What train? We’ve only just arrived, man. We need a hotel. We need a meeting. Editors. Publishers. We need a plan. We have much to say to the people.’
‘Ah,’ said Pinocharsky. ‘Well, no, not exactly. Not yet. There’s been a change of plan. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to contact you.’ He was looking shifty.
‘A change of plan?’
Yes. The House of Enlightened Arts… Rizhin decided Mirgorod wasn’t the place for it after all. He has a new plan, a better plan. You’ll see the advantages when you understand.’
‘What?’ said Forshin. ‘No. This is unacceptable.’
‘I’m to take you there directly,’ said Pinocharsky. ‘The train’s waiting—’
‘This is outrageous,’ said Forshin. ‘I protest. On behalf of the League. There must be consultation.’
‘These are the instructions of Rizhin himself,’ said Pinocharsky stonily.
‘At least let us have some time to rest and recover from the journey. The ladies—’
‘I’m sorry, that won’t be possible.’
‘Then tell us where we are going, man,’ said Olga-Marya Rapp. ‘At least tell us that.’
‘A new town in the east,’ said Pinocharsky. ‘A pioneering place. Leading edge. A city of the future. A place called Vitigorsk. There’s a great project under way there. I don’t know much about it yet myself.’
The League muttered and grumbled and cursed under their breath but there was no rebellion. They were too weary, too inured to disappointment; they knew in their hearts the limits of their true worth. Porters picked up their baggage and moved along the platform, and they followed in a subdued huddle.
Eligiya Kamilova caught up with Forshin.
‘Nikolai…’
Forshin looked at her, puzzled. She and the girls had slipped his mind in all the fuss.
‘Oh, Eligiya, of course…’
‘I wanted to thank you, Nikolai. You’ve been very kind to the girls and me. You’ve done more than we had any right to hope for.’
‘Oh. You’re not coming with us? No, of course not. But do. Come with us to this Vitigorsk place, Eligiya. See where all this excitement leads. The future is opening for us, I feel sure of it.’
‘I can’t, Nikolai. I must take Galina and Yeva to look for their mother.’
‘Of course you must do that.’ He held out his hand and she took it. ‘Well, goodbye then.’
‘Thank you, Nikolai. And good luck.’
Eligiya Kamilova watched Forshin walk away purposefully, hurrying to catch up with Pinocharsky. She never saw or heard of him, nor any other member of the Philosophy League, ever again.
‘Eligiya,’ said Yeva, ‘can we go now, please? We have to go and find our mother.’
Two hours later they were standing in the street where their aunt’s apartment building had stood, the place where the Archipelago bomb had fallen: six years before in Mirgorod time, but for them it was a matter of months.
Everything was different. Everything was changed.
Of their mother Elena Cornelius there was of course no sign at all. They waited a while, pointlessly. It was futile. They were simply causing themselves pain.
Eligiya Kamilova wondered what to do. It was only now she was here that she realised she had no plan for what came next, no plan at all.
‘We’ll come back again tomorrow,’ said Galina to Yeva. ‘We’ll come every day.’
8
The next morning, early, Lom went up into the mountains with Maksim, Konnie and Elena. Konnie had rented a boxy grey Narodni with a dented near-side wheel arch. The interior smelled strongly of tobacco smoke. There was a heaped ashtray in the driver’s door. The streets climbed steeply out of Anaklion into scrub and scree and dark dense trees. No sun yet reached the lower slopes.
They drove in silence. Lom, squeezed onto the scuffed leather bench-seat in the back next to Elena, watched out of the window. The Narodni struggled on the steep inclines and Konnie swore, fishing for the second gear that wasn’t there. The back of Maksim’s head sank lower and lower between his shoulders.
After forty-five minutes Konnie pulled off the road onto a rough stony track. Out of sight among boulders and black cypress she killed the engine.
‘This is it,’ she said. ‘You walk from here.’
Maksim, Lom and Elena left her with the car and started up a steep narrow hunting trail. Elena carried a rifle slung across her back. When they crested a ridge and clear stony ground fell away to their right, she broke away on her own. Two minutes later Lom couldn’t see her at all.
It took him and Maksim another hour to work their way around to the thick woodland above and behind the gatehouse of Dacha Number Nine. Maksim picked his route carefully, stopping to look at his watch. He seemed to know what he was doing. Once he had them crawl on their bellies in under thick green spiky vegetation.
‘Patrol,’ he hissed.
The sun was higher now, kindling scent from crushed leaves and crumbling earth. Slow pulses of purple and blue rippled across the cloudless sky. A liminal solar breathing.
Lom’s every move and step was a startling noise in the thin motionless air.
They crouched in the shadow of a pine trunk. The roof of the gatehouse was fifty feet below them, and beyond it the closed gate itself. Maksim checked his watch again and put his face close to Lom’s ear.
‘Now we wait,’ he whispered. ‘I will tell you when.’
9
Lukasz Kistler was lying on a low cot bed in his cell. Every part of him was in pain. He followed the passing of days and nights by the rectangle of sky in the high window, but he didn’t count them. Not any more. He divided time between when he was alone and safe and when he was not, that was all.
When the key turned in the lock and the door opened he wanted to open his mouth and scream but he did not. He knotted his fingers tight in his grey blanket and pulled the fabric taut: a little wall of wool, a shield across his chest. A protection that protected nothing at all.
Vasilisk the bodyguard stepped inside and padded across to the bed. Looked down on Kistler impassively with sleepy half-closed eyes.
‘Please,’ said Kistler. His mouth was dry. ‘Not any more. There is no more. It’s finished now.’
‘You’ve got friends outside the dacha,’ said Vasilisk. ‘They’re coming to take you away.’
Kistler tried to focus on what he was hearing. He couldn’t get past the fact it was the first time he had heard Vasilisk speak. His voice was pitched oddly high.
‘They’re going to try to blow up the gate,’ he said. ‘Stand up. You have to come with me.’
‘I refuse,’ said Kistler. He pressed himself deeper into the thin mattress. The springs dug into his back.
‘You refuse?’ Vasilisk looked at him with faint surprise, like there was something unexpected on his plate at dinner.
‘I refuse,’ said Kistler again. ‘Absolutely I refuse. No more. I will not come again. Not any more. I’m finishing it. Now.’
Vasilisk bent in and hooked a hand under Kistler’s shoulder, iron fingers digging deep into his armpit, hauling him up. Kistler resisted. Pulled away and tried to fall back onto the mattress.