‘My job, comrade. Until my unfortunate companions join me once more.’ Jens pocketed the chisel and walked back to the hatch so that he was looking down on his interrogator’s neat bald patch. Even the man’s spectacles looked irritated. ‘I’ve been inspecting the fastenings of the gas bags. Nothing must be overlooked for the coming test.’
The man’s eyes registered suspicion, but there was nothing he could pick on, so he backed down the steps to allow Jens access to the gondola. The moment he was out of sight Jens removed his cigarette lighter from his pocket, flicked its flame into life and stood it, still alight, on the walkway. He had seconds. No more. He slid down the steps and made straight for the gondola’s door. To his surprise the Black Widow was seated at one of the tables, gazing out of the window and smoking a cigarette.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Jens asked quickly.
‘Not for a moment. I like it here, it’s peaceful.’
Jens didn’t stop to argue. He opened the door and fell, rather than climbed, down the ladder. Before he hit the concrete ground, all hell’s fury exploded around him.
54
The roar of flames ripped the darkness apart. A blast of hot air scorched the skin on Lydia ’s face and sucked the moisture from her eyeballs, so it felt as though sand was jammed against her eyelids. She could barely lift them. Then the smell hit – stinging, acrid, suffocating.
Only a moment before, Chang had started moving towards the open door again, little more than a flicker of shadow along the wall. He was intent on learning what was on fire in the small rear hangar but, when flames erupted twenty metres up into the pre-dawn darkness, Lydia saw him turn abruptly and race back towards her. The explosion had torn a hole the size of a house in the side of the main hangar, and fire engulfed the interior in an orange and black inferno. Oh God, Jens is in there. She was certain.
‘No!’ she screamed. Before Chang could reach her, she ran into the burning building.
The smoke came at her like an enemy in great waves of black, swallowing her. It clogged her lungs and choked her till she couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. She dragged off her coat and wrapped it around her head and shoulders. Showers of burning wood and debris descended on her like shrapnel, but she fought a way through them, her arm up protecting her face. She screamed her father’s name.
‘Jens! Jens!’
In the smoke and the flames she couldn’t see anybody. It was a nightmare world. Her head felt as though a band of iron were being tightened around it. She was gulping in smoke and there was a hot pain in her chest, then something hard and heavy struck her back, knocking her to the ground. She couldn’t focus her eyes any more and knew her brain was dying from lack of oxygen. With an effort of will she pushed herself off her knees and screamed.
‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’
She could hear the sound of her own voice but her lips felt nothing, unaware of making it, as if disconnected from the rest of her. She stumbled over something, a wooden panel that had collapsed on to the ground in flames, and it set fire to one of her boots. Frantically her gloved hands beat at it and she found herself staggering into a small empty space at the heart of all this chaos, a kind of clearing in a blazing forest. Flames leapt all around her but this small still spot was miraculously free of fire. Across it lay a ladder tangled up with metal girders and a large heavy section of polished wood which was blistering in the heat. Crushed under them lay her father. She saw his white hair. Only his head and one arm were visible and his hand was stretched out, his eyes fixed on her. They were smiling.
‘ Lydia.’
The roar in her ears stole the sound but she saw his lips make the word.
‘Papa!’
She crouched down and clutched his hand. Their fingers entwined for a fleeting moment, the way they had in the snow so many years ago. She whispered, ‘My dear Papa,’ before she pushed herself to her feet, seized the wood and tried to yank it off his back. Her lack of strength shocked her. Her vision filled with bright stars and she had no idea whether they were the real night sky opening up above or whether they were inside her head. Jens touched her ankle and she knelt down quickly beside his head.
‘ Lydia,’ he said hoarsely, ‘get out of here. Now.’ He pushed at her but the gesture was so weak she barely felt it. ‘Don’t cry,’ he murmured. ‘Just go.’
She didn’t know she was crying. She kissed his white hair and it stank of oil and smoke. Blood was oozing from his ear. ‘Papa,’ she gasped and tucked her leg under the edge of the slab that was crushing him, taking the weight of it. She forced herself to push upright with the other leg. The wood shifted a fraction, enough for Jens to drag out his other arm and attempt to crawl forward on his elbows. But he was caught, his legs pinned.
‘ Leave, Lydia.’
‘Not without you.’
‘We’ll both die.’
In response Lydia seized a fallen piece of timber, heedless of the flames devouring it, and jammed it under the polished slab, freeing her leg. Then she bent down, gripped both Jens’ hands and pulled with all her strength until her lungs seemed to rip apart inside her. For a moment nothing happened except the fire leaping several paces closer, but suddenly something yielded. There was a loud crack and Jens started to slide forward. He made no sound. Lydia could see in his green eyes what this was doing to her father, yet she didn’t stop until he was clear of the wood. Relief surged through her until she looked at his legs. Bones were sticking out in all directions through the flesh. Even in the billowing black air she couldn’t miss the white of them, and the red of the blood. One kneecap had been torn off.
‘ Lydia, I beg you to go.’ His face was robbed of all colour, his lips ash-grey. ‘Don’t let… me kill my daughter too.’
Lydia crouched beside him, bent low and draped one of his arms over her shoulder. ‘You did this? This fire?’
He smiled and she loved his smile.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
He struggled to release himself from her grip but she refused to let him go. Instead she half lifted herself, raising him with her, holding him on her bent back. Still he made no sound as his shattered legs dragged behind him, but he didn’t breathe either. A sudden furious squall of sparks and fiery debris showered on their heads and she felt something burning her ear, then the back of her neck, but her father knocked whatever it was from her hair. She swayed, her lungs screaming for oxygen, and took one laboured step forward. Both of them knew the only way out of this inferno was to run but she couldn’t run. Not with her father on her back. She took another step.
‘Put me down, Lydia,’ he ordered in her ear. ‘I love you for coming for me. Now put me down.’
‘Alexei came.’ Another step. ‘He stopped the…’ three more steps but each one smaller than the last, ‘stopped the truck.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re…’ she gasped, dragging in smoke, ‘his father.’
A wall of flames rose before her. This was it. She had to walk through it. She twisted her head sideways. ‘Ready?’
He kissed her cheek. ‘ Lydia, I am not Alexei’s father.’
Chang would not give up. He’d find her. Or die. There was no middle path. He called her name without ceasing but the flames swallowed his words. The smoke suffocated life. He could feel it dying in his own lungs and his fear for Lydia tore his heart into pieces.
The gods had warned him. They’d sent him the omen but he had refused to listen to any words but hers. He’d let her come over the wall with him and now he was paying for not heeding the murmur of the gods, for not keeping a balance of desires. He could live – or die – with that, but he could not bear that she should die for it too.
He called out. He roared her name into the fire and the flames roared back at him, their laughter in every crackle and explosion that they spat in his face. He could see nothing beyond the inferno towering around him, whichever direction he turned, and quite suddenly he realised he was looking with the wrong sense. Eyes could lie and confuse and panic. So he closed them. He stood totally still and exhaled the poisons from his lungs.