‘Yes,’ Alexei murmured, not taking his eyes off them. ‘That’s why they’re here. It’s the raw materials we need.’
‘For industry?’ the woman asked.
He nodded. ‘For Stalin’s great Five Year Plan.’
‘So what is it the prisoners do all the way up here?’
Still he watched them. Saw a man fall. ‘Mining. This region is rich in ore and coal.’
An uncomfortable silence descended, while the passengers pictured the prisoners, black-faced somewhere deep under the train’s wheels, swinging picks at a brutal coal seam, lungs filling up with heavy choking dust.
‘And timber,’ Alexei added softly.
Dear God, let Jens Friis be good with a saw.
‘This place is too tidy for us,’ Liev Popkov growled under his breath. ‘Too clean.’
For once the ox brain was right. The town of Felanka was not what Alexei had been expecting and not what he wanted. They were walking down the main street, Gorky Ulitsa, with Lydia tucked safely between them, taking a careful look at their surroundings. Where were the usual rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks? Most of the towns up here in the north were sprawling, indifferent places that had sprung into being to accommodate the recent enforced migration of Russia’s dissidents into these sparsely populated areas. No one would notice an extra few travellers in one of those. But this was different. This town felt loved.
Elegant buildings lined wide, graceful boulevards and everywhere there was an abundance of scrolled ironwork. Balconies and streetlamps, door and window settings, all curled and twined in an outbreak of wrought iron. Felanka was built on iron ore. It lived and breathed it. Some way off to the west of the town lay the massive brick-built foundry. It loomed like a giant black turtle on the horizon, belching foul-smelling smoke that turned the air into something you could touch. But today the east wind was keeping the smoke at bay and the town was parading its charms under a brittle blue sky.
‘Popkov.’ Alexei nodded towards a shop front they were passing. ‘In here.’
He wanted to get Lydia off the street. She’d been silent since leaving the train, and all through their registration at the hostel where they were shown into rooms that smelled of laundered sheets, she’d looked pale and listless. He wondered if she was sick. Or sick at heart.
He pushed open the door off the street. It was a printer’s shop, with heavy iron presses on the left and a huddle of men in deep discussion around them. The air held the tang of metal and ink. On the right side of the gloomy interior a high counter ran across the window, and this was what Alexei had spotted from outside. Here customers could buy a hot drink and stand while they waited for their print order. An old babushka with sparse grey hair scraped back into a bun sat sharp-eyed at the back of the shop, one hand resting possessively on the claw foot of the samovar beside her.
‘Dobriy den,’ Alexei greeted her politely. ‘Good afternoon.’
‘Dobriy den,’ she nodded, and gave him a toothless twist of her mouth that he assumed was a smile. He bought tea for himself and Popkov, hot chocolate for Lydia. They carried the glasses over to the wooden counter by the window and stood looking out at the street.
‘It’s too tidy,’ Popkov muttered again. ‘For us.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lydia asked. She was again positioned between them – that’s how it always was – but didn’t look at him, just wrapped her gloves around the hot glass in its metal podstakanik and stared at the flurry of trucks trailing past. There was no one else in their section of the shop and the noise from the printing press meant there was no danger of being overheard.
Popkov rummaged his fingers in his thick black beard. He was chewing a wad of tobacco and his teeth were so stained they merged with the black bristles. ‘They don’t need us.’
‘You mean our money?’ she asked.
‘Da.’
She sank back into her silence, sipped her chocolate and blew steam at the window. Alexei could sense the shreds of hope slipping from her grasp. He placed his podstakanik down on the scratched surface with annoyance.
‘People always take money,’ he said firmly. ‘People always take money. Don’t you know that yet?’
Lydia shrugged.
‘Listen, Lydia.’ Alexei leaned an elbow on the counter and concentrated on her face. It looked tired, dark shadows circling her eyes. ‘We’ve come this far. To Trovitsk camp. We’ve even laid eyes on some of the wretched prisoners, poor bastards.’ He saw her flinch, a tiny movement of the muscle beside her eye. That was all. She said nothing. He lowered his voice. ‘We always knew the next part would be difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ Popkov snorted. ‘Fucking dangerous, you mean.’
‘Not impossible though.’ Alexei was irritated and gave a sharp rap with his knuckles on the wood, as if he could knock some sense into their heads. ‘Jens Friis could still be there.’
He saw her tremble. Sometimes he forgot how vulnerable she was, how unguarded. He had to remind himself that he’d had years at a military training establishment in Japan where he’d learned levels of self-control, but she’d had… nothing. He took a mouthful of his chai. It was hot and burned a path down inside him, but couldn’t warm what lay deep in there, cold and untouched. He pushed himself upright, stretched his shoulders and faced the one-eyed Cossack.
‘Popkov, I thought you were a man who liked danger. Drank it in with your mother’s milk, I heard.’
He saw the one black eye flicker and dart quickly across to the girl between them. In that moment Alexei knew that if Popkov possessed any fear of danger – which he seriously doubted – it was not for himself. Alexei detested the man. Could never understand what bound Lydia to this lazy, stupid, drunken Cossack who stank like a bear and farted like a horse. But right now he needed him.
‘So, Popkov, I think it’s time you and I get going. Tonight. With a wad of roubles in our pockets and a vodka bottle to crack over a few heads.’
Alexei’s voice was amiable enough, but the look he gave the big man was cold and challenging. Popkov turned, eyeing him over the top of Lydia’s hat and baring his teeth in what could have been a smile or a snarl.
‘Da.’
It was the way they’d done it before. A few bottles on offer, a few new friends in the back streets of a strange town. It was amazing what you could discover, what secrets tumbled off a loose tongue. Which officials were clean and which were dirty. Which one was fucking his boss’s wife and which one liked to pick up little boys in the dark alleyways. That’s what Popkov had meant when he complained Felanka was too tidy, too clean – but nowhere was too clean. Such places didn’t exist.
‘You see, Lydia, it’s far too soon to-’
But she let out a moan and dropped her head into her hands. Her hat fell to the floor and her hair tumbled like a fiery curtain around her pale face, shutting him out. Alexei glanced at Popkov. The big man was staring at the girl with an expression of such dismay, as if her moan had frightened him far more than any prospect of being arrested for bribery of a Party official. Neither of them had ever seen her like this. Alexei put out a hand, tentatively touched her shoulder.
‘What is it, Lydia?’
Tremors were running through her body. He waited, but she made no sound. At least she wasn’t crying; he hated women who cried. After a full minute he gently squeezed her shoulder. He could feel the shape of her bones, small and fragile, under the padding of her coat, but he continued to squeeze until he knew the pressure must be hurting her. He heard Popkov grunt and emit a rumble from his chest, but still Alexei didn’t release her shoulder.