What else matters in my life? I once owned a white rabbit called Sun Yat-sen. He mattered. I have a friend called Chang An Lo – you spoke to him. He means more to me than my own breath. Liev Popkov is my good friend, more than a friend. And Alexei is the brother I always wanted. So now you know me, Papa. I wear a horrible brown hat and I like sugary apricot dumplings and have discovered Kandinsky paintings.
Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you think. How you spend your days. Describe for me what you are working on. I long to know. I send you my love.
Lydia.
Jens kissed the letter. He kissed each word. He would have kissed Liev Popkov if he could. The big man had delivered it as he died. Jens had retrieved the flake of metal from under the seat, stooping to tie his bootlaces as he was led out to the truck. Oh Popkov, my old friend. Dragged away in a roll of canvas.
Anger scraped like grit in his gut as he paced his cell in the semi-dark, but his rage was as much for himself as for the Cossack.
‘Babitsky,’ he growled to the dead walls, ‘I hope you burn.’
Alexei loved the streets of Moscow. In places whole roads were being demolished, great new thoroughfares emerging. Rows of individual houses and shops were swept away at the stroke of an architect’s pen and vast multi-storey buildings were clawing their way up out of the soil like a new kind of gigantic urban mushroom. On the back seat of the car in the moody grey light of a winter’s afternoon, he was swept past the sprawl of construction sites and knew he was witnessing the world changing. It stirred him. Stalin was throwing everything into redesigning and broadening the Russian streets, but also the Russian mind.
‘Maksim,’ he said to the man swaddled in rugs beside him, ‘one of the vory rules is that we mustn’t collaborate with authority in any way.’
‘Of course not. Those in authority destroy every hope of a freedom of mind. The vory bow the knee to no man outside the brotherhood. That’s why we have stars tattooed on our knees, to remind us.’
‘So if the OGPU secret police turn up at your door at two o’clock in the morning, demanding to know information about one of your members, what then?’
‘I spit on their boots.’
‘And end up in one of the labour camps?’
Maksim laughed. ‘I’ve been there before.’
‘But now you’re older.’
‘Sicker is what you mean.’
‘All right, sicker.’ The older man’s flesh hung grey and doughy from the bones of his face. ‘You should have stayed at home. You’re tired.’
They were riding in an old bone-shaker of a car which didn’t help, but the smooth limousine that Alexei had grown accustomed to using when in Maksim Voshchinsky’s company had remained in its garage today to avoid risking identification. This vehicle was anonymous, it belonged to no one. It was stolen.
‘How far now?’ Maksim Voshchinsky asked.
‘Another few miles,’ Igor offered from the front seat. There were beads of sweat on the back of his neck. He was nervous.
Alexei gave Lydia a nod. ‘This route will take longer. But it’s safer.’
She said nothing. She’d been silent since they set off, hunched into her corner, unresponsive and mute. It annoyed Alexei. He’d had to stand his ground with Maksim to win her this place in the car and a little politeness wouldn’t have gone amiss. Sometimes, like today, he couldn’t work her out. Shouldn’t she be pleased, maybe even impressed – and certainly grateful at the prospect of where he was taking her this afternoon? But no. Silent and sullen. Tawny eyes refusing to meet his. All she did was cling to the side window with a fixed stare, as though memorising the route. Maybe she was. That thought worried him.
Or was it fear? It surprised him that he hadn’t thought of that before. Was his sister frightened? He felt an odd rush of tenderness towards her despite her withdrawn manner, because he knew fear was something Lydia would never admit to. She’d rather bite her tongue off first.
‘Lydia,’ he said in an attempt to draw her out of her isolation, ‘the truck took the prisoners to the hangars early this morning. It hasn’t returned yet, so we believe Jens is actually there right now.’
She dragged her face from the window and frowned at Maksim. ‘Did your vory men follow it?’
‘Da, of course.’
‘What if they were spotted?’
‘Hah! They were not spotted.’
‘But if they were, there will be soldiers and police waiting for us.’
He laughed, a rich amused sound that warmed the chill interior of the car. ‘My men are vory. Thieves. Harder to trace than shadows in snow. You understand?’
She nodded. But Alexei was not sure she did. She didn’t realise exactly how these men functioned or that they were outside the normal margins of society. To her they were just criminals. It was clear she didn’t trust them and he was surprised she hadn’t insisted on dragging that oaf Popkov along too. When it came to watching her back, that filthy Cossack was the one she relied on, God only knows why.
‘No action today,’ he reminded her. He was wary of what she might do. ‘We’re going out there to observe. Nothing more.’
‘I know.’
‘Just don’t expect too much.’
‘I expect nothing.’
‘That’s a good place to start,’ Maksim chuckled.
She turned her attention back to the window. They had left the city streets behind, passing the foul-smelling Red Hercules rubber factory some time back, and were driving north of Moscow. Huddles of wooden izbas, peasant cottages with a cow tethered at the front and dense rows of vegetables at the rear, popped up at intervals and broke the monotony of the flat and featureless landscape. The road ran straight as a prison bar across it. At one point a group of women were washing their bed sheets in the river and looked up with a moment’s interest. Otherwise there was nothing, not even other traffic, just the spiny edge of the pine forest blocking out the horizon on both sides.
The car stopped.
‘Out,’ Igor ordered.
They all climbed out into the empty windswept landscape except the driver, and the car swerved off the deserted road on to a patch of rough ground, where he promptly began to remove a wheel.
‘Now what?’ Maksim demanded.
‘Over there.’ Alexei indicated a darker shadow tucked among the trees. It was a small, covered army truck.
This was a point where the pines looped close to the road and a single-track dirt trail cut through the tall willowy trunks. The track was obviously well used and heavy wheels had gouged deep ruts into its frozen surface.
Maksim’s eyes narrowed into slits. ‘This is as far as I go.’
Alexei nodded and draped a rug over the older man’s shoulders, then climbed into the Soviet army vehicle he had stolen the previous night. He tried the engine and it started first time. Satisfied, he gunned it to full throttle.
‘You can wait here if you prefer,’ he called out to Lydia.
‘No.’
‘Then get in.’
She scrambled up beside him on the front bench and Igor jumped up after her. Alexei kicked the truck into gear.
49
‘Relax, Lydia, enjoy the ride.’ He gripped the steering wheel as it almost jolted out of his hands and the truck bounced its way across a narrow ditch, making Igor grunt.
‘Don’t they have guards on patrol?’ Lydia demanded. ‘Snipers in the trees?’
‘Of course. That’s why we’re in an army truck. No one will take any notice of it.’