Elena’s pale eyes glared at Lydia, who promptly picked up the bottle, marched over to the bed and smacked it against the bruise on Popkov’s cheek. ‘You just wait here, you brainless bear, and I’ll bring him to you.’
‘Alexei, I have a present for you.’
‘The only present I need is right here.’
He lifted Antonina’s hand and kissed the pale back of it. It was gloveless. She was still in shock at what she’d done, still prey to shivers and sobs, and the anguish in her dark eyes had not yet abated. Alexei knew only too well what it felt like to kill for the first time: a moment for ever seared into your brain. It never left you, but lingered, fretting at you until you learned to put it safe in a box and close the lid on it, as quietly as a coffin.
‘Don’t stare at me,’ she said self-consciously, ‘I look hideous.’
‘No, you look lovely.’
He meant it, despite the swollen nose and the bruises. Since her husband’s death, there was something about her, something real and solid that hadn’t been there before. As if she was tentatively removing the fragile layers one by one.
‘Show me what it is,’ he said, ‘this present of yours.’
Antonina led him through the apartment to a closet at the far end of the hallway and threw open its doors with a flourish. He frowned at what was inside, surprised at first, then slowly he started to smile. On a brass rail hung a Red Army officer’s uniform.
52
The forest was a different world in the dark. Lydia expected her eyes to adjust to it but they didn’t. Still she could see nothing. But she could hear things. Night sounds. They made the hairs on her arms stand on end and the back of her throat grow dry. It was a world of creeping and rustling and great gusts of dank breath, so that she had to force herself to keep still. Her hands wanted to flail around her, feeling for approaching shadows. Her feet just wanted to run.
‘All right?’ Chang whispered next to her.
‘Fine.’
She heard him inhale slowly and wondered how much her one word had betrayed. How long had they been crouched beside the tree trunk? One hour? Two? She’d lost track of time. There was no moon, no sky, just a black blanket above her head, interspersed with even blacker shapes as the trees swayed in the wind, their branches making needy feral whines. It reminded her of wild creatures in a snare. She didn’t speak, didn’t move. Tried to find stillness. The cold ate into her bones. Warmth from Chang’s body seeped through her coat into her arm and she concentrated on that. If she thought too hard about what was about to happen, her limbs would start to spasm.
‘Frightened?’ Chang’s breath was moist on her ear.
‘Not for me.’
‘For your father?’
She nodded. He couldn’t see it but she knew he would feel the movement in the darkness.
‘He will die for certain if we do nothing.’
‘I know.’
‘I will protect him all I can.’
‘I know.’
‘But first I will protect you.’
He stiffened beside her suddenly and she realised his sharp senses had picked up something she’d missed. Fifteen seconds later she saw it, the faintest blur of light, far off, coming and going between the trees. It was a good distance away, too far to hear any noise yet but they both knew immediately what it was. The truck convoy. Lydia ’s heart thudded in her chest, pumping hot blood and adrenalin into her chilled limbs. She was ready to move but Chang’s hand descended on her thigh, pinning her there.
Today would be hard. Inside the truck Jens sat on the bench with his eyes closed and his back braced against the metal side panel. That way he shut out the darkness. The truck rattled and roared, its engine straining on the rutted road, its wheels skidding over patches of snow and ice, stabbing into his thoughts. He braced his mind as firmly as he braced his back.
Today would be hard, he was under no illusions about that, but he was used to hard. He’d forgotten what easy tasted like, and that thought saddened him. He filled his mind instead with the glorious image of the airship, gleaming silver in a cloudless sky, its intricate internal structure of girders which he had so painstakingly created like a spider’s web inside the soft outer envelope. He let himself risk a smile. The last months had been good, better than he could ever have imagined, and now his daughter had re-entered his life. He’d seen her. He’d actually seen Lydia. Yet even that brought its own sorrow, a sharp stabbing pain at the sight of her because she reminded him of the loss of his wife, his Valentina.
He must have shivered because Olga took his hand. Her body next to his seemed so slight, she felt more like a shadow than a person, and at times in the darkness of the truck he even wondered whether he was imagining her. The way he imagined designs in his head. He squeezed her fingers to convince himself she was real, or was it to convince himself that he was real? Sometimes he wasn’t sure.
But Colonel Tursenov had made it clear that the test would be real enough. It was to be carried out with a full load of phosgene in its tanks, the gas sprayed over the prison camp so that they could study what number of people it would affect. Affect? No. What number of people it would kill. And Babitsky had warned that other specialists would take over from Jens’ team when the first test-run was completed, so what then? More tests over more camps? Where did it end?
The truck jolted and somewhere in the dark a head or an elbow cracked against the metal side. Prisoner Elkin swore. Today would be hard.
Alexei slid out of the hollow he’d scraped in the soil and moved closer to the road. Around him others did the same, invisible ripples in the night air. When the yellow headlights drew near any movement would be spotted, so the vory had to be in position and as still as the tree trunks themselves.
The vehicles were approaching, he could hear them now, their engines harsh in the silent forest, three pairs of headlamps cutting tunnels through the darkness. Not what he’d expected. Usually it was just one car in the lead, followed by the truck, but this was a convoy with the truck at its centre, a support car in front and another behind. Four soldiers in each of the cars, two in the cab of the truck. Ten men in all. Obviously the Colonel had tightened security but not by much. Who in their right mind would want to ambush a truck full of engineers and scientists?
The tree trunk was in place. A thin pine skewed across the road as if blown down by the previous night’s wind and it brought the lead car to a juddering halt. In the headlamps Alexei could see it was a two-door NAMI-1 with a canvas top, and that behind it the truck and the second NAMI bunched up tight, as though seeking safety in numbers. The passenger door of the first car burst open and a tall soldier, with the lights from the truck bouncing off his bald head, descended on to the forest floor.
‘Shit! A tree down.’
‘Shift it,’ the driver called out.
‘Fuck you, I’m not shifting that on my own, it’s too heavy. Get out here, you lazy scum.’
Two soldiers wrapped in thick greatcoats clambered out from the back, rifles slung carelessly over their shoulders. The driver climbed down reluctantly but he was much more cautious. He remained tight against the car, his rifle ready in his hands, eyes scanning the forest, trying to probe the shadows beyond the headlamps. He was the danger. Alexei took aim with his Mauser revolver, exhaled slowly to lower his heart rate and tightened his finger on the trigger. First he saw the eruption of blood from the man’s throat, then the noise hit him, raw and violent in the silence of the forest.
A spray of bullets rained out of the darkness before the other three soldiers had time to raise their rifles. They jerked like puppets, heads arching back as they were hit, bodies crumpled to the ground. Those in the rear car were better prepared and came out with rifles blazing. A hail of bullets roared into the trees, tearing off branches, ricocheting off trunks, mutilating the forest. One ripped past Alexei’s shoulder as he sheltered behind a pine, almost snagging his army uniform, but one of the vory further down the line let out a guttural grunt. Not so lucky.