‘Who?’
‘Alexei, of course. You and he were together in the courtyard and I can just imagine what-’
She stopped because she felt him tense, heard his quick intake of breath. He was halfway out of the bed with his knife suddenly in his hand when the door burst open and crashed against its hinges. Five men crowded into the small room. They were all Chinese and all carried guns.
‘Get out!’ Lydia yelled at them. She threw a quilt over her naked body.
The one in the front of the pack was young with a long face and dressed in a military padded jacket. The others looked to her like professional killers, all clothed in black with hard eyes. Lydia leapt from the bed but Chang stepped between her and the intruders, and she was terrified he was going to attack.
‘No!’ she screamed.
But he didn’t move. He remained frozen. Instead a torrent of words in rapid Chinese flowed from him and the young man in blue answered in quick bursts, clearly unhappy. At one point the young man gestured at Lydia and her heart kicked under her ribs, but when the words stopped, Chang grew very still.
Without turning he said in measured English, ‘This man is Biao. He is… he was my friend, a member of the delegation.’
Her limbs shivered.
Chang’s eyes were still fixed on Biao. ‘He is the person whom I trusted to find this room for us, the only person who knew where it was.’
‘Why is he here?’
She wished he’d turn. Wished he’d look at her.
‘Biao has come with his companions to ensure that I return to the Hotel Triumfal immediately.’
‘Why? What has happened?’
At last he turned and the look in his dark eyes drew all the shadows in the room to him. ‘Biao said that I should ask you.’
They waited outside the door. Chang forced Biao to agree to it while he spoke to Lydia. He was tempted to slit Biao’s worthless throat in payment for betrayal, regardless of the consequences for himself, but he was not willing to risk Lydia ’s life as well. As soon as the door closed he held her by the arms and refused to let her look away.
‘Tell me,’ he sought out the truth in her eyes, ‘tell me what you have done.’
Her chopped hair stuck out at strange angles and her pale face looked wretched. But far worse was the fear in her eyes. What was she so frightened of? He eased his grip on her thin arms and saw his thumbprints remain on her white skin as though they’d rather be with her than with him.
‘Tell me,’ he said more gently.
The words, when they came, rushed out of her. ‘The delegation is leaving Russia today and you haven’t even told me. So go to them. Go. Go back to your China and to your Communists. Even though you despise their leader.’ Sudden fury made the amber of her eyes look as burned as her hair.
‘Lydia,’ Chang said sharply, ‘how do you know that the delegation is leaving today?’
She had been breathing hard but stopped abruptly. He saw her fox teeth bite down. How was it possible to love someone so much and yet not know the secrets hidden under their tongue? The blisters on her forehead glistened golden in the uncertain light from the candle and his heart jolted for her. He wrapped his arms around her quivering frame and folded her to his chest. He kissed her smoky hair and felt her melt into him, so that all the fury and the questions were gone. Just a stillness remained at the heart of them.
A rap on the door made Lydia jump.
‘Quickly, my love,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘tell me. Tell me everything.’
She rested her head against his neck for a brief moment, then broke free and went over to the window. She pulled on her blouse but remained there, gazing out, as though what lay behind her was too painful to look at.
‘How did you know,’ he asked, ‘that the delegation was leaving today?’
‘Li Min told me.’
‘Li Min? Our delegation leader? How do you know him?’
She drew in a deep breath, as if she were drowning. ‘Listen to what I have to say, Chang An Lo, and then you can leave. Last year in China when I was about to set off for Russia to search for my father, a group of your people came to me.’
‘My people?’
‘Yes, your Chinese Communists. They’d heard I was travelling to Siberia. Maybe they had informers in the railway ticket office, I don’t know. But they came anyway. They knew from Kuan, who found out from you, that Jens Friis was my father, and they told me he had designed a secret project to help the Soviet military. Obviously they must have their spies in the heart of the Soviet system, even in the Red Army, but they didn’t know what it was he’d created or where he was being held – in a prison or one of those godforsaken labour camps. Not even whether he was dead or alive. Chang, you have to understand, he was my father and I-’ She stopped herself, snatched a breath and finished quietly, ‘So they asked me to find out.’
Anger, heavy and unwieldy, was churning in his gut.
‘And in return?’ he demanded. ‘What did they offer you?’
‘I asked for you.’
‘Me.’
‘Yes. I asked for you to be kept out of the civil war in China, far away from the Kuomintang army.’ She swallowed and he thought she would look round, but she didn’t. ‘I wanted you safe. I had no idea they would send you here to Moscow, I swear. That came as a surprise.’ She twitched the buttons of her blouse. ‘A welcome surprise. It proved they were sticking to their side of the bargain.’
He moved silently across the room until he was standing right behind her and could hear the catch in her every breath. ‘So that’s why you went into the prison that day to get the letter? The one from Jens about the construction of the project. So that you could give it to Li Min.’
She jumped at the sound of his voice so close but remained with her back to him. She nodded.
‘ Lydia.’
‘I know you’re angry. That you feel I betrayed you and did a dirty deal behind your back. But the thought of losing your life to a Kuomintang bullet was… too much. I couldn’t bear it. And now your Chinese friends have what they wanted, they are leaving and taking you with them.’
She leaned back till her head was touching his cheek and just that simple, intimate movement was enough to break his resolve to give her up. The immensity of what she’d done for him took his breath away. That she’d bargained her own life and that of her father… for his. His arms encircled her injured waist and drew her close against him, fighting to keep from crushing her into his own bones where she would be safe.
‘You’re right, I am angry, Lydia, but not with you, my love. With them.’ He smelled the blood on her and it made his heart weep. ‘I should have realised it wasn’t your past you were protecting. ’
‘No,’ she whispered, ‘it was our future. Yours and mine. But… Chang, we are both created by our past.’
Another knock shook the door and Biao shouted for them to hurry.
Chang spoke urgently. ‘ Lydia, you must decide now. If it’s America you want, we can-’
She spun round, her eyes wide and intent on his. ‘No, not America.’
‘My heart cannot beat without yours beside it.’
‘Is that what Alexei told you to do? To give me up?’
‘He said that with me you would be an outsider.’
She laughed, making the air in the room come alive. In the middle of all the fear and the pain and the danger she laughed, tossing her shorn curls, and the sound of it mended something inside him that was broken. ‘Oh Chang An Lo, I have been an outsider all my life. I used to fight against it, thinking I wanted to belong, but not now. It’s being an outsider that has brought me you.’
He took her face in his hands. ‘Your brother believes you must stay here in Russia, and when I see you here, I know this country is a part of your soul.’
‘Forget what Alexei says. He is not my brother.’
‘What?’