‘I wondered how long it would take you to find me.’
‘You knew I was looking?’
The man snorted with amusement. ‘Of course.’
‘Word travels fast in Felanka.’
Alexei picked up his drink and stretched his legs out towards the stove. At the far end of the bar two men broke out in song while another clapped a fast rhythm. Alexei took time to enjoy it, recognising it as a tune from his childhood which he hadn’t heard in fifteen years. Memories of Jens Friis with his beloved fiddle, which in equal measure he cursed and cajoled in Danish each time he rested a bow on its strings, came flooding into his head. He downed the vodka in one throw.
‘They sing well,’ he commented. ‘Exceptionally well.’
‘They used to be professionals. Now they’re sheet metal workers, poor devils.’ Vushnev balanced his pipe on his knee and for the first time a hint of real interest tightened the curve of his shoulders. ‘We’re all workers now for our great Soviet Fatherland.’
This was the moment. Alexei slipped a hand into his coat pocket as if to keep it warm, casually jingling the coins there. He made the first move.
‘You must grow weary of people coming to you, comrade, interested in your work for the Soviet Fatherland.’
A pause. A slight smile. Nothing more. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many. From all parts of the country they come knocking on my door.’ He puffed on his pipe, in no hurry.
Alexei lit himself another cigarette. His throat was dry as the dirt on the floor. The room was growing noisier, another man was singing an old folksong that had other drinkers swaying and joining in. The electric lamps on the walls were flickering, threatening to plunge them all into blackness.
‘Comrade, you must work hard,’ Alexei said, just softly enough for his words to slip under the barrage of noise but still reach his companion’s ears, ‘so hard you must make our Great Leader proud of your dedication to the reconstruction of Soviet society. All of us benefit from what you do.’ He let the words hang there. ‘You are trusted with much information.’
At last the greed was there, naked in the grey eyes. Vushnev was on the hook. Alexei slid the second vodka glass across the table towards him. This time the office manager of Trovitsk camp picked it up, tossed the liquid down his throat in one hit and smacked his lips with satisfaction.
‘Not here,’ he warned. ‘Too many eyes.’
‘Where?’
‘On Kirov Most. The bridge on the east side of town. There’s a stone arch in the middle of it.’
‘In half an hour.’
‘I’ll be there.’
Alexei exhaled heavily, the muscles in his neck starting to loosen. Now why did he feel this wasn’t the first time Vushnev had said those exact words?
The bridge was empty. Snow was driving through the darkness as if it had to get somewhere. The lethal ice on the road and pavement, churned up by traffic during the day, was now freezing hard once more and that made it impossible to walk silently.
Alexei arrived early. He hung back in the dense black huddle of buildings on the river bank, a row of workshops locked up for the night. He watched the bridge closely but, other than one solitary truck trundling over, it remained empty. He wondered whether Vushnev was watching from the other side. Kirov Most was a stone bridge with carved creatures rearing up at intervals along its parapet, and in the centre the stone archway that Vushnev had mentioned. No sign of life.
At each end of the bridge an elaborate wrought-iron lamp attempted to shed a circle of light, but both were losing the battle and they were barely visible in the sheets of snow that clogged the air. The wind snatched at Alexei’s hat and drove fingers into his eyes but he didn’t move. He breathed in shallow gasps behind his scarf. When something brushed against his shin he jumped, heart in his throat, so focused was he on the bridge, but it was only a scrawny cat seeking warmth.
Half an hour passed. An hour. Still no one on the bridge. He and the cat kept each other company but his thoughts grew chill and slippery, so that he almost missed it. A figure was moving up ahead. It was leaning into the wind, hunched in a fufaika with a scarf wound tightly round its head and much of its face. It might be Vushnev. Or it might not. More to the point, the figure was alone. Alexei scratched the cat’s head in farewell and moved out from his spot. He covered the ground quickly with long strides, coming up behind his quarry and tapping the snow-draped shoulder. The man swung round, startled, eyebrows heavy with ice above frightened eyes. It was Vushnev.
‘For fuck’s sake, you scared me!’
‘You’re late,’ Alexei pointed out.
‘So what? I was busy. I had to-’
The grey eyes were wary but no longer frightened. Alexei didn’t like that. It made him nervous. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m too cold to hear your bloody life story.’
The man backed off a step and glanced the length of the bridge. Alexei felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bitter cold.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said quickly.
‘Name?’
‘Jens Friis.’
‘Russian?’
‘No, he’s Danish. Remember it?’
‘Do you realise how many names I-’
‘Do you recognise it?’
Silence, except for the howl of the wind. Alexei brushed snow from his face.
‘I might,’ the man muttered at last.
‘How much to remember?’
‘What are you offering?’
From an inside pocket Alexei drew out a flat leather jewellery box. He flicked it open. An exquisite sapphire necklace nestled in a creamy satin bed and he heard Vushnev’s intake of breath. He snapped the case closed. The necklace had been his grand-mother’s, worn to Tsar Nikolas’s grand balls at the Winter Palace. The thought of it in this man’s grubby hand made him angry.
‘So do you know Jens Friis?’
‘I know the name.’
‘He’s in Trovitsk camp?’
‘What’s he to you?’
‘That’s none of your damn business.’
‘Sometimes I like to know why my…’ He smiled. ‘Why my clients are so keen to extract one of the inmates, when very often the prisoner has become a different person from the one they used to know. Are you ready for that? Years of hard labour and degradation change them, you see. Life in the camp makes them hard and selfish and only interested in…’
He’s stalling me. Keeping my attention off-
He swung round but it was too late. Shit! A blow thudded into his kidneys, another into the side of his head. He staggered but kept his foothold on the ice. He jammed an elbow into a face and a knee in a groin and gained himself some breathing space, but in front of him stood four men. Two more behind him and another crumpled in a groaning mess on the ground. Vushnev was smiling, standing well clear of any violence.
‘My friend,’ the office manager said softly, ‘you have no choice. I shall take the necklace anyway. And anything else you are hiding. Don’t refuse,’ he chuckled, ‘or I shall have to unleash my friends here. Surely you don’t want that.’
With no more than a small movement of his wrist, a gun appeared in Alexei’s hand and he pointed it directly at Vushnev’s face. ‘You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you?’
Vushnev edged backwards. The other men stood their ground.
‘Vushnev, don’t be a fucking fool. You can take the jewels. But in exchange I want-’
The knife came out of the darkness behind him. Pain tore through his body and it was so total, so mind-scouring, he could-n’t work out where it was hurting. Hands and feet were suddenly all over him, beating and kicking, hammering his body to the ground. He pulled the trigger twice, three times and heard screams, but the hands were still burrowing through his clothes, tearing at them, and he couldn’t stop them. He fought till he felt someone’s wrist snap and fingers go limp, but suddenly he was hoisted up into the air and launched over the edge of the bridge parapet. Out into the night air above the river.