‘They’ve got her, haven’t they?’ Lydia exclaimed. ‘The vory have taken your dog to make sure you obey.’
Edik stuffed the wallet into his oversized pocket. ‘Bastards,’ he whispered.
‘Bastards,’ Lydia echoed.
But she knew it was Alexei. Controlling her the only way he knew how.
‘Bastard,’ she said again and squeezed the boy’s arm. ‘I’ll get her back for you, don’t worry.’
Edik kicked out at a mound of ice that shattered in the sunshine, creating a thousand shimmering rainbows. ‘I’ll kill them if they hurt her.’
Lydia slipped the metal folder into her pocket next to where the cigar man’s gold watch was ticking discreetly, and she started to run, slipping and sliding on the snow.
‘Kuan.’
The Chinese girl looked surprised at first, then nervous. She was coming down the wide steps of the Hotel Triumfal and hadn’t noticed the slight figure in the shadows across the road. It was her habit to walk in the park opposite the hotel before it grew dark. She hesitated.
‘Kuan,’ Lydia called again.
She was thankful when the Chinese girl moved towards her. She didn’t want to have to chase her up the steps of the hotel. The blue coat and the bulky hat with its ugly grey rabbit-fur trimming made Kuan satisfyingly shapeless, not a figure of allure for her fellow delegates. Nevertheless Lydia ’s palms were sweating. There was something about the Chinese girl’s smooth face, something you wouldn’t want to cross. Determination was chiselled into its features, commitment luminous in the eyes. Chang would admire it.
Kuan placed her small palms together and bowed politely over them. Lydia ignored the courtesy.
‘Kuan,’ she said, her voice bordering on rude. ‘Will you please tell Chang An Lo that my aunt is ill, so I must leave.’ It was the wording they had agreed on should she ever need to warn him to stay away.
The girl studied her, black eyes carefully expressionless. Lydia wondered how much Russian she understood.
‘You will tell him?’ Lydia prompted.
‘Da.’
‘Thank you.’
They stood there in the twilight, their shadows merging on the scrubby grass until Lydia moved to separate them. The naked silhouettes of the trees jabbed fingers at them in the wind.
‘Kuan, why did you betray Chang to the Soviet police? You told them about the room in Raikov Ulitsa, didn’t you?’
The black eyes revealed nothing. ‘I do not know the meaning of the word betray.’
‘It’s what you do to your enemies. Not to your friends.’
‘Comrade Chang is my friend.’
‘Then treat him like one.’
The blank eyes suddenly came alive, the stolid body unexpectedly fluid and mobile as it swung to face Lydia. ‘Leave him in peace, fanqui.’
Lydia knew the word, she’d heard it a thousand times in Junchow. Fanqui. It meant foreign devil.
But Kuan hadn’t finished. ‘You have no need of him,’ she said. ‘There are many Russian men you can take instead. Choose your Soviet officer, the one with the fox-colour hair. One of your own. But leave Chang An Lo alone.’ She was close enough for Lydia to see the faint tremble in the corner of her eyelid. ‘Give him back to China,’ Kuan hissed.
Jens woke with a sense of sharp hunger. Not in his stomach. It was centred somewhere in his brain, gnawing its way along the coils, devouring parts of him. He tried desperately to recall what he’d been dreaming about but it had drifted out of reach already, leaving him with just the hunger and a waft of perfume more real in his nostrils than the dank odour of the basement cell.
Today would bring another letter.
Jens rolled on to his front to avoid the constant light of the dim overhead bulb and buried his face in the grubby pillow, so thin he could feel the bed slats through it. Today another letter. From his daughter.
That one word – daughter. Dochka. It altered him. Changed his perception and made a different person of him. It made it harder to bear what he had done and what he was still doing on the project. He groaned into the pillow. He wanted to sit Lydia down in front of him and explain. Don’t judge harshly, malishka. A man on his own with no one and nothing in an inhuman wasteland is one thing. He hardens like the shell of a walnut and over time the soft kernel inside slowly shrivels and dies. But a man with a daughter is quite another.
A man with a daughter has a hold on the future.
‘Prisoner Friis, do you agree with Prisoner Elkin? That everything is ready?’
‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’
‘You surprise me.’
‘We have worked hard, Comrade Colonel.’
They were in Colonel Tursenov’s office, strung out in a nervous line. The chief scientists and engineers on the project stood uneasily in front of his leather-topped desk, eyes fixed on the faded Turkish carpet under their feet. When spoken to directly their gaze crept up to Tursenov’s collar with its red flashes. No higher.
‘I expect to be impressed,’ the Colonel said. ‘There will be guests, high level military observers. So no mistakes. You understand me?’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
Tursenov strutted along the line, his spectacles glinting with satisfaction. ‘I have selected the location for a full test.’
‘A full test?’ Elkin exclaimed. ‘I thought…’ He looked suddenly pale.
‘What you thought, prisoner, is irrelevant.’ Tursenov turned his head and scrutinised Jens. ‘A full test,’ he snapped. ‘No mistake of any kind.’
Jens stared straight at him, right to the back of the hard grey eyes, and what he saw there wasn’t satisfaction. It was fear. Failure was not an option for a man like Tursenov because failure would mean a sentence of twenty years in a prison labour camp, and long before the first year was up he’d be torn limb from limb when the guards’ backs were turned. Jens had seen it happen. Had heard the screams.
‘No mistakes,’ Jens assured him.
‘Good.’
‘May I ask the location of the test?’
‘This will amuse you, prisoner Friis. It is to be in Surkov camp.’
‘But Colonel, there are hundreds of prisoners there.’
‘So?’
‘You can’t kill all-’
‘It’s not me doing the killing, prisoner Friis. It’s you.’
‘But there’s no need to.’
‘Of course there is, prisoner Friis. We need to ascertain how low the planes must fly and the exact concentration of the gas. The test will be conducted at Surkov camp. The decision is made.’
Surkov camp. A flash of memories arced through Jens’ head, jolting it on his shoulders. Barbed wire tied round his wrists, beatings with an iron pipe till it buckled, solitary confinement in a cell smaller than a coffin, a robin fluttering bright as a ruby on his finger until a guard broke both the bird and his finger with his rifle butt.
‘It’s the place where you started your life as a prisoner, I believe.’
‘Started my death as a prisoner,’ Jens corrected.
Tursenov laughed. ‘That’s good. I like that.’ The laughter trickled away as he studied Jens’ face. ‘Well now, it looks like you’ll be starting the death of other prisoners too. But I wouldn’t let that worry you. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’ve survived.’
‘Yes, Comrade Colonel. I have survived.’
The light in the courtyard was yellow. It slid through the darkness and spilled like oil on to the figures hunched in the cold morning air. Today it seemed to Jens that it made everyone look ill, but maybe that was because they all felt sick after yesterday’s meeting with Tursenov.
A full test. At Surkov camp. Dear God, he hadn’t expected that. There were people he knew there, men he’d eaten with, worked with, prisoners who had cared for him when he’d been injured.