‘I tell you I saw him.’
‘Where?’
‘Through the binoculars. He was sitting on a bench beside the big hangar.’
‘You’re imagining things.’
‘It was him. I know it was.’
Alexei left it there. Why argue the point? If she wanted so badly to believe she’d seen her father, then let her believe it.
‘Come on,’ he said in a brisk voice and removed his wrist from her grasp, ‘let’s get moving. Igor has finished packing away the rope.’
The wind was picking up, snatching at the branches, stealing through the mist. As they set off in single file once more, keeping close, Lydia cast one last glance back at the perimeter wall and whispered, ‘He had a woman sitting next to him, Alexei. Her hand was in his.’
They almost stumbled over the bodies.
‘Alexei!’
Lydia had seized the back of his coat with a force that almost choked him. As he swung round he was astonished to see a knife in her hand. Where the hell had that come from?
She’d stepped on an arm.
‘Down!’ he breathed.
He yanked her into a crouch at the base of a tree. Igor had flattened to the ground. The lack of undergrowth in the pine forest made movement easier but was no damn use when you needed cover. He held her down and under his palm on her back he could feel her heart racing. He waited ten minutes, gun in hand. Then another ten. No sign of any movement, no flicker of branches or flutter of birds. No sound, just a raw silence. They didn’t speak, not even a whisper, but Alexei made hand signals to Igor, then crawled away on his belly and elbows.
He found tracks, a number of them. And he found bodies, four, all in Red Army uniforms. Covered in blood. As though someone had hurled wet paint at them. He scoured the area, weaving between trunks, studying the high branches, but could spot no one. No one alive, that was; no one whose breath shuddered white trails into the mist. When he returned to Lydia she hadn’t moved a muscle, as if the icy air had frozen and trapped her there. But as soon as he nodded, she sprang to her feet in a low crouch.
‘Look,’ she whispered.
Her gaze was fixed on one of the dead soldiers. He was young and slumped in a sitting position against a pine, legs stiff in front of him, his eyes wide open and staring directly at her. Glassy, useless, sky-blue eyes. His throat had been cut from ear to ear like an extra-wide smile under his chin, and his life had spilled out over his army greatcoat by mistake – except this had been no mistake.
‘There are others,’ Alexei murmured and held up four fingers.
She slid a hand across the white skin of her own throat and raised an eyebrow. He nodded. All with smiles under their chins. He saw her flinch and feared she would freeze, her body go rigid. He’d seen it happen. Shock did strange things to a person. He was prepared to throw her over his shoulder if necessary, but when he started to move off she tucked in behind him like a shadow. Once again Igor brought up the rear, small eyes darting from tree to tree.
It was only when they reached the army truck that Lydia asked quietly, ‘Who did it? Who killed them?’
Alexei was certain he knew but something in him was reluctant to tell his sister.
‘Alexei,’ she insisted.
‘It’ll be Maksim. Watching our backs. That’s what a good pakhan does for his men.’
‘But you said the army patrols worked in pairs. And that they weren’t thorough in checking the forest. So why were there four soldiers?’
Alexei stamped the snow off his boots and swung up into the truck. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he scowled.
‘Not to me.’
‘We were betrayed.’
‘Betrayed? But who knew we were coming here today?’
‘Only us.’
The old black bone-shaker was still there on the track. Relief hit Alexei like a slap in the face and until then he hadn’t realised that a part of him had been doubting Maksim Voshchinsky. Fearing that he’d gone. But why would he do that when he’d just proved himself ruthless and thorough in protecting their backs? Alexei and Lydia resumed their earlier positions on the back seat and Alexei greeted Maksim with a grateful bear hug. The older man smelled of brandy but his skin felt brittle and cold, as though he’d been out in the wind.
‘Good to see you safe, my son,’ Maksim smiled.
‘Thank you, father.’
Lydia reached across Alexei and picked up one of Maksim’s hands. She removed the glove and lifted it to her lips, pressing a kiss on its veined flesh.
‘Spasibo, pakhan,’ she murmured.
The leader of the vory v zakone withdrew his hand with a chilly smile that went nowhere near his eyes.
‘Alexei,’ he said, ‘control your sister.’
The room smelled of blood. Metallic and salty and sticky as tar in the nostrils. Alexei stood just inside the door, heart pumping, seeking the source of the smell. He had accompanied Lydia into her house and up the narrow stairs. Something was wrong and he was determined to find out what. But on the top landing waited a thin man with suspicious eyes and a receding hairline, wearing a red armband that declared him to be the head of the Housing Committee. He blocked their path.
The man puffed out his weedy chest. ‘Comrade, there’s a stain on the floor outside your room. Please clean it up.’
Lydia blinked as though she hadn’t heard properly, then let out a gasp and pushed past, rushing to her door.
The man bit his lip, annoyed. ‘It looks like blood,’ he shouted after her.
Alexei followed. It was blood. And in the room there was more. The big woman, Elena, was standing by the bed. She lifted her head to see who had burst in without knocking, her pale eyes hard and angry. Beside him Lydia was quivering like a small animal, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.
‘Liev,’ she whispered. ‘Liev.’
On the bed sprawled the big man. His barrel chest was naked and exposed, except for a bandage which looked as though a large crimson dinner plate had been placed on top of it. A vivid strident red. Every inch of his skin was covered in blood, sweat or bruises, while his one black eye had sunk into an equally blackened socket. But his mouth, though split and scabbed, was twisted into a lopsided attempt at a grin.
‘ Lydia,’ he bellowed.
She flew across the room. Smears of blood rubbed off on her as she leaned over and kissed his hairy cheek, wrapping her arms around his bull neck.
‘You’re not dead,’ she said. It was an accusation.
‘Nyet. I thought about it. But changed my mind.’
‘I’m glad.’ She was beaming at him, her hands gripping chunks of his beard. ‘I thought you were dead, you big idiot.’
Alexei wondered if she’d act with quite that desperate energy if he came back from the dead one day. He doubted it.
‘They threw you out, did they?’ she laughed. ‘Didn’t want your smelly carcass in their prison?’
The Cossack grunted.
She patted the bandage on his granite chest. ‘Making a bit of a fuss over nothing as usual, aren’t you?’
He grunted again and from somewhere under the bandage rose a bubbling sound. It might have been a laugh.
‘Shut up,’ Elena snapped. ‘Don’t talk, Popkov.’
She was standing in the same spot, staring at Lydia with barely controlled anger. In one hand she held a white enamel basin piled high with scarlet swabs of cotton and stained bandages. In the other, which was turned palm up, lay a blood-streaked rifle bullet.
‘Did you take it out of him?’ Alexei asked.
‘Someone had to.’
‘Anaesthetic?’
She glanced at the empty vodka bottle on the floor and gave it a kick that sent it spinning under the bed.
‘Elena,’ Lydia said, her voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Thank you.’
‘I didn’t do it for you, girl.’
‘I know.’