The Concubine's Secret

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘They won’t like you coming,’ Lydia had warned him.

  ‘I’m not here to be liked.’

  She’d laughed but there was no life in it and that had saddened him. Now as he regarded their faces and noted the tension in their necks and in their hands, he knew Alexei would prevail. His voice would be the last. The fat man with the cheeks like dough would not say no to Lydia’s brother.

  Voshchinsky banged his fist down on his broad knee. ‘Very well, my comrades,’ he grinned at them, his jaw jutting in a display of aggression. ‘Let’s talk about tomorrow.’

  Chang led her away. He wanted to rid Lydia’s skin of the stink of them, to draw her from their cigars and their words of violence. He walked her across the city to Arbat, to a small Chinese tea room, and it pleased him when her eyes brightened at the sight of it.

  ‘I had no idea it was here,’ she smiled.

  ‘There’s one in every capital city in the world. We Chinese are like rats, we get everywhere.’

  She tugged off her hat, shook down her hair and inhaled the familiar scents of spices, jasmine and incense that rose from the jade fretwork on its facade.

  ‘I had forgotten,’ he murmured, ‘how much my spirit misses the colours that bring life and energy. Here in Soviet Russia the streets are grey as death. Even the sky above us is flat and colourless.’

  He drew Lydia into its fragrant interior. They sat at a low bamboo table and were served steaming red tea by a young Chinese girl in a cheongsam the colours of ripe watermelon - dark greens, crimson and black. She bowed low with respect and Lydia watched Chang with a soft smile on her lips.

  ‘My love,’ she said when the girl had gone, ‘do you miss your native country so badly?’

  ‘It is part of me, Lydia, its yellow earth is in my blood.’

  Her tawny eyes held his. ‘What are we to do?’

  He leaned forward and took one of her hands, curled it in a ball and wrapped his own around it.

  ‘Let’s talk about your father.’

  She gave a nod, a barely perceptible dip of the chin. ‘He was a man of power. A man with a family, a guest in the palaces of counts and princes. Under the Tsar he had a good life but under the Bolsheviks he lost everything, stripped to nothing.’

  ‘That’s what he was trying to explain in the letters, how he had to cling to the hard core of self to survive. You and I, Lydia, we understand that.’

  ‘Yes.’ The sadness in her one word was as heavy as the golden Buddha in the window.

  ‘There’s something I haven’t told you, something I learned the day I was in your father’s prison.’

  She said nothing, waiting.

  ‘I was told by General Tursenov, who runs the prison, that the whole idea for this project came from Jens Friis himself. It was all out of his brain. He wasn’t just an engineer recruited to work on it. While in the labour camp it was he who thought up the birth of this monster, as he calls it.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘Are you saying you believe he is a monster too? One not worth saving?’

  ‘No, that is not my point. He asked for his freedom in exchange, and that’s what the whole team has been promised when the project is completed. Their freedom.’

  The tension left her face and she smiled. ‘That’s wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me this before? He’s going to be released.’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  The tone of his voice warned her. The smile faded.

  ‘No, Chang, don’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry, my love.’

  ‘You don’t believe them.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Can you imagine that the military authorities will allow prisoners with top secret information to wander loose?’

  Lydia shook her head. ‘Would they send them back into the labour camps?’

  He made no comment.

  Her mouth crumpled and she hid it behind the little porcelain cup. ‘You mean they’d be shot.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Her hand quivered inside his.

  ‘He’s going to die,’ she whispered.

  ‘Unless we get him out.’

  ‘Don’t judge my father harshly, Chang. We can’t know what horrors he endured, day after day for twelve years. This was a way to make them stop.’

  Chang opened his hands and released her. ‘I know. Either of us would have done the same.’

  They both knew he was lying.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured and smiled at him.

  The boy was perched on the end of Popkov’s bed, playing cards and arguing with the big man. The two of them were gambling ferociously for dried beans and by the look of the pile at his elbow, Edik was winning. Misty was curled up on Elena’s lap, who was chuckling as the pup licked her fingers as greedily as if they were sausages. But the moment Lydia walked in, the playing and the laughing ceased. She was tempted to walk out again.

  ‘So you’re all better now, Liev,’ she teased. ‘I knew you were just faking it.’

  Popkov gave her a crooked smile. ‘So I wanted a day in bed.’

  ‘You lazy Cossack,’ Lydia frowned. ‘Why do I bother scurrying around in the snow buying you medicine?’

  She tossed him a half bottle of vodka and the dog galloped over to her, all paws and tongue. She pulled a brown paper bag from her pocket and gave Misty a fried pirozhok, one to Edik and one to Elena.

  ‘What are these?’ Elena asked with ill grace. ‘Goodbye presents?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is it all arranged then?’ Popkov demanded at once, between great swigs from the bottle.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘No you won’t!’ Lydia and Elena both said it in unison.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lydia added quickly, ‘you won’t be needed. Alexei is arranging everything and you know he’d rather have a rabid dog at his side than you.’

  Popkov scowled, screwed the top back on the vodka bottle and hurled it across the room at Lydia. It banged against her hip and rolled unbroken to the floor. ‘I’m coming, damn you, girl. Jens Friis was my friend.’

  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 sh
adows. 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.

  Alexei crouched low, moving forward at a run. He blasted out the truck’s headlights. One of the soldiers was climbing back into the rear car and Alexei fired at point blank range. A huge crimson flower blossomed on the back of the soldier’s greatcoat and he slumped into the passenger seat, clawing to shut the door to protect himself. A bullet from somewhere close took his eye out and he stopped moving.

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘No, Lydia. No.’

  ‘I must see what is—’

  ‘No.’

  Chang would not release her. His grip on her was too strong. They were hunched behind a tree far back from the road and she could smell the tang of its bark above her own fear, but the gunfire and the shouts in the darkness were unbearable for her. She needed to be there.

  ‘Please, Chang An Lo, let me—’

  He clamped a hand over her mouth, listening hard to the sounds from the road. ‘The guns are growing fewer.’

  That’s when she bit him.

  Jens felt panic like something solid inside the truck. It writhed in the blackness and threatened to choke him. People were screaming in here, raging. They hammered on the metal doors, begged to be let out. The noise of the guns outside was loud enough to deafen, reverberating as bullet after bullet thudded into the side of the truck. One hit a tyre and they felt it lurch as though drunk. Out in the forest, lives were ending. Explosions of glass and shrieks of pain, death trampling over hearts and lungs.

  Jens sat on the bench, his face clutched in his hands, and tried to think - but the darkness, the noise and the panic, they knotted the coils of his brain. Don’t do this, Lydia. Don’t. Not today of all days, my daughter. This day was to be my redemption.

  We are coming for you. That’s what she’d said in her letter.

  Suddenly Olga was beside him and she lifted his face, kissed his
closed eyes. ‘This is goodbye,’ she whispered.

  He knew she was right. ‘I hope you find your daughter again, Olga.’ He kissed her cheek.

  Elkin was bellowing at the doors when suddenly the guns ceased and there was a collective intake of breath, all ears straining, all pulses racing.

  ‘Get out here,’ someone yelled outside and the truck’s rear doors were thrown open.

  Alexei stood at the edge of the trees, something in him unwilling to approach. The dirt road was littered with nine bodies, plus one sprawled in the second NAMI-1, but he kept a watch on the forest as though not trusting it to remain silent. He had chosen this spot for the ambush because it was too far from the hangar complex for gunfire to be heard, but still he hung back. He was uncertain about approaching Jens and for the first time wished Lydia were there.

  The prisoners inside the truck were tumbling out, blinking hard in the rear car’s headlights and clutching each other as if they feared they would be snatched away. Some were crying, one was shouting abuse at their rescuers. The vory had no interest in them but prodded them into a group the way someone would herd diseased cattle in an abattoir. Alexei spotted Jens Friis easily. He was taller than the rest and stood apart, ignoring the men in black who had stopped the convoy, scanning the darkness, searching the cars, the road and the dense mass of trees for something. Or someone.

  Lydia. Jens wanted Lydia.

  His appearance came as a shock to Alexei. The red hair was gone and in its place was a thick white mane. Even though Lydia had told him about it it still jarred, and his face was gaunt and weathered, his jaw-line set hard. Only the way he carried himself was the same. That, and the mouth. Whatever else had died in Jens Friis, the gentle lines of his mouth had survived and tempted Alexei to rush over and embrace him. But he recalled the coolness of the letter.