Tell Me A Lie

by CJ Carver

  ‘I know just the person. He will be pleased of the business.’

  Simonov made a phone call. When he hung up, he said, ‘No problem. We will leave in an hour.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Jenny wriggled, trying to get comfortable. She was hidden in a crawl space above the kitchen and it was so dark, she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. Milena had shown her where to go after Ekaterina had left. She’d given her a pillow and two duvets from the storeroom and Jenny had struggled to convey them quietly to an area where she wouldn’t be seen at first glance should someone poke their head through the trap.

  She shivered continuously, her teeth chattering. The floor of the crawl space was heavily lagged to keep the lodge’s warmth from escaping through the roof, but the air above wasn’t heated. The temperature had to be hovering around zero.

  Would Ekaterina’s plan work? It was a crazy idea, and Jenny hadn’t been convinced until Ekaterina pushed the point that the guards would be lulled into complacency by having Yesikov there as well as his son, the pilot and the bodyguard.

  ‘When they see the snow machine has gone,’ Ekaterina told Jenny, ‘and that you and I are no longer there, they will assume we have both run away. They will send the helicopter after us. They will follow my trail into the wilderness. This is when you and Milena take the second snow machine and head in the opposite direction. Simple!’ She beamed.

  ‘But what about the guards?’

  ‘I bet you ten thousand roubles they will all be in the helicopter, desperate to catch us.’ Her gaze turned thoughtful. ‘All except for Lazar, and perhaps his bodyguard. We can slip them sedatives, if we need to. I have many sedatives.’

  ‘And the satphones?’ Jenny pressed. There were only two that they knew of, the one in the gun cabinet and the one Yesikov had brought with him, but it would only take one call and they would be ruined.

  ‘Milena will deal with them.’

  Jenny must have looked sceptical because Ekaterina added, ‘Because she will awake everyone and tell them we’ve gone, they will think she is on their side. She has given me up once before. She told them where I was hiding in my brother’s apartment . . .’ Her voice faltered briefly and she looked away as though the memory was too much to bear but she regained her composure fast. ‘They will expect her to betray me again.’

  Her voice wasn’t accusatory or unkind. She was simply stating facts. Jenny looked at Milena but the woman’s eyes slid away. She was scared, Jenny could see, and Jenny smiled, wanting to encourage her, thank her for her help, but Milena pretended not to see.

  At the time, Jenny had thought it worth giving Ekaterina’s wild plan a go – she couldn’t see herself escaping on her own – but now she was shivering in the crawl space she thought it was ridiculous and full of flaws. If Dan had been there he would have thought of something far more sensible she was sure, like flying them out in the helicopter, but he wasn’t here and her only allies were two women who’d done nothing with their lives except look beautiful and amuse whatever men they were told to.

  She wasn’t going to give up her hiding space yet, though. She was going to see how Ekaterina’s plan panned out first.

  Jenny didn’t think she’d sleep she was so cold, but she jerked awake when she heard a man’s voice. It sounded as though he was cursing. A chair scraped back. He mumbled a bit, and then he left, probably to use the loo. Another man’s voice. Sleepy and untroubled. Lights were switched on. Jenny could see narrow beams coming through the corners of the floor. She heard the kettle go on. Then came the sounds of breakfast being made. The men fetching bread and cold cuts. The whistle of the tea kettle. Another man came into the kitchen, yawning.

  She listened to the lodge awake. She tensed when she heard Milena’s voice but it sounded casual, as though it was a normal day. They’d agreed she’d leave it as long as she thought credible before she raised the alarm.

  Time crawled past.

  Jenny lay and talked quietly to her son in her mind. Put her hand on her belly and soothed and loved him, told him everything would be OK. She thought of her grandmother, Irina, and what Ekaterina had told her earlier – retracting her previous story – that Yesikov hadn’t made love to Irina but raped her continually until she’d run away with the love of her life, Dmitry, to make a new life in England. She wondered what Irina looked like, whether she had fair hair or not. If they’d recognise one another as her genes had recognised Lazar Yesikov.

  To her surprise she found herself napping. She was dreaming of Wales, walking Poppy with Dan and Aimee across the moors, when she was jolted awake by a man’s bellow. Then another. She recognised Yekisov’s dry voice, yelling, enraged. Doors banged. Men shouted. Milena’s voice joined in, high and panicky.

  Footsteps ran back and forth. More shouting. Curses. Milena had obviously raised the alarm. Then Jenny heard Lazar Yesikov speaking. His tone was hard and brusque. He was giving orders. The guards responded fast. Da, ser! was repeated several times. Yes, sir!

  Her stomach hollowed when she heard metallic clicks and whirrs of guns being loaded and primed. The men’s voices were low, concentrated. Rustles of clothing and bullet belts being buckled up. Some final orders from Yesikov. And then she heard the low hum of the helicopter’s engine starting up. She realised it had to be daylight. They wouldn’t have been able to follow Ekaterina’s snow machine’s tracks in the dark.

  The rotor blade started with a slow whap, gradually increasing as the whistle of the turbines wound into a high hum. Soon, the turbines were hissing and the blades a continual blur of sound.

  She couldn’t hear any more voices. Just the helicopter. She crossed her fingers. Counted down the seconds. It was less than two minutes later when the engine note changed, became fevered. The machine was lifting into the air. She wondered how many men were on board. She hoped all of them.

  The engine note changed again and she held her breath but then it settled and the helicopter thundered away. Jenny exhaled. Closed her eyes. Pictured Ekaterina with her ruined face riding the snow machine north, straight to nowhere.

  Go, Ekaterina. Go as fast as you can.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Ekaterina’s snow machine had run out of fuel long ago. She’d used both of the spare fuel cans and managed to put over a hundred and fifty miles between her and the lodge. It would take the helicopter roughly an hour and a half to catch her up. That’s if the helicopter made it. She’d shovelled handfuls of snow into its fuel tank earlier, and she had to hope it would interfere with the engines at some point, preferably when it was miles from the lodge.

  She’d hidden the snow machine as best she could in a dense wood of tall spruces. If the helicopter was still flying, she hoped it would force the pilot to land in order to send the men in to check it. More time to help Milena and Jenny to escape.

  She’d spent the journey thinking about Dan. All six-foot bliss of him. His hands, strong and broad, which touched her as delicately as silk. The feel of his heartbeat against her cheek. The depth of his voice. The way he said her name.

  Kat.

  Had he ever cared for her? She was never sure. She’d been an asset, an informant, and although he assured her his superiors didn’t know of her existence, he was to all intents and purposes her handler. She gave him gossip and titbits from the privileged inner circle of politicians and the military, and in return he made endless love to her in his hotel room. He brought her up-to-the-minute clothes from London and read to her from books by up-and-coming novelists that he thought she’d enjoy. They had restaurants they always went to, and favourite bars. Dan loved to eat Beef Khartcho at CDL, she liked to drink Huertas in Bar Strelka.

  She’d read Anna Akhmatova’s poetry to him, a woman she admired for writing The Requiem, which the poet had worked and reworked in secret, because it showed the terrible suffering of the common people in the USSR during Joseph Stalin’s time as well as exposing the truth behind the cult of his person. But it was Anna Akhmato
va’s love poems she’d shared with Dan.

  To us, separation is just entertainment

  The woes are dull without us.

  He’d spoken Russian then. He told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d met. The most exciting, the most exotic. That she was stunning, glamorous, exquisite, and that he treasured every moment she gave him.

  But he never said he loved her.

  One day, she took him to St Clement’s Church. It was spring and the row of trees flanking the massive building were budding vivid green. For the first time, she told him the truth. That Edik had asked her to befriend him. Ordered her to make the Englishman fall in love with her so she could drip misinformation into his ear.

  Dan had looked at her a long time. Then he’d cupped her face tenderly with his hands. He said gently, ‘I know.’

  Which meant Dan had been feeding misinformation to Edik right back, which had amused Ekaterina enormously. Dan had warned her she was playing a dangerous game between the two men, their two countries, but she hardly cared. She was in love. And when Dan vanished one day, seemingly off the planet, Edik told her he’d heard that Dan didn’t think she was of use to him any more, that he’d dumped her and wouldn’t be returning to Russia again. She hadn’t believed him until he’d taken her to a party and asked the British Ambassador how Dan was.

  ‘We haven’t seen him for a while,’ Edik said. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He resigned from the Russia desk,’ the Ambassador said. ‘He wanted something more challenging.’

  It was as though her heart had been ripped out of her. Her body emptied of blood. Her emotions blistered. She knew she had to hide her feelings but the shock of his abandonment – and without a word to her – was so immense, she swayed.

  Edik twisted her aside. He was blinking rapidly. ‘Shit. Don’t tell me you cared for him?’

  She saw his face begin to darken and knew her survival depended on the next few seconds. She pulled her arm free. Made an expansive, derisive gesture. ‘Of course I cared!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who else is going to bring me my Fortnum and Mason hampers? My favourite perfume? My French lingerie?’

  ‘Use the Internet.’

  She pouted. ‘It’s not the same. He was my lapdog. I liked petting him.’

  Edik laughed. ‘I shall find you another, my sweet.’

  Her love, her passion for Dan soured into loathing. She was so embittered, so angry, she couldn’t even grieve for him, and the memory of him slipped into the hollows of her soul like poison.

  Until last week, when she discovered that Dan had never abandoned her. When Fyodor rang Bernard Gilpin with the code words to alert him to the fact Dan was in danger, she’d told her brother to ask him why Dan had turned his back on her. Why Dan had broken her heart.

  He didn’t do it intentionally, the Director of the Security Service told Fyodor, going on to say that Dan had suffered a breakdown over the death of his son and had not only lost his mind with grief, but also his memory. Dan had no recollection of who he used to be, apparently. And no memory of her.

  Her hate for him had vanished like a trail of vapour snatched by a breeze.

  She remembered their standing in the cold of the street outside St Clement’s Church. The way he looked at her, his eyebrows drawn in. His expression confused. The voice in her head told her that he couldn’t see her like he used to, that he didn’t know her, and tongues of pain licked her soul as she stood there, looking at him looking back.

  When she asked him what happened, gazing into his ocean-grey, conflicted eyes, she knew a memory of her was in there somewhere. She’d wanted to beg and plead for him to remember her, but instinct told her she’d only alienate him. It had taken a monumental effort not to weep. Instead, her tears seeped hot and raw inside her heart as she’d turned aside, and talked business. Talked about Edik and his father’s plans.

  Did Daniel love her?

  She’d never know, but she loved him. She’d never stopped loving him.

  She stumbled, nearly falling to her knees. She was exhausted, her body beginning to fail, but she didn’t rest. She kept going, spurred by her picture of Yesikov’s infuriated expression, his disbelief that she’d outwitted him.

  I will beat him.

  I will win.

  She’d had two doses of morphine and had another three to go, but she knew she wasn’t going to last that long. Although she couldn’t feel the frostbite where her hood had slipped, or the flayed raw skin where her bandage had fallen, every step had become an effort.

  Where were Milena and Jenny? Had they left the lodge yet?

  The weak winter sun began to rise. A grey, grainy light slipped over the endless snowy vista. Somewhere a crow cawed and she stopped to listen, trying to pinpoint its direction. She couldn’t see anything but then a black shape flapped from the branches of a tree, wheeling over several dark shapes that seemed to be growing out of the ground. At first, she thought she was imagining things. She raised her goggles. Blinked her right eye several times. Her vision was blurred but the shapes remained the same. She tried to tell herself that it was nothing more than her imagination borne out of desperation to live, but as her sight cleared she saw she’d been right. A collection of barns and buildings stood on the other side of the trees. A thin trail of smoke rose between two hawthorns.

  She almost couldn’t believe it.

  She’d found a village.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  ‘Where’s the satphone?’ Lazar Yesikov demanded. ‘I put it on the kitchen table earlier. It’s no longer there.’

  His bodyguard, a thickset man with a dense red beard, stared at Milena with a dead expression, making her insides shiver.

  She licked her lips. ‘Perhaps one of the men took it.’

  Yesikov’s eyes bored into her, as sharp and cold as ice picks, until she felt he could read every thought she’d ever had.

  ‘You wouldn’t be trying to pull a fast one, would you little Milena?’ he said softly. ‘You know what will happen if you do.’

  She swallowed. ‘I think I saw it in the entrance hall.’

  ‘Fetch it.’

  On trembling legs, Milena walked along the corridor. She hated Ekaterina for putting her in this position. Why was her friend so intent on saving the Englishwoman and her child? They would be in their fifties when the boy became a man and walked into the Kremlin. They’d be old. Though fifty, her grandmother insisted, wasn’t old any more. Fifty was the new thirty. Ha! Her grandmother looked like an old shoe she was so wrinkled, but Milena knew this was only because she’d lived most of her life outdoors. Not like her and Ekaterina, who kept their skin fresh and youthful with spa treatments and vitamins, never venturing into the harshness of the Russian sun or snow without protection.

  She slipped into her bedroom and to the en-suite bathroom where she’d hidden the satphone. She had been going to disable it, maybe by immersing it in water, but she hadn’t dared yet. The second she did, it would end the pretence she was on Yesikov’s side and he’d order his bodyguard to kill her.

  She held the phone in her hand. It was just her, Yesikov and his bodyguard in the lodge. Edik and the other guards had gone in the helicopter. Did she dare disable it? She began to shake. She wasn’t cut out for this. She couldn’t help replaying the way her stomach turned every time she changed Ekaterina’s bandages. The bloody socket where her eye used to be, the skin on that side of the face bunched and corrugated where the brand had burned. The gaping hole in the side of her mouth.

  Milena brought the phone to Yesikov. He immediately made a call.

  ‘Nik. Where are you?’

  He was talking to one of the guards in the helicopter.

  ‘You’ve found the snow machine? Very good.’ His lips pulled back over aged yellow teeth in a humourless smile but then it vanished. ‘In a wood? They’ll be on foot, get after them! No, don’t land unless you have to. You should see their tracks leading out of the wood . . . Yes . . . Yes, you’ll have them soon. Yes, be ultra-ca
reful with the cargo . . . No, I want Ekaterina alive. I have something special planned for her.’ He listened for a few seconds before he said, ‘I expect to hear you have them soon.’

  He put the phone on the kitchen table. His face was triumphant. ‘We have them!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thanks to you, my precious Milena –’ he blew her a kiss ‘– for alerting us when you did. You will die a wealthy old woman dressed in velvet and gold.’

  Milena could have wept. The helicopter hadn’t failed. The snow Ekaterina shovelled into its fuel tank earlier should have stopped it working by now but it was still flying.

  ‘I am surprised at Ekaterina,’ he mused. ‘I thought she’d seen sense. You certainly did, didn’t you, Milena? You don’t like pain, and you certainly don’t like not being beautiful.’

  She managed a nod.

  ‘Which shows how making an example of someone can work.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘I think this time, I will cut off each of Ekaterina’s fingers, cauterise them, then let her recover and understand how hard it is to live without them. Then I shall cut off her toes. Then one hand, then the other. Then her legs. Her arms. She will be a lump of meat in a wheelchair. I will keep her as a reminder to everyone not to cross me.’

  A wave of nausea rolled over Milena. How had it come to this?

  When the satellite phone rang, she jumped.

  Yesikov answered. ‘Yes?’

  He remained silent for a few moments, and then he hung up.

  He turned and faced Milena. His face was like stone.

  ‘They can see only one set of footprints.’

  Long silence while he surveyed Milena.

  He said, ‘Where is she?’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Ekaterina stumbled towards the village. It was further away than she’d thought, and she blamed exhaustion as well as her one-sightedness for her misjudgement.

  A noise behind her in the distance. Something she couldn’t identify. She staggered round, half-expecting to see Yesikov’s guards charging through the snow for her, but there was nothing there. Only the gleam of snow beneath the faint dawn sun.