The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  “Because you asked me to, sir.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, sir. You said you thought we have a leak.”

  Dragomirov remembers and coughs, not daring to even glance at Borodin, who’s standing silently in the corner of the room, observing. He turns to Klokov. “Well, what did you find? Is . . . What’s his name again?”

  “Soldat Evgeny Shukshin.”

  “Is Shukshin a spy?”

  “Yes, sir,” says Klokov.

  Rostov says, “You’re sure? This is a serious allegation.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Borodin speaks from the shadows, his low growl of a voice making Klokov noticeably paler. “What is your evidence?”

  “Evidence, sir?”

  “On what basis are you accusing your fellow soldier of treachery?”

  “I heard him speak to your cook, sir, and he passed on classified information.”

  “What did he actually say?” Dragomirov asks.

  “He spoke of cooking and his family.”

  “What did he say relevant to your accusation?” Rostov says, impatiently.

  “It is relevant. It’s context.”

  “Context?”

  “His character. What sort of man he is, soft and weak. A liar and a blabbermouth, stealing food from our kitchen to give to Colonel Borodin’s cook. And he lied about his family.”

  “Giving army food to other members of the same army is not stealing. Arguably, it’s helpful behaviour and commendable,” Borodin says. “How did he lie?”

  “He showed your cook a photograph of his family. He’s always showing his photo to strangers. Anyone who will listen, boasting of having a son.”

  “How is that lying? Does he not have a son?”

  Rostov clears his throat. “He did have a son. His entire family died in a wildfire five years ago while he was away on active duty, but it won’t go in here,” he says, violently tapping his own forehead in a way that must have hurt.

  “It sounds like the man is due sympathy and understanding more than condemnation,” Borodin says.

  “It is a dangerous thing to fight with weak-minded men,” Dragomirov says, focusing on Rostov, who looks uncomfortable.

  Borodin says, “Presumably, you have been aware of these things for a while and have found him able to perform his duties – otherwise, he wouldn’t be here. This isn’t a revelation to you, surely?”

  Dragomirov was barely aware of the cook’s name and rank before this moment, but he isn’t going to give Borodin the satisfaction, so he inclines his head in a gesture that might be interpreted as agreement or might be stretching, and turns again to Klokov. “Well?”

  “I meant he’s not alright in the head, not to be trusted. He said other things to Colonel Borodin’s cook. Classified things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know if I should . . .” He glances at Borodin and then back at Dragomirov.

  Borodin says, “If this information was passed to my cook, it will be passed to me later anyway.”

  Klokov glances at Dragomirov, who nods.

  “Your cook was complaining because you are constantly in the jungle,” he says to Borodin.

  Dragomirov smiles, but Borodin is poker-faced.

  “Shukshin told him we’ve been on the road for more than a year, told him of the Lamplighter. He told him we’d lost her and were trying to find her again.”

  “We already know about the Lamplighter,” Borodin says. “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” Klokov says.

  Borodin turns to Dragomirov. “You must judge your own men, but it sounds like nothing to me. Do you have any news on the authorisation you said you would have tonight?”

  Dragomirov says, “We will have it later this evening.” Rostov and Dragomirov exchange glances, giving Dragomirov away to Borodin, but it doesn’t matter because he already knows Dragomirov is lying.

  “Let me know as soon as you get it through, won’t you? And please do brief your people not to snoop around my camp while we’re here. I am sometimes over-sensitive on the matter of intruders and may accidentally slip with my knife next time. Goodnight.” He nods at Dragomirov and is gone.

  There is a special punishment cage beside the prison block. It’s made of wood from the forest, and the door is barred with a thick pole. It isn’t possible to stand in the cage, and jungle grass and earth serve as the floor, making it easy for any snake, spider, or insect to crawl in. It’s rarely used. The last time was when Osin drank a day’s worth of his section’s ration of vodka, getting sick drunk and resulting in his comrades missing their daily allocation. No one argued for him.

  No one argues for the mad fat cook, either, as he is dragged by Klokov and Churkin across the yard, with Rostov overseeing and Dragomirov taking it all in from the door of his quarters. Evgeny begs and sobs and grabs at the doorframe. Klokov merely stamps on his hands and pushes him inside with his foot. When he won’t stop crying, he pours a bucket of water over him.

  “Next time it will be a bucket from the shithouse,” he says.

  “That’s enough,” Rostov says, and sends Klokov and Churkin back to their barracks.

  But Dragomirov lingers in the doorway, wishing Rostov hadn’t stopped them.

  24 The Night Rescue

  Tuesday, 21 June 2472, Siberia

  In the dead of the short night the forest is never still. A million life-and-death battles are fought. Things crash through the undergrowth, fall from branches, splash through water, dislodge rocks on the mountainside, and scream in warning or pain. Nocturnal insects leap from leaf to leaf or flutter in the moonlight, singing to find mates, and reptiles with strange, giant, unblinking eyes hunt them and make meals of them. The alert and the paranoid could be driven mad listening to noises in the forest at night.

  On this particular night, it is not just the animals on the prowl. People move with soft, sure feet, communicating without speaking, moving as one, without the need of light. They come down from the side of the mountain with such stealth, even the hunters and the hunted do not see them go. They pass through thick undergrowth and then suddenly disappear as if they were never there at all.

  Mathew is in a fitful sleep, tossing on the hard bench that serves as his bed, shivering under the thin blanket. He is woken by the sound of his name being called in an English voice.

  Half-asleep, he thinks, It’s Mum saying she’s leaving for work. No… It’s a man’s voice! Dad?

  His father had an accent. He hears the voice again, distinctly, and it fully wakes him up.

  A hand covers his mouth. Someone is crouching beside him. They have two fingers pressed to their lips. In his head, clearly, not aloud: “Be quiet. Don’t make a sound.”

  Whoever it is is speaking to him via his e-Pin.

  It’s pitch-dark, but there is a dim light source from somewhere, and he sees that the door to his cell is open. Are my Lenzes working now? He has night vision! In a blue-and-white wash of light he sees a man with wild grey hair, a tumbling grey beard.

  In Mathew’s head, not aloud, the man says, “My name is Lev. I am a friend, and I’ve come to get you away from here. It’s important you are as quiet as possible. Do not speak. Think loudly if you want to say something. We have adjusted your Lenz and e-Pin so you can use them in this way. Be quick now! We need to leave. You’ll be able to ask all the questions you like when we get to safety. Come quickly now. It will not be dark for much longer.”

  Mathew gets off his bench and goes from his cell into the corridor. The guard is in a dead sleep, slumped in his chair, snoring, catching flies. “Don’t worry, he will not wake for several hours,” the grey-haired man says in his head.

  The door to the guardhouse is open. A bank of clouds covers the moon. He follows the man, bending low, keeping to the shade cast by the guardhouse.

  Then Mathew spots Evgeny. He has seen them, too, crouched on the ground, holding on to the wooden bars of his cage, his eyes wide. Mathew knows he wouldn’t say any
thing to anyone about their escape, but he doesn’t want to abandon him.

  Mathew tugs on the shirt of the grey-haired man called Lev, thinking hard. “He’s my friend.”

  Something must have got through to the man because he nods. “Alright. Stay here. Do not move for now. If someone finds me, crawl under this building and wait for them to go. When it’s clear, head for the biggest tree, right ahead at the edge of the clearing. People will meet you there. Okay?”

  Mathew nods.

  Lifting the wooden pole locking the door of Evgeny’s cage, he sets it aside silently. As he’d done with Mathew, he puts his fingers to his lips. Evgeny appears to understand, crawling from the cage, and joining Mathew in the shadows of the prison block. They follow Lev to the end of the building.

  “This will be the most dangerous part. We need to get to that tree.” Mathew immediately understands he means the tallest, thickest one on the boundary of the clearing. “Your friend can’t hear me.”

  Mathew nods. Touching Evgeny on the arm, he points at the tree, making a running gesture with his fingers.

  Lev walks silently into the twilight. Evgeny and Mathew follow close behind. Evgeny grabs the back of Mathew’s shirt, and Mathew guesses that Evgeny is effectively blind, walking straight into darkness. Low clouds cloak the lightening sky until they are at the edge of the clearing and under the shade of the trees. It’s still the middle of the night, but the sun is coming up, breaking golden light brilliantly across the camp. Mathew glances back, but Lev taps him on his shoulder and indicates they should keep moving.

  They walk no more than thirty feet. Lev bends down and lifts some banana leaves, revealing a deep hole in the ground, a vertical tunnel, just wider than a man’s shoulders.

  “Quickly,” he says.

  There is a ladder. Manoeuvring himself carefully, Mathew gets his feet onto the rungs and starts climbing down. Evgeny follows. When Mathew reaches the bottom and raises his eyes, Lev is at the top, pulling the leaves back to hide the hole. Coming down after them, he collapses the ladder into a kind of portable stick and puts it in a bag on the floor at the base of the hole, which he slings over his shoulder. Light spills across the hollow from a lantern on the floor. Lev grabs this and uses it to light their way. Darkness folds behind them.

  They’re walking along a narrow tunnel. Lev is tall, and his wild grey hair brushes the roof. Evgeny barely fits through. The tunnel is cut from the bedrock of the forest. The sides are polished smooth. They walk in silence for what feels like a long time, perhaps twenty minutes, and then the tunnel starts to slope upwards. Lev stops, puts the lantern on the ground, takes the ladder stick from his bag and throws it at the wall. It unfurls all the way to the top of a shaft directly above their heads. This time he goes first, telling them to wait. He hauls himself out at the top, disappears for a few moments, and then comes down again.

  “Okay, Mathew, you first.”

  Mathew climbs the ladder, pokes his head out at the top, and peers about. Standing around him are four men in their twenties and thirties. They’re dressed like the bearded man in strange civilian clothes. One of the men takes Mathew’s hand and hauls him from the shaft. With lips closed, he says, “Hello, I’m Tristan. These are my brothers, Bren, Liam, and Kell. We still have some way to go, and we must be quiet. We will speak only through your e-Pin. Okay?”

  Mathew nods.

  The other men smile at him, and he grins back. One of them rushes to the shaft Evgeny is having difficulty squeezing through. Lev quickly explains Evgeny’s unplanned presence to the others. Once Evgeny is clear, they bury the shaft under leaves.

  They are immediately on their way, swift and quiet through the undergrowth. They stop a few times for Evgeny to catch his breath. They are patient, Mathew notices, and not at all critical of Evgeny’s weight or poor level of fitness.

  Eventually, they arrive at a cliff face. It’s sheer, rising above them a hundred feet or more. Lev walks to an outcrop of rocks sitting to one side of the cliff, lifts some leaves and holds them up for the others to pass under. The leaves are attached to a rough-fashioned door, made from wood. Inside the door is a cave.

  Tristan goes in first. Lev hangs behind to help them all in and then shuts the door behind them.

  They stand in darkness for a few moments while someone lights a lamp, and then lamps go on all around and a cave is revealed. One of Tristan’s brothers hands Mathew a lantern.

  They start to move off again.

  The cave is low and wide at first, the roof slanting at either side, so they have to move in single file and bend as they walk. Their lamps cast strange phantoms on the roof and into the corners of the cave.

  Towards the back the roof dips. Tristan gets down on his hands and knees and indicates that Mathew and Evgeny should do so too. They crawl through a narrow space. Mathew thinks about the weight of the entire mountain above him. The stone is wet and cold where it brushes his skin.

  They shuffle along for thirty feet or so and come into a much larger cavern, the roof high above their heads. They’re standing on the shore of a large underground lake that glistens in the lamplight but becomes black where the light runs out.

  “We have to swim for a while,” Lev says.

  There’s a wooden crate against the wall of the cave on the shore. Lev goes to it and collects small mouthpieces, goggles, and headlamps, which he hands around. He offers Evgeny and Mathew life jackets and helps to fit Evgeny’s. Tristan shows them both how to use the breathing equipment. Mathew puts the small mask to his face. It grips him like a living creature, soft and sucking against his skin. There’s no strap at the back. Taking in a shuddery breath, his eyes wide, not expecting to be able to breathe, he finds he can do so well and fluidly, and he relaxes.

  “Good,” Tristan says. He turns to Evgeny and makes sure his mask is secure. “Okay?” he asks.

  Evgeny puts up his thumb.

  Tristan’s brothers gather the lanterns, turn them off and stack them in the crate. The cave is lit only by their wavering headlamps.

  “Ready?” Lev puts on his breathing mask and wades into the dark water. The others follow.

  The water is ice-cold. Mathew gasps as it reaches his stomach, and he has to fight his instincts in order to keep pace with the others. Gripped by fear at the thought of getting further into the dark water, he continues to wade and watches the brothers begin to swim away, only the backs of their heads visible in the inky lake. He starts to swim out but fears going beyond his depth.

  Sensing his fear, Tristan says, “Put your head under the water. Look down.”

  Mathew does so, and he’s transported into a different world. They are floating in a cathedral. Their lamps seek and illuminate strange majestic shapes: underwater stalagmites like the ruined columns made to support the roof of a once great and ancient church, the rocks carved by water and formed by minerals over millennia into wonderful natural sculptures. The water is fresh and clear, and it’s possible to see a long way. Mathew is stunned at the beauty of it. He treads water, gapes, and forgets where he is. Lev taps him on his shoulder. The others have moved off and are disappearing into a narrow tunnel ahead.

  “We must keep going,” he says, turning.

  Mathew nods and follows. Now when he lifts his head from the water there’s only a couple of feet of air above him, but beneath, the water is a vast open space. The tunnel widens and narrows periodically as they go along, and then finally they stop and put aside their breathing equipment. It’s a dead end. There are no more tunnels for them to swim down.

  Mathew bends back his neck and is once again aware of the crushing weight of rock above their heads and now how deep inside the mountain they are. If anything happens, there’s no easy escape. He’s starting to feel chilled.

  Lev speaks aloud for the first time, using his voice for the benefit of Evgeny. “We need to dive and swim underwater for a while. Straight in front of us, under that wall, is a lip and a narrow underwater tunnel. Your breathing equipment will w
ork. You have to trust it and follow the man in front. It’ll be fine.” He glances between Evgeny and Mathew. “Okay?”

  They both nod. Evgeny is shivering. Lev takes their life jackets from them and passes them to Tristan and one of his brothers. Then he dives.

  Tristan takes Mathew to the wall at the end of the cave and pulls him underwater with him. Looking in his eyes, he speaks through his e-Pin: “Breathe normally like you were doing all along. Look ahead. Resist the temptation to panic.” He waits until he sees Mathew take a few unsteady breaths, then he says, “That’s it.” Pointing, he shows the way to a tunnel, lit by Lev’s headlamp. Up ahead, Lev is swimming on. “Pull yourself through with your hands,” he says, indicating the stalactites hanging down from the roof.

  Mathew says, “Thank you. I’m okay. Help Evgeny.”

  Tristan nods and swims to the surface. Mathew follows Lev into the tunnel. Taking Tristan’s advice, he pulls on the protruding rocks to give himself momentum. His hands and feet are numb with cold. He hears music, and he thinks he must be hallucinating, but then he realises Lev is humming down his e-Pin.

  Lev disappears from view. Mathew swims after him. They have come into another cavern. The water now stretches out below and beside him and far above his head. Raising his eyes, he can see Lev swimming at the surface, silhouetted against the light. Following, pulling with his hands, he kicks and then bursts through. Lev is there beside him.

  “Take off your mask,” he says. “You can breathe.” Treading water, he helps Mathew, who takes a grateful, shuddering gulp of air.

  His eyes are drawn upwards.

  The roof of the cavern is two hundred feet above his head and brightly lit. They are swimming at the bottom of a cliff in an underground lake. Water cascades down the rock side, the terminus of another underground stream. Ferns grow on shelves and crevices nourished by spray from the water. Lev swims strongly to the shore and wades out, climbing steps to dry land. He beckons to Mathew. All around, lining the lakeside, there are people – women, men, children, young people, elderly people, people of all ethnicities, dressed like Lev in strange civilian clothes. Two of Tristan’s brothers break the surface with Evgeny between them. They swim him to the water’s edge and help him to the shore.