He lost it for a moment and breathed out only when he realized it had passed through a wall and that what he’d thought a cupboard was a door. Leaving one room, he stepped into it again, finding himself in its ruined mirror.
The complex comprised two abattoirs, back to back. As Tom shut the steel door behind him, he realized that he’d moved between worlds.
I wouldn’t leave it too long to find her …
A jagged intake of breath gave way to Alex crying.
Nothing serious, the general said. A dislocated finger. Not even an important one.
RUN! RUN AWAY!
The girl he’d met at the party would never have shouted that. The man he’d been then wouldn’t have known how to be proud of her.
He won’t run, you know. That’s his problem. Rules limit action.
And rituals don’t? Tom thought darkly.
The treads of the stairwell were stained, the stench of urine so strong that even the cold couldn’t lessen it. A box room off a half-landing held a rotting mattress, a filthy sleeping bag and the embers of an old fire lit directly on the tiles. A military surplus bag stood in one corner, the kind a newly released prisoner might own.
Major Fox … General Dennisov’s voice was hard. The game, or whatever the man imagined it to be, was suddenly suspended. What have you done to my huts?
Tom abandoned the box room for the stairs, reaching a window.
Flames billowed from the first hut he saw, then the next, a hard white burn of phosphorus that softened to a civilian orange as wood and tarpaper caught. Taking the next twist at a run, he stopped at another window. All the rows were in flames. The huts in the first row blazed so fiercely they must be visible for miles.
How long before the authorities arrived?
Above him, Tom heard a door slam, Alex’s protests cut short and steps moving fast and hard along a landing. By the time Tom reached the landing only eddies and echoes remained, a sense of Alex passing through rather than Alex herself. Looking round, Tom saw steeply rising steps.
Instinct drove him up.
57
Hands in the Fire
The final run was concrete, metal strips along each edge, side walls stained by rain and possibly urine. The sour stink grew sharper as he climbed, until Tom reached what had to be a maintenance hut on the roof.
Its door was steel. Steel was good.
Pushing it open, he waited for shots.
All he got was cold air sweeping away the stench and a blizzard of snowflakes that dodged around him, suddenly free to swirl down the stairs behind. In the distance, the burning huts looked like campfires before battle, bright splashes against a wall of night. For a second that scene in Andrei Rublev with fires on the hillside filled his mind. Half believing the roof empty, Tom opened the door wider and stepped out.
His name arrived on the wind.
Her scream was as fierce as the wind that whipped at the tails of the shirt he’d lent Alex and buffeted her as she fought to balance on a low parapet. Her legs were bare, her toes curled to get purchase on the ice. General Dennisov had his pistol to her head, his other hand gripping her wrist. She was swaying dangerously.
‘You’ve made me late,’ General Dennisov said.
‘For what?’ Tom demanded.
‘The future,’ he said tightly.
‘Let her go.’
‘Are you sure?’ His fingers began to open and Alex yelled.
Letting his empty pistol hang by his side, Tom held up his other hand in instant surrender.
‘Very wise.’ The general steadied Alex slightly. ‘Now, let that drop.’ The sound of Kyukov’s sidearm falling was swallowed by snow.
‘Your friends will be too late.’
‘My friends?’
‘That helicopter.’
There really was a helicopter? He’d thought the noise had been in his head, like the stink in the orphanage corridors and the sickening fury that slicked this building’s floors and leached from its walls.
‘I have the photographs.’
‘Of course you do. As you can see, I have the girl.’ There was nothing human in the general’s smile. ‘Kyukov is dead, I imagine?’ General Dennisov shrugged. ‘I can forgive that. You shouldn’t have burned my huts, though. That’s disrespectful …’
‘I didn’t,’ Tom said.
‘But you did kill Kyukov?’
‘Call it a favour.’
Without warning, the general pushed Alex, grabbing her back before she could topple over the edge. Dragging her from the wall, he kicked the back of her knee and put his pistol to her head as she crumpled, the knuckle of his trigger finger whitening.
For a second, Tom believed he’d fire.
‘Now look what you’ve made her do.’
Alex climbed back on to the parapet. She was crying.
Did Becca cry as she crashed? Could you see a tree well enough through tears to hit it at eighty? Maybe Caro was right. Maybe it really was an accident. Maybe Bec didn’t kill herself after all … Below the level of Tom’s fear, below the howling wind and burning huts, were deeper impulses, older hungers.
Inside his head, Tom offered the God of the Old Testament whatever he wanted. He didn’t know if he was heard. There were days he was damn sure there was no one there to make the deal. All the same, the wind stilled slightly, the moon came out from behind cloud, and Alex stopped crying.
‘General,’ Tom said.
The Russian’s eyes were fixed on the folder Tom pulled from his jacket.
‘I take it this is the last set?’
Despite himself, the man nodded. ‘We came together,’ he said, ‘to burn them after Stalin died. I kept copies. The commissar did the same. Gabashville …’ The general glanced at the piss drying on Alex’s legs and looked as if he might push her off the roof anyway. ‘He didn’t keep copies. He had fakes made, perfect right down to the thumbprints on the back. Fakes were what he brought to our ceremony. Fakes were what we toasted with that awful brandy of his.’
Tom could see Beziki enjoying making fools of them.
‘When did you find out?’
‘I didn’t. The commissar wanted something from Gabashville. Gabashville revealed what he’d done and told him to go elsewhere. The little thief had grown a conscience …’
‘About killing the boy in the chair?’
‘There’d been a murder. We needed a murderer.’
‘And when flayed bodies kept turning up?’
‘What could they do? They were already implicated. Drench a knot in blood and it becomes impossible to unpick. Golubtsov’s father was devastated, you know.’ General Dennisov looked at Alex and his smile was a wasteland of desires. ‘Poor Kyukov. The things he liked to do. And now he’s dead.’
‘That was me.’
‘Well, it was hardly going to be her, was it?’ The man shook Alex, like a terrier with its catch. ‘I’m not sure why Sir Edward’s so upset. She’s not even his real daughter.’
‘I think you’ll find she might be.’
When Alex stiffened, Tom realized that her Russian had improved in the weeks she’d been away. Then he realized that it might have improved, and she might well have understood, but that wasn’t what transfixed her.
Turning in a tight circle over the burning huts, a white helicopter shuddered in the sudden updraft. The pilot fought for control and then came in hard and low, straight at their building. The machine was squat and sharp-edged, and so quiet Tom could barely hear it. A searchlight flicked on and blinded him before he could look away.
After-glare burned his retina.
When he glanced back, the light was on Alex.
The general stopped pointing his pistol at her and aimed at the helicopter instead, ducking as a rattle of automatic fire put bullets through the hut behind him. It was an impressive piece of shooting.
‘Step down,’ General Dennisov ordered.
With his pistol to Alex’s head, the general let himself be driven back by the copter’s downdraught, which threw
up such a blizzard it almost swept him off the roof. Edging closer, its searchlight filtered by dancing snow, the machine followed, until General Dennisov turned away, using Alex to shield him from its glare.
Very slowly, the helicopter positioned itself over the abattoir, never more than a few feet above its surface. Then it settled, skis spreading as they took the craft’s full weight. As its engine died, and the only sound became the low chop of slowing blades, General Dennisov pushed his pistol under Alex’s jaw.
‘Turn off that shitting light,’ he shouted.
The searchlight went off. Whoever did it changed his mind, and it flicked on again, but angled away from the general. A door slid back and a figure dropped to the roof, stumbling slightly under the weight of a rifle.
Pulling off a flying helmet, she shook out her hair.
General Dennisov looked in disgust from the burning huts to the girl in front of him. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I should have known it was you.’
Ignoring her father, Yelena walked round to help the pilot from his seat. Metal leg dragging, Dennisov limped around the rear of the small helicopter, avoiding its tail rotor. His face was fierce with pain.
‘Your wife came to my bar.’ He stared at Tom. ‘She told me about the deal you made. A woman like that … I’m not sure you deserve her.’
‘Your father wants these.’ Tom held up the photographs.
‘Of course he does.’ Dipping into his pocket, Dennisov threw across a gas lighter designed like a blowtorch. ‘Burn them.’
In his eyes was certainty, and a fury so bitter his mouth twisted at its taste. This was an officer who killed his own CO for being crap at the job, who’d ridden a Ural motorbike out to a log cabin after being told he’d never ride again, who could barely stand for the pain of flying a copter.
‘Do it,’ Dennisov ordered.
His sister raised her weapon and it was Tom she pointed it at. When her father stepped forward, she waved him back. The general’s eyes flared, but when Yelena twitched the rifle, he stopped where she indicated.
‘The catch on the side …’ Dennisov’s voice was flat, his patience eaten away.
Blue flame danced from the lighter’s nozzle.
‘Wait,’ Yelena said.
Tom waited.
‘You.’ She pointed at Alex. ‘Describe them.’
Alex looked from Yelena to the general, who still gripped her arm. At a jerk of Yelena’s rifle, Alex pulled free and went to stand beside Tom.
‘A man on an old-fashioned motorbike.’
‘Burn it,’ Dennisov ordered.
Tom put the lighter to the photograph’s corner and watched flames catch and cardboard curl. ‘No,’ Dennisov said, when he was about to let go.
Tom held it until he could feel his fingers singeing. When he looked over, the general was smiling. ‘And the next,’ Yelena said.
‘Three young men in an old Mercedes.’
Tom burned that as he’d burned the last, holding it and the ones that came after for as long as he could manage. If he didn’t hold them for as long as the first, Dennisov said nothing and didn’t make him pick them up again.
‘Two men with two girls.’
They joined the others as sprinkled ash on the snow.
‘A girl in a bath,’ Alex said. ‘She’s not wearing anything.’
‘She’s in the bath,’ Yelena said. ‘She wouldn’t be.’
‘A man tied to a chair.’ Alex’s voice faltered. ‘He’s trying to escape.’
‘And on the back?’ Dennisov asked.
‘A fingerprint.’
‘A thumbprint,’ the general corrected her.
Describing the next few photographs, Alex simply said, ‘He’s been cut … And again … He’s been cut some more …’ Her voice became flat and her eyes dead as she fought to keep her horror under control. Tom felt ashamed for forgetting how young she was.
‘He’s dead,’ she said finally.
The last photograph Tom simply burned without giving Alex a chance to describe it. She had no need to see four children her own age, their heads twisted half off by wire as they hung from a tree.
‘Come here,’ General Dennisov ordered.
Alex returned to the parapet.
‘If you kill her,’ Tom said, ‘my father-in-law will release files from our Administration in Berlin, files that mention you by name. All this will have been for nothing. Your reputation will be ruined.’
‘Rumours,’ the general said. ‘Filthy propaganda, lies … What we’d expect from the West. Anyway, where’s your proof now?’
‘What files?’ Dennisov asked.
‘Kyukov flayed a girl,’ Tom told him, ‘the daughter of a German scientist who moved to Moscow. Your father framed the son of an NKVD general in his place, and persuaded his comrades to help kill the boy. Then he blamed his murder on four German teenagers and hung them from a tree. You’ve seen the photographs.’
‘He didn’t kill her himself?’
‘Not that one.’
‘There were others?’
‘The girl at Patriarch’s Ponds,’ Tom said. ‘The dead children in the ruined house. Beziki’s sons. Who knows how many –’
‘Nobodies.’ The general’s voice was brutal, his eyes dark with hate. God knows, Tom thought, he’d been bad enough as a parent. He could barely imagine what it must have been like to have this man for a father. ‘And I don’t flay them. What do you think I am?’
‘Who shaved your head?’ Yelena looked at Alex, naked but for Tom’s shirt, hugging herself against the cold, her hair cropped to nothing.
Alex glanced at the general.
‘You,’ Yelena told Tom, ‘stand beside her.’
Tom didn’t recognize the woman Yelena had become.
Her face was harder, her cheekbones sharper. She stood, gripping the strange rifle as if she knew how to use it. One flare barrel, one shotgun, one that looked like it belonged on an SLR. Tom suddenly remembered where he’d seen it: propped in a corner of the commissar’s study. It had been Sveta’s husband’s.
‘So,’ said Yelena, when Tom had climbed up, ‘the truth. Do you really believe forgiveness of sins is possible?’
‘Yes,’ Tom replied, surprising himself.
‘Even for what I’m about to do?’
‘If you know you’re going to it,’ Tom said, ‘and you know it’s wrong, then you can stop yourself doing it.’
Even he knew it didn’t really work like that.
‘What if I can’t?’
‘Then you’re forgiven.’
‘Please,’ Alex said.
‘My mother was a nobody.’ Yelena said. ‘Please was a word she used often.’
‘Do it or don’t do it,’ her brother said.
Yelena looked at Alex and the English girl’s eyes widened.
Stepping down, she grabbed the general’s wrist, locking him in place. The entire world shifted. Out on the edge, beyond the burning huts, a wolf howled and Tom felt a shiver akin to shock.
Swivelling to face her father, Yelena fired.
At the noise, the wolf at the wire turned for the trees.
It was old, and its haunches hurt, and one hip was sore from a wound that wouldn’t heal. But habits learned young are hard to break, and here was where winter had taught it to find food. In its childhood, bodies from inside had been dumped beyond the wire, always pointing away, so the guards could say they died escaping. The wolf knew now, because it was old enough to know these things, that no one ever escaped.
58
Banquet
Alex had a bath on the plane.
She hadn’t known planes could have baths. This one had a bath and not just any bath. It was an iron bath held up on legs that ended in lion’s claws. The plane also had a shower and two round basins side by side, in front of a real mirror, not one of those slabs of silvered glass you found screwed to the wall of lavatories in ordinary planes. She’d asked how long she could take. The Russian girl told her to take as long as she
liked, and then glared at her brother and Major Tom from the embassy, daring them to disagree.
‘Whose plane is it?’
‘Everyone’s,’ her brother said. ‘It belongs to the people.’
He said it in such a way, and with such a twist to his lips, that Alex didn’t know if he was joking.
‘Go,’ the girl said.
Alex went and lay in hot water up to her chin for an hour.
She would have emptied the bath and run another if Major Fox hadn’t knocked to tell her they’d soon be landing. He said that Yelena, who had to be the Russian girl, had found her something to wear, since she thought Alex wouldn’t want to put back on the shirt she’d been wearing. She was right.
Alex wondered how Yelena knew.
Dismissing the thought, as she’d been dismissing all thoughts of what happened on the roof, Alex opened the bathroom door a little and found a neatly folded dressing gown outside. So that was how she came to land in Sebastopol, wearing a man’s silk dressing gown, heading down the steps from the plane with it flapping round her knees, while hard-eyed young men in smart uniforms stared straight ahead.
A long, low black car had been parked near the plane, with a chauffeur, or perhaps a soldier, waiting by the rear door. He opened it as Alex approached.
‘I thought we were going home?’ Alex said.
‘We have something to do first,’ Major Fox told her.
There was something affectionate in his gaze, as if he felt he knew Alex well, for all she didn’t really know him. He might be an uncle she rarely saw, an old friend of her mother’s, something like that. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘We have to go to a banquet. Are you going to be all right?’
‘You mean, can I manage to be quiet, not draw attention to myself, remember that I’m not meant to drink alcohol, and only speak when I’m spoken to?’
‘Something like that.’
Alex rolled her eyes and wondered why he grinned.
The meal was in full swing when Tom stepped back to let Alex and Yelena enter. Dennisov waved Tom on and shut the door behind them all. From the look of the tables, with their platters of food, picked-at plates and dozens of guests wearing expressions that suggested they’d long since reached capacity, the eating part of the evening was nearly over.
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