The Concubine's Secret

11

The door banged open. A blast of icy air tore through the tavern. It carved chunks into the solid pall of smoke that hovered like death over the heads of the drinkers. Alexei glanced up from the playing cards in his hand. So. Popkov had at last turned up. The big Cossack was brushing snow from his shaggy beard but his movements were unsteady; he was swaying on his feet, his single eye already bloodshot as a pig’s heart.

You stupid fucking bastard. We were meant to be watching each other’s backs tonight. What good are you to me in that state?

Alexei returned his attention to the game in hand. His mind was struggling to concentrate. This was his fourth session of cards in as many bars, each one buried in a back alley that stank of cats’ piss and despair. The bare wooden tables were stained with beer, the floor etched with vodka and waxed with tears. These places were strictly all male. Not a smooth cheek or a shapely leg in sight. Just a huddle of men determined to drown their day’s cares and the screech of their women’s voices in the glorious oblivion of a glass.

‘Get on with it, will you? Haven’t got all night, you know.’

Alexei ignored his opponent’s grousing. He’d selected this man deliberately out of all the ones who were shuffling cards at the tables. He chose him because he was fat. Fat means food, plenty of it. The card player must be stuffing himself on a diet of kickbacks and bribes, a feast of fistfuls of roubles. Clearly the man was an informer. A whisperer. He sold information.

A chair crashed to the floor nearby and out of the corner of his eye Alexei caught sight of Popkov weaving a path towards him.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Alexei snapped without looking up from his cards.

Popkov shuffled his ungainly frame around the table and stood behind Alexei’s chair. He laughed out loud as he spotted Alexei’s hand and the alcohol on his breath spilled over the other man’s shoulder.

‘Better give up while you’re losing,’ he mumbled in Alexei’s ear, then chortled at his own joke.

The fat man opposite joined in the merriment. ‘Your friend is right.’ He held up his own cards in a fan and waved them to and fro, as if waving Alexei’s chances goodbye.

‘Game’s not over yet,’ Alexei responded with irritation.

He was about to toss another few roubles on to the pile when he received a nudge in his side that was so violent his fingers jerked open and he let go of his hand. The cards slid across the dirty table top and four of them fell to the floor, three face up.

‘What the hell…?’ Alexei reached for the cards. But it was too late. The fat man had moved fast despite his paunch and had already scooped them up.

‘A seven, nine and ten, that’s no winning hand,’ the man grinned and dipped his heavy moustache into his glass of beer. ‘Now give up, like your fine friend says.’ His eyes shone grey and greedy.

Alexei threw up his hands in surrender, letting his opponent sweep away the roubles and pocket them. He looked up at Popkov. ‘You crazy drunken idiot. You’ve bloody lost me…’ But then he saw the look in Popkov’s eyes. ‘Very well. Game’s over.’ Alexei rose from his chair and gave a mock salute to his card partner. ‘It’s not my night, it seems.’

But the fat man wasn’t listening. He was already trying to ensnare another player from the group huddled round the bar. Alexei reluctantly obeyed Popkov’s hand on his shoulder and allowed himself to be propelled towards the back of the room where there was a spare table. They both sat down. Alexei thought about the lost roubles and sighed, but he lit himself a cigarette, inhaled deeply and looked across at Popkov.

‘You’re not as drunk as you appear, are you?’

Popkov’s face broke into a sly smile. ‘I never am. You should know that by now.’

‘So what’s the great hurry that you have to break up my game?’

‘I think the game I’ve been playing may be worth far more to you.’

‘So?’

‘So I’ve been having a drink.’

‘Correction. Drinks.’

‘Of course. If it hadn’t been more than one, I would have learned nothing. Just listen to me, will you, for a change?’

Alexei sat back in his chair, avoiding the Cossack’s fumes. ‘All right. Go on. Where were you?’

‘I was in a brothel.’

‘Oh shit. Don’t tell me you’ve got the clap.’

‘Just shut up. I wasn’t there to touch any of the girls, I was on the look out for a guard from the camp. They’d be desperate, see? I reckoned the place would be crawling with them.’

Alexei took a drag on his cigarette to hide his surprise. The Cossack wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

‘And did you find one?’

‘You bet I did. Almost as big as me, he was, and none of the girls wanted him, you could tell.’ He lowered his voice and dropped to a disconcertingly confidential tone. ‘Sometimes these girls are too small, you see, for our-’

‘Enough, spasibo.’

Popkov scratched at his eye patch and resumed his tale. ‘The man was staggering about the room, knocking into everything and everyone in sight. The madam was yelling, “Someone take this fucking guard back to his camp. Get him out of here!” So I did.’

Alexei offered the Cossack one of his cigarettes and lit it for him. It was a small gesture. ‘All right, so what then?’

‘He’s a big guy, like I said. Kept collapsing in the street, so I had to-’

‘Pick him up. Being such a gentlemanly character.’

‘Let me finish, will you?’ Popkov scowled at Alexei. ‘At least I didn’t sit around playing cards all night, losing good roubles to-’

‘The trouble with you, my friend, is that you don’t have a strategic mind.’

The single black eye glared at him through the smoke. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that the loss of a few roubles was necessary to discover…’ Alexei paused, making the big man wait, ‘that there are going to be heavy troop movements through Felanka in the next few weeks. That means trains. Frequent trains coming and going, a constant stream of new faces creating confusion.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the filthy table, gaze intent on Popkov. ‘If we can finish our business quickly, we can be out of here sooner than I expected. But,’ he hesitated, finding the next words hard, ‘I need you to watch out for Lydia.’

‘I always watch out for Lydia Ivanova.’

‘I think she might try to ride one of the trains back to Selyansk.’ The thought of his sister on one of those troop trains packed with soldiers, travelling on her own, turned his stomach.

The Cossack stabbed out his cigarette in a spill of beer. It hissed as he lumbered to his feet with a sudden urgency. ‘Let’s get moving.’

The night was starless, the cold air a slap in the face. Fresh snow lay soft underfoot. Alexei followed the Cossack down a narrow back street where there were no lights, just a dreary row of warehouses whose doors rattled like dead men’s bones in the buffeting of the wind. The smell of something burning caught at Alexei’s nostrils and grew stronger when Popkov took a turn into an open yard. Flames were leaping from inside a metal container drum which stood in front of a small stone store shed. Popkov headed straight for it.

‘What have you done to him?’ Alexei asked with foreboding.

Popkov’s chuckle told more than Alexei cared to know.

The big ox kicked open the door. The shifting glow of the flames leapt inside and curled up on a pale, dead-looking face. It belonged to an extremely large male, stretched out on his back with a chain looped several times round his neck. Each end of the long chain was hooked to one of the metal shelf brackets that lined the walls. The man couldn’t move his head more than a fraction either way. It was no wonder his eyes were closed. Could he breathe?

Alexei asked coldly, ‘Popkov, did you have to? What was wrong with bringing him to the bar and asking him questions over a few more vodkas? Tell me, you ox brain, what was wrong with that as an option?’

The Cossack looked taken aback. He held both hands out like plates to the warmth of the flames and shrugged mildly. ‘He might not have wanted to give us the answers. This way is… surer.’

That was probably true. But it was not the point.

With a snort of disgust Alexei stepped into the storehouse and unhooked the chain from the wall. A faint choke like a dog’s cough issued from the man on the floor. At least the poor devil was still alive. With no apparent damage other than a telltale swelling on his jaw, he rolled over on his side, muttered something incomprehensible and started to snore.

‘Podnimaisa! Get up!’ Alexei barked. He backed it up with a prod of his boot.

This produced a grunt. He bent down and hauled the man to his feet and they staggered out of the shed into the night air. Its icy blast instantly froze the alcohol in their blood and the big guard shuddered but sobered up enough to stand alone, listing precariously towards the heat inside the drum. He was younger than Alexei had first thought, with a clean-shaven, good looking face, early thirties probably.

‘Now,’ Alexei said. The sooner this was over the better. ‘I need to ask you a few questions.’

‘Piss off.’

The guard started out with an odd sort of flat-footed gait towards the yard entrance. It was like watching a duck on ice. Popkov stepped away from the fire and tapped him on the back, except that one of Popkov’s taps was like anybody else’s full-bodied thumps. The man went sprawling to the snow-covered ground, face down, arms and legs splayed, and before he could even think about what had happened to him, Popkov was sitting astride his back. He yanked off the guard’s hat, tossed it into the fire and seized a handful of thick fair hair in his fist. He wrenched the man’s head back and waited for Alexei to begin.

The Cossack was efficient, Alexei had to give him that, but this was a way of doing business that disgusted him.

‘What’s your name?’ Alexei demanded.

A dry croak issued from the guard’s tortured throat.

‘Ox brain,’ Alexei snapped, ‘let the man speak.’

The grip on the hair loosened a touch, so that the guard could swallow.

‘Your name?’

‘Babitsky.’ A hoarse whisper.

‘Well, Babitsky, it’s quite simple. I want to know whether a certain person is a prisoner in the Trovitsk labour camp.’

Babitsky grunted.

‘So if I give you a name, you will tell me whether he’s-’

‘Nyet.’

Without hesitation Popkov bounced the guard’s face on the ground. Up and down. Just once. But it came up with a nose covered in blood.

‘For fuck’s sake, stop that!’ Alexei exploded. ‘Babitsky, just answer my question and then you can go.’

The man moaned and spat out blood. ‘I only know the prisoners by numbers. Not names.’

Fuck.

‘So who would have the list of names?’

‘The office.’

‘Who works in the office? A name this time.’

The man’s eyes were growing hazy and he was having trouble breathing. With a mountain crushing his lungs, it was hardly surprising.

‘Get off him,’ Alexei commanded.

For a moment their eyes met and Alexei prepared to deliver that punch he’d been promising himself all evening. But Popkov wasn’t stupid. He gave a flash of teeth, released the hair in his fist and raised himself up on his knees so that he was still astride the guard but no longer resting his weight on him.

Babitsky dragged in air and said in a rush, ‘The camp office is run by Mikhail Vushnev. He knows them all.’

‘Where will I find this Vushnev when he comes into town? Where does he drink?’

‘The bar…’ He spat more blood on to the snow. ‘Down by the tyre factory. It’s a dump but it’s always got some fuckable girls serving the beer.’

Alexei removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket, wiped the man’s bleeding face and rose to his feet, thankful to be at a distance from him. He dropped the scarlet cloth into the fire. He wished he could drop the whole of tonight into the flames as easily.

‘OK, let him go.’

For once Popkov did as he was told.

The man staggered to his feet, cursing. Alexei took out a packet of cigarettes, shook out two, lit them both and handed one to Babitsky. He watched the man’s blood drip on to the cigarette.

‘Fuck you,’ Babitsky groaned, drawing smoke into his lungs.

‘Fuck the lot of you. I’m off tomorrow out of this freezing shit hole.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘What’s that to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’ve been posted to Moscow.’ His split lips curled in a bitter smile. ‘So fuck you and your questions.’

Alexei turned away. He’d seen enough. He had a name: Mikhail Vushnev. That’s where he’d start. Without the damn Cossack this time.