The Concubine's Secret

13

The knock on the door was sharp. The sound dragged Lydia back to Russia and the present with a jolt, and a familiar nausea flooded her stomach, making it ache as the wisps of remembrance were wrenched away. She rolled off the quilt, her bare feet chill on the boards though she was wrapped in her coat. It surprised her to find Elena deeply asleep on the other bed. She’d forgotten her. The woman’s mouth hung open, yet in sleep she looked younger, prettier, less formidable somehow.

Another rap shook the door. Lydia didn’t need to ask who it was. She debated whether to answer it at all, but she knew he wouldn’t give up. Her brother didn’t ever give up. She opened the door and Alexei was standing outside in the corridor, his long face pinched with cold and worry. He wasn’t quite quick enough to hide the look of relief that flicked through his green eyes at the sight of her, and she didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted by it. Right now she was too lonely to care.

‘You’re here,’ he said.

‘Yes. I promised I would be.’

‘Good.’

There was nothing more to say. He’d checked up on her, she was here; that was it. Behind the paper-thin walls a woman suddenly started to laugh in the next room, but Lydia felt no urge to smile. The hole inside her was too big, too consuming, it had swallowed everything she had.

‘Alexei.’ She whispered her brother’s name as something to hold on to. ‘Alexei.’ Her eyes focused on the third button of his coat. She couldn’t bear to look at his face because at the moment she had no armour. ‘Take me with you.’

‘Nyet. It’s too dangerous. I’ll work better without you. Stay here.’

She nodded and, still without looking at him, quietly closed the door. She leaned her back against it and listened to her brother’s footsteps walking away from her. Fast. As though he couldn’t wait to leave her behind. Slowly she slid down to the floor and wrapped her arms around her shins, balancing her chin on her knees.

The first person Alexei spotted as he entered the bar near the tyre factory was the blond truck driver, the one who had flirted with Lydia so outrageously on the road back from the foundry. What was his name? Kolya. He was trying to build a precarious tower of full vodka glasses on a table. Alexei elbowed his way to the long counter at the back of the smoke-filled room.

‘Vodka,’ he ordered.

A bottle and a glass appeared in front of him.

‘Spasibo.’ He poured himself a drink and threw it down his throat. ‘And one for yourself.’

The barman was small with tough no-nonsense eyes and a broken front tooth. He nodded and filled a glass for himself but left it untouched on the bar. Alexei could smell the sweet odour of almond oil on him.

‘What is it you want?’ The man spoke with a strong Muscovite accent.

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Got a name?’

‘Mikhail Vushnev. I’m told he drinks here. Do you know him?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is he in tonight?’

He didn’t even bother to look around. ‘Nyet.’

Alexei knew he was lying. He shrugged, poured himself another drink and pretended to watch the truck driver’s antics, all the time checking out the room. A dump, Babitsky had called it. He was right about that. Airless, gloomy and needing the attentions of a scrubbing brush, but warm and comfortable in a lazy sort of way. There was the usual clutch of dedicated drinkers huddled round the tables, a thin child on one man’s knee, while a dog lay under another man’s chair with watchful eyes. In one corner two men were playing chess, totally engrossed.

Alexei picked up his drink and ambled over to them, keeping a respectful distance from their table but close enough to observe their moves. For ten minutes he stood there, absorbed in the game. During that time two girls in colourful Uzbek dress materialised from a back room, flashing dark southern eyes and smooth olive skin as they balanced beer on trays. The atmosphere in the place changed with their arrival as if an electric switch had been flipped. Even one of the chess players was distracted enough to lose his rook foolishly, and his king fell soon after. One of the girls brushed her hip invitingly against Alexei as she squeezed past and pouted her full crimson lips at him, but he shook his head and lit another cigarette.

‘Don’t turn her down, comrade,’ the younger of the chess players laughed. ‘You never know when you’ll get another offer.’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ Alexei replied and held out the cigarette pack. The man accepted and stuck one behind his ear for later. ‘You play well,’ Alexei commented, nodding at the shakhmatnaya doska, the chessboard.

‘Spasibo. Do you play?’

‘Badly.’

The older player scrutinised him from deep-set eyes. ‘I doubt that,’ he muttered.

Alexei leaned down and righted the white king. ‘I was told I could find an excellent player here. Mikhail Vushnev was the name. I’m in the mood for a good match. Do you know him?’

‘If you want a good match, comrade, Mikhail is not your man,’ the younger one laughed scornfully. ‘He’s as much use on a chessboard as one of those girls in a nunnery, so-’

‘Leonid,’ the older one interrupted, ‘maybe a chess match is not the kind of match our friend here has in mind.’

Fuck. The man was sharp. Alexei gave him a careful smile. ‘Is he here, this Vushnev?’

‘Nyet.’

The younger one looked at his companion in surprise. ‘Boris, have you gone soft in the head or something-’

‘Nyet.’ This time even Leonid heard the emphasis in the word and kept his mouth shut.

‘Thanks anyway,’ Alexei said pleasantly.

Aware of eyes on his back, he moved over to the bar where Kolya was fondling one of the girls and getting his hands smacked for his trouble. Alexei ordered another vodka, then turned as if he had all the time in the world and no thought other than where his next drink was coming from. He let his gaze skim the tables, his eyes narrowed against the smoke, and settled for no more than a heartbeat on a lean man with brilliantined hair, smoking a long-stemmed pipe over by the stove.

Alexei’s gaze moved on indifferently. But he had his man. Young Leonid had betrayed him without even knowing it: just a glance at the mention of Vushnev’s name was enough.

Alexei placed a bottle of vodka and two glasses on the man’s table.

‘Dobriy vecher. Good evening, comrade. May I join you?’

He didn’t wait for an answer but pulled up a chair and sat down. The fact that the man’s angular face registered no surprise was not lost on him. Alexei poured them both a drink.

‘Za tvoye zdorovye!’ he raised his glass. ‘Good health!’

‘Za tvoye zdorovye, tovarishch,’ Vushnev responded but he didn’t touch the glass. His grey eyes were thoughtful and curious but he asked no questions. In Soviet Russia questions could get you into trouble. He was a man of around forty and contented himself with chewing on the stem of his pipe, shadows shifting in the hollows of his face, light skidding off the gleam of his hair. Something about the sheen of the man grated on Alexei’s nerves, but he dug up a smile of sorts and asked, ‘You’re Comrade Vushnev, I believe?’

‘I wondered how long it would take you to find me.’

‘You knew I was looking?’

The man snorted with amusement. ‘Of course.’

‘Word travels fast in Felanka.’

Alexei picked up his drink and stretched his legs out towards the stove. At the far end of the bar two men broke out in song while another clapped a fast rhythm. Alexei took time to enjoy it, recognising it as a tune from his childhood which he hadn’t heard in fifteen years. Memories of Jens Friis with his beloved fiddle, which in equal measure he cursed and cajoled in Danish each time he rested a bow on its strings, came flooding into his head. He downed the vodka in one throw.

‘They sing well,’ he commented. ‘Exceptionally well.’

‘They used to be professionals. Now they’re sheet metal workers, poor devils.’ Vushnev balanced his pipe on his knee and for the first time a hint of real interest tightened the curve of his shoulders. ‘We’re all workers now for our great Soviet Fatherland.’

This was the moment. Alexei slipped a hand into his coat pocket as if to keep it warm, casually jingling the coins there. He made the first move.

‘You must grow weary of people coming to you, comrade, interested in your work for the Soviet Fatherland.’

A pause. A slight smile. Nothing more. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many. From all parts of the country they come knocking on my door.’ He puffed on his pipe, in no hurry.

Alexei lit himself another cigarette. His throat was dry as the dirt on the floor. The room was growing noisier, another man was singing an old folksong that had other drinkers swaying and joining in. The electric lamps on the walls were flickering, threatening to plunge them all into blackness.

‘Comrade, you must work hard,’ Alexei said, just softly enough for his words to slip under the barrage of noise but still reach his companion’s ears, ‘so hard you must make our Great Leader proud of your dedication to the reconstruction of Soviet society. All of us benefit from what you do.’ He let the words hang there. ‘You are trusted with much information.’

At last the greed was there, naked in the grey eyes. Vushnev was on the hook. Alexei slid the second vodka glass across the table towards him. This time the office manager of Trovitsk camp picked it up, tossed the liquid down his throat in one hit and smacked his lips with satisfaction.

‘Not here,’ he warned. ‘Too many eyes.’

‘Where?’

‘On Kirov Most. The bridge on the east side of town. There’s a stone arch in the middle of it.’

‘In half an hour.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Alexei exhaled heavily, the muscles in his neck starting to loosen. Now why did he feel this wasn’t the first time Vushnev had said those exact words?

The bridge was empty. Snow was driving through the darkness as if it had to get somewhere. The lethal ice on the road and pavement, churned up by traffic during the day, was now freezing hard once more and that made it impossible to walk silently.

Alexei arrived early. He hung back in the dense black huddle of buildings on the river bank, a row of workshops locked up for the night. He watched the bridge closely but, other than one solitary truck trundling over, it remained empty. He wondered whether Vushnev was watching from the other side. Kirov Most was a stone bridge with carved creatures rearing up at intervals along its parapet, and in the centre the stone archway that Vushnev had mentioned. No sign of life.

At each end of the bridge an elaborate wrought-iron lamp attempted to shed a circle of light, but both were losing the battle and they were barely visible in the sheets of snow that clogged the air. The wind snatched at Alexei’s hat and drove fingers into his eyes but he didn’t move. He breathed in shallow gasps behind his scarf. When something brushed against his shin he jumped, heart in his throat, so focused was he on the bridge, but it was only a scrawny cat seeking warmth.

Half an hour passed. An hour. Still no one on the bridge. He and the cat kept each other company but his thoughts grew chill and slippery, so that he almost missed it. A figure was moving up ahead. It was leaning into the wind, hunched in a fufaika with a scarf wound tightly round its head and much of its face. It might be Vushnev. Or it might not. More to the point, the figure was alone. Alexei scratched the cat’s head in farewell and moved out from his spot. He covered the ground quickly with long strides, coming up behind his quarry and tapping the snow-draped shoulder. The man swung round, startled, eyebrows heavy with ice above frightened eyes. It was Vushnev.

‘For fuck’s sake, you scared me!’

‘You’re late,’ Alexei pointed out.

‘So what? I was busy. I had to-’

The grey eyes were wary but no longer frightened. Alexei didn’t like that. It made him nervous. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m too cold to hear your bloody life story.’

The man backed off a step and glanced the length of the bridge. Alexei felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bitter cold.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said quickly.

‘Name?’

‘Jens Friis.’

‘Russian?’

‘No, he’s Danish. Remember it?’

‘Do you realise how many names I-’

‘Do you recognise it?’

Silence, except for the howl of the wind. Alexei brushed snow from his face.

‘I might,’ the man muttered at last.

‘How much to remember?’

‘What are you offering?’

From an inside pocket Alexei drew out a flat leather jewellery box. He flicked it open. An exquisite sapphire necklace nestled in a creamy satin bed and he heard Vushnev’s intake of breath. He snapped the case closed. The necklace had been his grand-mother’s, worn to Tsar Nikolas’s grand balls at the Winter Palace. The thought of it in this man’s grubby hand made him angry.

‘So do you know Jens Friis?’

‘I know the name.’

‘He’s in Trovitsk camp?’

‘What’s he to you?’

‘That’s none of your damn business.’

‘Sometimes I like to know why my…’ He smiled. ‘Why my clients are so keen to extract one of the inmates, when very often the prisoner has become a different person from the one they used to know. Are you ready for that? Years of hard labour and degradation change them, you see. Life in the camp makes them hard and selfish and only interested in…’

He’s stalling me. Keeping my attention off-

He swung round but it was too late. Shit! A blow thudded into his kidneys, another into the side of his head. He staggered but kept his foothold on the ice. He jammed an elbow into a face and a knee in a groin and gained himself some breathing space, but in front of him stood four men. Two more behind him and another crumpled in a groaning mess on the ground. Vushnev was smiling, standing well clear of any violence.

‘My friend,’ the office manager said softly, ‘you have no choice. I shall take the necklace anyway. And anything else you are hiding. Don’t refuse,’ he chuckled, ‘or I shall have to unleash my friends here. Surely you don’t want that.’

With no more than a small movement of his wrist, a gun appeared in Alexei’s hand and he pointed it directly at Vushnev’s face. ‘You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you?’

Vushnev edged backwards. The other men stood their ground.

‘Vushnev, don’t be a fucking fool. You can take the jewels. But in exchange I want-’

The knife came out of the darkness behind him. Pain tore through his body and it was so total, so mind-scouring, he could-n’t work out where it was hurting. Hands and feet were suddenly all over him, beating and kicking, hammering his body to the ground. He pulled the trigger twice, three times and heard screams, but the hands were still burrowing through his clothes, tearing at them, and he couldn’t stop them. He fought till he felt someone’s wrist snap and fingers go limp, but suddenly he was hoisted up into the air and launched over the edge of the bridge parapet. Out into the night air above the river.

All he felt at first was a rush of relief. He was free of those bastards on the bridge. The night was so dark he was barely aware of plummeting, but his mind kicked in and told him to prepare. He drew in his flailing arms and legs, clutched at one last fading image of his sister. Then the water rose up and smacked into him like a brick wall, its freezing force squeezing him so hard his lungs jammed. He sank like a stone.