The Concubine's Secret

48

Lydia pounded her fist on the door till it shook on its hinges and rattled in its frame. Still it didn’t open. She thumped it harder, again and again, until the skin on her knuckles split. At long last there was the turning of a lock and the door jerked open.

‘What the bloody hell…?’ A pause. ‘Well now, if it isn’t little Lydia. What on earth are you doing here making such a row at this unseemly hour of the morning?’

‘I need your help, Dmitri.’

The Soviet officer smiled, a quiet steady smile that seemed to bob to the surface from somewhere deep down, as if he’d been expecting this moment, just not certain where among all the other moments it was hiding. He stepped back into the hallway, pulling the door wide open for her, and waved her inside.

‘What was wrong with the doorbell?’ he asked mildly.

‘It was too… easy.’

‘Too easy? What crazy place does that idea come from?’

‘I needed to hit something.’

They sat in the dining room facing each other across the middle of a long oak table. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, but with heavily carved feet so ornate that it jarred with the modernism of its owner. It occurred to Lydia that, like Antonina’s bracelet, it might have been acquired from someone needing help. Someone like herself.

‘So,’ he said with an easy smile, ‘what has got young Lydia so worked up this morning?’

‘I’m not worked up.’ She lifted her coffee and sipped it with a show of calm, but she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t shift the pulse of pain.

His grey eyes creased with amusement and she realised she wasn’t fooling him. He had sat her down, insisting that she join him for breakfast, poured her coffee and offered warm croissants from a French bakery, bottled peaches and wafer thin slices of smoked pork. She stuck to just the coffee. She would choke if she tried to eat. He was wearing embroidered slippers and a Japanese silk robe with a white linen napkin tucked into its front. With surgical precision he was slicing one of the peaches.

Lydia took a deep breath and let out the words she’d come to say. ‘Dmitri, today a friend of mine was shot.’

He raised one eyebrow. ‘The Chinese?’

‘No.’ The word jumped out of her mouth. ‘No, it was a Cossack friend of mine called Liev Popkov.’

‘A Cossack? He probably deserved to be shot then.’

In a low voice she said, ‘Dmitri, I will stick this knife in your throat if you say that about Liev Popkov.’

He placed a sliver of fruit in his mouth, dabbed the napkin to his lips and sat back with a serious expression. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t there.’

I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there. Chyort! I wasn’t there to help him when he needed me. Guilt jammed in her throat like a pebble from the Moskva River.

‘So someone told you what happened?’

‘Yes.’ She leaned forward on the table. ‘My friend had just started work for a baker and they were making a delivery to a prison here in Moscow.’

‘A prison?’ the Russian smiled. ‘What a coincidence.’

Lydia hurried on. ‘The baker said that suddenly one of the guards came charging at Popkov and he just defended himself. One of the other guards shot him.’

‘Understandably, if he was creating trouble.’

Lydia made herself ignore the comment. ‘The baker was ordered to leave immediately and has no idea whether my friend lived or died.’

‘Ah!’ He inclined his head. ‘Distressing for you.’

There was an awkward little silence. Lydia put her hands on her lap and made them stay there. ‘The baker says the guard claimed to recognise Popkov. It seems they had a fight some time ago in Felanka.’ She watched his pupils dilate with a sudden spike of interest at the mention of Felanka, though he maintained an attitude of quiet detachment. ‘In Felanka,’ she explained, ‘Popkov beat the hell out of the guard and he wanted revenge.’

‘I’ve seen too many of them, Lydia, these people who think with their fists. The prison camps are full of them. They live by their fists and more often than not they die by them too.’

‘Popkov may not be dead,’ she insisted.

‘So,’ Malofeyev raised his coffee cup and studied her over the gilt-edged rim, ‘you want to know what state this oaf is in and where he is.’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘I want you to get him returned to me.’

‘Dead?’

‘Dead or alive.’

‘And why would I do that?’

‘Dmitri, this isn’t like my request for the name of the prison. That was secret information, this isn’t. It’s just a misunderstanding. A stupid fight that flared up for no reason.’ She lifted her hands from her lap, placed them on the polished surface of the table and let them fall apart to reveal a heavy gold watch, its casing exquisitely wrought, its face intricately engraved. It was the one she’d stolen from the cigar man’s pocket. She looked at Dmitri and exhaled carefully. ‘I’m sure it’s something you could sort out with just a couple of telephone calls.’

His eyes had fixed on the watch. ‘Well, Lydia, you do surprise me. Is this all your friendship is worth?’

Lydia wasn’t sure what he meant and it angered her. Friendship with him or friendship with the Cossack? But something in the way he looked at the watch made her blood slow and stumble in her veins. It wasn’t enough. Already she knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

‘What is it you want instead?’ she asked.

He put down his cup and leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes intent on hers. She became aware that the room was unbearably hot. ‘I told you once before, Lydia, I want you to look at me the way you looked at your Chinese that night at the Metropol.’

‘That will never happen.’

‘Never say never, my dear. It could.’

Abruptly he rose to his feet, threw his napkin on to his plate and moved round the length of the table until he was standing directly behind her. The whisper of his slippers on the polished parquet floor made her skin prickle as though she’d brushed against nettles. He touched the back of her hair. She didn’t flinch. His fingers burrowed into her dense mane as if they had a right to be there.

‘You are very lovely, Lydia, and very young.’

‘I’m old enough.’

He bent down behind her until his lips were soft on her ear. ‘Old enough to know what you want?’

She nodded.

He kissed her ear lobe. She didn’t move. Just smelled the clean scent of him and felt his hair mingle with her own.

‘And is this what you want?’ He lifted a loop of her hair aside, twining its strands around his fingers so that she was attached to him, and kissed the pale skin of her neck.

She nodded. It was the least she owed Popkov.

‘Then I think I can help you,’ he murmured, sliding a hand round to her throat. ‘So sweetly delicate.’ His fingers started to explore, to caress the fragile stem of her collarbone, to insinuate themselves deeper into the opening of her blouse until they found the soft rise of her breast and she could feel his breath coming hot and moist on her cheek.

‘Your wife, Antonina?’ she asked. ‘Is she here? In the apartment? ’

The fingers froze. ‘She’s still in bed.’

‘Even so. Not ideal, is it?’

‘I didn’t think you were an idealist, Lydia. More of a realist, it seemed to me.’ He kissed the top of her head and his other hand encircled her waist, pinning her to the chair.

‘Dmitri,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘let me go.’ She heard his exhalation. ‘But I give you my word. You can pick your time and place – as soon as Liev Popkov is safely home.’

‘Dead or alive?’

‘Dead or alive.’

With reluctance he withdrew his arm, uncoiling it slowly. She rose to her feet. She’d bought a breathing space. ‘Thank you, Dmitri.’

‘Oh damn it, Lydia, will you ever make life easy for me?’ He was still breathing hard.

‘I doubt it.’ She forced a smile of sorts.

‘But I have your word?’

‘Yes, you have my word. Just find me Liev Popkov.’ For a moment she stepped nearer, her face close to his. ‘Find him,’ she said harshly and saw him recoil in surprise.

She moved to the door and swung it open, only to discover Antonina on the other side. She was wearing an oyster-pink negligee, her sharp painted nails held out in front of her like claws. How long she’d been standing there it was impossible to tell.

‘Lydia, my friend, I had no idea you were here,’ she said brightly. ‘Dmitri, you should have told me and I’d have joined you both for coffee.’

Her smile was as brittle as the stem of a wine glass. Lydia knew it would snap if she touched it.

‘Another time, Antonina,’ she said quickly and walked out of the overheated apartment.

Chang found her. How on earth he found her she had no idea. All that mattered was that he was here and she could feel his heart beating as hard as if he’d been running. He steered her through a maze of side streets till they came to a shabby stretch of houses where two strangers would be ignored – no one wanted trouble; they already had enough of their own. Chang lifted her chin and kissed her, and she felt sick with shame. He didn’t ask her what she was doing running the pavements at this early hour of the morning and she wondered if he could smell Dmitri on her.

‘ Lydia, Kuan gave me your message.’

She leaned her face into the collar of his coat.

‘Here is a new key to a new room.’ He pressed a small metal object into her palm and a scrap of paper bearing an address. ‘Be calm,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me what it is that has disturbed you.’

She shook her head, mute. He waited until she was able to speak.

‘It’s Popkov. He’s been shot,’ she whispered. ‘Because of me he might be dead.’ Her lips felt numb. ‘I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead.’

His hand soothed the crumpled line of her spine and the memory of another man’s fingers on her skin stole her breath. She shivered fiercely and when Chang drew back to look at her face, she knew he would sense there was more.

‘I’m worried for Elena,’ she said quickly. ‘She’ll be frantic about Liev.’

He leaned forward again and kissed each of her eyelids in turn.

‘Close your eyes, Lydia. Rest them. There is nothing you can do to help your Cossack friend.’

Her forehead sank on to his collar once more. Her limbs were trembling and she couldn’t stop them. Any more than she could stop hating herself.

My dearest Papa,

To talk to my father is wonderful. I never thought I would hear your voice – even if it is only on paper. As I grew up I spoke to you many times and told you many things, but I was always whispering to the empty darkness. How could it be otherwise? I believed you were dead. But now I grow greedy. I want more of you, Papa. I want to know you and I want you to know me.

So what shall I tell you? That I have your hair, you already know. What else? I lack Mama’s skill at the piano but my fingers are quick in other ways, and my mind is struggling with the concepts of this new system that is sweeping through Russia and China. This Communism. I admire its ideals but I despise its inhumanity. Stalin says you cannot make a revolution with silk gloves, but surely the individual still matters. You matter. I matter.

What else matters in my life? I once owned a white rabbit called Sun Yat-sen. He mattered. I have a friend called Chang An Lo – you spoke to him. He means more to me than my own breath. Liev Popkov is my good friend, more than a friend. And Alexei is the brother I always wanted. So now you know me, Papa. I wear a horrible brown hat and I like sugary apricot dumplings and have discovered Kandinsky paintings.

Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you think. How you spend your days. Describe for me what you are working on. I long to know. I send you my love.

Lydia.

Jens kissed the letter. He kissed each word. He would have kissed Liev Popkov if he could. The big man had delivered it as he died. Jens had retrieved the flake of metal from under the seat, stooping to tie his bootlaces as he was led out to the truck. Oh Popkov, my old friend. Dragged away in a roll of canvas.

Anger scraped like grit in his gut as he paced his cell in the semi-dark, but his rage was as much for himself as for the Cossack.

‘Babitsky,’ he growled to the dead walls, ‘I hope you burn.’

Alexei loved the streets of Moscow. In places whole roads were being demolished, great new thoroughfares emerging. Rows of individual houses and shops were swept away at the stroke of an architect’s pen and vast multi-storey buildings were clawing their way up out of the soil like a new kind of gigantic urban mushroom. On the back seat of the car in the moody grey light of a winter’s afternoon, he was swept past the sprawl of construction sites and knew he was witnessing the world changing. It stirred him. Stalin was throwing everything into redesigning and broadening the Russian streets, but also the Russian mind.

‘Maksim,’ he said to the man swaddled in rugs beside him, ‘one of the vory rules is that we mustn’t collaborate with authority in any way.’

‘Of course not. Those in authority destroy every hope of a freedom of mind. The vory bow the knee to no man outside the brotherhood. That’s why we have stars tattooed on our knees, to remind us.’

‘So if the OGPU secret police turn up at your door at two o’clock in the morning, demanding to know information about one of your members, what then?’

‘I spit on their boots.’

‘And end up in one of the labour camps?’

Maksim laughed. ‘I’ve been there before.’

‘But now you’re older.’

‘Sicker is what you mean.’

‘All right, sicker.’ The older man’s flesh hung grey and doughy from the bones of his face. ‘You should have stayed at home. You’re tired.’

They were riding in an old bone-shaker of a car which didn’t help, but the smooth limousine that Alexei had grown accustomed to using when in Maksim Voshchinsky’s company had remained in its garage today to avoid risking identification. This vehicle was anonymous, it belonged to no one. It was stolen.

‘How far now?’ Maksim Voshchinsky asked.

‘Another few miles,’ Igor offered from the front seat. There were beads of sweat on the back of his neck. He was nervous.

Alexei gave Lydia a nod. ‘This route will take longer. But it’s safer.’

She said nothing. She’d been silent since they set off, hunched into her corner, unresponsive and mute. It annoyed Alexei. He’d had to stand his ground with Maksim to win her this place in the car and a little politeness wouldn’t have gone amiss. Sometimes, like today, he couldn’t work her out. Shouldn’t she be pleased, maybe even impressed – and certainly grateful at the prospect of where he was taking her this afternoon? But no. Silent and sullen. Tawny eyes refusing to meet his. All she did was cling to the side window with a fixed stare, as though memorising the route. Maybe she was. That thought worried him.

Or was it fear? It surprised him that he hadn’t thought of that before. Was his sister frightened? He felt an odd rush of tenderness towards her despite her withdrawn manner, because he knew fear was something Lydia would never admit to. She’d rather bite her tongue off first.

‘Lydia,’ he said in an attempt to draw her out of her isolation, ‘the truck took the prisoners to the hangars early this morning. It hasn’t returned yet, so we believe Jens is actually there right now.’

She dragged her face from the window and frowned at Maksim. ‘Did your vory men follow it?’

‘Da, of course.’

‘What if they were spotted?’

‘Hah! They were not spotted.’

‘But if they were, there will be soldiers and police waiting for us.’

He laughed, a rich amused sound that warmed the chill interior of the car. ‘My men are vory. Thieves. Harder to trace than shadows in snow. You understand?’

She nodded. But Alexei was not sure she did. She didn’t realise exactly how these men functioned or that they were outside the normal margins of society. To her they were just criminals. It was clear she didn’t trust them and he was surprised she hadn’t insisted on dragging that oaf Popkov along too. When it came to watching her back, that filthy Cossack was the one she relied on, God only knows why.

‘No action today,’ he reminded her. He was wary of what she might do. ‘We’re going out there to observe. Nothing more.’

‘I know.’

‘Just don’t expect too much.’

‘I expect nothing.’

‘That’s a good place to start,’ Maksim chuckled.

She turned her attention back to the window. They had left the city streets behind, passing the foul-smelling Red Hercules rubber factory some time back, and were driving north of Moscow. Huddles of wooden izbas, peasant cottages with a cow tethered at the front and dense rows of vegetables at the rear, popped up at intervals and broke the monotony of the flat and featureless landscape. The road ran straight as a prison bar across it. At one point a group of women were washing their bed sheets in the river and looked up with a moment’s interest. Otherwise there was nothing, not even other traffic, just the spiny edge of the pine forest blocking out the horizon on both sides.

The car stopped.

‘Out,’ Igor ordered.

They all climbed out into the empty windswept landscape except the driver, and the car swerved off the deserted road on to a patch of rough ground, where he promptly began to remove a wheel.

‘Now what?’ Maksim demanded.

‘Over there.’ Alexei indicated a darker shadow tucked among the trees. It was a small, covered army truck.

This was a point where the pines looped close to the road and a single-track dirt trail cut through the tall willowy trunks. The track was obviously well used and heavy wheels had gouged deep ruts into its frozen surface.

Maksim’s eyes narrowed into slits. ‘This is as far as I go.’

Alexei nodded and draped a rug over the older man’s shoulders, then climbed into the Soviet army vehicle he had stolen the previous night. He tried the engine and it started first time. Satisfied, he gunned it to full throttle.

‘You can wait here if you prefer,’ he called out to Lydia.

‘No.’

‘Then get in.’

She scrambled up beside him on the front bench and Igor jumped up after her. Alexei kicked the truck into gear.