Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

Lom sank into a chair. He was weighed down with bleak despair. There was no strength, not even in his voice.

‘Should I protect the Shaumian girl,’ the Count was saying, ‘at the price of my own wife’s life? What was the Shaumian girl to us? There was a chance! She could have taken her place! She could have done her duty ! For her family and her people. She could have led … but she did not. She made her choice, and I made mine. For Ilinca’s sake.’

‘You saved your own skin,’ said Lom.

‘You think you can judge me, Vissarion Yppolitovich? Do you have a wife? No. You are a man alone. Judgement comes cheap for you.’

‘They took her, didn’t they?’ said Lom. ‘Last night. Hours ago. And you didn’t tell me. You let me go out and search. All this time I wasted. You could have… When did they come? Where did they take her?’

‘No one was here,’ said Ilinca. ‘What you are saying, it did not happen. Sandu is not to blame.’

Lom stared at the Count.

‘The girl is not here,’ said Palffy. ‘And you should please go too. You should get out of my house now.’

Lom stepped out into the street and started back down the hill towards the Purfas Gate. He would find Maroussia and get her back. He would do that. But he had no idea what to do or where to go. None at all. He needed to get out of the raion, that was his only clear thought.

He didn’t hear the staff car until it pulled up at the kerb alongside him, engine running. A long-wheelbase black ZorKi Zavod limousine, six doors, twenty feet long, with high backswept fenders and a spare wheel mounted on the back. A small red and black pennant was flying on the bonnet. The driver wound down the window. A long faintly sad intelligent face. Antoninu Florian in the uniform of a captain of police. On the front passenger seat Lom could see a pair of leather driving gloves laid neatly on top of a road atlas. Beside them a peaked cap with a crisp wide circular crown. Staff officer issue. Lom couldn’t see the badge.

Florian nodded to him. Gave him a faint weary smile, almost shy.

‘I suggest you get in the back,’ he said.

Lom peered in through the back windows. Two benches upholstered in comfortable burgundy leather. Carpet on the floor. Apart from Florian the car was empty.

‘Hurry please,’ said Florian. ‘We have to make a start.’

‘Maroussia is gone,’ said Lom. ‘They’ve taken her. I don’t know where. I have to find her.’

‘She is with Chazia,’ said Florian. ‘Get in the car.’

Lom barely heard what Florian said.

‘I have to get her back,’ said Lom again.

‘Then will you for fuck’s sake get in the back of the car like a good fellow and we can be on our way.’

At four in the afternoon Antoninu Florian’s stolen ZorKi Zavod limousine nosed down the hill and out of the raion through the Purfas Gate. Lom held the Blok 15 in his lap, hidden under the flap of his coat. Safety catch off. Florian showed a warrant card. The VKBD corporal leaned over to look into the back of the car. Lom faced front, eyes down, and tried to look bored.

‘Stand aside, soldier,’ said Florian. ‘No questions. Nothing to see.’

The corporal waved them through.

Florian drove the ZorKi with practised smoothness through residential streets and garden squares. Railings and snow. Money houses, finial-ridged with gables and balconies and porches and garaging for cars, set back behind lawns and laurel hedges. The kind of places where bankers and high Vlast officials made their homes. It was a part of the city Lom hadn’t seen before. Apart from a few horse-drawn droshkis and private karetas they had the roads to themselves. A gendarme in a kiosk on a street corner saluted them as they passed. Saluted the pennant. Florian nodded in acknowledgement, expressionless.

‘I have to find Maroussia,’ said Lom.

‘I know,’ said Florian. ‘You said.’

‘You know what happened to her? You know where she is?’

‘Chazia sent an upyr last night,’ said Florian. ‘Its name was Bez. Bez Nichevoi. Bez found Maroussia and took her to the Lodka.’

‘I should have been with her.’

‘It’s fortunate you were not.’

‘I could have stopped it,’ said Lom. ‘I could have protected her.’

‘No. You would be dead.’

Lom shrugged. ‘Possibly.’

‘Not possibly. Certainly.’

‘You said its name was Bez.’

‘Yes.’

‘You said was .’

‘It was a bad thing. It carried many deaths. I burned it.’

The car rolled past tall stuccoed houses. Cherry trees in gardens, leafless now. The snow had been swept from the pavements and piled along the kerb. Twisting on the polished leather bench, Lom could see behind them on the skyline a column of distant smoke drifting up and disappearing into low misty cloud.

‘This isn’t the way to the Lodka,’ he said.

‘No.’

Lom leaned forward. Jabbed the muzzle of the Blok 15 into Florian’s neck.

‘Then turn the fucking car around.’

Florian sighed and pulled in, ploughing the ZorKi’s passenger-side fender deep into a heaped-up ridge of snow on the side of the road.

‘Don’t look back,’ said Lom. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them. On the wheel.’

Florian did as he was told.

‘Where are we going?’ said Lom. ‘Where are you taking me? We have to get to the Lodka. That’s where Maroussia is.’

‘No,’ said Florian quietly. ‘Maroussia was in the Lodka, but now she is not. The Vlast is abandoning Mirgorod to the Archipelago. The government is relocating eastwards to Kholvatogorsk, but Chazia is going further, to Novaya Zima with the Pollandore, and she is taking Maroussia with her. Their train will have left by now. The journey will not be straightforward: it will take them many days, perhaps a week, perhaps more. We also, as you may have observed, are travelling east and we will be quicker. Much quicker. We will reach Novaya Zima before Chazia’s train and we will have time to prepare before they arrive. So unless you have a better plan, please be so good as to stop waving your dick around in the back of my car.’

‘How do you know all this?’ said Lom.

‘I was in the Lodka last night.’

‘You were in the Lodka ?’

‘She is alive,’ said Florian. ‘Beyond that, I cannot say, but she is alive, depend on it. Chazia will preserve her. The upyr took her. It did not kill her.’

‘Then we have to find that train.’

Florian shook his head.

‘The train they are travelling on is also carrying an extraordinary cargo. It will go by a special route prepared in advance under conditions of extreme secrecy. We have no chance of catching up with it before it reaches its destination. But even if we could… It is a military train. An armoured train. Soldiers. A mudjhik. A well guarded mobile prison. No. My plan is better. Come with me.’

‘Come with you?’ said Lom. ‘Who the fuck are you? Why would I trust a single thing you’ve said?’

Florian twisted in his seat and pushed Lom’s gun aside.

‘There is no time for this,’ he said, locking eyes with Lom. His irises were green, flecked with amber. ‘Come with me to Novaya Zima, Vissarion. Together we will do what needs to be done. Or get out of the car now, if you think you can do better alone.’

Lom stared into Florian’s face. He wished he could read something more in those deep, wise, dangerous eyes, but he could not. He had to make a choice, but it was no choice, not really. He sank back into the wide leather bench and slipped the Blok 15 into the pocket of his coat.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK. Drive.’