Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

‘That’s what he was trying to explain in the letters, how he had to cling to the hard core of self to survive. You and I, Lydia, we understand that.’

‘Yes.’ The sadness in her one word was as heavy as the golden Buddha in the window.

‘There’s something I haven’t told you, something I learned the day I was in your father’s prison.’

She said nothing, waiting.

‘I was told by General Tursenov, who runs the prison, that the whole idea for this project came from Jens Friis himself. It was all out of his brain. He wasn’t just an engineer recruited to work on it. While in the labour camp it was he who thought up the birth of this monster, as he calls it.’

Her lips tightened. ‘Are you saying you believe he is a monster too? One not worth saving?’

‘No, that is not my point. He asked for his freedom in exchange, and that’s what the whole team has been promised when the project is completed. Their freedom.’

The tension left her face and she smiled. ‘That’s wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me this before? He’s going to be released.’

‘That’s what they said.’

The tone of his voice warned her. The smile faded.

‘No, Chang, don’t.’

‘I’m sorry, my love.’

‘You don’t believe them.’

‘No, I don’t. Can you imagine that the military authorities will allow prisoners with top secret information to wander loose?’

Lydia shook her head. ‘Would they send them back into the labour camps?’

He made no comment.

Her mouth crumpled and she hid it behind the little porcelain cup. ‘You mean they’d be shot.’

‘I believe so.’

Her hand quivered inside his.

‘He’s going to die,’ she whispered.

‘Unless we get him out.’

‘Don’t judge my father harshly, Chang. We can’t know what horrors he endured, day after day for twelve years. This was a way to make them stop.’

Chang opened his hands and released her. ‘I know. Either of us would have done the same.’

They both knew he was lying.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured and smiled at him.

The boy was perched on the end of Popkov’s bed, playing cards and arguing with the big man. The two of them were gambling ferociously for dried beans and by the look of the pile at his elbow, Edik was winning. Misty was curled up on Elena’s lap, who was chuckling as the pup licked her fingers as greedily as if they were sausages. But the moment Lydia walked in, the playing and the laughing ceased. She was tempted to walk out again.

‘So you’re all better now, Liev,’ she teased. ‘I knew you were just faking it.’

Popkov gave her a crooked smile. ‘So I wanted a day in bed.’

‘You lazy Cossack,’ Lydia frowned. ‘Why do I bother scurrying around in the snow buying you medicine?’

She tossed him a half bottle of vodka and the dog galloped over to her, all paws and tongue. She pulled a brown paper bag from her pocket and gave Misty a fried pirozhok , one to Edik and one to Elena.

‘What are these?’ Elena asked with ill grace. ‘Goodbye presents?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is it all arranged then?’ Popkov demanded at once, between great swigs from the bottle.

‘Yes.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘No you won’t!’ Lydia and Elena both said it in unison.

‘Anyway,’ Lydia added quickly, ‘you won’t be needed. Alexei is arranging everything and you know he’d rather have a rabid dog at his side than you.’

Popkov scowled, screwed the top back on the vodka bottle and hurled it across the room at Lydia. It banged against her hip and rolled unbroken to the floor. ‘I’m coming, damn you, girl. Jens Friis was my friend.’

Elena’s pale eyes glared at Lydia, who promptly picked up the bottle, marched over to the bed and smacked it against the bruise on Popkov’s cheek. ‘You just wait here, you brainless bear, and I’ll bring him to you.’

‘Alexei, I have a present for you.’

‘The only present I need is right here.’

He lifted Antonina’s hand and kissed the pale back of it. It was gloveless. She was still in shock at what she’d done, still prey to shivers and sobs, and the anguish in her dark eyes had not yet abated. Alexei knew only too well what it felt like to kill for the first time: a moment for ever seared into your brain. It never left you, but lingered, fretting at you until you learned to put it safe in a box and close the lid on it, as quietly as a coffin.

‘Don’t stare at me,’ she said self-consciously, ‘I look hideous.’

‘No, you look lovely.’

He meant it, despite the swollen nose and the bruises. Since her husband’s death, there was something about her, something real and solid that hadn’t been there before. As if she was tentatively removing the fragile layers one by one.

‘Show me what it is,’ he said, ‘this present of yours.’

Antonina led him through the apartment to a closet at the far end of the hallway and threw open its doors with a flourish. He frowned at what was inside, surprised at first, then slowly he started to smile. On a brass rail hung a Red Army officer’s uniform.

The forest was a different world in the dark. Lydia expected her eyes to adjust to it but they didn’t. Still she could see nothing. But she could hear things. Night sounds. They made the hairs on her arms stand on end and the back of her throat grow dry. It was a world of creeping and rustling and great gusts of dank breath, so that she had to force herself to keep still. Her hands wanted to flail around her, feeling for approaching shadows. Her feet just wanted to run.

‘All right?’ Chang whispered next to her.

‘Fine.’

She heard him inhale slowly and wondered how much her one word had betrayed. How long had they been crouched beside the tree trunk? One hour? Two? She’d lost track of time. There was no moon, no sky, just a black blanket above her head, interspersed with even blacker shapes as the trees swayed in the wind, their branches making needy feral whines. It reminded her of wild creatures in a snare. She didn’t speak, didn’t move. Tried to find stillness. The cold ate into her bones. Warmth from Chang’s body seeped through her coat into her arm and she concentrated on that. If she thought too hard about what was about to happen, her limbs would start to spasm.

‘Frightened?’ Chang’s breath was moist on her ear.

‘Not for me.’

‘For your father?’

She nodded. He couldn’t see it but she knew he would feel the movement in the darkness.

‘He will die for certain if we do nothing.’

‘I know.’

‘I will protect him all I can.’

‘I know.’

‘But first I will protect you.’

He stiffened beside her suddenly and she realised his sharp senses had picked up something she’d missed. Fifteen seconds later she saw it, the faintest blur of light, far off, coming and going between the trees. It was a good distance away, too far to hear any noise yet but they both knew immediately what it was. The truck convoy. Lydia ’s heart thudded in her chest, pumping hot blood and adrenalin into her chilled limbs. She was ready to move but Chang’s hand descended on her thigh, pinning her there.

Today would be hard. Inside the truck Jens sat on the bench with his eyes closed and his back braced against the metal side panel. That way he shut out the darkness. The truck rattled and roared, its engine straining on the rutted road, its wheels skidding over patches of snow and ice, stabbing into his thoughts. He braced his mind as firmly as he braced his back.

Today would be hard, he was under no illusions about that, but he was used to hard. He’d forgotten what easy tasted like, and that thought saddened him. He filled his mind instead with the glorious image of the airship, gleaming silver in a cloudless sky, its intricate internal structure of girders which he had so painstakingly created like a spider’s web inside the soft outer envelope. He let himself risk a smile. The last months had been good, better than he could ever have imagined, and now his daughter had re-entered his life. He’d seen her. He’d actually seen Lydia. Yet even that brought its own sorrow, a sharp stabbing pain at the sight of her because she reminded him of the loss of his wife, his Valentina.