Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

He whispered in her ear, ‘Wait,’ and pointed to the spot she was standing on.

She nodded and didn’t argue. She was making it easy for him. He slipped along the length of the smaller hangar until he reached the side of the massive wooden structure beside it, but here he was exposed. The lights blazed. He crouched low and raced towards a narrow door near the front of it which stood open. A man was standing outside it, dressed in black, lean and wolfish in the set of his limbs, his back turned to Chang’s approach, the glowing tip of a cigarette hanging from his fingers. He was watching two dog-handlers across the yard ordering their animals to leap into the back of a truck, but one dog was more intent on savaging his companion’s hind legs. Chang moved up fast.

Two metres, that’s all that lay between them when the man sensed something and turned. Their eyes met. The man wore spectacles and the lenses magnified his shock, but even so he reacted quickly to the threat. His hand jabbed towards the revolver on his hip but too late. Chang had launched himself into the air, striking out with a kick that caught the man full in the throat. He clawed at his collar, knees buckling, and before he hit the ground a second kick thudded into his chest, breaking three ribs and stopping his heart.

The body was heavier than it looked. While the attention of the soldiers was elsewhere, Chang dragged it quickly just inside the open door and rolled it into the shadow of a crate. He glanced with astonishment at the great silver leviathan floating serenely above him, tethered to a tall metal mast, and rapidly retraced his steps.

Lydia was still where he’d left her but now her ear was pressed tight to the wall of the small hangar, the whites of her eyes huge in the dim light.

‘Listen,’ she urged.

He listened. A dull roar filtered through the timbers.

‘It’s fire,’ she warned.

Jens hadn’t expected this. This burning pain of regret in his chest. He’d climbed up the long ladder into the gondola attached to the airship’s underbelly, and immediately just the smell of its raw varnish and its faint odour of loneliness made him hesitate. Up here it was a solitary world. Different things mattered.

The gondola was set out with mahogany tables bolted to the floor along each side, next to the windows. Up front was the pilot’s cabin but Jens resisted the urge to enter it one last time. He reminded himself instead of all the military chiefs who would be sitting at these tables in a couple of days, swilling champagne as they watched first one plane detach itself from under the bows and then the other from under the stern. The gas canisters would be packed with their deadly cargo and Surkov camp within spitting distance. Hundreds of fellow prisoners choking to death because of him.

He unlocked the hatch to the body of the airship and pushed it open, pulled down the collapsible steps and climbed up. The air instantly grew colder. A soft grey twilight rippled through the silver skin from the lamps outside and it felt eerily calm. The interior was huge, cavernous – like being in the belly of a whale, Olga always said. But to him, even though he’d engineered it himself, each time he stepped inside he could not escape the sensation of being a tiny speck, a fly caught in a gigantic spider’s web of fine metal girders. He tipped his head back and gazed above. It was beautiful, unutterably beautiful. He was proud of it.

A sudden sound rose from below and set his heart racing. He dragged his mind back to what he was doing and rapidly made his way along the central planking to the nearest of the gas balloons. These were the great moons of hydrogen gas which kept the airship afloat, and it was the work of half a second to thrust a chisel through its pliable skin. He could hear the gas escaping, as angry as a cat’s hiss.

‘Prisoner Friis!’

Jens spun round. It was one of the Black Widows. Just his head showed above the hatch. ‘What are you doing up here, prisoner Friis?’

‘My job, comrade. Until my unfortunate companions join me once more.’ Jens pocketed the chisel and walked back to the hatch so that he was looking down on his interrogator’s neat bald patch. Even the man’s spectacles looked irritated. ‘I’ve been inspecting the fastenings of the gas bags. Nothing must be overlooked for the coming test.’

The man’s eyes registered suspicion, but there was nothing he could pick on, so he backed down the steps to allow Jens access to the gondola. The moment he was out of sight Jens removed his cigarette lighter from his pocket, flicked its flame into life and stood it, still alight, on the walkway. He had seconds. No more. He slid down the steps and made straight for the gondola’s door. To his surprise the Black Widow was seated at one of the tables, gazing out of the window and smoking a cigarette.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Jens asked quickly.

‘Not for a moment. I like it here, it’s peaceful.’

Jens didn’t stop to argue. He opened the door and fell, rather than climbed, down the ladder. Before he hit the concrete ground, all hell’s fury exploded around him.

The roar of flames ripped the darkness apart. A blast of hot air scorched the skin on Lydia ’s face and sucked the moisture from her eyeballs, so it felt as though sand was jammed against her eyelids. She could barely lift them. Then the smell hit – stinging, acrid, suffocating.

Only a moment before, Chang had started moving towards the open door again, little more than a flicker of shadow along the wall. He was intent on learning what was on fire in the small rear hangar but, when flames erupted twenty metres up into the pre-dawn darkness, Lydia saw him turn abruptly and race back towards her. The explosion had torn a hole the size of a house in the side of the main hangar, and fire engulfed the interior in an orange and black inferno. Oh God, Jens is in there . She was certain.

‘ No! ’ she screamed. Before Chang could reach her, she ran into the burning building.

The smoke came at her like an enemy in great waves of black, swallowing her. It clogged her lungs and choked her till she couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. She dragged off her coat and wrapped it around her head and shoulders. Showers of burning wood and debris descended on her like shrapnel, but she fought a way through them, her arm up protecting her face. She screamed her father’s name.

‘Jens! Jens!’

In the smoke and the flames she couldn’t see anybody. It was a nightmare world. Her head felt as though a band of iron were being tightened around it. She was gulping in smoke and there was a hot pain in her chest, then something hard and heavy struck her back, knocking her to the ground. She couldn’t focus her eyes any more and knew her brain was dying from lack of oxygen. With an effort of will she pushed herself off her knees and screamed.

‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’

She could hear the sound of her own voice but her lips felt nothing, unaware of making it, as if disconnected from the rest of her. She stumbled over something, a wooden panel that had collapsed on to the ground in flames, and it set fire to one of her boots. Frantically her gloved hands beat at it and she found herself staggering into a small empty space at the heart of all this chaos, a kind of clearing in a blazing forest. Flames leapt all around her but this small still spot was miraculously free of fire. Across it lay a ladder tangled up with metal girders and a large heavy section of polished wood which was blistering in the heat. Crushed under them lay her father. She saw his white hair. Only his head and one arm were visible and his hand was stretched out, his eyes fixed on her. They were smiling.

‘ Lydia.’

The roar in her ears stole the sound but she saw his lips make the word.