It was as Popkov emerged that everything went wrong. As if by accident their eyes met and the Cossack gave what could have been a nod or could have been just a nervous twitch of his thick neck. Jens lifted a hand and adjusted his hat. A wave of sorts. The baker was in a hurry. To Jens’ watchful eyes he seemed even more nervous today, tetchier, his feet scampering over the cobbles as though walking on coals.

‘You!’ The roar came from Babitsky. ‘I know you, you fucking bastard.’

Everyone turned and stared at the hefty guard. Babitsky’s rifle was aimed straight at Popkov’s chest.

‘Grab that big bastard,’ Babitsky shouted. Even in the pre-dawn cold, his face had turned vermilion. He was pounding across the courtyard, his rifle stuck out in front of him. ‘You,’ he bellowed, ‘I’m going to kill you.’

Jens hurled himself at the fence. ‘Run!’ he screamed.

But there was nowhere to run and the Cossack knew it. The gate was barred, the courtyard ringed with uniforms edging closer, rifle muzzles tracking every move he made. He gave Jens a flash of teeth in the black beard, flexed his massive shoulders and prepared to fight with bare hands.

‘Nyet!’ Jens shouted. ‘Don’t-’

Babitsky exploded on to Popkov, rifle thrust hard at his stomach. The guard was big but Popkov was bigger and faster. He stepped neatly to one side, pivoted on his heel and snapped the edge of one hand across Babitsky’s throat so that his knees buckled like bent straws. He clawed for air as he crashed to the ground. The other guards moved forward warily, surrounding the Cossack, who had snatched Babitsky’s rifle from the ground and was starting to swing it round the circle like a club, cracking elbows and smacking jaws.

Jens clutched the wire. Everyone knew what was coming.

A shot rang out. The sound of it was deafening in the enclosed yard as it ricocheted off the walls. The prisoners groaned in unison, all pressing their faces against the fence, the exercise circle forgotten. Popkov fell, his hand groping under the stone seat. Blood flowed on to the cobbles.

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.