Moskva (20 page)

If I can make it to the road … The lights of a lorry are away to one side and if I can reach the road before it arrives … If the driver is a Prod or sick enough of the situation … There’s something odd in relying on help from a Protestant.

I’m going to reach the road, though …

All I have to do is scramble down this slope and up the other bank and on to the tarmac. I look a mess. My donkey jacket is ripped and stinking of smoke and petrol. I’ve lost a boot somewhere, and three nails from my toes and one of the toes.

I wouldn’t stop for me.

I can hobble and hope though. Hobble and crawl and even run if I ignore the pain. The sleet in my eyes saves me the effort of crying. My once-white T-shirt is stained with mud. The lights are closer now. The lorry is so close I can hear the growl of its engine as it drops gears to begin climbing the hill.

I’m not sure if it’s two men behind me or three, how they’re armed or who told them who I really was. They knew, though. Looking back, I should have known they knew. The whiskey, the hearty clap on the shoulder, the jokes and jibes about friends in common. By the end everyone in the room was faking.

I’m over the ditch and on the slope and the lorry’s lights are dragon eyes getting closer when the punch comes. I lose my breath as I stumble, winded and suddenly cold. The ground is sodden, the lorry on the road so close I don’t know why the driver doesn’t stop. When the lorry accelerates, I have my answer. I try to stand to face the man behind me; but I
can’t stand and there’s no man and my leg won’t work. When the second punch comes, I know there’s a bullet in my back.

Darkness edges in and the world is fading when the old man and two others come to stand over me. One of them nudges me with his foot.

‘Nice shot.’

‘Fucking brilliant.’

‘And in this light, pal. In this fucking light.’

‘Should have known.’ It’s the old man who speaks. The one who doesn’t swear. He kicks my prostrate body hard. Stamps on the side of my head. They leave my body where it is. Leave time and blood loss to do the job.

For reasons known only to God, they don’t.

‘Tom …
Tom …
’

When the darkness cleared Tom found himself nailed to the cellar door by an arrow below his shoulder. The world he woke up to wasn’t quite the one he’d left. It never was. The last time he surfaced from something like this, he’d found that colours had changed. Something felt different this time too, although it was too soon to say what. He thought he saw a flash of grey beyond the doorway and wondered if it mattered. When crows rose from trees outside, he wondered what they were trying to say.

The stub of arrow jutting from his shoulder was as long as a thumb; the rest of it was hidden inside him, except for the point, which was in the door, obviously. His knees were locked rigid, holding him up by accident.

Blood was dripping down the inside of the jacket to make a puddle on the floor. Tom looked at it numbly. Dennisov, he thought, as the darkness tried to sweep back in. Dennisov wouldn’t get his bike back …

Then the light flared and Tom fell into unconsciousness.

He dreamed he saw Alex, hunched and naked, under a sky
so vast it belonged to a different world. She was sitting hip deep in snow, her fingers holding a wax angel.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not.’

She was struggling to mend its wing.

At his best in a crisis.
That was what Tom’s CO had said about him. This was certainly a crisis, so he should be good. But all he could do was stare numbly as his blood found a crack in the broken tiles and filled it. Last time he’d been shot, his body had been fired up by adrenaline. This time round …
You’re in shock.

You can’t afford to be in shock.

Two parts of himself were having a conversation.

You were probably meant to think of yourself as ‘I’ when talking to yourself.

He’d have stepped forward and pulled himself free if it weren’t for the memory of being warned never to pull out a knife blade in case it was the only thing stopping you bleeding out. He’d shout but … But what? He’d feel too stupid?

He’d rather die than be embarrassed?

Wasn’t that a little too English? Maybe marrying into Caro’s family had changed him more than he knew. How long had he been out cold? Long enough for blood to pool at his feet and colour to leach from the world beyond the door.

Not enough never to wake to see those colours again.

His fingers slipped on blood when he tried to worry the arrow free from the door, so Tom wiped them on his jeans and tried again, wondering if he was imagining feeling the arrow move. Its shaft was metal, thinner than a pencil. He worked it from side to side, moving himself at the same time and knowing that only fear stopped him giving up, that only
stubbornness stopped him simply stepping away from the door.

The arrow moved a tiny bit more each time.

His breath was broken glass, his face so wet and his fingers so red he felt as if he were crying blood rather than tears. His chest was tight, his guts knotted, his world reduced to white pain.
This is how a butterfly feels,
he thought.

In the doorway stood a figure, light forming a halo around his head.

He isn’t really there,
Tom told himself.
You’re hallucinating.
If he could split into different parts that talked to each other, perhaps one of them had gone to the door.

‘Major Fox?’ it enquired.

So polite, this hallucination.

Tom didn’t want to greet it pinned like a butterfly.

Grabbing the already loosened bolt, he yanked it free and lurched towards the man, who stepped back hurriedly as Tom stumbled past and through the open door and found himself on his knees in the snow outside. Staring up at a grey sky.

‘
Tom …
’

Sveta’s shout boomed again across the ice.

She stood on the far side of the lake, hands up to shield her eyes from the sinking sun and her boots planted firmly in the snow. Boots, jeans, a red jersey, bright as a target. It was the first time he’d seen her out of uniform. She waved, and then stopped mid wave as someone stepped up behind him.

Hands lifted Tom from his knees and Vladimir Vedenin smiled at him. Realizing it was Vladimir did what the crossbow bolt hadn’t. It jolted Tom awake, adrenaline sharpening the landscape around him.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tom demanded.

Vladimir smiled. ‘I could ask the same … That must hurt,’ he added.

Tom didn’t trust himself to speak.

Turning away, Vladimir shouted, ‘He’s injured.’

‘How badly?’

‘Very. You should go and get an ambulance.’

‘I’ll do it now,’ Sveta shouted.

‘Don’t …’ Tom’s yell was a crow’s croak.

Sveta turned back.

‘Don’t leave me. I want you here.’

For a second she hesitated, then shrugged, her decision made. ‘Okay, I’ll wait.’ To Vladimir she shouted, ‘Take the track round the side and meet me here. All right?’

‘If you insist.’

The Russian put his hand under Tom’s elbow to hold him up as they turned towards a camouflage-patterned open-top 4x4 parked under nearby trees. Vladimir glanced once at Sveta, who stood watching. His face was thoughtful.

‘UAZ-3151,’ Tom muttered.

‘You know your models.’

It was the only Soviet 4x4 Tom knew, and he only knew that because it was brand new, almost impossible to get in the civilian model, and someone at the embassy had been talking about it. He wasn’t even sure why he’d said it.

‘You’re friends with Svetlana?’ Vladimir asked.

Tom managed a nod.

‘I heard she took you to meet her grandfather.’

‘We needed somewhere to stop … His house was on the way.’

‘On the way to where? No one gets to meet her grandfather. Even my father doesn’t get to meet him. The man’s in self-imposed exile. He has no visitors and rarely goes to Moscow. Why would he see you?’

‘We talked about Alex.’

Vladimir’s hand tightened on Tom’s elbow and he increased
his speed towards the vehicle, only stopping when Tom twisted away. Sucking his teeth, Vedenin said, ‘Now, this is a mess.’ They were at the UAZ by then. Its seats were shiny, unscratched and unstained, smelling of new plastic.

‘I thought you came alone.’

‘I did,’ Tom said.

‘Yet your friend is here. You’d better get in.’

‘Bleed on it,’ Tom said. ‘I’m going to …’

‘My father will get me a new one.’

You’ll need it,
Tom thought as a burst of pain told him the arrowhead had ripped the seat back behind him. The other door slammed, the starter motor coughed.

‘I saw Alex,’ Tom said.

Vedenin turned off the engine.

‘Here?’ he asked.

‘She was sitting in the snow.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ Biting the inside of his lip, Vladimir looked over to where Sveta was staring at the suddenly stalled 4x4. ‘You can’t possibly have …’

Tom’s heart stuttered, held still for a semi-quaver and restarted, thudding like a fist inside his ribs. He’d been right. Vladimir was involved.

He smelled pine needles.

Vosene
,
that was the smell.

Becca’s pine-scented shampoo when Caro washed her hair as a child.

Hand shaking, Tom found his lock knife. His fingers were cramping by the time he opened the blade. Vladimir had restarted his vehicle, forced into a five-point turn by the tightness of the trees. The Russian only realized Tom had a knife when it touched his groin.

‘Where is she?’ Tom demanded.

The UAZ shuddered to a halt.

‘Major. I should call you Major, shouldn’t I? I don’t know what …’

The blade had been honed to cut cloth like paper. It probably helped that Tom’s fingers were shaking so badly. Vladimir whimpered and tried to push himself deeper into his seat. Tom wouldn’t have wanted to be where he was sitting either.

There was something Tom wanted to say.

It required finding the words.

‘Artery. Sphincter,’ he said carefully. He drew the blade lightly over Vladimir’s thigh. ‘Straight, you might have time to get help. Like this …’ The blade sketched a diagonal. ‘No chance. A minute at most. Where is she?’

‘I don’t know …
Enough!
’ Vedenin begged.

Tom glanced down but there was no blood spraying.

‘Tom?’ Sveta’s call echoed off the trees loud enough to send a crow in a ragged spiral, a flapping black rag against the grey sky. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ Vedenin shouted.

‘I was asking the major.’

‘Drive,’ Tom told Vedenin.

The Russian restarted his engine and put the 4x4 into gear, twisting his steering wheel to complete the final turn that would give them a track through the trees.

‘That way.’ Tom pointed at the frozen lake.

He had no intention of letting Vedenin use any route that took the 4x4, Vedenin or himself out of Sveta’s sight. Her presence was, Tom had no doubt, the only thing keeping him alive.

‘Major, that’s not wise.’

Tom adjusted his grip on the knife.

With a clank of transmission, the UAZ abandoned the track and headed slowly down the bank on to the marbled ice, Sveta yelling in protest.

‘He insists,’ Vladimir shouted.

The mounds were just mounds. The reeds and rushes merely windbreaks that had collected drifting snow. Tom wondered how strong the ice was. If he even really cared … Except he had to. There was Alex, and Charlie. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault Becca died. It wasn’t Alex’s fault either.

‘She crashed her car.’

‘Who did?’ Vladimir asked.

‘You shot me.’

‘I’ll get you to a hospital.’

‘Say what?’

‘An accident. A hunting accident …’

‘Faster,’ Tom told him, adjusting the knife.

The crawling 4x4 was halfway over when the ice boomed and Vladimir braked. A crack appeared in front of them. Off to his right, Tom watched another forming.

‘We need to get out,’ Vladimir said.

Tom shook his head.

‘Please …’ When Vladimir looked across at Tom, he had the anguished eyes of an El Greco saint and the cheekbones of a rock star. Jim Morrison, if his dad had been a Soviet minister, not a US admiral. ‘Alex came of her own free will.’

‘To you?’

‘No.’ Vladimir shook his head furiously.

‘Dmitry?’

‘How do you –’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I thought he was going to give her back.’

Sveta was watching, frozen at the lake’s edge.

‘Vladimir.
Who has Alex?
’

Twisting the key, Vladimir floored the accelerator, changing up fast. ‘
You don’t know him.
’ The young man’s final words were a strangled scream. He was headed straight for Sveta
when the ice gave and the 4x4 pitched forward, its grill hitting the far bank head on. Rocketing forward, Vladimir slammed into the metal bar at the top of his windscreen. When he bounced back into Tom, he was already slack as a rag doll.

Darkness descended.