The Girl from Junchow

by Kate Furnivall

  He listened for her again. But this time he listened with his heart.

  LYDIA KNEW HER HAIR WAS ON FIRE. JENS WAS NO LONGER moving on her back. As she stepped forward, one painfully slow foot after the other, she refused to let her knees buckle, but for all she knew, Jens could be on fire too. Her mind no longer functioned properly. Control of her limbs had ceased and her lungs were shutting down. She couldn’t scream if she wanted to. How she was still on her feet and pushing through a tunnel of flame and smoke that never seemed to end, she had no idea. It occurred to her briefly that she was dead and that this was hell.

  Chang, my love, I didn’t say good-bye. I didn’t say I love you. The thought expanded in her head and filled her whole mind, so that when she heard his voice she didn’t know whether it came from inside or outside her skull. But hands were lifting her father from her back and a strong familiar arm encircled her waist, supporting her. Even if she was dead and in hell’s torment for the whole of eternity, she didn’t care because Chang An Lo was at her side.

  The final moments became a blur and she felt herself trembling uncontrollably. Big paws were knocking her head from side to side, and the burning on her scalp stopped. Dimly she caught a glimpse of an eye patch and heard someone laugh. Laugh? How could anyone laugh if they were dead?

  “You were supposed to stay on the other side of the wall,” Chang said to someone. “You’re sick.”

  “I was bored. You can’t have all the fun.”

  It was Popkov’s booming voice and the filthy smell of his overcoat covering her. She saw him drape Jens over his great shoulder like a doll, and without knowing how, she found herself on Chang’s back. She laid her head against his and tried to inhale, but all she got was thick choking smoke. She coughed, vomited, and felt herself slide down into a black hole so deep and so suffocating, she knew she would never claw her way back up.

  ALEXEI WATCHED THE HANGAR TURN INTO A FIREBALL. IT transformed the compound into a shrieking, screaming scene of chaos. The darkness was gripped by writhing shadows as the flames tore loose, and the noise was deafening.

  Figures hurtled toward the burning building, black and jerky in their panic, while others were racing away from it as though a pack of wolves were at their heels. Alexei threw the NAMI-1 into gear and drove at full speed straight for the hangar. To hell with anyone in his way. The heat hit him from twenty meters out, and it struck so hard it was like driving into a wall.

  He saw them coming, Chang and Popkov. Bursting out of the side of the hangar where half the wall was gone. What the hell were they doing here? Wasn’t Popkov wounded? Then he saw something on Chang’s back and realized with a shock that it was Lydia. Another figure with white hair lay across the big Cossack’s shoulder. It had to be Jens. He slewed the car around and gunned it toward the blackened figures who were fully visible to all in the glare of the flames, but afterward Alexei could not recall which came first, the shot or the explosion. They seemed to occur at the same moment, yet in his mind it was the shot that lingered, the sharp crack of a rifle ringing forever in his ears.

  They were still more than five meters from him. Silhouetted and defenseless. The shot came from the side, from a soldier whose adrenaline was running high, too high for him to keep a steady hand on his rifle. He’d aimed at Chang, who was several paces ahead of Popkov, but he hit Lydia. Alexei saw her body jerk on Chang’s back, then hang lifeless, her hands flapping loose as he ran.

  Alexei’s heart stopped. That was when he registered the other sound, a dull boom that reverberated inside his head like a roll of thunder. The stench of fumes burned in his nostrils and a part of his mind recognized them—a gasoline drum had exploded. But all his eyes saw was the wall, the way it moved. What remained of the side wall of the hangar, with all its heavy structural timbers and solid planking on fire, blasted away from the building. For one second it seemed to hang in the air, choosing its victims, then came rushing down toward Chang and Popkov.

  Alexei stamped on the pedal. The car flung itself forward in one final effort, and Chang hurled Lydia and himself inside it as the wall crashed around them. The windshield exploded. The canvas roof split as a blazing beam tore through it and embedded itself in the empty rear seat. Sparks and flaming debris rained down on the car’s hood.

  “Jens!” Alexei shouted.

  Beside him on the passenger seat, clutching Lydia as if he would never release her again in this lifetime, Chang murmured, “Popkov.”

  Alexei leapt from the NAMI-1 and found them both. Popkov was half-hidden under the car’s axle, where the blast had thrown him. The chassis had protected him except for a long gash on the back of his leg. Amid the flames Alexei discovered Jens’s body. His head was half-severed, his chest and limbs crushed under a flaming mass of timbers. His hair was smoldering. Another rifle bullet slammed into the side of the car and voices shouted, yet Alexei couldn’t move. He gazed down at his dead father’s mutilated face and couldn’t walk away. Not like this. Don’t let it end like this, Papa. He didn’t even feel the next bullet graze his ear.

  It was Popkov who moved him. Physically picked him up, dumped him in the driver’s seat of the car, and wrenched out the blazing beam from the rear seat. Half a second later Alexei was speeding toward the entrance gate with his three passengers crammed in the back. When the sentry challenged him, he swore viciously at the soldier and waved Dmitri’s papers under his nose.

  “Get out of my way, you fool. I have to report this incompetence to Colonel Tursenov immediately.”

  “Da, Colonel, da.”

  The gate swung back and the forest opened before them. He drove only until the compound was out of sight and then stamped on the brakes, swiveling around in his seat.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  Chang didn’t reply, but he was crooning softly and it sounded like a death lament. In the corner the big Cossack sat hunched and silent, tears streaming down his blackened face.

  Fifty-five

  “DON’T DIE.”

  From somewhere far, far above, the words drifted down to her. Like the tiniest flakes of snow that melt to nothing the moment they touch your skin. But these words weren’t soft.

  “Don’t die, my love.”

  It’s too late. Can’t you see, I’m already dead?

  There was no pain, no thoughts, no desires, no colors, just a nothingness. A hollow void. But if being dead was this, just nothing, what was the point of all the vital effort of life? And what happened to the future life she had planned? Did it still exist? Would it go on unfolding without her? An image of Chang slid into the void inside her, Chang An Lo going on, taking himself a Chinese wife and having bright-eyed Communist children. All without her. Would he weep? Would he remember? The strange thing was that even in death her heart wanted him to be happy.

  But happy with her.

  “Come back to me, my fox girl.” His words floated down to her, yet they were sharp as needles under her skin and wouldn’t let her rest.

  No, my precious one, it’s too late. She felt herself tumbling deeper into the hole, head over heels down into the void, its blackness swallowing her, sucking all the brightness out of her, her fingers uncurling and letting go. No pain. Not even the image of Chang anymore. Just the emptiness of the void now. It’s over.

  “Come back, Lydia, or I’ll come down there after you and drag you back with my bare hands.”

  No, let me rest.

  Something was grabbing her, physically shaking her until she felt her teeth rattle.

  Teeth? How could she have teeth if she was dead? When you’re dead, you’re just spirit. Damn it, damn it! Teeth! That meant a tiny part of her was alive. Damn it! It took a gigantic effort of will, but she dug her fingernails into the wall of blackness and felt her body jerk as the falling came to an abrupt halt. It made everything hurt. It would be so much easier to let go.

  Chyort! Inch by inch, hand over hand, she started to haul herself up.

  THE BULLET, THAT’S WHAT SHE SAW FIRST WHE
N SHE OPENED her eyes. It was sitting on the windowsill, proud of itself in the sunlight, shining as if it had been polished. Second came Elena’s broad face. She was leaning over Lydia, the lines of her face rigid, and her fingers were stained scarlet. Red paint? Why was Elena messing with paint?

  “So you’re awake.”

  “Yes.” Lydia’s throat felt as though it had been skinned. The air inside her tasted black and rotten.

  “I’ve just changed your dressing.” The colorless eyes studied her intently. “Sore?”

  “A bit.”

  “You shouldn’t be. Your friend has been dripping God-knows-what filthy Chinese muck onto your tongue and telling me you’ll feel no pain.”

  “Chang? Where is he?”

  Elena’s somber face broke into a smile. “You’ll live.”

  “She’d better.”

  “Chang An Lo?” Lydia turned her head and found him there at her side, sitting on the bed. His expression was one she’d never seen before.

  “Was I dying?” she whispered.

  He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her palm and each finger, and held it to his cheek. “No, my Lydia.” He gave her a smile. It was so full of a heat she could feel on her skin, it melted something cold and frightened within her. “You weren’t dying. You are indestructible. You were just testing me.”

  His voice filled her head. He bent forward, still holding her hand as if it were part of himself, and rested his forehead in the curve of her neck. He remained like that for a long time, without moving, without speaking. His black hair grew warm under her cheek and she felt the thread that bound them together tighten as it spun a silken strand through their flesh and blood and bone.

  “Chang An Lo,” she murmured, and saw a glossy lock of his hair ripple with her breath, “if ever you die, I promise I’ll come and find you.”

  THE ROOM WAS TOO FULL OF PEOPLE. WHITE-HOT SPARKS seemed to flicker in the air, stirring it into constant motion. Lydia was sitting up in bed when all she wanted to do was slide back into that black hole. They had told her about Jens.

  She’d screamed, “No!” Then silenced herself. Crushed the pain into a hard ball.

  She pictured him among the ruins of his grand dreams, his proud white head smashed to the ground by his own hand in the ultimate sacrifice. No, Papa. The tears escaped down her cheeks and wouldn’t stop. When she tried to wipe them away she saw her hand for the first time and it was burned, an ugly red and covered in slimy ointment.

  “It’s disgusting,” she murmured as she stared at it.

  Someone laughed and she knew it was with relief because a burned hand was so much better than a burned life. But Lydia wasn’t talking about her hand. It was her failure. That was disgusting. Papa, I’m sorry. Forgive me. Black dots fluttered on the edge of her vision, and she had the sick feeling they were pieces of the black hole that had followed her, biding their time. She struggled to see straight. There were words she had to say.

  “I want to thank you, all of you,” she said. “For your help.” Her voice was raspy, scarcely recognizable as her own.

  “We almost did it.” It was Alexei.

  “Jens was grateful,” she whispered. “He told me so.” She looked at Alexei, who was pacing the room restlessly, this man she now knew was not her brother. “Thank you. Spasibo.”

  Popkov was looking wretched, playing cards with Edik on the other bed while Misty lay on the pillow and chewed one of Popkov’s stinking socks.

  “You found each other,” the Cossack growled. “At the end you and Jens were together.” He threw down his hand of cards in defeat and shrugged his huge shoulders. “That’s what matters.” He shuffled the cards.

  Lydia nodded. Couldn’t speak.

  Alexei stopped at the end of her bed. “He’s right, Lydia. To have you there would have meant everything to him.”

  “And to me,” she murmured. “But I was too late to stop him. He chose to destroy what he’d started, at whatever cost, to save other prisoners.”

  Alexei shifted uneasily, and she could feel his frustration and the depth of his need. She had to give him something. “Alexei, he loved you,” she said simply. “Jens told me. When he was on my back, he was worried for you.”

  Alexei’s green eyes, so like her father’s, stared directly at her, and she could see that he didn’t know whether to believe her. But she was too exhausted to fight him and closed her eyes.

  “I want to speak to Elena,” she said in a whisper. “Alone.”

  There was an awkward silence. But when she opened her eyes again the air in the room had settled like dust, empty except for the imprint of Chang’s lips on her forehead and the big woman seated on the end of her bed.

  CHANG WAS UNEASY IN THE COURTYARD. IT WAS TOO PUBLIC, too visible to eyes. Anyone behind the windows would report the presence of a stranger, particularly a Chinese stranger. He was supposed to be viewing a bicycle factory, but had sent Edik with a message to Biao to tell the Russians he was unwell. It was the truth. He was sick. His heart was so sick he could vomit it up onto the courtyard cobblestones beneath his feet.

  “Chang,” Alexei said, “I’m glad to have this moment to speak with you.”

  Till now they hadn’t spoken. He turned and inspected Alexei. Lydia’s brother was a tall man in his long coat, proud like his father but as complex as his sister. There was no doubt that he was a man of courage and decision, for Chang had seen both in abundance at the fire in the middle of all the terror and confusion. Yet at the same time . . . he could sense in him the kind of sorrow that could take several lifetimes to heal.

  “Each of us,” Chang said quietly, “has our own history.”

  Alexei frowned. “I’m not here to discuss history.”

  “So what shall we discuss instead?”

  “Lydia, of course. What else would you and I have to speak about?”

  Chang smiled and felt the snow soft on his face. “We could speak about life. About death. Or about the future.” He placed his hands together and bowed formally over them. “I wish to thank you, Alexei Serov, for saving my life at the fire. I am in your debt.”

  “No debt. No debt at all. You saved my sister’s life. That is enough.”

  Chang inclined his head in the faintest of bows. That is enough. The words were true. If Lydia had not been on Chang’s back, this Russian would have left him to burn. They both knew that. A young woman hurried out of the building into the courtyard with a bucket in each hand and glanced at the two strangers with open curiosity as she crossed toward the water pump. The only sound was the laughter of Lydia’s stray pale-haired boy on the other side of the yard with the Cossack. Chang and Alexei listened for a moment to the laughter, both willing it to last longer in the cold echoing air.

  “About Lydia,” Alexei said suddenly.

  Chang waited, watching the boy. He could sense the brother deliberating as to how to start.

  “It won’t work, the two of you,” Alexei said flatly. “It’s impossible to make it work; the barriers are too high. If you care for my sister at all, you’ll give her up and leave Russia. Let her stay with her own people. For God’s sake, can’t you see, you and she are oil and water, you cannot mix?” His voice was growing softer, lower, more intense. “If you love her, Chang An Lo, really love her, let her have her own life. With you her future will always be as an outsider wherever she is.”

  Slowly Chang turned his head and fixed his gaze on the dark green eyes. Again the boy’s laughter crossed the courtyard, but this time they didn’t hear it.

  “You understand me?”

  “What Lydia and I decide to do is none of your business,” Chang said coldly.

  “She’s my sister, damn it, that makes it my business.” Anger flared and Chang knew it had been there all along, lying in wait. “You took Lydia over the wall. For God’s sake, why did you take her with you to search for Jens in the hangar? You almost killed my sister. How can I ever trust you? Do you expect me just to forget and forgive such a—” />
  “No.” Chang felt the pain twist deep in his gut, sharper than a heated knife. “No, I don’t. No more than I can forgive myself.”

  “WELL?” ELENA ASKED, RESTING HER ARMS ON TOP OF HER bosom as she sat at the bottom of the bed. Her eyes had shrunk to wary points.

  “You know what I’m going to say.”

  “How could I possibly know what goes on in that crazy head of yours?”

  Lydia smiled. Everything hurt and she badly wanted to sleep, but she had to say this. “First I want to thank you, Elena.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking the bullet out of me.”

  The woman shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of practice.”

  “Thanks anyway.” She hesitated.

  “What else?”

  Lydia took a shallow breath. “I want to know why you betrayed me.”

  “What?”

  “Both times that Alexei and I went into the forest the soldiers knew we were coming. They sent in stalkers to track us and would have caught us if Chang hadn’t been watching our backs. The second time there was an extra car to guard the truck convoy.”

  Elena sat very still. “You are mistaken, comrade.”

  “The only people who knew what we were doing were the vory and Chang, Popkov, and myself. And you.”

  “Any one of those thieves would sell you to the secret police as soon as slit his grandmother’s throat.”

  “No, you’re wrong. They do as Maksim tells them and he is besotted with my brother, so he would let them do nothing to harm him. The others I’d trust with my life.” She leaned forward. “So that leaves you.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Elena.” The gaps between her words grew longer. “We both know it was you.”

  “If I said yes,” Elena muttered, “what difference would it make?”

  “It might to Liev.”