He hit the fence at a run and scrabbled up and over, dropping recklessly on the other side. The crowds were backing away and scattering, terrified. There was a sound like a low despairing collective moan. The mudjhik was through the trains and out in the open ground, but it had slowed. Lom felt its riveted focus on him begin to slip and disintegrate. It was the crowd. The background noise of so many panicking minds confused it. It was sifting through them, trying to find him again. It hooked him and lurched forward but he pushed its gaze aside.
The mass of people was a single collective entity, a herd mind with a simple overwhelming purpose, moving on instinct, getting through from second to second, shoving, shouting, pushing, desperate to escape before the mudjhik crashed into them. Lom charged into the middle of it and joined them. For the first time in his life he surrendered himself up to the tidal mind of a mob, obliterating independent thought and sinking without question below the surface into dark, exhilarating waters. The energy that flowed through him was tremendous. The people around him were shadows, rivals, part of him, indistinguishable. Somewhere at the outer edges of his mind he felt the grazing trail of the mudjhik, superficial and negligible. The mudjhik itself was being pulled into the dark vortex and absorbed. Lom ducked away from it and let himself be carried away.
53
Lavrentina Chazia sat alone in the projection room in the deserted offices of Project Winter Skies, running the film of the test explosion at Novaya Zima over and over again. The evacuation of Mirgorod was under way. Her instructions were being carried out. Her train was ready: the Pollandore installed, her angel skin crated and stored, the Shaumian girl under lock and key in a barred freight car. There was nothing that required her attention until the train left at noon. She ran the film again. And again. She must have watched it twenty, fifty times. She could close her eyes and watch it all unfolding inside her head: the technicians busying themselves with the final preparations; their stupid, excited grins; the caption, UNCLE VANYA; the wind across silent level tundra, dwarfing the gantry; and then the cataclysm. The blinding gush of absolute, total, irresistible destructive power. As soon as the film had finished she went back to the projector, rewound it and played it again.
It was almost impressive that Dukhonin had achieved so much alone. She had underestimated him. But whatever he had done, it was hers now. In Mirgorod, Dukhonin had kept the circle tight and she had killed them all. Their families would be rounded up and shipped off east. That they would end up as conscript labour in Novaya Zima itself was an elegance that pleased her.
The Vlast had made a terrible mistake. She realised that now. All of them, and she along with them, had made a terrible mistake. They had been so focused on the fallen angels and what they meant, and what could be done with the flesh of their carcases, they had all failed to realise what human ingenuity could do by itself. They had taken their eye off those obscure laboratories.
But Kantor had not. Kantor had found them. And Kantor had found Dukhonin and made him his puppet. When he needed to tap into the resources of the Vlast he had chosen Dukhonin as his point of entry. Vain, industrious, narrow-minded Dukhonin. It had been a good choice.
Kantor’s continuing existence pained her. Him she could not touch, not yet, but his time would come, and soon. He thought he pulled her strings. He thought he could keep things from her. But she would tip him over. She would see him swing from his own lungs. When the time came. Not yet but soon.
On the screen Uncle Vanya erupted once more. Chazia shifted in her chair and grunted at the punch of excitement in her belly and groin.
It was all coming together for her now. Power. Power. Power. The living angel. The Pollandore. And this: Novaya Zima. This was a strength that would wipe the Archipelago from the face of the planet and build her Vlast for a thousand, a hundred thousand years! The Founder himself would be nothing more than a footnote in the story of the rise of Lavrentina Chazia and the Vlast she would build. With this, the living angel would listen to her. With this, could she not erase the angel itself from the face of the planet? Yes, and burn the forest too. All of it. The whole of the planet would be hers.
54
Lom took a tram as far as the northern edge of Big Side and walked the rest of the way back to the Raion Lezaryet. It was almost midday. The Purfas Gate was open but the VKBD were watching the bridge. They let him cross without question–they weren’t interested in who went in–but no one was coming out. A small knot of men stood in sullen silence just inside the wall.
As Lom climbed the steep narrow streets towards the house a distorted loudspeaker voice, high-pitched and hectoring, echoed instructions off the crowding gables. He couldn’t make out the words or the direction it was coming from. Shops and offices were closed, the streets almost deserted. Ahead of him two men in frock coats and wide-brimmed hats crossed the road, heads down and walking quickly. They entered the Clothiers Meeting Hall and shut the door behind them. The tannoy was getting louder. Following the direction of the noise, Lom reached the edge of a small cobbled square, defined on one side by the raion’s only hotel, the Purse of Crowns, and on the opposite corner by the Lezarye Courts of Commercial Jurisdiction.
A trestle table had been set up in the middle of the square. On it was a contraption like a radio, connected to a hefty separate battery, and next to it stood a sturdy tripod holding the loudspeaker horn. A small man in a dark suit and polished ankle boots was shouting into a microphone, reading from a sheet of paper. Hatless, he looked cold. His cheeks, his nose, the tips of his small ears were pink. Thin black hair slicked across his skull. Sweat-flattened strands across his forehead. He kept stopping to wipe his face and polish the lenses of little wire spectacles with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. Half a dozen armed VKBD kept watch from the steps of the court. The tannoy and the echoes in the square distorted his voice. Lom had to listen the message through three times to piece it together.
‘Attention! Attention! Residents of Raion Lezaryet! The defence commissar and city captain of Mirgorod announces that this quarter is designated for immediate evacuation. There is no reason for alarm. Prepare yourselves for resettlement or work duty in other provinces. Women and children will leave first. Small hand luggage only is to be taken. You must gather at the Stratskovny Voksal at 6 p.m. sharp. Women with babies are to provide themselves with paraffin stoves. You must understand that any resistance to this order will result in police countermeasures. Attempts to avoid resettlement will lead to forced evacuation. It is expected that all demands will be met with punctuality and calmness. I repeat…’
Apart from Lom and the VKBD, there was nobody in the square to hear him. He was shouting at blank shuttered windows. Drawn curtains. Closed doors. There was a neat stack of paper on the table. Copies of the declaration for handing out. Nobody was taking one.
When Lom reached Elena Cornelius’s apartment it was deserted. Maroussia wasn’t there, and there was no sign that she’d been back. Their attic room was as he’d left it. Down in the kitchen everything was neatly stacked. The stove was banked up and smouldering quietly, no indication of a hurried departure, but Elena wasn’t there and nor were the girls.
Lom found the Count and Ilinca in their salon. They were sitting side by side on a threadbare chaise longue. Dressed for a journey. A pair of old scuffed suitcases and a faded dusty carpet bag in the middle of the floor. The door standing open, ready.
‘We knew the day would come,’ said the Count. ‘We are prepared.’
‘Maroussia?’ said Lom. ‘Did she come back?’
Ilinca shook her head.
‘She won’t come here again,’ said the Count. ‘You should go too, Vissarion Yppolitovich. They’re coming to collect us soon.’
‘What happened to Elena?’ said Lom. ‘And the girls?’
‘Elena went to the Apraksin,’ said Ilinca. ‘She took Yeva and Galina to school on the way. They would have gone before the announcement came. Elena is sensible. She’ll know what to do.’
&nb
sp; ‘You can’t wait here like this,’ said Lom. ‘You have to run. You have to get away now. By yourselves. Don’t let them take you. The raion is being cleared. There are trains at the station.’ The excrement and straw in the darkness. The reek of disinfectant barrels. ‘You don’t know—’
‘No,’ said Palffy. ‘We are safe.’
‘You have to get away.’
Palffy looked out of the window.
‘Away?’ said Ilinca. ‘Where would we go? How could we travel alone? Will you take us?’
The Count put his hand on Ilinca’s arm.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, not looking at Lom. ‘I told you. They won’t hurt us. They know us. They have our names. We are citizens; we’re on the list; we did the right thing.’
‘What?’ said Lom. ‘What did you do?’
The Count looked up at him blankly.
‘You should leave now,’ he said. ‘Do not wait here.’
‘What have you done?’ said Lom.
The Count looked away and shook his head. The truth punched Lom in the belly. He felt dizzy. Sick with despair.
‘Maroussia,’ he said quietly. ‘You betrayed her. You told them and they came for her.’
The Count took his wife’s hand and gripped it tight in his.
‘You did. Didn’t you?’ said Lom. He took a step towards them. ‘You fucker. What have you done?’
‘No,’ said Ilinca quietly. ‘Please. Don’t.’
‘So hit me,’ said the Count, staring up into Lom’s face. ‘You are a violent man, I know this. Here.’ He fumbled in his pocket and brought out an antique revolver. Holding it by the barrel, he offered the handle to Lom. ‘There. Shoot me. You have a gun. Shoot me. I am ashamed of nothing. I did nothing you would not do. Nothing I would not do again a hundred times over for Ilinca’s sake.’
Lom sank into a chair. He was weighed down with bleak despair. There was no strength, not even in his voice.
‘Should I protect the Shaumian girl,’ the Count was saying, ‘at the price of my own wife’s life? What was the Shaumian girl to us? There was a chance! She could have taken her place! She could have done her duty! For her family and her people. She could have led… but she did not. She made her choice, and I made mine. For Ilinca’s sake.’
‘You saved your own skin,’ said Lom.
‘You think you can judge me, Vissarion Yppolitovich? Do you have a wife? No. You are a man alone. Judgement comes cheap for you.’
‘They took her, didn’t they?’ said Lom. ‘Last night. Hours ago. And you didn’t tell me. You let me go out and search. All this time I wasted. You could have… When did they come? Where did they take her?’
‘No one was here,’ said Ilinca. ‘What you are saying, it did not happen. Sandu is not to blame.’
Lom stared at the Count.
‘The girl is not here,’ said Palffy. ‘And you should please go too. You should get out of my house now.’
Lom stepped out into the street and started back down the hill towards the Purfas Gate. He would find Maroussia and get her back. He would do that. But he had no idea what to do or where to go. None at all. He needed to get out of the raion, that was his only clear thought.
He didn’t hear the staff car until it pulled up at the kerb alongside him, engine running. A long-wheelbase black ZorKi Zavod limousine, six doors, twenty feet long, with high backswept fenders and a spare wheel mounted on the back. A small red and black pennant was flying on the bonnet. The driver wound down the window. A long faintly sad intelligent face. Antoninu Florian in the uniform of a captain of police. On the front passenger seat Lom could see a pair of leather driving gloves laid neatly on top of a road atlas. Beside them a peaked cap with a crisp wide circular crown. Staff officer issue. Lom couldn’t see the badge.
Florian nodded to him. Gave him a faint weary smile, almost shy.
‘I suggest you get in the back,’ he said.
Lom peered in through the back windows. Two benches upholstered in comfortable burgundy leather. Carpet on the floor. Apart from Florian the car was empty.
‘Hurry please,’ said Florian. ‘We have to make a start.’
‘Maroussia is gone,’ said Lom. ‘They’ve taken her. I don’t know where. I have to find her.’
‘She is with Chazia,’ said Florian. ‘Get in the car.’
Lom barely heard what Florian said.
‘I have to get her back,’ said Lom again.
‘Then will you for fuck’s sake get in the back of the car like a good fellow and we can be on our way.’
Part Two
55
At four in the afternoon Antoninu Florian’s stolen ZorKi Zavod limousine nosed down the hill and out of the raion through the Purfas Gate. Lom held the Blok 15 in his lap, hidden under the flap of his coat. Safety catch off. Florian showed a warrant card. The VKBD corporal leaned over to look into the back of the car. Lom faced front, eyes down, and tried to look bored.
‘Stand aside, soldier,’ said Florian. ‘No questions. Nothing to see.’
The corporal waved them through.
Florian drove the ZorKi with practised smoothness through residential streets and garden squares. Railings and snow. Money houses, finial-ridged with gables and balconies and porches and garaging for cars, set back behind lawns and laurel hedges. The kind of places where bankers and high Vlast officials made their homes. It was a part of the city Lom hadn’t seen before. Apart from a few horse-drawn droshkis and private karetas they had the roads to themselves. A gendarme in a kiosk on a street corner saluted them as they passed. Saluted the pennant. Florian nodded in acknowledgement, expressionless.
‘I have to find Maroussia,’ said Lom.
‘I know,’ said Florian. ‘You said.’
‘You know what happened to her? You know where she is?’
‘Chazia sent an upyr last night,’ said Florian. ‘Its name was Bez. Bez Nichevoi. Bez found Maroussia and took her to the Lodka.’
‘I should have been with her.’
‘It’s fortunate you were not.’
‘I could have stopped it,’ said Lom. ‘I could have protected her.’
‘No. You would be dead.’
Lom shrugged. ‘Possibly.’
‘Not possibly. Certainly.’
‘You said its name was Bez.’
‘Yes.’
‘You said was.’
‘It was a bad thing. It carried many deaths. I burned it.’
The car rolled past tall stuccoed houses. Cherry trees in gardens, leafless now. The snow had been swept from the pavements and piled along the kerb. Twisting on the polished leather bench, Lom could see behind them on the skyline a column of distant smoke drifting up and disappearing into low misty cloud.
‘This isn’t the way to the Lodka,’ he said.
‘No.’
Lom leaned forward. Jabbed the muzzle of the Blok 15 into Florian’s neck.
‘Then turn the fucking car around.’
Florian sighed and pulled in, ploughing the ZorKi’s passenger-side fender deep into a heaped-up ridge of snow on the side of the road.
‘Don’t look back,’ said Lom. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them. On the wheel.’
Florian did as he was told.
‘Where are we going?’ said Lom. ‘Where are you taking me? We have to get to the Lodka. That’s where Maroussia is.’
‘No,’ said Florian quietly. ‘Maroussia was in the Lodka, but now she is not. The Vlast is abandoning Mirgorod to the Archipelago. The government is relocating eastwards to Kholvatogorsk, but Chazia is going further, to Novaya Zima with the Pollandore, and she is taking Maroussia with her. Their train will have left by now. The journey will not be straightforward: it will take them many days, perhaps a week, perhaps more. We also, as you may have observed, are travelling east and we will be quicker. Much quicker. We will reach Novaya Zima before Chazia’s train and we will have time to prepare before they arrive. So unless you have a better plan, please be so good as to sto
p waving your dick around in the back of my car.’
‘How do you know all this?’ said Lom.
‘I was in the Lodka last night.’
‘You were in the Lodka?’
‘She is alive,’ said Florian. ‘Beyond that, I cannot say, but she is alive, depend on it. Chazia will preserve her. The upyr took her. It did not kill her.’
‘Then we have to find that train.’
Florian shook his head.
‘The train they are travelling on is also carrying an extraordinary cargo. It will go by a special route prepared in advance under conditions of extreme secrecy. We have no chance of catching up with it before it reaches its destination. But even if we could… It is a military train. An armoured train. Soldiers. A mudjhik. A well guarded mobile prison. No. My plan is better. Come with me.’
‘Come with you?’ said Lom. ‘Who the fuck are you? Why would I trust a single thing you’ve said?’
Florian twisted in his seat and pushed Lom’s gun aside.
‘There is no time for this,’ he said, locking eyes with Lom. His irises were green, flecked with amber. ‘Come with me to Novaya Zima, Vissarion. Together we will do what needs to be done. Or get out of the car now, if you think you can do better alone.’
Lom stared into Florian’s face. He wished he could read something more in those deep, wise, dangerous eyes, but he could not. He had to make a choice, but it was no choice, not really. He sank back into the wide leather bench and slipped the Blok 15 into the pocket of his coat.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK. Drive.’
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