Moskva

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘He watched,’ she said, scowling because Tom had noticed.

  ‘He?’ Tom asked.

  ‘The weird one.’

  Kyukov? ‘Did he …?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Just watched.’

  And the general shaved your head and body, Tom thought.

  Between them, they starved you, stripped you, hung you upside down so your piss ran down your belly and across your face … He was glad she was angry.

  In time, he hoped she’d be furious.

  Tom watched Alex steady herself against a plum tree stripped of leaves, laden with ice and apparently lifeless. He’d like to give her time to stop, time to recover. But time was the one thing they didn’t have.

  ‘See that door in the wall?’ he said.

  ‘I get to go first again?’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  Keeping to the side where the snow was thinnest, the wind having banked most of it against the garden’s other wall, Alex limped for the doorway, moving so unsteadily that Tom had to fight the urge to go after her to help.

  He’d be the target though.

  No point in drawing down fire.

  She made it and he closed the gap between them in seconds, moving Alex and himself further into the arch to hide them from sight. Kyukov’s Jeep stood a hundred paces away, alone on open ground and visible from all directions.

  ‘I’ll hotwire it,’ Tom said.

  Crouching low, he looped round to its far side, doing his best to stay hidden. His heart sank when he saw footprints. He wanted to drive Alex out of there and keep going. They were 500 miles from Moscow and without papers. The closer he could get to the capital, the greater his chance of getting a message to the commissar. But it wasn’t going to happen. The bonnet of the Jeep was slightly open. He knew without checking that its rotor arm was gone. He checked anyway.

  53

  Crossing the River

  ‘What do you mean it won’t work?’

  ‘They took the rotor arm.’

  ‘I don’t even know what that is.’

  ‘It’s part of the electrics. Cars won’t work without them.’

  Alex’s bottom lip trembled. ‘You’re meant to be getting me out of here.’

  In her voice, Tom could hear petulance, and Alex’s sudden scowl said she knew he could hear it, but she was doing a good job of hiding the fear. He was proud of her for that. Her eyes were wrong, though, dilated. It would help if he knew what they’d given her, because Tom was certain they’d given her something. And if it was nasty, she was going to have trouble going cold turkey later. Assuming he could buy her a later.

  ‘They were going to kill me.’

  Tom froze, feeling suddenly sick.

  Alex huddled in the safety of the arch, her expression unreadable as she stared at the Jeep that would now be taking them nowhere. ‘It would have been cold anyway,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t even have a roof.’

  ‘Alex? They were going to kill you?’

  ‘That’s what the weird one said.’

  ‘Kyukov?’

  She shrugged. ‘The other one said he’d return me. The weird one said they wouldn’t. His friend was keeping me alive until you arrived. He kept talking about photographs. What photographs?’

  ‘They’re from the war.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘I don’t think your being here is about the photographs. You’re their guarantee that Sir Edward will help prevent the release of official papers.’

  ‘That’s not going to work. He took Mummy from Daddy. Did you know that? He doesn’t care about me. He pretends to. He doesn’t really…’

  Tom remembered Sir Edward’s shock when Tom mentioned the dead cat, his restrained despair and quiet fury at being trapped and unable to say by what. ‘Believe me,’ Tom said, ‘he does care.’

  Alex turned away and Tom understood the conversation was over.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said a few seconds later.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You haven’t got a top. You must be cold too.’

  Tom took it as the apology it was and nodded towards the huts.

  ‘They’ll see us,’ she protested.

  ‘We keep close to the garden’s outside wall. Find a spot roughly in the middle at the end, head to the huts from there. It’s a blind spot.’

  ‘And the falling snow will help,’ Alex said.

  ‘And the falling snow will help.’

  They set off, Tom’s arm tight around Alex’s shoulders as he tried to keep her upright and moving. When she stumbled for the second time, he stopped, bit down on his frustration and set off again more slowly.

  Patience, he told himself.

  If necessary, he was capable of waiting for hours, utterly silent and still. He had done it that night in a Belfast car park. He simply wasn’t patient around children, his own or anyone else’s. And look where that had got him.

  They stopped midway along the end wall, looking in both directions to check no one was in sight and they’d reach the right place. The first row of huts was two hundred yards away. ‘What if they do see us?’ Alex demanded.

  ‘Weave,’ Tom said. ‘And keep weaving.’

  ‘You think they’ll shoot?’

  If what she’d just said was true, Kyukov might.

  If Tom had been on his own, it might be different.

  He’d be back in the orphanage, bringing the battle to them. He’d fix a trap, find himself a weapon, embrace the darkness and find somewhere to wait them out. Break General Dennisov’s neck – or Kyukov’s, it didn’t matter which – take the gun or whatever he found and kill the other. Alex made that impossible.

  Tom considered leaving her at the huts and doubling back.

  But she was cold and scared and barely able to walk on her own.

  As Tom watched her limp beside him, her bare feet cutting prints in virgin snow, he knew he had to stay with her and keep going. Alone, if he got himself killed, that was his problem. But he was here with Alex, and if he got himself killed, then Alex was on her own.

  He couldn’t take the fight to them with Alex in hand.

  All he could hope for was to outrun them, find something to keep her warm in one of the huts and keep going. They’d crossed the widest point of the river getting to the island. The river on this side had to be narrower.

  Once back on the mainland …

  Once back on the mainland what? Find a road, flag down a car, hope there was someone official who’d be prepared to arrest them, get a message to the commissar, to Dennisov or the embassy? It came to something when their least forlorn hope was being arrested. A pop came from behind them and Alex stumbled.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Tom asked.

  She picked herself up, her face white.

  ‘Are you hit?’

  Alex shook her head.

  ‘Then run,’ Tom ordered.

  ‘My feet hurt.’ She sounded close to tears.

  Wrapping his arm round her, Tom dragged Alex after him, trying to steer her left and right when her instinct was to head straight for the nearest hut. Another shot followed and when Tom glanced back he saw a shadow through the falling snow, and another coming up behind it.

  They were maybe seventy-five yards away.

  You could kill with an automatic at seventy-five yards but more by luck than anything else. Accuracy wasn’t good at half that distance.

  A revolver, on the other hand …

  At least they had the falling snow on their side.

  ‘Keep weaving,’ Tom said.

  He picked her up when she fell, took her down with him when he stumbled in turn, and ran, half-blinded by snow, towards the huts that got closer with every step. ‘Keep going,’ he insisted.

  ‘But the huts –’

  ‘The next row. No, the one after.’

  He led Alex at a slant towards a hut near the end, hoping the rows behind would keep him shielded. Then he doubled back, dragging her with him, and st
opped at one hut before going to another.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Muddling the footprints,’ Tom said.

  It wasn’t perfect because there wasn’t time for perfect but it would do. At least Tom hoped it would. Pushing open a rotting door, he bundled Alex inside. The wooden floor sank with every step, fallen shutters revealing jagged glass. The only things inside were frames for empty bunks. A shot came from outside.

  ‘Hush,’ Tom said.

  Alex put her hand over her mouth.

  ‘They’re shooting at shadows,’ he said.

  The coast looked clear in both directions.

  ‘We’ll try that one,’ Tom said. The door to a hut opposite was already open. Better still, they found the window on the far wall missing.

  ‘Through you go.’

  Tom helped Alex up and over the sill, hearing her grunt as she landed outside. Scrambling after her, he looked back. The general was rounding a corner in the row of huts behind. He held his automatic drawn and was stepping sideways, with the weapon raised and ready to fire.

  ‘What did you see?’ Alex asked.

  ‘One of them.’

  ‘You should leave me.’

  ‘Alex …’ Tom wasn’t sure what to say other than Don’t be ridiculous.

  So he put his arm round her again and ran for the last of the rows, finding a door unlocked and barging it open. ‘Quickly,’ he said.

  A pile of rags produced torn trousers, a kapok jacket with one toggle missing and a cap with half its peak ripped away. The jacket was stiff with ice and quite possibly dirt. The cap had been chewed by rats, judging from the droppings.

  ‘Alex. Come on.’

  Turning her back, she slipped off Tom’s jacket, let him help her into his shirt and then the padded jacket they’d found. Buttoning the front, she turned to let Tom tie the missing toggle’s tape to the loop it threaded through. And Tom had a flashback to helping Becca dress. She’d been young. Young enough to accept help.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Tom grabbed his jacket and turned his back while she scrambled into the trousers.

  ‘What’s that?’ Alex said. He thought she’d heard something but she was staring through the filthy window towards a long building between them and the river. It was older than the orphanage, but not by much, one of those strange pre-war buildings that must once have looked very modern.

  ‘We’ll go round it,’ he said.

  Crouching low and keeping huts between themselves and where Tom hoped Kyukov and the general were, they ran for the trees along the river, Tom dragging Alex after him. ‘Almost there,’ Tom promised.

  They cut between the pine trees, grateful for their sudden cover, and came out on the edge of the Volga, stopping in shock. There was no ice. Dark water stretched from their feet right across to the far bank. There was no way over.

  ‘Why isn’t there ice?’ Alex demanded.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There had been ice on the river’s other side.

  There was still snow at their feet, snow falling around them and snow smothering the bank they couldn’t reach.

  Dropping to a crouch, Tom tested the water.

  It was close enough to freezing to make his fingers ache and numb his hand. The only clue to the absence of ice was that fat pipes, coming from the building they’d gone round, disappeared into the water and a low mist hung over them.

  ‘Think you can swim across that?’

  Alex shook her head miserably.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Tom said.

  ‘It’s too far,’ Alex said. ‘I’ll drown.’

  She must know she was trapping them on the island. But this was Alex. Swimming was one of the things she did well, probably better than him. If she said she was too cold, too weak, too shaken, or a mix of all three, to swim across, he had to believe her. No matter how fiercely he wanted to drag her into the water and make her try.

  54

  Slaughterhouse Now

  The Stalingrad Oblast Abattoir.

  The words were carved into limestone above the building’s double doorway. The door itself was locked and Alex huddled in the recess while Tom rattled the handle, peering through a thick glass panel until he realized there was movement inside.

  ‘Get back,’ he said.

  Grabbing Alex, he stepped away from the door.

  An old woman came to the other side of the glass, peered through it and shook her head, vanishing the way she’d come. As an afterthought, she turned on the foyer lights at a switch by a door she shut behind her.

  ‘It’s still in use?’ Alex asked.

  Tom shrugged, nodded towards a path that had obviously been cleared recently, because it wore only a thin skim of snow, and together they headed round the side of the abattoir towards a loading bay at the rear. Empty vodka bottles colonized one corner. Empty cans of local beer sat beside them.

  A concrete ramp led to half a dozen sliding doors.

  A landing stage was so dilapidated that one end had sunk beneath the water. A sign warned that no more than one cattle barge was to be unloaded at a time. The sign was as rusted as the landing stage was ruined. ‘Keep watch,’ Tom said.

  Alex shuffled to the corner and peered round it.

  ‘See anyone?’

  She shook her head.

  Tom tried each sliding door in turn.

  All of them were locked from inside, and he was about to give up when he saw a narrow door set into the side of the recess that held the doors he’d been trying. He’d already worked out that cows went through the separate doors, probably straight into individual killing pens on the far side. The narrow door was padlocked. Tom didn’t have a pick or any wire to make one but that was fine.

  ‘They’re here,’ Alex said suddenly.

  ‘Coming towards us?’ he asked.

  ‘No. They glanced this way. They’ve gone to the front.’

  How long would it take them to find and follow their footprints? A minute? Less? Grabbing an empty beer can, Tom flicked open his lock knife and hacked out a triangle of metal, bending it over the back of the blade.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Making a shim.’

  He pushed the shim’s point into the outside of the padlock’s staple, and tore his frozen fingers turning it, but felt the staple pop free.

  ‘Hurry,’ he said.

  Tom shut the door behind them, jammed it from inside and hoped that neither the general nor Kyukov knew there’d been a padlock or realized one was missing. When he looked round, Alex was staring in horror at the killing pens, which had floors that sloped and gutters for shit.

  ‘You’ve never seen one?’

  Of course she hadn’t. Tom almost apologized, but she took it as a straight question and was shaking her head. Tom had. He’d worked for a month in Donegal, killing twenty cows a day. There were bigger abattoirs but his had been family-run, and their speciality was not looking too closely at the state of the meat.

  Where you had an abattoir, you had …

  Tom looked around him. The gates were old but well oiled, the blood drains were clear and the slopes swept. He had the feeling the building hadn’t been used for killing cattle in years; it felt too sanitary. But somebody was looking after it, and it was so neat that cows could be shipped in tomorrow, slaughtermen found and work begin immediately.

  There would be a locked cupboard.

  Beyond the slaughter floor, with its drains, was the inedible-offal room with its row of stainless-steel paunch tables. The layout was so familiar that Tom recognized it instantly. A door led off to a store with a metal cupboard at the far end, leather aprons hanging from hooks both sides and rubber boots in pairs along the floor.

  ‘Try those,’ Tom said, pointing to the smallest.

  He was wrong about the cupboard being locked, though.

  A dozen penetrating captive-bolt guns were racked in a row, with the blank cartridges needed to load them
on a shelf above. Tom pushed the blanks aside.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘A pithing rod.’

  ‘What’s a pithing rod?’ Alex asked.

  Tom decided not to explain. ‘Take one of the stun guns,’ he said.

  Alex shook her head.

  ‘I can teach you how to use it.’

  She took the thing reluctantly, looking horrified at its weight.

  ‘Too much?’ He meant the weight but when she nodded and said yes the tremor in her voice told him she was talking about something else.

  He took the gun back.

  ‘Stay close then.’

  She shot him a glance Tom recognized.

  What really disconcerted him was that the overhead rails were running, hooks slowly circling through the empty rooms above head height. They moved almost silently, on a well-oiled track that had obviously been kept clean and free of rust. Looking through a glass porthole into a huge freezer room at the hooks disappearing into the distance, Tom remembered the girl at Patriarch’s Ponds, and the photograph of Beziki’s son, white as ice and naked on the snow. That door was locked.

  All the same, he shivered.

  ‘What now?’ Alex said it like Tom would know, and he was reminded how young she was, relatively speaking. What now depended on General Dennisov and Kyukov, on Tom getting close enough to kill one or both, on him keeping Alex safe if she really meant it about Kyukov wanting to kill her.

  He’d always known they’d kill him. Well, suspected it, maybe. But not her.

  She was a kid, hungry, filthy and frightened. Why was Tom there if not to take her place on the altar? That was the deal. That was always the deal.

  Build a world that fetishizes sacrifice and some will find themselves cast as victims, while others believe they have a right to wield the knife. Some days Tom found it hard to pretend the New Testament had won.

  ‘What now is I get myself a weapon.’

  ‘You have one.’ She nodded at the heavy stun gun.

  Tom shrugged. You could put it to someone’s skull, or against someone’s chest, and the four-and-a-half-inch steel bolt would punch through bone or tissue. But that wasn’t really what he had in mind.