House of the Hanged. Mark Mills

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      ‘I can’t say.’

      ‘I have a right to know.’

      ‘And I have a duty to protect his identity. If you’re captured by the Cheka they will make you talk. Don’t look so affronted – everyone talks. Do you want him to lose his life too?’

      At that moment Katya returned bearing a tray, which she placed on a low side table. She must have been eavesdropping from the kitchen. It wasn’t just the misting of pity in her hard eyes; before pouring the tea she handed Tom two tablets and a glass of water.

      ‘Aspirin. For your wrist.’

      The tea cups matched the antique porcelain pot, and Dukes savoured a first, warming sip before continuing.

      ‘Look, believe me, I’m sorry. We’ve all lost friends, good friends, and I daresay we stand to lose many more. But you shouldn’t have come here. Markku should not have given you this address. There’s nothing we can do for you.’

      ‘I didn’t come here for me, I came here for you – to warn you.’

      He explained that Markku had put him in contact with a man named Dimitri Zakharov. It was Zakharov who had organized the escape, Zakharov who had betrayed him to the Cheka.

      Dukes and Katya exchanged a brief look. ‘I doubt that very much,’ said Dukes. ‘Zakharov gave them a description of me. I overheard them say it.’

      Dukes hesitated. ‘If he did, then it was tortured out of him.’

      ‘He didn’t look too distressed when I saw him leave his apartment an hour ago.’

      Dukes was clearly taken aback by this news. ‘Maybe we’re talking about another Zakharov.’

      ‘How many Zakharovs does Markku know who live on Kazanskaya?’

      ‘Katya . . .?’

      For once she looked shaken. ‘Anything is possible. We both know that.’

      Dukes turned his attention back to Tom. ‘I was wrong. You were right to come here.’ He handed the revolver back. ‘I’m surprised there are still six bullets left in the cylinder.’

      Tom had indeed trailed Zakharov for a good few streets, imagining the moment – the muzzle of the gun planted at the base of the traitor’s neck, or maybe a swift tap on the shoulder first with the barrel so that Tom could carry with him the flash of recognition, of terror, in the other man’s eyes as a future balm for his soul. In the end, though, he had allowed Zakharov to slip away from him.

      Maybe it had been cowardice, the knowledge that retribution would surely come at the cost of his own life, or maybe the calculating pragmatist in him had prevailed over base emotion. Either way, he was alive, and the information he had just handed on might even save lives. It clearly had value; he could see its worth reflected back at him in Dukes’s eyes.

      ‘This changes everything,’ said Dukes. ‘We can’t stay here. Katya, you also have to leave.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You must.’

      ‘Not if I don’t know where you’re going.’

      ‘Katya –’

      ‘Do I know?’ she insisted.

      Dukes shook his head solemnly.

      ‘Then go,’ she said. ‘Both of you. What are they going to do with an old woman like me?’

      Her life had been reduced quite enough already to this: this queer museum of displaced artefacts. The barbarians might be hammering at the gates of the city, but the curator had no intention of abandoning her post.

      It took Dukes a few minutes to gather his belongings together, and all the while he was issuing instructions to Tom. Katya accompanied them downstairs as far as the first-floor landing. Pressing something into Dukes’s hand, she said, ‘It was my mother’s.’

      Tom also received a parting gift – a jewelled gold locket on a chain.

      ‘You are a brave boy,’ said Katya, ‘and you deserve to live. But remember . . . keep back one bullet for yourself.’

      She shooed them off down the stairs like a mother sending her two sons out to play.

      Tom left the building first, turning up his collar and heading south on Liteiny Prospekt. Dukes went north. Ten nerve-racking minutes later they reconvened, as arranged, in front of a haberdashery on Nevsky Prospekt. There was no acknowledgement; it was an opportunity for each of them to determine if the other was being followed. Dukes had said he would stamp the snow from his boots if he felt they were safe to proceed. This he now did, before setting off once more at a brisk pace. Tom tailed him at a distance, his fingers closed around the revolver in his pocket, unsure of their destination.

      He tried to remain alert, but his grief came at him in waves. He had walked this same route with Irina, idly strolling in the summer heat, stopping every so often to peer into a shop window, the scarlet trams rattling back and forth nearby.

      He choked back a sob and felt the heat of anger rising in his belly. He didn’t fight to suppress it; he let it spread through him, into his chest, along his limbs, warming him.

      It came to him quite suddenly what he would do and how he would do it.

      It was a religious building of some kind, set well back from the street behind a high wall at the southern end of the Nevsky. Beyond the imposing entrance gate the trees rose tall and bare on either side of the pathway. Dukes cut left almost immediately into the trees, taking a well-trodden trail through the deep snow. It led to a cemetery deep in the wood, a bosky burial ground for the wealthy, sparsely populated with the dead. Large free-standing tombs were scattered around a frozen lake, like temples in some eighteenth-century garden.

      The packed snow of the snaking pathways suggested that many others had visited in recent days, possibly paying a final tribute to their ancestors, it occurred to Tom, before fleeing the country for good. Right now, though, the two Englishmen found themselves alone. The purpose of their own pilgrimage was still no clearer to Tom, even when Dukes made for a tomb pushing four-square through a deep drift.

      No larger than a garden shed, it was maybe twice as tall, its roof crowned with a Russian cross. The pale green stucco of its outer walls had crumbled in parts, revealing the bare stone blocks beneath. Its door was of solid wood and firmly locked.

      Dukes was still struggling with an iron key when Tom joined him. The lock finally emitted a rasping groan and the door swung open on rusty hinges. The moment they were inside, Dukes shouldered it shut behind them.

      The only illumination came from a small lunette above the door, and it was a few seconds before Tom’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, by which time Dukes was already on his knees before the altar. For a worrying moment it looked as though he was praying, but he was working away at one of the flagstones, prising it up with a pocket knife. Buried in the packed earth beneath was an old cigar box. It contained a wafer-thin package wrapped in waxed paper.

      ‘Here,’ said Dukes. ‘Take it with you.’

      Tom had handled СКАЧАТЬ