‘But this danger is different,’ he’d explained patiently. ‘It’s everywhere. In the air you breathe, in the khleb you eat and in the pillow that lies under your head at night. This is Josef Stalin’s Russia. It’s 1930. No one is safe.’

‘Davai, davai, davai! Come on, come on, come on!’

The gamblers in the bar were chanting the words, and to Alexei it sounded dismally like the bleating of sheep. The locals had bet their petty kopecks on their own man and now crowded round the pair, who were locked together as intimately as a couple in the throes of sexual frenzy, mouths open and spittle in silver threads between their lips. There was nothing more than a shiver between Popkov’s arm and the table. You couldn’t slide a goddamn knife between them. Alexei felt his heart kick up a pace and that was when Lydia leaned down to the Cossack and whispered something in his ear. She was a small slender figure among the bulk of broad swarthy faces and thick padded waists, but her hair stood out like a fire down there in the dim light as it drew close to the greasy black curls and stayed there.

It took a moment. No more. Then slowly the massive arm began to rise, to force the other arm back, a whisper at a time, until the crowd began to howl its anguish. The local man flared his broad flat nostrils and roared a battle cry, but it did him no good. Popkov’s arm was unstoppable.

What the hell was she saying to him?

A final roar from Popkov and the battle was over, as he drove his opponent’s meaty fist flat on to the surface. The force of the impact made the table screech as if in pain. Alexei pushed himself back from the banister, turned on his heel and set off for his room, but not before he’d seen Lydia dart a glance in his direction. Her wide tawny eyes were ablaze with the light of victory.


Alexei leaned his back casually against the closed door of Lydia’s room and looked around the tiny space. It was no better than a cell. A narrow bed, a wooden chair and a metal hook on the back of the door. That was it. He’d say this for her, she never moaned about the conditions however bad they were.

It was dark outside, a wind rattling a bunch of loose shingles on the roof, and the naked overhead lightbulb flickered every now and again. In Russia, Alexei had learned, you never take anything for granted. You appreciate everything. Because you never know when it will disappear. You may have electricity today, but it could vanish tomorrow. Heating pipes shook and shuddered like trams on Nevsky, one day dispensing a warm fug of heat but lying silent and cold the next. The same with trains. When would the next one arrive? Tomorrow? Next week? Even next month? To travel any distance across this vast and relentless country you had to have the patience of Lenin in his damn mausoleum.

‘Don’t grumble.’

Alexei’s gaze flicked to Lydia. ‘I’m not grumbling. I’m not even speaking.’

‘But I can hear you. Inside your head. Grumbling.’

‘Why would I be grumbling, Lydia? Tell me why.’

She pushed back her hair, lifted her head and gave him a sharp glance. She had a way of doing that which was always catching him off guard, making him feel she could see inside his head. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the thin quilt pulled round her shoulders and a square of green material between her knees. Her busy fingers were counting out her winnings into small piles.

‘Because you’re angry with me about the arm wrestling for some reason.’ Lydia studied the money thoughtfully. ‘It does no harm, Alexei. It’s not as if I’m stealing.’

He refused to accept the bait. Her thieving activities of the past, snatching wallets and watches the way a fox snatches chickens, were not something he cared to discuss right now.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but you took something from them downstairs and they won’t thank you for it.’

Lydia shrugged her thin shoulders and returned to her miniature coin towers. ‘I took their money because they lost.’

‘Not the money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Their pride. You took away their pride, then you rubbed their noses in it by emptying their pockets.’

Her eyes remained firmly on the money. ‘It was fairly won.’

‘Fairly won,’ he echoed. ‘Fairly won.’ He shook his head angrily but kept his voice low, his words deliberately measured. ‘That is not the point, Lydia.’

She twirled one of the coins between her fingers and flashed him another quick glance. ‘So what is your point?’

‘They won’t forget you.’

A shimmer of a smile touched her full lips. ‘So?’

‘So when anyone comes asking questions, the people here will take pleasure in recalling every detail about you. Not just the colour of your hair or how many vodkas you fed into Popkov or your name or your age or the names of your companions. No, Lydia. They’ll remember carefully the numbers on your passport and on your travel permit and even what train ticket is hidden away in your bodybelt.’

Her eyes widened and a blush started to creep up her cheek. ‘Why would anyone bother to remember all that? And who would come asking?’ Suddenly her tawny eyes were nervous. ‘Who, Alexei?’

He pushed his shoulders away from the door and only one half-pace took him to the bed where he sat down next to her. The mattress was bullet-hard and the three piles of coins tottered slightly in her lap.

She treated him to a surprised smile but her gaze was wary. ‘What?’

He leaned close, so close he could hear the whisper-soft clicking of her teeth behind the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘First of all, keep your voice down. The walls are paper-thin. That’s not just to save money on materials, they’re designed to be like that.’ His voice was the faintest trickle in her ear. ‘So everyone can eavesdrop on everybody else. A neighbour can report a muttered complaint about the cost of bread or about the incompetence of the rail system.’

She gave him that direct look again and rolled her eyes so dramatically he almost laughed out loud, but stifled it with a frown instead.

‘Damn it, listen to me, Lydia.’

She took his hand, scooped up one of the piles in her lap and dribbled twenty coins on to his palm.

‘I don’t want your money,’ he objected.

But she gently wrapped his fingers round the little heap, one by one.

‘Keep it,’ she whispered. ‘One day you may need it.’

Then she turned her face to him and kissed his cheek. Her lips felt feather-soft and warm on his skin. His throat tightened. It was the first time such an intimate gesture had passed between them. They’d known each other for eighteen months now, much of it unaware of the fact that they were brother and sister, and he’d even seen her stark naked that terrible day in the woods outside Junchow. But a kiss. No, never that.

He stood up awkwardly and flexed his legs. The room was suddenly claustrophobic, and silent except for the vibration of a woman snoring next door.

‘Lydia, I’m just trying to protect you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why do you make everything so…?’

‘Difficult?’

‘Yes. So damn difficult. As if you prefer it that way.’

She shrugged and he studied her for a long moment, the mane of fiery hair that she refused to cut, the delicate heart-shaped face with candle-pale skin and the firm chin. She was seventeen years old, that’s all. He needed to make her understand, but he knew she had long ago learned to be stubborn, learned to be strong enough and difficult enough to deal with the hardships of her life. He knew that. Something in him wanted to reach out to her, to bridge the gap between them and touch her, to pat her shoulder or her undisciplined hair, to reassure her. But he was certain she wouldn’t welcome it, would regard it as pity.

Instead he said gently, ‘We have to work together, Lydia.’

But she didn’t look at him, didn’t answer.

Just a faint murmur escaped her lips and it struck him as a wretched and lonely sound. Alexei saw her eyes unfocused and her lips moving silently. She’d gone. Sometimes she did that. When things became too much she would disappear, leave him and float away into her own private world, somewhere in her head that brought her… what? Joy? Comfort? Escape from this dingy room and this dingy life?

Alexei’s back stiffened. He could guess where she’d gone. And with whom. Abruptly he opened the door to leave.

‘I’ll see you at the station tomorrow,’ he said in a brisk voice.

No reply.

He walked out and shut the door with a sharp click behind him.


Alexei stepped out into the gloomy corridor and stopped dead. Right in front of Lydia’s door loomed Liev Popkov, that crazy Cossack of hers. Alexei himself was tall and unused to looking up at people, but Popkov was considerably taller and as broadchested and bad-tempered as a water buffalo. Popkov didn’t back off. He was rooted to the scuffed floorboards, deliberately in Alexei’s way, huge arms folded across his chest so that he seemed to swell with every breath. He was chewing something vile that turned his teeth the colour of old leather.

‘Get out of my way,’ Alexei said quietly.

‘Leave her alone.’

Alexei gave him a long cool stare. ‘Leave who alone?’ ‘She’s young.’

‘She’s dangerous because she’s impetuous. She has to learn.’

‘Not from you.’

‘You let her take a risk tonight in that bar.’

‘Nyet. You are the danger. You, not her. You, with all your fancy talk and your aristocratic stiff neck. I tell you, each day that dawns in this land, you are the risk to us, not-’

‘You’re a brainless fool, Popkov.’

‘I’m here to protect her.’

‘You?’ Alexei dragged out the single word and gave the Cossack a slow, insulting smile.

‘Da.’ Popkov’s black curls were as unruly as his temper and sprang over the ragged scar that sliced across his forehead into the eyepatch. ‘Da.’ Popkov spat it out more vehemently, his breath escaping in a foul-smelling hiss. ‘Frighten her,’ he growled, ‘and I will rip your fucking balls off.’