His smile came slowly. It started with a faint curve in one corner of his lips and she watched it rise through the muscles of his cheeks to his eyes.

‘You know me too well, my Lydia.’

‘Don’t hide from me.’

‘I’m not hiding. Just careful of you.’ His hand lifted and settled on the small of her back as if it had a will and a desire of its own. ‘You have enough to think of here in Moscow. Enough… complications.’

‘So tell me now.’ She bounced her chin on his. ‘Or I’ll lie here all night and all day until you do.’

He laughed. ‘That’s an excellent reason,’ he said, ‘for not telling you anything.’

‘I’m waiting.’

He breathed quietly and she matched the rhythm of her own breath to his. The silence in the small room lay like a blanket around them, warm and intimate. His nostrils flared and she knew he would tell her.

‘Mao Tse Tung is still battling it out, at war with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang forces.’ He spoke quietly but the very softness of his words made Lydia nervous. ‘I believe that Mao and our Communist Red Army will win. One day they will take control. Maybe not soon, but eventually the people of China will realise that their only chance of a future of freedom is through Communism. It is the only way forward for a country like China. We’ve seen it here in Russia, we’ve viewed the advances that will come.’

‘But what about…?’ She stopped.

‘About what?’

‘About the mistakes?’ She waved an impatient hand in the direction of the window and whispered, ‘What about the fear out there?’

Chang wrapped both arms around her naked back and pulled her tight against his chest. ‘It is the leader who is wrong, Lydia, not the Communist system. Stalin is the wrong leader for Russia.’

‘And Mao Tse Tung?’

‘I have fought for him. Endangered my life for him. And risked the lives of my friends and colleagues.’

‘I thought you worked in their Head Office in Shanghai. Decoding encrypted messages, that’s what you told me.’

He gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I do. Some of the time.’

She let it pass. Endangered my life, he’d said.

His fingers stroked her spine, soothing her. ‘But like Stalin,’ he continued, ‘Mao is the wrong leader. He is a corrupt man and will cripple China if he gets his hands on her.’

She let her mouth rest on the hollow of his throat, aware of his pulse.

‘Chang An Lo, if that is so, you must stop fighting for him.’

He tightened his grip on her till she could barely breathe. ‘I know,’ he said bleakly. ‘But where does that leave China? And where does that leave me?’

43

The prison was cold today. It happened regularly, the air turning white in front of your face when you breathed out. Jens wasn’t certain why it should be so cold. Plumbing incompetence? Perhaps. But he had an unpleasant suspicion that it was done intentionally by Colonel Tursenov to keep his charges on their toes. To jog their memories of what it was like to spend winters in the forests or the mines or on canal construction. Such hints sharpened the mind.

Jens was seated at his broad desk in his workroom, blueprints spread out in front of him like great rectangular lakes into which he could plunge and shut off his mind to all else. He was proud of them. He couldn’t help it. And certainly he wasn’t ready to hand them over to someone else. They represented many hours of hard scrupulous work, a well designed, carefully thought-out and expertly calibrated piece of engineering. Even after all those years of mind-numbing servitude in the timber forests of Siberia, he could still think. Still draw. Still plan.

Still desire to live.

Especially now. Now there was Lydia.


‘Stand.’

The door banged open. Babitsky, the big greasy guard who was always sweating whatever the temperature, sprang to attention and Jens could almost smell his fear from across the room. It set the hairs on his own neck bristling.

The senior group of engineers and scientists had been herded out of their individual workshops into the meeting hall. It was a fine elegant room with a high ceiling and good proportions. In the days before the Revolution, when the villa used to be an aristocrat’s mansion rather than a dismal prison with bars at the windows, this had been the dining room, and still it contained a massive mahogany table on which blueprints and technical drawings were stacked. No silver candlesticks, no crystal goblets, no murmur of laughter. Practicality and utility were the new gods of Soviet Russia. Well, that suited Jens just fine. He had learned to be a practical man.

They stood in a straight line, hands neatly behind their backs, eyes front, chins to chests, no talking. Exactly the way they’d been taught in the camps. A row of highly educated and intelligent brains acting like trained seals. Beside him Olga gave a barely audible snort of disgust and he noticed a small hole in the hem of her skirt as he directed his eyes downwards.

‘Comrades.’ It was Colonel Tursenov himself. ‘Today we have brought some visitors for you.’

Jens’ heart jumped in his chest. Lydia? For one foolish moment he thought it could be his daughter come to see him. He glanced up quickly and found himself staring straight at the Colonel, flanked by a nervous Babitsky and an only slightly less nervous Poliakov. Visitors of importance, then. Behind them, instead of the red-haired young woman he’d stupidly hoped for, stood a row of six hard-eyed Orientals – four men, two women – though it was not easy to tell the difference, the way they dressed. A red band branded the arm of their blue coats. Communists. Chinese Communists? He had no idea they existed. The world out there must be changing fast. And why on earth would they bring these Chinese to a top secret project?

‘Comrades,’ Colonel Tursenov said again. He didn’t usually address them with such a proletariat term. Tovarishchi. Normally it was their surname or number. Nothing as respectful as tovarishch. ‘Today we are honoured by a visit from our comrades in the Chinese Communist Party.’ He gave a courteous nod to the older figure at the front of the group, a man with iron-grey cropped hair and a deeply lined face that revealed nothing. But Jens noticed Tursenov’s eyes shift quickly to the tall young Chinese behind him and linger there. As though that was where the power – or maybe the trouble – lay.

‘Comrade Li Min, these are our senior workers,’ he announced to the older Chinese, gesturing towards the docile row the way a farmer might indicate ownership of pigs. ‘Top brains.’

‘You have done well to gather such skills together.’ It was the older visitor who spoke in fluent Russian. ‘They must be deeply honoured to work for the State and for your Great Leader, Stalin.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

Honoured? That was a question none of the prisoners cared to answer.

‘We will now inspect the workrooms downstairs,’ Tursenov announced.

No, stay out of my workroom.

The Colonel knew perfectly well they all hated the ignorant fingers rearranging and even removing their papers. But he insisted on it. To remind them what they were.

‘First, I wish to speak to them.’

Everyone looked towards the tall young Chinese who had spoken and Colonel Tursenov’s face creased into an uneasy frown. To be polite he must say yes. But to be safe he must say no. Jens observed the struggle and was not surprised when the Chinese stepped away from the group of armbands and took long strides over to the line of workers, as if the Colonel had already given permission. The determination of it made Jens want to smile at what must be going on in Tursenov’s head right now. The visitor stood at one end of the line and studied them.

‘They are all prisoners, are they not?’

‘Da. But no names, please.’

The Colonel started to draw the rest of the delegation towards the door in the hope that the renegade would follow. But the young Chinese took no notice. His dark eyes took in the face of each of the five male prisoners; the two women he ignored completely. When his gaze settled on Jens there was a question in it, but Jens couldn’t work out what it was. This young man disturbed him but at the same time excited him. With a jolt he realised he was being confronted by an independent mind, one that had not been sucked dry of all its inner intricacies by a blunt State system. Jens had almost forgotten what that felt like and the unexpected challenge brought a smile to his lips. The Chinese approached but stopped first in front of Ivanovich, who stood next to Jens, a man nearly as tall as himself.

‘You,’ he said, eyes fixed on Ivanovich’s face. ‘What is it you do?’

‘Comrade Chang,’ Tursenov burst out, ‘such details are not-’

‘I do not ask what he is working on. Only what his field of work is.’ The black eyes centred on the Colonel and there was a pause.

‘Very well,’ Tursenov said with ill grace and nodded at Ivanovich.

‘I am an explosives expert,’ the prisoner said in an undertone.

Jens saw the interest slide out of the black eyes, the way the tide ebbs off a beach and leaves nothing behind.

‘And you? What is your job?’

Jens glanced at Tursenov. Received a nod.

‘I am an engineer.’

The Chinese made no comment, just drew breath quietly and studied Jens, inspected his face, his hair, his clothes, as though committing them to memory. Suddenly the lengthy inspection by this foreigner irritated Jens. He looked away.

‘I am an engineer,’ he said in a curt voice, ‘not a zoo animal.’

‘Are you good?’

‘I’m the best. That’s why I’m here.’

Despite himself, he was drawn to look back at the Chinese and something in the black eyes had changed. Somewhere deep inside them lay laughter. Whoever this man was he’d brought a breath of the outside world into this stifling airless cage.