‘And what did the Inner Committee do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘They refused the message. They were afraid. What could they do? They didn’t have the Pollandore. They lost it. The useless fuckers lost it long ago. Please—’
‘So?’
‘So they sent it away. The paluba. They sent it away.’
‘What happened then? What did the paluba do? Where did it go? What happened to the key?’
He closed his eyes. His head sank forward again. She was losing him.
‘Your daughter, Teslom. You have a daughter. You should think of her.’
‘What?’
‘She is pregnant.’
‘No… not her… Leave her alone!’
‘If you fail me now, I will reach inside your daughter’s belly for her feeble little unborn child–it’s a girl, Teslom, a girl, she doesn’t know this but I do–and I will take its skull between my fingers… like this…’ She paused. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know that I will do this? Do you know that I will?’
She squeezed his heart again, gently. He screamed.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Nearly finished now. Think of your daughter, Teslom. Think of her child.’
‘Oh no,’ he gasped. ‘Oh no. No.’
‘Where is the key to the Pollandore? Tell me how to find it.’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Then who? Who knows?’
‘The woman,’ said Teslom, so quiet Chazia could hardly hear. ‘The woman,’ he said again. ‘Shaumian.’
‘What? Say it again, darling. Say the name again.’
‘Shaumian. The key. It would go to the Shaumian woman next. If not the Committee… then Shaumian. Shaumian!’
Chazia felt her own heart beat with excitement. Shaumian. She knew the name. And it led to another question. The most important question of all.
‘Teslom?’
‘No more. Please. I can’t—’
‘Just one more thing, sweetness, and then you can have some peace. There are two Shaumian women. Was it the mother? Or the daughter? Which one was it, darling? Which one?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Either. What’s the difference? It makes no difference. It doesn’t—’
‘Yes, it matters. The mother is dead. The mother dead, the daughter not. That’s the difference, darling. Mother or daughter?’
Teslom choked and struggled for breath. He was mouthing silence like a fish drowning in air. Chazia waited. Everything depended on what he said next.
‘Mother or daughter?’ whispered Chazia gently. ‘Mother or daughter, darling?’
‘Daughter then.’ His voice was almost too quiet to hear. ‘Daughter. The key would be for the daughter.’
‘Maroussia Shaumian? Be sure now. Tell me again.’
‘Yes! For fuck’s sake. I’m telling you. That’s the name. Shaumian. Shaumian! Maroussia Shaumian!’
He was screaming. Chazia felt his heart clenching and twitching in her hand. Shoving the blood hard round his body. He was working his lungs fast and deep. Too fast. Too deep.
It didn’t matter. Not any more. She squeezed.
When she had killed him, she withdrew her hand from his chest, wiped it carefully on a clean part of his shirt and went back round to her side of the desk. Turned the knob on the intercom box. Pulled the microphone towards her mouth.
‘Iliodor?’
‘Yes, Commander.’ The voice crackled in the small speaker.
‘There is a mess in my office. Have it cleared away. And I need you to find someone for me. A woman. Shaumian. Maroussia Shaumian. There is a file. Find her for me now, Iliodor. Find her today and bring her to me.’
3
Vissarion Lom and Maroussia Shaumian took the first tram of the day into Mirgorod from Cold Amber Strand. Marinsky Line. Cars 1639, 1640 and 1641, liveried in brown and gold, a thick black letter M front and back on each one. Four steep clattering steps to climb inside. Slatted wooden benches. Standard class, single journey, no luggage: 5 kopeks. There were few other passengers: in summer holidaymakers came to Cold Amber Strand for the bathing huts, the pleasure gardens, the bandstand, the aquarium, but now winter was closing in. Signs above the seats warned them: CITIZEN, YOU ARE IN PUBLIC NOW! BEWARE OF BOMBS! WHOM ARE YOU WITH?
They went to the back of the car and Lom took a seat opposite Maroussia, facing forward to watch the door. He kept his hand in the pocket of his coat, holding the revolver loosely. A double-action Sepora .44 magnum. It was empty. But that was OK. That was better than nothing.
The tram hummed and rattled and accelerated slowly away from the stop. Maroussia huddled into the corner and stared out of the window, eyes wide and dark. Flimsy shoes. Bare legs, pale and cold.
‘The Pollandore is in Mirgorod,’ said Maroussia. ‘It must be. Vishnik knew where it was–he found it, and he was looking in the city. So it’s in the city. That’s where it is.’ She frowned and looked away. ‘Only I don’t know where.’
‘We’ll start at Vishnik’s apartment,’ said Lom. ‘He had papers. Photo graphs. Notes. We’ll go and look. After we’ve eaten. First we need to find some food. Breakfast.’
‘I left my bag at Vishnik’s,’ said Maroussia. ‘I’ve got clothes in it. Clothes and money and things. Maybe the bag’s still there.’
‘Maybe,’ said Lom.
‘I can’t go back to my room,’ said Maroussia.
‘No.’
‘They’ll be waiting. Watching. The militia…’
‘Possibly,’ said Lom. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be fine—’
Lom broke off. A woman with two children got on the tram and took the seat behind Maroussia. Maroussia withdrew further into the corner and closed her eyes. She looked tired.
The city opened to take them back. A fine rain greyed the emptiness between buildings. It rested in the air, softening it, parting to let the tramcars pass and closing behind them. The streets of Mirgorod were recovering from the flood. River mud streaked the pavements and pools of water reflected the low grey sky. Businesses were closed and shuttered, or gaped, water-ransacked and abandoned. People picked their way across plank-and-trestle walkways between piles of ruined furniture stacked in the road. Sodden mattresses, rugs, couches, wardrobes, books. A barge, lifted almost completely out of the canal and left beached by the flood, jutted its prow out into the road. A giant in a rain-slicked leather jacket was shouldering it off the buckled railings and trying to slide it back into the water. Gendarmes and militia patrols stood on street corners, checking papers, watching the clearing-up. They seemed to be everywhere. More than usual.
Lom leaned forward and slid open a gap in the window, letting the cold city air pumice his face. He inhaled deeply: the taste of coal-smoke, benzine, misting rain and sea salt was in his mouth–the taste of Mirgorod.
Maroussia’s shoulder was raised protectively, half-turned against him. Her face was almost a stranger’s face, at rest and unfamiliar in sleep. She was almost a stranger to him. He knew almost nothing about her, nothing ordinary at all, but he knew the most important thing. She had set her will against the inevitability of the world. The Vlast had come for her, for no reason that she knew–not that the Vlast needed reasons–but Maroussia hadn’t gone slack, as so many did, numbed by the immensity and inertia of their fate. She had seized on the vague and broken hints of the messenger that came from nowhere–from the endless, uninterpretable forest–and she had turned them into the engine of her own private counter-attack against… against what? Against unchangeability, against the cruelty of things.