‘Maroussia?’ said Lom. ‘Did she come back?’
Ilinca shook her head.
‘She won’t come here again,’ said the Count. ‘You should go too, Vissarion Yppolitovich. They’re coming to collect us soon.’
‘What happened to Elena?’ said Lom. ‘And the girls?’
‘Elena went to the Apraksin,’ said Ilinca. ‘She took Yeva and Galina to school on the way. They would have gone before the announcement came. Elena is sensible. She’ll know what to do.’
‘You can’t wait here like this,’ said Lom. ‘You have to run. You have to get away now. By yourselves. Don’t let them take you. The raion is being cleared. There are trains at the station.’ The excrement and straw in the darkness. The reek of disinfectant barrels. ‘You don’t know—’
‘No,’ said Palffy. ‘We are safe.’
‘You have to get away.’
Palffy looked out of the window.
‘Away?’ said Ilinca. ‘Where would we go? How could we travel alone? Will you take us?’
The Count put his hand on Ilinca’s arm.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, not looking at Lom. ‘I told you. They won’t hurt us. They know us. They have our names. We are citizens; we’re on the list; we did the right thing.’
‘What?’ said Lom. ‘What did you do?’
The Count looked up at him blankly.
‘You should leave now,’ he said. ‘Do not wait here.’
‘What have you done?’ said Lom.
The Count looked away and shook his head. The truth punched Lom in the belly. He felt dizzy. Sick with despair.
‘Maroussia,’ he said quietly. ‘You betrayed her. You told them and they came for her.’
The Count took his wife’s hand and gripped it tight in his.
‘You did. Didn’t you?’ said Lom. He took a step towards them. ‘You fucker. What have you done?’
‘No,’ said Ilinca quietly. ‘Please. Don’t.’
‘So hit me,’ said the Count, staring up into Lom’s face. ‘You are a violent man, I know this. Here.’ He fumbled in his pocket and brought out an antique revolver. Holding it by the barrel, he offered the handle to Lom. ‘There. Shoot me. You have a gun. Shoot me. I am ashamed of nothing. I did nothing you would not do. Nothing I would not do again a hundred times over for Ilinca’s sake.’
Lom sank into a chair. He was weighed down with bleak despair. There was no strength, not even in his voice.
‘Should I protect the Shaumian girl,’ the Count was saying, ‘at the price of my own wife’s life? What was the Shaumian girl to us? There was a chance! She could have taken her place! She could have done her duty! For her family and her people. She could have led… but she did not. She made her choice, and I made mine. For Ilinca’s sake.’
‘You saved your own skin,’ said Lom.
‘You think you can judge me, Vissarion Yppolitovich? Do you have a wife? No. You are a man alone. Judgement comes cheap for you.’
‘They took her, didn’t they?’ said Lom. ‘Last night. Hours ago. And you didn’t tell me. You let me go out and search. All this time I wasted. You could have… When did they come? Where did they take her?’
‘No one was here,’ said Ilinca. ‘What you are saying, it did not happen. Sandu is not to blame.’
Lom stared at the Count.
‘The girl is not here,’ said Palffy. ‘And you should please go too. You should get out of my house now.’
Lom stepped out into the street and started back down the hill towards the Purfas Gate. He would find Maroussia and get her back. He would do that. But he had no idea what to do or where to go. None at all. He needed to get out of the raion, that was his only clear thought.
He didn’t hear the staff car until it pulled up at the kerb alongside him, engine running. A long-wheelbase black ZorKi Zavod limousine, six doors, twenty feet long, with high backswept fenders and a spare wheel mounted on the back. A small red and black pennant was flying on the bonnet. The driver wound down the window. A long faintly sad intelligent face. Antoninu Florian in the uniform of a captain of police. On the front passenger seat Lom could see a pair of leather driving gloves laid neatly on top of a road atlas. Beside them a peaked cap with a crisp wide circular crown. Staff officer issue. Lom couldn’t see the badge.
Florian nodded to him. Gave him a faint weary smile, almost shy.
‘I suggest you get in the back,’ he said.
Lom peered in through the back windows. Two benches upholstered in comfortable burgundy leather. Carpet on the floor. Apart from Florian the car was empty.
‘Hurry please,’ said Florian. ‘We have to make a start.’
‘Maroussia is gone,’ said Lom. ‘They’ve taken her. I don’t know where. I have to find her.’
‘She is with Chazia,’ said Florian. ‘Get in the car.’
Lom barely heard what Florian said.
‘I have to get her back,’ said Lom again.
‘Then will you for fuck’s sake get in the back of the car like a good fellow and we can be on our way.’
Part Two
55
At four in the afternoon Antoninu Florian’s stolen ZorKi Zavod limousine nosed down the hill and out of the raion through the Purfas Gate. Lom held the Blok 15 in his lap, hidden under the flap of his coat. Safety catch off. Florian showed a warrant card. The VKBD corporal leaned over to look into the back of the car. Lom faced front, eyes down, and tried to look bored.
‘Stand aside, soldier,’ said Florian. ‘No questions. Nothing to see.’
The corporal waved them through.
Florian drove the ZorKi with practised smoothness through residential streets and garden squares. Railings and snow. Money houses, finial-ridged with gables and balconies and porches and garaging for cars, set back behind lawns and laurel hedges. The kind of places where bankers and high Vlast officials made their homes. It was a part of the city Lom hadn’t seen before. Apart from a few horse-drawn droshkis and private karetas they had the roads to themselves. A gendarme in a kiosk on a street corner saluted them as they passed. Saluted the pennant. Florian nodded in acknowledgement, expressionless.
‘I have to find Maroussia,’ said Lom.
‘I know,’ said Florian. ‘You said.’
‘You know what happened to her? You know where she is?’
‘Chazia sent an upyr last night,’ said Florian. ‘Its name was Bez. Bez Nichevoi. Bez found Maroussia and took her to the Lodka.’
‘I should have been with her.’
‘It’s fortunate you were not.’
‘I could have stopped it,’ said Lom. ‘I could have protected her.’
‘No. You would be dead.’
Lom shrugged. ‘Possibly.’
‘Not possibly. Certainly.’
‘You said its name was Bez.’
‘Yes.’
‘You said was.’
‘It was a bad thing. It carried many deaths. I burned it.’
The car rolled past tall stuccoed houses. Cherry trees in gardens, leafless now. The snow had been swept from the pavements and piled along the kerb. Twisting on the polished leather bench, Lom could see behind them on the skyline a column of distant smoke drifting up and disappearing into low misty cloud.
‘This isn’t the way to the Lodka,’ he said.
‘No.’
Lom leaned forward. Jabbed the muzzle of the Blok 15 into Florian’s neck.
‘Then turn the fucking car around.’
Florian sighed and pulled in, ploughing the ZorKi’s passenger-side fender deep into a heaped-up ridge of snow on the side of the road.
‘Don’t look back,’ said Lom. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them. On the wheel.’