Part 68 (1/2)

'I'll send you a wire, Alfred, I promise. As soon as I can.'

'Do that, my girl. You know I'll worry.'

She looked at his face and couldn't understand how it had grown so dear to her. He had lost a few pounds and his brown eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into his head than . . . before. How had she once thought them pompous? She leaned forward and hugged him.

'Sure you have enough money?' he asked.

'If I had any more golden guineas sewn into my clothes and glued inside the soles of my shoes, the train would need an extra engine to cart me over the mountains.'

He laughed. 'Well, you've got my solicitor's address in London, so you can always reach me and I can wire you money for a steamer ticket to England. I won't stay much longer. Not now. Not here in China.'

She held on to his hand for a moment, trying to find the right words and failing. In the end she said with a smile, 'Be happy in England. She'd want you to be.'

'I know.' His lips tightened. He nodded. Patted her arm. 'Keep yourself safe, my dear girl. G.o.d be with you.'

'I have my bear with me.'

She glanced into the carriage. Liev Popkov was seated there. His great fist was stroking his beard and somehow managed to make even that simple gesture threatening rather than thoughtful. Her own small leather suitcase rested beside him on the bench seat, safe as the Bank of England. Probably safer. Even Alfred laughed when he saw two men back quickly out of the compartment when they encountered Liev's single black eye and outstretched legs, as if a buffalo had snorted in their faces.

The train guard started slamming doors. The smell of hot metal stung Lydia's nostrils as another belch of steam sent black s.m.u.t swirling up the platform. The engine heaved itself into life. Whistles shrieked. This was it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but at the same time something was tearing apart in there and she couldn't quite hold it together. She jumped up on the carriage step, and it was then that she saw the tall figure with the silk scarf, short brown hair, and lazy stride ambling along the platform, as if he had all the time in the world. He strolled up to her carriage and doffed his smart new fur cap to her.

'Alexei.' She grinned at him. 'I thought you weren't coming.'

'Changed my mind. Not keen on this place anymore, a bit too chilly for me.' He glanced over his shoulder toward the station entrance and though he kept it casual, she could spot the unease in his green eyes.

'Too hot, I think you mean. Come on, Papa will be glad to see you,' she said and stepped to one side.

Alexei gave her a look that she couldn't read, but it didn't matter. Her brother was here. He shook hands with Alfred, who muttered, 'Good man, look after her,' and then Alexei leaped easily into the carriage beside her.

'We have company, I see,' he drawled and stared suspiciously at the big greasy Russian.

Lydia laughed. This could get interesting. It was going to be a long journey.

The clouds overhead were moody and silver-edged as she took her seat. She leaned her head against the juddering window, drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly as Chang An Lo had taught her, watching the pane of gla.s.s mist up and obscure what was out there. What lay ahead terrified her. And thrilled her. She knew she could survive it. She'd said so many times. That was the one thing she was good at. Surviving. Hadn't she proved it? Well, now she was going to help her father survive.

She wiped a hand over the window. Cleared a swathe of gla.s.s.

Because now she knew that you didn't survive on your own. Everyone who touched your life sent a ripple effect through you, and all the ripples interconnected. She could sense them inside her, surging and flowing, doubling back and overlapping, all the way back to the beginning. And at the centre of them all was Chang An Lo. She wrapped her hand tight around the quartz dragon pendant. He and she would survive this and would be together again when all the turmoil was over, of that she was sure. She stared intently up at the low ridge of hills ahead where rumour had it that the Communists camped out, as if she could keep him safe by sheer force of will alone. She sent out a ripple of her own.

The train growled to a start.

Read on for an extract from Kate Furnivall's breathtaking novel, Under a Blood Red Sky Under a Blood Red Sky, published by Sphere in November 2008.

For more information on Kate Furnivall visit her website at

1.

Davinsky Labour Camp, Siberia February 1933

The Zone. That's what the compound was called.

A double barrier of dense barbed wire encircled it, backed by a high fence and watchtowers that never slept. In Sofia Morozova's mind it merged with all the other hated lice-ridden camps she'd been in. Transit camps were the worst. They ate up your soul, then spat you out into cattle trucks to move you on to the next one. Etap Etap, it was called, this s.h.i.+fting of prisoners from one camp to another until no friends, no possessions and no self remained. You became nothing. That's what they wanted.

Work is an Act of Honour, Courage and Heroism. Those words were emblazoned in iron letters a metre high over the gates of Davinsky prison labour camp. Every time Sofia was marched in and out to work in the depths of the taiga forest she read Stalin's words above her head. Twice a day for the ten years that were her sentence. That would add up to over seven thousand times - that is, if she lived that long, which was unlikely. Would she come to believe that hard labour was an 'Act of Heroism' after reading those words seven thousand times? Would she care any more whether she believed it or not?

As she trudged out into the snow in the five o'clock darkness of an Arctic morning with six hundred other prisoners, two abreast in a long silent shuffling crocodile, she spat as she pa.s.sed under Stalin's words. The spittle froze before it hit the ground.

'There's going to be a white-out,' Sofia said.

She had an uncanny knack for smelling out the weather half a day before it arrived. It wasn't something she'd been aware of in the days when she lived near Petrograd, but there the skies were nowhere near as high, nor so alarmingly empty. Out here, where the forests swallowed you whole, it came easily to her. She turned to the young woman sitting at her side.

'Go on, Anna, you'd better go over and tell the guards to get the ropes out.'

'A good excuse for me to warm my hands on their fire, anyway.' Anna smiled. She was a fragile figure, always quick to find a smile, but the shadows under her blue eyes had grown so dark they looked bruised, as though she'd been in a fight.

Sofia was more worried about her friend than she was willing to admit, even to herself. Just watching Anna stamping her feet to keep the blood flowing made her anxious.

'Make sure the brainless b.a.s.t.a.r.ds take note of it,' grimaced Nina, a wide-hipped Ukrainian who knew how to swing a sledgehammer better than any of them. 'I don't want our brigade to lose any of you in the white-out. We need every single pair of hands if we're ever going to get this blasted road built.'

When visibility dropped to absolute zero in blizzard conditions, the prisoners were roped together on the long trek back to camp. Not to stop them escaping, but to prevent them blundering out of line and freezing to death in the snow.

'f.u.c.k the ropes,' snorted Tasha, the woman on the other side of Sofia. Tasha tucked her greasy dark hair back under her headscarf. She had small narrow features and a prim mouth that was surprisingly adept at swearing. 'If they've got any b.l.o.o.d.y sense, we'll finish early today and get back to the stinking huts ahead of it.'

'That would be better for you, Anna,' Sofia nodded. 'A shorter day. You could rest.'

'Don't worry about me.'

'But I do worry.'

'No, I'm doing well today. I'll soon be catching up with your work rate, Nina. You'd better watch out.'

Anna gave a mischievous smile to the three other women and they laughed outright, but Sofia noticed that her friend didn't miss the quick glance that pa.s.sed between them. Anna struggled against another spasm of coughing and sipped her midday chai chai to soothe her raw throat. Not that the drink deserved to be called tea. It was a bitter brew made from pine needles and moss that was said to fight scurvy. Whether that was true or just a rumour spread around to make them drink the brown muck was uncertain, but it fooled the stomach into thinking it was being fed and that was all they cared about. to soothe her raw throat. Not that the drink deserved to be called tea. It was a bitter brew made from pine needles and moss that was said to fight scurvy. Whether that was true or just a rumour spread around to make them drink the brown muck was uncertain, but it fooled the stomach into thinking it was being fed and that was all they cared about.

The four women were seated on a felled pine tree, huddled together for warmth, kicking bald patches in the snow with their lapti lapti, boots shaped from soft birch bark. They were making the most of their half-hour midday break from perpetual labour. Sofia tipped her head back to ease the ache in her shoulders and stared up at the blank white sky - today lying like a lid over them, shutting them in, pressing them down, stealing their freedom away. She felt a familiar ball of anger burn in her chest. This was no life. Not even fit for an animal. But anger was not the answer, because all it did was drain the few pathetic sc.r.a.ps of energy she possessed from her veins. She knew that. She'd struggled to rid herself of it but it wouldn't go away. It trailed in her footsteps like a sick dog.

All around, as far as the eye could see and the mind could imagine, stretched dense forests of pine trees, great seas of them that swept in endless waves across the whole of northern Russia, packed tight under snow - and through it all they were attempting to carve a road. It was like trying to dig a coal mine with a teaspoon. Dear G.o.d, but road-building was wretched. Brutal at the best of times, but with inadequate tools and temperatures of twenty or even thirty degrees below freezing it became a living nightmare. Your shovels cracked, your hands turned black, your breath froze in your lungs.