Only as Alyosha was turning the nose of his taxi down Bayerischerplatz – the police truck, with its sirens wailing, rushing towards him – did he become aware of the throb in his stomach growing hot and sticky. His breath was coming in short, uneven gasps, and he felt hot and cold in turn. He swallowed hard, once, twice and again – but more and more bile filled his mouth and he started to shake, and felt himself go colder by the second. Margarita, meanwhile, was feeling in her hair, with clumps of it coming out in her hands.

  He somehow managed to drive almost to Margarita’s apartment block and bring the Austro-Daimler to a stop, before the world went dark. When he came round, Vicki was there, too, and the two women somehow got him up the stairs as he was fading fast from pain. They took him to Vicky’s apartment as it was the closest, and they put him on the sofa and tried to staunch the blood, but the depth of the slash made it impossible. Margarita had to keep rinsing the cloth in the bowl, turning the water red, before placing it as gently as she could back on his flesh.

  Alyosha whimpered softly, his fingers gripping the side of the sofa. His lips blue and his cheeks bloodless, his eyes fluttered as he drifted in and out of consciousness. As more and more blood continued to flow over her fingers, Margarita was desperately afraid that the blade might have caught his kidney. Vicky ran out to fetch a doctor, someone they could trust.

  He was a Russian, and after examining the wound, he stitched it up and dressed it. Putting his equipment back into his bag, he told Alyosha he had been very lucky. The cut was deep, but he was pretty sure that there was no damage to any major organs.

  Margarita followed him to the kitchen, where they had a murmured conversation. The doctor agreed she had done the right thing in not taking him near a hospital. That would not have been wise, given how many more doctors and nurses supported Hitler’s party these days. The doctor knew of more than one communist who had gone to seek treatment, and had never been seen again. He gave them instructions on how to tend Alyosha, and left. Margarita said she should go and see what had happened to the children.

  ‘I’ll stay with him.’ Vicky had just rolled herself a cigarette.

  Margarita thanked her.

  Very gingerly, Alyosha shifted. Vicky propped him up with some cushions, so that he could sit up a little. He asked for more water, but he could barely hold the cup, and he spilt most of it down his chest. She went to sit by his side, her body against his. She put her fingers over his, steadied the cup, and brought it up to his lips. He slowly drank the rest sip by sip.

  Vicky sat herself in a chair, lit a cigarette and held it by her cheek. She wanted him to give her a report of what had taken place outside the picture house.

  ‘Didn’t Margarita tell you?’ He felt exhausted. ‘Why do you want to hear it all again?’

  He closed his eyes, and she let him rest while she finished her cigarette. Then she dragged her chair closer to him, a notepad and pencil in her hand, and gave him a little nudge. In spite of how weak he felt after losing so much blood, Vicky insisted that he tell her everything that had happened, without leaving out a single detail. Alyosha tried his best, but he felt his throat drying up, and she brought him another glass of water. This time, he could smell tobacco smoke on her fingertips, and noticed how stained her fingernails were. He shut his eyes again, and rested his head back in the hollow of the cushion, his throat working, his cheeks hot and red as the blood rushed to his face. The next minute, he vomited over his lap, his insides roiling, his body ice-cold, his teeth chattering. He saw once more Vlasich’s eyeball dripping through his fingers.

  60.

  In the prison yard, Artyom was walking with the Saint, who was a broken man. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his skin had an unhealthy pallor, and his nose was dripping.

  ‘Artyom, you have to rescue me from this agony.’

  ‘I’ve already told you a dozen times, I can’t. If I could, I would.’

  ‘Would you?’

  What have they been putting in the man’s head? Artyom asked himself.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. You tell me one thing, and I hear something completely different. Almighty God, what is the truth? When we stand before our betters, I hope they will judge that a very grave wrong was done to the both of us. But if there is as much as an iota of truth in these dreadful accusations, then you must own up to it. You must acknowledge your sin openly, however excruciating that may be, and for the good of your soul, you should beg for mercy – not only the mercy of the court, but the mercy of the Lord Almighty, and accept your punishment with humility.’

  ‘If I understand you correctly, what you’re asking me to do is confess that I’m guilty?’

  ‘If you are.’

  ‘Do you think I am?’

  The Saint was very quiet.

  ‘Do you think that I have done what they are accusing me of? Do you think me capable of importing heroin? Seriously?’ Artyom walked on and the Saint followed him. ‘I’m disappointed. I thought we knew each other better than that. I thought it was the same zeal for helping those who most needed it was what brought the two of us together in the first place.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Artyom, please forgive me. But it’s a terrible thing when a man can’t recognise his own degradation. Better always to light a small candle of hope to illuminate a corner, than curse all the darkness.’

  Artyom walked on again, head bowed, like a man cut to the quick.

  ‘I beg your pardon. Forgive me for doubting you. But I’ve been facing dark nights of the soul, and I’ve found it hard to see deliverance. I feel that my Saviour has turned his back on me. Although I beg him every night to open the cell door to the daylight of justice, it’s the dark which engulfs me always.’

  Artyom was interrogated again. It was clear that the case against him was strong. He and the Saint would be looking at ten years of prison with hard labour. And that would be in Guyana, in South America.

  61.

  ‘Lying on that sofa all day won’t do you any good.’

  ‘I do try my best to get up.’

  ‘You have to try harder.’

  ‘You can be a hard woman.’

  Vicky smiled. They both knew she was very kind to him.

  His only visitors were Margarita and the Russian doctor. His cousin never came empty-handed, and usually brought a bundle of magazines or newspapers with her – Das Tage-Buch, Montag Morgen and Die Rote Fahne – and every now and again, the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, Alyosha’s favourite because of the pictures.

  Margarita was very grateful to him for rescuing her, especially as they both knew that Vlasich and the SA would be slow to forgive. The Nazis would be after his blood forever, as Alyosha realised only too well. He didn’t dare go back to his own room, as they would be sure to come looking for him – if they hadn’t done so already.

  62.

  Inessa and Philippe visited Artyom at the Santé.

  ‘Is it true?’ whispered his sister across the table, looking distressed.

  Artyom was smoking one of her husband’s cigarettes, luxuriating in a long pull of smoke into his lungs.

  ‘Is what I’ve heard about you true, Tomya?’

  Philippe was scrutinising him minutely.

  ‘If my own sister doubts me,’ Artyom said lightly, ‘what hope have I in front of the judge?’

  She turned to her husband. ‘What did I say? I told you, didn’t I? I told you my little brother wouldn’t be involved in such a thing.’

  Looking at his sister, the slight softening of her profile made her look more like their mother, Artyom thought. Was he starting to resemble his father, he wondered? Was he starting to speak like him?

  ‘Why don’t we change the subject?’ Artyom flicked the ash from his cigarette on the floor. ‘Where have you two come from today?’

  Inessa told him enthusiastically about the rehearsals for their latest production, a light comedy, which they would tour in Lyon, on the Riviera at Menton, then Beausoleil, Juan-les-Pins, Saint Raphael, Nice and Cannes.

  Artyom felt the sun warm on his back as she named the towns, and it raised his spirits.

  Philippe offered him another cigarette.

  ‘We’ll have a week’s break before going on to Toulouse and Pau, and then we’ll finish the tour at Biarritz.’

  ‘Let’s hope I’ll be out of here in time to see it,’ he said cheerfully.

  The bell rang to signal the end of visiting. The three stood there awkwardly for a moment, then after Artyom had shaken hands with Philippe and thanked him for coming to see him, Inessa flung herself on her brother.

  ‘It breaks my heart to see you in a place like this,’ she said through her tears. ‘You’ve been so kind to me…’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing we can to do help you? Just say the word,’ said Philippe, ‘and we’ll do our best…’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be alright but perhaps you could look out for Zepherine and the children? I’ve asked her not to come here, I don’t want her upsetting herself.’

  ‘Of course, we’ll do our best for them.’

  ‘Have you seen the new baby yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  A second passed.

  ‘But you have a good lawyer?’ asked Inessa. ‘It’s worth spending the money on a good one…’

  ‘I think he’s able enough, thank you.’

  That wasn’t true: with not a sou to his name, Artyom was defending himself.

  63.

  There were two other men with his usual interrogator this time. He could see at once that these two came from a world beyond the greasy walls of the Sûrété. They both had soft, white hands and clean nails, and they had about them the smell of luxurious homes, tranquil wives, pretty little children and obedient dogs. They pulled documents tied in legal ribbon out of fine leather briefcases, placing everything neatly before them on the desk. They were the only ones to speak, the policeman a pale shadow in the background.

  ‘On whose authority are you making this offer?’ Artyom asked after hearing what they had to say.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there. What we want is an answer.’

  ‘And then what? If I were to agree, how would I live my life then?’

  One of the civil servants tapped the document in front of him.

  ‘Very few men return to France after ten years of hard labour in Guyana. Those who do are broken in health and spirit. Alternatively, the earth and maggots of South America can be your home for ever.’

  ‘Why don’t you think our offer over?’ suggested the other one in a reasonable voice.

  64.

  Margarita decreed that he was well enough to risk a short walk. It felt strange to be out in the fresh air. His body still felt heavy, and he moved hesitantly and slightly jerkily, veering from one side of the pavement to the other.

  ‘Lean on my arm,’ she told him.

  They hadn’t gone very far before he was tired, and she suggested a rest and a drink at the Grosser Kurfürst. It was clear that Margarita had been there often from the warm welcome the roly-poly of a woman behind the bar gave her. After sitting at one of the wooden benches, Alyosha saw why: on the windowsill at his elbow were some of the flyers and pamphlets of the Roter Frontkämpferbund. Then he took in that while the two or three young men standing casually by the door looked perfectly relaxed, they were keeping an eagle eye on the comings and goings outside. It was quiet enough, with little traffic and few people passing by.

  Two glasses of Bitburger arrived, and Margarita fetched a chess set. Setting out the pieces, she spoke of her worries for the Soviet Union. It was clear that Adolf Hitler meant war; that much was obvious enough simply from reading Mein Kampf. The Soviet Union needed to arm itself, and quickly.

  ‘Why is the rest of Europe so blind?’

  Alyosha didn’t have the energy to engage with her.

  By the time his white bishop had succeeding in taking her black knight, the sky had darkened outside. In a move he hadn’t anticipated, her second knight jumped over his pawns to knock his queen into his lap.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  Curious, he looked up from the board at her. The rain was beating down by now and gurgling into the gutters. Several office workers had come scurrying into the bar for shelter, their shoulders and backs dripping, filling the place with a smell of damp cloth mixed with petrol fumes. The hum of voices and clinking of glasses on the zinc bar gradually grew louder. Half a dozen thoughts flitted through Alyosha’s head.

  ‘This is good news?’ he asked carefully.

  Margarita avoided his eye, turning her head to look out of the window. She clearly wasn’t jubilant.

  ‘Have you told Larissa?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet. I’ve been meaning to. But… I’m finding it difficult.’

  ‘But you two are so close. I can’t believe you’ve told me before her.’

  ‘We are and we’re not. Since Bruno joined the NASAP a couple of months ago I’ve barely seen her. It’s just too… difficult.’

  This was news to Alyosha

  ‘Why are you surprised?’

  ‘I thought he was a member of the Deutschnational Voklspartei?’

  ‘So he was. But, like so many others, he’d been leaning towards the Nazis for a while.’

  Margarita had joined them for supper one Sunday evening, and Bruno had launced into a diatribe about how society was going to the dogs, and how much he sympathised with the Nazis’ hatred towards the girls who danced naked in nightclubs for filthy-minded old capitalists. What right had men like that to buy young flesh? And he hated the discordant noise of the negro’s jazz that you heard in those clubs as well. What was the negro apart from the link between ape and man? Their music was an affront to the ear – if you could even call jazz music at all – and not suitable for the Teutonic nation. Was jazz appropriate for anyone with a European aesthetic, a people for whom the splendours of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were part of their inheritance? He’d gone on in that vein for what felt like hours, and of course she hadn’t been able to stop herself from arguing with him, and things were said on both sides that would have been better left unsaid, and after that, the welcome when she visited was distinctly lukewarm.

  Alyosha considered this, and then asked, ‘Does Vicky know that you’re expecting?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Are you going to tell her?’

  Margarita sipped her beer. ‘I don’t know. It depends…’

  She seemed so uncertain about everything; so totally unlike her usual self.

  ‘There’s not much – how shall I say? – intimacy between Vicky and me. Not really. I’ve realised that she’s never told me anything personal in all the time I’ve known her. She’s never once discussed her family, for instance. I can’t say I know her better today than on the first day I met her. I don’t know if anybody knows Vicky, really.’

  ‘I’ll help in whatever way I can,’ he said, placing his hand over hers and squeezing it tenderly.

  ‘Thanks ’Lyosha. You’re very kind to worry about me. There’s nobody else much who does.’

  ‘But what about Kai-Olaf? What does he say?’

  She told him that Kai-Olaf thought that their political work was more important than anything, and that having a baby would be an added burden on lives which were already running close to the precipice – lives that the weakest breeze could blow over the cliff edge.

  ‘The cause is more important to Kai-Olaf than anything else.’

  He had told her that she should get rid of the baby as quickly as possible. But, in her heart, she didn’t want to. She loved her sister’s children, and knew how she would love to hold her own baby in her arms.

  ‘If you were in my position what would you do?’

  65.

  The police made sure that the Saint heard everything. Artyom had never seen him so furious.

  ‘You’re a wicked man, a truly wicked man. You’ve told me nothing but a pack of lies. But there’s an opportunity now for you to make amends, and save us at the same time. Do what they ask of you. Save us both.’

  ‘Do you understand what they’re asking me to do?’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘I might as well just hang myself tonight and have done with it.’

  ‘Are you willing to see an innocent man suffer because you insist on saving your own sinful skin? Why are you smiling? I don’t have a reason to smile in the hell I’m in. It’s all up on us.’

  When Artyom was next brought before the two civil servants, they told him his time had run out and he had to give them an answer: was he prepared to give evidence in court against Lolole and Meme Corse?

  ‘Are you ready to do what we want? It’s a disgrace that a criminal like Meme Corse is sitting in the Deputies’ Chamber. He’s poison, and there are some individuals very high up in the Government who are determined to get rid of him. If you do us this favour, you walk free, and we won’t forget you helped us. You will be doing a great service to the Republic of France, which has given you so much. Otherwise, your trial goes ahead.’

  ‘Neither of the two brothers will ever forgive me, as you well know.’

  ‘They’ll both be under lock and key – for a very long time.’