Page 78 of The Half Life of Valery K

‘Night.’ Shenkov set the phone back into its cradle. ‘If we’re lucky we’ll know where that bloody lab is soon,’ he said, so softly it was hard to hear him even from centimetres away, never mind through the bugs in the phone and the light switches.

‘Cement,’ Valery said. He turned the kettle on again, and the taps. ‘You bugged the trucks even though I wouldn’t give you Sasha’s results.’

‘You wouldn’t have been so frightened if you’d found nothing,’ Shenkov said.

‘It was polonium,’ Valery agreed, freshly ashamed. He sighed. ‘But you should be frightened too. This is sanctioned from Moscow. You can’t just walk in and make them stop. Particularly after shutting down an asylum just for …’

‘No, but I will tell the newspapers exactly where the lab is, who’s running it, and then I’ll mysteriously fail to find any of the editors or the printers of the special editions that ensue,’ he said.

Valery looked across. ‘And then someone comes along to shoot you.’

‘They’re taking children. You can’t talk about why you killed fifty-three men with a chemical bomb and I can’t watch them take children Tanya’s age. If I get shot, I do.’

Valery had to bite his tongue while he rinsed out the cafetière and made a new round of coffee. He doubted either of them wanted any more coffee, but it was something to do with his hands. The hot water bloomed black, and tiny rainbow bubbles erupted over the surface, and he tried to find that happy voice that enjoyed fluid dynamics and appreciated the crossword-cigarettes. He couldn’t. Shenkov was turning brittle again, too ashamed to just be miserable. It was clear he meant what he was saying. He really would do what he could and die for it. He was flint; he couldn’t bend, only shatter. The idea of watching him break opened up that thinly covered pit in Valery’s mind, the one that went all the way down to the fires, and the bomb, and the red trains. The worst thing was, Valery would survive it; he could survive anything. It was involuntary. He wasn’t flint but glass – he broke a lot, but then he vitrified and mended, and he could do it endlessly. He would survive this to see Shenkov in pieces.

‘There’s an easier way,’ he said.

Shenkov had been fetching the milk. ‘What?’

‘Once we know where this place is, I can just knock on the door. I think I can get myself on to the research team. If there are kids … I should be able to find a way to get them out. You can get them to Chelyabinsk on false papers.’

Shenkov watched him for a long time. ‘It’s Resovskaya’s trial. She just had you arrested and sent to that place. I saw the file.’

‘I know, but she doesn’t know that the arrest actually happened. It’s Sunday today. If I turn up for work tomorrow, no one will be any the wiser. If she chases it, she’ll find that you’ve shut the asylum down to intakes from Lighthouse scientists.’ He hesitated while he surveyed how certain he was. ‘The only reason I’m not already working on her trial is that she thinks I’m trying to sabotage her, but she’ll have no choice if I turn up at the door.’

‘If she thinks you want to sabotage it, she’ll have the inevitable soldiers guarding that door shoot you.’

‘I think she would find that overdramatic.’ Valery tipped his head. ‘She doesn’t crack nuts with sledgehammers. She likes elegant solutions.’

Shenkov didn’t quite smile. ‘I didn’t fake three hundred pages of documents at that asylum just to bury you in a pit in the woods.’

Valery nodded, because he didn’t have it in him to laugh. ‘Yes, no, I know. I really don’t think you’ll have to do that. Anyway, listen, I’ve had all my looking after now. Sod off, for God’s sake, salvage the weekend, get some time to yourself. Tell me the coordinates when you know them and I’ll drop by your office tomorrow.’

Shenkov didn’t move, except to ball his fist and touch the wall with his knuckles, the mime of a punch. ‘I didn’t mean to make you do anything you didn’t want to in Moscow.’

Valery stopped still, because it was so far from what he had expected Shenkov to say that at first, like another language, it was only unconnected sounds.

‘I know you must be scared of me, God knows I know, but I’d rather shoot myself than hurt you. I’m not – believe me or don’t, but I am not going to just snatch you if you let me stay in a room with you for longer than fifteen minutes. I’m sorry, for everything. And I’m sorry to say all this, but watching you contort yourself to be polite in case I lose my temper and kill you is – horrible.’

‘What?’ Valery said softly.

Shenkov brought his shoulders forward, the barest trace of a shrug to say he didn’t know what else to add. He shied when Valery came up close to him, as if he expected a punch in the face. Valery took his hands and pinned them above his shoulders.

‘I’m not scared of you. I thought you wanted to be left alone.’

Shenkov shook his head slightly.

Valery let him go, and tilted forward against him until he was resting against his chest. After a long time, Shenkov crossed both arms over his back and bent to press their heads together, all his bones too tight even through his clothes. They didn’t ease until Valery put one hand on the nape of his neck, where prison warders would, fingertips between the vertebrae, to remind you they could break it if they had to.

29

The Laboratory

On Monday morning, Valery drove into the forest. He had the coordinates to which the bugged cement truck had driven yesterday, and within half an hour, he had found the place. The path was barely there, and he had to edge the Land Rover through the trees and the undergrowth exactly over the tracks of the truck to get through; even then, gorse and briars squeaked their thorns down the car doors.

The way came out in a clearing. He saw the graves even from the car. There were dozens, lined up in clinical rows. There were no headstones, no markers, but the rectangles of concrete showed clearly in the grass, even the older ones. They were all three metres by one.

He walked around slowly, looking between the trees. If he had been running the project, he wouldn’t have wanted to transport radioactive corpses far, particularly knowing that there were researchers from the Lighthouse wandering around, and hunters from the village.