Page 88 of The Half Life of Valery K

Anna was as good as her word. She arrived at about eight o’clock in the morning. They didn’t speak on the way upstairs. As soon as Valery opened the door of his flat, the children shot up and thumped into her, and she had to spend the next few minutes calming them down. Albert swam up to the surface of his tank to see what was going on.

‘Is that an octopus?’ Anna said.

‘If you hold your finger out he’ll give you a handshake.’

She did, and Albert prodded her fingertip, then furled excitably around the tank to show her his marbles. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I might cry now.’

‘I know.’ Valery gave her a cup of coffee and put the television on to confuse the bugs. Albert climbed out of the tank and onto his marble tray, where he leaned over to see into Valery’s cup. Valery prodded him softly. ‘It’s hot. Not good for octopuses.’ He put a drop on his fingertip and showed him. Albert touched it, then went green and curled up in a ball. ‘See? You know it’s horrible, why do you keep putting yourself through this?’

The littlest boy was looking hopeful, so Valery put Albert in his hands. Albert took up a noble pose on the boy’s shoulder.

‘Be very gentle,’ Anna said. ‘If anything happens to that octopus, you’re going in the radioactive lake.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ the little boy said meekly.

‘Actually, Dima, take them downstairs to the canteen and get some breakfast.’ It was funny to hear that a little boy was called Dima; in Valery’s head, the only Dima there could ever be was the godfather from the camp.

The eldest looked worried. ‘But what if they come for us—’

‘Nobody has any interest in you whatsoever, darling, I promise.’

All of them looked at Valery.

‘Sit near the door that leads into the kitchen,’ he said. ‘If anyone tries to talk to you, run out the back.’

‘Can Albert come?’

‘Yes, but he’ll have bacon off you at the speed of light, so be careful. Probably better to let him have his own plate. And a jug of water, if you put a tiny bit of salt in it. He’ll sit in it if he feels too dried out.’

A little reluctantly, they went. Valery watched Anna. She must have wanted to keep them in the room with her, but she must have realised too he was going to have to talk about this place without calling it a chocolate factory. Once the children were gone, he turned the television on louder to cover his voice as he explained what had happened. Resovskaya, the asylum, Shenkov’s raid, the secret lab.

‘I think she must have found a way to have him arrested because then that will mean she can get rid of me when she wants to,’ Valery said. ‘Actually I don’t understand why someone hasn’t come for me already.’ He hesitated for too long, and caught a snatch of a breakfast news programme. ‘And I don’t understand how she could possibly have the authority to have the head of the KGB arrested.’

Anna was quiet after he finished. Now that he was looking at her properly, she seemed very, very tired; more so than probably she should have, even after the journey from Chelyabinsk. Some clock in her had slowed down too much lately and processed things too sluggishly. A thyroid problem, Shenkov had said.

She was quiet for so long that he had time to feel certain she was going to tell him that whatever had happened to Shenkov, it was none of his business.

‘You know what she’s done, though,’ she said. ‘It would have been easy.’

‘What?’ he said gratefully.

‘You said they’re running blood samples from the local hospitals; they find their candidates for the human trial from whoever looks promising from the blood work?’

‘Yes?’

‘His name will have come up in her samples. They ran blood tests on him to see if he would be compatible with Tatiana. Probably it even looked legitimate to the other researchers. He’s lived here for seven years but he’s never had any radiation-related problems.’

Valery found himself pressing both hands to the sides of his throat, as if he could crush his voice box. ‘He’s at the lab.’

‘He must be,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t think she could have got him for anything else, not this quickly.’

He didn’t know what to say, except that she was right.

‘How vengeful is she? Resovskaya.’

‘Is she going to give him a thousand roentgen right now and watch him melt? No, I think she would say that was a waste of a test subject,’ Valery said, furious with himself. He had been right there, holding the blood samples. He had known that Shenkov and Tatiana had been tested in Chelyabinsk. He should have seen straight away that Shenkov was in danger. If he had, he could have warned him.

‘Good, then,’ said Anna, with her bone-deep practicality. ‘So all we need to do is get him out before they give him too much.’