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filthy stain rotting the heart out of this country, like it’s rotting my lungs.’ Anna struggled for breath. For a while they said nothing more but the silence hurt, so Anna asked, ‘Where will you go?’
    ‘I’ll do as you say and follow the River Ob, then head west to Sverdlovsk and the Ural Mountains. To Tivil.’
    That came as a shock. ‘Why Tivil?’
    ‘Because Vasily is there.’
    Anna felt the sick hand of jealousy squeeze her guts.
    ‘Are you all right, Anna?’
    Sofia’s eyes were gazing at her with concern, and that’s when the red haze hit. It made her want to strike out, to shout and scream Nyet! into that sweetly anxious face. How dare Sofia go to Tivil? Anna thrust her hands tight between her knees and clamped them there.
    ‘Vasily?’
    ‘Yes, I want to find him.’
    ‘Is he the reason you’re escaping?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘No, you don’t.’
    But she did. Anna saw only too well. Sofia wanted Vasily for herself.
    Sofia looked at Anna intently and then sighed. ‘Listen to me, you idiot. You said that Maria, your governess, told you about Svetlana Dyuzheyeva’s jewellery.’
    Anna frowned. ‘Yes. Vasily’s mother had beautiful jewels.’
    ‘She told you,’ Sofia continued slowly, as though speaking to a child, ‘that Vasily said his father had buried some of the jewels in their garden at the start of 1917, for fear of what might happen.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And that, after the Civil War, Vasily went back for them and later hid them in the church in Tivil.’
    ‘So it’s just the jewels you’re going for.’
    ‘No, not just the jewels.’
    ‘Vasily too?’
    ‘Yes, for Vasily too.’
    Anna shuddered. She couldn’t stop it, a cold spiky tremor that crept through her bones. Again she said, ‘I see.’
    Sofia’s shoulder gave a little shove that took Anna by surprise and started her coughing again. She hunched over her scarf, pressing it to her mouth, fighting for breath. When it was over, she looked flat-eyed at Sofia.
    ‘Take good care of him,’ she whispered.
    Sofia tilted her head to one side. For a while she said nothing, then she reached out and pulled back the scarf from Anna’s mouth. In silence they both studied the blood stains on the cloth. Sofia spoke very clearly and deliberately.
    ‘There’s only one reason I’m leaving here. Using the jewels and with Vasily’s help, I will come back.’
    ‘Why in God’s name would you want to return to this stink-hole? ’
    ‘To fetch you.’
    Three words, only three. But they changed Anna’s world.
    ‘You won’t survive another winter here,’ Sofia said quietly. ‘You know you won’t, but you’re too weak to walk hundreds of miles through this bloody taiga, even if you could escape. If I don’t go to fetch help for you, you’ll die.’
    Anna couldn’t look at Sofia. She turned her head away and fought the onrush of tears. She felt the sickening weight of fear and knew it would be there inside her for every second that Sofia was gone.
    ‘Sofia,’ she said in a voice that she barely recognised, ‘don’t get yourself eaten by a wolf.’
    Sofia laughed. ‘A wolf wouldn’t stand a chance.’

5
    The Ural Mountains July 1933
    The dog. That’s what Sofia heard first. The dog. Then the men.
    The sound of them carried to her through the quivering breath of the forest as the hound’s paws splashed through a gulley and scrabbled up the other side. Coming closer, too close, with belly-deep whines, teeth bared and tongue loose, thirsting for the taste of blood. It set Sofia’s own hackles rising into sharp spikes of fury. Her hand reached out, her scarred fingertips clutching at the air in front of her as if for one last second she could capture its placid warmth and cradle it to her chest.
    But how could she be angry with a dog? The animal was only doing what it did best, what it was bred to do. To track its prey.
    And she was its prey. So they’d come for her at last. She shivered.
    Had they come by accident?