HOUSE OF
THE HANGED
MARK MILLS
For my mother
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Acknowledgements
Also by Mark Mills
Copyright
Chapter One
Petrograd, Russia. January 1919
The moment the guard called her name she felt the weight of the other women’s eyes upon her.
It didn’t make sense, didn’t fit with the grim clock that regulated their lives. Too late in the day for an interrogation, the usual hour of execution was still some way off.
‘Irina Bibikov,’ snapped the guard once more, his silhouette black against the open door of the darkened cell.
She was hunched on her pallet bed, her back against the wall, her knees pulled tight to her chest for warmth, as tight as her new belly would permit. Unwinding, she rose awkwardly to her feet, her palm pressed to the damp stonework for support.
The guard stepped away from the door. She knew better than to meet his gaze as she passed by him and out into the corridor.
Blinking back the ice-white light from the bare electric bulb, she briefly heard the murmur of prayers on her behalf before the guard pulled the steel door shut behind them.
Tom fought the urge to hurry ahead. Nothing to arouse suspicion, he told himself. His papers, though false, were in good order, good enough to pass close scrutiny. He knew this because he’d been stopped by a Cheka patrol earlier that day while crossing Souvorov Square.
There had been two of them, small men in shapeless greatcoats that reached almost to their ankles, and they had enjoyed their authority over Yegor Sidorenko. The name was Ukrainian, to account for the faint but un disguisable hitch in Tom’s accent. He had called them ‘Comrade’; they had called him ‘Ukrainian dog’ before sending him on his way. More than a year had passed since the Bolshevik coup, but evidently the spirit of brotherhood so widely trumpeted by Lenin, Zinoviev and the others had yet to reach the ears of their Secret Police. So much for lofty ideals. So much for the Revolution.
Tom knew that he couldn’t bank on being quite so lucky if stopped again, but only as he drew level with No.2 Gorokhovaya did it occur to him that he might actually find himself face-to-face with the same two Chekists as they entered or left their headquarters.
There were patrols coming and going, passing beneath the high, arched gateway punched in the drab façade. Beyond lay the central courtyard, where the executions took place, where the bodies were loaded into the back of trucks, their next stop, their terminus, some nameless hole hacked out of the iron-hard ground beyond the city limits.
At least the sharp north wind sluicing the streets of the Russian capital permitted him to draw his scarf up over his nose, all but concealing his face. As he did so, he cast a furtive glance through the archway, past the sentries shivering at their posts.
What was he looking for? Signs of unusual activity, some indication that the plan had already been compromised. He saw nothing of note, just a courtyard shrouded in the gathering gloom, and the dim outlines of men and vehicles.
Trudging on past through the deep snow, Tom silently cursed the fact that Irina hadn’t been transferred by now to one of the state prisons, Shpalernaya or Deriabinskaya, where security was considerably more lax and bribery endemic. Instead, his only option had been to try and spring her from the beast’s lair.
It was a cellar room, small and all but empty. There were some mops poking from their pails in one corner and a few large tins of cleaning fluid stacked up in another, but Irina’s eye was drawn to the wooden stool standing alone in the middle of the room. On it were some clothes, neatly folded, with two pieces of paper resting on top.
One was a visitor’s pass made out to Anna Constantinov. On the second was scrawled: St Isaac’s Cathedral. The words were in English, and she recognized the handwriting.
‘Quick,’ said the guard. He was the youngest of the three who oversaw the female prisoners, not much more than a boy, his moustache a tragic overture to manhood. ‘Get changed.’
Irina stared at the slip of paper in her hand, not quite believing that it had happened, trying to picture what Tom must have put himself through, the dangers he had faced, the border crossing from Finland . . .
It was almost inconceivable.
‘Hurry,’ hissed the guard.
His ear was pressed to the door, but his eyes remained fixed on her – eager young eyes, hoping for a glimpse of female flesh.
She was happy to oblige. It might provide some scrap of comfort at the end of his short life. She wondered how much money he’d been promised. More than enough to see him safely away, out of the country. To stay would mean certain death before a firing squad. She looked down at her belly, the still unfamiliar bow, the tautness of the pale skin around her navel.
Dressed now, her soiled clothes heaped on the floor at her feet, she wrapped the shawl around her head and turned to the guard.
‘I’ll get rid of that,’ he said, taking the piece of paper from her.
Young, yet sensible. It wouldn’t be wise to have details of the rendezvous about her person if she was stopped while trying to leave.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
‘You too.’
They parted company wordlessly in the corridor outside, the guard pointing out her route before