‘So now you’re one of the vory, what will they do for you?’

‘I have yet to find out.’

He started to button up his shirt. He didn’t hurry. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder whether belonging to this brotherhood meant more to him than she realised.

‘I have a new father,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘One who will help me.’

The shock of it caught her across her throat. She coughed and stared down at her hands because they seemed to be strangling each other, but she needed badly to talk about something else. Anything else.

‘Antonina wants to speak to you,’ she said.

Instantly his head came up, the green eyes alert and interested. ‘You’ve seen her?’

‘Yes. I’ll take you to her tomorrow.’

‘Thank you.’

That was all. They’d both said enough. Lydia walked over to the peg on the door and pulled on her coat.

‘Sleep well, brother,’ she murmured, opened the door and walked out on to the dim landing.

Before she reached the black courtyard outside, a burly shadow merged with her own, so that it turned into a two-headed monster on the prowl through the night. It was Liev Popkov. They didn’t speak. He loped beside her and she lengthened her stride to his as they disappeared into the dark streets of Moscow. Only when he’d seen her safely to her destination would he return to the warmth of Elena and his own bed.

The crucifix still hung on the wall and the room had filled with shadows, but it didn’t matter to Lydia. Nothing mattered. Not now. Chang had lit the gas lamp.

‘So that I can look at you,’ he’d said.

When she’d entered the room he’d taken her face gently between his hands, his fingers feeling the bones under her skin as if they could tell him something. His eyes studied hers intently for a long moment, then he had kissed her forehead and folded her into his arms.

That was when suddenly nothing else mattered.

She lay with her cheek on his naked chest, her limbs spread lazily over his, and let her fingers trail over his skin. With intense pleasure she smoothed out the slick sheen of sweat that made it glow in the yellow light as if it had been oiled. Each time she touched one of the ridged scars on his chest she lifted her head and brushed it with her lips, tasting his saltiness. Those old scars, like the ones where his little fingers had once been, she could bear. They were surface damage. But what lay under his fine precious skin? What new damage had been inflicted while he was away from her, scars she couldn’t see?

She pressed her ear even closer to his chest to listen for what lay underneath, but caught only the steady drumbeat of his heart and the soft sigh of air entering and leaving the secret cavities within him. His hand was buried in the tangle of her hair, moving among its strands, fingering them, burrowing deeper.

Their first love-making had been intense, hungry for each other as starved creatures are for food, but this time they allowed themselves a slower pace as if they could start to believe they were not going to be snatched apart again at any moment. Their bodies began to relax. To trust. They found each other’s rhythm with ease and Lydia experienced again that familiar ache for him which no amount of feeling him hard inside her, becoming a physical part of her, ever banished completely.

She stroked the long taut muscle of his thigh, saw it twitch with pleasure. ‘Tell me,’ she said softly, ‘what it is that is hurting so much inside you.’

‘Now I am here with you, all pain has vanished.’ He was smiling, she could hear it in his voice even though she couldn’t see his face.

‘You lie well, my love.’

With his hand still entwined in her hair, he raised her head a fraction and turned it so that her chin was balanced on his ribs and he could see her face. His black almond-shaped eyes were smiling at her.

‘It’s the truth, Lydia. The rest of the world does not exist when we are together. What’s out there,’ he glanced at the black window and for a second the smile slipped, ‘with all its hardships, it ceases to be.’ He smoothed a lock of fiery hair back from her forehead and put a fingertip to her mouth. She parted her lips and he touched her teeth. ‘But it’s waiting for us.’

His other hand strayed to her breast, stroking it with a slow aching caress. Abruptly she rolled herself on top of him, laying her own body along the length of him. Their bones and their flesh moulded together, her ankles slotted between his, her thighs on his, her stomach flat against his, her ribs joined to his. She could feel the heat at his groin and needed to merge it with her own. She rested her elbows on either side of his head and stared down into his solemn gaze.

‘Tell me about China,’ she ordered.

The flicker was slight. A tiny black shutter somewhere deep in the darkness behind his eyes. But enough. She knew now she’d been right. She kissed his beautiful straight nose.

‘Tell me,’ she said in a gentler tone, ‘what has happened in China that causes you such grief.’

His smile came slowly. It started with a faint curve in one corner of his lips and she watched it rise through the muscles of his cheeks to his eyes.

‘You know me too well, my Lydia.’

‘Don’t hide from me.’

‘I’m not hiding. Just careful of you.’ His hand lifted and settled on the small of her back as if it had a will and a desire of its own. ‘You have enough to think of here in Moscow. Enough… complications.’

‘So tell me now.’ She bounced her chin on his. ‘Or I’ll lie here all night and all day until you do.’

He laughed. ‘That’s an excellent reason,’ he said, ‘for not telling you anything.’

‘I’m waiting.’

He breathed quietly and she matched the rhythm of her own breath to his. The silence in the small room lay like a blanket around them, warm and intimate. His nostrils flared and she knew he would tell her.

‘Mao Tse Tung is still battling it out, at war with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang forces.’ He spoke quietly but the very softness of his words made Lydia nervous. ‘I believe that Mao and our Communist Red Army will win. One day they will take control. Maybe not soon, but eventually the people of China will realise that their only chance of a future of freedom is through Communism. It is the only way forward for a country like China. We’ve seen it here in Russia, we’ve viewed the advances that will come.’

‘But what about…?’ She stopped.

‘About what?’

‘About the mistakes?’ She waved an impatient hand in the direction of the window and whispered, ‘What about the fear out there?’

Chang wrapped both arms around her naked back and pulled her tight against his chest. ‘It is the leader who is wrong, Lydia, not the Communist system. Stalin is the wrong leader for Russia.’

‘And Mao Tse Tung?’

‘I have fought for him. Endangered my life for him. And risked the lives of my friends and colleagues.’

‘I thought you worked in their Head Office in Shanghai. Decoding encrypted messages, that’s what you told me.’

He gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I do. Some of the time.’

She let it pass. Endangered my life, he’d said.

His fingers stroked her spine, soothing her. ‘But like Stalin,’ he continued, ‘Mao is the wrong leader. He is a corrupt man and will cripple China if he gets his hands on her.’

She let her mouth rest on the hollow of his throat, aware of his pulse.

‘Chang An Lo, if that is so, you must stop fighting for him.’

He tightened his grip on her till she could barely breathe. ‘I know,’ he said bleakly. ‘But where does that leave China? And where does that leave me?’