Child Thief (12 page)

‘And you're an expert?' Dimitri said.

‘I've followed tracks.'

‘Rabbits,' he said. ‘Squirrels. That makes you an expert?'

I ignored him and went back to the other men, taking no notice of them watching me as I went to the boundaries of the disturbance we'd made and began walking around it, looking for other signs. It wasn't long before I found them.

I called to my brother-in-law, but Dimitri wasn't alone when he came to where I was crouched in the snow. The others followed, keeping back.

‘The same tracks,' I said without looking at them.

I sensed Dimitri step closer and I put out a hand to take hold of the hem of his coat. I tugged, indicating he should come down to my level.

‘I have tracked more than rabbits and squirrels,' I said quietly. ‘They're what I track here, because they're what we have. Maybe a wolf from time to time, but I've been way north of here, right into the Carpathians, and I've tracked bear and deer and elk.' I looked at Dimitri. ‘And you're forgetting the things you hate about me. I've followed armies through the snow and the summer forests, across steppe and river, and they've followed me. I've tracked and killed men – experts at concealing themselves – sharpshooters hiding in the forest. I've hunted deserters and enemies, anarchists and revolutionaries and tsarists.' I leaned close so Dimitri could feel my breath in his ear. ‘Don't doubt that I know how to track a little girl.'

Now I looked back at the others standing behind us and I raised my voice. ‘Any one of us can see these tracks were made by the same boots as those tracks back there. And even my daughter Lara,' I glanced at Dimitri, ‘even my daughter
Lara
could tell me these prints were not left by an eight-year-old girl.'

I pointed into the track. ‘The light's not so good, but see how deep this is?' I took Dimitri's hand and pulled off his glove. ‘Put your finger in it,' I told him. ‘
Feel
how deep this track is.' I let go
of his hand and waited for him to put it into the impression in the snow, nodding at him when he hesitated. ‘Go on.'

When Dimitri had done it, I stood and walked away, beckoning him to follow. We went to where the other tracks led away and I told him to do the same thing.

‘What?' Dimitri said looking up. ‘What am I supposed to be feeling?'

‘They're different,' I said.

‘For God's sake, we're wasting time. My daughter is out there, maybe she's—'

‘These tracks are leaving,' I said. ‘The others were arriving.'

Dimitri looked at me.

‘And they're made by the same boots. There's a defect in the right sole, close to the toe.'

‘Dariya's?'

‘No. You followed her tracks. You wiped them out with your own; otherwise you'd be able to compare them. These are a man's boots. And the prints are much deeper here. This man was carrying something when he left. Something heavy.'

‘Something heavy like what?'

‘A child.'

Now the realisation came to his eyes. Dimitri's whole face changed as he stood and looked out at the tracks that disappeared into the trees. ‘We have to follow. Now.' He began to move, but once again I stopped him. Dimitri pulled against me but I dragged him back.

‘This is going to be difficult for you, Dimitri, but you can't go now. Unprepared. In the dark.' The sun was gone now and the sky was darkening quickly. It would be black in just a few minutes. ‘Only an idiot would go into the forest at night in just their coat and boots.'

‘But we have to go after her.'

‘We can't leave her out there.' Leonid came forward.

‘I'll go,' Stanislav said. ‘Together we'll find her.'

‘You'd die,' I said. ‘That's what you'd do together out there,
and you know it. You'd get lost in the dark and you'd freeze to death.'

‘What about Dariya?' Leonid said. ‘She—'

‘She'll be fine. Whoever she's with, he'll have to stop. There's nothing out there for a long way. It'll be too dark, too cold. He'll
have
to stop. He'll have somewhere. Shelter of some kind.'

‘Then we'll catch up with him. Come on.' Dimitri turned to the others. ‘Come with me.'

Stanislav nodded, but the others stood and watched. Uncertain.

‘How can you be sure this man has shelter?' Leonid asked.

‘Because if he didn't, he'd freeze to death just like any of us. We have to go back first,' I said. ‘We have to collect a few things. Then we'll follow. At first light.'

‘That's too late,' Dimitri said. ‘She might be—'

‘She's not,' I said. ‘She's not.' But I couldn't be sure Dariya wasn't already dead. I could only hope.

‘I can't wait till first light. I'm going now,' Dimitri said, pulling away from me and rushing out into the snow. Almost immediately he stumbled and fell.

I hurried out to grab hold of him. ‘You're destroying the tracks. We'll never find her if you do that. We have to wait until first light,' I said. ‘We have to
wait
. I understand your pain and your impatience, but we have to wait. We can't follow at night, unprepared.' I felt Dimitri's fear and his anger. I felt it seeping from every pore, washing him with its stink. I could smell it all around him. Dimitri was afraid for his daughter as any father would be afraid for his child. As I would be afraid for mine. And he had come fresh from the scene of two murdered children and a wrongly hanged man. He would be thinking what we were all thinking.

‘We'll find her,' I said. ‘I promised Lara, and now I'm promising you. We'll find her and we'll bring her back.'

Dimitri continued to struggle, but he began to weaken and I felt the fight drain from him. He knew I was right. There was no point in following her in the dark. The moon was dying behind
the clouds and the night would be black. We'd see nothing of the tracks, and the cold would break us. It would slip its fingers beneath our coats and it would wrap itself around our hearts. I could feel it now, already nipping at me.

‘We'll fetch a lamp,' Dimitri said. ‘Begin searching tonight.'

‘A lamp's no good,' I told him. ‘A few candles in the forest at night? You'll see nothing but your feet. At best you'll destroy any tracks, and at worst you'll lose yourself and be dead from the cold before morning. I've seen it before.'

I pulled my brother-in-law to his feet and turned him in the direction of home. Pushing and pulling him back down to the village.

‘First light,' I said. ‘I promise,' I was already thinking about what we would need to take with us.

The other men walked in silence, all of them feeling Dimitri's pain.

‘You're a believer,' I said to Dimitri.

‘Hm?'

‘You believe in God.'

‘Of course.'

‘Then pray.'

‘I already am. Every second.'

I nodded, watching what I could see of Dimitri's face in the falling darkness, then I lifted my eyes to the stars and a made a quiet prayer of my own. I thought about those tracks in the land, leading away from Lara and Dariya's secret place, and I prayed that God would do just one thing for me. I prayed the tracks would stay fresh. I prayed it wouldn't snow tonight.

10

Natalia was at the window, lit by the weak flame of a candle, when I returned. She and the children had been watching for me, seeing the dark shapes up on the slope before the sun dropped and took them from their sight. But now she was at the door, helping me with my coat, waiting for me to remove my boots.

‘Did you find her, Papa?' Lara came forward without hope in her eyes.

I put my hands on my daughter's cheeks and squatted so our eyes were level.

I wanted to tell her that Dariya was safe at home, that I had climbed the gentle hill with my head high and I had shown the other men what to do. I wanted to prove to my daughter that I was the brave and perfect father she believed she had.

But I shook my head. ‘No, my angel.'

Lara swallowed and nodded because she knew that would be the answer. She'd been at the window with her mother, and she'd seen that Dariya was not with me when I returned to the village. ‘Did the Baba Yaga take her?'

I smiled, but it was a forced, tight-lipped expression caused by sadness rather than amusement. ‘No, my angel. There is no Baba Yaga. That's just a story.' A story with which we teased the children, a way of keeping them from wandering too far into the forest. It was a dangerous place if they became lost, but it was sometimes hard to make children understand that. Frightening them with tales of the old hag worked better. There were even grown men who shuddered in the forest when they remembered
the tales they'd heard as children – tales which they now recounted to their own sons and daughters.

Alone in the forest, with nothing but the trees, a person raised on folk stories of the old witch can find it hard not to imagine the bone fences, each post topped by a human skull except for the one left free for the head of the next weary traveller. There were savage dogs and a terrible house that moved on chicken legs, creaking and groaning, screaming as it turned to face the traveller. And the twisted old hag herself, spewing from that house, cackling, flying in her blackened pestle. The stories varied from telling to telling – the keyhole filled with teeth, the witch who ages a year each time she answers a question – but the one thing many of the stories had in common was that the Baba Yaga's favourite food was lost, vulnerable children. And thinking about it like that, I wondered if Lara wasn't half right. Perhaps the Baba Yaga
had
taken Dariya.

‘Then where is she?' Lara asked. ‘Is she lost?' Her eyes widened as she considered something even more terrible than the broken teeth and the crooked back of the old witch. Lara had heard Natalia and me talking. She had assimilated words and emotions she knew nothing about, but they had become her fears. ‘Did the Chekists come for her?' she asked.

I glanced up at Natalia standing close, the word hanging between us as an invisible entity. It was an old word for an organisation that no longer existed under that name. Lenin's Cheka was once responsible for grain requisition, the interrogation of political enemies, running the Gulag system and putting down rebellious peasants, workers and deserting Red Army soldiers. Its name was so ingrained in the consciousness of the people that even though it had a new title, OGPU, many people still referred to the political police as Chekists. And just that one word was sufficient to capture the essence of everything the organisation stood for.

For Lara, the word held special power. She was afraid of the Baba Yaga, but the adults were afraid of the Chekists.

‘No, Lara. Not them either,' I said. ‘Dariya is lost, that's all.
But I'm going to find her. Her papa and I are going to look for her and we're going to find her.'

‘You promise?'

‘Didn't I already promise?'

Lara nodded and I hugged her tight, grateful she was here and not out there in the dark and the cold. I felt a great sadness for Dimitri, and I felt fear and sympathy for Dariya, but I couldn't help also feeling relief for my own daughter, and for the other people standing around me in that room.

I held Lara for a while, the hard floor painful on my knees, and I wiped the palm of my hand across my eyes before I released her. ‘Time for you to sleep now.'

‘But, Papa, I—'

‘Now,' I said, looking up at Natalia again. ‘And no stories tonight. Straight to sleep.'

Natalia nodded and took Lara's hand, leading her into the bedroom.

I watched them go and stayed on my knees. My legs didn't work like they did when I was a young man. There was a stiffness in the joints, aches in the places where they had been broken or injured. I'd survived two wars, fought for three different armies, and I counted my blessings I'd come away alive, but I hadn't been free from injury.

I pushed up, ignoring the pain, and stretched the discomfort away before beginning to gather the things I'd need.

‘You're leaving now?' Viktor asked.

‘No, not in the dark. Not now. I'll go at first light. Dimitri will be waiting, if he isn't stupid enough to try going now.'

‘But you don't think he will?' Petro said.

‘No.' I shook my head as I tipped an assortment of cartridges onto the wooden table. The brass and lead rolled together, forming patterns. ‘He knows it's no use. He'd never find her in the dark.' I looked up at my sons. ‘You want to help; sort these out.'

‘You're going to need all these?'

‘Who knows what I'm going to need.'

I took the two handguns that had been among the hanged man's belongings and placed them on the table along with other things I intended to take.

‘You don't think she's just lost then?' Petro asked as he began to sort the cartridges, standing them upright on the table.

‘No. Dariya's not lost. Someone has taken her.'

‘Taken her?' Petro looked up from what he was doing. ‘Why do you think that?'

‘There were tracks.' I sat down and put my elbows on the table, but my hands were in fists and they pushed down on the wooden surface.

‘But who would take her?' Petro asked. ‘Who would want to take Dariya?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Someone from the village?'

‘No.'

Natalia came out from the bedroom and closed the door behind her. ‘Speak quietly,' she said. ‘Lara's not sleeping.'

‘I wouldn't blame her if she didn't sleep at all tonight,' I replied.

Natalia went to the
pich
and put a pot of water on to boil. She made black tea, weak to preserve what we had left.

‘Tell me what happened,' she asked as she put four cups on the table, clicking her tongue at the mess I'd made. ‘And move some of these things away.'