impressions, understandings – roaring floods of light. Much lost…’ Illegible. ‘… magnificent. This is the day! The new Vlast begins here. It speaks to Kantor also. It does.’
There were a few more notes in Chazia’s scrawl. They seemed to record further meetings with Kantor, but they were undated. Only a few unconnected words and figures. Lom could make nothing of them. Chazia had written across the bottom of one, ‘It speaks to him. Always to him. Never to me.’
30
There was a way to enter the Lodka revealed only to the most secret and trusted servants of the Vlast. It was a small shop, occupying the ground floor of a grimy brick house. The shop window, glazed with small square panes of dirty glass and lit by dim electric bulbs, displayed photographs of naked dancing girls. Books in plain yellow covers. Packets in flimsy paper wrappers marked with prices in spidery brown manuscript. The dried-out carcases of flies and moths.
The proprietor was a fat bearded man in gloves and striped shirtsleeves, known only as Clover. If you spoke certain words to this Clover, he would nod, lift the partition in the counter and show you through a dusty glass door into the back parlour. From there you went through a curtained back exit, across an interior courtyard and down a narrow stairway into a mazy network of tunnels and cellars. It was easy to lose yourself in that subterranean labyrinth, but Josef Kantor knew the way well.
It was an unpleasant route. Kantor disliked it and used it as rarely as he could. The way was damp and dark, and stank of stale river-water. The tunnels and passageways were faced sometimes with stone, more often with rotten planks, and always with slime and streaks of mud. The floor was treacherous with dirty puddles and scattered rubbish. These underground passageways extended under much of inner Mirgorod. They were remnants of the original building work, if not – as some said – remains of some much more ancient settlement that predated the coming of the Founder. Kantor tended to believe the latter. Sometimes he heard things – the shuffle of slow footsteps, mutterings and echoes of shouting – and saw the trails of heavy objects dragged through the mud. Not all the original inhabitants of the marshlands had been driven away by the coming of the city, and some that had left had returned. He wasn’t nervous, threading his way through the maze, but he found it… distasteful.
He came eventually to a locked metal gate that barred the way. He had a key, and let himself through onto an enclosed walkway slung beneath one of the bridges that crossed to the Lodka. Out of sight of the embankment and the windows of the building, it led into the upper basements of the vast stone building. Once inside, Kantor traced a circuitous route that led him gradually upwards, through unused corridors and by way of service elevators and blank stairwells, to the office of Lavrentina Chazia.
Kantor picked up a chair, placed it in front of her desk and sat down. Chazia ignored him and carried on working. Her face had always reminded Kantor of something reddish and cruel. A vixen. And the dark, smooth blemishes where her skin was turning to stone. They were spreading. It was getting worse. He watched her unconsciously scratching at the angel mark on the back of one hand. She dabbles too much.
‘It was a complete success,’ he said.
‘What?’ She didn’t look up.
‘The march. On the Lodka.’
‘Oh. That. But we must talk about something else, Josef. Your position is compromised. Krogh knows who you are. He has the name. Josef Kantor.’
‘Krogh is old and tired.’
‘Krogh is clever,’ said Chazia. ‘He knows we’re working against him and he knows he can’t trust his own people. He’s taken steps against you. An investigator. From the east. Someone with no connections here. He’s set him to track you down.’
Kantor grunted. ‘One investigator? That can be taken care of. You’ll do that?’
‘Of course.’
‘We can’t afford distractions.’
She looked up from her papers at last.
‘You and I cannot meet again, Josef. Our plans must change. At least in so far as they involve you.’
‘I’m not dispensable, Lavrentina. The angel speaks to me. Not you.’
Kantor saw Chazia’s vixen head lean forward, her eyes widen a fraction. She scratched at the stone-coloured back of her hand again. Delicately wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. How transparent she is. She gives herself away. She doesn’t know