House of the Hanged Read Free

wrist. He bit back a cry, not wishing to draw attention to himself.
    He glanced up and down Admiralty Prospekt: the pavements were deserted, just an isvochik heading towards him, drawn by a shaggy white horse. It was free, and Tom waved it down, almost laughing at the absurdity of his good fortune.
    The coachman, muffled in furs, was bringing the small sledge to a halt when Tom heard the shout.
    â€˜Stop him!’
    It came from the cathedral. The tall Chekist stood dwarfed between two pillars of the north portico, waving furiously.
    â€˜Stop him!’ he bellowed again. ‘He’s an enemy of the Soviet!’
    With a flick of the driver’s reins the sleigh took off. Tom stumbled after it, unable to get any meaningful purchase on the compacted snow, falling quickly behind as the horse’s trot became a canter. Realizing the futility of the pursuit, he cut left across the street and disappeared into the park on the far side.
    Overhead, a half-moon hung in a cloudless sky, and even beyond the pool of light thrown by the street lamp he could still pick a route with ease. Unfortunately, this also meant that his pursuers would have no trouble following his deep tracks in the snow.
    That first lone shout had now become a chorus at his back. Outnumbered, the only thing he had in his favour was that he had prepared himself for such conditions. The snow in the park was deep, thigh-deep in places, just as it had been in Finland. Before leaving Helsinki, he had trained hard in anticipation of their flight from Russia, pushing himself on occasions to almost masochistic extremes. Not only was he in better physical condition than he’d ever been, but he had also accustomed himself to the hunger and the cold until his mother would barely have recognized the lean, gaunt spectre of her own son before her. He had grown a beard, and he had learned to stoop convincingly, knocking a few inches off his height, making him one of the crowd.
    â€˜Come on, you bastards,’ Tom muttered to himself. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’
    What they had, it turned out, was guns. And they weren’t afraid to use them.
    The first few shots ripped through the skeletal branches above his head. He assumed they were warning shots until he heard something whistle past his left ear, death missing him by a matter of inches.
    Crouching, he drove his legs on, knowing that every hard yard gained now would equate to three or four when the snow-bound park gave way to Admiralty Quay. He lost a little of his advantage when he was suddenly pitched forward into the snow, as if shoved hard in the back by a phantom hand. Scrabbling to his feet, he figured the bullet must have struck the bag slung over his shoulder, embedding itself in the jumble of clothing he’d put together for Irina.
    A primeval impulse to survive, to live beyond his twenty-two years, took complete possession of him now. He ploughed on like a man sprinting through a waist-high sea to save a drowning child. Pleasingly, the shouts of his pursuers had dimmed almost to silence by the time he finally broke free on to Admiralty Quay.
    He knew that the frozen stillness of the river lay just beyond the low wall ahead of him. Should he risk it, skittering across the ice, out in the open? No. He bore left, away from the Admiralty building, his legs burning, but with a lot of life still left in them.
    Run , he told himself. Settle your breathing and stretch out your stride . He would take the next street on the left, head south, lose himself in the back streets around the Mariinsky Theatre.
    Tom glimpsed the revolver in the other man’s hand a split-second before they collided. Both had been slowing to make the turn, but the head-on impact still sent them sprawling in a tangle of limbs.
    The gun. Where was it? No longer in the man’s hand, but within reach. Tom lashed out with his foot, slamming the heel of his boot into the man’s head, catching him in the